Articles
Globalizations, 2022
Historically, the army has been one of the main fabrics of modern subjectivity. The work of Miche... more Historically, the army has been one of the main fabrics of modern subjectivity. The work of Michel Foucault, specifically, explored how the armed forces have been a central site in the production of such subjectivities via modes of discipline and biopower. Building on Byung-Chul Han’s examination of neoliberalism, we argue that the new subject of the army is no longer solely a disciplinary/biopolitical subject but increasingly a psychopolitical project. These projects are constituted through, and as an expression of, what Han defines as the achievement society. In the achievement society neoliberalism redefines subjectivity through an affirmation of limitless possibilities and freedoms articulated through market logics. Neoliberal projects, thus, do not acknowledge limit conditions, but only boundlessness to actualize the self. This article reveals how the logics of the achievement society have gained entrance into exceptional military spaces, thereby transforming military subjects into achievement projects.
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European Journal of International Security, 2023
This article presents a theoretical and methodological argument for employing a narrative-based a... more This article presents a theoretical and methodological argument for employing a narrative-based approach to explore criminal organisations' (COs) claims to political authority, accompanied by an empirical example. International Relations scholarship is increasingly interested in the role narratives play in political meaning-making processes, with violent non-state actors (VNSAs) beginning to occupy a central space in such investigations. This work has contributed important insights into how VNSAs, such as terrorists and insurgents, mobilise narratives to challenge state authority. However, this literature still needs to take stock of groups that do not directly challenge the state but rather live within it. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's literary theory and using the Sicilian Mafia as a case study, I show that COs exercise and construct their narratives of political authority by reappropriating the state's key constitutive narratives of space, time, and identity. By reflecting the same form of (statist) political imagination via alternative spatial, temporal, and identity configurations, these groups simultaneously reject and reproduce modern articulations of political authority in their spatio-temporal and identity dimensions.
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Globalizations.
Modernity is often understood as a time of crisis. Health, humanitarian,
economic, and environmen... more Modernity is often understood as a time of crisis. Health, humanitarian,
economic, and environmental crises are just some crises characterizing the
present. This special issue investigates these interwoven crises by
investigating the subject in crisis, as making sense of how our worlds are
changing requires interrogating how we ourselves are changing. How can
we apprehend the subject and forms of subjectivities implied when evoking
specific crises responses? In this introduction, we suggest reading current
crises as expressions, effects, and accelerations of a longstanding
epistemological crisis sustaining the modern articulation of subjectivity. To
trace the subjectivity/crisis link we mobilize Derrida’s notion of aporia, which
exposes the unresolvable tension(s) at the foundation of concepts, to survey
how subjectivity has been examined in political theory and international
relations (IR) and to posit the continued necessity of immanent critiques of
modern subjectivity. We conclude by setting out the individual contributions
to this special issue.
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Defence Studies, 2021
This article analyses remote warfare from an ontological security perspective, arguing that remot... more This article analyses remote warfare from an ontological security perspective, arguing that remote warfare needs to be understood as a response to states’ internal self-identity needs. We develop this claim by analysing an emerging aspect of remote warfare: Security Force Assistance (SFA). SFA is aimed at building up the security forces of partners, sharing best practice, assisting in security sector reform, fostering collaboration, and overall contributing to conflict resolution. Focusing on the UK, we show how and why ontological security needs are a driving force behind the UK’s SFA program. We outline the UK’s specific autobiographical narrative, which we call a “global engagement identity,” explore the crises that induced ontological insecurity, and show how the UK’s SFA program can be read as a routinised foreign policy practice aimed at taming uncertainty and reinforcing ontological security. This paper makes three contributions. First, it analyses remote warfare through an ontological security framework, thereby moving the focus from “security-as-survival” to “security-of-being.” Second, it highlights the importance of SFA as a remote warfare tool. Third, it shows the centrality of ontological security in understanding UK defence policy.
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Although Security Sector Reform (SSR) is widely regarded as a vital element of peacebuilding, its... more Although Security Sector Reform (SSR) is widely regarded as a vital element of peacebuilding, its implementation has remained largely disappointing. In recent years, the academic literature has witnessed an intensifying debate on the need to close the policyimplementation gap in SSR. This article contributes to the debate on the need for a second generation SSR by exploring the value of further education (FE) programmes through an autoethnographic approach of FE courses delivered in Palestine, Lebanon, and Georgia. We argue that FE can enhance a holistic approach to SSR, contributing to horizontal and vertical integration and fostering a long-term strategic vision.
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Journal of Peace and War Studies, 2021
Decolonizing as a project and practice has generated renewed attention since the global Black Liv... more Decolonizing as a project and practice has generated renewed attention since the global Black Lives Matter protests’ demand for a far-reaching engagement with the structural racism prevalent within society. Civil-military relations have not been untouched by this. While calls to decolonize higher education (HE) are not new (Bhambra, Gebrial, and Nişancıoğlu, 2018), such calls have not yet found resonance in the professional military education (PME) domain. This is an important gap as military education institutions, similar to western universities, are key sites where “colonialism—and colonial knowledge in particular—is produced, consecrated, institutionalized and naturalized” (Bhambra, Gebrial, and Nişancıoğlu, 2018). In this paper we provide a rationale for the importance of decolonizing PME as well as the benefits for decolonizing teaching and learning in a PME setting by drawing on existing attempts developed to decolonize HE institutions. Though building on these, our decolonizing rationale links issues identified in relation to HE to the specific sensitivities of PME. Our argument unfolds as follows. First, we outline how we understand the process of decolonizing and how it relates to PME. Second, we explain how the armed forces benefit from decolonizing PME. Third, we look at two avenues in need of decolonizing: the curriculum and the educator. In our conclusions we reflect on the importance of decolonization for creating truly diverse and inclusive forces and its significance in crafting effective military leaders for the twenty-first century.
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Wavell Room , 2021
Decolonizing as a project and practice has generated renewed attention since the global Black Liv... more Decolonizing as a project and practice has generated renewed attention since the global Black Lives Matter protests’ demands for a far-reaching engagement with the structural racism prevalent within society. Civil-military relations have not been untouched by this. The U.S. Army unveiled an initiative to promote diversity and inclusivity in the forces, and Gen. Petraeus recently reflected in The Atlantic on his own military experience, legacies of systemic racism, and debates over symbols glorifying the Confederacy, arguing that “[t]he way we resolve these issues will define our national identity for this century and beyond.“ While aspects such as the names of institutions or the replacement of statues have been debated extensively, the importance of decolonizing Professional Military Education (PME) has so far escaped attention.
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Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice , 2020
This article investigates the consequences of adopting a public health-based approach to conflict... more This article investigates the consequences of adopting a public health-based approach to conflict analysis and conflict resolution. We use the Cure Violence project (CV) as an example of such an approach. CV sees violence as a disease that can be controlled and contained via epidemiological methods and strategies that are applied in disease control. Initially originating to tackle urban violence in the US, CV is now extending globally, and it is broadening its scope of action to international conflict resolution. Despite its short-term successes in reducing levels of violence, we argue that such an approach is at risk of de-politicizing conflict-resolution. Rooted in methodological individualism and evidence-based epistemology, this approach has the tendency to overlook structural causes and drivers of conflict, while concentrating its efforts on the individual alone. Conflict resolution, henceforth, becomes an individualized task, and the responsibility for its success and failure is transferred entirely on the individual. This overlooks the centrality of complex structural conditions as well as the role of collective agency in conflict resolution.
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E-IR, 2017
This paper focuses on the role of higher education and its impact on peacebuilding and internatio... more This paper focuses on the role of higher education and its impact on peacebuilding and international conflict management.
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As Derrida has argued, the constitution of the criminal is related to the constitution of the sov... more As Derrida has argued, the constitution of the criminal is related to the constitution of the sovereign, and both are situated outside the law, one above and one below it. The present contribution explores the way organised crime is excluded from the political realm and how this exclusion reproduces statist claims to sovereignty through exceptional measures which outlaw the (organised) criminal. This exploration is carried out by critically engaging with the dichotomy between economics and politics. I investigate what this tells us about the way the sovereign and the criminal are mutually and relationally constituted through the opposition between what is ideological and ascribed to the realm of politics and what is non-ideological and ascribed to the realm of economics. This dichotomy is explored through an analysis of the Italian State’s antimafia legislation, which relies upon the opposition between States and illicit violent non-state actors, but also on their internal differentiation, with the terrorist seen as political and ideological, and the organised criminal as non-ideological and apolitical, and therefore more dangerous than the terrorist. Through this differentiation, the sovereign Italian State reproduces itself vis à vis the mafioso. In the second part of my analysis, I investigate the counter discourse of the mafia.
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Global Crime, 2014
The present contribution critically engages with the theoretical and empirical nexus between ‘cri... more The present contribution critically engages with the theoretical and empirical nexus between ‘crime’ and ‘terrorism’. The Crime–Terror Nexus is understood first as the increasing cooperation between terrorist groups and criminal organisations, and second as the merging of terror/crime identities. I argue that the concept of the Crime–Terror Nexus reifies the identities of both criminal and terrorist organisations by pre-assigning exclusively economic motives to the former and exclusively political motives to the latter, even though in reality these categories, which underpin the concept of the nexus, are becoming increasingly blurred. This contribution draws upon concepts from political theory to unpack the identities of these violent non-state actors. In accordance with Carl Schmitt’s understanding of the political and of sovereignty, these identities can be understood as forms of ‘illicit sovereignty’. Through an empirical analysis of the discourse of the Sicilian Mafia, I show how the Mafia constructs its identity in relation to the Italian state by contesting the sovereignty of its ‘licit’ counterpart.
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Book Chapters
Remote Warfare - Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 2021
Late modern warfare is increasingly characterised by ‘the technical ability and ethical imperativ... more Late modern warfare is increasingly characterised by ‘the technical ability and ethical imperative to threaten and, if necessary, actualise violence from a distance – with no or minimal casualties’ (Der Derian 2009, xxi). The term remote warfare has been coined to capture this process where states and societies of the Global North are progressively distancing the effects of war. New technologies, such as drones, and actors, such as private military and security companies (PMSCs) and special forces, are a fundamental feature in enabling such types of warfare, and their importance has attracted increasing attention (Chamayou 2015). In this chapter, we focus on what Der Derian has referred to as the ‘ethical imperative.’ This imperative, we argue, underpins the commitment towards forms of remote warfare and actively shapes the direction and focus of the techniques it employs. In order to think about remote warfare, it is necessary to recognise the normative commitment that underpins this way of war. This is a commitment which emerges clearly from the definition of remote warfare as a series of methods and approaches, such as the use of proxies, special operations forces, PMSCs and drones, to ‘counter threats at a distance’ (Watts and Biegon 2017). The chapter focuses on the ethical imperative sustaining the process of distancing by looking at the normative commitment embedded within forms of remote warfare. We do so by exploring remote warfare’s socio-political effects on intervening states, which so far has generated only limited attention from scholars.
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Law, Security and the State of Perpetual Emergency, 2020
The configuration of state sovereignty has been historically constituted through a spatial distin... more The configuration of state sovereignty has been historically constituted through a spatial distinction between an inside, the space of domesticity, and an outside, the space of anarchy and war. Yet, post 9/11, scholars have raised our attention to how the Global War on Terror has increasingly blurred this spatial division. This chapter, however, analyses the overlap between these two dimensions by placing them inside a longer historical trajectory. Through an investigation of Italian state responses to the Sicilian mafia, this chapter shows how the logic of war has been inscribed into the logic of domestic security since the Italian unification in the nineteenth century. By adopting a legal-historical perspective, this analysis exposes that the exceptionality of this inscription shows itself to be a process of normalization that led to a progressive militarization of security discourses and practices. Analysing exceptionalism from this ‘decentred position’ does not imply reducing the importance of post 9/11 exceptionalism, nor does it deny its increasingly pervasive nature. It requires us, however, to frame it within a long-term historical and institutional framework to capture its emergence and conditions of possibility.
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War Amongst the People: Critical Assessments, 2019
Republished in Small Wars Journal.
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War Amongst the People: Critical Assessments, 2019
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Politics of Anxiety, Edited by Emmy Eklundh, Andreja Zevnik, and Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet, Rowman and Littlefield, 2017
Far-right parties seem to be knocking at the doors of every national parliament in Western Europe... more Far-right parties seem to be knocking at the doors of every national parliament in Western Europe, urging reflection on the reasons for their rise and their success. The Front National in France, the Independence Party in the UK, and the Alternative Fur Deutschland Party in Germany are just three examples of a more general advance of these parties across Europe. A growing literature has referred to this phenomenon as a form of “radical revolt”, an “insurgency” that challenges the established mainstream parties.
The dominant explanation of this phenomenon is that in times of anxiety, uncertainty leads to the growth of right-wing extremism. This understanding implies that extremism "fills the voids" left empty by mainstream parties who are perceived as unable to offer effective responses to this anxiety. This chapter calls this diffused understanding into question by inquiring into the interplay between the ‘far’ right and (neo)liberal politics. I argue that the terms of the dominant debate in which this rise has been understood are misleading, because they work to conceal the link between mainstream (neo)liberal politics and those of the far right. Instead, by focusing on the political meaning of anxiety, I shall show that when anxiety becomes the driver of European politics, far-right parties enter into in a relation of mutual constitution with neoliberal politics rather than a zero-sum opposition to them.
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Edited Volumes
Recent conflicts such as those in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan are increasingly characteris... more Recent conflicts such as those in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan are increasingly characterised by a pluralisation of irregular and privatised forms of violence. These actors include, among others, warlords, mercenaries, terrorists, transnational organised crime groups, foreign fighters and Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs). While some pose a direct challenge to the state, others are in a complementary and symbiotic relationship with it. As such, violent non-state actors are both competing and cooperating with state actors in modern conflicts and their hybrid nature raises questions with regards to how best to understand these actors, as they often escape neatly defined categorisations. In modern conflicts the lines between terrorists and organised crime groups, irregular and regular forces, as well as economic and political motivations to fight, are increasingly blurred. As a result, ‘new’ and ‘old’ types of violent non-state actors are defining elements of modern conflict. The extreme complexity of twenty-first century conflicts requires a more integrated approach between military and civilian actors in order to respond more effectively to its challenges.
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Howgate Publishing, 2020
Since the early 1990s, the challenges posed by fragile and failing states have been a contentious... more Since the early 1990s, the challenges posed by fragile and failing states have been a contentious and enduring part of the debates on post-Cold War international security. Though extensive, these debates have so far yielded little agreement on either the essential nature of state fragility and failure and what, if anything, potential outside intervenors can and should do to prevent it from developing, restore state functionality, or at least mitigate its impact and consequences. In this book, an international team of authors examine both the conceptual and practical challenges posed by this phenomenon. They consider the essential nature of the problem and through a variety of case studies, examine the effectiveness or otherwise of various regional and wider international responses in Africa, the Middle East and South America. This book will be of interest to both academics and practitioners engaged in studying and responding to the ongoing challenges posed by the existence of fragile and failing states in the contemporary international system.
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War Amongst the People: Critical Assessments, 2019
Recent conflicts have required the armed forces to engage in what has been termed ‘war amongst th... more Recent conflicts have required the armed forces to engage in what has been termed ‘war amongst the people’. Such conflicts increasingly require a type of soldier deployed to function as an ‘armed social worker’, as was seen most recently in operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this increased focus on societal relations has – and should – become the area of prime concern for contemporary armed forces, this poses a series of conceptual and practical questions regarding the ‘people’ concerned and the nature of the society amongst which war is conducted. Scholars and practitioners come together in this volume to explore how armed forces can make sense of such complexity in conceptual terms and how military actors have practically interacted with local power structures and relations, with both positive and negative effects. It examines armed forces’ engagement at the local level in a contemporary context and contextualises this within the broader political, strategic, tactical and legal implications this engagement has had at home and overseas.
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Conference Papers/Work in Progress
Paper Presented at the Remote Warfare conference, Oxford Research Group, 2019
Conceptualizations of war have always hinged on a war/peace dichotomy sustained by clear spatial ... more Conceptualizations of war have always hinged on a war/peace dichotomy sustained by clear spatial and temporal distinctions. Conditions of war or peace, therefore, cannot simultaneously occupy the same space and time. The recent turn towards remote forms of warfare is increasingly challenging these spatial and temporal distinctions. For example, the ability of drones to carry out strikes across diverse geographies strengthens the disconnection between geography and warfare (Gregory: 2011) and the use of private proxies by polities formally at peace veils the very presence of war and simultaneously externalizes its costs (Krieg & Rickli: 2018). In a multiplicity of ways thus remote warfare radically modifies the spatial and temporal configurations of war, thereby collapsing the functional relation linking politics and war that has traditionally been at the center of the Clausewitzian understanding of war. This creates a paradoxical condition in which war is continuously present in the spaces in which it takes place, but simultaneously absent from the politics of the states operating ‘remotely’. The effects are twofold. First, for the spaces in which remote warfare takes place, war is no longer an exceptional state of affairs but becomes ever present, turning war into a perpetual socio-political condition. Drones, almost permanently occupying the skies, are a case in point. Second, by externalizing the burdens of war to private proxies, polities that conduct war ‘remotely’ not only obfuscates the presence of war but also challenge their own political authority. As military remembrance rituals have a constitutive function in the production and reproduction of sovereign claims and the creation of national identities, the externalization of sacrifice to private proxies raises important questions regarding the constitution of sovereign claims, as ‘the location of death within a series of meaningful and consecrated events ultimately lies at the base of all endeavors to support the autonomous dignity of the polity resting on force.’ (Weber: 1946)
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Uploads
Articles
economic, and environmental crises are just some crises characterizing the
present. This special issue investigates these interwoven crises by
investigating the subject in crisis, as making sense of how our worlds are
changing requires interrogating how we ourselves are changing. How can
we apprehend the subject and forms of subjectivities implied when evoking
specific crises responses? In this introduction, we suggest reading current
crises as expressions, effects, and accelerations of a longstanding
epistemological crisis sustaining the modern articulation of subjectivity. To
trace the subjectivity/crisis link we mobilize Derrida’s notion of aporia, which
exposes the unresolvable tension(s) at the foundation of concepts, to survey
how subjectivity has been examined in political theory and international
relations (IR) and to posit the continued necessity of immanent critiques of
modern subjectivity. We conclude by setting out the individual contributions
to this special issue.
Book Chapters
The dominant explanation of this phenomenon is that in times of anxiety, uncertainty leads to the growth of right-wing extremism. This understanding implies that extremism "fills the voids" left empty by mainstream parties who are perceived as unable to offer effective responses to this anxiety. This chapter calls this diffused understanding into question by inquiring into the interplay between the ‘far’ right and (neo)liberal politics. I argue that the terms of the dominant debate in which this rise has been understood are misleading, because they work to conceal the link between mainstream (neo)liberal politics and those of the far right. Instead, by focusing on the political meaning of anxiety, I shall show that when anxiety becomes the driver of European politics, far-right parties enter into in a relation of mutual constitution with neoliberal politics rather than a zero-sum opposition to them.
Edited Volumes
Conference Papers/Work in Progress
economic, and environmental crises are just some crises characterizing the
present. This special issue investigates these interwoven crises by
investigating the subject in crisis, as making sense of how our worlds are
changing requires interrogating how we ourselves are changing. How can
we apprehend the subject and forms of subjectivities implied when evoking
specific crises responses? In this introduction, we suggest reading current
crises as expressions, effects, and accelerations of a longstanding
epistemological crisis sustaining the modern articulation of subjectivity. To
trace the subjectivity/crisis link we mobilize Derrida’s notion of aporia, which
exposes the unresolvable tension(s) at the foundation of concepts, to survey
how subjectivity has been examined in political theory and international
relations (IR) and to posit the continued necessity of immanent critiques of
modern subjectivity. We conclude by setting out the individual contributions
to this special issue.
The dominant explanation of this phenomenon is that in times of anxiety, uncertainty leads to the growth of right-wing extremism. This understanding implies that extremism "fills the voids" left empty by mainstream parties who are perceived as unable to offer effective responses to this anxiety. This chapter calls this diffused understanding into question by inquiring into the interplay between the ‘far’ right and (neo)liberal politics. I argue that the terms of the dominant debate in which this rise has been understood are misleading, because they work to conceal the link between mainstream (neo)liberal politics and those of the far right. Instead, by focusing on the political meaning of anxiety, I shall show that when anxiety becomes the driver of European politics, far-right parties enter into in a relation of mutual constitution with neoliberal politics rather than a zero-sum opposition to them.
https://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/event-podcast-the-cost-and-consequences-of-remote-warfare
https://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/event-podcast-the-cost-and-consequences-of-remote-warfare