Peace and Conflict Studies

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Peace and Conflict Studies

• Global Conflict Scenarios

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Anna Tsing

• Globality ...the globe, that planet-wide space
  for all humanity and its encompassing habitat
• Global connections Places are made through
  their connections with each other, not their
  isolation planetary interconnections

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Metaphors of globality

• Future new global age, new paradigm, new
  predictive expertise
• But what is new about global processes?
• Networks combining transnational
  interconnectedness with individualism
• But what about the continued importance of
  national borders and structures?

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Metaphors of globality

• Circulation migrations, flows, mobility
  (creative hybridity)
• But what about the circulation of troops
  (military interventions) and the necessary
  material infrastructure of circulation?

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Disciplinary readings

• Globalism is read differently in different
  disciplines
• In economics it is read as market integration and
  homogenization
• In political science it is read as a process that
  goes beyond the international system
• In anthropology it is read as the opposite of
  localism

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Scale making

• Distinction between (contained) locals and
  (mobile) globals?
• Distinction between urban cosmopolitans and rural
  hinterlanders?
• Distinction between global forces and local
  places?
• Distinction between globalization and local
  resistance?

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Global conflict scenarios

• Instances of scale making
• Imagined global orders
• Imagined parties in conflict

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Imagined conflicts

• Between ideologies
• Between civilizations
• Between cultural norms
• Between rational people and irrational fanatics

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Presentation

• Huntington, Samuel. 1993. The Clash of
  Civilizations? Foreign Affairs 72(3) 22-49.
• Barber, Benjamin. 1992. Jihad Vs. McWorld.
  Atlantic Monthly 269(3) 53-65.
• Kaplan, Robert. 1994. The Coming Anarchy.
  Atlantic Monthly 273(2) 44-76.

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Presentation

• Ajami, Fouad. 1993. The Summoning. Foreign
  Affairs 72(4) 2-9.
• Sakakibara, Eisuke. 1995. The End of
  Progressivism A Search for New Goals. Foreign
  Affairs 74(5) 8-14.
• Bowen, John. 1996. The Myth of Global Ethnic
  Conflict. Journal of Democracy 7(4) 3-14.

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Samuel P. Huntington
Professor, Harvard University Chairman, Harvard
Academy of International and Area Studies
1977-1978 Coordinator of Security Planning for
the National Security Council
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The Clash of Civilizations

• After the Cold War, global conflicts are between
  civilizations
• Cold War was about ideological division
• Clash of Civilizations is about cultural division
• From Iron Curtain to Velvet Curtain

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The Clash of Civilizations

• Globalization increases the interactions among
  peoples
• This enhances peoples civilization-consciousness
• We know who we are when we know who we are not
• Contrastive identities

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Civilizational alignments

• Kin-country syndrome
• Civilization rallying
• Cultural identities

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Identities

• An Ibo may be ... an Owerri Ibo or an Onitsha
  Ibo in what was the Eastern region of Nigeria. In
  Lagos, he is simply an Ibo. In London, he is a
  Nigerian. In New York, he is an African.

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Civilizational identity

• A civilization is the highest cultural
  grouping of people and the broadest level of
  cultural identity people have short of that which
  distinguishes humans from other species.
  (Huntington 199324)

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Civilizations
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Civilizational differences

• history
• language
• culture
• tradition
• religion

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Civilizational differences

• Different views on the relations between
• God and man
• the individual and the group
• the citizen and the state
• parents and children
• husband and wife

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Civilizational differences

• Differing views of relative importance of
• rights and responsibilities
• liberty and authority
• equality and hierarchy

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Difference and conflict

• Differences do not necessarily mean conflict,
  and conflict does not necessarily mean violence.
  Over the centuries, however, differences among
  civilizations have generated the most prolonged
  and the most violent conflicts.
• The fault lines between civilizations will be
  the battle lines of the future.

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Emerging alignments
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Islams bloody borders

• West (Christians)
• China (Confucians)
• Balkans (Slavic-Orthodox)
• Israel (Jews)
• India (Hindus)
• Burma (Buddhists)
• Philippines (Catholics)

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Emerging alignment
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Western response

• Foment conflicts between enemies of the West
• Pull Latin American and Orthodox civilizations
  closer to the West
• Hold geopolitical positions
• Learn to live with civilizational difference

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Benjamin Barber
Professor of civil society, University of Maryland
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Jihad vs. McWorld

• Metaphors for two opposite global trends
• Neither McWorld nor Jihad is remotely democratic
  in impulse. Neither needs democracy neither
  promotes democracy.

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Jihad

• Jihad in the name of a hundred narrowly
  conceived faiths against every kind of
  interdependence
• Antipolitics of tribalization

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Jihad

• Explicitly antidemocratic one-party
  dictatorships, governments by military junta,
  theocratic fundamentalism
• Often associated with a version of the
  Führerprinzip that empowers an individual to rule
  on behalf of a people

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McWorld

• fast music, fast computers, and fast food
  with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonalds
• The antipolitics of globalism
• The administration of global markets
  homogenization

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Global future

• Jihad may be a last deep sigh before the eternal
  yawn of McWorld.

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Robert Kaplan
American journalist, inspired by Thomas
Malthus and Thomas Homer-Dixon
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The Coming Anarchy

• How scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism,
  and disease are rapidly destroying the social
  fabric of our planet
• West Africa provides a premonition of the global
  future

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West Africa

• Crime, chaos, disease, danger
• ...young men everywhere hordes of them. They
  were like loose molecules in a very unstable
  social fluid, a fluid that was clearly on the
  verge of igniting.

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Homer-Dixon

• Scarcity of renewable resources (fresh water,
  forests, fertile soils, fisheries, regional
  hydrological cycles, etc.)
• Environmental scarcity causes conflicts

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Ecological conflict cause
ecological depletion
uncontrolled urbanization
societal collapse
state collapse
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West Africa
destruction of the rainforest
soil erosion
rural depopulation
urban overpopulation
societys collapse
urban gangs take over
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The coming anarchy

• West Africa is becoming the symbol of worldwide
  demographic, environmental, and societal stress,
  in which criminal anarchy emerges as the real
  strategic danger.

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West Africa

• In Abidjan, effectively the capital of the Cote
  dIvoire, or Ivory Coast, restaurants have stick-
  and gun-wielding guards who walk you the fifteen
  feet or so between your car and the entrance,
  giving you an eerie taste of what American cities
  might be like in the future.

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Metaphor
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Inside the limo
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Outside the limo
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Fouad Ajami
Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the School
for Advanced International Studies at Johns
Hopkins University
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The Summoning

• Huntington is wrong because
• modernity and secularism will not be defeated
• tradition-mongering and fundamentalism are signs
  of modernization and modernitys success

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The Summoning

• Huntington is wrong because
• states, not civilizations, continue to be the
  most powerful global actors
• civilizations do not control states, states
  control civilizations

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Actual alliances

• Iran supports Christian Armenia
• West supports Armenias enemy, Muslim Azerbaijan
• Governing Muslim party in Turkey, AKP, wants EU
  membership, whereas secularist-nationalist
  parties CHP and MHP dont

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Eisuke Sakakibara
Mr. Yen professor at Waseda University former
vice minister of finance for international affairs
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The End of Progressivism

• Progressivism the belief that there is only one
  ideal end, the unique path of which human beings
  can recognize
• Progressivisms socialism and capitalism
• Disillusionment with progressivism reemergence
  of civilization consciousness

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Crises of capitalism

• oligopolization of the world market
• strategic trade (rather than free trade)
• mass consumption creates large-scale destruction
  of nature

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The prospects for success

• Learning from Asia
• coexistence of diverse civilizations
• respect for the environment

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John Bowen
Professor of Anthropology at Washington University
at St. Louis
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Ethnic identities

• Not ancient and unchanging
• Not cause of intolerance
• Not cause of violence

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Creating ethnic identities

• Colonial censuses
• Palace politics
• Centralized politics
• Top-down nationalism

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Alternative situations

• dispersed dominance (facilitating multiple group
  alliances)
• cross-cutting cleavages (for example, religious
  differences cutting across linguistic
  differences)
• proliferation of points of power (dominance in
  one sphere ought not to automatically confer
  dominance in others)