|
Main
Academic and other completed longer works. Note: The author is happy for you to read these papers, but the fact that they are published on an open forum is not an excuse to plagiarise. Contact me by e-mail if you wish to quote or borrow from them; see also the Creative Commons copyright notice.
Rising China, Shining India; the quagmire in the Persian Gulf and America’s Global War on Terror. These are some of the focal points of international politics in 2007, and none of them exist in isolation.
For the giant populations of Asia to continue their slow grind out of poverty requires economic growth; industrialisation and development must be fuelled. Both China and India are increasingly dependent on oil and gas imports, and in order to safeguard their futures energy security is vital. So each needs to command new sources and new ways of bringing in fossil fuels.
There are some vital strategic areas that can serve as transit routes in both China and India’s energy security policies. Thus geopolitics return to the historical heartland of Kipling’s Kim – the territory now known as Pakistan. It is as if the original Great Game has gone back to square one, only with some fresh rules and new players.
This thesis aims to examine the geopolitical implications of developing Pakistan as an ‘energy hub’, and to analyse the impediments to its fruition and the interested parties’ strategies for seeing it through. And, whereas other studies tend to focus on individual factors at work, it aims instead to critically observe them in the context of the situation as a whole.
Bound copies are available at lulu.com for around $10 plus P&P; downloadable PDF files are free of charge. Click here to access the virtual storefront.
This work is made available on the understanding that it will not be copied, plagiarised or otherwise reproduced without the explicit consent of the author.
Can Europe Help Tame China’s Environmental Nemesis?
 BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China admits to climate failings
"Compared with social and economic modernisation, China's ecological modernisation lags far behind," said the research group's director, He Chuanqi.
Damn right. The single most terrifying thing about China is its rampant and relentless self-destruction - a policy which one day could implode with apocalyptic consequences. But what can any of us do about it?
The European Union is China's biggest trading partner: in 2004, trade levels stood at €160 billion. And with financial flows this high, inevitably relations between the two economic giants transcend business alone.
According to liberal and constructivist theorists, the increasing interdependence brought by globalisation brings about a slow but steady ‘diffusion’ of norms and standards across national borders and even continents. The EU itself is a good example of the spread of ideas from country to country, both as a stimulus to and a result of the integration process.
With this in mind, it stands to reason that the EU should be able to ‘diffuse’ its ideas to countries like China. Actually doing so, however, is easier said than done. This paper below looks at how, rather than trying to directly introduce human rights and democracy, Europe can penetrate both China’s economy and its political sphere with ‘green’ values instead.
Download Word file or read main text below. (See Word file for bibliography and footnotes).
Continue reading "Greening the Smoking Dragon" »
The Faith and the State lecture series closed with a general debate held at the ISHSS in Amsterdam. Moderated by Maarten Huygen of NRC Handelsblad newspaper, the speakers were chosen to embody as best as possible the different strands of the discussions over the last two months.
In the right corner was atheist philosopher Prof Herman Philipse; ranged against him were the Labour party Mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen, and Professor Hakan Yilmaz of Bogazici University, Istanbul. Also present was Cornell historian Professor Laurence Moore, representing the American dimension of the debate. Their main statements are detailed further elsewhere: what follows is a summary of the public forum itself.
Read on below.
Continue reading "Religion, Enlightenment and Democracy" »
Dutch Multiculturalism in Question
A draft report of proceedings in New York, by Jessica Serraris and Philip Sen.
Those who managed to get in – people were literally lining up around Washington Square to attend the debate at NYU’s Tischman Auditorium – were warned that they’d hear some views that would be “a little more direct than Americans are used to”. They were not to be disappointed.
Integration and its Discontents
Students, professors, journalists and VIPs alike gathered to see arguably one of the most celebrated Dutch women in recent history. The notoriously outspoken Ayaan Hirsi Ali had been invited to discuss the dark side of Islam and Dutch multiculturalism, and along with former EU commissioner FFrits Bolkestein and writer Bas Heijne she certainly managed to captivate the audience.
But the debate was deeply one-sided. If Heijne was supposed to counter the rightist views of the other two, he did not live up to the task. Perhaps the debate would have benefited had a prominent and outspoken Muslim been invited to the stage too. Still, what ensued was otherwise a representative discussion on Holland’s controversial and divisive integration issues. After Professor Tony Judt's introduction, in which he set recent upheavals (including two political assassinations) into context, it was time to hear the speakers make their cases. It soon became clear that there would be more than one star of the show.
Read on below.
Continue reading "Religion and the Limits of Tolerance" »
 Faith and the State
Remarque Institute (NYU) and ISHSS (UvA) US-Europe Public Forum 2006
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
Edmund Burke, 1729-1797
Be afraid. If recent press reports are to be believed, Europe – and Britain in particular – is positively crawling with Islamic terrorists, bent on death and destruction in the name of Jihad.
The media tends to exaggerate, of course, but after the uncovering of plans to destroy 10 aircraft in mid-air, the discovery of terror training camps and the arrests of Al-Qaeda commanders, no-one can deny that something is going on. What lies at the roots of this militancy among Europe’s Muslims, and what, if anything, can be done to assuage it?
Download Word file or read main text below. (See Word file for bibliography and footnotes).
This essay is the joint winner of the US-Europe Public Forum 'Faith and the State' competition 2006. You can also read the original blog entry from which the paper was extended.
Continue reading "A Taste of Reality and the State of Things to Come" »
Xinjiang, the Uyghurs and an Oversight in International Law
When the Charter of the United Nations was drafted in 1945, the aim was to eliminate both war and the causes of war. In a world devastated by conflict, the Allies dreamed of a new order governed by the rule of law, where human rights and the self-determination of peoples overrode the spent era of empire.
So when we think of colonialism today, we tend to imagine white European settlers sweeping aside the indigenous populations of the Americas or Australia in their lust for land; the creaking imperial administrations of Dutch Indonesia, French Indochina and the British Raj; or the unruly scramble for Africa. It is a period we shamefully consign to the history books.
But inherent contradictions of the UN Charter’s first two articles, which also enshrine the sacred right of nations to sovereignty and territorial integrity, leave chinks in the armour of international law. Colonialism is alive and well, and with us now in the 21st century.
A case in point is China, which following the collapse of the Soviet Union at the close of the last century constitutes what may well be the world’s last real empire. In its wild western province of Xinjiang, the politics of colonisation continue, intertwined with the modern obsessions with political Islam and the hunt for oil. Is there anything international law has to say about the predicament of Xinjiang’s Uyghurs, a people who are rapidly becoming strangers in their own land?
Download Word file here or read main text below. (Word file contains additional bibliography, maps and appendices)
Continue reading "Colonialism in the 21st Century" »
Cold War Standoff, Lukewarm Co-operation or Something Else Altogether?
In Iran is embodied all of the issues of our time: nuclear ‘rogue states’; Islamic fundamentalism; energy security. And both the US and its rising rival, China, have vital interests in its future.
America’s policy is heavily discussed, and the newspapers are filled with fact, hearsay and rumour about its next move. But what will China do? Given that it has more significant stakes in Iran than in the other ‘Axis’ members, can the Chinese ruling classes just look the other way as they did with Iraq? Will they push for a settlement as they are doing with North Korea? Or will they confront the US in the United Nations and even on the ground?
At this crucial junction for the world order, neither neo-realism and neo-liberalism – both written and practised by ‘Occidental’ thinkers, not ‘Oriental’ – may be fully adequate to explain what happens next. Indeed, are our understandings of Chinese interests correct at all?
Download Word file here or read the main text below. (File contains additional footnotes and bibliography).
Continue reading "Theorising China's Iran Crisis Policy" »
A New Alliance or Another Sino-Russian Split?
Every period of history has its ‘stories of the day’. For us, in the post-Cold War era, these are now obvious: the threat of Islamic extremism and the consequent ‘War on Terror’; the rapid economic growth of what is already dubbed the ‘Asian Century’; and the increasing strain on the environment by the over-exploitation of resources and the under-management of the consequences.
The continued ‘rise of China’ in particular depends upon a number of external factors – most notably, energy supply. In order to keep its restless millions in check, the governing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has to fuel the breakneck economic growth of the last decade, or at the very least prevent collapse.
Yet China’s oil and gas reserves are inadequate for its future needs, whereas neighbouring Russia and Central Asia are major providers of energy. So upon them and their pipelines it must rely – although the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a nation that disdains reliance on others and prefers to go it alone.
The answer is to build its political and economic influence over Central Asia. Russia, however, also has hegemonic ambitions in the region. The scene is thus set for a confrontation within what some authors describe as the ‘New Great Game’. At present, relations remain benign, but how long can this continue? Could we soon be facing another Sino-Russian Split reminiscent of the 1960s row between Mao and Khrushchev? Or will Russia be pulled into China’s orbit in an uneasy partnership of mutual interdependence?
Download Word file here or read main text below. (Word file contains additional bibliography, tables and maps).
Continue reading "Pipeline Politics in Central Asia" »
|
|
