Portraying the Other in International Relations: Cases of Othering, Their Dynamics and the Potential for Transformation [Unabridged] 1443839035, 9781443839037

Table of contents :
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LIST OF TABLES
INTRODUCTION
SECTION I
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
SECTION II
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
SECTION III
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CONTRIBUTORS

Citation preview

Portraying the Other in International Relations

Portraying the Other in International Relations: Cases of Othering, Their Dynamics and the Potential for Transformation

Edited by

Sybille Reinke de Buitrago

Portraying the Other in International Relations: Cases of Othering, Their Dynamics and the Potential for Transformation, Edited by Sybille Reinke de Buitrago This book first published 2012 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2012 by Sybille Reinke de Buitrago and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-3903-5, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-3903-7

The inspiration for this book came in part from a panel I organized, entitled “Portraying the Other in International Relations” and held at the first joint conference of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) and the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) in São Paulo, Brazil in February 2011. I am grateful to the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, especially Prof. Dr. Dirk Nabers, Dr. Miriam Prys and the Research Programme on Power, Norms and Governance in International Relations, and the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, especially Prof. Dr. Michael Brzoska, for making funds available to attend the conference. I thank Cambridge Scholars Publishing for showing interest in my panel and for encouraging me to edit a book on this interesting topic. This compilation is of course also the result of the authors contributing to it with their original research, in most cases conducted over a number of years. Thanks thus belong to them for having made this work possible. I would also like to thank Miguel A. Buitrago for his inspiration and support during all stages of publishing this book.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ..................................................................................... ix List of Tables.............................................................................................. xi Introduction .............................................................................................. xiii Othering in International Relations: Significance and Implications Sybille Reinke de Buitrago Section I: Processes of Othering in Interstate und Interregional Relations Chapter One................................................................................................. 3 ‘Faces of Alterity’: The Eastern European Other Inside the EU Emanuel Crudu and Maria Eremenko Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 19 Othering in the ‘Exceptional’ U.S.-Cuba Relationship Lana Wylie Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 39 American Discourse on Haiti: Defining the Other and Military Intervention Melody Fonseca Chapter Four.............................................................................................. 55 Reconstructing the Other in Post-Colonial International Relations: A Look at South-South Cooperation and Indigenous Globalism Stacey-Ann Wilson Section II: Othering in Policy towards Radicalism and Terrorism Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 75 Tyrants, Radicals and Other Threats: An Essay on Civilization and Violence in U.S. Foreign Policy towards Iraq Diego Santos Vieira de Jesus

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Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 91 The Othering of Terrorists: Elite U.S. Newspapers’ Use of the Word Terrorist and the Subsequent Mention of Religion Jennifer Hoewe Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 107 Terrorist Labelling and European Foreign Policy-Making: A (New) Weakening Tool? Sidney Leclercq Section III: Overcoming (Destructive) Othering: Transformative Potential Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 127 Transforming Discourses of Otherness: The Role of the Mass Media in Greek-Turkish Relations Elena Lazarou Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 143 Self and Other in Foreign Policy Discursive Practices: Resisting Othering in Processes of Knowledge Production in IR Erica Simone Almeida Resende Contributors............................................................................................. 163

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Illustration 7-1: Terrorist labelling process ............................................. 109 Illustration 7-2: Interdependence of field developments and EU discussions ......................................................................................... 113 Illustration 7-3: Linkage of legal consequences and policy..................... 116 Illustration 9-1: Las Meninas. By Diego Velázquez................................ 152 Illustration 9-2: La trahison des images. By René Magritte.................... 154 Illustration 9-3: Death of a Muslim Soldier. Platon................................. 157

LIST OF TABLES

Table 6-1: News Stories with the Word Terrorist in the Headline ............ 97 Table 6-2: News Stories with the Word Terrorist in the Headline that Mention a Religion ....................................................................... 97 Table 6-3: Religions Mentioned in News Stories with the Word Terrorist in the Headline ...................................................................... 98 Table 6-4: Frequency of Religions Mentioned in News Stories with the Word Terrorist in the Headline .............................................. 99

INTRODUCTION OTHERING IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPLICATIONS SYBILLE REINKE DE BUITRAGO

The other, as defined in difference to the self, can be observed in diverse contexts and dimensions within the field of international relations, as well as in other fields and in everyday life. Yet, as present as these processes of othering and self-other constructions into relations of difference and opposition are in the international arena and as essential as their scrutiny and understanding are, the analysis of such processes can only be found at the margins of past and current IR work. The reason for this underexposure may lie in the greater difficulty of examining this broad topic and partly in the fact that it is simply not mainstream IR but rather located at the intersection of IR and other fields. The interdisciplinary nature of the topic requires one to look beyond the own discipline and venture out into other areas, to link up with them and initiate exchange, which in this author's view increases both the potential for scientific knowledge and learning as well as the attractiveness of the topic. Due to the great significance of othering processes in the various relationships and forms of interaction at the international level and due to the stated analytic underexposure this book presents an attempt to move othering and its implications more into the centre of IR study and initiate debate on cases of othering and its dynamics and consequences. Conceptually, this book is devised in the following perspective, applying ideas regarding the factors of influence, elements and dynamics of othering that have evolved during my research in the past years as well as out of my experience with othering itself. I see representations of difference inseparably linked with othering, both being a regular part of interaction between states, groups and individuals. Such representations not only affect interaction on the international stage in general, but also touch on issues of competition for leadership, the rise of new actors, levels

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of friendship and hostility, and the perception of threats and resulting behaviour in policy, to name just a few of the relevant aspects–aspects that are elaborated in this book’s contributions. The other, or the constitutive other, is portrayed by utilizing different images and various stylistic and discursive means, typically interwoven. In discourse, for example, links can be constructed between current events and the past, where already existing visual or ideational content is used to compare distinct events and to point to or remind of past occurrences and the respective policy responses. These are attempts to legitimize certain policy options over others. In such cases, the collective cultural memory or repertoire of a group or a nation is tapped and utilized. Aside from using discourse to connect narratives or specific elements of a narrative, stylistic means are applied to compare, to liken or distinguish, to convince, to empower or devalue–in short, to construct relations between self and other in various ways. In this, also images play a significant role. While we are already socialized with certain images of ourselves and various others, images can change and/or be modified. Existing images of the other may be added to and adjusted. Images can also be newly created and constructed, even though there must be some link to a memory or to existing perspectives or ideas for those new images to be able to take hold in the minds of people and to thus be effective from the view of those promoting them. We can even find examples of mirror imaging, where mutual views of the other share elements of an image’s make-up. When actively promoted in discourse, images and their linked discursive elements can unfold great strength in shaping self-other relations. In the realm of international relations, states and various other entities engage in processes of othering and thereby affect both policy and interstate relations. Motivations for portraying the other in various ways and for engaging in dynamics of othering are diverse. But whatever the underlying motivations may be, the view and understanding of the self is always related to views of the other–for there could be no self without the other and no other without the self. In essence, defining the self always requires a differentiation from that which is not the self. Likewise, we can only name the other and comprehend what the other is to us by placing it in relation to the familiar, such as the self or, in extension, the own group. Representations are thus a product of mutual constructions of the self and other. To better understand othering and representations of the other, the challenge for IR scholars dealing with othering is thus also to include the self as analyst, their own position and their relation to the other in their

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analyses. This need remains often unfulfilled, however, partly also due to lacking methodological tools. Some of the chapters in this compilation have nevertheless attempted to fulfil this endeavour. While othering thus involves representations of the self and other as different, the represented difference does not always have to be filled with purely negative content, such as dislike, aversion or enmity. I would argue that difference can also be described with more positive content, such as elements of admiration for certain achievements, or at least some level of recognition and toleration. Positive and negative content can vary, and many cases show a mélange of elements in a complex relationship. Most often though, a view of hierarchy is part of othering processes, the self being typically placed above the other. Thus, seeing the other only as different–and in a neutral manner–is enormously difficult and empirically unlikely, since our ideas are subjective and come with a specific, laden cognitive and emotional content. Positioning oneself as neutral or refusing to take a position at all is extremely rare. Furthermore, self-other constructions and processes of othering are constantly present and on-going. We respond to new situations, to events and to crises. We hear, see, read and learn new aspects that must be integrated into our existing ideas and fit into our held stories. This is the case for the various others that we hold, as we are engaged in multiple relations with others, thus creating and contributing to a constant interaction and exchange in views and narratives, all of which shape resulting behaviour and actions in one way or another. The implications are then manifold. Multiple consequences of othering processes are visible at the verbal level, others already in terms of actual policy and measures taken. One of the dangers of othering though also lies in the difficulty of knowing or noticing where othering processes are taking hold or where they have already taken effect. As othering has also constitutive effects, it initiates processes of its own, which makes a roll-back of othering or a transformation highly challenging. But where can we then see othering processes in place, in terms of action? Instances can be verbally expressed devaluations of another state, such as a perceived rival; of course also in categorizations of another state or group being the enemy or presenting a threat, such as in the label of rogue state, radical or terrorist; or more benign in portrayals of the own country as exceptional and as example to be followed by the rest of the world–each with constitutive effects being found in policy measures. Other instances can be hierarchically shaped policies, which are partly motivated by superiority-inferiority views,

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include or aim for distinct treatment of groups and individuals and lead to exclusionary practices. More examples are illustrated in-depth in the following chapters. All of the aforementioned elements and dynamics, with their implications and complexity, make othering a fascinating and meaningful area of study. The introduction to this book cannot do without mentioning some important scholars working on othering in recent years, scholars who have influenced my views and understanding of othering processes. One of the most prominent one, albeit not in the mainstream IR literature, is Iver B. Neumann. Neumann speaks of international relations as constructions between relations of self and other (1999b, 20), which occur and develop at different levels and various dimensions. Referring to a number of other authors, like Tzvetan Todorov, Michael J. Shapiro and David Campbell, Neumann highlights the need to consider the historical side of views of self and other, the political aspects of identity, and the attempt to represent oneself in relation to others without the distancing that is so often part of it, thus calling to respect differences and the idea of difference as such (ibid, 21-25). While doing so is highly difficult, as described above, the last chapter in this book elaborates on this worthwhile challenge. Neumann points out that while thinking that the closer we know one another the less we are likely to engage in othering is comforting, there is also sufficient evidence against this relation. Because of the subjective use of cultural differences and groups’ specific cultural aspects, any difference, however small it may be, can be used for dividing groups and distancing them from one another. In implication then, we are never safe from engaging in othering. Additionally, according to Neumann knowledge about another group, sympathy or empathy with it and proposals or actions for engaging or dealing with a group are distinct issues, and they can be linked in various ways (ibid, 34-35). This explains the sometimes, on surface, contradictory behaviour or the contradictions between statements and actions. Thus, while one group may be very knowledgeable about another group, even close to a deeper understanding of the other, it may still aim for and follow policies oriented towards domination of that group. Similarly, elements of sympathy or empathy can get lost or be submerged under different motivations, and action against the other is enabled. As stated before, the manner in which the self is formed as well as formulated and expressed is linked with processes of othering. Thus,

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identity formation and self-views carry with them the differentiation from others, in essence requiring the drawing of social boundaries. Self and other constitute one another and both are furthermore unbounded (ibid, 35). The forging of identities fits to states as well, states becoming existent also via discourse about them, which include ideas for future existing and being (Neumann 1999a, 223). Relevant in this are images of our own nation and of other nations, which are filled with reflections about events and experiences. Such national images also contain different degrees of friendship or hostility and thereby impact relations among states (Boulding 1996, 461-464; Fisher 1997, 75). States can be understood as larger groupunits that need a national identity and an overarching story or narrative for their self-understanding and inner coherence in their representations towards other states. Processes of othering are then also impacted by geographical proximity. When linked with other factors, geographical proximity may even motivate and strengthen othering (Buzan and Wæver 2003, 46). In fact, within the discipline of geography, a stream of critical geography has formed. Critical geographers study how space is symbolized and via discourse institutionalized and which effects of inclusion and exclusion such practices of spatial bordering, ordering and othering have. Borders, for example, define both territory and identity for a more cohesive and unique group, on the one side. On the other side, however, differences are also newly created or fortified (Houtum and Naerssen 2002, 125-126). There is then both inclusion and exclusion, both cohesion within and differentiation to the outside. Houtum and Naerssen also state that borders are the meeting place of different normative orders, a place where distinct systems act to govern and maintain their values (ibid, 129), at times in softer ways and at other times in a fierce struggle. Thus, othering often involves views and actions to place the own group above the other (Hansen 2006), initiating respective modes of self-other representation and interaction. Diez, however, points out that othering must not necessarily need to portray the other as inferior, but simply as different, a view that would allow balanced and more reflective behaviour towards the other (2005, 628-629). However, as elaborated above, a view of the other as simply different, without a better or a worse, is due to human psychology difficult and empirically not quite supported. But we can find potential for adjusting or transforming othering. Narrative processes of othering create a larger story surrounding self-other relations. This story must be credible and it is constantly reformulated to

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fit new situations affecting the self (Neumann 1999a, 218-219). When faced with dramatic, overwhelming events that sufficiently disturb held ideas, the stories and the views of self and other may collapse, not able to maintain their hegemony. In such times space is created for new ideas as well as new self-other constructions and relations (Laclau 2005). Such disturbance and the newly created space can positively affect a more balanced representation of the other. Finally, Neumann also sees worth in gaining an understanding of how the observer–or the researcher–takes part in othering processes in terms of the ways he or she portrays self and other (1999b, 36). No less importantly, he argues that analyses of processes of othering and exclusion have a normative concern in that they ought to produce insights for facilitating joint existence of different groups (ibid, 37). Attempting to expand the state of research on othering as well as to respond to some of the stated needs, this edited volume presents various cases of othering and self-other constructions in three thematic sections: I) cases of interstate and interregional relations, II) the specific policy field of terrorism and counterterrorism, and III) the important aspect of possible transformation of othering. While the contributions are a selection within a broad field, they take up the topic from diverse angles and with different conceptual approaches, illustrating the multiple forms othering can take. Contributions show how othering can be studied, its dynamics and consequences critically analysed and more comprehensively understood, but also the limits in these attempts. Various motivations for engaging in othering are elaborated. The images, ways of representations and stylistic means that are applied in processes of othering are exposed and their internal logic as well as effects on thinking and behaviour in the international arena examined. Furthermore, possibilities for modifying othering processes, that is, how negative self-other constructions may be transformed, with the goal of enabling the peaceful existence of different groups, are presented. The contributions allow us to look beneath the processes involved in othering, to recognize linkages and patterns, and even to relate to and compare dynamics and elements to the interactions and relations we ourselves are involved in. Thus, on the one side, insights about specific and current othering processes are generated that allow for adjustments in rhetoric and the political process, thereby enabling improvements of these cases of self-other interaction. Policies could then be shaped in a more

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comprehensive manner, with a more long-term view and greater awareness of local impact. As researchers we can become aware of and consider our own role in processes of othering when conducting scientific analyses. Keeping in mind that we construct our social world, our social realities, also in the manner we speak, our communication is an expression of our self-other relations. On the other side, each one of us can–on a smaller scale, but in our various roles and relations–utilize these insights in attempts to engage less in othering and more in building positive and constructive relations. We can become more aware of the images we hold of others and question their motivations; we can become more mindful of how we communicate with and about others; and we can become more sensible in our interactions with and behaviour towards others. Lastly, the book is a product of a conference panel on processes of othering and self-other constructions in the field of international relations, entitled “Portraying the Other in International Relations”, which was held at the First Joint Conference of the International Political Science Association and the European Consortium for Political Research, February 16-19, 2011 in São Paulo, Brazil. Based on the Call for Papers, a proposal for this book was solicited. The book includes works based on the panel papers as well as additional contributions. Not only does this compilation present a collection of the current research on othering, but an additional great value lies in the strong international background of the book’s contributors.

Overview of book chapters This compilation is structured in three thematic sections, analysing the dynamics of othering in diverse contexts and cases, while utilizing various theoretical perspectives and methodological applications. Common to all contributions is the interest in uncovering how precisely othering takes place, what its specific functions are and what it results in. Underlying is a further interest in making transparent the existing but not always open and fully known power relations and hierarchies. For example, othering is often a part of policy outcomes, but not in itself intentional. And yet, othering processes reflect underlying views of the other and conceptions of the self-other relationship. Thus, it is of importance to uncover where othering occurs as a by-product of policy, so that policy can be readjusted. On the other side, othering may be completely intentional. But also in these cases, we have unintended policy outcomes, often in terms of restricting policy options, which would normally not be in the interest of

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policy and decision makers. Thus, beginning with the first section, Processes of Othering in Interstate und Interregional Relations, a variety of cases of othering and self-other interaction in current international relations are illustrated and analysed. In Chapter 1, Emanuel Crudu and Maria Eremenko present othering processes in light of a supposed European division along an East-West line. Looking at the enlargement rounds of the European Union, they find othering as an integral part of EU practice. Not only were states in Eastern Europe othered before joining the EU, but also the EU enlargements, which aim at including new members into the Union, take the form of othering of the new member states in Eastern Europe. Crudu and Eremenko argue that this othering may even be strengthened now that these states are part of the EU. Driving this development is the need to ‘Europeanize’ and become like Western European member states, as it is those states that have formed and promoted their values as the core EU values and standards inherent in the Union’s institutions. Becoming part of the EU and its institutions thus necessarily results in needing to adjust to their underlying values. However, in the process alterity-making results, along with a division of EU member states into core versus non-core, a division that must be overcome for the process of convergence within the Union to continue and be successful. Lana Wylie, in Chapter 2, analyses othering within the setting of U.S.Cuba relations. In this particular relationship othering has a longer and more apparent history. The U.S. and Cuba are two countries enormously different–and even opposed–in their size, political system, legitimacy claim, capacities and power potential. The short distance between the two furthermore accentuates the perception of difference and likely results in the need to further highlight the differences on both sides since decades. Precisely because the other, who is so different from oneself, is so close, othering is necessary to protect own identity. Thus, both countries engage in portraying an exceptional role for themselves, all the while othering the other state. Views of the own exceptional status is closely weaved together with views of the other as everything but exceptional and as necessarily opposed to oneself, thus the extreme other. These dynamics of perception and interaction, so the author, present an important factor in maintaining the U.S.-Cuban relationship as confrontational as it is and making a transformation highly difficult.

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In Chapter 3, Melody Fonseca considers othering processes in the U.S.-Haiti relationship as one more example of a rather uneven relationship with many hierarchical elements. In her contribution she analyses the ways in which this particular type of othering has shaped the Haitian social imaginary as a political community. She argues that the U.S. military interventions in Haiti in the past century, American identity discourses such as the Monroe Doctrine, and the inherent self-other constructions have left a lasting impact on Haiti, its citizens and the Haitian self-understanding. The American construction of Haiti as the other is set against the civilized, liberal and expansionist American self, and Haiti thus appears in the American view all but civilized, liberal or expansionist. Whereas the aspects of civilization and liberal values do not necessarily have to go along with an expansionist stance, in the American case the expansionist drive may contribute to a greater missionary fervour on the one side and a stronger othering of all those that are seen to be lagging behind the self as shining example. These othering aspects towards Haiti create imbalances in the relationship of the two countries, which in turn enable and shape processes of exclusion to the disadvantage of Haiti. In the last chapter of the first section, Chapter 4, Stacey-Ann Wilson takes up the case of reverse othering. In this very insightful example of othering processes, own experiences of becoming the other seem to have created an impetus for utilizing the marginalized position of the other to the own advantage, as if to rise above the label of the other. Perhaps one can even speak of a learning process or awareness creation of othering processes that has taken place. However, by dealing with own othering in a certain manner, new othering processes can be initiated, and in the illustrated cases those that were previously othered, are now othering in turn. In her examination of South-South cooperation and indigenous globalism, Wilson thus finds current processes of reconstructions of the other. Whereas developing countries and indigenous populations have been actively marginalized by dominant Western discourses, they are now engaging in a reconstruction of themselves as the core and the developed European countries as the other. By forming global alliances, previously marginalized actors are thereby gaining influence and status. However, they are also creating new forms of othering. The second section, Othering in Policy towards Radicalism and Terrorism, examines othering in the field of terrorism / counterterrorism, in particular the labelling of terrorists or their narrative framing and

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inherent (potential of) violence. Already before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 terrorists were othered as criminal, evil or irrational or described in other ways so as to distance the self from the terrorist and to justify policy measures against terrorists and the phenomenon of terrorism. But with 9/11 this othering visibly took a sharper turn, especially during the first administration of George W. Bush and the War on Terror. Language turned more emotional, and the legal space was adjusted–and sometimes also ignored–in a number of countries, not only the United States, in order to be able to ‘hunt’, catch and imprison terrorists, to get them to divulge information and in the larger frame to counter and reduce terrorism. But how does this affect own identity, or how does it impact those who may be randomly suspected to be in the ‘terrorist corner’? Furthermore, how does terrorist othering and labelling unintentionally reduce policy options? The next three chapters take up these aspects. Diego Santos Vieira de Jesus in Chapter 5 takes up the concept of civilization and its flexibility in regulating and redefining global boundaries. The meaning of civilization tends to depend on the respective perspective of those that use it in their, often morally-shaped, arguments. But arguing with a civilizational position comes with inherent othering, for the self is necessarily civilized and thus the others less so or not at all– civilization thus acting as a marker of boundaries. In his essay the author utilizes the idea of spatiotemporal localizations of difference, whereby the self, self-knowledge and own identity can be maintained intact and coherent to the self. These processes are then applied to American foreign policy narratives on Iraq and the various perceived threats, such as tyrants and radicals. Since threats need to be countered, new facets of threats must equally be responded to as well as integrated into the existing narrative. Thus, American decision makers can develop and justify solutions in the face of (new) threats, which take the form of disciplinary action against the other, without creating a disturbance in American identity and ideals. In Chapter 6, Jennifer Hoewe analyses the use of the word terrorist in prominent U.S. news media, specifically in the New York Times and the Washington Post, over a period of six years. The word terrorist has, arguably for most, a negative connotation. Because the word terrorist is not neutral, coming with ‘heavy baggage’, the manner of its usage contributes to meaning-making with possibly significant implications in terms of creating social realities and actions taken upon these meanings. By coupling the use of the word terrorist with the mention of a religion, in her analysis Hoewe was able to uncover a particular type of framing. She

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found a high linkage between the word of terrorist in the headlines of news stories and mentions of Islam as religion within the stories, which has at least two disturbing effects. On the one side, the media’s othering of terrorists as Islamic terrorists is revealed, while on the other side the othering of Muslims in general is shown. Such dynamics inform on media effects such as priming of readers, but also of writers, where such priming in turn plays a significant role in the maintenance of stereotypes and prejudices. In Chapter 7, Sidney Leclercq looks at terrorist labelling and its unforeseen consequences for policy. In some ways similar to the contribution before, the label of terrorist with its negative connotation has, when applied to others, consequences in terms of perception of and understanding about those labelled as terrorist. Such a label not only shapes and restricts the view, but thereby also limits available policy options. Leclercq applies the case of terrorist labelling to the European Union’s policy toward the Palestinian movement Hamas. He argues that the 2003 inscription of Hamas on the EU terrorist list has initiated a symbolic and political process that is unintentionally affecting the EU’s policy effectiveness. While the labelling of Hamas as terrorist group has enabled the creation of new policy instruments, according to Leclercq the terrorist labelling has also reduced the options available to the EU. In effect, there is less coherence in EU policy, and furthermore less international recognition and autonomy of the Union. These results seem to question the usefulness of the EU terrorist list, putting up for debate both terrorist labelling and terrorist lists in general. Finally, the book would not be complete without considering cases where othering is reduced or overcome. While othering seems natural to humans, and while it may even be an important part of our decisionmaking abilities–at least when within a smaller frame so as not to result in negative consequences for the self or for others–extreme othering should be avoided and relationships should and can be improved. When othering processes remain small or contained enough, dialogue and rapprochement are and become possible. Self-other relations can be adjusted and policy steps can be taken to support and further promote such readjustments. Importantly, also policy options are then increased again. Thus, the third section Overcoming (Destructive) Othering: Transformative Potential aims to illustrate the power of transformation processes in cases of othering, that is how past othering processes and their impact on societies

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and nations can be overcome or how such othering can be avoided or minimized. Elena Lazarou focuses in Chapter 8 on the role of media in the transformation of discourses of otherness. The media plays a pivotal role in shaping views, as already illustrated in another chapter. By setting the tone and using particular terminology in the description of the self in relation to others, the media can shape societal discourses on issues in a negative or positive manner. This also enables the media to change a specific discourse by introducing new elements, new terms and a new tone. Depending on the role played by media then, conflict discourses can be maintained, strengthened or transformed. Lazarou examines the impact of media on discourse and its influence on foreign policy developments in the relations between Greece and Turkey. In her case study of the role played by Greek media in the Greek government’s policy towards Turkey she shows how the media has contributed to a construction of identity discourses and a reconstruction of perceptions of the other. The Greek media, according to Lazarou, played a crucial role in transforming the othering of Turkey. By impacting Greek foreign policy, relations with Turkey could be substantially improved. In this book’s last contribution, Chapter 9, Erica Simone Almeida Resende considers possibilities of dealing with difference constructively, that is without falling into the negative dynamics and traps of othering. Doing so surely requires great efforts, as humans tend to naturally engage in constant categorizations and evaluations of others, constructing their particular self-other relations with hierarchical dimensions. Yet, it is of utmost importance to gain awareness of such, often unconscious processes and to work towards a limiting of othering and negative stereotyping as well as a positive viewing of difference in general. By applying artisticpoetic language to international relations discourses, the author argues for a position of equality of various perspectives, where multiple interpretations are enabled and allowed, which would in consequence permit the consideration of both self and other as connected and interlinked. This, however, would require that we give up our points of reference by which we judge others in IR, but it would also, according to Almeida Resende, enable a more comprehensive understanding as well as an appreciation of complexity and rich difference. I thus invite the reader to go on a journey–a journey not only through the various and multi-faceted contributions presented in this volume, but

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also a journey in and with themselves, their perspectives and understandings of others, their self-other constructions and the appreciation of difference in our world.

References Boulding, Kenneth E. 1996. “National Images and International Systems.” In Culture, Communication and Conflict: Readings in Intercultural Relations, ed. Gary R. Weaver, 459-470. Needham Heights, MA: Simon & Schuster Custom Publishing. Buzan, Barry and Ole Wæver. 2003. Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Diez, Thomas. 2005. “Constructing the Self and Changing Others: Reconsidering ‘Normative Power Europe’.” Millennium. Journal of International Studies 33 (3): 613-636. Fisher, Glen. 1997. Mindsets: The Role of Culture and Perception in International Relations, 2nd edition. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press Inc. Hansen, Lene. 2006. Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War. Oxon: Routledge. Houtum Henk van and Ton van Naerssen. 2002. “Bordering, Ordering and Othering.” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 93 (2): 125-136. Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason. London: Verso. Neumann, Iver B. 1999a. “Conclusion: Self and Other after the Death of the Sovereign Subject.” In Uses of the Other. “The East” in European Identity Formation, ed. Iver B. Neumann, 207-228. Manchester: Manchester University Press. —. 1999b. “Uses of the Other in World Politics.” In Uses of the Other. “The East” in European Identity Formation, ed. Iver B. Neumann, 137. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

SECTION I: PROCESSES OF OTHERING IN INTERSTATE UND INTERREGIONAL RELATIONS

CHAPTER ONE ‘FACES OF ALTERITY’: THE EASTERN EUROPEAN OTHER INSIDE THE EU EMANUEL CRUDU AND MARIA EREMENKO

[A] sense of identity can firmly exclude many people even as it warmly embraces others. The well-integrated community in which residents instinctively do absolutely wonderful things for each other with great immediacy and solidarity can be the very same community in which bricks are thrown through the windows of immigrants who move into the region from elsewhere. The adversity of exclusion can be made to go hand in hand with the gifts of inclusion. —Amartya Sen (2006, 2)

Introduction Not a long time ago a British lady was considered bigoted by Gordon Brown upon asking “Where do all these Eastern Europeans come from?”1 Maybe, despite her concern with the dangers of immigration for Britain, the lady was correctly pointing out that such a question still awaits answers in Europe. Ironically, the first answer to such a question would point to the fact that the Eastern Europeans come from the Western European imaginary. As Iver B. Neumann puts it, “regions are invented by political actors as a political programme, they are not simply waiting to be discovered” (Neumann 2001, 71). Larry Wolff (1994) skilfully showed Eastern Europe as invention emanating initially from the intellectual agendas of the elites of Enlightenment that later found its peak of imaginary separation during the Cold War. The enlargement, however, 1

The exact question of Gillian Duffy to Gordon Brown was: “all these Eastern Europeans what are coming in, where are they flocking from?”. See dialogue on BBC News online, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8649448.stm, accessed January 30, 2011.

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was expected to make the East-West division obsolete under the veil of a prophesized convergence. It would have finally proven the nonontological, historically contingent and unhappy nature of the division of Europe and remind Europeans of the wider size of their continent and the inclusive and empowering nature of their values. Still, 20 years after the revolutions in Central and Eastern European countries, Leon Marc, while arguing that the category of Eastern Europe is outdated and misleading, bitterly asks a still relevant question: “will Europe ever give up the need to have an East?” (Marc 2009, 161). This chapter argues that the sedimented European reflexes are difficult to dismantle and that specific reifying tendencies let the traces of an EastWest slope persist in the current European imaginary. The arguments here draw from and find their substance in following the dynamic struggle for meaning vividly depicted on the scene of the so-called European identitymaking processes. Though reluctant about the reality and specificity of an existing or emerging European identity shaped peculiarly by the EU, this chapter makes specific theoretical choices in assessing the features of such an eventual identity and further tries to locate its exclusive determinants by looking at the identitarian narratives unfolding inside the EU. While a wide literature extensively addresses EU narratives of alterity-making, in terms of shaping its borders and delineating its outsiders, this chapter adds a focus on the internal dimension of ‘making the other’ inside the EU. It argues that the enlargement did not substantially alter the narratives that axiologically place Central and Eastern European countries on a lower scale of Europeanness.

The EU’s endogenous identity or the ‘Western genetic soup’: A neo-medieval empire? It is a widespread though not undisputed argument nowadays that the EU is or is becoming a normative power. That is to make reference to a variable normative commonality or to a set of shared values that the EU is empowering and promoting. Among many normative instruments of EU foreign policy, the enlargement was considered the most successful one, as it proved to be a powerful leverage through credible incentives to encourage political change and foster substantive democratization (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005; Vachudova 2005). Since the end of the Cold War, enlargement was understood more as a function of Western European institutions and particularly of the EU as an emerging pan-European policy shaper. Yet, enlargement also reminded most EU

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students that the formation of EU institutions is based on particular and historically circumstantial experiences that led to a specific model of institutionalization. That is, specific identitarian narratives, norms and values are endogenous to the EU’s formation and gradual institutionalization. Johan P. Olsen (2010) thus refers to a Western “genetic soup”, where its pre-existing components define the viable political choices in the development of new institutions. This genetic soup, in Olsen’s terms, “includes historically developed institutional arrangements, standard operating procedures, practices, rules, roles, identities, normative and causal belief systems, and resources and capabilities” (Olsen 2010, 96). In this line of arguments, the EU as institutionalization and policy process “is based on west European experience” (Wallace et al. 2010, 5). This statement is repeatedly made by Helen Wallace as a preliminary observation to her overview of the EU in all four editions of the wellknown Policy-Making in the European Union. The dense multilateralism as a specific feature of Western politics remains, for Wallace, at the core of EU formation, while the enlargement brings to saliency the question whether there is one Europe or several in embracing Central and Eastern European countries with different inheritances (Wallace 1999, 2001). Interesting is that most often the European type of interrogation involves an asymmetrical positioning that looks at the endogenous primacy of Western values, while other values or inheritances are considered to have difficulty in adapting or submitting to Western ones (Delanty 2003). The asymmetry involved in the enlargement process was widely debated and acknowledged. What was rather left untouched is the one-dimensional consideration of endogeneity: while Western values and norms are most often considered inherent to the EU formation, the candidate countries and the new members are treated as pure rationalchoice driven actors with identities exogenous to political decisions. They are therefore theorized, analysed and treated as tabula rasa actors, who are ready to be socialized within EU core values by extensive subjection to conditionality requirements that are fulfilled solely due to the incentives of admission. When identitarian factors are addressed they are only considered as independent variables for underdevelopment and/or dysfunctions. Frank Schimmelfennig (2003a, 2003b, 2007) made extensive arguments and provided valuable empirical insights in showing that the processes of EU enlargement towards Central and Eastern Europe, while hard to be explained in rational-choice terms, could be better understood in the constructivist terms of collective identity within a community environment. Yet, if one translates his argument bluntly, it

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would simply be as if Western EU members were tricked to accept the enlargement by the Central and Eastern European countries’ agile politicians. In this line of argument, there is no sufficient rationally driven interest for Western EU members to explain their decision to enlarge. As an alternative explanation, constructivism can account, in Schimmelfennig’s (2003b) argument, for the decision to enlarge as coming from a Western European liberal democratic, community-building ethos. Still, this endogenous nobility is not sufficient without looking at the Central and Eastern European rational manoeuvres. As the decision to enlarge cannot be fully explained in the constructivist logic, Schimmelfennig innovatively introduced the Central and Eastern European candidates’ strategic action to complement the identity-based explanations. Thus, the Central and Eastern European states rationally, strategically and rhetorically, and not through a logic of appropriateness, speculated on the EU’s commitments to liberal community-making values. Their goal was to shame the reticent member states into complying with the community rules and honouring past commitments. As a result of these arguments, the opponents of Eastern enlargement found themselves rhetorically entrapped (Schimmelfennig 2003b, 5).

One could easily find Schimmelfennig’s arguments and evidences as being both ingenious and robust. However, through their elaborate nature and from alternative ways of looking at the evidence on enlargement they also convincingly show what is usually disregarded: the European nature of the applicant countries themselves and the endogenous nature of Europeanness in their endeavours. As there is plenty of evidence of overwhelming popular support for European integration in all candidate countries, one can look at the domestic politicians involved in the bargaining as entrapped in the emerging liberal democratic community values of their own polities. This might provide substance for a constructivist understanding of the motivation to integrate, while most researchers prefer to look at the balance between benefits of integration and the costs of being outside the EU. The costs-benefits analysis and its alternative rationalist reasoning provide without doubt essential evidence for the applicant states’ need to integrate, yet they are not sufficient for the will and value-driven commitment to do so. A constructivist reading of enlargement suffers from the same old distorted reflexes that emerged from Enlightenment: to look at Central and Eastern European countries as Europe’s other. It pictures a European identitarian core that is alien to the candidate countries and which can be

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accessed and interiorized only through extensive conditionality and socialization. To be clear, at this point we are not arguing that conditionality was not an effective tool for democratization by exercising pressure on otherwise non-compliant politicians and institutions. The argument here rather goes to emphasize that rationalist explanations are not dichotomous to constructivist arguments but complementary, and that they should be treated as such also in regard to applicant states and not only to ‘core’ Europe. The constructivist argument has among its unintended consequences the continuous perceptions of Central and Eastern Europeans as others after enlargement, as the recognition of their commitment to European values was not at stake within the process of accession. Only their institutional progress and processes of learning were traced and analysed. It is in this logic that the concepts of Central and Eastern Europe should have disappeared as a sign of successful socialization. Yet, the post-enlargement reality indicates that many factors were ignored, and that old categories both persist and are reshaped, for in Johan Olsen’s words, “institutions do not treat all actors, issues, and conflicts impartially” (2010, 97). The homogenized view of a pan-European prevalent identity as the engine of enlargement emanates from particular visions of the EU suffering from analogical fallacy (Majone 2009, 155) with a type of Westphalian state. Jan Zielonka (2007) hypothesized that we can look at the EU enlargement towards Central and Eastern Europe as a type of postmodern, neo-medieval imperial politics. As the EU lacks a cohesive sense of cultural identity, the enlargement “was about asserting the EU’s political and economic control over the unstable and impoverished eastern part of the continent through skilful use of political and economic conditionality” (Zielonka 2007, 13). What most of the theories of enlargement disregard in rationalist or constructivist views are the constellations of mental mappings, hierarchies and disjunctions inside the EU that they reflect but which they cannot account for. Anne Marie Thiesse (1999) showed a paradoxical commonality of Europeans, which is that they have spent the last two centuries of the previous millennium in a joint effort to create their national identities through national intellectuals’ mutual observation, imitation and transfer of ideas and expertise. The intellectuals’ industrious and militant invention of national identities consisted of providing content and consistence for an identitarian checklist through observation and delimitation from the outsiders conceived as radical others. The European identity-making endeavours or theorizations pursued a loose but nonetheless similar strategy forging a common content

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for an imagined commonality through differentiation from outsiders. The other became a criterion for legitimizing particular borders of the Union in particular historical moments. Yet, the enlargement in its limited transformative framework made the outside constitutive other into an insider. Most of the theories of enlargement are unable to deal with the endogenous Europeanness still treating the new members as the EU’s constitutive internal others. The differences in culturally settled norms and values of Central and Eastern European countries are disregarded as factors shaping a particular logic of appropriateness and being exposed to a process of othering through a lower gradation in the scale of Europeanness. The formation of identitarian narratives in the European Union reflects the post-modern imperial nature of enlargement. According to Jan Zielonka, the “EU’s eastward enlargement is often treated as a routine institutional operation that is unlikely to change the course and nature of European integration” (2007, 2). Most theories and narratives surrounding enlargement resemble the neo-medieval empire logic by preserving the other as other after becoming a member. The formation of internal alterities is constitutive to the shape that the EU has taken after the end of the Cold War. The EU’s internal other is no longer subjected to an either-or logic, but exposed, narrated and often treated as the denominator for the maximum tolerated difference inside the EU. More difference inside the Union is perceived as threatening to the constitution of Europeanness (e.g. Turkey). Ole Wæver (1997) looked at the EU after the end of the Cold War in striking similarity with the medieval empires organized in form of concentric circles that entail hierarchical attitudes towards its internal others. As Jose Manuel Barroso said, the EU is the first non-imperial empire “built on voluntary pooling of power and not on military conquest”.2 It is the argument in this chapter that the EU identitarian narratives maintain a delineative East-West slope and reproduce narrative practices that resemble a neo-medieval empire shape rather than an emerging European cosmopolitan order or a Westphalian superstate. While the processes of identity-making intrinsic to the creation of nation-states produced a homogenizing move that propelled the created other outside its borders, the EU identity-making frames internal hierarchies accommodating an internal other through a persisting wide and growing set of dichotomies: core Europe/non-core Europe, new Europe/old Europe, pioneers/followers, 2

Mahony, Honor. 2007. “Barroso says EU is an empire.” EUobserver.com, http://euobserver.com/9/24458, accessed January 30, 2011.

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or centre/periphery. The proliferation of such dichotomies expresses the widespread though most often gratuitous European scepticism in the complementarity between wider and deeper integration and further fuels scenarios for differentiated and club-based integration (Majone 2009).

Faces of alterity: The European Union and the making of the other The advance and transfiguration of the initial project of an ‘ever closer union’ brought about and intensified the searches and disputes on and around the idea of an emergent EUropean identity (Herrmann, Risse and Brewer 2004; Checkel and Katzenstein 2009). However, the search for the substance, determinants, manifestations or specific features of such an identity opened the way for the image of an “identitarian Babel” (Trenz 2010, 10) as a proxy for the degree of unity and consensus or dialogical contestation within the processes of tracing or creating an EU collective identity. Iver B. Neumann (1996, 1998, 1999, 2004) insistently and extensively argued that the formation of identities in Europe does not always consist of nested positive-sum identities most often theorized within EU studies but also of conflictual zero-sum processes of othering. As Europe is a “historically fabricated reality of ever-changing forms and dynamics” (Delanty 1995, 3) the other and the narrative processes of alterity-making are constitutive to discourses forging European identities (Neumann 1996, 207). It is the argument here that, unlike the formation of national identities, the European identity-making processes and practices after the latest enlargements are indicative for processes of internal othering that reflect the EU’s shape of a neo-medieval empire. The othering processes and narratives inside the EU reflect the remains of the EU enlargement as exclusive and selective process that is diachronic in territorial expansion and identitarian integration. Alterity-making processes connected with the evolutionary nature of the EU take multiple faces. The post-Cold War Europe was first of all exposed to othering its past, in order to secure the unpredicted achievement of the fallen Iron Curtain. That is to say that, in security terms, Europe after 1989 was to “avoid a return to its own notorious past of war and power balancing” (Buzan and Wæver 2003, 356). Such a historic moment intensified the need for further integration in Europe. After Maastricht, the EU became committed to supplement deepening with widening integration. The gradual extension of powers within EU institutions led to an increasing impact of decisions taken in Brussels over

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issues of member states citizens’ saliency and hence to a gradual politicization (Hix 2008) of what used to be mostly a successful economic cooperation platform. The post-communist Central and Eastern European countries started to claim their ‘return’ to Europe, each with its own voice, thus certifying at the same time their ‘return to diversity’ (Rothschild and Wingfield 2008). Entrapped in its own rhetoric by the Central and Eastern European countries’ use of collective identity arguments, as Schimmelfennig (2003b) has argued, the EU further pursued its enlargement agenda by exercising extensive leverage in locking in the democratization processes and by diminishing potential backsliding through conditionality (Vachudova 2005). The EU’s decision to enlarge towards the East brought to the table identitarian narratives at a scale and intensity never witnessed before. What is Europe, who is European and who is not? The EU and its supporters gradually started to speak as the most soundly voice for what is to be meant by Europe in terms of values and norms. Within the EU enlargement process, the Central and Eastern European countries got into a civilizational beauty contest themselves in search of drawing the most Western profile. What’s Central Europe, what’s more Eastern, what’s more Ottoman, Balkan, Byzantine; who is the actual kidnapped kid of the West; and who can build better credentials by pushing the Easternness to the next border. The concept of Central Europe returned this time in narrative distinction to the backward Eastern Europe on the one side and to Russia on the other side, the latter being Europe’s radical other already since Enlightenment (Neumann 1996, 1999). As regards the countries emerging from the former Yugoslavia with their armed conflicts, many inside the EU secretly wished that it had been on a different continent. Thus, a new Balkanization occurred (Todorova 2009). Turkey, another historic client of European narratives of alterity-making (Levin 2011) applied for EU membership, bringing thus back to intense salience its profile as a concerning other, against which a supposed European self is contrasted (Hansen 2004). “I do not believe that Turkey belongs in Europe, and for a simple reason, which is that it is in Asia minor”, Nicolas Sarkozy said in a prime-time interview on TF1 and France 2 television.3 The models of ‘exceptionality’ were also exposed to a logic of othering, as often invoked in the case of Northern countries. Browning (2007) portraits the Nordic exceptionalism in three dimensions of being 3

Interview at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBoBTdh9oa4, accessed January 30, 2011.

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better than the European norm and of being different: the peaceful nature of Nordic societies that consecrated their position as bridge builders during the Cold War, the Nordic international solidarism, and the egalitarian social democracy. While during the Cold War the Nordic model gained a unique status as an exception to European standard practices, after 1989 the three constitutive elements became less particularly Nordic, while being absorbed in the wider flux of negotiated interests within the European Union. Ole Wæver (1992) argued that a Nordic identity within the EU is becoming largely absent while the Northern countries are no longer seen as better than Europe but rather as being lost in a form of peripheralism since they neither follow the German welfare model nor ‘core’ EU security approaches. The essential identitarian fear in Northern countries comes, therefore, from not representing the core but rather a marginal status in an increasingly hierarchical Europe. Parallel, the rapid globalization exposed the EU member states to intensive legal and illegal immigration, international organized crime, terrorism and international spread of infectious diseases that supplied additional fuel to the existing constellation of narratives of alteritymaking. As regards for example Germany and its perceived troubles with immigration, Angela Merkel recently stated that attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have “utterly failed”.4 The 9/11 terrorist attacks on the USA had the spill-over effect of multiplication of suspicion towards the Muslim other in the EU, probably Europe’s most consistent other in historic time (AlSayyad and Castells 2002), while the American unilateralism as response to 9/11 generated in the EU a heated debate over its own security identity that narratively delineated between old Europe/new Europe and core Europe/non-core Europe (Levy et al. 2005). Regarding Americans themselves, the anti-American sentiments in today’s Europe became commonplace in an unprecedented manner, while “the presumptively ‘un-American’ qualities of Europe were fast becoming the highest common factor in European self-identification” (Judt 2005, 790). “EUrope stands for what USA is not”, affirmed Marco Antonsich (2008, 512) in portraying the increasing othering of America by Europeans. Coming back to the concept of Eastern Europe as internal other of the EU, Jan Zielonka points out that “the EU accession process has often been handled in a dictatorial fashion: the candidates were presented with a long 4

BBC News, October 17, 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe11559451, accessed January 30, 2011.

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list of conditions for entrance, and they were hardly in a position to negotiate these conditions let alone reject them” (2007, 162). Integration appears as nothing else but the structural form of EU dominance towards Eastern European applicants, while the convergence of their political trajectories is the sign of their submission. In Zielonka’s own terms, “under careful scrutiny the accession process looks rather like an imperial exercise of asserting political and economic control over an unstable and underdeveloped neighbourhood” (2007, 59). Recent enlargements then appear as results of explicit power politics. The lens of the EU as a postmodern type of neo-medieval empire, as Zielonka’s arguments frame it, more suitably address the EU’s nature of a polity characterized by overlapping authorities, divided sovereignty, diversified institutional arrangements and multiple cultural identities. However, this is not to explicitly compare the Europe of today with medieval Europe, it rather serves as metaphor (Wæver 1997). It is in moments of growth and development that a European core in dichotomy with external others takes shape. As development and growth are uneven and rather the exception than the norm (Wolff 1994, 9), they generate also an internal civilizational evaluative scaling of regions and people inside. The result of the formed hierarchies are the internal others. These internal others are the observable outcome of a hegemonic discourse on and of Europe “which operates to produce an induced consensus – which is less compliance with power than acquiescence and helplessness – with which a system of power can be mobilized” (Delanty 1995, 6). The neo-medieval empire shape of Europe, suggested here as analytical tool rather than as a substantive statement, illustrates the centrality and emphatic nature of the distinction between centre and periphery that torments the enlarged Europe. Ole Wæver (1997) addressed the fact that the eroding or fading of the nation-state brings with it a curious revival of a narrative use of maps and a formation in Europe of quasi-geographical concentric circles aiming to keep the core intact. Among these circles, “the first is about the core itself, the second pertains to close outsiders, and the third refers to those peripheral actors that circle around this centre” (Wæver 1997, 68). Klaus Eder (2005) also suggested that in order to answer who are the Europeans in the context of integration one must distinguish between core and peripheral Europeans, that is to identify a core that has the power to define who is European beyond doubt and to treat the other’s ways of defining Europeanness as counterclaims. The core Europeans are, in Eder’s argument, the ones searching to retain the symbolic power of naming, also

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of naming the other. Looking at identities as product of social struggles, he sees the occurrence of a core European identity as a fact: This core/periphery distinction sets off a dynamic of identity construction, which is shaped by core Europeans, not yet Europeans and potential Europeans who distinguish themselves from the non-Europeans and/or the anti-Europeans. It is within such struggles that the issue of the construction of a European identity must be located (Eder 2005, 200).

We might ask on what privileged meta-analytical position is one to be placed to see this multi-layered struggle for comprehension. Not even the core Europe has much agreement on the power of naming. Maria Rovisco (2010) has followed media to show how the narratives differ significantly between France and Britain in the struggle to define what the European core is all about. It could be expected that such a variation is visible in other ‘core’ countries as well. This shows that Europe is trapped in an ongoing process of naming with a complicated and multi-centric imagination when talking about the shape of its others. The persistent core-periphery nexus is the sign that the EU is not yet able to live up to its cosmopolitan ideals.

Conclusion The possibilities of EUropean narratives of alterity-making are by no means exhausted by the exemplifications above. An extensive literature approached the available forms of alterity in connection with the EU identity-making narrative processes. Yet, most of the research and writings on the topic agree on a reference to the European others as external/outsider others. The other or the processes of alterity-making are positioned most often in the frame of international relations and the making of European identity in relation or delineation with its outsiders. The making of the European identity is conceived in mimesis with the formation of national identities. In this logic, “Europe acquires distinction and salience when pitted against the Other” (Strath 2002, 388). As collective identities take the shape of imagined family resemblances, they are built gradually by specifying a sense of belonging and solidarity. However, what Delanty (1995, 5) calls the “pathological form of identity” is precisely their construction against a category of otherness. As identities are relational they generate a system of delineating the in-group from the out-group. The delineation mark is the imagined and narratively enforced border among groups. Concerned with the dynamic imaginary involved in

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shaping Europe’s borders, Iver B. Neumann invested significant energy on decrypting through genealogy the narratives of othering in international relations “to demonstrate how the self/Other nexus is operative on all levels of European identity formation” (1999, 161). By studying identity along the European boundaries, Neumann skilfully managed to disclose the dichotomous processes of European identity-making and their reliance on a self-other nexus. But he considers region-building to be similar to nation-building as processes of forging “imagined communities” and, therefore, follows a similar logic in analysing the formation of national identities. National identities, unlike regions, benefited from the existence of borders as preservers of and guarantees for the sovereignty of the state. Europe has a more flexible connection with borders and their function is much harder to be defined than that of national borders. In the case of the EU, where the concept of Europe was appropriated (Laffan 2004, 75), the borders move and what they preserve is harder to tackle. While Neumann’s books were written before the Eastern enlargement, the remaining question is what happens when the nominated others become insiders. Are new members/former external others quickly socialized and embraced as ‘true’ Europeans or will the alterity-making practices that they were exposed to have left traces? This is an important question since, if the normative judgments involved in pre-enlargement processes of othering persist, one has to consider that in the creation of a European prototype for in-group identification (Mummendey and Waldzus 2004) it “is easier to tolerate the differences of outsiders than [it] is to tolerate the failure of insiders to live up to the prototypic norm” (Herrmann and Brewer 2004, 19). It is the proposed argument here that looking at EUrope after enlargement as taking the shape of a neo-medieval empire allows one to trace the internal processes of othering through better lenses than the analogy with national identity creation. This is to suggest that we can look at the EUropean identity-making practices as sui-generis post-modern assimilationist processes that dynamically reconfigure but also preserve the alterity as alterity. As the boundaries dividing the self and the other are shifting in time, the genealogy of a group self-representation emerging from a variety of sub-groups marks the features of its identitarian constructs and generates narratives of internal diversification through concentric circles mapping one’s distance from a postulated centre.

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—. 2003a. “Strategic Action In a Community Environment: The Decision to Enlarge European Union to the East.” Comparative Political Studies 36 (1/2): 156-183. —. 2003b. The EU, NATO and the Integration of Europe. Rules and Rhetoric. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schimmelfennig, Frank and Ulrich Sedelmeier, eds. 2005. The Politics of European Union Enlargement. New York: Routledge. Sen, Amartya. 2006. Identity and Violence. The Illusion of Destiny. London: Penguin Books. Strath, Bo. 2002. “A European Identity: To the Historical Limits of a Concept.” European Journal of Social Theory 5 (4): 387-401. Thiesse, Anne-Marie. 1999. La création des identités nationales: Europe XVIIIe-XXe siècle. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Todorova, Maria. 2009. Imagining the Balkans, updated edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Trenz, Hans-Jörg. 2010. “In Search of the Popular Subject: Identity Formation, Constitution-making and the Democratic Consolidation of the EU.” European Review 18 (1): 93-115. Vachudova, Milada Anna. 2005. Europe Undivided. Democracy, Leverage and Integration After Communism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wæver, Ole. 1997. “Imperial Metaphors: Emerging European Analogies to Pre-Nation State Imperial Systems.” In Europe. Security, Territory and Identity, eds. Ola Tunander et al., 59-93. Oslo: International Peace Research Institute. —. 1992. “Nordic Nostalgia: Northern Europe After the Cold War.” International Affairs 68 (1): 77-102. Wallace, Helen. 2001. “Introduction. Rethinking European Integration.” In Interlocking Dimensions of European Integration, ed. Helen Wallace, 1-22. Basingstoke: Palgrave. —. 1999. “Whose Europe Is It Anyway? The 1998 Stein-Rokkan Lecture.” European Journal of Political Research 35: 287-306. Wallace, Helen, Mark A. Pollack and Alasdair R. Young, eds. 2010. Policy-Making in the European Union, 6th edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wolff, Larry. 1994. Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Zielonka, Jan. 2007. Europe as Empire. The Nature of the Enlarged European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER TWO OTHERING IN THE ‘EXCEPTIONAL’ U.S.-CUBA RELATIONSHIP LANA WYLIE

Introduction Both Cuban and American foreign policies are constructed by the interplay between the ideas of the self and the other. In the U.S., understandings of the American self as exceptional establishes a context wherein othering of Cuba becomes not only natural but necessary for the continuation of the U.S. self-image. In the American view, Cuba is not just different and inferior but an anathema to American values and characteristics, the ultimate other. Furthermore, Cuba’s very existence as a state that is highly critical of the American political system and values makes the case that American attempts to dominate the hemisphere are not only morally wrong but have failed, challenges the U.S. self-image as exceptional, and consequently reinforces the othering of Cuba. A similar process also takes place in Cuba. Cuba’s foreign policy has been profoundly shaped by the Cuban understanding of the self in relation to the U.S. other. Centuries of foreign influence and over five decades of conflict with the United States have made an indelible mark on the Cuban sense of self and contributed to Cuba’s own exceptional self-image. The U.S. has become an extreme other and a national obsession. This chapter addresses the two identities and explores the process of their mutual constructions. It ends by asking whether the clashing of the two exceptional identities and the degree of mutual othering dooms the bilateral relationship to be hostile for the foreseeable future.

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Assumptions and approaches The framework of this chapter borrows from the literature regarding otherness. Although this chapter is indebted to David Campbell’s articulation of the other, it assumes that identity of a state is not just performed through a relationship between the self and the other but can also be produced via domestic processes (though these in turn might be created by othering processes occurring at levels below the state). Likewise, the chapter agrees with more recent scholarship (Hansen 2006; Diez 2005) that there are degrees and types of othering. The goal of this chapter is to analyse the relationship between othering, a particular identity, and the foreign policy relationship between Cuba and the United States. Identity as it is conceptualized here cannot be neatly separated from policy, as identity produces and reproduces policy at the same time as policy influences identity. Foreign policy and identity are both understood as practices that are continually in flux. Both are constantly being performed in explicit and implicit ways. Neither identity nor foreign policy is performed in exclusion of the other, but identity discourses can be understood as providing structure to the foreign policy environment. The chapter primarily uses discourse analysis to identify the various constructions of identity and otherness in the United States and Cuba. The vocabulary of political leaders and foreign policy officials in both countries are the main discourse referenced.

The American exceptional self1 Americans have long seen themselves as exceptional. In relation to the domestic environment, exceptionalism is understood as an outcome of the Enlightenment’s emphasis on individual liberty and the influence of Puritan morality (Lipset 1996). In the foreign policy arena this is translated into assumptions about what the United States stands for and what is appropriate international behaviour given these beliefs and values. The discourse of exceptionalism portrays the U.S. as embodiment of democracy, defender of freedom and human rights, and natural political 1

This section expands on the argument made by the author in Perceptions of Cuba: Canadian and American Policies in Comparative Perspective (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010).

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and moral leader of the West. The self-image thus is considered to convey on the U.S. special rights and duties associated with promoting these values internationally and, most importantly, within the hemisphere. These representations are accepted as common sense in American foreign policy discourse. The belief of the United States being exceptional is reflected in the history of U.S. foreign policy. One of the most well-known articulations of exceptionalism expressed in foreign policy doctrine was voiced by John O’Sullivan, in Manifest Destiny. In 1845 O’Sullivan described the U.S. as “the nation of progress, of individual freedom, of universal enfranchisement… [conveying on the U.S. a] blessed mission to the nations of the world, which are shut out from the life-giving light of truth” (1839, 429-430). These ideas did not fade with the passage of time but came to be seen as the foundation of American foreign policy behaviour and continue to be echoed in foreign policy doctrines and discourse up until the present day. Most recently, the debate about American exceptionalism garnered media attention after President Obama was criticized for a reluctance to embrace this part of identity. In 2009 Obama said “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism” (Crowley 2009). This offhand remark greatly upset a significant segment of American society. Prominent Republican Mike Huckabee criticized: “To deny American exceptionalism is in essence to deny the heart and soul of this nation” (Tumulty 2011). Yet, many have since pointed out that Obama frequently refers to the exceptional character of the United States (Kazin 2011). In his 2011 State of the Union Address, Obama declared “America’s moral example must always shine for all who yearn for freedom, justice, and dignity.” (2011) The belief in the exceptional character of the U.S. remains a powerful force constructing the way Americans see themselves and their role in the world. This belief has had particular relevance for U.S. policy towards Cuba.

American exceptionalism and policy towards Cuba This section proposes that American exceptionalism and the process of othering Cuba are intimately tied together. The various agencies, individuals and informal networks with influence over policy towards the island make sense of the Cuban-American relationship within a context

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that contains certain assumptions and worldviews, including what it means to be American. By positioning the U.S. as exceptional, this identity reinforces the othering of Cuba. Broadly conceived, conceptualizing the U.S. as exceptional places all other states in an inferior category. Since 1959 Cuba has not only been seen as different and inferior but as anathema to U.S. values and characteristics and thus as a threat to the American way of life. The American self-identification as the guardian of freedom and democracy and their contrasting images of Cuba became central to the performance of American policy. Furthermore, Cuba directly challenges American identity as exceptional. Cuba is highly critical of the U.S. political system, values and international actions, often portraying the United States as anything but superior. Havana argues that American attempts to dominate the hemisphere are not only morally wrong but have failed. Washington’s reaction to Cuba’s statements is intensified because Havana is able to elicit international criticism of American actions. Even more significantly, Cuba’s very existence challenges the American conception of themselves as exceptional. Americans ponder how it is possible that revolutionary Cuba has been able to resist the sheer attraction of the U.S. model. They ask how it is possible that the revolutionary government remains in control of Cuba despite a massive and long-term effort by the United States to oust the Castros from power and restore Cuba to its pro-American position. They cannot understand how Havana has been able to resist American political, diplomatic and even military might. The easiest way to maintain the belief in the exceptional character of the United States and still answer these questions is to conceptualize Cuba as an evil state that is solely focused on repressing their populace and undermining American efforts in the region. The understanding of the U.S. as an exceptional nation has produced and reproduced certain ways of ‘seeing’ Cuba, which lead to the preferencing of some policy options over others.

Othering Cuba: From inferior to enemy American exceptionalism influenced the relationship even before Cuba gained independence from Spain. Then, Americans caricaturized Cubans as children or gendered them as female. These representations of an inherently inferior Cuba appeared in American cartoons, official statements and popular discourse, making American tutelage seem necessary (see Vaughan 2003). John Quincy Adams argued that Cuba was “incapable of self-support” and thus would “gravitate only toward the

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North American Union” (Adams in Benjamin 1992). Senator Albert Beveridge justified American involvement in the 1898 Spanish-American war over Cuba because God has made Americans “the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns… He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples…” (Beveridge in Twig 1998, 22). In recent history the othering of Cuba is often associated with the U.S. identity as apostle of democracy and freedom. Cuba is represented as an enemy of these values in U.S. legislation, official speeches and by much of the media. American self-views and American views of Cuba go hand in hand, mutually reinforcing. Policy towards Cuba is largely constructed by these taken-for-granted images and identities. The United States is focused on changing the political face of Cuba. This not only includes the removal of the Castro brothers from power but also the stipulation that Cuba should adopt a democratic political system and market economy modelled after the United States. The end of the isolationist policy is firmly tied to these changes. A 1997 government document declares: Once Cuba has a transition government – that is, a government committed to the establishment of a fully democratic, pluralistic society – the United States will be prepared to begin normalizing relations and provide assistance to support Cuba’s transition (U.S. Interest Section 1998).

The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act (also known as Helms-Burton Act) that tightened the embargo declares: The United States has shown a deep commitment, and considers it a moral obligation, to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms… The Cuban people deserve to be assisted in a decisive manner to end the tyranny that has oppressed them for 36 years… (U.S. House of Representatives 1996, 3-4).

A senior government advisor, Daniel Fisk, said many accounts of American Cuba policy totally miss a significant factor in U.S. foreign policy: “the views of a significant segment of the foreign policy elite of America’s mission in the world and how this ‘mission’ is played out through the structure and interaction of the policy-making institutions” (1999, 46). The United States considers itself to be on a moral mission in Cuba.

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U.S. exceptionalism in the hemisphere Policy regarding Cuba is particularly constructed by the idea within American exceptionalism that the U.S. has special rights and duties within the hemisphere. American officials have historically conceptualized the Western hemisphere as being within their own sphere of influence, giving them latitude to intervene in the internal affairs of the countries in the region. This attitude was officially expressed in 1823, when President Monroe warned European powers that Latin America and the Caribbean were the exclusive concern of the United States. The Monroe Doctrine marked the beginning of an historical pattern that has characterized U.S. policy toward the region ever since. In the American imagination, geography and history have conveyed on Cuba a special place within the American sphere of influence. In the early years of the relationship strategic concerns over Cuba were joined by the growing perception that Cuba could not function independently and that because of its proximity, the island would one day become part of the United States. President Martin Van Buren thought that Cuba should be tied to Spain or the U.S. because Cubans were incapable of selfgovernment (Perez 1988, 109). President McKinley similarly justified the American intervention in Cuba’s war with Spain in 1898 (U.S. Department of State 1899). Although the U.S. involvement quickly ended the war, the U.S. continued to occupy Cuba until 1902. The Platt Amendment, which the U.S. government subsequently attached to the Cuban constitution, restricted Cuban sovereignty and gave the United States the right to intervene in Cuban affairs. Americans continued to view Cuban sovereignty as pliable. In 1959 the United States still believed their control over Cuba was natural and necessary, and thus they resisted Fidel Castro’s challenge to American domination of Cuba. American officials could not understand that Cubans supported their new government’s emphasis on sovereignty. Relying on their own perceptions of the attraction and superiority of the American model, President Kennedy and his advisers were shocked when the Cuban people opposed the American-backed forces during the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion. Yet, this event did not shake the belief that the U.S. had a special relationship with Cuba, entitling them to interfere in Cuban affairs, up until today. The 1996 Helms-Burton Act demonstrates this belief in particular. Helms-Burton dictates that a future Cuban government must release all political prisoners, make all political activity legal, and

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sever any ties to Fidel and Raúl Castro, and it demands an end to Cuban socialism (U.S. House of Representatives 1996). The 2003 and 2006 reports from The Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba reveal similar perceptions of Cuba, and of the U.S. role in the country’s future. The commission was created by the Bush administration in order to devise a plan to “assist Cuba’s transition to democracy and free market economy,” aiming to …bring about a peaceful, near-term end to the dictatorship; establish democratic institutions, respect for human rights, and the rule of law; create the core institutions of a free economy; modernize infrastructure; and meet basic needs in the areas of health, education, housing, and human services (U.S. Commission for the Assistance of a Free Cuba 2003).

In July 2006 the commission released another report that made additional recommendations “to hasten the end of the Castro dictatorship” (Rice 2006, 6). The commission’s reports are a clear example of the interrelationship between identity and misperceptions. Both these reports portray an understanding of Cuba that is overwhelmingly contested by international experts. For instance, the reports are critical of the Cuban healthcare system and assert that the United States will assist the transitional government “to meet the basic needs of the Cuban people” and ensure “that adequate health and social services are provided” (Powell 2004, 55). The report ignores that the Cuban healthcare system is regarded as excellent by international organizations (see WHO Cuba; Lobe 2001). Washington dismisses this contrary evidence as manipulation by Havana. In another example, the 2006 document claimed that “Fidel Castro and his inner circle have begun a gradual but intrinsically unstable process of succession” (Rice 2006, 5). Ironically, the same month the report was issued Fidel Castro began what is now recognized as a very stable succession by transferring power to his brother so he could undergo surgery. The success of the power transfer was reinforced in 2008 when Fidel Castro permanently gave up the presidency of Cuba, demonstrating that, contrary to American perceptions, the Cuban government had devised a stable process of succession. Cuba’s physical and psychological location within the American worldview, and all that they imply, continue to influence the way American officials make sense of the relationship. In particular, Fidel Castro’s revolutionary message and Cuba’s apparent ability to resist the U.S. contradict the American self-image as exceptional and challenge the

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various images of Cuba and of the U.S. role in the hemisphere that have been part of the American imagination for hundreds of years, consequently evoking also emotional reactions. These emotional reactions are tied to the popular paternalistic narrative that the U.S. and Cuba should be intimately connected. Yet, Fidel Castro’s revolutionary message and Cuba’s apparent ability to resist the U.S. bring these earlier metaphors and images that were built on the idea of Cuba as weak into question, creating a sense of dissonance. The challenge to a core identity of the United States from a country that was often thought of as an American ‘child’ intensifies the emotional component of the policy. Cuba’s leaders defied representations of the U.S. role in the hemisphere and Cuba’s ‘natural’ inferiority. In the early years of the Castro reign, the U.S. unsuccessfully fought the Cuban challenge to its identity with military might, covert actions, economic isolation, international condemnation and other means. Cuba in this era continued to successfully challenge the United States by simply existing. The failure of many U.S. governments to oust Fidel Castro added insult to injury, as this fact further served to defy the U.S. belief in its exceptional character. Interestingly, Fidel Castro is aware of how this resistance is seen in the United States. He said: It is unlikely that the United States will forgive us and forget about the role that the Cuban revolution has played and continues to play. Surely, the United States is deeply irritated over the fact that this small country shows it possesses the ability to fight and resist (1992).

Given the fundamental self-images and perceptions involved in constructing this policy and the resulting emotions they elicit, it is relatively easy to see how it has become possible for U.S. policy towards the island to have remained hostile for over half a century.

The Cuban exceptional self and ideas of the United States A similar process also takes place in Cuba. Cuba’s foreign policy has been profoundly shaped by the Cuban understanding of itself as exceptional. Centuries of foreign influence have made an indelible mark on Cuban identity, helping to construct an identity that is both exceptional and imbued with an ardent sense of self-determination. This identity has shaped the way Cuban policy makers have perceived the global environment and their relations with the U.S.

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As in the U.S. case, there is considerable literature that argues that Cuba is an exceptional state. Although this chapter briefly reviews the reasons cited for this in the literature, it focuses on the idea that Cubans perceive themselves and their state as exceptional and the manifestation of that perception in foreign policy decisions. Although Cuban exceptionalism is most frequently linked to events in the last half century, the idea of Cuban exceptionalism has historical roots that go back to its initial struggles for independence. Even in these early days Cuba seemed determined to chart its own course, both domestically and internationally. Today, Cuba is considered to be both politically and socio-economically exceptional. Yet, this exceptional identity is also intimately bound up with an othering of the U.S.

Socio-economic and political exceptionalism Cuba’s exceptional identity is closely tied to Cuban success in the health and education fields and its international role. The revolutionary government has achieved health indicators that surpass other countries with similar gross national product (GNP) and match levels achieved by some of the richest countries in the world. For example, in 2009 Cuban life expectancy for men was 76 years and for women 80 years. Likewise, neonatal mortality is low (3 per 1000 live births) in comparison to many other countries in the region, and better than in both Canada and the U.S. (4 per 1000 live births) (WHO 2011). Cubans have achieved similar success in education. Very early on the government initiated a massive literacy and education campaign, increasing literacy from 76% to 96% (Labacena Romero 2011). Cuban leaders also frequently reference Cuba’s success in these matters, often pointing out how Cuba compares to other states. In a 2002 speech Fidel Castro argued that other Latin American countries were …well below achieving the educational, cultural and social rates that are essential for a healthy, decent and just life of their citizens. Not one can match Cuba in a single one of these rates. Illiteracy rate: Latin America, 11.7%; Cuba, 0.2%. Inhabitants per teacher: Latin America, 98.4; Cuba, 43… (2002).

It is especially important for Cuba to be recognized for its accomplishments in science and related work in internationalism. For example, in 1995 Fidel Castro said:

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Chapter Two Can anyone doubt Cuba’s accomplishments in science? Among all the Third World countries, Cuba is unquestionably first.… Has any other country demonstrated more solidarity, or sent more doctors, teachers, technicians, or soldiers to the Third World than Cuba?

He also said, “Cuba’s prestige is growing apace because our country is doing things that nobody else is doing”, citing examples such as Cuba’s international medical and educational services (2006). The idea that Cuba is exceptional in these areas is frequently emphasized by Cuban leaders and has become an integral part of Cuban identity. Cubans also point out that they have achieved these extraordinary results in education and healthcare under adverse conditions. The blockade, as the embargo is known in Cuba, has had a significant impact on daily life across the island, making it impossible or more expensive to obtain many products. Furthermore, the end of the USSR ushered in a devastating economic crisis in Cuba, termed the Special Period, which was characterized by inordinate shortages in basic necessities. Yet, Cuba’s economy recovered from its near collapse and has managed to survive under the restrictions imposed by the embargo. In 2000, Fidel Castro stressed that the Cuban people: with exemplary courage have withstood 41 years of a blockade enforced by successive governments of the most powerful country in the world in political, economic, technological and military terms. Furthermore, for the last 10 years, they have withstood the double blockade that resulted from the collapse of the socialist bloc and the USSR.

He then emphasized Cuba’s exceptional character by comparing Cuba’s ability to weather these crises with other states. He said: None would have been able to withstand this for even two weeks, and we have withstood it for 10 years. And for several years now, little by little, we have managed not only to survive but also to gradually increase our economic production… (Castro 2000).

Just as remarkably, the Cuban revolution has also endured the concerted U.S. effort to bring an end to Cuba’s political system. Cuban exceptionalism is tied directly to Cuba’s ability to withstand the embargo and related hostility from the United States. According to Bert Hoffman and Laurence Whitehead: Those who have argued that there is not only one hegemonic ‘superpower’,

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and that U.S. military, economic, political, and cultural supremacy is now such that outright resistance to it had become futile, must face the fact that the Castro regime, as tiny as the Cuban economy may be in a global perspective, still continues to flaunt its resistance, and even to attract occasional new allies to its cause (2006, 5).

Cuban leaders regularly emphasize U.S. hostility and Cuba’s ability to withstand American power. In 1962 Fidel Castro contended: Never have we ceased living under these threats of sabotage, of infiltration, of indirect attacks, of threats of direct attacks. When the imperialist thought that the revolution could be destroyed by a simple press campaign and that with their reactionary press campaign they could subvert our people, or demoralize our people, they began these campaigns. And they failed. When they believed that economic aggression, the suppression of our sugar quota, and the embargo on the exportation of spare parts and raw materials would be sufficient to make the revolution collapse, they began their economic attacks. And they failed. When they believed that sabotage and subversion could destroy the revolution, they began sabotage and subversion. And they failed. When they believed that by organizing an invasion by mercenaries who would occupy a piece of Cuban territory and begin a war of destruction and attrition which would cost us hundreds of thousands of lives, they could destroy the revolution, they attacked and failed. They came for wool and went away shorn.

Similar statements have appeared in most major speeches in Cuba ever since. In almost all cases, the David versus Goliath imagery is used to stress the exceptional nature of the Cuban revolution and its ideas. In a 1999 speech Fidel Castro emphasized Cuban exceptionalism: Our people aren’t any better than other peoples. Their historic greatness is derived from the singular fact of having been put to the test and having been able to withstand it. It’s not a great people in and of itself, but rather a people, which has made itself great, and its capacity to do so is born out of the greatness of the ideas and the righteousness of the causes it defends (1999).

Both outside of Cuba and within the rhetoric employed in the country, Cuba’s exceptionalism is tied directly to its survival in the face of challenges, its perseverance in the face of the American threat. The following section shows that Cuba’s othering of the U.S. is intimately implicated in Cuba’s exceptional identity as it reinforces central elements sustaining this self-identification.

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The U.S. and the reproduction of Cuban identity Cuba’s struggle against the United States helped produce and continues to reproduce Cuba’s identity as exceptional. The U.S. became the ultimate other because of the history of U.S. interference in Cuba’s quest for independence. The United States intervened in Cuba’s war with Spain in 1898 and then attached the Platt Amendment to the Cuban constitution. This rider, giving Cuba the status of an American protectorate, would come to define and symbolize future U.S.-Cuban relations. Over the next half century, the economic and political influence of the United States on the island became progressively less overt but nonetheless played an instrumental role in defining the paternalistic relationship between both countries. The 1959 overthrow by Fidel Castro of the U.S.-friendly regime of Fulgencio Batista marked the beginning of a steadily deteriorating relationship between the U.S. and Cuba. In 1960, the United States imposed an economic embargo on Cuba, restricting trade on all products except for food and medicine. The 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion reinforced the Cuban belief that Washington was intent on controlling their country. The efforts by the CIA to oust Fidel Castro from power, including numerous assassination attempts, further entrenched these ideas in Cuba. Thus, American paternalism has continued to remain a defining part of the relationship. The 1992 Cuban Democracy Act and the 1996 Helms-Burton Act tightened the embargo and imposed numerous conditions on Cuba. The 2003 and 2006 reports issued by the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba further reinforced the idea that the United States would not stop until Cuba was once again under American control.

Rhetoric of independence and exceptionalism Cuba’s exceptional self-identity has had a major influence on Cuba’s foreign policies, including, for example, Cuba’s decision to vigorously pursue positions of power within organizations like the Non-Aligned Movement or the United Nations Human Rights Council. Most significantly for this chapter, the belief that Cuba is exceptional has constructed the way Cuba has responded to the U.S. Fidel Castro came to power with a nationalist message that directly challenged Cuba’s ties to the U.S. and the American role in the region. In 1962 Fidel Castro, echoing Jose Marti, said U.S. leaders:

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speak as if they were the bosses of the world, as if they were the lords and masters of this continent, as if they could lay down rules for our conduct. That language, Mr. Leaders of the United States, we do not understand. The steps our country takes in exercising its legitimate and unrestricted sovereignty do not require instructions from Washington, or warnings, or orders.

Fidel Castro’s rhetoric was famous for its challenges to the United States. Yet, his discourse was not unique as it reflected Cuba’s long history of nationalist self-determination and the embodiment of these ideas within Cuba’s identity as exceptional. In fact, Raúl Castro continues this pattern by frequently linking the current struggle against the U.S. to Cuba’s history. For example, in a 2007 speech he referred to Cuba’s history of struggle against foreign powers, the history of American aggression and Cuba’s unwavering defiance, stating: The conclusion of the U.S. government hierarchy at that time was also consistent with its history: they had to destroy this people who dared to dream of justice, dignity and sovereignty, and if not, make them suffer to the utmost. The example set by Cuba was far too dangerous in a poor, subdued and exploited continent. But they were unable to bring us to our knees… [furthermore arguing that] “President Bush himself insists on repeating that he will not allow the Cuban Revolution to continue. It would be interesting to ask him just how he intends to do that. How little they have learned from history! ... ‘They shall never have Cuba!’” (Castro, Raúl 2007)

Cuba’s nationalist message and the American response to that message continue to reinforce Cuba’s identity as exceptional. The U.S. government is seen as an extreme and hostile other by Cuba. Just as Washington officials contrast the two states, Cuban leaders do the same, while emphasizing Cuba’s superiority. Soon after assuming power, Fidel Castro asserted: “What leaves Kennedy sleepless, and pushes him to a policy of aggression and threats and statement after statement against Cuba is our success.” Castro went on to contrast the two countries: If his system is better than ours, why does his country, which has not suffered economic aggression or embargoes, have problems, while our country, which has suffered all those aggressions, has no problems? If his system is better than ours, why are they moving toward a crisis while we march ahead? … Their system is outmoded and is doomed to failure, ... I have been trying to demonstrate how ridiculous it is for people who are up

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These broad comparisons were used frequently by the Cuban leadership in emphasis of the early success of the revolution through an othering of the United States. As the revolution progressed, Castro used comparisons with the U.S. to emphasize the Cuban self-identity as an exceptional state. He often pointed out Cuba’s achievements in social services and internationalism, among others, while at the same time emphasizing the weaknesses of the U.S. system in these areas. Fidel Castro recently contrasted the Cuban and American responses to the Haitian earthquake, describing the U.S. role as a military occupation that has hindered relief efforts, while “Cuba – despite being a poor and blockaded country – has been cooperating with the Haitian people for many years… Our country is accomplishing a strictly humanitarian mission.” (2010) And, Raúl Castro has followed this tradition. In a 2010 speech he attempted to turn American accusations against Cuba back on the United States. He called U.S. accusations concerning Cuban human rights lies and stated: “The US government tries to hide its own sins and attempts to evade its responsibilities…”, charging the U.S. with: the creation of torture and detention centers, for placing the burden of the economic crisis on the lowest income workers, violently repressing demonstrators and implementing discriminatory policies against migrants and minorities (2010).

Cuba’s exceptional self-image is reproduced by the idea that Cuba has a long history of struggle for independence that continues to this day in its resistance to the United States. Fidel Castro expressed this idea when he said: If history appreciates the real values, if it appreciates ethics, patriotism, the spirit of independence, sovereignty, and the capability for fighting and resisting, it should give an exceptional place to Cuba. I think there are fewer people who confronted so greater a challenge than the one met by the Cuban revolution… (1994).

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Conclusions: Mutual othering, exceptionalism and the future of the relationship Although the relationship remains hostile, in the last few years the degree of animosity between Cuba and the United States lessened somewhat. Since becoming president of Cuba in 2008, Raúl Castro has initiated changes on the island, most recently following the Communist party congress in 2011. Changes such as term limits for senior government officials and reducing the role of the state in the economy were fundamental adjustments, although still within the overall revolutionary framework. Although these changes are downplayed in the U.S. they do take Cuba in a direction more favoured by the U.S. At the same time, Barack Obama has altered the edges of U.S. policy by reversing some of the decisions made by President Bush. In 2009, Obama lifted restrictions on visits and remittances for Cuban-Americans. More recently, Obama lessened some travel restrictions to Cuba for cultural or educational purposes. Other changes include a reduction in hostile rhetoric, increased communication and/or cooperation such as the 2010 cooperation over the Haitian earthquake and the resumption of migration talks. Although these changes to U.S. policy are admittedly limited, they do indicate a greater willingness to engage in dialogue. Yet, fundamental sources of tension remain. Many of these tensions are deeply embedded in the subconscious of both nations. Both Cuban and American foreign policies are constructed by the interplay between the ideas of the self and the other. In the U.S., understanding the American self as exceptional establishes a context wherein othering of Cuba becomes not only natural but necessary for the continuation of the U.S. self-image. The multiple schisms and contrary conceptions operating at once challenge the American self-image and its understanding of its role in relation to other countries of the hemisphere and consequently evoke emotional reactions. Furthermore, the hostile policies reinforce the mutual othering and lead to a hardening of the relationship between othering and identity. Likewise, Cuban foreign policy has been profoundly shaped by Cuba’s identity in relation to the U.S. other. A history of foreign influence and decades of conflict with the U.S. have marked the Cuban sense of self. The tension that characterized Cuba-U.S. relations in the early 1960s reinforced the idea in Cuba that independence was a continual process and that they need to be constantly on guard. American actions, including efforts to overthrow the revolutionary government, have since then served

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to reinforce this idea in Cuba. U.S. paternalism, as visible in various policy measures mentioned, remains a defining part of the relationship. Thus, changes in U.S. policy would only come after change in Cuba. Given Cuba’s history and the central place of independence in the Cuban imagination, it is not surprising that Cuba has reacted intensely to U.S. rhetoric and policies. The United States has become the obvious other to Cuba, provoking emotionally laden speeches and antagonistic policies that reinforce the process of othering. Further complicating the relationship is the degree to which both states believe they are exceptional. Since the United States and Cuba through their interactions not only reinforce the belief in their own exceptionalism but thereby also reinforce the mutual process of othering, their interactions have significant potential to exacerbate tension. To claim that either state’s exceptionalist identity is solely related to their othering of the other state would be to ignore many additional variables and performances occurring in each state that contribute to the view of themselves as exceptional. Yet, in each case, the relationship with the other state is intimately bound up in its understanding of its own exceptional character and the fact that the other state is considered an extreme and hostile other. Consequently, fundamental change in the antagonistic relationship becomes much more difficult.

References Adams, John Qunicy, quoted in Jules Benjamin. 1992. The United States and the Origins of the Cuban Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Beveridge, Albert. U.S. Congress, In Support of an American Empire, 56th Congress, 1st session, January 9, 1900, 704, quoted in Stephen W. Twing, 1998. Myths, Models, and U.S. Foreign Policy: The Cultural Shaping of Three Cold Warriors. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Campbell, David, 1992. Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Castro, Fidel. 2010. “Fidel Castro on Haiti: Cuba ‘Sends Doctors, not Soldiers’.” Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal January 23, http://links.org.au/node/1477, accessed March 7, 2011.

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—. 2006. “Speech to 5th Plenary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.” Granma International July 4. —. 2002. “Speech Given on International Worker’s Day in Revolution Square, Havana.” May 1. Reprinted in Red Critique, http://www.redcritique.org/MarchApril02/fidelcastromaydayspeech200 2.htm, accessed September 19, 2011. —. 2000. “Speech to U.S. Movement (excepts) Harlem, New York.” September, http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/133.html, accessed September 19, 2011. —. 1999. “Speech on 40th Anniversary of Cuban Revolution Santiago du Cuba.” January 1, http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/130.html, accessed September 19, 2011. —. 1995. “Castro Gives Fifth FEU Congress Address, Havana Tele Rebelde and Cuba Vision Networks.” March 26, http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1995/19950326.html, accessed September 19, 2011. —. 1994. “Castro Discusses Emigration, Achievements.” Daily Report October 20, http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1994/19941020.html, accessed September 19, 2011. —. 1992. “Part IV of Interview with Fidel Castro by Tomas Borge.” June 4, Mexico City Excelsior, http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1992/19920605.html, accessed September 19, 2011. —. 1962. “Castro Addresses Education Congress, 11 September.” Havana, http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1962/19620911.html, accessed September 19, 2011. —. 1961. “Speech at Closing of Meeting of Technical Advisers in Havana.” FIEL Radio Network, February 12, http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1961/19610212.html, accessed September 19, 2011. Castro, Raúl. 2010. “Speech in the Cuban National Assembly.” December 18, http://www.radioreloj.cu/english/index.php/radio-reloj-news/36nationals/264-Raúl-castro-speech-in-the-national-assembly, accessed September 19, 2011. —. 2007. “Speech at the Main Celebration of the 54th Anniversary of the Attack on Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Garrisons.” Camagüey, July 26, http://www.walterlippmann.com/rc-07-26-2007. html, accessed September 19, 2011.

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Crowley, Monica. 2009. “American Exceptionalism, RIP.” Washington Times July 1, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/1/americanexceptionalism/, accessed September 19, 2011. Diez, Thomas. 2005. “Constructing the Self and Changing Others: Reconsidering ‘Normative Power Europe’.” Millennium 33: 613-636. Fisk, Daniel. 1999. “Cuba in US Policy: An American Congressional Perspective.” Canada, the US and Cuba Helms-Burton and Its Aftermath. Kingston, ed. Heather Nicol, 27-65. Centre for International Relations, Queens University. Hansen, Lene. 2006. Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War. Oxon: Routledge. Hoffmann, Bert and Whitehead, Laurence. 2006. “Cuban Exceptionalism Revisited.” GIGA Working Paper No. 28 (September). Kazin, Michael. 2011. “Stuff of Legend. American exceptionalism is a flawed idea, but Obama should still use it.” The New Republic February 14, http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2xrLHE/www.tnr.com/article/politics /83365/american-exceptionalism-obama-santorum-romney, accessed September 19, 2011. Labacena Romero, Yuniel. 2011. “Cuba Celebrates 50th Anniversary of the Literacy Campaign.” Cuba Minrex, January 5. Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1996. American Exceptionalism: A DoubleEdged Sword. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. Lobe, Jim. 2001. “Learn from Cuba, Says World Bank.” IPS, May 1, http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/185.html, accessed May 2, 2007. Obama, Barack, 2011. State of the Union. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/State_of_the_Union/state-of-the-union2011-full-transcript/story?id=12759395, accessed September 19, 2011. O’Sullivan, John. 1839. “On Manifest Destiny.” in J. & H.G., pubs., “The Great Nation of Futurity.” The United States Democratic Review 6 (23): 426-430, http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/osulliva.htm, accessed March 7, 2003. Perez, Louis. Jr. 1988. Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Powell, Colin. 2004. “The Commission for Assistance for a Free Cuba: Report to the President.” http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PCAAB192.pdf, accessed June 29, 2011. Rice, Condoleezza. 2006. “The Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba: Report the President.”

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http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/cubareport0707.pdf/, accessed June 29, 2011, Tumulty, Karen. 2010. “Conservatives’ new Focus: America, the Exceptional.” Washington Post November 29. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/28/ AR2010112804269.html, accessed March 10, 2011. U.S. Commission for the Assistance of a Free Cuba. 2003. “Fact Sheet: Commission for the Assistance of a Free Cuba.” http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/12/20031208-8.html, accessed June 29, 2011. U.S. Department of State. 1899. Foreign Relations of the United States, Statement of 11 April 1898. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. U.S. House of Representatives. 1996. Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996. Report 104-168, sec. 201, March 1. U.S. Interest Section Havana, Cuba, 1998. “Basic Policy: To Support Peaceful Change from Within.” http://usembassy.state.gov/havana/wwwh0012.html, accessed March 24, 2003. Vaughan, Christopher. 2003. “Cartoon Cuba: Race, Gender and Political Opinion Leadership in Judge 1898.” African Journalism Studies 24 (2): 195-217. World Health Organization (website). Cuba. http://www.who.int/countries/cub/en/, accessed August 5, 2011. World Health Organization. 2011. World Health Statistics 2011: Global Health Indicators. http://www.who.int/whosis/whostat/EN_WHS2011_Part2.pdf, accessed June 29, 2011. Wylie, Lana, 2010. Perceptions of Cuba: Canadian and American Policies in Comparative Perspective Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

CHAPTER THREE AMERICAN DISCOURSE ON HAITI: DEFINING THE OTHER AND MILITARY INTERVENTION MELODY FONSECA

Introduction: An overview of American-Haitian relations Contemporary analysis of the Haitian social crisis tends to be deficient and only partially explored. Mainstream approaches to Caribbean studies “fail to appreciate that white supremacy is the ‘norm that constitutes the identities and regulates the behavior of States and peoples’” (Watson 2001, 475), while critical perspectives are almost exclusively based on dependency theory. This limits conceptions of Haitian resistance to the determinism of global structures. This chapter, on the contrary, argues that structural factors related to race are more decisive than elements linked to class regarding the relationship between Haiti and the United States. Therefore, the chapter suggests that, especially during periods of military intervention, American discourse on Haiti is structured by the externalization of internal racial fears and the white terrified consciousness. As David Campbell points out: The demarcation of self and other is, however, not a simple process that establishes a dividing line between the inside and the outside. It is a process that involves the gray area of liminal groups in a society, those who can be simultaneously self and other–outsiders who exist on the inside (1990, 275).

This chapter presents the political relations between the U.S. and Haiti from what may be called a poststructuralist or postcolonial approach (see Campbell 1990; Mehta 1990; Watson 2001; Bowden 2004), taking into account the significance of the construction of the other and its effects on the development of the Haitian social imaginary. Applying a historical

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analysis of previous studies, discourses and press material, the chapter explores the relations between the regional hegemonic power and Haiti, one of those “societies born of a special brutality” (Watson 2001, 460). Following Campbell’s approach–“eschew[ing] the notion that US policy simply responds to a fixed, ahistorical, and external reality” (1990, 267)–, this chapter aims to present the way in which American exclusionary discourse on Haiti has been modified during the 20th and 21st centuries to correspond with their imaginary of external threats and the standards of civilization/democratization, and how this has conditioned U.S. foreign policy towards Haiti. This historic relationship has been punctuated by U.S. interventionary policies. Initially, after a century of trade and economic relations between the countries, the U.S. government decided to invade Haiti in 1915, occupying it until 1934. During this period, the Haitian state institutions suffered far-reaching changes that contributed to an on-going political, economic and social crisis during the 20th century. In 1957, François Duvalier (Papa Doc) was elected as president of Haiti. Shortly after his election he eliminated the parliament and declared a dynasty, with his son Jean Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc) as his successor. Despite this it was not until the Carter administration that the U.S. government rediscovered a democratizing discourse against Baby Doc’s dictatorship. By the mid1980s the Haitian people started a process of débordement (Fatton 1999, 215), urging the Reagan administration to take action against the dictator. The Reagan Doctrine established U.S. government collaboration with the Haitian Army (García 2002, 64), and finally a coup d’état removed Baby Doc from power. Haiti spent five years in a transition to democracy, and in 1990 the elections brought Jean-Bertrand Aristide into power. His democratic government did not last one complete year. Then, three years after Aristide’s exile, and a failed diplomatic strategy (Pastor 2003, 136), the Clinton administration invaded Haiti in September 1994. From the American government’s perspective, the invasion was a success; nonetheless, the subsequent state-building process has been a complete failure.

Power and exclusion: How the identification and description of the other upholds military intervention The construction of national identity is partially formulated via exclusion strategies that determine who is who (identification) and who is what (description), depending on context. It establishes ontological categories

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that situate individuals and groups on the borderline, or up or down from this line. The categorization determines their individual capacity to benefit from liberal precepts such as liberty, equality and rationality (Mehta 1990, 428). The creation of these precepts, understood as universals, permits exceptions (absolute or temporal), that serve to identify and describe the bearers of rationality, and thus, at the same time those deserving liberty and equality. Nation-state building, through the inclusion/exclusion process, develops categories that serve to nationalize and racialize groups (Watson 2001, 449). Once the identification/description parameters are established there is a necessity to strengthen them through the creation of stereotypes that provoke the exclusion of the other. This other, constituted as an enemy, is considered as an outsider to the community even when within its borders. A review of American history shows that since its constitution as a nation-state, it has gone through different identification/definition processes of excluding liminal groups, putting them in a state of otherness, and projecting this experience abroad outside national borders. The Manifest Destiny was one of the first examples portraying the American Indians as barbarians, uncivilized and irrational. It gave the white supremacist pioneers tools to define themselves in binary opposition and construct a discourse justifying the other’s exclusion. During their expansion to the West, the pioneers constructed the idea of a common identity that was structurally different to how American Indians were represented as a community (Marienstras 1980, 18). Campbell also says that the Manifest Destiny …helps us identify the juncture in which the global inscription of [United States] Foreign Policy develops… the imperial expansion that was considered essential to the maintenance of liberty at home was extended to Asia and the Caribbean (1990, 273).

It is important to underline how the white terrified consciousness operated in the articulation of American discourse towards black populations in the Caribbean. This is especially the case for Haiti. Since the 17th century the slaves in the United States tried to free themselves via a number of different strategies. The runaway slaves also helped the American Indians to defeat white Americans (Aptheker 1993, 18-19). Finally, the slave revolt in St. Domingo in 1791, and the constitution of the Haitian state thirteen years later, contributed to the externalization of these internal American fears. During the 19th century, Americans

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reconstructed the barbarian myth through stories about Haiti. In their imaginary, as Winthrop D. Jordan notes: A single black rebellion was bad enough, but this was never-ending, a nightmare dragging on for years. Worst of all, the blacks were successful, and for the first time Americans could see what a community really looked like upside down (1974, 147).

This externalization of the internal ‘enemy’–the black slaves in the U.S.–structured and “gave content” (Mehta 1990, 427) to U.S. foreign policy in the Caribbean. Following the ideals of the first imaginary sketched out by the Manifest Destiny, the United States saw Caribbean people as the incarnation of the barbaric other. Regarding the Monroe Doctrine, Hilbourne Watson says that: [It] specified that the Caribbean (with its largely African-based populations) could not expect to have any geopolitical autonomy from US power: Either it would fall under US tutelage and be saved from itself or descend into Haitian barbarism. It would be the destiny of the United States to police the Caribbean in order to uphold ‘proper civilization and pride of race’ (2001, 460).

Set as “primary security risks” (Watson 2001, 474-475), race and ethnicity became central in the media debates of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is in this context that American society upholds a discourse based on the external Negro threat. In the American imaginary, the Haitian Republic was the definition of barbarism and anarchy. This image strengthened their exclusionary discourse towards them. In the name of liberty, progress, and democracy, they declared Haitians as politically incompetent “and justified [themselves] by a plethora of anthropological descriptions that serve to buttress the claim of incompetence” (Mehta 1990, 428). As a result of these exclusionary strategies underlining the difference between strong and weak states, the denial of sovereignty is justified, and it may materialize through military intervention. With the slave revolt and a century of “images of mystery, decadence, romance and adventure” (Dash 1997, 1) behind it, Americans were ready to intervene in Haiti, or as president Wilson said: “to take the bull by the horns and restore order” (Heinl and Gordon 1996, 395).

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American discourse towards Haiti around 1915: “The Haitian Problem”1 After the failure of its last six governments Haiti was experiencing a serious governability crisis. Since the beginning of the century, different sectors of the U.S. population raised questions about what the American response to “the Haitian problem” (Watson 2001, 462) should be, as it was considered a threat to their regional interests. Fear about the absence of order in Haiti could be considered as an essential problem to American foreign policy in the region (Campbell 1990, 268). Invading Haiti was not just a matter of economic interests, but a matter of moral responsibility. As a citizen argued more than a decade before the invasion: What would the people of Washington say if a respectable citizen of this city, seeing two boys in deadly combat, knowing that one or both would be killed unless stopped, and he refused to interfere? The law of humanity, regardless of the Monroe doctrine, in my judgment justifies an interference on the part of this government […] Why not go to Haiti for the same reasons and settle her strife: set up a government […] with certain commercial advantages to us, and thus put her on the road of success that marks the pathway of the white man’s civilization? (Washington Post, September 15, 1902)

The argument about moral responsibility did not deny geopolitical interests in Haiti. Nonetheless, the expansion of the white man’s civilization, which includes a unique idea of knowledge, political organization, economic and social structures, religion, and daily life performance, plays a relevant role in the relations between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ states. Moreover, if we analyse the political context and discourses of American politicians, as Theodore Roosevelt’s implementation of the Monroe Doctrine in the Caribbean region, we can see a strong connection between American imperialism and civilizational discourse. After the SpanishAmerican War, “US editorial-writers, in the style of ancient Rome, were already calling the Caribbean ‘Mare Nostrum’” (Heinl and Gordon 1996, 335). From the American perspective, one of the main issues was to keep Europeans out of the Caribbean, but most importantly, out of Haitian politics. The U.S. government was not only aware of German pretensions,

1

The white slaves owners created, as Watson (2001, 462) said, “[e]xpressions like the Africanization scare, the Haitian Problem, and the black problem […] and Haiti became the symbol of ‘barbaric’ Africa in the Caribbean”.

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but also suspicious of France and its historical relations with the former colony. As soon as the American marines arrived in Port-au-Prince, Admiral Caperton declared that the post-intervention period was to be focused on the stabilization of the country, the protection of foreigners, and the celebration of elections. Nonetheless, a few days later, they took control of all Haitian institutions, setting the agenda for the other main issue regarding the intervention: Haiti’s incursion on “the pathway of the white man’s civilization.”2 The Americans controlled not just the customs and National Bank, but also changed school curriculums, reorganized the peasantry, and brought Protestant missionaries to collaborate in the restructuration of civic and societal networks. The marines opted to reform the Haitian army and police (gendarmerie) as fundamental peacekeeping bodies and developed a “benevolent despotism” (Streit 1928, 623). Under the regime of “Americanization” of the gendarmerie, a slavery-like practice, named the corvée, was reestablished to build new infrastructure. Part of these practices saw peasants and poor urban workers forced to move among regions and work for free during certain periods of the year (Castor 1971, 56). Despite this, the American press presented a different vision of the Haitian occupation. In their stories, U.S. marines’ activities in Haiti focused on humanitarian work, as well as the civilizational legacy they were bringing to the Haitian people. One example of these stories is: The United States marines have literally taught the Haitians how to live decently […]. Before their coming, sanitation save in the crudest and most unsatisfactory forms, was unknown and fevers and epidemics were as plentiful as revolutions. The entry of the United States marines ended this sorry story (Washington Post, March 4, 1917).

These arguments above may be explained as American imperialist pretentions and the means used to keep the region under control. However, with the reestablishment of these practices the Americans not only rebuilt Haitian infrastructure, they also promoted a culture of work and responsibility. The implementation of the protectorate in 1916 served these pretences, giving the U.S. complete control over Haitians’ customs and permitting American politicians to work on the new constitution (Castor 1971, 47). This unequal treaty indicates the stereotyping of the Haitians as uncommitted citizens. Sustained in the liberal discourse, which claims that 2

Making reference to the letter published in the Washington Post, September 15, 1902, and quoted above.

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“political inclusion is contingent upon a qualified capacity to reason” (Mehta 1990, 436), they infantilized Haitians' capacity to govern themselves and ruled them with a strong hand and violent practices. The tension created by, what David Nicholls called, “‘the clumsy actions of the Americans’ treating all Haitians as ‘niggers’”, also had its effects on the political opposition to the occupation (1996, 142). The political resistance had its roots in some elite politicians, but also, after the first decade of the occupation, in an emergent black middle class. “Growing numbers of black teachers, doctors and lawyers were in evidence and it was they who provided the impetus for the noiriste movement of the thirties which culminated in the crisis of 1946” (ibid, 143). This movement of young intellectuals was a real challenge to the Americanization of Haiti. The Haitian leaders, after the U.S. withdrawal, were part of this generation, including the coming dictator François Duvalier, who founded with Louis Diaquoi and Lorimer Denis the Trois D’s. The group, also known as the Griots, began a freethinker’s space, but later became race-determinist and generated anti-American nationalist arguments within the emerging political class (Nicholls 1974, 8). They identified themselves in a binary opposition with the idea of whiteness that, instead of decolonizing them, reattached them to colonial dichotomies. A new era of nationalist paraphernalia was starting, and it would not free Haitians from colonial logics.

Democratization as a ‘New Standard of Civilization’ in the post-Cold War era: The crisis of 1991 to 1994 Haitian transition to democracy occurred in a period of important changes in the international system. After the breakdown of Duvalier’s dictatorship the Reagan administration supported the Haitian military junta in order to control the process of political change (Snyder 1992, 385; García 2002, 215). Nonetheless, it was not until 1990, under the Bush administration, that elections were conducted. With 67% of the votes, the priest Jean Bertrand Aristide won the elections and became Haiti’s first democratically elected president in more than four decades. Democracy did not last long, however, for Aristide was removed by a coup d’état nine months after his election and went into exile in 1991. This political crisis was a great challenge to democratic discourse, which was claimed not just by Americans but also by regional and international organizations, such as the Organization of American States

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(OAS) and the United Nations.3 The revitalization of the ‘standard of civilization’ through democratic and human rights discourse had an impact on the decision-making process during the Haitian political crisis. The American government did not support Aristide’s candidature, but after his election and exile, they were forced to act coherently with their democratic discourse. This meant to condemn the Haitian military junta and start a negotiation process to bring democracy back to Haiti. Nevertheless, to be coherent with democratic discourse also meant pressuring Aristide and persuading him to move from his populist ideals to a more neoliberal model. Thus, Haitian total integration into the post-Cold War era of liberal democracies was conditioned by its submission to what Brett Bowden calls the third democratic syllogism:4 …the ‘Washington Consensus’ holds that the best way to ‘open up’ a country to promote growth is through complete integration into international trade and investment regimes. This form of economic ‘shock treatment’ entails measures such as the privatization of State-owned enterprises, floating the currency, and ending subsidies and tariffs (2004, 45).

The Washington Consensus was not the only democratic syllogism to be fulfilled in order to be considered a part of the society of democracies. This discourse, embodied in the Santiago Commitment to Democracy of 1991, engaged OAS members in the promotion of peace in the hemisphere through the reinforcement of representative democracy and the progressive liberalization of trade and markets. Therefore, they accepted the second democratic syllogism, which claimed that democracy is “the best form of government for promoting economic development” (Bowden 2004, 45). The post-Cold War era was also characterized as a period for rethinking concepts such as sovereignty, democracy, liberalism and identity. Some of the states considered as non-democratic suffered the exclusion from the society of democracies; ontological reasons were used for this, as they 3

The former Secretary General of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, promoted the Democratic Peace Theory and the Preventive Diplomacy Strategy in An Agenda for Peace, addressed to the General Assembly and Security Council in June 17, 1992. 4 The author argues that in the reconceptualization of the “standard of civilization,” there are three democratic syllogism that must be accomplished to totally fulfil the standard: 1. “Liberal or democratic peace theory … It holds that liberal democracies tend not go to war with one another”; 2. “…the correlation between democracy and economic development”; and 3. the ‘Washington Consensus’, (Bowden 2004, 45).

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were judged not only for what they did, but for what they were (Donnelly 2006, 147). It became necessary to reinforce the discourse against regimes at the margins of the new international scenario. As U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III declared about the Haitian military junta: This coup could not and would not succeed […] we do not recognize, and will not recognize, this outlaw regime. Until President's Aristide Government is restored, this Military junta will be treated as a pariah by the Hemisphere, without assistance, without friends, without future (Pastor 2003, 122).

Democratic peace theory was at the core of the main discourses regarding countries in political crisis like Haiti. The desirability of democracy supported by the idea that “liberal democracies tend not go to war with one another”–the first democratic syllogism (Bowden 2004, 45), pushed states to react against and condemn outlaw rulers. Baker aimed for Latin American governments to pressure the military junta through a trade embargo, this being a complete failure (Pastor 2003, 123-124), not only because some governments maintained trade with the junta, but also because the most affected by the embargo were the poorest in Haiti (Weiss 1999, 501). By 1992 Haitians restarted the massive boat migration to Florida, as in the later years of Baby Doc’s regime. The images of hundreds of Haitians arriving in Florida each week impacted American public opinion. For human rights activists to extreme right-wing commentators, the Haitian crisis was at the centre of public opinion and electoral debates. One of Clinton’s main critiques to Bush’s management of the Haitian crisis was the decision to capture boats overseas and force them to return to Haiti, or in other cases take them to Guantánamo (McGillion and Morley 1997, 366). While Haitians running away from misery and violence were sent back to Haiti, Cubans running away from communism were received and considered as political refugees. Yet, after the presidential elections, Clinton’s policy towards Haiti did not change much. He also sent Haitians to Guantánamo and, actually, normalized this action as humanitarian aid to refugees. As he would claim later in his address to the U.S. before the Haitian invasion: Thousands of Haitians had already fled to the United States […] This year in less than two months more than twenty one thousand Haitians were rescued at sea by our Coast Guard and Navy. Today more than fourteen thousand refugees are living in our neighbor base in Guantanamo […] three hundred thousand, five percent of the entire population, are in hiding in their own country. If we don’t act, they could be the next wave of refugees at our door. We would continue to face the threat of a mass

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Although the relationship between Clinton and Aristide was less tense, there were some conditions inherited from the negotiations with Bush’s presidency and the junta. To be coherent with democratic discourse the U.S. government had to support Aristide’s government, but not his political programme. Aristide was trapped: if he wanted to return to Haiti, he would have to make some reforms in his political programme, and that could cost him his supporters’ trust. He had to accept the appointment of Marc Bazin–a conservative politician supported by Bush and one of his opponents in the elections–as his vice-president, abort his plans for an agrarian reform, accept international collaboration for the military and police officers reform programme, and “adopt extremely pragmatic economic policies that never went beyond the World Bank’s vision of ‘basic needs’” (Fatton 1999, 220). Even if this moderation on Aristide’s political reforms could affect his legitimacy, Americans felt satisfied that it would be upholding Haitian democracy. The forthcoming stage was the junta’s retreat. Was military intervention an option despite democratic discourse? Since non-democratic governments are considered a threat to international peace, a democratic country may conceive itself to have the responsibility to impose democracy by any means. This ‘new’ language encrusted in democratic discourse was embodied in UN Security Council resolution 940. The resolution aimed for states to act against the junta, using all necessary means to impose democracy. As the junta was considered a threat to peace and democratization in the hemisphere, and therefore a threat to American national interest, the U.S. reinforced the interventionist language toward the outlaw regime. President Clinton claimed in his message before the intervention: “when brutality occurs close to our shores it affects our national interest and we have the responsibility to act” (C-Span Video Library, September 15, 1994). This points to the view that enforcement of the democratic discourse itself allowed the military intervention. A few days after this announcement former President Jimmy Carter, Senator Sam Nunn and General Colin Powell offered a final proposal to the junta: they could leave power and an operation of twenty one thousand troops would take control of the country, or they could resist and a bombing operation of Port-au-Prince would start immediately. Declaring the Haitian crisis as a national security threat not only served to uphold the intervention, but also to give the democratic discourse the tools to enforce democracy. The consolidation of humanitarian

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interventionism was beginning around the Third World, and this would serve to enforce the democratic standard and the accomplishment of its syllogisms.

Conclusions: American-Haitian relations over the last two decades. Has nothing been learned from the past? Currently and over the last two decades Haiti has experienced a deep social crisis. Understood as a “failed or weak State” (see Helman and Ratner 1993; Gros 1996; Rotberg 2003; Shamsie and Thompson 2006),5 the international relations studies on Haiti tend to focus on the analysis of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the international community’s response to the recent social tragedies such as the earthquake in January 2010, the cholera epidemic and the social struggles related to the presidential elections. Much of the economic, social, and intellectual capital has been focused on the reconstruction of Haitian institutions. From security to education, international organizations and NGOs are working to create a ‘new’ democratic, liberal, capitalist and ‘non-corrupt’ Haitian state. However, much criticism has been made by different sectors about MINUSTAH’s inefficiency, and the postearthquake administration of economic aid for reconstruction. From illegitimacy claims during the last elections after the illegalization of the Fanmi Lavalas Party–those who support Aristide–, to the violence against UN peacekeepers, Haitians from the most marginalized neighbourhoods continue to struggle for national independence against Western occupation. The roots of the current social crisis may be found in the management of post-invasion Haiti, 1994-2004. However, from an American perspective Operation Uphold Democracy “was right” (Rotberg 1996, 135). After the restoration of Aristide’s government through the “permissive invasion” and the “successful” change of power between Aristide and René Preval (Talbott 1996, 149), Haiti’s democratic experiment started. In the U.S., efforts were made to convince Americans of the positive results of the 1994 intervention: The United States was right to go into Haiti. It was right to oust the junta’s drug traffickers and smugglers, thus ending three years of personal enrichment by officers who persisted in ignoring the betterment of their citizens. It was right to sustain Aristide’s interrupted presidency. It was 5

Despite the different interpretations and categories of a failed state, Haiti has been considered by some “to remain weak but without failing” (Rotberg, Failed States, Collapsed States, Weak States: Causes and Indicators 2003).

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Chapter Three right to support a fledgling democratic initiative in a close, and unusually weak, neighbor. It was right to send troops to provide security, help rebuild Haiti’s destroyed infrastructure, and provide ‘democracy training’ to its military, judges, parliamentarians, and election supervisors (Rotberg 1996, 135).

Usually, the American government not only emphasizes the importance of their decision to go into Haiti, but also underlines the intention of maintaining a multinational force, although with less troops (ibid). During the 1990s, Haiti became a paradise for the expansion of UN missions and NGOs (from 1993 until now there have been eight international missions). None of them could rebuild Haiti or, at least, develop a pathway for its democratization. As in other periods of Haitian history, foreigners–states and non-state actors–used to blame the Haitian government as the first– sometimes not the only, but always the most important–agent of its own tragedies. According to Robert Fatton, “Imperial America was not, however, the sole reason to Aristide’s fall” (Fatton 2006, 125), and there is much to be found in the Haitian legacy of a neopatrimonial state, “politics of the belly,”6 and Aristide’s messianic rhetoric. In any case, Fatton describes all of America’s strategies under the Bush administration to constrain Aristide’s capacity to enforce his political project.7 This leads us to ask: Is all the diplomatic, economic and military effort of the regional power to block Aristide’s political and economic proposals, and to support internal opposition, a marginal issue? Internal legitimization is important to obtain key domestic policy improvements, but in a system of “sovereignty inequalities”, as Jack Donnelly (2006) called it, external legitimization is crucial to be considered a part of the society of

6 In his analysis of the functioning of the Haitian state, Fatton uses Jean-François Bayart’s concept of “politics of the belly” to explain African states’ logics of neopatrimonial rule and wealth distribution. For more see Fatton (2006). 7 “There is no doubt that the administration of George W. Bush had little sympathy for Aristide […] Formulated and exercised by two ultra-conservatives, Roger Noriega and Otto Reich, Washington’s policy was bent on empowering Aristide’s adversaries. The USA encouraged and financed the development of the opposition regrouped in Convergence Démocratique and the Groupe des 184. Moreover, while it may not have directly supported the rise of the armed insurgency, Washington clearly knew that unsavoury elements of the disbanded Haitian army were training in the Dominican Republic with the objective of violently overthrowing Aristide […] In fact, the USA simply abandoned Aristide even though he agreed to the terms of a Caricom-engineered compromise – a compromise that the opposition rejected…” (Fatton 2006, 124-125).

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democracies, to fulfil the standard and, therefore, not be the site of military intervention. Nowadays it is true that much of Aristide’s internal opposition, aside from the classic political elite, were those disappointed with his first term’s neoliberal policies. It is also important to recognize that Aristide failed in his intentions to build a non-corrupt state and to stop the neopatrimonial practices. This has been criticized by Haitian historians and sociologists who had taken into account the international context of the Haitian crisis. However, it is necessary to comprehend the rude impact of the democratic standard on the Haitian government. To declare Aristide as a non-democratic ruler in 2004 was not a marginal issue, even more in a post-September 11 context. Once again discourses about external fears and threats to American security were linked to Haitian instability (see Rotberg 2002 and 2003). Now, drug-trafficking and political violence were among the new threats to the hemisphere and new challenges to Haiti’s democratization. This discourse of fear and the necessity to act in advance forced Aristide’s second exile and created a form of international protectorate in Haiti. The name of the operation to take Aristide out of office, Operation Secure Tomorrow, was a clear sign of the renewal led by the imposition of democratic discourse: preventive military interventions in ‘weak’ or ‘failed’ states. Since then, state-building in Haiti has not been accomplished, elections still lack in transparency, and some political groups use violence as a means of terrifying their opponents. With this ‘chaotic’ panorama, Haiti faced the devastating earthquake of 2010. This, as hurricane Katrina did in New Orleans, served as an opportunity to undertake Haitian reconstruction by what Naomi Klein (2007) called “disaster capitalism doctrine”. As part of the democratic discourse, finding its arguments in the second democratic syllogism, this doctrine is reinforced in post-disaster societies, leading them to reproduce the ‘only alternative’ possible for states after the Cold War era: the neoliberal state.8 It is fair to say that after almost a century from the first U.S. invasion of Haiti, Americans as well as Western countries and Westernized societies, have learned little from the past colonial/protectorate experiences in Haiti.

8

In her book, Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein (2007) explained how the logics and structures developed in the past four decades had used the language of shocks and disasters to impose capitalism as the only economic alternative.

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As argued above, after more than two centuries of independence Haiti is still constrained by white supremacist ideals, internally and abroad. The black identity that the Haitian slaves fought during their revolution, making history and challenging 19th century liberal thought, has been “deconstructed” (Watson 2001, 462) to serve the survival of other identities. American “discourse of danger with threats identified and located on the outside” (Campbell 1990, 264), served to portray the Haitian other in a zone of exclusion, while the use of military interventionism has served to impose American values of liberal democracy, peace and security. The constant portraying of the Haitian other as antagonist to these values has been, and still is, a key challenge to Haitian national reconciliation.

References Ain, Gastón. 2009. “Intervención Internacional. Haití: Receta Repetida, Fracaso Anticipado.” Revista Académica de Relaciones Internacionales 10: 1-36. Aptheker, Herbert. 1993. American Negro Slave Revolts. New York: International Publisher. Boutros-Ghali, Boutros. 1992. “An Agenda for Peace.” Resolution A/47/277, New York. Bowden, Brett. 2004. “In the Name of Progress and Peace: The ‘Standard of Civilization’ and the Universalizing Project.” Alternatives 29: 4368. Campbell, David. 1990. “Global Inscription: How Foreign Policy Constitutes the United States.” Alternatives XV: 263-286. Castor, Suzy. 2008. “La Transición Haitiana: Entre los Peligros y la Esperanza.” Osal VIII (23): 25-38. —. 1971. La Ocupación Norteamericana de Haití y sus Consecuencias (1915-1934). México: Siglo XXI. C-Span Video Library. 1994. http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/602101, accessed May 15, 2011. Donnelly, Jack. 2006 “Sovereign Inequalities and Hierarchy in Anarchy: American Power and International Society.” European Journal of International Relations 12 (2): 139-170. Farmer, Paul. 2002. Haití para qué: Usos y Abusos de Haití. Hondarribia: Editorial Hiru. Fatton, Robert. 2006. “The Saturnalia of Emancipation and the Vicissitudes of Predatory Rule.” Third World Quarterly 27 (1): 115136.

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—. 1999. “The Impairments of Democratization: Haiti in Comparative Perspective.” Comparative Politics 31 (2): 209-229. García, David. 2002. “Una Estrategia de Primacía: La Administración Bush, las Relaciones Trasatlánticas y la Construcción de un Nuevo Orden Mundial 1989-1992.” UNISCI PAPERS. Gros, Jean Germain. 1996. “Towards a Taxonomy of Failed States in the New World Order: Decaying Somalia, Liberia, Rwanda, and Haiti.” Third World Quarterly 17 (3): 455-471. Heinl, Robert D. and Nancy Gordon. 1996. Written in Blood, The Story of the Haitian People 1492-1995. Lanham: University Press of America. Helman, Gerald B. and Steven R. Ratner. 1993. “Saving Failed States.” Foreign Policy 89: 3-20. Jordan, Winthrop. 1974. The White Man’s Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. Klein, Naomi. 2007. Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Metropolitan Books. Lewis, Stewart M. 1902. “Republic’s Duty in Haiti.” Washington Post, September 15: 10. Marienstras, Élise. 1980. La Résistance Indienne aux Etats-Unis du XVIe au XXe Siècle. Paris: Éditions Gaullimard/Julliard. McGillion, Chris and Morris Morley. 1997. “‘Disobedient’ Generals and the Politics of Redemocratization: The Clinton Administration and Haiti.” Political Science Quarterly 112 (3): 363-384. Mehta, Uday S. 1990. “Liberal Strategies of Exclusion.” Politics and Society 18 (4): 427-454. Morgan, Stanley. 2004. “The United Nations’ Transition in the Post-Cold War Era: Time for Change?” In United States Post-Cold War Defense Interests. A Review of the First Decade, ed. Karl P. Magyar, 35-49. New York: Palgrave McMillan. Nicholls, David. 1996. From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour and National Independence in Haiti. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. —. 1974. “Ideology and Political Protest in Haiti, 1930-46.” Journal of Contemporary History 9 (4): 3-26. Pastor, Robert. 2003. “The Delicate Balance between Coercion and Diplomacy: The Case of Haiti, 1994.” In The United States and Coercive Diplomacy, eds. Robert Art and Patrick Cronin, 119-155. Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace. Rotberg, Robert I. 2003. “Failed States, Collapsed States, Weak States: Causes and Indicators.” In State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror, ed. Robert I. Rotberg, 1-28. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.

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—. 2002. “Failed States in a World of Terror.” Foreign Affairs 81 (4): 127-140. —. 1996. “Clinton was right.” Washington Post Newsweek Interactive 135-141. Shamsie, Yasmine and Andrew Thompson. 2006. Haiti, Hope for a Fragile State. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Snyder, Richard. 1992. “Explaining Transitions from Neopatrimonial Dictatorships.” Comparative Politics 24 (4): 379-399. Streit, Clarence. 1928. “Haiti: Intervention in Operation.” Foreign Affairs 28 (6): 615-632. Talbott, Strobe. 1996. “Democracy and National Interest.” Foreign Affairs 75 (6): 47-63. Washington Post. 1917. “What Uncle Sam’s Marines Have Done for Haiti.” March 4: SM7. Watson, Hilbourne. 2001. “Theorizing the Racialization of Global Politics and the Caribbean Experience.” Alternatives 26: 449-483. Weiss, Thomas. 1999. “Sanctions as a Foreign Policy Tool: Weighing Humanitarian Impulses.” Journal of Peace Research 36 (5): 499-509.

CHAPTER FOUR RECONSTRUCTING THE OTHER IN POSTCOLONIAL INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: A LOOK AT SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION AND INDIGENOUS GLOBALISM STACEY-ANN WILSON

Introduction International politics is about othering. We have created binaries to characterize the human population and to separate our understanding of ourselves from our perceptions of others. Whenever there is a ‘self’ it is set against an ‘other.’ The distinction of self and other need not be negative or destructive, however, the way our international system and the relations within developed is built on a particular imagining of self and other. European imperialism, having successfully carved up the world, has allowed Eurocentric discourses to prevail in international relations, and the social sciences and humanities more broadly. It is from a European perspective that the disciplines come to understand the civilized and savage, the superior and inferior, and the developed and undeveloped. These binaries are used as ways to understand our place in the international system. European imperialism had been a successful othering project, kept intact for more than four centuries. This othering was brutally challenged first by the enslaved in Haiti (the Haitian Revolution), followed by countries in Latin America and much later the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. Breaking free of colonial shackles, slavery and servitude opened up the possibilities available to the traditional others–the so-called uncivilized savages. The others, motivated by freedom, started to assert themselves and affirmed that their histories were longer and much older than the

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European colonial venture. This has resulted in the creation of global alliances among the marginalized such that exclusion and othering have taken new forms and are informing new discourses. This chapter explores two unintended consequences of othering. The first is the emergence and growth of South-South cooperation, whereby the mass of Third World others formed strategic alliances to offset the dominance of developed countries in the North. In this sense, to be white/European and developed has become the other. There is now widespread recognition that if not for the biased make-up of the international system, the North is far less important to the South (especially in terms of natural resources) than the South is to the North. The second example refers to the internationalization of indigenism, whereby indigenous peoples around the globe have internationalized their marginal status to create alliances with each other in defence of their treaty, land and human rights. The historical othering of indigenous peoples has created a space for the indigenous others to redefine their relationships within the nation-state and between states, finding a place in international forums like the United Nations (UN). For my purposes here, the working definition of indigenous people is the “descendants of the original inhabitants of a geographical region prior to colonization who have maintained some or all of their linguistic, cultural and organizational characteristics” (Deruytterre 1997, 2). A note on context and method is important here. This chapter is based in part on participant observer ethnographic research in Canada and Australia between 2007 and 2010, working alongside indigenous activists at the community level. This chapter also benefits from community discussions, public lectures and interviews conducted over a one-year period (2008-2009) with community development practitioners working in developing countries. The interviews and the ethnographic work were not specific to the topic of this chapter, but the common themes which emerged inform this discussion of an emboldened (non-European) self that is set against a reconstructed (European) other. Based on these discussions, it is clear that there is a ‘reimagining’ of the marginalized status of developing countries and indigenous peoples and a reconstruction of the other such that the developing, marginalized self is the core and the developed/settler other is pejorative. Othering has allowed for the development of what has been called “collective self-reliance” within the global South and “unity in diversity” among indigenous peoples. Ideologically, this is best understood within a

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resistant, post-colonial discourse, that is, the struggle for political, economic and cultural independence. This chapter is positioned within that discourse. In the context of post-colonialism, these cooperative arrangements and social movements are challenging who is legitimately allowed and authorized to speak on behalf of the oppressed and colonized. They are now speaking on their own behalf, demanding to be heard. However, the former colonizers have not become silenced in the process, as the West assumes a natural right to speak for others. It is against this realization that these movements are anti-colonial, as they are conscious of having to consistently resist the silencing of non-European voices, to overcome the emotional, psychological, intellectual and sociocultural trauma that is part of the colonial experience.

Identity and othering in international relations It is harder for those at the alleged centre to hear the hopes, fears and explanations of those on the margins, not because of physical distance ... but because it takes resources and access to be ‘heard’ when and where it matters (Enloe 1996, 186).

If we think about the core concerns of international relations, such as war and peace among states, the processes and mechanisms of globalization and the like, they are fundamentally about othering. Our world system is built around framings of the other–the civilized self versus the savage other, the religious/spiritual self versus the pagan/superstitious other, the industrial self versus the undeveloped other. What was left almost silent is that much of the othering is fundamentally wrapped up in our construction of race and gender, and notions of cultural superiority and inferiority. In other words, the international system is predicated on a project of global white supremacy. Identity markers therefore are packaged in an ideological bow, with economic and politically deterministic assumptions and world systems that negotiate the inclusion and exclusion of the other, based on how much they were willing to reflect the values of the West. The marginalization and denigration of whole populations of non-Europeans in what has been called the Third and Fourth Worlds has been an incredibly successful process of othering. I use the concept of the Third World to refer to connections being made by the formerly colonized peoples of Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean. These countries make up the global South and are historically at the margins of the power structure of the international system. Fourth World refers to those societies where colonization “took

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the form of outright conquest and the attempt to absorb the people and resources ... into states created as extension of empires populated with a majority of European descendants” (Wilmer 2009, 193). I refer to these occupied territories as settler colonies. The North (also referred to as the West) refers to the developed countries of Western Europe, North America and Oceania. Developed countries maintain the mechanisms and processes of inclusion, exclusion and othering. In terms of socialization and representation in the international system, the other is measured against presumed universally accepted norms. The norm is based on the North, masking the reality that these populations account for a minority of the world population. “Such representational habits and knowledge systems are prone to isolating themselves in order to maintain their belief in universality” (Constantinou et al. 2008, 6). Further, Beier argues that the reproduction of these knowledge systems serves to “invalidate” and “repudiate” alternative, non-Western ways of knowing and being (2009, 16). Utilizing a Foucauldian view of power, as always being present but based on different rationalities, using different techniques and systems, I accept that we cannot get away from power relationships themselves. However, “emancipation from particular systems of power or from the effects of the employment of particular techniques of power ... might well be regarded as desirable” (Hindess 1996, 152). The two cases presented here can be understood as seeking emancipation from Western power structures. Indigenous peoples and activists in the global South are engaged in de-centering and disturbing the imposed hegemony of the North. “They call for ‘discursive reciprocity,’ that is, for non-Western versions of historical experience and ‘ways of knowing’ to be respected on equal footing with Western versions of history and knowledge systems” (Wilmer 2009, 195). Post-colonial, anti-colonial resistance as practiced through South-South cooperative arrangements and global indigenism are attempts to secure some measure of discursive reciprocity.

Post-colonialism: Reconstructing the other [W]e insist upon a veritable Copernican revolution in order to break with European habit … of acting on our behalf – of deciding for us, thinking for us and, in short, denying us the right of initiation … the right, in fact, to personality. Aime Cesaire, Lettre a Maurice Thorez (1957)

Colonialism is in the lived experience of the colonized. It is embedded in peoples’ psyche and consciousness because the power structures that

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operated under colonialism are still present in the post-colonial period. Countries in the global South were silenced through the economic and political imperialism of the North. The global South historically lacked the language, venue and resources necessary to align their interests in order to seriously challenge the status quo. Similarly, European settlers in the Americas and Oceania have successfully marginalized indigenous peoples in their ancestral homes. Indigenous peoples, separated by geography, different colonial experiments, policies and treaty arrangements, were kept apart from the wider society and each other such that awareness and alliances were not easily facilitated. The global South and indigenous peoples have been marginalized both spatially and linguistically. The marginalized is heard and understood only in so far as it is communicated by the universal (Western) self. The subaltern cannot effectively communicate his or her life story and predicament … The words of the subaltern thus become weak, rough, illiterate, inaudible, and always need to be interpreted and put in a form that is effective and persuasive within the dominant regimes of representation and argumentation (Constantinou et al. 2008, 10). Resistance to these representations and knowledge systems can be traced alongside the internationalization of these ideas. However, the resistance movements have not always been organized. In addition, marginalized people have not always had a receptive venue in which to voice their concerns. This has affected North-South relations and likewise settler-indigenous affairs. South-South engagements have directly challenged the North’s view of the global South as dependent and in need of Western aid to develop economically. Indigenous peoples have likewise challenged their marginalization within the nation-state and actively engaged in politics of shaming their national governments and seeking international recourse for their national grievances. In the process, the other has been reconstructed in the international affairs of these groups. To be part of the developed North is no longer to be admired or viewed as superior in culture, politics, economic resources or human development. The presumed universalism of Western values has been challenged; the limits, hypocrisy and double standards of Western policies have been exposed. The global South and indigenous peoples have become aggressive in their articulation of their rights to craft their own futures and have a say in the system that they are forced to participate in.

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Over the last few decades, with decolonization, South-South cooperation and indigenous globalism, the West has responded by ‘seeing’ the others. The West now recognizes the others’ claims to humanhood and has placed considerable emphasis on mutual cooperation, interdependence and partnership, but also a capitalist brand of democracy and cosmopolitanism. This is the West’s conceptual response to discursive reciprocity. The West engages in a politics of recognition–the act of recognizing the claims or rather the others’ right to make claims. But it does not go further to either deal with redistributive justice where it is appropriate or a fundamental reformation of the international system as demanded by indigenous peoples and the global South.

South–South cooperation One of the major aims of the global south nations has been to challenge the perceived inequality of the international status quo, achieve visibility for their concerns, and reduce their economic and political dependence on the north. To attain these ends, they have had to establish channels for the promotion of alternative norms and strategies (Braveboy-Wagner 2009, 13).

South-South cooperation has been on the agenda for most developing countries since before decolonization, however, relationships with former colonies and the North generally were prioritized, even while most recognized that they needed to cooperate with each other to alter the international system’s structure. Historically, South-South cooperative efforts had been timid, with cooperation built primarily on appeals to cultural consciousness and “invoking cultural identity” as an economic instrument (Rosenbaum and Tyler 1975, 246). Furthermore, North-South relations shape South-South cooperation. According to Nassau Adams, the demise of North-South relations occurred in the aftermath of the 1980s debt crisis. He argued that the debt strategy employed by the North, which sought to protect their banks against defaults from developing countries, served to cripple the South and severely slowed their economic development (1993, 154). The debt strategy of overkill, Adam claims, left developing countries “drained and exhausted, bereft of any will to confront and to challenge” (ibid, 170). However, they continued to challenge the system. Activists, if not governments, began to organize even more fiercely. Resource-rich developing countries continued to seek out new partnerships with each other. The shake-up (although not demise) of North-South relations encouraged deeper South-South multilateralism and cooperation in trade, aid and monetary policy and bolstered

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international coordination. Furthermore, industrial development in the South “marked a shift in global possibilities” (Seidman 1993, 176). The end of the Cold War was also significant for developing countries. “The fragmentation of the previous political system provoked a dispersion of power towards regions containing emerging economies” (Aguilar 2010). There are wide differentiations among developing countries, in terms of population, power and economic influence. The position of China is furthermore important. China is classified as a developing economy, and “has long played a highly supportive leadership role in the third world” (Braveboy-Wagner 2009, 2), however, with the 3rd largest economy in the world it is also a world power and the only developing country with veto power in the UN Security Council. In addition, countries in the developing world received political independence at different times. While the bulk of the post-colonial literature focuses on the period after the Second World War, decolonization started long before that in the Americas. Rosenbaum and Tyler observed that in 1975 the “sense of unity” shared by less developed countries (LDCs) in dealing with the economic dominance of the North had “not been sufficient to stimulate a great deal of commitment to cooperative economic policies” (Rosenbaum and Tyler 1975, 246). But the tides have turned with South-South cooperation being on the rise, especially in trade and economic investment. Social interactions have also increased in terms of tourism, educational exchanges, anti-globalization activism and transnational non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Globally and regionally, South-South organizations emerged in the 1960s to provide a voice and act as a collective counterweight to Western interests. There are two broad global South organizations, the NonAligned Movement (NAM) and the Group of 77. The Group of 77 was formed in 1964 to promote collective economic and development interests among countries in the South. G77 is built on respect for the cultural and social characteristics of each country, rejecting the single universal model of development usually touted by the North for the South. G77 has had mixed success in their economic lobbying, but the expansion of the group from the original 77 to 131 members indicates its continuing relevance to Southern aspirations. Likewise, the end of the Cold War and the break-up of the Soviet Bloc did not translate into NAM’s dismantling, formed during the Cold War “to foster third world identity and solidarity through the articulation of common views and aspirations” (Braveboy-Wagner 2009, 13). The movement is still vibrant, with Fiji having joined as the newest member in January 2011.

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Beyond these two global organizations, there is a growing list of regional and sub-regional arrangements to promote development and foster South-South cooperation. In Africa, the African Union adopted a New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), which among other things is to promote “sound economic management and people-centred development” (UN Secretary General 2003, 6). In Asia, the development of micro-regional arrangements allow “participating countries to reap the economic benefits of cooperation while sidestepping political issues that might obstruct efforts of broader scope” (ibid, 7). In Latin America, the five-member Andean Community is recognized as being “one of the most advanced of all South-South cooperation efforts ... with its joint parliament, common foreign policy, Council of Ministers and Court of Justice” (ibid). They also have agreements on intellectual property rights, human rights and peace and security charters. In the Caribbean, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has been working towards enhanced regional integration and their South and Central American neighbours have pledged closer relations over the last decade. In addition, developing countries, especially larger countries like India, China and Brazil are providing technical assistance as well as supporting a variety of development programmes and investment projects in other developing countries. China has reduced or cancelled debt from some of the least developed countries in Africa. It established a South-South Cooperation Demonstration Base in Fuzhou in the 2000s. Brazil consults with its neighbours in the region before planning its development outreach programmes. Notably, Brazil’s foreign policy entails the promotion of regional integration, multilateralism and South-South cooperation (John de Sousa 2008). Cuba has provided medical expertise to many developing countries. Cuba’s medical diplomacy in the South is particularly interesting because of the country’s small size and despite the additional economic stress due to the U.S. embargo. Cuba has been a long-time contributor to South-South international development, having trained African, Latin American, Caribbean and Pacific Island doctors in Cuba and providing health programmes in the South for more than 40 years. “Cuba’s international contribution to the capacity building of health workers is on a scale exceeding that of all members of the G8 group of leading advanced countries combined” (Blunden 2008, 2). The Cuban model (sometimes referred to as solidarity aid) is an example of social medicine rather than high-tech diagnostics, one that many financially strapped developing countries appreciate. As Blunden points out, “the

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Cuban approach is based on a holistic concept of health, as a product not just of individual bio-physiology but of the whole social and economic environment” (ibid, 3). The uniqueness of their approach is that it has always been linked to the ideals of the recipient country, linked to their self-determination and their independence. There are potentially no issue areas unaddressed by South-South cooperative arrangements, either in principle or in practice. Even on refugee resettlement the South has stepped up. Despite their own poverty, Benin, Burkina-Faso, Brazil and Chile as of 2002 offered refugees from other developing countries permanent resettlement in their countries. New ways of thinking and new ways of operating are emerging in the South. The India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Initiative was created in 2003 as a body for South-South cooperation. The tri-partite forum not only deals with development issues of the three countries, it concerns itself with social development in other developing countries as well. The IBSA Facility for Poverty and Hunger Alleviation (IBSA Fund) was launched in 2004 and serves as IBSA’s development arm. Administered by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the fund is a dedicated trust by these three governments for South-South cooperation. Because South-South cooperation is good news for the global South, it is easy to get carried away and forget the seedy side of politics. The power imbalances among developing countries imply that patterns of relationships could develop that resemble North-South relations, where larger more developed economies in the South develop spheres of influence and direct developmental assistance, trade and investment according to their strategic ends. Developing countries are “conditioned to believe that economic imperialism is something practiced exclusively by the industrialised nations” (Rosenbaum and Tyler 1975, 251). However, the economic activism of Brazil, South Africa, India and China has created tensions within some developing countries that are voicing concerns about neo-colonialism through land and resource grabs and foreign direct investments. In Latin America, Brazil has been accused of having hegemonic ambitions (Rosenbaum and Tyler 1975, 250). In Africa, South Africa is criticized for its imperialist-styled investment structure. South Africa’s economic interests and behaviour are seen as similar to Western exploitative relationships. Therefore, South Africa is not considered as being able to serve the development aims of the African countries invested

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in (Chidaushe 2010, 23). China has been flexing its investment muscles all over the globe in both developed and developing countries. In Africa, Chinese aid was welcomed as a relief from reliance on Western donors, but many critics have now pointed out that China is not so much interested in developing Africa as it is in getting access to the raw materials it needs to fuel its own economy and to establish new markets for Chinese goods. Many have complained that Chinese engagement is corrupt, exploitative, and ignores human rights and financially bolsters the African elite in exploiting their populations and their natural environment. The backlash against China, Brazil and South Africa highlights that countries in the global South can be considered both exploited and exploiter. They can be ‘Northern’ in aspirations and practices but ‘Southern’ in values and world status. While the global South is not a unified entity with one voice, there is some agreement that South-South development is more supportive, humanist and adaptable in its instruments and objectives than those used by traditional North-South engagements. Where does the future lie for South-South relations? Trade and economic interests dominate current relations, with fewer alliances based on political ideology. The power imbalances coupled with the exploitative and often prejudiced nature of North-South engagements shaped the emotional and psychological reconstructing of whiteness and the North by the South. The psychological connection among developing countries against Euro-dominance was enough to drive South-South engagements, but will it sustain them? South-South relations will need to move beyond economic relations to “broader collective action and mobilization based on new forms of social and political organization” (Aguilar 2010). It is only through ideological restructuring that the Euro-logic of the international system can be disrupted.

Indigenous Globalism: Beyond the politics of embarrassment The official history of the conquest has always been presented from the point of view of the colonisers who try to turn the conquerors into heroes. This view leads us to view ourselves as the slave master did and consequently is meant to prevent us from understanding ourselves or other peoples (Operative Secretary as quoted in Gabriel 1994, 3-4).

The spirit of resistance to European domination shapes indigenous globalism. It is what drives their cooperation and coordination at the international level. In the Americas there is an insistence of a unitary

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indigenous civilization that unites indigenous peoples across the continent, with a diversity of cultures and languages, not very different from the European conception of itself. This unifying past opens up the possibility for a unifying future, one that is shaped by indigenous values and institutions and one that rejects in principle and practice those Western values that seek to dominate everything around it–man and nature. Indigenous activists hope to replace it with the more harmonious values espoused by indigenous peoples where the relationship between man and nature is not about domination. With the emergence of a Fourth World discourse in settler colonies, indigenous peoples around the globe have internationalized their marginalization to create alliances with each other in defence of their distinct cultures, their political and human rights. This case highlights how the historical othering of indigenous peoples in settler colonies has created a space for the indigenous others to redefine their relationships, linking indigenous peoples in developed and developing countries. This is especially significant because the field of international relations “has been almost completely silent on Indigenous peoples, their diplomacies, and the distinctly non-Western cosmologies that underwrite and enable them” (Beier 2009, 11). Settler-indigenous relations, based on the near extinction of one for the economic benefit of the other, have always been unpleasant and confrontational. In the 19th century indigenous peoples sought international recourse for the protection of their treaty rights and human rights. “Indigenous representatives travelled to Britain to present their grievances to King George, but were denied an audience with the king and told that their concerns fell within the ‘domestic jurisdiction’ of the settler states” (Wilmer 2009, 187). However, settler states have been reluctant to negotiate with indigenous peoples who insist on being treated as equal sovereigns at the table. Indigenous peoples have refused to substitute their various ways of knowing, and that has placed them at odds with European representation ideations. Whereas the global South confronts the North as equal player, at least within the context of decolonized statehood, indigenous peoples are still politically colonized. “They are nations without states in a world wholly carved up by and among states” (ibid, 193). The establishment of the nation-state and the presumption of political sovereignty rest “on the obligation of its subjects to obey, so that the holder of such power appears to have both the capacity and the right to call on their obedience” (Hindess 1996, 138). Indigenous peoples

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challenge this obedience because the very foundation of the state, erected out of colonialism, exploitation and invasion, is seen as illegitimate. Indigenous peoples worldwide have been demanding their right to selfdetermination, to social, political and economic participation, territorial rights and environmental stewardship rights at home, and over the last four decades they have increasingly internationalized those demands. By the 1970s pluralists in international relations argued that the era of treating IR as taking place strictly between governments had passed. “Instead, it had to be accepted that world politics involved transactions among a kaleidoscopic range of actors” (Little 1996, 75). The globalization of indigenous peoples took advantage of this by indigenous peoples taking their grievances to international forums as communities, informal networks, treaty bands and as NGOs. As Niezen has pointed out, indigenous leaders have discovered the advantages of cutting across state interests under the gaze of the international community. The “politics of embarrassment”–the use of the media, political lobbying, and public relations campaigns to highlight the neglect and abuses of the state–has been effectively applied (2000, 143). Indigenous activists and organizations began to network and link up with their counterparts in other countries as they continued to be ignored (marginalized or repressed) by state governments. Nation-states have not been receptive to indigenous claims, fearing that if these claims are recognized the state will lose property. Indigenous networks have made use of their people power and new technologies, including film-making, the internet and new media in shaming their governments. The networking and collaboration has also allowed them to scale “up their skill-set and tactical repertoire in the process” (Lackenbauer and Cooper 2007, 100). Indigenous internationalism, although not always visible in mainstream international politics, was a natural progression in addressing issues generated from European conquest and imperialism. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, long before the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, for example, sophisticated diplomacies and vibrant systems of trade relations linked the continents’ many peoples in a distinctly nonWestern but wholly functioning inter-national system (Beier 2007, 123). European colonialism “obscured and profoundly damaged” those systems, and in so doing, not only has much of the diversity of human experience of encountering and engaging the other been lost or rendered archaic, but a distinct set of human traditions for practicing what scholars call

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international relations has been cast aside (De Costa 2009, 61). Global indigenism is forcefully reclaiming that history. In the 1920s indigenous leaders unsuccessfully tried to have their grievances heard at the League of Nations. They were pushed back to the state level; the League did not have the mechanism to handle their claims. In the 1950s, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) with its limited mandates was the first inter-governmental organization to address indigenous issues. With the creation of the United Nations, a more favourable international environment emerged. The UN structure ushered in self-determination and human rights instruments, including a Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and Covenants on social, cultural, economic and political rights. These circumstances created an environment in which indigenous peoples could press for their recognition and self-determination. Networking and coordination among indigenous organizations became ‘normalized’ after the 1977 International NGO Conference on Discrimination in the Americas. A few years later, in 1982, the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP) was established, which became the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (PFII) in 2000, holding its first session in 2002. PFII has placed indigenous issues at a level of attention offered before only to nationstates. This is significant because the rights of indigenous peoples, particularly territorial rights and self-determination, have always been presented by nation-states as a threat to individual state sovereignty, “as either prepolitical, subpolitical, or antipolitical” (Frank 2009, 50). However, indigenous movements very rarely demand secession or full independence from their state. Indigenism does not constitute ethnonationalist aspirations (Niezen 2003), but nation-states, particularly colonial settler states, have consistently viewed indigenous demands as a destabilizing threat to the state. Furthermore, the movement is about ending exploitation and oppression as de facto state policy, not exacting retribution on former colonizers and settlers. It is no surprise then, that the big four developed settler states–Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand–originally voted against the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was adopted in September 2007. Although it is not legally binding, it is an important customary law, thus being significant that they were the only countries to vote against it (11 countries abstained). The governments of the four settler states have since reconsidered their positions, after facing public pressure at home and abroad. The adoption of the Declaration recognizes

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indigenous peoples “as right-bearing collectives unlike other groups, such as refugees, minorities, women and children who are thought to have only individual rights within the framework of the state” (Escarcega 2010, 3). Working within an international social movement allows a certain level of protection against subversive state activities to destabilize local indigenous organizations, undermine their leadership and co-opt or subvert their cause.

Conclusion One of the enduring legacies of colonialism is the perception of the West versus the rest. While countries in the global South may not agree on everything, they are psychologically united in their resistance to Western domination. Likewise, indigenous peoples are united in their resistance to exploitation and oppression at the hands of the benefactors of colonialism. South-South cooperation and global indigenism have demonstrated that being othered within systems that dismiss and devalue one’s existence can serve as motivations for alliance, cooperation and coordination that cut across a variety of differences–geography, class, gender, ideology or wealth. This has forced the North and settler states to cede some power, however marginal, to other players in the international arena. The reality, as Susan Strange has pointed out, is that “on many issues most states have lost control over some of the functions of authority and are either sharing them with other states or with some other (non-state) authorities” (1996, 42). The emerging relationships at the global level require that states share authority not only with economic (non-state) actors such as multinational corporations, but also with indigenous peoples. “Aboriginal peoples [are] willing and able to locate their activities in a complex two-level game with a heightened international and domestic face visible across a wide spectrum of institutional sites and issues-areas” (Lackenbauer and Cooper 2007, 104). Western governments and settler states have not always responded favourably to the growing activism in the South and among indigenous peoples, but they have engaged in a process of recognition. The politics of recognition exercised by the West is an attempt to separate them from their colonial, oppressive past. Similarly, activities in the South and global indigenism are to separate them from their oppressed, powerless past. Both, operating on their particular principles, have not yet changed the global system, and the North is quite reluctant to make any changes that reflect the South’s numerical strength or the indigenous claims’ moral

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strength. But while it is true that South-South and settler-indigenous relations are predicated on the dominance of the North and settler states, this must not always be the case. As alliances and networks become stronger, the rationality of the international system will be subverted; some cracks in the hegemonic armour are already visible. But there is still much work to be done, as those who currently hold the power have ‘rigged’ the system in their favour and have no intention of relenting. However, they will have to learn to share the spotlight with the multitude of others who are now too emboldened to go silently to their corners.

References Adams, Nassau A. 1993. Worlds Apart: The North-South Divide and the International System. London: Zed Books. Aguilar, Carlos G. 2010. “South-South Relations in the New International Geopolitics.” Global Studies Review 6 (3), www.globality-gmu.net, accessed December 10, 2010. Beier, J. Marshall. 2009. “Forgetting, Remembering, and Finding Indigenous Peoples in International Relations.” In Indigenous Diplomacies, ed. J. Marshall Beier, 11-28. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. —. 2007. “Inter-national Affairs: Indigeneity, Globality, and the Canadian State.” Canadian Foreign Policy 13 (3): 121-131. Blunden, Margaret. 2008. “South-South Development Cooperation: Cuba’s Health Programmes in Africa.” The International Journal of Cuban Studies 1 (1): 1-11. Braveboy-Wagner, Jacqueline Anne. 2009. Institutions of the Global South. Oxon: Routledge. Chidaushe, Moreblessings. 2010. “South-South Cooperation or Southern Hegemony? The Role of South Africa as a ‘superpower’ and donor in Africa.” The Reality of Aid. South-South Cooperation: A Challenge to the AID System? A Special Report on South-South Cooperation. Constantinou, Costas M., Oliver P. Richmond and Alison M. S. Watson. 2008. “International Relations and the challenges of global communication.” Review of International Studies 34: 5-19. De Costa, Ravi. 2009. “Indigenous Diplomacies before the Nation-State.” In Indigenous Diplomacies, ed. J. Marshall Beier, 61-78. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Deruytterre, Anne. 1997. “Indigenous Peoples and Sustainable Development: The Role of the Inter-American Development Bank.”

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IND97-101. Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, www.iadb.org, accessed December 21, 2010. Enloe, Cynthia. 1996. “Margins, Silences and Bottom Rungs: How to Overcome the Underestimation of Power in the Study of International Relations.” In International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, eds. Steve Smith, Ken Booth and Marysia Zalewski, 186-202. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Escarcega, Sylvia. 2010. “Authenticating Strategic Essentialisms: The Politics of Indigenousness at the United Nations.” Cultural Dynamics 22 (1): 3-28. Frank, Mark F. N. 2009. “The Political Stakes of Indigenous Diplomacies: Questions of Difference.” In Indigenous Diplomacies, ed. J. Marshall Beier, 47-60. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Gabriel, John. 1994. “Initiating a Movement: Indigenous, Black and Grassroots Struggles in the Americas.” Race and Class 35 (3): 1-17. Hindess, Barry. 1996. Discourses of Power: From Hobbes to Foucault. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. International Alliance of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forests, www.international-alliance.org, accessed January 10, 2011. John de Sousa, Sarah-Lee. 2008. “Brazil as a Development Actor: SouthSouth Cooperation and the IBSA Initiative.” Fride (June). www.fride.org, accessed December 4, 2010. Lackenbauer, P. Whitney and Andrew F. Cooper. 2007. “The Archilles Heel of Canadian International Citizenship: Indigenous Diplomacies and State Responses.” Canadian Foreign Policy 13 (3): 99-119. Lawrence, Bonita and Enakshi Dua. 2005. “Decolonizing Antiracism.” Social Justice 32 (4): 120-143. Little, Richard. 1996. “The Growing Relevance of Pluralism?” In International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, eds. Steve Smith, Ken Booth and Marysia Zalewski, 66-86. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. May, Jay R. 2003. Globalization and the Poor. New York: Cambridge University Press. Niezen, Ronald. 2003. The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity. Berkeley: University Press of California. —. 2000. “Recognizing Indigenism: Canadian Unity and the International Movement of Indigenous Peoples.” Society for Comparative Study of Society and History 42 (1): 119-148. Operative Secretary. 1991. II Continental Encounter Campaign 500 Years of Indigenous, Black and Popular Resistance. Guatemala.

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Rosenbaum, H. Jon and William G. Taylor. 1975. “South-South Relations: The Economic and Political Content of Interactions among Developing Countries.” International Organization 29 (1): 243-274. Seidman, Gay M. 1993. “Facing the New International Context of Development.” In Global Visions: Beyond the New World Order, eds. Jeremy Brecher, John Brown Childs and Jill Cutler, 175-190. Boston: South End Press. Strange, Susan. 1996. The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. UN Secretary General. 2003. “State of South-South Cooperation: Background Paper, Report by the Secretary General of the United Nations to the 58th session of the General Assembly.” New York: Office of the Chairman of the Group of 77. Wilmer, Franke. 2009. “Where You Stand Depends on Where You Sit: Beginning an Indigenous-Settler Reconciliation Dialogue.” In Indigenous Diplomacies, ed. J. Marshall Beier, 187-202. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

SECTION II: OTHERING IN POLICY TOWARDS RADICALISM AND TERRORISM

CHAPTER FIVE TYRANTS, RADICALS AND OTHER THREATS: AN ESSAY ON CIVILIZATION AND VIOLENCE IN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY TOWARDS IRAQ DIEGO SANTOS VIEIRA DE JESUS

Introduction In the 19th century, the concept of civilization–defined by John Stuart Mill as material development in terms of economic and technological progress and as good government based on fair and efficient political and juridical systems (Keene 2002, 112)–shaped the imperialist conquest of peoples that were considered not advanced. This concept discriminated non-Europeans and allowed the resolution of contradictions between two distinct legal and institutional structures at the international level: a voluntarist and decentralized European order, characterized by tolerance towards political and cultural difference and by respect for the authority of independent and legally similar states; and a decentralized extra-European order, characterized by the division of sovereignty, the defence of individual rights over property and the diffusion of particular models of imperialist powers’ societies over local political and social systems (ibid, 5-6). The characterization of non-Europeans as ‘wild’ or ‘barbarian’ peoples that should be civilized to the European ‘standard’ solved the dilemma of interaction with difference by discriminating those that are different (Walker 2005, 2). Diversity was objectified and disciplined with the purpose of preserving the cohesion of the identity of European imperialist countries. The strong division between an intra-European order based on tolerance and an extra-European order based on civilization was blurred in the 20th century, with the interpenetration of the two models of order in the context of enlargement of the society of states and in the constitution of a

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globalized order: the recognition of sovereignty and political and cultural tolerance towards non-European communities and the diffusion of civilization in Europe after the catastrophe of war caused by Europeans themselves in that same century. Nevertheless, this recognition was conditioned to the assimilation of civilization standards, based on the abandonment of the idea of racial superiority that legitimated the bifurcated order in the past (Keene, 9-10). With the questioning of European self-confidence in the diffusion of its societal patterns after two World Wars on the continent and the collapse of the intense division between both orders, the concept of civilization preserved the main aspects of progress and good government, abandoned the racial discriminatory conception and remained an objective to be pursued by humanity (ibid, 137-139). Today, the multiple changes of this concept do not mean its abandonment as a regulative modern ambition, even in the context of reconfiguration of global contours. With the redefinition of the boundaries of modern political life and the growing challenge to the segmentation between the national and the international levels in the 21st century, the political space with the exercise of authority enlarges beyond the state, and those artificial borders still demarcate antagonisms, even though they are not where they used to be (Walker 2005, 1). Globalized politics still operates in a metaphysics of presence and absence. Notions of progress and good government are diffused in opposition to the philosophies of radical groups and non-liberal regimes, which are conceived as rogue states that must be submitted to ‘domestication’ in the modern structures of authority. This happens in order to preserve the stability of the international system, where great powers such as the United States exercise their might. Based on the notion of productive power developed by Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall (2005, 55)1, this article aims to explain why the concept of civilization is flexible enough to prevail as a modern regulative ambition in the context of redefinition of global boundaries. The 1 “Productive power … is the constitution of all social subjects with various social powers through systems of knowledge and discursive practices of broad and general social scope. Conceptually, the move is away from structures, per se, to systems of signification and meaning - which are structured, but not themselves structures - , and to networks of social forces perpetually shaping one another. In that respect, attention to productive power looks beyond - or is post-structures” (Barnett & Duvall 2005, 55).

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main argument indicates that the flexibility of this concept is the result of a historically contingent necessity of spatiotemporal localization of difference to preserve the integrity of the self and its self-knowledge in relation to its own understanding of what objectivity must be. The dilemmas and contradictions in the fight against new threats are solved, and the disciplinary action on the other is justified. The examined case deals with the enlargement of U.S. political space beyond its frontiers. The consolidation of the notions of progress and good government in the concept of ‘civilization’–opposed to tyranny in rogue states and to radicalism of terrorist threats–results from the necessity to protect the cohesion of U.S. identity. The right to intervene in order to protect innocent citizens from their government in the Third World is legitimated, and the separation between preventive and preemptive action is blurred, for example in the Bush Doctrine. I incorporate Beate Jahn’s (2000) discussion about the combination of the concept of freedom with unequal notions of state construction, which offers justification for intervention based on the defence of liberal principles. The poststructuralist perspective (Campbell 1997; Walker 1993, 2005; Weber 1995) is based on a Foucauldian perspective and stresses that discourses about ‘reason’ or ‘truth’ are generated as exercises of control in specific political circumstances. It also indicates that logocentric mutuallyconstituted structures and binary oppositions in language and thought such as inside/outside can be arbitrary and should not be taken for granted. Those structures and oppositions establish limits to the capacity of considering alternative world views and difference is continuously marginalized and conceived hierarchically in reference to a nonproblematic and privileged self in a perspective of inferiority, negation and objectification (Walker 2005, 4-6). The spatial divisions that exclude otherness are crystallized in the international level by the paradigm of sovereignty, which disciplines ambiguity and contingency in order to differentiate and standardize the location in which it works (Campbell 1997). Foreign policy makes ‘external’ certain events and actors in consonance with practices that constitute the domestic sphere. Dangers are located in other political communities (Campbell 1997), and the challenges they represent are seen as threats to the supposedly welldefined and stable identity of the state, which contains those challenges and preserves its integrity and self-knowledge in relation to its own understanding of objectivity (Walker 2005, 2).

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In the next section, I show that Edward Keene’s discussion is insufficient to analyse the transformative mechanisms of the notion of civilization, which allow its maintenance as a regulative ideal. I argue that mainstream IR theorists and constructivists neglect or underexplore the role of this concept in the formation and consolidation of the modern international system, unable to fully explain the concept’s intense ability to change and reify specific forms of power. I attempt to overcome those limitations by defending that the demarcation of identity is constructed by the systematic exclusion of difference in disciplinary dynamics of subjectivity. The concept of civilization was situated in a sovereign interpretive centre and adapted in specific spatiotemporal circumstances in order to organize different communities hierarchically. With linear interpretations of time and segregation of diversity outside the borders, difference was allocated in inferior positions in a universal scale of development based on the level of approximation to the ‘civilized’ political and social organization. When diversity is marginalized, the sovereign stability is preserved, and violence is legitimated to deal with difference. Before final considerations, the blurring of the limits between prevention and preemption in the Bush Doctrine is examined in the case of U.S. action in Iraq in the context of legitimization of military action in order to ‘civilize’ rogue states, defend liberal principles and preserve the stability in the expansion of U.S. political space.

The role of civilization in the configuration of the modern international system Keene critically rereads Hugo Grotius’ writings and gives attention to some concepts that were abandoned in the simplifying orthodox interpretations of his work, but were fundamental to colonialist and imperialist practices: the divisible sovereignty and the private property in the law of nations, articulated by the assertion of authority of European states in the extra-continental world and the appropriation of unoccupied lands. Keene says that a Grotian conception of the international system is more related to the constitution of a non-Westphalian, hierarchical political and legal order in the extra-European environment than to Bull’s international society of sovereign states (1977). In Europe a structure of norms defined non-intervention and territorial integrity as principles of interstate relations in order to minimize political and cultural conflicts and pressure from sub-state forces and hegemonic powers. However, the interest in maximization of gains in the extra-European world created decentralized systems of governance and stimulated the development of

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individual rights in colonial settings in North America and the strengthening of imperial primacy in commercial deals with East Indies’ elites. The main consequence was the gradual legitimate acquisition of those elites’ prerogatives by the Europeans, the source for the implementation of civilization missions (Keene 2002, 42-59, 146). The concept of civilization strengthened the orientations towards the sharing of sovereignty and the protection of individual property rights in the non-Westphalian world. It also allowed for the comprehension, at the first moment, of the functioning of the extra-European order in the interaction of these concepts with the orientations that govern the relations between ‘civilized’ and ‘non-civilized’ peoples and the stabilization of boundaries between both orders. Through the century, this notion has been seen as a process towards an ideal conception of social organization that should be pursued by everyone all over the world. With the indiscriminate violence in Europe during two World Wars and the association of barbarian behaviour with totalitarian and militarist ideologies, the universal diffusion of ‘civilization’–social interaction, respect for human rights, and socio-economic progress–occurred simultaneously to the dissemination of tolerance, particularly with limitations on the use of force and the general respect for sovereign equality and independence of nonEuropean peoples. This simultaneous propagation has brought internal challenges, such as the search for equilibrium between state rights and citizen rights, but it has not meant the abandonment of the Westphalian arrangement: the inviolability of state authority has always been compromised by the possibility of the division of sovereignty, and this propagation has not promoted innovation when it positioned civilization as the international order’s objective. According to Keene, there is no general crisis of legal and institutional structures at the international level at that moment, but rather the strengthening of contradictions that have persisted since the 19th century. Even though the discriminatory racial method to solve the paradox between the Westphalian and non-Westphalian orders has been abandoned in a globalized world, and there is a gradual interpenetration between them, the purposes of the international order are consolidated in the bifurcated modern thought between the promotion of tolerance and the adoption of the concept of civilization, since tolerance has become a general principle and the diffusion of civilization standards has not been refuted (Keene 2002, 143-145).

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Some aspects of the old concept of civilization, such as the notions of progress and good government, remain intact in the 21st century, and this concept is plastic enough to incorporate, for example, the condemnation of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and terrorist activities. This flexibility guarantees its persistence, so that civilization keeps being an objective to be pursued, even when constant global transformations take place. Although Keene sees the concept’s malleability as important and shows that its adaptation capacity guarantees its persistence as the narrative that indicates the direction for modernity and a world of peace, the main factors that justify this flexibility are marginalized in his work. Keene exposes the institutional and normative structure of this segmented order, where practices of differentiation still operate and the dual thought between tolerance and civilization still persist. However, he only shows the capacity of resistance of civilization, not showing the defining mechanisms of the concept’s mutability. The undertheorization of those transforming mechanisms limits Keene’s work as an exposition of a narrative of the dynamics of state incorporation in a divided international order and the selection of mechanisms to solve the internal contradictions of this order. To search for explanations for this flexibility in IR mainstream is a useless task, because those perspectives simply neglect the main aspects of civilization in the formation and the consolidation of the modern international system or take for granted a limited and static conception of civilization, which makes the understanding of its adaptive and transformative capacity difficult. Realist perspectives, as in Waltz (1979) for example, examine the rationalization of state actions based on material interests that are not questioned in an ideational vacuum, or operate with the notions of good government and good economy in an opportunist way, defending that those notions are only legitimating mechanisms of given interests of self-interested dominant groups, as in Morgenthau (1967) for example. Realists postulate generalizations about a uniform power politics (Jahn 2000, 7-9), and their abstraction in relation to specific spatiotemporal developments in the constitution of states and the international system does not help the understanding of the flexibility of the civilization concept, because historically contingent dynamics of stigmatization of difference that aim to maintain sovereign integrity are neglected. Liberal thinkers say that the notions of social and economic progress and fair and efficient political systems in the civilization notions are

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important, but they appeal to a universalizing teleology that made into ‘free’ and ‘mature’ subjects everyone who was submitted to the structures of modern authority. Kantian regulatory narratives clearly state that universal reason is internalized in the modern subject, capable of ‘walking towards a world of peace’, when the ‘universal within himself’–which segregates the ‘immature’–is realized. This shows the constitution of a regime of ‘truth’ about the world, with the main purpose of preserving mechanisms of power and of projecting aspects of the modern man to other times and places in order to construct myths of origin, narratives on how human beings converted themselves into modern subjects (Walker 2005). Liberal thinkers see permanent elements of civilization as important, but undertheorize the defining factors of its adaptations to specific spatiotemporal circumstances. Therefore, diversity is conceived as a problem that must be solved (Jahn 2000, 29). Constructivist perspectives have the merit to capture the complexity of the dynamic process of constitution of social identities, developed contingently by the interaction of domestic and international events. This interaction justified, for example, the imperialist race as the expression of a ‘national competition’: great powers saw each other as threats to their own projection of national-bourgeois collectivity in the transformation of the periphery, but the nationalist and racist conquest of other societies allowed that self-identified communities soften the irreconcilable differences of social domestic cleavages and protect the bourgeois identity from the strengthening working class (Hall 1999, 221-247). When Hall shows the generative and transformative capacity of the agents, the author examines how transformations of individual and collective identity generate stimuli for the imperialist sharing and investigates the variations on the cultural and institutional transmission of civilization models. However, Hall objectifies actors in the periphery as recipients of systemic change and reifies the marginalization of those actors. The author is still a hostage of state sovereignty: when he conceives the state as historically favoured institutional form in the expression of identity, he gives the state ontological centrality. This institution is seen as the ultimate end of national self-determination efforts. I attempt to develop an alternative perspective that examines the flexibility of the concept of civilization but does not fall into the trap of reification of modern rituals of presence and absence in the separation between particular and general, specifically in the context of political space beyond state borders.

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The civilization, the systematic exclusion of difference and the legitimization of violence The flexibility of the concept of civilization can be examined in the dynamics of the construction of political space by the dominant conception of the modern international (Walker 2005). This conception holds mechanisms that limit, segment and mobilize multiple forms of power. There is also a doubled procedure of exclusion, constituting and reproducing the other as a negation of identity and working as category of thought that does not allow the identification of processes of segregation and subordination of difference by the exclusion of what is outside of this international. The logic of inside/outside was characterized by the establishment of abstract and arbitrary borders that bring obstacles between identity and difference and a totalizing logic that marginalize outsiders. This logic was possible as the result of the difference between modern and non-modern, understood in the historical break-up with the pre-modern and the post-modern and in the geographical break-up with other peoples considered ‘wild’ or ‘barbarian’. Those peoples should be submitted to the ‘domestication’ in the modern structures of authority. The merits of this alternative perspective are the possibility of destabilization of those mutually constitutive categories and the criticism of modern logocentric practices of binary opposition. The preservation of the sovereign integrity, for example, was possible by the establishment of a hierarchy in specific spatiotemporal circumstances, in which the modern subject is seen as a sovereign interpretative centre, a privileged and better reality or a non-questioned presence, and the other is conceived in reference to this centre in a perspective of inferiority, as a negation of this identity and objectified in a process of production of the external world by the subject. Simultaneously, the modern international shows a specific spatiotemporal articulation of the relations between sovereign states as expressions of particular cultures and peoples and of the international system as an expression of a universally conceived humanity. The incorporation and subjectivation to the modern world, but also the exclusion of other worlds, develop this way. This leads to a specific resolution of political and philosophical options to be recognized and to the establishment of clear limits to the capacity of considering other possibilities. Modernity is constituted as a specific cultural form, separated from other specific spatiotemporal forms of life in a second process of exclusion. An outside of the production of modern subjectivity is created, and the modern suppositions on

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sovereignty and the international system–characterized by the marginalization of difference–guarantee its continuity, because they keep non-modern elements absent (Walker 2005). This poststructuralist perspective brings out the power and the eventualization. In a Foucauldian perspective, this approach highlights that discourses of knowledge about ‘reason’ or ‘truth’ do not refer to foundational concepts, but are created as exercises of control in specific historical circumstances. By drawing on the Derridean deconstruction method, it is possible to show how arbitrary and particular the binary structures that constitute language and thought can be, as well as the possibility of destabilization of mutually constitutive categories between the inside and outside. In a poststructuralist approach, many communities are conceived as outcomes of the modern thought–such as a sovereign state, for example–and operate as mechanisms of exclusion. They converted socially constructed circumstances into natural conditions. In this sense, the reproduction of borders can be conceived as a political discourse that established what we can speak, think and be by using space divisions that marginalize difference. Paradigms like sovereignty discipline the ambiguity, the problems and the contingency of history in order to differentiate and standardize the place where it operates (Campbell 1995). So there is no natural community because there is no natural foundation of those social groups and associations. They are not stable concepts, because they lack a pre-established ontological significance, and can be understood as intersubjective constructions and effects of discursive and symbolic practices. Their authority can be conceived as a political performance, and it performs with the objective of preserving the ontological and practical status of those communities (Weber 1995). The authorization to segregate at the borders of the modern subject, the sovereign state, the states system and modernity itself reproduces not only the conception of the other as a negation of the self, but the exclusion of alternative ways to the modern form of production of subjectivity in specific historical and spatial circumstances. It is possible to understand the flexibility and the consequent resistance of the concept of civilization as a modern regulative ambition: when it disciplines subjectivity and limits the identity in particular spatiotemporal contexts, the conception of the modern international allows the fixation and the reproduction of civilization patterns and the creation of differentiated spaces inside itself. It also specifies what the civilized society can be, talk and think. In the

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dynamics of the systematic exclusion of difference, the civilization notions are located as an ideal of social organization. While the main elements of social and economic progress and good government are preserved, those notions can be adapted according to the particularities of each space and time in order to give effect to hierarchies that allocate difference spatiotemporally and guarantee the stability and integrity of the dominant identity. Concomitantly, non-modern forms of production of subjectivity are isolated in order to allow that the identity of civilized modern peoples strengthens its self-knowledge and its unity in relation to its own understanding of what objectified difference must be. The effects of this procedure of double exclusion are the development of a linear interpretation of history–which locates non-civilized or less civilized communities in a different time from the civilized–and the positioning of diversity in an external space to the frontiers of civilization. Organized in stages of development (Jahn 2000, 118-122), the social and cultural difference–labelled as ‘dysfunctional’ or ‘barbarian’–is situated in marginalized positions in universal scales of proximity to the civilized political and social organization. The resulting undertaking is the implementation of a totalizing project of progressive assimilation in the modern structures of authority by multiple cultural and political strategies, in which those ‘barbarians’ or ‘rogue’ elements are seen as potential receivers of the cultural elements from civilized societies. When this categorization is naturalized, the dilemmas and contradictions in the interaction with difference are solved, and justifications for civilising action upon the ‘inferior’ are created. Authority and the use of violence with mechanisms that build unequal relations between distinct communities are legitimated. In the contemporary world, many leaders see it necessary to discipline terrorist organizations and states that harbour them or develop WMD. In this context, the defence of social and economic advance, good government and human rights is consolidated in the flexible concept of civilization, but the concept is adapted with the strengthening of democratic values and the aversion to terrorism and incorporates the nonproliferation efforts in a context of redefinition of the limits of political life. The spill-over of political space, where authority is implemented beyond state borders, provoked the destabilization of the rigid demarcation between domestic and international spheres. However, this transformation of borders does not suppose that their role as a regulatory ideal has been overcome: the artificially determined limits were flexible enough to define

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authority on space and demarcate antagonisms, even though those borders are not where they used to be. The modern discourse limits the perception that, even if there is engagement with diversity beyond the national borders, practices of differentiation and segmentation are still reproduced, particularly based on adapted versions of civilization patterns (Walker 2005, 6).

The expansion of the civilization: The legitimization of violence in the Bush Doctrine In the first Bush administration’s view, ‘rogue states’ like North Korea, Iran and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq–labelled by the president as parts of an ‘Axis of Evil’ in 2002–could not, differently from the Soviet Union, be contained only by the threat of nuclear retaliation. At that time, the members of the U.S. executive perceived that rogue states’ leaders were more prone to accept risks, even if those risks involved the sacrifice of lives of their population and the wealth of their nations. They thought that the basis for success of previous initiatives–a mutually understood diplomatic vocabulary and permanent communication channels–is very difficult to establish with rogue states, which widens the possibility of miscalculations and misunderstandings, and that those potential adversaries hope that the acquisition of WMD and delivery systems can limit a U.S. intervention in regional conflicts (Kartchner 2002, 274-275). Terrorist organizations–many of which are harboured and financed by rogue states–express their rejection to U.S. authority, and they have a demoralizing effect on Western liberal governments by showing these governments’ inability to protect their own citizens and provoking a value shock with the attack of innocent people. The preoccupation with this threat is motivated not only by the corrosion of social and political structure, but also by the fact that the exclusion of private agents from the privilege of using armed force is one of the main aspects in the constitution of the contemporary international system. Even though the borders of modernity are redefined, the state has the monopoly on the legitimate use of force, something that not only guarantees its survival but also secures the continuity of international order. When terrorist organizations use social and political violence, they are criminalized and put in the category of ‘evil doers’ (Nogueira 2003, 94-98). Rogue states that finance and protect those organizations are also evil because they harbour and help groups that destabilize the order.

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When rogue states and terrorist organizations question the efficacy of U.S. institutions and the values of its society and globally defy the authority of the superpower in a widened political space, the diversity represented by them is translated into a threat to the civilized identity, a danger that emerges from external spaces categorized as ‘wild’ or ‘barbarian’. In this context, the strengthening of the notions of progress and the defence of human rights in the concept of civilization, the explicit condemnation of terrorist actions and the repudiation of WMD proliferation reinforce the opposition between liberal and democratic principles characterizing U.S. society on the one side and radical and authoritarian philosophies of rogue states and terrorist groups on the other side. The understanding of these threats as the negation of sovereign civilized U.S. identity has the double function of strengthening the integrity of U.S. society and marginalizing alternative ways to the civilized way regarding the production of subjectivity. According to former secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, open borders and societies facilitate terrorist attacks, and the ownership of WMD by rogue states has the main purpose of coercion and intimidation. When those states wanted to develop WMD instead of promoting the wellbeing of their own populations, those states were labelled as dangerous, erratic and cruel. Members of the Bush administration reiterated that the leaders of those states neglected their populations, seen by U.S. leaders as hostages of their own leaders. In the name of freedom's defence and the protection of citizens that were victims of tyranny and oppressive governments, violence is legitimated to guarantee the protection of populations and institutions of the U.S. and their allies. The Iraqi non-acquiescence to past UN resolutions on disarmament, the regime’s supposed links with terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and the oppressive character of the political leadership widened suspicions on Iraqi intentions, in a way that the urgent removal of this government was seen by U.S. leaders as a legitimate way to preserve stability. Previous events showed that intervention could be necessary, because Iraq could not be trusted on other occasions. For example, at the end of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), Iraq had a foreign debt of 80 billion dollars and neither could nor wanted to dismantle its war machine. President Saddam Hussein had the intention to expand the Iraqi position in the Arab world. Then U.S. President George Bush sent troops to the Persian Gulf, and the UN Security Council imposed an economic boycott. In response to the embargo and military mobilization, Iraq proclaimed its annexation of

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Kuwait and ordered the arrest of foreigners living there to use them as human shields against any threat of attack. After the war, the UN Security Council established international weapons inspections to prevent Saddam Hussein from rebuilding his arsenal of WMD. Bill Clinton, as president, tried to contain Saddam Hussein with a mix of sanctions and weapons inspections, but concluded that the Iraqi president had to leave power. The first administration of George W. Bush took up this issue after September 11, saying that Saddam Hussein had a history of attacking its neighbours, used chemical weapons, supported terrorist groups, challenged UN Security Council resolutions and sought to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq formed, along with Iran and North Korea, what Bush called the ‘Axis of Evil.’ These states, in his opinion, showed that international standards of conduct were not sufficient to stop inappropriate behaviour. Even though there was no evidence that Iraq was in the imminence to attack U.S. forces–action that would justify a preemptive action–the Bush administration used the lacking precision in the identification of the level of threat imminence and deployed a preventive action labelled as preemptive to explore the existing strategic advantages. This administration wanted to end Iraqi capacity to perpetrate threats and eliminate its motivation to conduct these threats by regime change (Freedman 2003, 106). Members of the Bush administration considered massive retaliation to be meaningless when directed against terrorist networks without citizens to defend. Nor could the U.S. rely on agreements signed by states they considered as tyrants. The National Security Strategy of 2002 highlighted American power, this power stemming from the combination of unparalleled military strength with the incorporation of freedom and democracy. The goals would be to build good relations with major powers and to extend peace, encouraging open societies on every continent. The essence of the strategy was to use the unprecedented power to remake the world in America’s image. Its nucleus would defeat the ‘enemies of freedom’ based on the idea that the core values of democracy and free enterprise would prevail so that the threats were eliminated (Daalder & Lindsay 2005, 121-124). Although after Saddam Hussein’s defeat no link between him and Al Qaeda was completely proven and Iraq did not actually have WMD, the border between prevention and preemption was blurred due to the authorization of new forms of intervention, based on the necessity to

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‘civilize’ rogue states and limit their potential intentions and capacities. Moral and humanitarian considerations were evoked to legitimate action.

Final considerations In order to guarantee the integrity of its enlarged political space, the U.S. tries to ‘civilize’ rogue states, in part based on the supposition that international terrorists could not survive without the protection of those states, and to territorialize the fight against new threats by trying to circumscribe the world to the modern international, as we can see in the fight against Islamic extremists associated with Al Qaeda in Iraq. At the same time, the concept of civilization is flexible enough to prevail as a modern regulative ambition in the context of redefinition of global boundaries. This concept is sufficiently plastic to fulfil the historically contingent necessity of spatiotemporal localization of difference to preserve the integrity of U.S. identity and its self-knowledge in relation to its own understanding of what the other must be. In the case of enlargement of U.S. political space beyond its frontiers, the consolidation of the notions of progress and good government in the concept of civilization–seen as opposed to tyranny, radicalism and irrationality–came from the necessity to protect the cohesion of U.S. identity. The right to intervene in order to protect innocent citizens from their government in Iraq was legitimated, and the separation between preventive and preemptive action was blurred in the Bush Doctrine. The ethos of survival keeps conferring modern political communities power and control over their relationship with outsiders (Nogueira 2003, 97), independently on where the borders of this modern international are situated.

References Barnett, Michael and Raymond Duvall. 2005. “Power in International Politics.” International Organization 59 (Winter): 39-75. Bowden, Brett. 2002. “Globalisation and the Shifting ‘Standard of Civilisation’ in International Society.” Jubilee conference of the Australasian Political Studies Association. Australian National University. Bull, Hedley. 1977. The Anarchical Society. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Campbell, David. 1997. Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, revised edition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Daalder, Ivo H. and James M. Lindsay. 2005. America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Dockrill, Saki R. 2006. “Dealing with Fear: Implementing the Bush Doctrine of Preemptive Attack.” Politics & Policy 34 (2): 344-373. Freedman, Lawrence. 2003. “Prevention, Not Preemption.” The Washington Quarterly 26 (2): 105-114. Hall, Rodney Bruce. 1999. National Collective Identity: Social Constructs and International Systems. New York: Columbia University Press. Heisbourg, François. 2003. “A Work in Progress: The Bush Doctrine and its Consequences.” The Washington Quarterly 26 (2): 75-88. Jahn, Beate. 2000. The Cultural Construction of International Relations: The Invention of the State of Nature. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave. Kartchner, Kerry M. 2002. “The Future of the Offense-Defense Relationship.” In Arms Control: Cooperative Security in a Changing Environment, ed. Jeffrey A. Larsen, 271-289. London, Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Keene, Edward. 2002. Beyond the Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics. Cambridge and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Kegley, Charles W. Jr. and Gregory A. Raymond. 2003. “Preventive War and Permissive Normative Order.” International Studies Perspectives 4: 385-394. Morgenthau, Hans J. 1967. Politics Among Nations, 4th edition, revised. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Nogueira, João Pontes. 2003. “Ética e Violência na Teoria de Relações Internacionais: Uma Reflexão a Partir do 11 de Setembro”. Contexto Internacional 25 (1): 81-102. Walker, Robert B. J. 2005. “The Doubled Outsides of the Modern International.” 5th International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities and Nations (C.a.N. Fifth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Beijing). —. 1993. Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Waltz, Kenneth. 1979. Theory of International Politics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

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Weber, Cynthia. 1995. Simulating Sovereignty: Intervention, the State and Symbolic Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER SIX THE OTHERING OF TERRORISTS: ELITE U.S. NEWSPAPERS’ USE OF THE WORD TERRORIST AND THE SUBSEQUENT MENTION OF RELIGION JENNIFER HOEWE

Introduction Within the New York Times and Washington Post, two of the most influential Western news sources, the word terrorist frequents news story headlines. This pattern is indicative of the rise in interest in acts of political violence since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. As the definition of a terrorist remains ambiguous, the use of the word terrorist in the news media continues to be a hot-button issue. This chapter aims to uncover how use of the word terrorist in the headlines of two elite U.S. newspapers, the New York Times and Washington Post, is related to the subsequent mention of specific religions. Since religions are by nature emotionally laden, finding them stated after an initial mention of terrorism garners news consumers’ attention. Coupling any group of people, in this case, members of religions, with the word terrorist has implications in promoting otherness. That is, it creates a scenario of us-versus-them, as the majority of individuals do not want to be associated with the word terrorist. Such a dichotomy has the potential to influence public opinion, particularly if a pattern exists in two major news sources. As a consequence, public policy may be affected, giving this issue international implications necessitating critical analysis.

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The priming of news consumers Repetition in the pairing of words feeds directly into the theoretical context of media effects, specifically priming. If words are found habitually in unison in news stories from several sources of news, priming implications ought to be of concern, particularly if they are found in recent news stories (Kim, Han and Scheufele 2010). The media’s ability to set the news agenda helps structure and activate the schemas with which individuals evaluate political actors (Iyengar 1990; Iyengar and Kinder 1987). Fiske and Taylor (1991) defined priming as “the effects of prior context on the interpretation of new information… specifically a name for the fact that recently and frequently activated ideas come to mind more easily than ideas that have not been activated” (257). This phenomenon relies on a memory-based skill set often triggered by the most salient attitudes (Hastie and Park 1986; Eagly and Chaiken 1993; Price and Tewksbury 1997). Attitudes are built from prior experiences, and the retrieval of those prior experiences helps to provide frameworks for understanding present situations (Tourangeau and Rasinski 1988). Such attitudes are often shaped or reinforced by the news media (Scheufele and Tewksbury 2007; Tversky and Kahneman 1973). Delving deeper, Sheafer (2007) found that the affective attributes of priming alter the message processing of news media consumers. This chapter focuses on news consumers being primed with the word terrorist in a news story’s headline. Since priming is fuelled by its affective attributes, especially those that are negative, the mention of specific religions within the story elicits negative connotations toward those religions that are related to terrorism, which facilitates the othering of members of those religions.

Terrorists and otherness as portrayed by the news media The word terrorist has yet to be concretely defined within scholarly work. However, Norris, Kern and Just (2003) provide an adequate definition that covers both terrorism and terrorists: Terrorism is… the systematic use of coercive intimidation against civilians for political goals. This concept identifies this phenomenon by the techniques, targets, and goals; and all these attributes are regarded as necessary and sufficient for an act to qualify as terrorism. ‘Terrorists’ are those who employ the methods of terrorism. (6)

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Other definitions tend to encompass similar elements but structure the semantics in varying capacities (Nacos 2010, 31; Schmid and Jongman 1988, 28). The U.S. Department of State (2006) defined terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.” A terrorist group was defined as “any group practicing, or which has significant subgroups which practice, international terrorism.” Among these definitions, one thing is clear. Being labelled as a terrorist does not bear a positive association. Rubenstein (1987) believed “to call an act of political violence terrorist is not merely to describe it but to judge it,” because “[n]obody wants to be called a terrorist: terrorism is what the other side is up to” (17-18). Moreover, early (Epstein 1977) and more recent (Chermak 2003) scholarship has found terrorists portrayed as irrational extremists in the media. Chermak (2002) called this depiction an “outsider frame” (128). These conclusions inherently position the terrorist as the other. As such, the terrorist label shifts the individual or group associated with this label into the category of otherness. Terrorism reported by the news media has undergone some inspection among the academic community. Chermak and Gruenewald (2006) examined the news media’s coverage of terrorism occurring within the United States between January 1, 1980 and September 10, 2001. The authors found that most terrorist activities go unnoticed by the press; instead, those involving casualities, domestic terrorist groups, airlines or hijacking receive an abundance of news attention. Atwater and Ku (1991) found terrorism to be reported from a domestic point of view. Furthermore, prior to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Kern, Just and Norris (2003) reported that news media coverage of terrorist events was continually decreasing. However, following the attacks, coverage reached “record levels” (290). Specific to the connection between terrorists and members of particular religions, Powell (2011) content analysed 1,638 news stories from six news outlets about 11 terrorist events occurring in the United States between October 2001 and January 2010. The author found a pattern in which non-American Muslims, Arabs, and Islam were shown as part of terrorist organizations working against the Christian-dominant United States, concluding that terrorist acts are portrayed in the news media as a problem stemming from Islam (107-108). Pratt (2010) identified that Islamic extremists have been well represented in the news media, whereas Christian extremists have not. He contended that, though not the norm,

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extremism is inherent in all religions. Furthermore, Juergensmeyer (2000) concluded that terrorist activities have been carried out by members of nearly all religions, including Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and Christians. The correlation illustrated here warrants a closer examination of the news media’s portrayal of terrorists and its relationship to members of particular religions. This chapter’s study intends to uncover what connections between the word terrorist and words pertaining to specific religions have been made in the news media in recent years. The author contends that since news media consumers are first being primed with the word terrorist in the headline, if the subsequent mentions of one particular religion are frequent and in more than one major publication, they may activate this association in other environments and create or maintain a stereotype. The latter part of this argument is supported by the findings of Das et al. (2008), in which the news media’s depiction of terrorism is linked to increased prejudice toward members of out-groups, who would be included in a category of otherness. The examination of words in particular is a crucial component of this chapter’s analysis. Spencer (2010) concluded that words are important “as they are the only way of making sense of the world and assigning meaning to it. Words do not only describe reality, but they actively take part in the construction of the world as we see, talk, hear, imagine, and ultimately react to it” (1). The permanency of the words printed in newspapers makes them especially critical in the production and consumption of news media. Thus, careful examination of how specific words are used in news stories is and ought to be a necessary aspect of media studies. This chapter then seeks to discover how the word terrorist is used in the headlines of two major newspapers–the New York Times and Washington Post. It then observes the frequency with which specific religions are mentioned to better determine what, if any, patterns exist. The word terrorist and the words describing particular religions are emotionally laden and, when used in close proximity and with great repetition in the news media, have the potential to create or reinforce stereotypes. These stereotypes have a real, if not already established, potential to develop into a category of otherness, leading to consequences on the international stage in terms of changes in public opinion and public policy, which are demonstrated later. Thus, the study at hand seeks to shed light on the priming implications of consistently pairing the word terrorist

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in news story headlines with mentions of particular religions within the stories.

Research questions Analyses of major world news sources is of utmost importance due to their potential in influencing public opinion (Altheide 1991; Bassiouni 1981; Blumler and Gurevitch 1982; Curran, Gurevitch and Woollacott 1982; Jamieson and Waldman 2003; Slone 2000; Wanta and Hu 1993). In particular, the New York Times presents one of the most influential sources of news in the world (Dearing and Rogers 1996). When the Times indicates that an issue is newsworthy, other U.S. news organisations take note. When producers and editors at television stations, radio stations, newspapers, and to a lesser degree, newsmagazines sit down to decide which stories will receive the most time, the best placement, and the biggest headlines that day, they often have checked first to see what decisions the editors at the Times have made about the same issues. (12)

The necessary examination of this publication is evident. The Washington Post represents another influential news media producer, and its analysis was a necessary part of this chapter’s study to examine priming implications as compounded from multiple sources. First, determining the number of stories printed within these publications in which the word terrorist is used in the headline gives an understanding of the frequency with which the reader is initially primed with the word terrorist. Research question 1: How many news stories were published in the New York Times and Washington Post with the word terrorist in the headline? Second, each religion mentioned within these stories must be noted to determine where the reader’s focus is drawn after being primed with the word terrorist. Research question 2: How many of these news stories made at least one mention of a specific religion? Third, the number of stories in which a particular religion was mentioned ought to be counted to better understand how many stories drew attention from the word terrorist in the headline to that religion. Research question 3: Which religions were mentioned in most stories?

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Fourth, words specifically pertaining to these religions must then be counted to determine with what frequency that religion is mentioned. Research question 4: Which words describing particular religions were used the most frequently? Lastly, the coverage of the two newspapers must be compared and contrasted to shed light on what, if any, priming implications exist. Research question 5: What patterns exist associating the word terrorist in headlines with mentions of specific religions in the body of the stories?

Methodology This study conducted qualitative content analysis on news stories published by the New York Times and Washington Post. These newspapers were selected based on their ability to reach a large audience as well as their influence on the national and international news agenda (Dearing and Rogers 1996, 12). According to BurrellesLuce (2010), a company that tracks newspaper circulation figures, they represent the third and fifth most circulated U.S. newspapers: New York Times, 951,063 daily and Washington Post, 578,482 daily. The research period of this study ranges from January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2010. This period was selected to assess the most recent news stories in the post-9/11 media environment. This study’s content analysis includes a census of all stories published, including stories published in print editions and on websites. Stories were located using the New York Times website and Lexis-Nexis. Searches for the word terrorist in the headline of articles produced the appropriate stories. The plural form was also included (i.e., terrorists). Only news stories were included; opinion pieces and reviews were extracted from the search results. The author then coded each story by identifying and counting each specific religion mentioned. Only specific identifying words were included as mentions of specific religions. For example, words categorized as Islam included Islam, Islamic, Islamist, Muslim(s), Sunni(s), Shiite(s), and Ahmadi(s). Words categorized as Christianity included Christianity, Christian, and each denomination (e.g., Catholic, Catholicism, Lutheran, Lutheranism, Presbyterian, Presbyterianism, Baptist(s), Methodists, Methodism). Words categorized as Judaism included Judaism, Jew, and Jewish. Words categorized as Hinduism included Hinduism and Hindu(s). Words categorized as Buddhism included Buddhism and Buddhist(s). Any

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of these words that were part of a person’s name were extracted from the results (e.g., Christian as a first or last name). References to religions that did not use a word pertaining to a specific religion were not used. For example, references to a non-descriptive place of worship (e.g., church, mosque, etc.) were not included, as they did not use words lending themselves directly to a particular religion.

Results Within the allotted time period, the New York Times published 139 news stories with the word terrorist in the headline. The Washington Post published 148 such stories. A total of 287 news stories were located. Table 6-1 News Stories with the Word Terrorist in the Headline New York Times

Washington Post

Total

139

148

287

Of the total number of news stories, 144 (50.2%) used at least one word relating to at least one specific religion. The New York Times published 70 news stories (50.4%) with the word terrorist in the headline that made mention of at least one specific religion. The Washington Post published 74 (50.0%). Table 6-2 News Stories with the Word Terrorist in the Headline that Mention a Religion New York Times

1

1

Washington Post

Total

No.

Pct.

No.

Pct.

No.

Pct.

70

50.4%

74

50.0%

144

50.2%

Percentages calculated based on the respective newspaper.

Five religions were specifically mentioned within these stories: Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The percentages are calculated based on the respective newspaper’s total news stories mentioning a religion. At least one mention of Islam was found in the

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greatest number of stories. 65 of the 70 news stories (92.9%) in the New York Times that mentioned a specific religion mentioned Islam. 70 of the 74 stories (94.6%) in the Washington Post that mentioned a specific religion did the same. Christianity was mentioned in nine of the stories (12.9%) in the Times and in four of the stories (5.4%) in the Post. In the Times, Judaism was mentioned in eight stories (11.4%), Hinduism was mentioned in two stories (2.9%), and Buddhism was mentioned in none of the stories. In the Post, Judaism was mentioned in nine stories (12.2%), Hinduism was mentioned in two stories (2.7%), and Buddhism was mentioned in one story (1.4%). Table 6-3 Religions Mentioned in News Stories with the Word Terrorist in the Headline Washington Total New York Times Post No. of No. of No. of Religions1 Pct. Pct. Pct. Stories Stories Stories Islam 65 92.9% 70 94.6% 135 93.8% Christianity 9 12.9% 4 5.4% 13 9.0% Judaism 8 11.4% 9 12.2% 17 11.8% Hinduism 2 2.9% 2 2.7% 4 2.8% Buddhism 0 0.0% 1 1.4% 1 0.7% 1

Some news stories mentioned more than one religion, thus percentages do not total 100%.

Of those religions specifically addressed, Islam was mentioned by far the most frequently. Specific religions were mentioned a total of 616 times. Percentages are again calculated based on each newspaper’s total times mentioning specific religions. Islam represented 527 of these mentions (85.6%). Words lending themselves specifically to Islam were cited 230 times in the New York Times and 297 times in the Washington Post. These numbers represented 81.9 and 88.7% of the mentions of specific religions, respectively. Christianity was mentioned 11 times (3.9%) in the Times and 16 times (4.8%) in the Post. Judaism was mentioned 21 times (7.5%) in the Times and 11 times (3.3%) in the Post. Hinduism was mentioned 19 times (6.8%) in the Times and 10 times (3.0%) in the Post. Finally, Buddhism was never mentioned in the Times and only once (0.3%) in the Post.

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Table 6-4 Frequency of Religions Mentioned in News Stories with the Word Terrorist in the Headline

Religions Islam Christianity Judaism Hinduism Buddhism

New York Times No. of Pct. Times 230 81.9% 11 3.9% 21 7.5% 19 6.8% 0 0.0%

Washington Post No. of Pct. Times 297 88.7% 16 4.8% 11 3.3% 10 3.0% 1 0.3%

Total No. of Pct. Times 527 85.6% 27 4.4% 32 5.2% 29 4.7% 1 0.2%

The implications of coupling terrorists and religion in the news media The word terrorist was located in many news story headlines published in the New York Times and Washington Post within the six-year period analysed. This finding is not surprising, considering the steep rise in U.S. news coverage of terrorist acts since September 11, 2001 (Kern, Just and Morris 2003). However, when examining the subsequent mentions of specific religions, an important pattern emerged. Both newspapers mentioned at least one specific religion in half of all their news stories with the word terrorist in the headline. Each publication directed the reader from the word terrorist in the most prominent portion of the story–the headline–to a reference to a particular religion in half of the stories analysed. This understanding, however, is not nearly as notable as the dispersion of these mentions of specific religions. Of the 144 news stories published in the Times and Post with the word terrorist in the headline that mentioned at least one specific religion, 135 of them mentioned a word specifically pertaining to Islam. This numerical evidence overwhelmingly represents these newspapers’ proneness to couple the word terrorist with a mention of Islam, particularly when examining mentions of specific religions. When a particular religion was

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mentioned, nearly 94% of the news stories analysed drew attention to Islam after first bringing attention to terrorism through the headline. This data represents nearly the entire sample of news stories that mentioned a specific religion, which means that nearly half of all the news stories with the word terrorist in the headline published in the New York Times and Washington Post made at least one mention of a word directly referencing Islam. Furthermore, a word specifically pertaining to Islam was mentioned significantly more frequently in terms of the number of times it was used. A word categorized as referencing Islam represented nearly 86% of the total mentions. A word referencing Judaism represented a distant second with only 5.2% of the total mentions. These findings signify the New York Times and Washington Post’s consistency in pairing the label of terrorist with Muslims. For example, a Washington Post story of May 10, 2007, called “The terrorist next door: Plot suspects lived quietly in suburb,” portrayed a New Jersey family with Muslim neighbours. When some members of the Muslim family were accused of being involved in a terrorist plot, the Post writer labelled them the “jihadists next door.” This type of illustration in a news story may lead news consumers to believe all Muslims, particularly those living in their neighbourhoods, either are or have the potential to become terrorists. The repeated pairing of the words terrorist and Muslims or Islam has enormous potential in creating or reinforcing the stereotype of the ‘Muslim terrorist’. This study’s findings hold significant implications in terms of the priming aspects of media effects. The frequency with which a newspaper headline containing the word terrorist is followed by at least one mention of a word referencing Islam has the potential to shape the views of news media consumers. Prior research has implicated the news media in perpetuating the Muslim terrorist stereotype (Chermak and Gruenewald 2006; Powell 2011). The frequency of this pairing found in this study has the potential to prime these consumers into believing that most terrorists are Muslims. More frighteningly, it has the potential to prime them to believe that most Muslims are terrorists. The priming implications within the media-effects model exemplified here illustrate the news media’s ability to create or perpetuate stereotypes. Through priming, the news media repeatedly exposes news consumers to similar references, which then activates schemas in the mind of the consumer that categorize the information and often generate or recall images of stereotypes. In this case, the Times and Post repeatedly exposed

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their consumers to the word terrorist followed by at least one mention, but often several, of a word related to Islam. This pattern could prime the reader to almost automatically and even subconsciously associate terrorists with Islam and vice versa. Simply put, the Times and Post created the opportunity for news consumers to create or reinforce the stereotype of the ‘Muslim terrorist’. The effects of priming have implications beyond the individual level. Since these newspapers play a role in shaping the national agenda for news, it is reasonable to believe that most news consumers have been primed to associate terrorism and Islam. This connection has repercussions on an international scale. If the priming effects are strong, public opinion could be swayed. The majority of consumers of the New York Times and Washington Post could categorize Muslims as terrorists due to the repeated association of Islam in the news media with the word terrorist. The chain of sociological consequences of these individuals influencing their social circle with this view could progress to a noticeable shift in the larger public opinion. This, of course arguably, may have already occurred. The subsequent effect is a change in public policy. In the United States’ democratic system of government, for example, a shift in public opinion could influence voting results, which has the capacity to affect legislators and legislation. Also, politicians’ opinions are affected by news coverage in the same manner as other news consumers (Domke, Watts, Shah and Fan 1999). One example of a policy change in the U.S. was the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The U.S. government created DHS with the main purpose of protecting the United States from terrorist attacks. Now, DHS, which is the third largest Cabinet department, operates on a multi-billion dollar budget. Again, terrorists are put in a category of otherness, as the U.S. government maintains a Cabinet department whose “highest priority” is “to battle terrorism” and protect “American people from terrorist threats” (U.S. Department of Homeland Security). As such, the magnitude of public opinion and public policy change has obvious international consequences in terms of foreign policy. In this process, it is important to mention again that the word terrorist denotes otherness. Thus, the words often associated with it carry with them a certain degree of otherness. In this case, Muslims–as they are continually found in recent news stories headlined with the word terrorist–

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are being cast as the other by two major U.S. newspapers. This study’s findings indicate that Muslims are being portrayed as the other. It ought to be noted that the connection between Muslims and terrorism is not completely new as a cultural component (Semati 1997; Sharma 2008). Nor is it especially uncharted in the study of news media (Nacos 2007; Rizvi 2005; Said 1997; Semati 2010). In fact, some scholars have connected terrorism to Muslims to otherness (Pintak 2006; Poole 2006; Powell and Abadi 2003; Semati 1997; Semati 2010). The mishandling of Islam within the news media has been well documented as well (Eckstein 2008; Ibrahim 2010; Mishra 2008). However, the structure of this chapter’s study and the clarity of its results, as well as its priming implications, combine all of these facets to better understand the news media’s coverage of terrorists and its connection to and implications toward Islam. As such, the New York Times and Washington Post’s use of the word terrorist in the headlines of news stories with subsequent mentions of words specifically related to Islam may have made Muslims into the other, particularly from a Western perspective. This otherness may then translate into public opinion. If Muslims are considered likely terrorists, policy may reflect the public’s belief in their otherness and treat them as such. This mentality minimizes, if not eliminates, the capacity for empathy by making one quarter of the world’s population non-relatable. Ultimately, this chapter brings to light the connection in verbiage between Muslims and terrorists that is perpetuated by two international leaders in news media. Future research should further vet the news media’s propensity to couple the word terrorist with specific references to Islam. Television and radio news should be further analysed. Also, a closer look at the placement of the words terrorist and terrorism and Muslims and Islam within news stories across mediums may shed more light on how proximity may affect priming. More importantly, the findings presented within this chapter ought to prompt introspection among journalists, journalism instructors and their students to determine if the labels distributed among news stories about terrorists and terrorism are correctly and fairly applied. The results of the study at hand suggest that greater care in the use of the words terrorist and terrorism is needed.

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References Altheide, David L. 1991. “The impact of television news formats on social policy.” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 35: 3-22. Atwater, Tony and Linlin Ku. 1991. “News Time Allocation in Network Crisis Coverage: The Case of TWA Flight 847.” Political Communication and Persuasion 8 (4): 247-256. Bassiouni, M. Cherif. 1981. “Terrorism, Law Enforcement, and the Mass Media: Perspectives, Problems, Proposals.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 72: 1-51. Blumler, Jay G. and Michael Gurevitch. 1982. “The Political Effects of Mass Communication.” In Culture, Society, and the Media, eds. Michael Gurevitch, Tony Bennet, James Curran and Janet Woollacott, 30-47. London: Routledge. BurrellesLuce. 2010. Top Media Outlets: Newspapers, Blogs, Consumer Magazines and Social Networks. http://www.burrellesluce.com/system/files/BL_2010_Top_Media_List _Updated_May202010.pdf, accessed January 12, 2011. Chermak, Steven M. 2002. Searching for a Demon: The Media Construction of the Militia Movement. Northeastern University Press, Boston. Chermak, Steven M. and Jeffrey Gruenewald. 2006. “The Media’s Coverage of Domestic Terrorism.” Justice Quarterly 23 (4): 428-461. Curran, James, Michael Gurevitch and Janet Woollacott. 1982. “The Study of the Media: Theoretical Approaches.” In Culture, Society, and the Media, eds. Michael Gurevitch, Tony Bennet, James Curran and Janet Woollacott, 11-29. London: Routledge. Das, Enny, Brad J. Bushman, Marieke D. Bezemer, Peter Kerkhof and Ivar E. Vermeulen. 2008. “How Terrorism News Reports Increase Prejudice against Outgroups: A Terror Management Account.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45: 453-459. Dearing, James W. and Everett M. Rogers. 1996. Agenda Setting. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Domke, David, Mark D. Watts, Dhavan V. Shah and David P. Fan. 1999. “The Politics of Conservative Elites and the ‘Liberal Media Argument”. Journal of Communication 49 (4): 35-38. Eagly, Alice H. and Shelly Chaiken. 1993. The Psychology of Attitudes. Forth Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace. Eckstein, Paul. 2008. “Islam and the Structure of Global Power.” The Humanist 68 (2): 16-20.

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Epstein, Edward C. 1977. “The Uses of Terrorism: A Study in Media Bias.” Stanford Journal of International Studies 12: 67-78. Fiske, Susan T. and Shelley E. Taylor. 1991. Social Cognition. New York: McGraw-Hill. Hastie, Reid and Bernadette Park. 1986. “The Relationship between Memory and Judgment Depends on Whether the Task is MemoryBased or on-line.” Psychological Review 93: 258-268. Ibrahim, Dina. 2010. “The Framing of Islam on Network News Following the September 11th Attacks.” International Communication Gazette 72 (1): 111-125. Iyengar, Shanto. 1990. “Framing Responsibility for Political Issues: The Case of Poverty.” Political Behavior 12 (1): 19-40. Iyengar, Shanto and Donald R. Kinder. 1987. News that Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jamieson, Kathleen H. and Paul Waldman. 2003. The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories that Shape the Political World. New York: Oxford University Press. Juergensmeyer, Mark. 2000. “Understanding the New Terrorism.” Current History 99: 158-163. Kern, Montague, Marion Just and Pippa Norris. 2003. “The Lessons of Framing Terrorism.” In Framing Terrorism, eds. Pippa Norris, Marion Kern and Montague Just, 281-302. London: Routledge. Kim, Sei-Hill, Miejeong Han and Dietram A. Scheufele. 2010. “Think About him this Way: Priming, News Media, and South Koreans’ Evaluation of the President.” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 22 (3): 299-319. Mishra, Smeeta. 2008. “Islam and Democracy: Comparing post-9/11 Representations in the U.S. Prestige Press in the Turkish, Iraqi, and Iranian Contexts.” The Journal of Communication Inquiry 32 (2): 155178. Nacos, Brigitte. 2010. Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Understanding Threats and Responses in the post-9/11 World. Boston: Longman. —. 2007. Mass-Mediated Terrorism: The Central Role of the Media in Terrorism and Counterterrorism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Norris, Pippa, Montague Kern and Marion Just. 2003. “Framing Terrorism.” In Framing Terrorism, eds. Pippa Norris, Montague Kern and Marion Just, 3-23. London: Routledge. Pintak, Lawrence. 2006. “Framing the Other: Worldview, Rhetoric, and Media Dissonance since 9/11.” In Muslims and the News Media, eds.

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Elizabeth Poole and John E. Richardson, 188-198. New York: I. B. Tauris. Poole, Elizabeth. 2006. “The Effects of September 11 and the War in Iraq on British Newspaper Coverage.” In Muslims and the News Media, eds. Elizabeth Poole and John E. Richardson, 89-102. New York: I. B. Tauris. Powell, Kimberly A. 2011. “Framing Islam: An Analysis of U.S. Media Coverage of Terrorism since 9/11.” Communication Studies 62 (1): 90112. Powell, Kimberly A. and Houda Abadi. 2003. “Us-versus-them: Framing of Islam and Muslims after 9/11.” Iowa Journal of Communication 35 (1): 49-66. Pratt, Douglas. 2010. “Religion and Terrorism: Christian Fundamentalism and Extremism.” Terrorism and Political Violence 22 (3): 439-457. Price, Vincent and David Tewksbury. 1997. “News Values and Public Opinion: A Theoretical Account of Media Priming and Framing.” In Progress in Communication Sciences: Advances in Persuasion, eds. George A. Barett and Franklin J. Boster, 173-212. Greenwich, CT: Ablex. Rizvi, Fazal. 2005. “Representations of Islam and Education for Justice.” In Race, Identity, and Representation in Education, eds. Cameron McCarthy and Warren Crichlow, 167-178. New York: Routledge. Rubenstein, Richard E. 1987. Alchemists of Revolution: Terrorism in the Modern World. New York: Basic Books. Said, Edward W. 1997. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine how we See the Rest of the World. New York: Vintage Books. Scheufele, Dietram A. and David Tewksbury. 2007. “Framing, Agenda Setting, and Priming: The Evolution of Three Media Effects Models.” Journal of Communication 57 (1): 9-20. Schmid, Alex P. and Albert J. Jongman. 1988. Political Terrorism: A New Guide to Actors, Authors, Concepts, Data Bases, Theories, and Literature. Amsterdam: Transaction Books. Semati, Mehdi M. 2010. “Islamophobia, Culture, and Race in the Age of Empire.” Cultural Studies 24 (2): 256-275. —. 1997. “Terrorists, Moslems, Fundamentalists, and Other Bad Objects in the Midst of ‘us’.” The Journal of International Communication 4 (1): 30-49. Sharma, Divya. 2008. “Why Do they Hate U.S.? Exploring the Role of Media in Cultural Communication.” Journal of the Institute of Justice and International Studies 8: 246-262.

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Sheafer, Tamir. 2007. “How to Evaluate it: The Role of Story-Evaluative Tone in Agenda Setting and Priming.” Journal of Communication 57 (1): 21-39. Spencer, Alexander. 2010. The Tabloid Terrorist: The Predicative Construction of New Terrorism in the Media. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Slone, Michelle. 2000. “Responses to Media Coverage of Terrorism.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 44: 508-522. Tourangeau, Roger and Kenneth A. Rasinski. 1988. “Cognitive Processes Underlying Context Effects in Attitude Measurement.” Psychological Bulletin 103 (3): 299-314. Tversky, Amos and Daniel Kahneman. 1973. “Availability – Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability.” Cognitive Psychology 5: 207-232 U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Counterterrorism. http://www.dhs.gov/files/counterterrorism.shtm, accessed January 27, 2011. U.S. Department of State. 2006. Country Reports on Terrorism. http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2006/82726.htm, accessed January 27, 2011. Wanta, Wayne and Yu-Wei Hu. 1993. “The Agenda-Setting Effects of International News Coverage: An Examination of Differing News Frames.” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 5: 250263.

CHAPTER SEVEN TERRORIST LABELLING AND EUROPEAN FOREIGN POLICY-MAKING: A (NEW) WEAKENING TOOL? SIDNEY LECLERCQ

Introduction The attacks of September 11, 2001 constitute a rupture in international politics resulting in the rise of terrorism on top of the international agenda. In this particular context, the European Union (EU), international actor in the making, saw a need–and a political opportunity–to strengthen its internal cooperation in the struggle against the phenomenon. A major impulse in that direction was given with the erection of a list of organizations and individuals henceforth labelled as terrorists to whom financial sanctions would apply. With 47 organizations in 2009, the list has been the focus of many studies, comments and debates. Most attention has been on the internal and fundamental rights dimensions of the document. However, the meaning of portraying complex movements as terrorist organizations, along with the implications with regard to specificities of EU foreign policy-making and its positioning on the international scene have remained largely unexplored. In other words, what does a list of terrorist organizations represent for the European Union as an actor seeking influence and recognition? Does such a list properly integrate EU foreign policy? How does it alter and/or shape it? The case of Hamas is used as entry point to the analysis.

Deconstructing terrorist labelling The word terrorism has a multitude of meanings, both historical and present. A simple etymological detour shows its use to qualify violence against the state, violence by the latter, a mode of revolutionary action, a

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nationalist or separatist struggle, a religious fight, an apocalyptic prophecy, a tool for organized crime and many others (Chaliand and Blin 2004). Not only has its meaning evolved over time, but it also has multiplied, developed in opposite directions and, last but not least, seen superposition in its (opposite) uses. The evolution, multiplication, antonymy and superposition of the term have made its understanding elusive and complex. The lack of definition by the United Nations (UN) and the arduous mobilization of the concept in academia further reflect the difficulty of any universal or intelligible apprehension of the phenomenon. To approach terrorism, numerous authors and international organizations have used typologies, often based on the nature of the organizational structure of the particular group, its operating procedures–the UN approach1–or finalities. However, these approaches only classify realities already perceived as terrorist, hence not resolving the definitional issue. Every attempt to academically define terrorism, either by its objectives, means or its desired effects, has had important shortcomings such as assimilating the term to political violence, presuming that certain means are exclusively terrorist or having recourse to hardly quantifiable subjective considerations (Duez 2002, 109-111). As Didier Bigo summarizes, “terrorism does not exist: or more precisely, it is not a usable concept in social sciences” (2005, para.1). What, then, is terrorism? As illustrated, the semantic plurality of the term constitutes a major obstacle to any definitional undertaking. Nevertheless, this very definitional incapacity and the reasons behind it have fundamental heuristic value and force one to change perspective. If obstacles stem from the meaning actors put into the word, the focus should drift away from the term itself to concentrate on its use. Indeed, terrorism can be perceived as a weapon in the symbolic and political conflict (Bigo 2005, para.4). Henceforth, the question is not whether violent acts can be defined as terrorism or its actors as terrorists but whether or not they are actually qualified as such (Barrinha 2008, 4). That is the core issue of terrorist labelling.

1

Since 1963, thirteen international legal instruments have been promulgated by the UN in that regard, such as the Hostages Convention, the Civil Aviation Convention or the Plastic Explosives Convention, thus avoiding the political sensitivity of a definition (Golder and Williams 2004, 273).

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Just like the pirate or the brigand, the terrorist can be analysed as a form of label of the other. As such, its simple use triggers a triple-folded process (Ill. 7-1). First, it qualifies an act of violence and its author(s), but does so in a reductive manner. The complexities of an actor–individual or collective, its struggle, its motives–all seem to be essentialized into a single identity. The sociological theory of labelling further confirms this reductive tendency by asserting that the process conceals the multiple facets of the actor labelled, whose principal identity is now made of the characteristics associated with the label (Ritzer and Smart 2002, 223). “Once assigned, the power of a name is such that the process by which the name was selected generally disappears and a series of normative associations, motives and characteristics are attached to the named subject …” (Bhatia 2005, 5, italics in original).

Illustration 7-1: Terrorist labelling process. Own source.

Second, all the characteristics, motives or values associated with the actor labelled seem to merge, in the case of terrorism, into the single formula ‘the devil’, immediately disqualifying the actor. The process polarizes positions into a good-versus-evil approach. It is clear that following 9/11 actors had to choose sides, any form of nuance seeming unjustifiable (ibid, 8). The disqualification consequently removes the

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legitimacy of the other's fight to the benefit of the labeller’s interpretation of (social) reality. The third dimension is the justification of a response outside of the classical political framework. The terrorist being assimilated with the devil has lost its political dimension, becoming apolitical and allowing a fight exceeding the conflict realm itself. Like the label of the pirate justified that “all mankind must declare war against him” (Sir Blackstone 1765-1769, 5.iii, italics added by author), or the brigand justified laws of exceptions and a reformulation of the distribution of powers (Berger 2009, 12), the terrorist justifies a response outside the conventional political and legal framework.

European terrorist lists: Fitting the bill? An important step has been taken after 9/11 with the erection of an EU terrorist list of individuals and groups.2 Although terrorism has always been the main driving force behind closer European cooperation in criminal matters, the attacks in the United States provoked an acceleration of this integration dynamic (Weyemberg 2002, 295). By December 2001, the EU had created its list3 along with a Common Position detailing the modalities, all under the framework of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) (CEU 2001a, 2001b). Adopting a self-determined list constitutes an important milestone as the EU risks itself to commonly define which group or individual is to be considered terrorist, with the political and symbolic consequences–advantages and prejudices–implied for its anti-terrorist agenda, the compatibility with its other agendas, its perception of the world and the perception the world will have of it. Four elements are fundamental to the understanding of European terrorist labelling: the notion of a terrorist act, the inclusion criteria, the functioning of the list and its scope. The EU sets out what it means by a terrorist act in the Common Position 2001/931/CFSP. The first striking element is that many expressions used in the text, like “by its nature or context”, “seriously” or “fundamental structures”, leave room for a wide array of interpretations of what such an act could be (CEU 2001b). Ergo, 2

A previous list, only targeting the Taliban and Al Qaeda, was already in force since 1999 in the EU. It was, however, a servile reproduction of a pre-established UN document (UNSC 1999), the EU having had no say in its content (Bailleux and Meerbeeck 2007, 143). 3 This list is now requested by the UN Security Council (UNSC 2001).

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the definition of these acts remains rather opaque and imprecise. Likewise, the inclusion criteria suffer from the same symptoms, basing the blacklisting on elements such as “precise information” or “serious and credible evidence or clues”. These criteria also reveal that a prior conviction is optional in order to be included on the list. An individual or group can be labelled as terrorist without having stood any trial. This clearly denotes the “out of conventional framework” nature of the terrorist label and hence paves the way for a form of reconfiguration of the executive and judiciary powers. The Council manages the list and decides, unanimously and at least twice a year, on its revision or modification. A working group that is denominated the clearing house prepares its decisions. Designated by the press as the “most secretive working group in Brussels” (Bouilhet 2006), the composition or decision-making process of this body–or to many even its very existence–is unknown. Contrasting with the vagueness of the three first elements, the scope of the list is diaphanous. The sanctions related to the lists are only of financial nature and do not govern diplomatic relations or political actions of the Council. An answer from the latter to a European parliamentary inquiry on the consequences of the inclusion of a terrorist group on the list is clear: “The Council ... does not take any measure to implement the decision” (Council 2004). Looking back to the deconstruction of terrorist labelling and confronting it with the European listing, two main reflections can be drawn. First, the opacity around the definition, the criteria and inclusion procedure of the list of terrorists seems inadequate if the important symbolic and political stakes of the label are considered. However, it denotes the extraordinary character of terrorist labelling compared to a classical judicial procedure, for which a sanction is only carried out when the conviction has been ruled and the rights of defence respected. Thus, we can consider that the EU gives itself important flexibility and arbitrariness, and consequently also a strong political dimension to the list. The apolitical nature of terrorism would therefore justify a certain lack of clarity in the decision-making process related to the list. Nonetheless, as evoked, one element does not fit the model: the clarity of the scope of the list. At this stage, there appears to be a dissonance between, on the one hand, the political and symbolic ramifications apriori linked to terrorist labelling and, on the other, its European application, which limits itself to financial sanctions.

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European terrorist labelling in motion: The case of Hamas Building on the previous sections, two hypotheses seem to emerge. First, the anticipated apolitical dimension of the fight against terrorism actually reinforces the political character of the label, making it a tool of the CFSP. Second, the exceptional nature of EU blacklisting conditions its foreign policy by imposing the triple-folded process inherent to the label, thus, exceeding the legal consequences of the list itself. To test those hypotheses, the Palestinian Islamic resistance movement Hamas has been chosen. This selection is justified by two elements. Foremost, Hamas offers key momentums for the analysis of European terrorist labelling in relation to its foreign policy: the inscription of the movement on the list and the policy adopted following the legislative elections of 2006. Secondly, the movement also imposed itself due to the significance of the Middle East–the “strategic priority”–in the discourse of the Union, formally embedded in the CFSP since its creation in 1992 (European Council 1992).

Blacklisting Hamas: Fight against terrorism or tool of CFSP? During the Second Intifada, Hamas perpetrated, on June 11, 2003, a suicide attack in Jerusalem that killed 17 people. The EU strongly condemned the attack and called on Hamas to renounce violence–a classic attitude of the EU in these circumstances (CFSP-HR 2003). One new element, however, stood out. Speaking through its High Representative, Javier Solana, the EU warned the movement of finding ways to end all its foreign aid. In other words, the EU was considering the inclusion of Hamas on its list of terrorist organizations.4 Part of the agenda of the meeting of foreign ministers in Luxembourg five days after the suicide bombing, the decision to include Hamas on the list only occurred on September 6, 2003. An analysis of these three months of discussions reveals a four-folded political aspect to the inclusion. Firstly, the terrorist nature of the acts is never questioned. The remarks 4

It shall be recalled, however, that the military wing of Hamas (the martyr brigades Ezzedine al-Qassam) has been on the list since December 2001. The proposed inscription concerned the entire Hamas, including its political activities and social network, along with its military wing.

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made by Javier Solana on June 13, 2003 exemplify that consensus: “In the light of the tragic events of the last days and, in particular, of the terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas […]” (CFSP-HR 2003). If the Union describes the act as terrorist and identifies its authors, the inclusion itself– given the inclusion criteria of the Common Position 2001/931/CFSP– should leave no doubt. The occurrence of discussions therefore suggests that other dynamics take precedence in deciding whether or not the inscription takes place. The lack of transparency of the procedure gives more leeway to the Council in its decision-making process and allows for additional parameters to be applied. Secondly, the process of inscription can only be understood in the light of the political developments of the conflict and negotiations in the field. Three phases can be identified: talks between the Palestinian factions for a ceasefire; signature of a ceasefire on June 29 by the three main Palestinian factions including Hamas; and the breaking of the ceasefire by Hamas on August 19 with a suicide bombing in Jerusalem. Likewise, three stages of the European decision-making regarding the issue can be distinguished: on June 13, a post-attack rhetoric of threats against the movement to bring it to the negotiating table; the decision, on July 3, not to decide the fate of Hamas due to the changing situation on the ground; and the choice to include Hamas on the terrorist list on September 6 following the attack of August 19. A simple superposition of these two timeframes (Ill. 7-2) shows their inevitable interdependence. Field developments

EU discussions

Talks

Threats

Ceasefire

Postponement of decision

Breaking of ceasefire

Inscription

Illustration 7-2: Interdependence of field developments and EU discussions. Own source.

Thirdly, given the previous elements, it is evident that terrorist labelling was used as a tool of foreign policy. Consecutively as threat, reward and sanction, it acted as weapon in a double-folded strategy of contributing to the conflict resolution process as well as being a player in that process. In its three functions, the label has been instrumentalized in a short-term strategy of European diplomacy, confirming earlier assumptions.

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Lastly, an additional symptom of political instrumentalization needs to be highlighted. When Hamas was finally included in the list, neither its members nor its officers or the charities suspected of raising its funds were specifically added to the list (Zecchini 2003). Considering the “fight against the financing of terrorism” objective of the list, these restrictions appear to significantly reduce its practical efficacy. Labelling Hamas therefore seems more akin to a political opportunity in the conflict than the consequence of a conviction based on a systematic application of the label to the perpetrators of acts identified as terrorist.

Terrorist labelling and post-electoral policy From the inclusion of the Islamic movement on the terrorist list until the legislative elections of 2006, the EU attitude towards Hamas was ambiguous and fluctuating (ICG 2006). As an important actor of development cooperation in the Occupied Territories, the EU had to deal with a movement that was impossible to circumvent on the operational level but seemingly beyond the pale because of its terrorist identity. Its position towards the presence of Hamas on the list of the legislative elections reflected this schizophrenia. The EU simultaneously pronounced itself against the participation of armed groups in the elections, for the running of elections despite this presence, and finally against Israeli efforts aimed at hindering the Hamas campaign (Malley 2006). On January 25, 2006, however, the EU no longer faces only a popular party or a terrorist movement, but also the winner of legislative elections. The victory of Hamas made the previous attitude impossible to sustain and called into question the long-established relations with the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) government. Moreover, the ballot could not be challenged. The electoral observation missions were clear: the elections were free and fair, the organization well managed, and the participation massive (EU Election Mission Observation 2006). The EU is a singular actor in Palestine. Not only is it the most important donor to the PA, but it primarily finances its institutions to enhance their development and stability. The presence of the EU also included civilian European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) missions, and funds towards NGOs or through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). By being a singular actor, the chosen strategy will also have singular consequences. The political and economic strategy of the EU after the elections can be summarized in three lines: suspend the

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funding and programmes that have any connection with the PA government; look for alternatives to economically support Palestinians; and diplomatically and politically isolate the new government. The EU also conditioned the resumption of assistance to the three criteria of the Quartet5: recognizing Israel, ending violence and recognizing the previous agreements and obligations. Rigour and flexibility (Solana 2006) were the basic principles with which Javier Solana justified the European policy toward Hamas: rigour in preventing Hamas from meeting its governing prerogatives, and flexibility to adapt to the reality by finding alternative solutions, promoting the Presidency–held by Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas–, and isolating the Hamas-led government. The European policy orientation was confirmed on two subsequent occasions: when it did not change its attitude toward the national unity government formed in February 20076, and when the EU actually reversed its position following the appointment of an interim government by Mahmoud Abbas7 in June 2007, establishing again political and economic cooperation with the PA. Three questions arise from the EU policy regarding terrorist labelling: If a link exists between the policy orientation and the presence of Hamas, what is its nature? Has the label limited the range of options available to the EU? Has it justified the policy? To embark on a reflection on the link between the terrorist list and the chosen policy is to analyse the relationship between a legal document on the one side and a policy option on the other, in order to determine whether a causal relationship exists. A first level of analysis is the legality of such a link. In other words, was the European policy a mere operationalization of the European blacklist? As previously emphasized, the legal scope of the list only allowed for economic sanctions. Thus, at first sight, there is no explicit connection between the orientation of the EU and the terrorist list. Nevertheless, if it is not a mere operationalization of the list, it still seems to be a function of the label. Indeed, “the reasoning seems to be that any political contact is ruled out, in analogy with the labelling of an organization as terrorist” 5

The quartet (the EU, U.S., Russia and the UN) is in charge of representing the international community in the negotiation of a peace agreement in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. 6 The coalition consists of different Palestinian factions, mainly Hamas and Fatah. 7 Following a period of conflict in 2007, a political and geographic division of Palestine occurred, with Fatah taking over power from the PA in the West Bank and Hamas taking control of Gaza.

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(Hellquist 2006, 11). The theoretical model of terrorist labelling can explain that connection by emphasizing the crucial importance of the political and symbolic dimensions of the terrorist label. These dimensions act as a Pandora’s box for the legal consequences, confirming the “out of conventional framework response” aspect of a terrorist label (Ill. 7-3).

Terrorist list of the European Union

Legal scope of the list

Political and symbolic dimensions of terrorist labelling

European postelectoral policy

Illustration 7-3: Linkage of legal consequences and policy. Own source.

If the disqualification of Hamas generates an impossibility–not per se but de facto–to negotiate or maintain any kind of relations, the list inevitably conditioned the EU response to the victory of the Islamic movement. In fact, while a range of options was available to the Council (in the level of sanctions and forms of diplomatic and political relations, both formal and informal), the terrorist label has circumscribed the possible course of action to a limited number of radical options (Hellquist 2006, 12). The terrorist label has turned from a tool of foreign policy into a constraint. Not only did the terrorist label reduce the spectrum of political options of the EU, but it also justified the one chosen. An analysis of the discourses of European diplomats shows that the presence of the movement on the list is used to explain the policy adopted.8 As such, the label appeared to be an exogenous element, an unquestionable fact, independent from the Union’s will (Hellquist 2006, 18). It takes the form of an apolitical document, which no one can influence, but from which actions arise. Terrorist labelling lives on the paradox of opening the way to larger consequences than the ones envisaged, but with the same logic it constrains European diplomacy to a specific set of sanctions.

8

"Ultimately, the unwillingness of Hamas to come into line with our principles […], along with the fact that Hamas appears on the European list of terrorist organisations, must inevitably have consequences for the EU: the impossibility of regarding Hamas as a valid Partner until it changes its stance" (Solana 2006).

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Between tool and handicap: A weakening label Based on criteria developed by Joseph Jupille and James Caporaso (1998), this contribution finally intends to infer conclusions of the impact of terrorist labelling as a form of othering on the actorness of the EU in international relations. According to Delcourt, these indicators have a heuristic value, both internal–by framing the research–and external–by allowing to use those parameters uniformly on other aspects of EU external relations (2000, 523). The first criterion for an actor wishing to play a role in international relations is its external recognition. This does not presume its influence but simply recognizes its presence in international politics. Vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the external recognition cannot be challenged and is found at different levels: commercial, development, political and diplomatic. EU recognition also stems from third party expectations. In a 1993 article, updated in 1998, Christopher Hill develops this concept of expectations of the EU (1993, 1998). He associates it with the concept of capability the EU holds to live up to the expectations, and he identifies a series of “capability-expectations gaps” (1993, 306). A major expectation towards the EU was for it to become “a second western voice in international diplomacy” (ibid, 311). This expectation seemed particularly important in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for which the EU “appeared, in the division of roles with Washington, as the ‘sponsor’ of the Palestinians” (Remacle 2006, 69). In this sense, the post-electoral European policy, conditioned by the presence of Hamas on the list of terrorist organizations, has diminished the expectations of the international community, particularly of the Palestinians and the Arab countries. It lost part of its specificity, guaranteeing its recognition and, in fine, its actorness. Finally, recognition is a two-way process. Thus, by not recognizing the PA government under Hamas, the EU denied its own recognition. Consequently, it cannot play an effective role in IsraeliPalestinian affairs linked to Hamas even though its actorness in the Second Intifada (until the inscription of Hamas) was essential on many occasions, especially during the negotiations of ceasefires (Hroub, 2008, 158-159). Authority to act externally is the second parameter of the EU’s actorness. Authority here means the “EU’s legal competence in a given subject matter” (Caporaso and Jupille 1998, 216), or the legal capacity delegated by the member states to EU institutions. A few reflections can be drawn from the impact of EU terrorist labelling on its authority.

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Foremost, by establishing the list, member states have reinforced the legal capacity of the EU. Indeed, they have de facto provided the CFSP with a new diplomatic instrument. However, if the inscription on the list is a tool in itself, the actual presence of a movement on this list is a handicap. The political spill-over, intrinsic to the symbolic stakes of labelling, acts as legal constraint, and no longer as political opportunity. The spill-over is accentuated by the legalization of EU foreign policy. The latter still being in construction, its embedment into law is necessary to its existence and expansion, which allows for some predictability (Smith 2001, 81-82). Nevertheless, with predictability comes a form of rigidity. Terrorist labelling therefore exacerbates the limits of legalization for the construction of the CFSP by amputating part of the necessary flexibility of any foreign policy. Even though effects are difficult to quantify, it is evident that the rigidifying consequences of labelling Hamas as a terrorist organization in the Palestinian post-electoral European policy have been larger than the ceasefire–then broken–of 2003. The third criterion is autonomy, namely an institutional distinction and independence from other actors (Petiteville 2009, 196). The autonomy of the EU stems from its member states as well as from other international actors. In the Middle East peace process, the EU’s institutional distinction is shaped by its presence in the Quartet, the existence of a High Representative for the CFSP, the Special Envoy to the Middle East or the Commissioner for External Relations. Immediately after the inscription of Hamas on the list of terrorist organizations, all of these actors have suspended their contacts with the movement. Member states have followed this path, justified by the presence of Hamas on the list. But while the EU has not reversed its position later on, certain member states have progressively distanced themselves from this attitude.9 By doing so, they take back, de facto, foreign policy competences, otherwise enjoyed by the EU’s CFSP. An external loss of autonomy is also inherent to the consequences of this form of othering. In fact, during the Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2008-2009, the EU had to rely on third-party actors to try to play a role in a ceasefire, especially Turkey (Solana 2009). Terrorist labelling, in its formal or operational consequences, lessened EU external and internal autonomy.

9

In 2008, for instance, France’s Foreign Minister justified contacts with the movement by saying: “We need to be able to dialogue and we hope for our emissaries to be able to enter Gaza if we want to play a role” (Kouchner 2008).

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Last but not least, the forth parameter to the EU’s actorness is cohesion (Caporaso and Jupille, 200, 218-219). It can be defined “at least, as a lack of contradictions and, at best, as a harmonization of policies, approaches, instruments” (Martinelli 2008, 23). Because it has to be negotiated at multiple levels, the EU’s quest for cohesion is one of its hardest challenges (Petiteville 2009, 196). Two major issues of cohesion have emerged from terrorist labelling and its ramifications. For one, there exist double standards in European terrorist labelling. While it is scientifically hazardous to compare two movements, some similarities between Hamas and Hezbollah are relevant to the issue at hand. Both have distinctive political and armed wings (Mervin 2008, 340); a strong socio-religious heritage perpetuated through an important network of services to the populations (Catusse and Alagha 2008, 117-123); have used and claimed suicide bombings against civilians; and have not recognized the three conditions of the Quartet. Despite these elements, European policy towards Hezbollah is radically different, for neither the political nor the armed wing was added to the list. Even though justifications can be found to this differential treatment,10 none is related to the terrorist nature of their acts. All are political or symbolic. And, for another, European terrorist labelling has had tremendous negative impact on the cohesion of its democratization and state-building agendas. The approach promoted by the EU for the Middle East can be found in the Berlin Declaration of 1999: The European Union is convinced that the creation of a democratic, viable and peaceful sovereign Palestinian State on the basis of existing agreements and through negotiations would be the best guarantee of Israel's security and Israel's acceptance as an equal partner in the region (European Council 1999).

The 18.5 million euros EU contribution to the 2006 elections is in line with the overall claimed strategy in the region. Consequently, the EU’s post-electoral policy is contradictory on two levels: it did not recognize the outcome of an election it greatly contributed to and promoted, endangering its advocacy for democracy; and it jeopardized the institutions it considerably financed and thus the perspective of a viable Palestinian state. 10

While no official explanation has been given, some factors can be identified: the absence of a political opportunity to use the “inscription card”; the consequences a Hezbollah terrorist labelling would have on relations with member states’ soldiers in the UN Mission in Lebanon (UNIFIL); the fragile political environment; or the sensitivity of the symbolic message it would send to the Lebanese Shiite community in a multi-confessional political system (Mansour 2009).

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By adopting this attitude, the EU contributed to a weakening of Palestinian social and political cohesion. Following crises such as Rwanda or Bosnia, the EU developed the concepts of root causes of conflict and of structural stability, the first referring to causes such as poverty, social inequalities, violations of human rights, the legitimacy of power or any other social, economic and political cause of conflicts; the second being reached when the social, economic and institutional structures are “able to peacefully reabsorb the tensions” (Santopinto 2008, 52). An unconditional support to the losing party of the elections, Fatah, provoked a radicalization of both Hamas and Fatah, which in turn made the formation of a unitary government difficult and contributed to the degradation of their relations, to the conflict, to a civil war situation and in fine to the political and geographic division of Palestine. Obviously, the EU is not solely responsible for the sequence of events. Nevertheless, it contributed to these dynamics and against its own positions. Portraying the other in international relations does not come without consequences. For the European Union, labelling Hamas as a terrorist organization has had a tremendous impact on its own capacity to act on the international stage. The application of Jupille and Caporaso’s four criteria of actorness has allowed for the canalization of these impacts on its policy. Their analysis clearly revealed that terrorist labelling in its essence or consequences has weakened–and continues to weaken–the European Union’s actorness. The flagrant opposition of a tool of foreign policy and all its other agendas reflects the risk of using a single lens to approach the complexity of an actor or situation. Terrorist labelling fractures a multidimensional approach that considers the diverse intricacies and roots of any conflict or post-conflict situation. As a concluding matter, it is ironic to remark that incoherence or difficulties of the CFSP are often attributed to the division of member states on a given issue. In this case, however, the weakening of the EU is not caused by their division but by their unanimous agreement, every semester, to inscribe an individual or group on a list.

References Bailleux, Antoine and Jérémie van Meerbeeck. 2007. “Droit de l’Homme, Droit Pénal et Droit Communautaire à Luxembourg. Enjeux, Paradoxes et Difficultés d’un Ménage à Trois.“ In Les Droits de l’Homme, Bouclier ou Épée du Droit Pénal? eds. Yves Cartuyvels et

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al., 117-174. Brussels: Editions Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis Bruxelles & Bruylant. Barrinha, André. 2008. “The Terrorist Label in Securitised Conflicts: Turkey’s Discourse on the PKK.” Paper presented at the annual conference of the International Studies Association, San Francisco, California, March 26-29. Berger, Emmanuel. 2009. “Quand l’Insécurité Sert le Pouvoir Exécutif.” Politique. Revues de Débats 59 (April): 9-12. Bhatia, Michael V. 2005. “Fighting Words: Naming Terrorists, Bandits Rebels and Other Violent Actors.” Third World Quarterly 26 (1): 5-22. Bigo, Didier. 2005. “L’Impossible Cartographie du Terrorisme.” Cultures & Conflits, original articles. Sir Blackstone, William. 1765-1769. “Commentaries on the Laws of England.” Adelaide: University of Adelaide Library, http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/blackstone/william/comment/a, accessed August 3, 2011. Bouilhet, Alexandrine. 2006. “Les Tigres du Sri Lanka sur la Liste Noire de l’UE.” Le Figaro, May 20. Caporaso, James and Jupille, Joseph. 1998. “States, Agency and Rules: The European Union in Global Environment Politics.” In The European Union in the World Community, ed. Carolyn Rhodes, 213229. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Catusse, Myriam and Alagha, Joseph. 2008. “Les Services Sociaux du Hezbollah. Effort de Guerre, Ethos Religieux et Ressources Politiques.” In Le Hezbollah, État des Lieux, ed. Sabrina Mervin, 117140. Arles: Actes Sud. Chaliand, Gérard and Blin, Arnaud. 2004. Histoire du Terrorisme. De l’Antiquité à Al Qaida. Paris: Bayard. Council of the European Union. 2004. Response to the Parliamentary Question by Ilka Schröder. E-009/04, January 12. —. 2001a. Council Common Position on Combating Terrorism. 2001/930/CFSP, December 27. —. 2001b. Council Common Position on the Application of Specific Measures to Combat Terrorism. 2001/931/CFSP, December 27. Delcourt, Barbara. 2000. “L’Union Européenne: Acteur des Relations Internationales? Autorité, Autonomie, et Cohérence de l’UE dans la Crise au Kosovo.” In Annuaire Français de Relations Internationales, eds. Serge Sur and Jean-Jacques Roche, 522-531. Brussels: Bruylant. Duez, Denis. 2002. “De la Définition à la Labellisation: Le Terrorisme comme Construction Sociale.” In Le Droit International Face au

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Terrorisme, eds. Karine Bannelier et al., 105-118. Paris: Editions Pedone. European Council. 1999. Presidency Conclusions. Berlin, March 24-25. —. 1992. Conclusions of the European Council. Annex I. June 26-27. EU Election Observation Mission West Bank & Gaza. 2006. Statement of Preliminary Conclusions and Findings. Jerusalem, January 26. Golder, Ben and Williams, George. 2004. “What is ‘Terrorism’? Problems of Legal Definition.” UNSW Law Journal 27 (2): 270-295. Hellquist, Elin. 2006. “Outlawing Hamas: An Illustration of the High Stakes of Legalisation.” Master Thesis. Lund University. Hill, Christopher. 1998. “Closing the Capability-Expectations Gap?” In A Common Foreign Policy for Europe? Competing Visions of the CFSP, eds. John Peterson and Helene Sjursen, 18-38. London: Routledge. —. 1993. “The Capability-Expectations Gap, or Conceptualizing Europe’s International Role.” Journal of Common Market Studies 3 (3): 305328. Hroub, Khaled. 2008. Le Hamas. Paris: Demopolis. International Crisis Group. 2006. “Enter Hamas: The Challenges of Political integration.” Middle East Report 49. La presse canadienne. 2003. L’Union Européenne Met en Garde le Hamas. June 13. Malley, Robert. 2006. “Prendre l'Ascendant sur le Hamas.” Le Monde, January 24. Mansour, Camille. 2009. Interview by author. Bir Zeit, April 21. Martinelli, Marta. 2008. Introduction to L’Union Européenne et la Gestion de Ccrises, eds. Barbara Delcourt, Marta Martinelli and Emmanuel Klimis, 21-24. Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles. Mervin, Sabrina. 2008. “Chronologie.” In Le Hezbollah, État des Lieux, ed. Sabrina Mervin, 339-346. Arles: Actes Sud. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, France. 2008. Interview between the Minister of European and Foreign Affairs, M. Bernard Kouchner, and Europe 1. May 19. Petiteville, Franck. 2006. La Politique Internationale de l’Union Européenne. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Remacle, Eric. 2006. “Les Leçons pour l’Europe Après la Guerre du Liban: Quelles Clés pour Analyser la PESC? ” Eyes on Europe 5: 6871. Ritzer, George and Smart, Barry. 2003. Handbook of Social Theory. London: Sage Publications. Santopinto, Federico. 2008. “L’UE et la Gestion de Crises: Le Rôle de la Commission Européenne.” In L’Union Européenne et la Gestion de

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Crises, ed. Barbara Delcourt, Marta Martinelli and Emmanuel Klimis, 47-64. Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles. Smith, Michael E. 2001. “Diplomacy by Decree: The Legalization of EU Foreign Policy.” Journal of Common Market Studies 39 (1): 79-104. Solana, Javier. 2009. EU High Representative for the CFSP, Calls for Ceasefire in Gaza During Visit to the Middle East and Turkey. S004/09, January 9. —. 2004. Remarks by the EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, on the Latest Developments in the Middle East. Brussels, S0133/03, June 13. United Nations Security Council. 2001. Resolution 1373. S/RES/1373 (2001), September 28. —. 1999. Resolution 1267. S/RES/1267 (1999), October 15. Weyembergh, Anne. 2002. “Coopération Pénale Européenne Face Terrorisme: Rupture ou Continuité.” In Le Droit International Face au Terrorisme, eds. Karine Bannelier et al., 279-295. Paris: Editions Pedone. Zecchini, Laurent. 2003. “Les Européens Décident d’Inscrire le Hamas sur Leur ‘Liste Terroriste’.” Le Monde, September 9.

SECTION III: OVERCOMING (DESTRUCTIVE) OTHERING: TRANSFORMATIVE POTENTIAL

CHAPTER EIGHT TRANSFORMING DISCOURSES OF OTHERNESS: THE ROLE OF THE MASS MEDIA IN GREEKTURKISH RELATIONS ELENA LAZAROU

Introduction Discourses of otherness have–explicitly or implicitly–been used to support foreign policy decisions in various geographical and chronological contexts. Some have argued that they do so by establishing a cause-effect relationship between identity and foreign policy, while others, following the critical constructivist framework, have understood policy as a representational practice that secures and reproduces identities defined within the self-other context (e.g. Rumelili 2004). While the latter observation serves to explain path dependency and continuity in foreign policy, it fails to explain foreign policy transformation and the transformation of conflict, especially conflict transformation where “the way actors see themselves and relate to each other will have been transformed to such an extent that they will not resort to violent means, and ideally will change their identity so that conflict is fundamentally altered” (Diez, Agnantopoulos and Kaliber 2005, 565-66). This chapter argues that one essential factor in facilitating the process of this ideational and discursive transformation is communication, as represented, among other things, by the media. Using the case of the Greek-Turkish conflict transformation, the chapter isolates the print media as a factor and examines in detail the construction and deconstruction of discourses of otherness. It also relates these discourses to two significant foreign policy developments, which were critical in the course of bilateral relations and in their transformation from a condition of conflict to one of rapprochement: the Imia/Kardak crisis of 1996 and its follow-up; and the lift of the Greek veto on Turkish accession to the EU in 1999. The final

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section relates the evolution of discourses in the media to foreign policy developments.

The media as ‘discourse transformers’ The idea of media carrying significant power to affect policy outcomes and, consequently, policy transformation is a fundamental assumption of media and communication studies. More recently, this view has also been imported to constructivist studies of international relations. According to theories of the public sphere, the mass media are an institutionalized forum of debate, which serves as a central linkage between the public and the institutional structure. In this function, they are conveyors of information about issues and actors according to their professional norms and values. However, the media should not be regarded as merely serving other actors as communication channel, forum for exchange and medium of selfobservation of society, but media should also be seen as a political actor in the public sphere with a legitimate own voice (Page 1996). They do so in particular by assigning relevance to issues for public debate, by setting the agenda1 and by expressing their own opinion. They also are able to shape the way in which events are transmitted and perceived, a process referred to as framing (Entman 1993). The above suggest that the media hold the power to facilitate change by including new policies in the public agenda and legitimizing them by framing them in a positive context, and by privileging sources of authority which commend the changes. In this way, these policies become acceptable to the public audiences and, thus, possible options for the executive power, which in liberal democracies ultimately relies on public consent. In this way, the media may act as agents of change, by promoting new discourses or, in the opposite case, as veto players, persisting on the reproduction of traditional and path-dependent ideas and discourses and resisting to policy change National foreign policy is a suitable field for the study of these assumptions, as it is high in ideational content, closely related to discourses of national identity and national interests, and framed within a context of values and guiding principles embedded in a given society. Therefore, for foreign policy transformation to occur, the mobilization of 1

On agenda-setting in the mass media see McCombs and Shaw (1972); Fulton, Helen. 2005. Narratives in the Media, CUP.

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the media as an agent of change, promoting a new perception of the world and the state’s interests and identity in it, may constitute a necessary precondition. In cases of conflict transformation, this ‘new perception’ goes hand-in-hand with the transformation of a discourse of otherness in the framing of the other party. As Keohane (2001) points out: …actors’ interests, preferences and perceptions are subject to discursive challenges; human and social actors are prepared to change their views of the world if it is rationally proven to them that their interests lie elsewhere in a new given environment (10).

Consequently, if actors such as the media view the benefits offered by endorsing fewer discourses of otherness as greater than those resulting from persisting on traditional national discourse (e.g. in foreign policy), they may be persuaded to promote new discursive constructions and thereby act as agent of change. Thus, the ideas of persuasion and transformation are equally central to the understanding of the role of the media in the constructivist research agenda and, for the purposes of this chapter, as actors in their own right in the reconstruction of the framing of the other and the subsequent effects on the transformation of foreign policy and bilateral relations. The analysis here uses the case of the Greek media to explore their role as agents in the reconfiguration of discourses on Turkey’s otherness, and in the transformation of the Greek-Turkish relationship from conflict to rapprochement.

Greek-Turkish relations and the Greek press: The othering of Turkey Until recently the scholarly literature has concurred that by and large the Greek press has contributed to the perpetuation of the turbulent relationship between Greece and Turkey by emphasizing nationalism in the Greek public space and by representing Turkey as the other, along with the negative connotations that this entails. Thus, it has been argued that the mass media have played a significant role in the process of reproduction and reinforcement of ethnocentric and nationalist discourses (Ozgunes and Terzis 2000) and that the conflicts in the Aegean and in Cyprus could have been resolved a long time ago, had it not been for the consistent presentation of hostile images, prejudices and national stereotypes by the

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mass media (Giallourides 2001). Instead, nationalist patterns in the media have accentuated oppositional metaphors of us versus the other particularly with references to civilization (or lack thereof), tolerance (versus fanatic nationalism) and generosity (versus a lack of gratitude as well as greed). Particularly in times of conflict, these oppositional categories have guided the construction of the stereotypes of the other in the media. The analysis of stereotypes has, in fact, been used as the main method to understand the way in which the media–in the wider sense–perform their role in Greek-Turkish relations (see Hadjidimos 1999; Giallourides 2001; Millas 2001; Panagiotou 2003; Kostarella 2007; Özkirimli and Sofos 2008). In these studies, there is a general consensus that the Greek mass media have served to reproduce the established stereotypes of Turkey, that is, the stereotypes derived from history and literature, and have sometimes reformulated these stereotypes in order to match particular circumstances. They conclude that negative stereotypes of the Turks, which promote the abstract idea of Turkey as the eternal enemy, are abundant and constant across time: “This coverage works towards the continuation of the dispute, since it constructs a negative image of the ‘Other’” (Panagiotou 2003, 3). As the two countries have been historically posited as the other in their respective nationalist imaginaries, “engaged in parallel monologues in which each is seen as the ‘opposite’ to the survival of the other” (Özkirimli and Sofos 2008, 49), the mobilization of such feelings by the press brings life to the historically ingrained images and creates an environment susceptible to conflict. On the other hand, these deep-rooted perceptions of Turkey are also seen to limit the press’ options to introduce varying discourses. In order to comprehend the link between the Turkish stereotype and Greek national identity, it is necessary to go back to the historical circumstances surrounding the creation of the Greek state, and the production of Greek nationalism. Greek national identity initially emerged from a “heterogeneous territorial movement” (Smith 1983, 219) aimed at achieving independence in the name of a new identity, which was wider than any existing group identities of the time. As in most of the postWestphalian nationalisms, this identity was legitimized through its historical precedent and the claim of continuity of the nation throughout time in spite of its fragmentation. In other words, the revolutionary movement of Greek independence presented itself as a coalition against a common enemy, the Ottomans (Kitromilides 1990, 29). Consequently,

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when the first Greek state was established in 1828 after almost four centuries of Ottoman rule, the main purpose of the nation-state was to forge an “imagined community” with cultural, religious and linguistic bonds (Veremis 1998, 27). Hence, in the collective Greek consciousness, the Ottoman Empire and, therefore, the Turkish state as its successor had historically stood as the main visible obstacle to the perceived continuity of the Greek ethnos and obstructed the flourishing of Greek civilization after the fall of Constantinople. Thus, Ottomans, and later Turks, were constructed as the state’s principal other. The subsequent negative stereotypes of Turkey have particularly involved images of the Turks as barbarian (often referred to as Asian) and inferior in terms of civilization; untrustworthy and not hesitating to go back on their word; fanatical, conservative, as well as fearful of progress and insecure against the West; and anti-Christian and unholy tyrants (Millas 2001). Direct or indirect allusion to these representations in the contemporary mass media is perceived as detrimental for societal support for rapprochement. Focusing on the perpetuation of these images, the literature tends to attribute a rather negative role to the press in GreekTurkish relations, and perceive the Greek-Turkish case as an example of “how media promote the oppositional schema of us versus them, when defining national ‘Others’” (Kostarella 2007, 27), and thus perpetuate conflict and the relevant foreign policy choices. Negative stereotyping ultimately results in “hate speech”, defined as “a way of reporting or spreading opinion that is designed to enhance the national self in contrast to the ‘Other’” (Hadjidimos 1999, 20) Hate speech appears more frequently in the media in moments of tension, further aggravating conflict scenarios. What appears to permeate the literature is a lack of exploration of the positive impact that the media can have as an agent of transformation. It can be argued that this one-sided approach is a result of the lack of comprehensive and balanced studies of the media in this function. Until recently, the great majority of studies has focused on the attitudes of the media in moments of crisis between the two states, the most obvious example being scholarly articles on media discourse surrounding the Imia/Kardak crisis (for example Giallourides 2001; Panagiotou 2003). Given that nationalist discourses become more pronounced in moments of perceived crisis, studies with time frames involving episodes of conflict are bound to discover discursive manifestations of pronounced nationalism.

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The emergence of a new research agenda, guided by the assumption that non-governmental actors (including the media) have acted as promoters of the post-1999 rapprochement, has begun to reverse these potentially erroneous findings. In this spirit, this chapter examines the evolution of the Turkey/other discourse in the Greek press at selected time frames throughout the crucial period from 1997 to 2000, when Greek foreign policy towards Turkey departed from a conflict scenario. The analysis of discourses and presentation of narratives is based on empirical work, which begins with the 1996 Imia crisis, the most critical near-war incident between Greece and Turkey in the 1990s, and ends a few months after the December 1999 decision of the Greek government to support Turkey’s EU candidacy. The newspapers examined are the leading dailies Ta Nea, Eleftherotypia, Kathimerini and To Vima, which accounted for the majority of readership in the periods examined.2

Turkey as the archetypal other: The Imia/Kardak crisis and the European Council of Luxembourg (1996-1997) Following the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Eastern bloc, Greek foreign policy in the 1990s focused intensely on enhancing the ties between its region, the Balkans and Southeastern Europe, and the European Union, of which it constitutes a member since 1981. Turkey, as the archetypal other, constituted an exception to the general attitude of bringing Europe to the region. Nowhere was this more pronounced in political and public discourse and media as in the time surrounding and following the events of the Imia/Kardak crisis in 1995-1996. The events, briefly summarized, started on December 25, 1995, when a Turkish cargo boat run aground on a group of rocks of the Eastern Aegean which fall within the disputed waters between Greece and Turkey and are known as Imia in the former and Kardak in the latter. The Greek authorities had offered to assist, but the Turkish captain had refused their assistance, claiming that the accident had occurred in Turkish territorial waters. After a series of negotiations, a Greek tug boat towed the Turkish boat to the Turkish port of Gulluk. Following the incident, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a verbal address to the Greek embassy in Ankara, asserted for the first time that the islets constituted part of Turkish territory. This led to a further exchange of verbal and written addresses,

2

Statistics drawn from the Greek Daily Newspaper Union databases (www.eihea.gr) and the European Journalism Centre.

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wherein the Greek side maintained that the islets were granted to Greece by virtue of a bilateral agreement between Italy and Greece in 1932.3 Soon thereafter, in January 1996, reporters of the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet brought down the Greek flag that the mayor of the nearby island of Kalymnos had raised on the Imia islets and replaced it with the Turkish one, after which Greek soldiers brought the Greek flag back, an action which Turkish Prime Minister at the time, Tansu Ciller, called a casus belli. Greek and Turkish warships began gathering in the disputed area and, on January 31, 1996, Turkish soldiers landed on one of the two islets. The crisis was resolved with the intervention of the United States, with Bill Clinton urging both sides to return to the status quo ante. In spite of the eventual prevention of armed conflict, the event accentuated the conflict and rivalry between the two parties, which also manifested itself in the diplomatic field. Most characteristically, the conflict played out in the negotiations for Turkey’s accession to the EU in the European Council of Luxembourg in 1997. While expectations had been that the EU would formally accept Turkey as a candidate for membership, the Greek veto played a decisive role in denying Turkey candidate status. As shown in the next paragraphs, the media sought to justify the veto by othering Turkey towards Greece and in relation to Europe. Maintaining the narratives that have traditionally characterized GreekTurkish relations, the press framed bilateral relations within a discourse of conflict and animosity, suggesting that war between the two countries should not be treated as an unlikely event and blaming it on what was perceived as traditionally hostile and imperialistic Turkish ambitions, reflected in Turkish foreign policy. Reports were accompanied by apprehensions about Turkish imperialism, which clearly reflected the stereotypical assumptions about the Turkish other such as the following commentary in To Vima: Only those unaware of history cannot see, or pretend that they do not see where Ankara ‘is going’ with all of this: simply, it aims to reverse everything, which will enable it to revive the infamous Ottoman Empire. […] The ‘homme malade’ as the Europeans referred to the Sultan’s 3

There are various accounts of the events leading to the Imia crisis, for example Veremis, Thanos. 1999. History of Greek-Turkish Relations,1453-1998. Athens: I. Sideris; Kourkoulas, Alkis. 1997. Imia: A Critical Analysis of Turkish Politics. Athens: I. Sideris; Soltaridis, Simeon. 1996. The Indisputable Greek Sovereignty. The Threat of a New Casus Belli. Athens: Nea Sunora.

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The discursive construction of Turkey as Europe’s other permeated the Greek press, which emphasized that Turkish policy-making, societal values and dominant attitudes clashed with the basic premises of what was understood as ‘European’.4 This idea was promoted by the consistent publication of statements by politicians and experts speaking of “Turkey’s insistence on disregarding all the values which form the contemporary European civilization” (To Vima December 21, 1997) and emphasized the existence of a wide-spread European belief that Turkey was not European or, as Ta Nea phrased it, “a perception on a Pan-European level that this state does not belong to the core of Europe” (December 21, 1997). This labelling of Turkey was often attributed to its refusal to endorse the ideas and principles on which the EU had based its construction. As argued in Ta Nea, “while many EU states wish for closer ties with Turkey, they are however particularly annoyed with Ankara’s denial to take a step back and to accept principles that are taken for granted in any civilized western country” (December 11, 1997). In this context, the view held by the press was that becoming part of Europe would be up to the Turkish state itself. Repeating the words of the Greek Commissioner, To Vima explained: It is up to Turkey itself to prove with actions that it is interested in a close relationship with the EU, to actively prove that it respects the basic values of European society. Turkey must realize that good neighbourly relations and cooperation with Greece are a fundamental condition for the upgrading of its relations with the EU. (December 14, 1997)

The picture painted of Turkey’s disregard of international law and its inability to cooperate was accompanied by a diametrically opposed image of Greece as a crusader fighting for international principles, cooperation and peace. This was illustrated, for example, in a To Vima interview, which quoted Commissioner Christos Papoutsis saying that Greece has to “continue to demand consistently that Turkey respect International Law […] We must make clear that Greece is interested in the creation of relations of peace, stability and cooperation in the whole region” (December 14, 1997). 4

For more on the notion of Turkey as Europe’s other see Diez (2004); Neumann (1996, 1999); Triandafyllidou (1998); and Robins (1996).

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While this approach to Turkey’s otherness left open the possibility of change towards a more European Turkey, elsewhere in the papers more essentialist arguments for Turkey’s ideational misfit with the EU found their way into the public discourse. Indicatively, soon after the European Council meeting, one opinion piece argued that: Neither the Ottoman Empire previously, nor Turkey during the twentieth century has been accepted by the West as ‘west’. They do not belong in what Voltaire called the ‘Big Democracy’[…] For Westerners Turkey is a foreign, ‘different’ place, a culturally, socially, institutionally, but also geographically ‘exotic’ place (Ta Nea December 19, 1997).

Turkish Islam also featured in the discussion of the country’s identity in the Greek papers, which commented on the clash between “the Muslim tradition and the western way of life that many in Turkey have adopted” (Ta Nea December 31, 1997) as a problematic situation. The antagonism between Islamists and the military establishment in Turkish politics was heavily criticized as a non-European phenomenon and was used to argue that Turkey did not resemble a European state guided by the principles embedded in the EU treaties: “They have generals, they have the National Security Council and they have Islamists” (Eleftherotypia December 24, 1997) was the general idea repeated often. Eleftherotypia spoke of a Turkish “inability to adapt to western standards” (December 22, 1997). Finally, the human rights issue also featured prominently in the discourse on an uncivilized, non-Western Turkey. The striking antithesis between the principles and values that Europe was considered to represent and the violation of those principles in Turkey was used to accentuate the perceived otherness. The revelation in Ta Nea of the methods of torture used against Turkish left-wing journalists was accompanied by the comment: “at the same time that Turkey claims a place in Europe, the journalist Ilan Karatepe reveals: in the Turkish prisons they are crucifying people!” (December 23, 1997). On another occasion, “How in the world can the medieval regime of Ankara ask to be accepted in the club of wellmannered Europeans?” (Ta Nea December 20, 1997). A “military establishment which, more and more openly, holds the power” (Kathimerini December 29, 1997), “an increasing wave of religious fanaticism” (Ta Nea December 30, 1997), and an unstable political, economic and social situation were recurring themes, which captured the construction of Turkey as an other to the idealized notion of Europe.

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Thus, the prospect of dialogue between the two countries as well as policies to diffuse the conflict were pushed out from the dominant discourse as not constituting a policy option when dealing with an unreliable, expansionist and brutal other (Panagiotou 2003). With such strong othering in place within the public sphere, no government could succeed in introducing a new foreign policy paradigm more prone towards rapprochement with Turkey.

The other reconsidered: Opening the door to the EU (1999) As a follow-up to the process launched in Luxembourg, the European Council met in Helsinki in December 1999 to discuss enlargement within the wider scope of the European Union’s future. Following intense debate regarding the approach that the Luxembourg Council had taken towards the Turkish accession, the EU overcame the long-lasting ambiguity over the Turkish case. While the depiction of Greek-Turkish relations in the Greek press remained rather consistent in the years between the Luxembourg and Helsinki European Councils, it is, however, possible to discern some elements of a more positive discourse on Turkey in the 1999 press in contrast to that of 1997. This change was manifested through the endorsement of the position that, by withdrawing the veto on Turkish accession and engaging Turkey in pre-accession negotiations, Greece would open up the path for stability, development and peace in the Balkans. In contrast to the narrative cultivated in previous years, this proposition was as ground-breaking as the Foreign Ministry’s policy change itself. However, it ran the risk of not appealing to public opinion and appearing unconvincing when juxtaposed to centuries of cultivation of the narrative of Turkey as enemy and the other. One mechanism employed by the press to moderate this problem was to transform Greek perceptions of Turkish intentions, with a particular focus on Turkish politicians. Thus, the newspapers highlighted the positive efforts of certain Turkish government officials, particularly of the Turkish Foreign Minister, as well as of particular Turkish milieus, which Eleftherotypia described as “the Europhile powers of the neighbour and all those who wish to escape the control of the armed forces and to build a democracy, as we know it in the West” (December 13, 1999). This acknowledgement was captured in the words of the Greek Foreign Minister, reported in most Greek news sources in the week before the European Council: “If things go well in Helsinki and Turkey becomes a candidate state, this will be to a great extent thanks to Turkey’s Minister of

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Foreign Affairs, Ismael Cem.” (Ta Nea December 8, 1999) Eleftherotypia described Cem’s upcoming visit to Athens as initiating a new era (December 13, 1999) and spoke of a historic turn (December 12, 1999) in the Turkish establishment, while To Vima welcomed Papandreou’s statement that “whatever the result of Helsinki, I hope that we will continue in this new course, this new opportunity, the new climate that has evolved between the two countries” (December 8, 1999), and Kathimerini made reference to new horizons opening up for the country after Helsinki (December 12, 1999). As a consequence of this shift, the war-related narrative of Turkey as the archetypal enemy changed fundamentally from 1997 to 1999, and the idea that Turkey could attack at any minute was slowly abandoned. Nevertheless, it would be naïve to suggest that suspicion of Turkish intentions evaporated from the Greek media discourse. It would be safer to claim that such attitudes were less pronounced, or that they were addressed alongside the suggestion that through the EU Turkey’s behaviour could be controlled. Thus, conditionality acquired increased significance. Ta Nea, for example, emphasized that: …the inflexible stance held by Turkey on the issue of bilateral relations with Greece […would] be maintained with greater stubbornness in case the EU [recognized] Turkey as a candidate state for accession without first witnessing the realization of the conditions that have been set (December 4, 1999).

These conditions referred to the criteria agreed upon by the European Council in Copenhagen and Luxembourg,5 but also to the demands that Greece was about to put forth in the Helsinki Council in exchange for the withdrawal of its veto, namely agreeing on a specific roadmap for Turkish accession, getting the candidate states to recognize the jurisdiction of the ICJ in bilateral disputes (so as to take the matter of the Aegean to that level), and securing Cypriot accession without the prior resolution of the Cyprus problem as a precondition.

5

The Copenhagen Criteria and excerpts from the Luxembourg Conclusions were repeatedly cited in the press, even without commentary, in way of a reminder of what the collective EU stance was on the Turkish issue. All four major dailies published the criteria in one form or another on the weekend of December 11-12, 1999.

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In spite of the more positive climate, the persecution of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and the events following his flight had a strong impact on the negative perception of the Turkish state and offered the Greek press a chance to highlight the contradictions between conditions in Turkey and Europe, particularly in the area of human and minority rights. Consequently, the Kurdish issue became an important part of the discourse on Turkey as the other, but in a more EU-specific context this time. Turkey’s stance towards the Kurdish minority was treated as an indication of Turkey’s inability to comply with EU norms, as well as with the legal demands of the European Court of Human Rights not to execute the PKK leader. It was also framed as an incompatibility of principles and values between Turkey and Europe. While the human rights issue received particular attention, due to the recent events surrounding the Ocalan ‘fiasco’, other narratives on Turkey’s otherness, such as religion, were noticeably absent in the 1999 press, particularly when compared to two years earlier. This observation suggests that the acceptance of Turkey as a potential EU member on the state-level was partly reflected in media discourses. Consistent with earlier narratives, Turkey continued to be depicted as lacking respect towards the international and European legal systems. The view of Turkey communicated through the Greek press was that of a state refusing to accept the norms governing the EU and its relations with potential candidate states. While other applicant and candidate states were portrayed in a constant effort to comply with the EU criteria and to adapt their internal and external policies to what was considered ‘EU standard’, Turkey was depicted as wanting to enforce its own rules by pursuing a strategy of threats, a strategy that it had consistently followed in its relations with Greece. The words of threat and blackmail frequently found their way into the discussion on the Helsinki negotiations, as in Ta Nea, which reported that: The spirit of … civilised negotiations within the EU is now being threatened by Ankara. The Turkish President Suleyman Demirel in his crudest blackmail up to now warned that if Greece adopts a negative position [in Helsinki], the current climate of rapprochement will come to an end and our relations will be characterised by tension (December 7, 1999).

By suggesting that both Europe and Greece constituted recipients of Turkey’s threats and disrespect the Greek media constructed two mutually

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reinforcing narratives. On the one hand, the conflict was represented as a European rather than a bilateral one; on the other, the idea of us/Europe versus them/Turkey was accentuated, depicting Turkey as incompatible with the EU ‘way of doing things’. In spite of this persistence, Greek media discourses surrounding Turkey’s course towards EU accession up to 2005, when accession negotiations were officially opened, have been characterized by an increasing appreciation of Turkey’s effort to transform, suggesting that otherness can also be used as the basis of discourses of rapprochement, when discussed within a context of efforts for mutual understanding. Such an approach, should it permeate the public sphere, prepares the ground for subtle, gradual policy change as has been the case with Greece and Turkey. In this sense, media is an important component, which “foreign policy decision-makers take into considerations as they develop their policies” (Naveh 2002, 2), since it both constrains leaders and officials and provides them with opportunities to advance their goals (Gilboa 2002). It is, therefore, possible to argue that the brief overview of the Greek case on which this chapter is based, indicates that after 1997 the Greek press has gradually acted as a mediator for new foreign policy discourses towards Turkey. Traditional attitudes towards Turkey in the Greek press have been consistent with the construction of the Turk as the other, and were therefore in contrast with the official discourses of rapprochement adopted gradually through the reorientation of Greek foreign policy in the period studied here. In spite of obvious inertia due to long-standing foreign policy path-dependency based on the perception of Turkey as a threat, the transformation of the discourse in the press is discernible. It corroborates the hypothesis that the media, as agents of discourse transformation with the ability to bring about change in perceptions and ideas, carry the power to facilitate or hinder conflict transformation discourses by promoting either traditional or alternative identity and policy paradigms. Had the press continued to promote the representation of Turkey as an enemy as strongly as before, and had it not engaged in narratives of rapprochement, the evolution of Greek foreign policy towards Turkey would probably present us with a very different picture.

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References Diez, Thomas. 2004. “Europe’s Others and the Return of Geopolitics.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 17 (2): 319-335. Diez, Thomas, Apostolos Agnantopoulos and Alper Kaliber. 2005. “Introduction: Turkey, Europeanisation and Civil Society.” South East European Society and Politics 10 (1): 1-15. Entmann, Robert 1993. “Framing: Towards Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43: 51-85. Giallourides, Christodoulos. 2001. I Ellinotourkiki Sigkrousi, I Optiki tou Typou. Athens: I. Sideris. Gilboa, Eytan. 2002. Media and Conflict. NY: Transnational Publishers. Hadjidimos, Katerina. 1999. “The Role of the Media in Greek-Turkish Relations.” Co-production of a TV programme window by Greek and Turkish journalists. Robert Bosch Stiftungskolleg für Internationale Aufgaben, Programmjahr 1998/1999. http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/pdf/Greek-Turkish-Media.pdf. Keohane, Robert O. 2001. “Governance in a Partially Globalized World.” American Political Science Review 95 (1): 1-13. Kitromilides, Paschalis M. 1990. “Imagined Communities and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans.” In Modern Greece: Nationalism & Nationality, eds. Martin Blinkhorn and Thanos Veremis, 23-65. Athens: Sage/ELIAMEP. Kostarella, Ioanna. 2007. “Framing the Other: Turkey in the Greek Press.” GMI: Mediterranean Edition 2 (1): 23-32. McCombs, Maxwell and Donald Shaw. 1972. “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media.” The Public Opinion Quarterly 36 (2): 176187. Millas, Herkules. 2001. Images of Greeks and Turks. Athens: Alexandreia Editions. Naveh, Chanan. 2002. “The Role of the Media in Foreign Policy DecisionMaking: A Theoretical Framework.” Conflict and Communication Online 1 (2): 1-12. Neumann, Iver B. 1999. Uses of the Other: ‘The East’ in European Identity Formation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. —. 1996. “Self and Other in International Relations.” European Journal of International Relations 2 (2): 139-174. Ozgunes, Neslihan and Georgios Terzis. 2000. “Constraints and Remedies for Journalists Reporting National Conflict: The Case of Greece and Turkey.” Journalism Studies 1 (3): 405-26.

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Özkirimli, Umut and Spiros A. Sofos. 2008. Tormented by History. London: Hurst & Co. Page, Benjamin I. 1996. “The Mass Media as Political Actors.” Political Science and Politics 29 (1): 20-24. Panagiotou, Nicos. 2003. “The Role of the Press in a ‘Conflict’: The Greek Press Coverage of the Greek-Turkish Relations.” Paper presented at First LSE PhD Symposium on Modern Greece (21 June). Robins, Kevin. 1996. “Interrupting Identities: Turkey/Europe.” In Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. Stuart Hall and Paul Du Gay, 61-86. London: Sage. Rumelili, Bahar. 2004. “Constructing Identity and Relating to Difference: Understanding EU's Mode of Differentiation.” Review of International Studies 30: 27-47. Smith, Anthony D. 1983. Theories of Nationalism. 2nd edition. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers. Triandafyllidou, Anna. 1998. “National Identity and the ‘Other’.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21 (4): 593-612. Veremis, Thanos. 1998. Istoria ton Ellinotourkikon Sxeseon 1453-1998. Athens: I. Sideris.

CHAPTER NINE SELF AND OTHER IN FOREIGN POLICY DISCURSIVE PRACTICES: RESISTING OTHERING IN PROCESSES OF KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN IR ERICA SIMONE ALMEIDA RESENDE

Choisir le dialogue, cela veut dire aussi éviter les deux extrêmes que sont le monologue et la guerre. —Tzvetan Todorov (1989, 15)

Introduction and assumptions In Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World, Walter Russell Mead (2002) argues that the Cold War was essentially a myth: a mix of facts, interpretations and fiction, attempting to meet the nation’s needs at a particular time in history. For the American historian, the Cold War created a new paradigm in U.S. foreign policy, which was the outcome of dual “myth-making”: the mythification of us and them. There were two main elements in what became the myth … of the Cold War. One was a myth about Them; the other was a myth about Us. The myth about Them – that communism was a united global force engaged in a determined, aggressive crusade to impose its vicious ideology in every corner of the globe – was never very accurate, and hampered thoughtful American foreign policy-makers throughout the Cold War. The myth … mobilized American public opinion for the struggle ... The notion of a monolithic communism was politically mischievous because it effectively prevented American public opinion from understanding the Cold War in any coherent or sensible way (Mead 2002, 61).

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The Cold War frame of a struggle between us and them–Americans versus Soviets, democrats versus authoritarians, capitalists versus communists–is echoed in David Campbell’s work. Campbell (1998) found that U.S. foreign policy texts constructed a very specific representation of reality: a “free and peaceful America” being under threat from an “international conspiracy” that was bent on destroying “inherent dignity, freedom, and sacredness of the individual,” guardian of “God-given” values of “western civilization” (27) and such. Campbell’s interpretation was that the consistent, deliberate evocation of a “national mission”, the “objectives of the republic”, the “defense of liberty”, the “affirmation of individuals” and “America’s predestination” signalled that these strategic documents, beyond analysing Cold War world politics, also formulated a representation of American national identity. U.S. foreign policy discourses fed off the discursive articulation of a “dividing line” that turned differences into otherness. Discourses identified by Mead and Campbell employed imagined representations that constructed the us–“exceptional America”, “predestination”, “benevolent Empire”–in clear opposition to them– “Empire of Evil”, “tyranny” and “communist wave”. By erecting frontiers based on binary dichotomies like inside/outside, hierarchy/anarchy, self/other, which were articulated with identity markers of a specific ideology, U.S. foreign policy discourses converted difference into otherness. The self was socially constructed in relation to the other, defining what should be deemed a legitimate part of the social body of the domestic, allied, hierarchical, orderly community of the state self, and what should be domesticated, marginalized, silenced and excluded. Yet, differences can be managed without converting them into otherness. When one recognizes that the self is an integral part of the other, and thus rejects the idea of the self as stable or superior, diversity in difference can be accepted and celebrated. This chapter attempts to present alternative sources for foreign policy discourses by drawing on the potential of artistic-poetic language for resisting the making of otherness in IR processes of knowledge production.

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Identity, difference and foreign policy discourses In the last two decades, the discipline of IR has shown a renewed interest in identities. Foreign policy studies show a growing recognition1 of identity, interest and foreign policy being linked and of foreign policy not functioning merely as state reactions–the state here considered as a pre-existing entity endowed with fixed identities and interests–to a hostile, outer realm of independent existence. According to Messari (2001), foreign policy is no longer conceived as “bridge-builder” between preexisting entities, but as key discursive practice to the co-constitution of both states and identities (227). Furthermore: Foreign policies are legitimized as necessary … through reference to identities, yet identities are simultaneously constituted and reproduced through formulations of foreign policy. Policies require identities, but identities do not exist as objective accounts of what people and places ‘really are’, but as continuously restated, negotiated, and reshaped subjects and objects … [I]dentity and policy are constituted through a process of narrative adjustment, that they stand, in social science terminology, in a constitutive, rather than causal, relationship (Hansen 2006, xvi).

By rejecting any clear causal or material link between identity and foreign policy, one is able to understand how both are essentially discursive, relational, political and social in nature. They are discursive because objects cannot be conceived outside the field of discourse or language; relational because one can only speak of a self if there is also the other; political because different discourses compete in their attempt to stabilize meanings in order to gain dominance and impose their thinking; and social because they are articulated by cultural and socially embedded codes and norms. This conception is embraced by Campbell, who sees foreign policy as central to the constitution, production and maintenance of the state’s identity and existence. Thus conceived, foreign policy can be seen as politically instrumental in the construction of borders by discursively producing differences, based on dichotomies sustained by identity markers with specific ideological content. For Mansbach and Rhodes (2007), such markers set the boundaries between self and other: what is included and

1

See Campbell (1998), Hansen (2006), Nabers (2009), Neumann (1996), Shapiro (1988), Walker (1993) and Weber (1998).

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what excluded. Difference becomes otherness by the creation and naturalization of a privileged self. Foreign policy depends on representations, narratives, symbols and meanings that are attributed to the nation, the people or the interest to be protected from danger and defended at a time of crisis. In order to legitimately claim to protect interests from a threat, one must first give meaning to reality and populate it with objects and their relations. The state, through its foreign policy discursive practices, articulates and gives specific identities to other states, regions, peoples and institutions at the same time as it creates an identity for itself. Thus, to make sense foreign policy discourses depend upon representations and symbols of the national. This leads to the notion of policy and identities being ontologically linked: only through the implementation of foreign policy–or its performance, as posited elsewhere by Judith Butler (1990)–will identity come to life. At the same time, identity is constructed to legitimize and naturalize political options (Shapiro 1988; Campbell 1998; Weber 1998). As Hansen (2006) says, identities are “articulated as the reason why policies should be enacted, but they are also (re)produced through these very policy discourses: they are simultaneously (discursive) foundation and product” (21). Hansen’s view is shared by Campbell, for whom the relationship between identity and foreign policy results from the very notion of “feeling secure”, since “danger is not an objective condition” but “an interpretation effect” (1998, 2). If the risks are not the same, and not all risks are even interpreted as dangerous, he argues, the role of subjectivity in the articulation of danger should be considered. Language is then key to the production, articulation and reproduction of meanings that allow the dissemination and legitimization of discourses of fear, which reflexively construct threats, (re)produce collective identities and set up the state as the only space where security and a sense of collective belonging can be provided. Similar to the Cold War having converted difference into otherness, the War on Terror constructed new dividing lines between what is inside and outside the privileged space occupied by America. While the inside of the American political community–the self–is positively signified as stability, security and order, what lies beyond America is negatively signified as instability, insecurity and chaos. America is constructed as set of positive meanings under threat by terrorists, dictators, madmen, barbarians and evildoers. Fear and anxiety from a threatening other against the American self thus legitimate and propagate specific U.S. foreign policy discourses.

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Furthermore, America is constructed as agent of change and global liberator. In this context, U.S. foreign policy discourses create and reify both self and other by basing them on specific American and nonAmerican identity markers.

The implications of the self/other dichotomy for identity and difference in IR Neumann (1996, 141) notes that the influence of the Hegelian dialectic concept of self/other in identity construction processes puts the topic of otherness at the very heart of modern Western philosophy. Quoting Rodolphe Gasché, for whom “the essence of Western Philosophy is the attempt to domesticate Otherness” (cited in Neumann 1996, 141), Neumann draws on the thinking of Emmanuel Levinas to criticize the ontological approach of the self as authoritarian, violent and exclusionary: if “the Other is that which is not me”, its mere existence is enough to unsettle the order (1996, 151). As Dirk Nabers (2009) rightly observes, the process of identity (re)construction is only possible when a discourse capable of melding the multiple and various elements spread throughout the social field is articulated and consolidated around a single chain of equivalences constituted in opposition to whatever is outside that social field (194-197). In other words, the construction of the other as an antagonistic force assures and legitimizes the meaning of identity through strategies that spread fear and anxiety about the other. William Connolly (1991) criticizes traditional theories that try to anchor subjectivity at an “Archimedean point”, arguing that its existence is the product of belief, not a demonstrable certainty about the “ultimate answer to the question of being” (71). In this sense, he warns of the risk of exclusion whenever ultimate foundations are evoked to legitimize political authority. Turning to Nietzsche’s skepticism about the possibility of any certainty in social and political theory, Connolly comments on identity’s relational nature when he defines identity as part of a relationship involving two or more entities designed to express equality, unity and uniformity, as opposed to whatever is not the same. He thus conceives identity in terms of identity/difference. An identity is established in relation to a series of differences that have become socially recognized. These differences are essential to its being. If they did not coexist as differences, it would not exist in its distinctness and solidity. Entrenched in this indispensable relation is a second set of tendencies, themselves in need of exploration, to congeal established

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Chapter Nine identities into fixed forms, thought and lived as if their structure expressed the true order of things. When these pressures prevail, the maintenance of one identity (or field of identities) involves the conversion of some differences into otherness, into evil, or one of its numerous surrogates. Identity requires difference in order to be, and it converts difference into otherness in order to secure its own self-certainty. Identity is thus a slippery, insecure experience, dependent on its ability to define difference and vulnerable to the tendency of entities it would so define to counter, resist, overturn, or subvert definitions applied to them. Identity stands in a complex, political relation to the differences it seeks to fix (Connolly 1991, 64).

This description expresses the idea that identity springs from the continuous production of otherness: an identity strives to take root and impose itself as unique and true, branding everything that is different as alien, bad, irrational, abnormal, primitive and/or dangerous, while denominating itself as good, coherent, rational, sane, civilized, peaceful and/or true. Connolly conceives us living in a new time, where society is criss-crossed by a dense web of different disciplinary powers and categories designed to impose order and conformity. In such a situation, the self feels cornered and starts to experience “uncertainty, contingency, and fragility residing in the status, power, and opportunities bestowed upon one” (22). This sense of uncertainty and anxiety, which is exacerbated in late modernity, generates a widespread resentment towards the other and attempts to recognize the self as having a unique, true, authentic, secure and real identity that is therefore free of uncertainty. Here the identity/difference paradox noted by Connolly becomes visible: the construction of the other is at once a precondition for and a threat to the existence of the self. Connolly takes this paradox as starting point for framing the problem of the state, which he identifies as the privileged “site of identification” for producing otherness, considering that the state becomes “the site of the most fundamental division between inside and outside, us and them, domestic and foreign, the sphere of citizen entitlements and that of strategic responses” (201). By marginalizing, excluding and disciplining– in the Foucauldian sense–the other, as well as appeasing and compensating the self, the state channels all resentment against the other into stabilizing and legitimizing the self. The acknowledgement of us living in special times has important implications both for politics and knowledge production: the recognition that the unstable nature of identities provides an opportunity to reflect critically–and act–for social change.

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Like Connolly, the author here believes it is possible to engage with differences without turning them into otherness. Differences should be understood and celebrated for all their complexity and wealth, not denigrated. This forces us to recognize ourselves in whatever is different without turning it into the other, but seeing it as subject worthy of respect and tolerance. The challenge lies in getting away from the traps of language forms that give precedence to a single viewpoint. In the IR discipline, this language is actually a tributary of the modernist project, it is strategic and scientific and, as noted by Richard Ashley (1996), fundamental to the “persistent, almost ritualistic affirmation of the sovereign territoriality of agents of thought and action” that is so widespread in scholarly circles. From this perspective, the production of knowledge in IR may be understood as a discursive practice that presupposes the “necessity of thinking, acting and narrating political life in the service of some sovereign centre of decision that can at once represent and derive its powers from a familiar territory of its exclusionary being”. Further, “we are members of a community” that is fully aware that “every instance of interpretation and conduct will be held to proceed from a standpoint, a position, a subjective perspective”, enabling IR scholars to “justify what they say and do, impose interpretive limitations, and then, so limited, decide the meanings of events” (241).

The political implications of strategic-scientific language for IR and the potential of arts and poetry for resistance to othering In the field of IR, the way in which knowledge is produced–based on self/other dichotomies constructed via a strategic-scientific language that determines ‘winners’ and ‘losers’–has profound ethical and political implications, particularly for those working in the field. Why are IR scholars more concerned with ‘explaining’ international phenomena than ‘understanding’ them? Why are certain agents and structures privileged over others? Why have certain paradigms, models, categories, codes, values and meanings been imposed while others have been excluded? These questions refer to the comforting notion–or perhaps creed?–of a single Archimedean point for the production of knowledge. Steve Smith makes an important point about the connection between IR knowledge production and the events of 9/11: The problem is that the discipline of IR has defined its core concerns … to exclude the most marked forms of violence in world politics, in favor of a

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Chapter Nine relatively small subset which ultimately relies on the prior moves of separating the outside from the inside of a State, separating economics and politics, separating the public from the private, … separating the moral from the practical, and separating causes and effects … As such the discipline has helped to bring into existence the world of September 11 2001 by focusing on specific, and partial, notions of violence and inequality; by taking its referent object to be the State rather than the individual; and by subsuming difference and identity into sameness. Above all, this has been done in the name of legitimate social science, very narrowly defined (Smith 2001, 13-17).

Subjectivity in IR should be paid attention to. There is a pressing need to understand, not only explain, international phenomena, and to act ethically upon them. The challenge is to find ways for doing so. The author here believes that the first step should be the suspension of judgement: the rejection of the Archimedean point, of the strategicscientific language so deeply embedded in IR knowledge-making. To suspend judgement is to refuse privileged points of reference, the game of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’, the grounding of the self against the other and the domestication of difference. To suspend judgement should not be confused with avoiding an ethical stance. It is only by conceiving differences transsubjectively and multi-dimensionally that one could possibly escape the traps of the modern scientific project. It is a matter of ceasing to anchor identities at one Archimedean point to the exclusion of others, and of reworking meanings, representations, spaces, relationships and structures in order to cultivate alternative conceptions of self and other. Above all stands the commitment by IR scholars to conceive new ways of constructing a notion of us for both self and other, thereby channelling voices, actions and synergies towards change and emancipation. For this, scholars need to consider how the language of modern science creates exclusionary dichotomies born out of fear, ignorance, anxiety and intolerance. As an alternative to the strategic-scientific language dominating IR, the author suggests a look into the potential of arts and poetry, particularly the artistic-poetic language, in dealing positively with difference. Unlike strategic-scientific language, arts and poetry allow the expression of repressed emotions and to engage positively when faced with diversity. Artistic-poetic language has the unique ability to capture and express sidelined or ignored dimensions, creating a venue for dealing with sudden changes resulting from crises.

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Sadly, the potential of this language is underexplored in IR. The way in which the discipline turns a blind eye to it confirms how knowledge production in IR has always felt more at ease and ‘legitimate’ by privileging a single and hence valid source of knowledge. There seems to be an encompassing confidence on the matrix of modern sciences that has made it almost impossible for any knowledge to be built from aesthetic sources. Attempts to bring IR and aesthetics together are very few.2 The author thus presents an argument for how artistic-poetic language could aid in dealing with difference without turning it into otherness. However, one might immediately ask: What can poetry, fiction and the word say about the non-self in order to not fall into the traps of essentializing identities? Can painting, photography or music establish dialogue with differences? Is artistic and poetic language capable of engaging politically in a different way than strategic-scientific language? What are the implications of such artistic engagement? These questions are addressed with the help of Steve Smith, who has investigated the work of Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) and Rene Magritte (1898-1967) to show that art can indeed contribute toward the acceptance of differences by refusing to provide a fixed viewpoint for the observer. Velázquez most famous painting Las Meninas (1656) (Ill. 9-1) shows, at first sight, the central theme of the Infanta Margarita, daughter of King Phillip IV of Spain and Mariana of Austria. However, a closer look shows a multiplicity of perspectives and points of reference, including that of the painter himself, effectively doing away with the possibility of there being a single, definitive interpretation. Deftly resolving the composition of space, light and perspective, Velázquez structures his work dynamically and multi-relationally. The absence of any fixed observation point is evident as soon as one tries to describe the painting. It could equally be described as a portrait of the Infanta Margarita, a self-portrait of the painter, the depiction of a family moment, the portrait of a man entering–or leaving–a private moment enjoyed by the royal family, or as a painting of the act of painting. What was Velázquez painting: the Infanta, alone or with her entourage, including the dwarf and the dog; her posing for the portrait; the private life of the royal family; the Spanish royalty, whose presence is inferred from the reflection in the mirror; a self-portrait; or the act of painting itself? 2

See Bleiker (2000, 2006), Constantinou (2000), Laqueur (1987) and Shapiro (1988).

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Who is the observer of this image: the royal couple; Velázquez; the courtiers; or the person viewing the painting, who sees himself before the surface of a mirror? The painting can be interpreted, viewed and understood in many different ways because it does not give precedence to a specific point of reference, object or plane, Velázquez refusing to do so. There are no stable perspectives–no Archimedean point from which to appreciate the work.

Illustration 9-1: Las Meninas. By Diego Velázquez.

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Another element that underlines the denial of any single point of reference lies in the royal couple, the Infanta’s parents. The painting suggests that the king and queen are outside the painting, but their reflection in the mirror puts them inside. King Phillip IV and his wife Mariana are both represented, although it is impossible to know exactly what their position is in relation to other people shown. The spatial structure and the position of the mirror are set in such a way as to suggest that the king and queen were next to the painting, in the same place where a visitor at the Prado might now stand. As art historian Harriet Stone (1996) claims, the painting creates the effect of a succession of perspectives for “generations of spectators who assume the couple’s place before the painting” (35). Michel Foucault (2002) was moved to discuss this painting, considering it to be a structure of knowledge that invites the observer to take part in a representation within another representation. Departing from the number of perspectives, Foucault concludes that the work’s depth and complexity derive from this multiplicity of perspectives shown in the dense web of relationships between painter, subject and observer. If there is no primary point of reference, what are the painter, the Infanta and her attendants, and even the man on his way in–or out–looking at? Are they looking at us as we look at them? That might be a logical answer. Yet, seeing the reflection in the mirror of the king and queen looking at their daughter, this conclusion is confounded. Indeed, Foucault sees this reflection as having the function of attracting something that is intimately alien to the painting, something outside the self as well as part of it, or the other with the self. In fact, the painting does not have a focal point at all. The painting is elusive in its structure, as Foucault would put it. The refusal to privilege any references (of the painter, sovereign or the observer) prevents any one of these subjects from imposing their viewpoint on any of the others and on reality itself, which can then be understood to be in flux. As Foucault sees it, Velázquez managed to propose a totally new episteme, albeit in an embryonic state. The painting forms a bridge between the classical and modern, hailing a new epistemology. Las Meninas celebrates the instability of meanings and turns the absence of reference into the potential for emancipation from dominant structures (3-18). Like Velázquez, Belgian artist Rene Magritte was able to subvert structures and meanings by problematizing representation. His works are realistic, but also surrealistic. They challenge and provoke because their meanings are not stable, for they defy explanation without interpretation. Magritte’s art is sustained by the belief that the faithful representation of

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objects, things and people can prompt the observer to question the own condition. In his Treachery of Images series, Magritte presents the image of a pipe with the following caption: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”). It is a call to question the assumptions we make in our daily world (Ill. 9-2).

Illustration 9-2: La trahison des images. By René Magritte.

How can a pipe not be a pipe? While the inscription seems like a contradiction, it is actually right: the painting itself is not a pipe but a depiction of one. It is not a pipe, because we cannot smoke it. By putting into visual art the problem of representation of reality, Magritte uses the aforementioned paradox to trigger the spectator’s imagination and powers of reflection about moments of aporia and paradox, like the pipe that is not a pipe. By inverting the dominant logic about the perception of what is real and not real and by toppling traditional meanings about the world of things and their established relationships, Magritte forces us to question the relationships between observer and observed, representations and realities, realism and virtualism, and imaginary and real. The resulting unease makes us reconsider the place of individuals in the world, and our part in the social construction of reality. The conclusion is that one cannot simply

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go about deciphering representations of reality, as every representation involves interpretation, which makes it political and conflicting. We as individuals must make choices in the awareness that we are effectively participating in the construction of meanings of our realities. Smith (2002) holds that IR scholars could learn from the art of Velázquez and Magritte: the subversion of normality; the rejection of dominant, common-sense viewpoints; the questioning of representations of reality; the attention granted to emotions and fears; and how knowledge is used to reveal the unknown. By denying the observer a stable viewpoint, the artists were able to question the nature of representation. At no point do they give us an Archimedean point from which the ‘right’ interpretation of the meanings of their works can be made. Never is it clear who is represented or representing; or whether it is possible or even desirable to answer this. Deprived of clear-cut reference points, which are questioned and subverted, we become aware of the unstable, precarious and contingent nature of our own identities, which stops us from constructing anchors for making value judgements. In this sense, the subversion of normality, the rejection of the dominant common-sense view, the problematizing of representation, the attention granted to emotions and fears, and the use of what is known to reveal the unknown all become instruments in the construction of social emancipation. The ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies in the discipline of IR need to reflect critically on their anchors and come to terms with the loss of its Archimedean points; the discipline needs to learn to better administrate the “Cartesian anxiety” (Bernstein 1983) in these times of crisis. The way dominant theories gradually construct representations of international reality, treating it as something to be deciphered in a straightforward manner, only shows just how much the area needs a little Velázquez and Magritte. Rather than searching for greater homogeneity, universality, predictability, equality and stability, we should celebrate heterogeneity, particularity, diversity, unpredictability, difference and instability. Despite the impossibility of absolute interpretations, the discipline of IR is still dominated by points of reference that articulate partial, specific, contingent and exclusionary meanings about violence, justice and ethics. Furthermore, these mostly have to do with the reality of developed nations rather than the periphery. As a result, IR-constructed reality does not seem to match the reality of most people on this planet. By giving precedence to a single viewpoint and making it the one and only

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interpretation of reality, the discipline has even systematically contributed to denying and side-lining Third World suffering and injustice. Following is an example of how artistic language can offer political inspiration to break away from traditional self/other dichotomies. What does it mean to be a real American in the time of the War on Terror. In the image below (Ill. 9-3), a mother is weeping for the loss of her son, who died in service in Iraq. The black and white photo taken at Arlington cemetery stands out from a series of nineteen photos taken by Antoniou Platon for The New Yorker magazine. With its power to communicate the pain of loss, this photo appeared on the front covers of American newspapers when Colin Powell made reference to Platon’s photography in his endorsement of Barack Obama, then running for president. In the photo, Elsheba Khan is kneeling down with her head resting on the tombstone of her son, Army Specialist Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, who lost his life at the age of 20. If the name does not already catch the eye, the star and crescent at the tombstone’s top certainly do: here lies a U.S. soldier who was also a Muslim.

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Illustration 9-3: Death of a Muslim Soldier. Photograph copyright Platon.

After weeks during which U.S. public opinion repeatedly questioned whether or not the Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, might be Muslim and could or could not represent American national identity, Colin Powell endorsed his support of Obama by making reference to this photograph. Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no. That’s not America. Is there something wrong with a seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion that he is a

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It is important to recognize what power an image of such great beauty and poetry can have. The unequivocal message is that being American encompasses such open, multiple meanings that it may be possible to conceive it in dialogue with the Muslim identity. In the highly-charged post-9/11 environment, with its paranoid overtones and anxieties regarding ‘un-Americanness’ running high, the strength of this photograph defied the dominant discourses that seek to domesticate difference. In times of crisis like 2001, in the midst of heightened emotions and calls for retaliation, there is also a need to accept the multiple meanings made possible by art and integrate them into the dominant discourse. As already investigated by Louis Althusser, what art makes us see, and therefore gives us the form of ‘seeing’, ‘perceiving’ and ‘feeling’ (which is not the form of ‘knowing’), is the ideology from which it is born, in which it bathes, from which it detaches itself as art, and to which it alludes (1970, 222).

In other words, art disturbs reification, prizing open cracks to allow new ways of knowing, feeling and relating to what is different. Bleiker explores this venue by highlighting how a relatively recent event of great impact was represented by a broad range of vocabularies. Writing about the fall of the Berlin Wall, he observes: The turbulent events of 1989 can, for instance, be understood through the vocabulary of high politics, which revolves around great power relations and diplomatic negotiations; or through the vocabulary of strategic studies,

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which stresses military capacities, state repression, and relations of coercive force; or through the vocabulary of IPE, which places emphasis on market performances and their impact on political stability; or through the vocabulary of peace studies, which focuses on popular dissent and its ability to uproot systems of domination; or through the vocabulary of feminist theory, which illuminates the gendered dimensions of crumbling walls; or through the vocabulary of the common men and women in the street, which epitomizes the daily frustrations of living in a suffocating society; or through any other vocabulary that expresses the subjective dimensions of interpreting events. (Bleiker 2000, 2)

He holds that the promotion of a fairer, more egalitarian and peaceful world order is only possible by rethinking IR language, since when this draws a distinction between what is safe or threatening, what is rational or irrational, what is possible or impossible, and what is legitimate or illegitimate, it becomes a veritable social practice of normalizing common sense categories. It is not a problem of translation per se, but an issue of problematizing representations that make whole masses of individuals, values, facts, relationships and structures invisible to the discipline. For them to gain attention in IR, the many different realities previously prevented from engaging in dialogue as the self must be given recognition and legitimacy. He advocates activist arts, especially poetry. Arts allow us to reflect on politics, recognizing that aesthetics cannot be separated from political substance. Art can therefore simultaneously engage language and sociopolitical reality in order to convey experiences, without, however, giving precedence to any specific subjectivity. Echoing a call made by James Scully (1988), Bleiker (2000) contends that for a poem to hold poetic as well as political value, it must be able to connect the private and public, the self and other. Only then would it function as social practice towards resistance and political change. Further, Bleiker postulates that this is the only form of language that can draw on the imaginary in order to challenge thinking in IR theory and practice. By seeking in art a means to validate diverse conceptions of security, we explore alternatives that not only distance us from threats but can also lead us beyond resentment, insecurity, anxiety and loss. Given that our subjectivities are only mutually possible when articulated with different subjectivities, we should acknowledge our reciprocal interdependence without fear or prior judgement, putting everyone into a position where they can exchange, communicate and learn, so we can rid ourselves of the shackles born from fear.

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Concluding remarks The way scientific-strategic language has been used to make foreign policy discourse a channel for the production of otherness is something that should surely prompt scholars of IR to consider how they produce knowledge. IR scholarship should not fall foul of what Richard Ashley (1996) calls a “practice of deafness” (248). Recalling Bleiker, who sees knowing as more than the mere acquisition of knowledge, it means above all a quest for new capacities–the capacity to hear, comprehend and share, and not to only gain more facts (2006, 94). Arts have much to offer in the harnessing of these capacities. As already argued by Roland Barthès (1972), artistic-poetic language refuses ideological manipulation and myth-making. By speaking for everyone, it stands apart from a single, privileged position on reality. It embraces multiple viewpoints and subjectivities precisely because it does not impose any restriction on interpretation. Despite Theodor Adorno’s famous statement that poetry was no longer possible after Auschwitz, he actually reviewed his thinking and noted that art alone had the capacity to deal with the demands of suffering, politics and contemporary consciousness. In time, Adorno himself reversed his early condemnation of art in times of crisis: “It is now virtually in art alone that suffering can still find its own voice, consolation, without immediately being betrayed by it” (cited in Arato and Gephardt 1982, 318). Even so, this does not mean that alternative knowledge is more authentic or somehow better than prevailing interpretations of the world; and it clearly cannot replace technical or scientific knowledge. Nonetheless, there is a need to build new forms of knowledge to guide us towards a newer, deeper understanding of the challenges of our time. Artistic-poetic language offers ways of dealing with difference without necessarily converting it into otherness. The next challenge is to gain a better understanding of how to incorporate the potential of arts and poetics into the production of knowledge in IR.

References Althusser, Louis. 1970. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press. Arato, Andrew and Eike Gephardt. 1982. The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. New York: Continuum.

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Ashley, Richard. 1996. “The Achievements of post-Structuralism.” In International Theory: Positivism & Beyond, ed. Steve Smith, Ken Booth and Marysia Zalewski, 240-253. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barthes, Roland. 1972. Mythologies. New York: Hill and Wang. Bernstein, R.J. 1983. Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bleiker, Roland. 2006. “Art after 9/11.” Alternatives 31 (1): 77-99. —. 2000. “Introduction.” Alternatives: Local, Global, Political 25 (3): 269-286. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and The Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Campbell, David. 1998. Writing Security. U.S. Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Connolly, Williams E. 1991. Identity/Difference. Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Constantinou, Costas M. 2000. “Poetics of Security.” Alternatives: Local, Global, Political 25 (3): 287-306. Foucault, Michel. 2002. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences. New York: Routledge. Hansen, Lene. 2006. Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War. London: Routledge. Laqueur, Walter. 1987. The Age of Terrorism. Boston: Little & Brown. Linkins, Jason. 2008. “Colin Powell Invokes Image of Fallen Soldier.” The Huffington Post. October 18, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/19/colin-powell-invokesimag_n_135977.html, accessed July 8, 2009. Mansbach, Richard and Edward Rhodes. 2007. “The National State and Identity Politics: State Institutionalisation and ‘Markers’ of National Identity.” Geopolitics 12 (3): 426-458. Mead, Walter R. 2002. Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and how it Changed the World. New York: Routledge. Messari, Nizzar. 2001. “Identity and Foreign Policy: The Case of Islam in U.S. Foreign Policy.” In Foreign Policy in a Constructed World, ed. Vendulka Kubalkova, 227-245. New York: Sharpe. Nabers, Dirk. 2009. “Filling the Void of Meaning: Identity Construction in U.S. Foreign Policy After September 11, 2001.” Foreign Policy Analysis 5 (2): 191-214. Neumann, Iver B. 1996. Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and IR. London: Routledge.

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Shapiro, Michael. 1988. The Politics of Representation: Writing Practices in Biography, Photography, and Policy Analysis. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Scully, James. 1988. Line Break: Poetry as Social Practice. Seattle: Bay Press. Smith, Steve. 2001. “Singing Our World into Existence: IR Theory and September 11.” Unpublished working paper (see also International Studies Quarterly 48 (3), 2004, iv and 499-51). Stone, Harriet. 1996. The Classical Model: Literature and Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Todorov, Tzvetan. 1992. The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. New York: HarperPerennial. —. 1989. Nous et les Autres. La Réflexion Française sur la Diversité Humaine. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Walker, Robert B. J. 1993. Inside/Outside: IR as a Political Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weber, Cynthia. 1998. “Performative States.” Millennium 27 (1): 77-95.

CONTRIBUTORS

Erica Simone Almeida Resende has a BA in Legal Studies and International Relations, and has finished her PhD in Political Science at the University of Sao Paulo in 2009. She is currently Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Rio de Janeiro Federal Rural University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has published articles in peer-reviewed journals in Brazil and abroad, as well as four books in Brazil. She is a U.S. State Department Alumna and Fulbright Scholar since 2006. Emanuel Crudu is currently Doctoral Research Fellow at ARENA Centre for European Studies at the University of Oslo. He is PhD candidate in Political Systems and Institutional Change at IMT Institute for Advanced Studies in Lucca, Italy, with a working thesis assessing the arguments of political convergence and institutional change in CEE countries after the 2004 and 2007 waves of EU enlargement. Maria Eremenko, Junior Research Fellow at the Laboratory for Political Research, National Research University, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, is currently working on her thesis about European identity policy. Having studied at the University of Helsinki and in a Master Programme at Sciences Po, Paris, she is interested in European studies, and identity research in particular. As member of the Comparative Politics Department of the HSE Faculty of Politics, she is teaching political geography, responsible for international projects of the faculty and involved in comparative research projects with qualitative and quantitative methods. Melody Fonseca is graduate student of International Relations and African Studies, Fellow Researcher at the Contemporary History Department, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and member of the International Relations Studies Group (GERI-UAM). Her research interests are U.S. foreign policy toward Haiti, the construction of exclusion discourses based on race and power, and the effects of military interventions on the construction of social imaginaries. Her doctoral thesis examines American military interventions in Haiti during the 20th century

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and their effects on the (re)construction of the Haitian state and power institutions. Jennifer Hoewe is doctoral student and University Graduate Fellow at the College of Communications at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include media effects, specifically the news media’s ability to develop and perpetuate stereotypes through the uses of framing, cueing and priming. She completed her MA in journalism at Michigan State University, where she was named Outstanding Graduate Student, and her BA in communications at Grand Valley State University. Elena Lazarou is Assistant Professor and Researcher at the Centre of International Relations at CPDOC/FGV, Rio de Janeiro, and Associate Researcher at the Centre for International Studies at the University of Cambridge, where she completed her PhD in International Relations in 2008. Previously, Lazarou was Visiting Fellow at the Hellenic Observatory at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Head of the Euro-Mediterranean Observatory at EKEM, Athens and Research Associate at the Centre for International Policy Research at the University of Sheffield. Her interests include European integration, foreign policy analysis, the Mediterranean and Brazil. Sidney Leclercq is a Research Fellow at GRAPAX, Research Taskforce on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding and PhD student at the Université Libre de Bruxelles’ Research and Teaching in International Politics. He holds a MA in European Political Studies from the Université Libre de Bruxelles and a BA in Political Science from the Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis. His research focuses on EU external action, counterterrorism, European Middle East policy, transitional justice, security sector reform and state-building in Central Africa. Diego Santos Vieira de Jesus holds a PhD in International Relations from Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, where he is Adjunct Professor. He is the author of the book 13 passos para o Juízo Final – A flexibilidade estratégica e a nova era do desarmamento nuclear dos EUA e da Rússia (2000-2005) and co-author of the book A União Européia e os estudos de integração regional. His articles are published in Latin American, American and European journals, such as The Nonproliferation Review, International Political Sociology and The Washington Quarterly. His research focus lies on the foreign policy of emerging countries and

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great powers, Brazilian foreign policy, regional integration, nuclear arms control and non-proliferation. Stacey-Ann Wilson is Senior Research Fellow at the Stronger Smarter Institute at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. She has a PhD in Political Science with research interests in international political economy, international relations and comparative politics. Her areas of interests are identity, culture and political behaviour, with a particular focus on countries in the global South, as well as indigenous politics and the political economy of community development. Lana Wylie is Associate Professor in Political Science at McMaster University, Canada. Her recent research has explored the intersection of identity and foreign policy decisions with a focus on the foreign policies of Canada, the U.S. and Cuba. Her book, Perceptions of Cuba: Canadian and American Polices in Comparative Perspective (2010) compares Canadian and American policies toward Cuba. She has recently co-edited two volumes on Canadian foreign policy: Canadian Foreign Policy in Critical Perspective (with J. Marshall Beier) (2010); and Our Place in the Sun: Canada and Cuba in the Castro Era (with Robert Wright) (2009). Most recently, she was guest editor of the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal’s issue (2010): “The Politics of Canada-Cuba Relations: Emerging Possibilities and Diverse Challenges.”

About the Editor Sybille Reinke de Buitrago is Associate Researcher at the University of Hildesheim and Fellow at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, Germany. She holds a PhD in Political Science, a MA in International Affairs with specializations in Peace & Conflict Resolution and International Communication, and a BA in International Studies. Her research focuses on aspects of perception, culture, identity, norms and ideas in international relations, particularly in security policy and conflict situations, as well as on social constructivism. In her recent book, Threat Images in International Relations: American and German Security Policy on International Terrorism, she analysed threat perceptions of security policy decision makers in Germany and the U.S. Other publications are on the role of trust in conflicts in Asian Politics & Policy, or on psychological-cultural aspects in security policy in the Journal of Strategic Security. She is alumna of American University in Washington, DC and a U.S. State Department Alumna.