Tag: Nationalism

Right-wing Populism and the Attack on Cooperative International Security

Image courtesy of Palácio do Planalto/Flickr. (CC BY 2.0)

This article was originally published by E-International Relations on 23 August 2019.

The contemporary political environment has seen a paradoxical hijacking of key liberal peace and security concepts which helped to secure the post-Cold War era. With key concepts like human security undermined, what will come next? The following is an initial reflection as my colleague, and I embark on a larger study of how the emergence of right-wing populist nationalism has become a significant global phenomenon and what impact it has had for dominant theories of security in the post-World War II liberal international system. From the challenges to the NATO alliance to questioning the link between poverty and violence, the peace, security and development agenda has been radically transformed in a few short years, with trust between former allies eroding and the moderate level of predictability in the liberal international system being shaken.

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Humanitarian Issues

Nationalism, Persecution and Repatriation of the Rohingya

Image courtesy of EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations/Flickr. CC BY-ND 2.0

This article was originally published by E-International Relations (E-IR) on 5 April 2018.

The incidents that took place in the Rakhine state (previously Arakan) of Burma/Myanmar in August 25 (2017) and the Myanmar governments’ actions on and reactions to the Rohingya crisis, indicate the ugly face of Burmese nationalism. This behavior is the consequence of state centric policies that have generated refugees, created conflicts and produced a grave humanitarian situation. This version of extreme nationalism is carefully crafted by Myanmar’s regime and is historically rooted. The practice of extreme nationalism in Myanmar so far has been to benefit “Us” at the expense of “Others”. It has constructed and framed the Rohingya as the “Others”, therefore justifying their actions to eliminate “the existential threat” to the Burmese way of life and to the Burmese population. The military maintains strict control over government institutions. The quasi-civilian government is still following the footsteps of the military government that precisely failed to bring unity while it was in power for fifty years.

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´Social Cohesion´ in Deeply Divided Societies: Five Findings for Peacebuilding

Courtesy El Bingle/Flickr

This piece was originally published by Political Violence @ a Glance on 30 August 2016.

Majlinda Kelmendi of Kosovo’s Olympic Gold Medal won in judo was doubly significant for her young country. First, Rio was Kosovo’s first-ever Olympics – it became controversially independent in 2008 and its Olympic Committee was not recognized until 2014 (conveniently, after the now much-maligned Sochi Winter Games); Kelmendi, already a champion in judo, carried the Kosovo flag first into the Olympic stadium. Second, by default, her gold medal was the country’s first-ever Olympic medal of any kind.

Back home, Kosovo remains deeply divided along the essentially ethnic lines that emerged during its mostly successful secessionist bid from Serbia (Kosovo’s independence is still not fully recognized, and tensions remain with a small Serb minority along with important Orthodox sites). July, for example, saw tense but mostly peaceful marches by Kosovo’s minority Serbs to holy sites.

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The Right to Decide: Exit and Basque Self-Determination

Basque Country Needs You
Basque Country Needs You. Credit: Iker Merodio via Flickr
This article was originally published by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) on 28 June 2016.

Five years ago, the Basque militant group ETA (Basque Homeland and Freedom) announced a unilateral and permanent cessation of operations. Since then, the disappearance of political violence has given rise to a new debate on Basque nationhood: more inclusive, more open, more civic, and at the same time stronger in its affirmation of the legitimacy of popular sovereignty and the democratic demand to exercise ‘the right to decide’, as against the earlier radicalism of immediate independence.

A new book edited by Pedro Ibarra Güell and Åshild Kolås, Basque Nationhood Towards a Democratic Scenario, takes stock of the contemporary re-imagining of Basque nationhood in both Spain and France. Taking a fresh look at the history of Basque nationalist movements, it explores new debates that have emerged since the demise of non-state militancy. Alongside analysis of local transformations, the book also describes the impacts of a pan-European (if not global) rethinking of self-determination, or ‘the right to decide’.

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Fascism in Interwar Egypt: Islam, Nationalism and Political Modernization

King Faruq I of Egypt in military uniform displaying several medals and decorations. Image: Riad Shehata/Wikimedia

This article was originally published by E-International Relations on 28 January, 2015.

Although Fascism has been a phenomenon made in Europe, it had its own political and ideological implications on the neighboring colonized Arab-Muslim world as well during the interwar period. Considering Egypt’s representative case, this article tends to show under which circumstances Fascism had established its own school in this Muslim country, what the native political forces had actually learned from it and how Fascism had been domestically translated into just another reflection of the political modernization process.

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