|
|
|
|
Spring 2000: Rationality And International Relations (Part. II)
Totem and Taboo in the Kosovo Conflict: Remarks on the Natural Limits of an International Mediation (PDF, 17 pages, 56.3 KB) , by Victor-Yves Ghebali
Why have all the attempts to pacifically end the Kosovo crisis since 1992 been failures? By asking this question the article considers the Kosovo conflict as part of a particular category of conflicts: one which conclusion is usually conceivable either as the result of an agony ordeal consecrating the military victory of one of the two protagonists, either as the effect of an foreign coercive intervention, whether armed or not – of the UN, of a regional organisation mandated by the UN, or of an ad hoc coalition of States acting with or without the authority of the international organisation. The article details the three key factors that made the Kosovo conflict reluctant to international mediation: the non-negotiable nature of its stakes, the solipsist mentality of the Serbs, and, lastly, the flaws in the international mediators' approach
Bombs to Convince? Air power, Limited Rationality and Coercive Diplomacy in Kosovo (PDF, 36 pages, 106.2 KB) , by Pascal Vennesson
On March 24th 1999 the NATO air forces lead by the United States of America started the "Allied Forces" major air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. On June 10th 1999, after 79 days of bombing, the Serb leaders accepted the requirements of the OTAN countries’ political leaders, surprising and relieving western leaders and analysts. This article aims at situating the Kosovo crisis in regards to the major conceptions of the coercive diplomacy and air force, and to put forward an interpretation of the use of the air as an arm. Which were the objectives of the air campaign? How was it conceived and later put into place? Which military and political factors affected both its planning and execution? What impact did the airforce have on the Serb leaders’ decision to put an end to their actions? The first teachings from this conflict have not emptied, and far from it, the reflections on the Kosovo crisis and its consequences on the comprehension of the current use of armed forces.
Applying the Models of Allison to a State with "Multiple Voices": Pakistan and the Kargil Crisis (PDF, 40 pages, 120.5 KB) , by Amélie Blom
Surprisingly have Graham Allison's hypothesis barely been applied to the foreign policy of non-Western countries. Yet, the Spring 99 Kargil crisis opposing the two nuclear states of Pakistan and India can be better understood by deconstructing Pakistan's decision-making process rather than by identifying its strategic motives only. This crisis indeed revealed long-term structural dysfunctions of the Pakistani State which, therefore, talked as a "multivocal" state. But in this case, if the three very useful models of Allison can not be applied as complementary (the "organisational process" was the decisive one) and have to be refined by other analysis frameworks: Robert Putnam's "two-level game" and studies on the influence of emotions on decisions.
The Knowledge of the West: On the Representations of the "Abidjan Coup" of December the 24th 2004 (PDF, 15 pages, 51.4 KB) , by Michel Galy
The December 1999 Abidjan coup enabled us to analyse the articulation between representations and discourses on such an event, in the West as well as in Western Africa. One could therefore observe in an accelerated way the crystallisation of a double discourse coming from a double referent: the French political field as imagined in Abidjan, and the encoded but still very present ethnical referent. Coming from a dual habitus, such a recent political field construction corresponds to a community based ideology though not having straight forward links to the ethnic group but rather functioning through "blocks"– to which ancient and modern myths and realities correspond and are represented by the different candidates. In this intense symbolic war power belongs to those who master the instant translation of reference and discursive fields in a permanent ambiguity and a permanent distance apart from the so-called Knowledge of the West.
The Configurations of Space, Time and Subjectivity in a Context of Terror: the Colombian Example (PDF, 33 pages, 66.4 KB) , by Daniel Pécault
Daniel Pécault analyses the experience of terror in Colombia. He shows that terror is a strategic tool for guerillas, paramilitaries, and drug cartels. These actors seek to modify the balance of power between them by hitting civilians. These actors seek to link their power to a specific territory, to define a temporality with regards to their objectives, and to build identification modes that would incite favourable allegences. But on the contrary, the experience of violence is marked by a dematerialisation of space, a break-up of temporal references, and a dislocation of the subjects confronted to it. These are thus logics of de-territorialisation, of de-temporalisation and of de-subjectivisation that characterise the experience of strategic logics of terror, according to the author.
France’s Foreign Policy, Actors and Processes, Review Essay (PDF, 7 pages, 26.6 KB) , by Frédéric Charillon
Frédéric Charillon spots the light on the main interest of Marie-Christine Kessler’s book. This book deals with the elaboration conditions, the actors and the environment of the French foreign policy and is thereby different from the majority of studies that only emphasise the foreign policies’ content as being a "great policy". Kesler insists on the eminently bureaucratic and routinized character of the French foreign policy while presenting its institutional complexity, its constraints and mechanisms. The book is therefore of a great interest for the sociology of international relations. It indeed deconstructs the fiction of a unitary State, shows how decision-making is fragmented and highlights the contemporary transformations of the national and international contexts.