Lighthouse HT 17 by Oxford International Relations Society

Oxford International Relations Society Journal The Lighthouse (formerly Sir) Hilary 2017, Issue 14 oxirsoc.com facebook.com/irsoc editor-in-chief@oxirsoc.org

Sponsored by: This was printed by Anchorprint Group Ltd on 120gsm UPM fine. All of the pieces included in the journal were written by University of Oxford students and edited by student editors. The artwork included is a mixture of student, faculty and public domain art. Lighthouse accepts pitches for submissions at the beginning of every term between 0th and 2nd weeks. We recruit our editorial team near the end of every term, with applications for positions due at the end of 7th week. The best way to stay up to date with the publications is to subscribe to our mailing list via our website oxirsoc.com, or to like us on Facebook: facebook.com/irsoc.

C O N T E N T S 7 Macron and the Second Coming 10 Emmanuel Elliot Grogan international relations needs anthropology 13 Why Katy Allen Technological progress and drone warfare 16 Perspectives: George Tarr the fallacy of technological determinsim 19 Perpectives: Sorcha Thomson Trumps all? Rethinking rule by the people 22 Democracy Sasha Skovron interview with Professer Rana Mitter 25 An Meera Sachdeva progress in Chinese-Japanese relations 28 Cultivating Nathaniel Chan United People Organisation 31 The Christoph Steinert progress in India: a perspective from Tamil Nadu 35 Social Yashaswi Bagga bias in the domain of war 38 Progress Jeffrey Ding progress: global feminism and Islamic dress 41 Unveiling Margo Munro Kerr levelling the scale of economic progress 44 Migration: Daniel Kodsi as truth and justice in Argentina 46 Progress Sorcha Thomson The wheel of time and foreign affairs Matthew Palmer

EDITORIAL Katherine Pye, Editor

n the cover of this term’s journal is the silhouette of 'The Spirit of Progress', a bronze statue which sits atop of the old Montgomery Ward headquarters in Chicago. Leaning forward with her right foot raised as if running to flight, she holds a flaming torch in her right hand and in her left a caduceus, an ancient symbol of commerce. Her history traces the progress of American modernity. The statue was constructed in the economic boom of the 1920s, when the Montgomery Ward dry goods store, reaching new heights of success and prosperity wanted to celebrate their 50th anniversary with a remake of the famous 'Progress' statue in New York City. With tragic irony it was in September 1929, weeks before the greatest financial crisis in the history of the modern world, that 'The Spirit of Progress' took her place. The spirit of optimism and ambition in which she was constructed was to be in desperately short supply in the following years. In the streets beneath her criminal gangs thrived and thousands of Americans queued for jobs in the snow. They were stunned at what could have gone so wrong so suddenly and how rising living standards and social change could so quickly regress. The world of 2017 is no more certain. The concept of progress, towards economic prosperity, peace and human rights has lost meaning for many. The results of the EU referendum and the 2016 US elections have proven that established visions of progress are far from unanimous, and not least that a path towards a ‘liberal world order’ is far from a linear trajectory. These themes are thoroughly explored by Lighthouse contributors this term; what embodies progress across the world? When might it occur? Why does it have a remarkable ability to slip away without warning? Is it still a meaningful concept or simply a pretty figurine, an embellishment that tries to encapsulate a messy, vacillating trend in recent history? I hope the articles in this journal give some form to what the progress of the future might look like as we leap, clutching our torches, into a brave new world.

EDITORIAL TEAM Editors

Katherine Pye Laura Whetherly Editor-in-Chief

Rupert Sparling Deputy Editors

Elliot Grogan Sorcha Thomson Sub Editors

Meera Sachdeva Michael Shao Graphic Designer

Adam Zibak

EDITORIAL Laura Whetherly, Editor

The wheel of time and foreign affairs: change and progress By Matthew Palmer

elcome back to Lighthouse with our latest edition for Hilary Term 2017. 2016 was a year which saw some extraordinary events in International Relations – the election of Donald Trump, Britain’s EU referendum and escalation of the conflict in Syria. The response to these and other unexpected developments in global politics has focused on one question which we have tried to address in this edition of the journal. What is progress, if, as time passes, we seem to be rolling back the ‘progressive’ changes made by earlier generations? The answer, of course, is not straightforward. In this edition, you can see how writers have approached the issue from a multiplicity of viewpoints: how progress relates to war, what drives change and progress in particular regions and how ‘progress’ affects the individual. We have also tried to explore ‘progress’ from a global perspective and to broaden the discussion away from the topics most often in conversation in the UK. As well as covering war and economic change, you can read about bullfighting in the Tamil Nadu region of India and what we can learn about progress from anthropologists in the Amazon. There is also a focus on the impact that the individual can have on larger scale events. From grandmothers in Argentina to the impact of cultivating transnational friendship, the individual is able to assert influence on events far beyond their personal experience. In the wake of such extraordinary global flux, the idea of ‘progress’ is a pressing one. We hope you enjoy reading this journal as much as we enjoyed writing it.

n the Western world, we generally view time as linear, with a definite beginning and constant progress until we reach a final end. This conception of time, drawn from Judeo-Christian sources, is so pervasive in the West that we often find it hard to comprehend any other way of seeing time; and yet, many human cultures beg to differ. Cyclical conceptions of time are prominent in Buddhism, Hinduism, the Celtic religions and most famously perhaps in the ancient Maya civilisation. When time is linear, we expect semi-constant progress, irreversible change, a sense of moving towards something greater; time is measured in small units, and there is a tendency to think in the short term. When time is cyclical, we can expect repetition, a lack of overall progress, and a longterm view of history. So how is this relevant to the hard truths of relations between nation-states? The answer lies, perhaps, in the fact that Judeo-Christian concepts of linear time and progress do not appear to hold true when looking at world politics. The human race has progressed inexorably in the fields of science, medicine, perhaps even the arts; yet when it comes to the affairs of nation states, we appear to have not moved beyond the world politics of our forebears. At first glance, this seems to be a preposterous notion. Surely in the

field of international relations we have progressed – the USSR collapsed leaving the USA as the only remaining superpower, and now we no longer have the threat of major war between the great powers hovering above our heads. Globalisation has brought together peoples and states on opposite sides of the plan-

“Why is time apparently so cyclical when it comes to international affairs?” et; the world’s nations are overseen by intergovernmental entities such as the UN, the WTO, and the IMF. How could we have not progressed since the start of the 20th century, or the Middle Ages? Since the Cold War, this has been a popular view, exemplified by Fukuyama’s 'End of History' and politicians calling for a “New World Order” of liberal capitalist democracies to replace the old order of competing powers with rival ideologies. Yet, as recent history has shown, the fall of the USSR did not usher in the “End of History”; great changes are sweeping across the Western world, and the overwhelming superiority of the USA is, ever-so-slowly, diminishing in the face of a rising China and more-bellicose Russia.

The media talks at various times of our era resembling that of the 1930s, and of tensions between Russia and the West as being worse than at any point since the Cold War, seeing it as something of a ‘step back’ from the

emerging. Large international organisations such as the United Nations are nothing new, really. The Catholic Church often performed a similar role in Medieval Europe, intervening in wars between states in order to keep the peace in Christendom. It might be controversial to do so, but could you draw parallels between the First Crusade and the 1949 UN intervention in Korea? Perhaps. While it is true that the United Nations is a global organisation, while the Church was a pan-European one only, that does not detract from the inherent similarities in the way they went about their business. Cycles of time are not supposed to be exactly repetitive – they can broaden and contract, but the general patterns remain the same. Great Powers viewed patterns of diplomacy in a cyclical way – Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers is a classic example. Yet the United States’ currently unmatched

“Humanity may progress, but relations between the polities into which we are divided will not” implied progress towards peaceful harmony. But is it a ‘step back’, or is it simply the wheel of time making another rotation? Is the West destined to have this sort of relationship with Russia forever, constantly sliding between periods of relative warmth and frigid tension? Looking back at Russian-Western relations over the last few hundred years, you can indeed see this sort of pattern

supremacy is occasionally seen as something unique in history, when it is not. Hegemony has existed since the dawn of nation-states. The Achaemenid Empire was seen to be as unmatched at its height as the U.S is now; so was the Roman Empire, the Mongol territory and the British Empire. All of these powers eventually declined despite their apparent invincibility. The difference, one might say, is that now we have nuclear weapons. Some see this as a watershed in the way Great Power relations are conducted; the nuclear powers will never go to war in the way they did before. But while nuclear weapons have greatly increased the destructive potential of war – to extinction-level capability, it is not entirely convincing that they changed the way Great Powers operated in their struggle to maintain the ‘balance of power’. Arms Races are nothing new – look at the early 20th century, or many early naval wars. Of course, this leads to the unnerving prospect that perhaps nuclear war is not such a remote possibility as we think. It is worth wondering what effect ever-progressing technological innovation will have on the realm of international relations. In truth, it is doubtful we will see anything fundamentally different from what we have seen before. That does not mean there will be no change – but that change may simply be a return of age-old patterns. Globalisation and the rise of the Internet have made international borders porous, breaking down what is sometimes called the “Westphalian System” of nation states. Furthermore, with the rise of megacities, the 21st Century might become an “Age of the City”, in which

great urban centres become more and more important while the relative power of nation states declines. Is this something entirely new, or is this a return to the pre-modern system of city-states and nations with indeterminate boundaries? Is there another slow cycle of state-forms which is revolving back to a classical pre-Westphalian model?

“The laws of the jungle are more applicable to the realm of international relations than those of human civilisation” Why is time apparently so cyclical when it comes to international affairs? Perhaps the key lies in the essential anarchy of international relations. States, unlike people, do not really have to worry about breaking ‘the law’; they are the force behind laws, and intergovernmental organisations have little real independent power to uphold the rules. The laws of the jungle are more applicable to the realm of international relations than those of human civilisation. Perhaps the cyclical model of time is a more naturalistic world-view, appropriate to lawless anarchy; progress only occurs when there is a lawmaker with effective power to direct and enforce, cracking the whip in order to move its charges in the right direction. If so, it seems that little will truly progress in the field of international relations, as long as there are states to compete with each other. Humanity may progress; but relations between the polities into which we are divided will not.

Macron and the Second Coming

social and economic progress, as pragmatic policy-making finally transcended the restrictive ideological dogma of both right and left. Otherwise put, it was the ‘politics of common sense’. The new political orthodoxy was clear: elections were now to be won in the centre, by appealing to a progressive majority. For a while it continued. Cameron and Osbourne did their best to mimic the man they called “The Master”, whilst Obama’s 2008 victory rekindled the message of positivism, that ordinary people can put their hands on the arc of history and “bend it once more towards the hope of a better day”. Then came the tempest of 2016, which has shuffled many of these protagonists, some more gracefully than others, off the political stage. The age of progressive politics appears to be over. Donald Trump’s apocalyptic assessment that “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now” has heralded an age of pessimism, perhaps even an age of regression. The liberal vision of a better tomorrow has lost both its power and its voice.

The last hope for the progressive majority? By Elliot Grogan

n mid May 1997, D:Ream’s “Things can only get better” echoed round buoyant town halls and conference centres up and down the UK; adopted by New Labour as its election campaign theme, it encapsulated the bubbling optimism that was sweeping Tony Blair, the youngest Prime Minister in over a century, into Downing Street. A new centrist age appeared to have arrived in Britain, ushered in by a liberal election landslide. Across the pond, Blair’s opposite number in Washington was also an advocate for this ‘new’ kind of optimistic, liberal centrism. Bill Clinton, who had shot to the Democratic party nomination in 1992 as the ‘consensus candidate’, was presiding over the longest peacetime economic expansion in American history, championing free trade, healthcare and welfare reform. Things could surely only get better... These two forty-somethings were united in their positivist vision of the future based on aspiration and compromise; united in promoting a political philosophy aimed at navigating the difficult tension between social justice and economic pragmatism. Centrism appeared as the child of twentieth century

Where did it all go wrong for the centre? Have we witnessed a natural political cycle, a revanchist rejection of liberalism? Did the personal taint the political, as the hamartia of centrism’s chief proponents, from Clinton’s sex scandals to Blair’s titanic hubris, dent faith in the political philosophy? Did centrism fail to control the unintended consequences of globalisation and open borders? Or has the technological revolution, unparalleled since the profusion of the printing press in the 16th century, fundamentally changed the rules of the game? Whatever the answer to these questions, almost 100 years after they were initially penned, Yeats’ words appear prescient: “the centre cannot hold”. Western democracies are witnessing a rapid political fragmentation away from the centre back towards dogma and extremes, be it Sanders and Trump, Corbyn and May, or Fillon, LePen and Hammon. The unifying cry of centrism has fallen into obscurity. The question is whether a return to policies of the past will be able to deal with the world of future. No Western democracy appears more exposed to a rupture with liberal centrism in 2017 than the fifth French republic. On the right-wing lie the two political heavyweights most likely to be moving into the Élysée Palace: Francois Fillon and Marine Le Pen. Yet it is worth interrogating whether their respective programmes bear the marks of progression or of regression. Fillon’s campaign slogan certainly lacks D:Ream’s giddy hopefulness: “cassez la baraque” roughly translates as “tear the house down”. The former prime minister is committed to an unyielding neo-Thatcherism with a nationalist twist; slashing state spending, firing half a million civil servants, and

reintroducing hard barriers on immigration. Such aggressive 1980s neo-liberalism may prove effective in a country where red tape and a stifling labour market has sapped economic productiv-

“Centrism appeared as the child of twentieth century social and economic progress, as pragmatic policy-making finally transcended the restrictive ideological dogma of right and left” ity. Yet will long-term economic gains outweigh the short-term social costs of such uncompromising resoluteness? Jostling with Fillon for right-wing votes is Marine Le Pen, whose desire to close France’s borders to refugees and rebuild a nationalist sate appears to echo a far darker period of 20th century history. Yet the left too, embodied by the Parti Socialiste, finds itself hostage to the past. Reeling from the inadequacy of the Holland government, Corbyn-esque rebel Benoit Hammon has triumphed in presidential primaries over former Prime Minister Manuel Valls. The principal subject of debate throughout the primaries? The 35-hour working week, a policy first advocated by Francois Mitterrand in the 1981. Whereas Valls attempted to repeal an ineffective policy in Government, Hammon declared himself not only a supporter, but in favour of extending it by limiting the working week to 32-hours, in the quixotic belief that this will catalyse the jobs market as work will be shared around.

Mitterrand, the arch-realist who abandoned the 35-hour week upon realising its ineffectiveness, would be turning in his grave. Valls was once considered the French heir to Blair, advocating symbolic party reform such as dropping the name ‘socialist’ much as Blair repealed Labour’s Clause IV and rebranded Labour as ‘New Labour’. Both men believed that the left’s values are best served when the party is trusted with governing, and to achieve this a pragmatic economic anchor was key. Instead, the PS’s official candidate will be laying out a divisive vision of a future where work no longer exists, and must therefore be replaced by universal basic income to the tune of €350bn. Pragmatic economics indeed. Yet perhaps a flicker of hope remains for the progressive majority in the shape of Emmanuel Macron, a Europhile financier and former Minister for the Economy; a protagonist leading a centrist résistance in this election race by re-popularising a ‘third way’. Macron has fashioned a ruthless campaign machine, signing up almost 200,000 members to his En Marche! movement, a tally which has overtaken that of the Parti Socialiste. The party’s raison d’être is a simple one: to transcend party divides, bringing together the best ideas of left and right under one banner. Sound familiar? Macron’s central message is not only to be wary of extremes, but also to beware the “hyper-simplification” which is gripping Western political discourse. Hyper-simplification is the idea that complex policy problems can be solved with brutalist simplicity; that building a wall will stop illegal immigration, that leaving Europe will bring untold riches to the NHS, or that banning refugees will eliminate terrorism. Policy making is difficult and com-

plex, unintended consequences must be weighed up, known unknowns evaluated, unknown unknowns prepared for. But in this age of unreason, nuance isn’t popular, complexity isn’t marketable. Macron’s programme is however, one of compromise and nuance, including reform of the 35-hour week which builds in flexibility between supporting employment and social fairness. The candidate’s vision is of an outward-looking France leading a progressive Europe, supporting market freedoms of deregulation and entrepreneurship, but tempered by a social agenda.

“Macron’s candidature is asking whether a progressivist vision of tomorrow still has the power to grasp the collective imagination” There is a lot to lose this election season. The security and prosperity of the late twentieth-century has not come into being haphazardly. Defenders of open societies and free markets must make a stand, and Macron has taken up this mantle. It may prove unpopular; too progressive, too early for voters to spurn the siren call of populism, too late to overcome the centre’s failures since the 1990s. But boxed in by pessimism - be it that immigrants are crippling France, that 500,000 employees of the state need to be consigned to the unemployment scrapheap, or that work is no longer relevant - Macron’s candidature is asking whether a progressivist vision of tomorrow still has the power to grasp the collective imagination. Perhaps in this election the centre can still hold.

Progress in the Amazon and beyond

Why international relations needs anthropology By Katy Allen

s progress always progressive? This loaded term is in urgent need of critique from all disciplines, particularly considering recent political events that threaten to legitimise all-or-nothing, polarised viewpoints. ‘Progress’ is historically associated with a social evolutionary narrative; otherwise put, that ‘West is best’. It is also the reason colonialism is sometimes conceptualised as a positive phenomenon, despite the unprecedented human suffering it continues to cause. There remains a school of thought which perceives colonialism as a catalyst for global progression involving the modernisation and civilisation of cultures clinging to ‘dying’ and ultimately unsustainable lifestyles. This is a not an uncommon view and is perpetuated by educational and government rhetoric, although post-colonial scholarship strives to deconstruct these standpoints. IR as a discipline might utilise anthropological methods and devices to push for a self-reflexive critique concerning ways in which notions of progress influence

mainstream IR thinking and rhetoric. The Amazon region is perhaps one of the most obvious examples of mass-scale environmental and cultural destruction in the name of progress. An annual study by the Brazilian government estimated that deforestation in the Amazon had increased by 29%, equating to 7989 square kilometres wiped out between August 2015 and July 2016. We know that causes are heavily rooted in factors such as agriculture and fuel demand, things which enable societies to exist in their current form, but the level of deforestation is also directly and indirectly linked to corruption in government institutions and unequal distribution of wealth and power. Disregard for the rainforest goes hand in hand with the exploitation of local people, resulting in economic, social and technological destitution: indigenous communities today suffer from a myriad of social issues, including high rates of suicide, drug addiction and alcoholism. The economic driver allied to a

fundamental attachment to the concept of progress can be problematic in other ways. The UK Government’s Department for International Development (Dfid) has recently been heavily criticised for ‘dumping’ billions of pounds of overseas aid money into World Bank trust funds to meet its annual commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on aid. There have been calls for more effective and transparent spending

that belongs to indigenous people is taken away from them, despite the fact they are widely recognised by scientists, our ‘experts’, as extremely knowledgeable regarding land management and biodiversity maintenance. Groups campaigning for indigenous rights such as Survival International, although effective, do in a sense also end up falling into the progress trap. It is all too easy to present a romanticised image of ‘uncontacted’ indigenous tribes consisting of ‘noble savages’, a well-known trope in early anthropology that re-enforces feelings of an ‘Other’ as different. By presenting indigenous peoples as ‘innocents’, untouched by the evils of western civilisation, their agency is erased, despite the political savviness and activism of many of these groups. Earlier scholars of the region, particularly Claude LeviStrauss, were considered to perpetuate a view of indigenous peoples as ‘without history’, frozen in time and in need of being catapulted into the present. Yet detailed studies by anthropologists, archaeologists and historical ecologists show the extent of the anthropogenic landscape within the Amazon and the socio-political complexity of pre-Columbian societies; evidence points to a land that has for thousands of years been consciously managed by humans, their impact in the region possibly extending as far back as 11,000 – 8500 BP. Shockingly, Survival’s Director Stephen Corry downplayed and even undermined the importance of anthropologists in terms of addressing the needs and desires of indigenous peoples. Anthropologists must spend a long period with one group,

“It is all too easy to present a romanticised image of ‘uncontacted’ indigenous tribes consisting of ‘noble savages’” following reports of money sitting in these obscure funds for years or alternatively being distributed in an untargeted manner in the hope that economic stimulus will bring progress and raise living standards. These themes are often echoed in conversations with people who work with NGOs and their related international bodies: they are frustrated, their work is rushed and unconsidered. The political pressure to act immediately means mistakes are made and an organisation ends up hindering those they are trying to help. Yet corruption is also notoriously rife amongst the big players of the conservation industry, organisations ostensibly opposed to the powerful quest for progress. Like governments, supra-national conservation entities are sometimes guilty of enforcing their constructed agendas with little thought to traditional cultures and their territories. Land

usually around 1-2 years for initial fieldwork, precisely because relationships of trust and understanding take time to build and the insight gained during this time is thus invaluable. The quote used to open this article came from Yanomami Shaman Davi Kopenawa, who worked with anthropologist Bruce Albert to co-author The Falling Sky which partly consists of a critique of the West. Whilst critiques of development are nothing new, anthropological fieldwork allows the emergence of alternative interpretations borne from different cultural perspectives and epistemologies, in addition to those grounded in our own concerns. Moving on then to exploring existing alternative frameworks and theoretical foundations for potential critiques of progress, feminist perspectives in IR, such as those embodied by the work of Anne Tickner, have a lot in common with anthropological ones. A micro-scale approach, longer periods of time spent on the ground and a more detailed focus on typically underrepresented voices in

international narratives would benefit greatly the study of large-scale interactions, such as state to state. Conceptually, IR too often remains uncritical of its own frameworks; being a bit more self-conscious would refresh a discipline often accused of being stale in its approach and reverse its reputation as typically monopolised by a western-derived positivist philosophical outlook. Anthropologists are not saviour figures and indigenous peoples worldwide can and do speak for themselves. The association of anthropologists with colonialism and the problems with their contemporary presence in regions such as the Amazon must also not be swept aside. But perhaps a more nuanced understanding of culturally-specific definitions of progress, gained through the theoretical and methodological devices used in anthropology, would enrich our understanding of global events and give indigenous peoples a more defined position on the international stage.

Perspectives: Technology A cautionary message

Technological progress and drone warfare By George Tarr

acking in consensus and clarity, the duelling concepts of time and progress often suffer treatment as something close to synonymous; the latter painted as the necessary and inviolable fruit of the former’s work. This determinism about progress is harmful in more ways than one, yet its consequences are perhaps nowhere clearer than in the arena of international security and conflict. In this discipline, where developments are thought to rest upon the ever upward trajectory of science and moral reason, we have become worshippers of the present tense. Seeming to herald the halcyon days ahead, the 20th century brought what many have called a revolution in military affairs. This systemic shift is the cargo of a multidisciplinary evolution in a globalising age; a surge in media, machine and morality. Its clearest symptoms have been US-led conflicts in the Arab world, which have seen precision-targeting and speed like never before. Against the cinematic backdrop of two costly and messy world wars, a new age appears to be dawning. In this age, conflict, when it occurs, will be swift, effective and nearly bloodless. The future itself is announcing its arrival - and it is furiously bright. Such it is that the harbingers of the

revolution race like Alice in Wonderland’s White Rabbit, consumed by his pocket watch, ever frantic for the important date ahead. In essence it is a kind of temporal arrogance – what C.S. Lewis calls “chronological snobbery” – barely slowed in its tracks by the warning signs that line its path. The 2003 Iraq War was one such signpost. While recognised for its flaws, the failures of this infamous conflict are never thought to derive from any kind of technological regression. In spite of widespread assertions that the war should never have occurred, the banner of progress still flies over its fruition.

“It is within this ‘scientific and moral progress’ that new, unintended evils have arisen”

governed by rules and with roughly proportionate methods. But the advent of satellite warfare and the use of drones brought about an unprecedented asymmetry of means. Iraq’s weak grasp of anti-satellite methods left it virtually powerless in the grasp of the US-led coalition. General Tommy Franks, US Army Former Commander, emphasised that “the command and control of air, ground, naval, and SOF [Special Operations Forces] from 7,000 miles away was a unique experience in warfare”, achieving “unprecedented real-time situational awareness”. President Bush praised the effectiveness of these new means, calling the war in Iraq “one of the swiftest and most humane military campaigns in history.” More recently, the US coalition has conducted 18,117 strikes on Syria and Iraq in the ongoing operation against ISIL, resulting in an estimated minimum of 2,358 civilian casualties. Yet, it is within this ‘scientific and moral progress’ that new, unintended evils have arisen, rooted in psychological factors far from the mind of the high-calibre invading army.

The first factor has been a shift in the ground-level perception of ‘the enemy’. When soldiers patrol the streets in US uniforms, wielding AK47s, the immediate enemy is easily defined. Quite apart from ideological concerns, the enemy to the insurgent on the street is simply that man; the armed invader himself. The man in the urban alley, and the immediate threat he brings, becomes the fulcrum around which hatred and resentment turn. With the advent of precision-targeting drones, the specificity of the enemy was replaced by faceless objects, spiralling towards faceless targets. Drone development removed this focal point, releasing the tension in a fire of undirected vengeance: the enemy, losing its immediate identity, became ‘America’ and ‘the West.’ This is compounded by what Edward Jones coined as ‘correspondent inference theory’, whereby observers tend to interpret the objective of an agent in terms of the consequence of their action. If you notice someone close a door and the room becomes quieter, you assume they closed it in order to make the room quiet.

In the conventional first phase of the war, the US-led coalition invaded to disarm suspected nuclear weaponry as planned. Satellite warfare was used extensively, securing, superficially, the quick surrender of Iraqi armed forces. The strategy marked a historical shift. Traditional Westphalian war was a ‘brutal form of politics’ between two sovereign states,

Perspectives: Technology In the instance of the soldier on the street, witnessing him open fire will instil a perception that his intent is to kill those he has found, fuelling resentment and a desire to avenge those deaths. In the instance of a drone, the faceless enemy, with no detectable hesitation, causes repeated, extensive destruction and civilian casualties. It is inferred from this consequence that the broad opponent has the intention of wreaking unrestrained havoc, destroying the very fabric of the nation it victimises. What follows is a shift in the norms of acceptable warfare. When the enemy is faceless, and of seemingly endless might, the inferior power becomes justified in its ruthlessness. After the clinical US operations, Iraq erupted into unrestrained guerrilla warfare; fighting was conducted tooth and nail, and street by street. Insurgents turned to identity-driven appeals for violent support from

forces turned them into an overarching strategy. The subsequent costly affair sparked a long-running, hyper-resilient hatred of the West amongst particular members of the Iraqi citizenry, by direct consequence of the ‘progressive’ asymmetry of means thought to bring swift resolution. To those on the ground, the pattern was clear. In 2005, US Lieutenant General Chiarelli noted a substantial shift in Iraqi perceptions of the West as a whole, remaking that “in many instances, we are our own worst enemy." The glorification of drones as military progress is one manifestation of a temporal arrogance which ought to be continually checked. There are other examples on the horizon. Technological developments which echo science fiction, such as the emergence of fully autonomous weapons or socalled ‘killer robots’, could create extensive issues of accountability in the future. Even presently, we see an unnerving lack of effective investigation into and punishment for unlawful drone killings, in part fuelling the desperate retaliation of its victims. The purpose of this article is not to vilify progress, but to condemn the idealistic notion of its linearity. Enlightenment is never an achieved destination. The present is rather more or less enlightened in various respects. It is possible to choose incorrectly between the good and the bad of the past; to build on the least of our inheritance. Indeed, our pride in the present has borne a harmful freight. Following the White Rabbit, racing into the future and blind to the past, has led us down the rabbit hole more than a number of times.

“When the enemy is faceless, and of seemingly endless might, the inferior power becomes justified in its ruthlessness” those located within the offending nations themselves. They turned to a broad campaign of terrorism; a struggle against the Western world. As noted by American political scientist Robert Pape, recent escalations in suicide attacks can be directly traced to feelings of an insurmountable struggle against foreign intervention. While in previous wars such tactics remained peripheral, the Iraqi

The power of technology or the technology of power? On determinism and progess By Sorcha Thomson

blogger sips his coffee while typing into his laptop, sitting in a busy café in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, but present in another world. With one click, the text on his screen leaves his possession, to be liked, shared, and consumed by a digital audience of limitless views. 700 years earlier, a monk has entered a silent library for the first time. It is Oxford, 1411, and regulations have just been introduced that recognise libraries as a quiet space. Picking up his pen, the monk begins to copy the manuscript in front of him, emboldened by his new-found privacy to think critically of the text in front of him. What do a 21st century blogger and a 15th century monk have in common? Not a punchline to a bad joke. The men are united by their position in a shared narrative of the role of technology in determining social change. The blogger, able to share information and communicate with a freedom and scope previously unknown, is to organise a movement that will shake the Arab world in 2011. The monk, learning to read in

private, gains the ability to reflect on the information presented to him, ultimately mounting a challenge to the transnational authority of the Catholic Church that will change the locus of power in the Western world. From the silencing of reading, through the invention of the printing press, to the seismic boom of the internet age, each new communication epoch has been seen to herald in a great social revolution. It is true that with the printing press came the spread of vernacular language text and the democratisation of information, and it is true that the internet has allowed for human interaction on a global scale as never before.

“Revolutions – in communications or otherwise – do not happen overnight” But there is a danger in attributing social change to the power of technology, whereby the medium itself is said to shape and control the

Perspectives: Technology scale and form of human association and action. This technological determinism provides for the assumption that with each watershed moment in communication technology, there will be an accompanying social progress – bringing human kind closer to an imagined ideal standard of society. The persisting prevalence of this teleological illusion, from academia to mainstream media hype, demonstrates not just a crude understanding of the nature of social change but, more deeply, it feeds a Eurocentric view of the world that obscures the operating dynamics of power. Historical perspective lets us stop seeing every new technology as the one that will crumble existing power structures, and allows us to understand the logic of ethnocentrism that defines this view of progress. The invention of the Greek alphabet makes an effective starting point.

lowing authority as it was presented to them. Non-European languages were recognised as remnants from a past, preserved at some various stage of evolutionary backwardness. This narrative, while feeding into popular theories of a great cognitive divide between East and West, obscures the reality of a long and messy

“Developments in human communication do not proceed in a monolithic juggernaut towards a standardised modernity” process through which European order was presented as the standard of modernity to which the colonial world must strive. Here, the power of technology gives way to the technology of power. The colonial dichotomy posits an absolute opposition between the order of the modern West and the backwardness and disorder of the East. This order intended to assert itself through the institutions and practices of the colonial administration, so that it would perpetuate and reproduce, making its direct exercise no longer necessary. But resistance to the European order continued to challenge the colonial hegemony. Oral cultures staked their role in transitions to modernity, adopting the tools of the new order to serve alternative contemporary agendas. Technology, including that of writing, did not constitute a force in itself, but played vehicle to an ongoing interaction of shifting social relations.

The Greek alphabet was a technology used around the the word. It was considered the pinnacle of human script; with its incorporation of vowels it could fully restructure the realm of sound to that of sight. What followed has been considered a restructuring of consciousness: the ability to read text privately distanced the receiver from the author; objectivity followed distance, fuelling critical thought, and allowing for the development of the human mind to its full potential. This intellectual ascendency, it was believed, left behind those cultures whose methods of oral communication were said to be lacking in objectivity and creativity, producing conservative mind sets blindly fol-

We can now fast forward to the momentous upheaval to social order that took place across the Middle East in the 2011 Arab Spring. With the arrival of each new media in the Middle East, it has been presumed that mass democratisation will follow. The Arab Spring seemed to prove these effects. Facebook and Twitter were certainly key accelerators of the movement, in the organisation of protests and the spread of information. But the assumption that social media freedom would correlate with a Western-style democracy agenda ignores the context of the mass protests across the Arab world. Internet communication may be a powerful accelerator, but it does not dictate the substantive ideological form of such protests – ranging from secular left wing trade unions, to Islamists, and right-wing populists. The emphasis on the power of new technologies in spreading Western democratic values is inherited from a technological determinism that promotes the European order as an idealised modernity. Revolutions – in communications or otherwise – do not happen overnight. They are the product of an often long, and for some tortuous, transition in the tools of knowledge dissemination. They reflect of shifting social and political relations, rather than determining them. To prioritise the medium is to neglect the importance of the messages it contains, and to draw a line towards the same Cartesian hierarchy of elements proposed in the arguments surrounding the invention of the alphabet. Developments in human communication do not proceed in a monolithic juggernaut towards a standardised modernity, but as a conduit for the play of forces that determine the lived experience of those who shape it.

Democracy Trumps all?

Rethinking rule by the people By Sasha Skovron

resident Donald J. Trump’s triumph over Hillary Clinton during November’s US election mortified spectators from all corners of the globe, but with hindsight, the outcome should have come as no surprise. Brexit didn’t only teach us that pollsters and politicians are out of touch with the realities of popular opinion; it taught us that the public aren’t afraid to vote for something different and venture into unknown territory. In the case of Trump, the citizens of the United States voted to completely change the trajectory of national policy, without erring on the side of caution. Could we have foreseen this? Yes, absolutely. In fact, we should have seen it coming from a mile away. The western world has become complacent in presuming that democracy will inevitably result in the best outcome; in presuming that voters will always make the ‘right’ decision. Last June, Michael Cohen wrote in the Guardian that “Trump has practically no chance of winning the presidency. Quite simply, the Republican electorate looks nothing like the rest of the American electorate… Trump has systematically alienated the demographic groups that he will need to win the White House.” The extreme positions Trump needed to adopt to win the Republican nomination were perceived to appeal

to a radical minority; yet alarmingly, his outrageous rhetoric, in conjunction with his ability to provide the American people with a different strategy, won him the presidency. Those the current establishment had failed to satisfy saw a unique opportunity embodied in Donald Trump: they saw the promise of change, they saw someone proposing to enact a tangible difference. This difference, crucially, does not need to be of a reforming or liberal dimension. The West’s superiority complex has led us to believe that ‘the free world’ is inevitably progressing along Whig lines towards a liberal utopia - our history has and will play out as the con-

“The western world has become complacent in presuming that democracy will inevitably result in the best outcome” tinuing victory of progress over reaction. Yet Brexit and the results of November 8th make one statement loud and clear: reaction and regression are forces to be reckoned with in politics, and to be candid, we are moving further and further away from the forward-looking ideals we perceive our states to epitomise. It’s time for us to rethink the values of

the world we live in. The US election left millions disillusioned with their country, and there needs to come a point at which we remove the blindfold and acknowledge that our faith in democracy has been misplaced. We cannot rely on the seemingly ‘right’ or ‘best’ outcome to triumph, and now need to question why a man who demonises immigrants, champions white supremacy, mocks those with disabilities, openly admits to committing fraud, has a history of sexual assaults, and who now threatens the liberties of hundreds of thousands of individuals across the American social fabric, was chosen by the American people to be the leader of the free world. Nicholas Kristof’s article for The New York Times, ‘Lies in the Guise of News in the Trump Era’, acknowledges that far-right websites and ‘fake news’ have gained ground, continuing to spew misinformation targeting minorities, and undermining tolerance and democracy. He writes: “I think we in the mainstream media — especially cable television — sometimes bungled coverage of Trump. There was too much uncritical television coverage of Trump because he was good for ratings; then there was not enough investigation of his business dealings, racism and history of sexual assaults, and too much false equivalency that equated the two candidates as equally flawed. More broadly, we in the mainstream media are out of touch with working-class America; we spend too much time chatting up senators, and not enough visiting unemployed steel workers.” Facebook recently became embroiled in accusations that, through the dissem-

Focus: East Asia ination of misinformation, the social networking site served as an echo chamber, shaping the opinions and votes of the American electorate. Barack Obama’s post-election speech given from the White House Rose Garden attempted to reconcile the notion of democracy with the surprise election outcome. “That’s the nature of democracy”, he expressed. “It’s not always inspiring. The path that this country has taken has never been a straight line. Sometimes we move in ways that some people think is forward and others think is moving back. The point, though, is that we all go forward with a presumption of good faith in our fellow citizens. Because that presumption of good faith, is essential to a vibrant and functioning democracy.” Despite good intentions, the speech isn’t convincing. This ‘presumption of good faith’ has backfired, with Trump’s seismic immigration ban barring more than 218 million people from the United States and denying entry to all refugees fleeing their war-torn countries. 500,000 green card holders are now blocked from returning to America - their legal rights as US residents have been swiped from under their feet. The affair is eerily reminiscent of the US rejection of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust; 254 passengers aboard the SS St. Louis, a German passenger vessel turned away from the United States in May 1939, were killed in Nazi-controlled Europe following their return. The current state of affairs in America represents the absolute antithesis of progress. Trump’s executive order – issued just after Holocaust Remembrance Day – practically laughs in the

face of history, and is gruesomely resonant with the highly-charged, racist and bigoted rhetoric of the 1940s. New York representative Nydia Velazquez voiced her concern for the direction of American policy, stating “This is not who we are … We cannot go back to those dark days in our history.”

“The West’s superiority complex has led us to believe that ‘the free world’ is inevitably progressing along Whig lines towards a liberal utopia” So Obama’s “presumption of good faith” doesn’t quite cut it anymore. A flawed and unpredictable democratic system resulted in Clinton winning the popular vote with a margin of 2.1 per cent - aside from Obama's 2008 win, she received more votes than any other US presidential candidate in history - and yet she was not the winner of the electoral college. Additionally, the failure of politicians, experts and media institutions to treat Trump as a serious contender, combined with the misplaced conviction that democracy inevitably produces the ‘best’ outcome, left millions in shock upon Trump’s victory as president-elect. But viewers should have prepared for this outcome long ago. For all our mockery of Trump over the last eighteen months, he had the last laugh, and any notion of ‘progress’ – if we are to define progress as the advancement of equal rights for all groups under a democratic system – seems to draw further and further out of reach.

What the developing world can learn from China and Japan

An interview with Professor Rana Mitter By Meera Sachdeva

hen it comes to progress in Asia, a few countries come out ahead of the rest: Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and increasingly of course, China. In fact, for the progress they’ve made, these countries stand out not only in Asia, but in the rest of the world as well. What is it about these countries that has set them apart? What can other developing countries looking to achieve the same progress learn from their growth stories? Rana Mitter, Professor of History and Politics of Modern China is the author of several books including China’s War with Japan 1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival, and a speaker for the International Relations Society this term. Although Professor Mitter specializes in the history of Republican China, his expertise extends far beyond the borders of China, to Japan and much of East and South East Asia.

Throughout the course of our conversation in his office in the Centre of China Studies, Professor Mitter described three key elements which have led to East Asia’s growth spurt. The first is a kind of modernization that maintains links to a country’s roots – an “indigenous revolution” as Professor Mitter describes it. “Japan’s modernization [of 1868-1912] drew on existing resources within Japan itself and the nature of the country changed very profoundly from being relatively inwardly directed, relatively technologically constrained and relatively reluctant to allow too much popularization of power, to a system which in some ways reversed all of those things while still maintaining a very strong connection to the indigenous roots of Japanese culture.” By the end of the modernization period for example, the national slogan had

Focus: East Asia changed from sonno joi, ‘revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians’, to wakon yosai, ‘Japanese spirit combined with Western learning’. This highlights that although the attitude towards the West changed significantly, the emphasis on protecting what was inherently Japanese did not. Professor Mitter contrasts this to China, “which a couple of decades later would actually become very rejectionist of its own culture,” to explain why China’s economic progress took longer to take off. While Japan did maintain a careful balance between modernization and continued respect for its roots, it also looked outward to see what lessons it could learn from the developed West. The second element of this growth story is what Professor Mitter describes as another balance: “the ability to adapt externally directed forms of government and technological development without becoming prisoner to them. Japan’s democratization took ideas from British political practice, French legal precedents and German militarization without copying or imitating any of those. Instead it drew on a whole variety of different Japanese traditions such as the tradition of having the Emperor at the apex of the country, while at the same time popularizing the polity in a very significant way.” It is no coincidence that at the same time as Japan introduced democratic institutions such as an elected parliament (the Diet), it also reinstated the Emperor as the head of the country (although he had no political power). In fact, when the constitution was developed in 1889, it was presented to the people as a gift from the Emperor. Regrettably, Japan did eventually become a prisoner to external ideas, and its drive to empire and militarization is the most important example of that. According to Professor Mitter, “that combination of genuine modernization and genuine liberalization in parts combined with a much more aggressive imperialism is the paradox of pre-war Japan.” The final element of the Japanese growth story and the East Asian one as a whole is an investment in the people and in an education system. Japan’s modernization period saw it introducing a national education system to educate the entire population. By the end of the period in 1912, almost everyone attended free public schools for at least six years. “Relative to other parts of the world which have come from relatively low GDPs to relatively high GDPs in the post World War II environment, so excluding Western Europe and North America, East Asian countries in general have spent and invested more on education and on creating a workforce that is able to engage with and operate in a more flexible economic environment. That is certainly one of things you notice about Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in the 1970s and 1980s. It was no surprise that when he had to summarize what it was he wanted to do for China he called it the Four Modernizations, which included wanting to strength-

en Science and Technology, agricultural development and industry.” Japan also continued investing in its education system in its second modernization period, post-World War II. In fact, “one of the advantages of Japan outsourcing most of its defence to the US is that it had more money to spend on things like technical training, education and R&D”. Indeed, the 2016 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which ranks countries based on how their 15-year olds perform in international tests saw China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore rank in the top 11 for Maths and Science. Upon my pressing Professor Mitter for why this trend was specific to East Asia, and had not been seen in South Asia, Africa or Latin America, he responded “It would be false to deny that there is a cultural element because while all these counties are not purely in any sense Confucian – it’s too crude to say that – there is a Confucian element of thinking in Eastern parts of Asia. There is no doubt that from a very early time, an emphasis on learning and education has been part of that particular culture.” In fact Confucius developed an entire theory on education and believed it should be open to all, seeing it as an equalizer. While this argument appeals to the anthropologist, Professor Mitter appeals to the economist as well by drawing upon Robert Solow’s famous theory of economic growth which won him the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1987. This theory states, among other things, that the lower the level of capital stock in a country, the faster it will grow. “What’s distinctive about East Asian countries”, Professor Mitter went on to say, is that “they had all been very badly hit by war and destruction. Although in some sense Latin America, Africa and South Asia were also involved in the Second World War, none of them had the kind of in depth exposure and destruction during the war that East and South East Asia had. In that context, the starting point of national destruc-

tion in China and Japan and South Korea and Indonesia and Malaysia and all these countries provided a very different national consciousness than was the case in places in Latin America and Africa which had different battles to fight. The liberation wars from European empires in Africa were very important and very violent in their own ways but they provided a different dynamic about what the state thought was important compared to people looking at the ashes of post-war Tokyo or Shanghai or Kuala Lumpur or Singapore which all suffered very badly during the war.” While countries on the brink of freedom from colonialism were bound to pri-

"While countries on the brink of freedom from colonialism were bound to prioritize democratization and civil liberties, many countries in East and South East Asia also focussed on rebuilding the economy" oritize democratization and civil liberties, many countries in East and South East Asia also focussed on rebuilding the economy by investing in manufacturing, technology and human capital – all of which led to their miraculous growth. The story of East Asian growth thus turns out to be a much more multi-faceted one than expected. It involves maintaining careful balances between the past and the present, and the external and domestic, but also a recognition that its people are the most valuable resource a country has and that they deserve to be invested in. While other countries cannot replicate the contextual elements that led to this growth, there is still much they can learn and export to their homelands, following the Japanese example.

Focus: East Asia A personal testimony by Nathaniel Chan

Cultivating progess in Chinese-Japanese relations

he deterioration of relations between China and Japan that followed the re-election of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2012 has left people on both sides of the East China sea believing that the dream of a harmoniously shared future between the two countries is doomed. In their eyes – fixated on a rear-view mirror reflecting the twentieth century and refusing to look to the present – China and Japan will always be antagonistic neighbours. To them, another war between the two great civilizations is both imminent and inevitable. The belligerent purveyors of this myopic worldview are the largest obstacle to a prosperous Asia. They threaten the stability of the international economy and global peace. Sadly, it seems they are currently winning the fight for the future. In September 2014, 93% of Japanese respondents who participated in the Genron poll said they held a negative impression of China. 87% of Chinese participants in the China Daily parallel poll reported they felt likewise about Japan. So, is it true that China and Japan hate each other more than ever—beyond the point of no return? If human beings on both sides take the right actions, the turbulent tides in the East China Sea can permanently subside. What the animosity peddlers

fail to grasp is the truth that the contemporary issues vexing China and Japan are by no means eternal in nature and are well within the abilities of everyday people to transcend and resolve. After all, it was only the men of the previous century that started this regional hatred. The men and women of today should be equally able to put an end to it. This can be achieved well within our lifetime, so long as the level-headed and good-hearted succeed in summoning both the popular and political will to do so. Instead of old politicians expediently invoking nationalistic resentment whenever their personal approval ratings begin to wane, young Chinese and Japanese activists should shape public sentiment from the bottom up. In order to counteract these negative contributions to the ever-essential China-Japan relationship, there must be a concerted “friendship movement” at the grassroots level. We need direct people-to-people exchanges between Chinese and Japanese citizens, particularly among the youth. Even though the young adults of today are inculpable for the atrocities inherited from the past, we are responsible for co-creating a brighter future to leave behind for successive generations. There is ample evidence that such intercultur-

al “befriending” has already been taking place between university students and young professionals on popular social networks like Facebook, YouTube and Meetup. While China has blocked most of these sites, there are still millions of Chinese nationals studying and working abroad, beyond the Great (Fire) Wall who are open to gaining new perspectives. In November 2013, I founded the Chinese-Japanese Friendship on Meetup.com. It is based in my hometown of Toronto, Canada, which boasts one of the world’s largest Chinese diaspora communities and happens to be an increasingly popular working holiday and English school destination for young Japanese adults. Our group organizes weekly trilingual (Japanese, Mandarin and English) language exchanges, dining experiences, sporting events, karaoke nights, and more. Just over three years old, our group has already hosted 1643 events, attracting over 3,450 members across Toronto in the process. Our team of volunteer organizers receive no monetary compensation and give their time and energy for nothing other than the intrinsic reward of building this shared sense of Asian community. One of our Japanese organizers told me before she joined our meetup group she had held an unfavourable view of Chinese people back home in Kobe. Her real motivation for signing up to the Meetup group was to make new friends during her one-year stay in Toronto. She never expected that after consistently attending and even hosting our weekly bubble-tea language exchange events, some of her closest friends in Canada would end up being Chinese. Members like her then add each other as friends on their social networks. These new friendships are especially powerful in the social media age as they are visible to both their entire networks. This means that hundreds of people on both sides of the rivalry notice this new friendship with the "inherited rival" and in time, begin to challenge their own biases. With an event almost every day, the Chinese-Japanese Friendship Society has quickly become the

Focus: East Asia most active Toronto-based group on Meetup. In fact, if you searched “Chinese Japanese” on Google during the peak of our popularity in 2015, our intercultural friendship group was among the top 4 Autocomplete suggestions. In August 2015, we achieved a major milestone in reaching 2000 members, which coincided with the 70th anniversary of the end of World War 2 in Asia. Two thousand is a particularly significant number for this important cause as the much beloved Chinese Premier and statesman, Zhou Enlai once characterized the Sino-Japanese relationship, as “2,000 years of friendship and 50 years of confrontation.” With each member of the group representing one year of Chinese-Japanese friendship, we believe that these human bridges built in this informal and fun manner are the most effective foundation to repaving the long road between these two world powers. Multinational corporations with operations in both countries, universities, the pan-Asian entertainment industry and the government at all levels should each support this youth-led grassroots

friendship movement. As the movement rises, they too stand to directly benefit from warmer China-Japan ties. Better relations facilitate reciprocal business opportunities in two of the world’s largest markets. To the likeminded youth of today with an affinity and appreciation for both storied cultures, we must never tire in our efforts until we achieve our aims. When that day comes, an overwhelming majority of Chinese and Japanese citizens will shake each other’s hands and relinquish their tightly-clenched fists. As John F. Kennedy stated in an address to the United Nations in 1963, “Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures. And however undramatic the pursuit of peace, that pursuit must go on.”

Nathaniel Chan was a Youth Goodwill Ambassador at the Embassy of Japan in consultation with what was is now Global Affairs Canada. He is currently at the Saïd Business School.

United People Organisation A new vision for progress and a better world order By Christoph Steinert Part I: Critique of the present international system

the fate of almost every global crisis. A veto of only one party silences the voice of the supposed ‘global community’. The civil war in Syria epitomises the failure of this controversial institution, as Russia’s incessant veto has perverted the Security Council into an instrument of narrow power politics. The fact that not even a psychopathic dictator can be stopped from the cold-hearted killing of his own population ridicules the idea of a world community. Yet the failure of the purported world community goes far beyond the Syrian tragedy, also manifesting itself in areas untouched by the Security Council. We are living in a world where the richest 1 per cent of the people have more wealth than the rest of world’s population combined. While UNICEF notes that 450 million children are still living on less than $1.90 a day, oil monarchies are building evermore luxurious temples of decadence. It flies in the face of reason that we are not able to redistribute income and property to a greater extent. It would not only represent a moral imperative but could also cure ongoing problems such as civil wars, refugee influxes, criminality, and corruption. However, governments are captured by the logic of national interest, with policies tailored solely for domestic constituents. While the global community would be better off if extraordinary income, inheritance, or property was

Syria leaves us all ashamed, shocked, and helplessly baffled. When dictator Bashar Al-Assad unleashed terror on his own people in 2011, no one was yet able to anticipate the beginnings of the deadliest conflict of the twenty-first century. Five years later, and after numerous attempts at diplomatic solutions and various dubious foreign interventions, the killing continues and the city of Aleppo has become synonymous for infinite human cruelty. The world is united in demanding an ending to the suffering. However, we are also united in impotence when it comes to finding solutions for the relentless killing. Where is the world community that expresses the will of the overwhelming majority to stop the killing and the suffering of civilians? Why is the will of the majority in an increasingly democratic world meaningless? To answer these questions, it is necessary to understand the body which symbolises our fractured global community. While we live in a world dominated by nation states, the institution with the most powerful mandate to represent the global community remains the Security Council of the United Nations. The governments of the United States, Russia, China, France, and Great Britain decide

taxed more aggressively, governments are reluctant to harm the competitiveness of their domestic markets. Thus, states are captured in a downward spiral competing for greater investment through business-friendly markets and less regulation, leading to a permanent increase in the gap between rich and poor. The same logic extends to other issues such as climate change, refugee policies, or the regulation of banks. At the heart of these difficulties lies the fundamental disparity between national and global perspectives. When observed from the universe, our earth seems to be divided solely by the oceans

Tutsis were left to be slaughtered. To be clear, it is not my intention to write a pamphlet against the political organisation in states and to follow destructive anarchical visions. The world does not need another Somalia, and the organisation in states has proved to be largely successful in constructing relatively peaceful domestic societies. Rather, I seek recognition of the fact that the state system has proved to be ineffective in solving global problems, intensifying division and prioritising national interests over the interests of humanity. States are unable to produce or enforce global public good. Therefore, it is absurd to view global interests through the lens of nation states; people’s needs are distorted when they are reflected through the prism of various raison d’états. Our world lacks an impartial attorney for global interests and a global community with an independent voice. The human rights movement made an invaluable contribution in moving beyond stately logic. Human beings are explicitly considered as equal irrespective of their nation, skin colour, religion, race, gender, ethnic group, or sexual orientation. However, since its inception, the human rights movement has suffered from the allegation of a pro-Western bias. As human rights are mainly a continuation of European ideas of ’Enlightenment’, drafted under the aegis of Western thinkers, former victims of imperialism regard human rights as an attempt to universalise Western values. While it seems likely that most people in Africa or Asia would also endorse rights such as the right to be free from torture and inhumane punishment, the Western origin sparks cultural relativist and

“Our world lacks an impartial attorney for global interests and a global community with an independent voice” peacefully swirling around our five continents. However, on our maps and in our minds the world is divided by the border lines of around 200 states. People are at best enfranchised within the frame of their own nation; at worst they are not enfranchised at all. If you lose the lottery of birth, you are forced to carve out a miserable existence under dictators in Zimbabwe or North Korea; condemned to poverty, heteronomy, and misery. Our thinking too is equally constrained by the logic of segregated borders. By reducing human beings to national citizens, we implicitly ascribe to them different values. For instance, following signs of the nascent genocide in Rwanda in 1994, European peacekeepers were evacuated while 800,000

anti-universalist movements. The consequence is that we still live in a world where national interests are prioritized over human rights and where powerful states dictate the destiny of the disenfranchised world community. But is there really no alternative to the status quo and our chronic impotence in solving global problems? Are we forced to leave the destiny of the world in the hands of the ineffective Security Council and governments driven by national egoism and zero-sum game power maximisation?

their core values. Although expecting global citizens to possess profound knowledge of specific policy is an unrealistic hope, everyone would be able to express the broader values important to them. It would represent the ultimate legitimation of human rights if the global populace endorsed such principles as their core values. By strict impartiality and political neutrality, the UPO could provide a forum to identify the most pressing issues for humanity. People all over the world would be able to set the agenda of global policy-making, and no government in the world could ignore the clear will of so diverse a collective grouping. An online platform with the purview of Facebook, formulating political objectives and values, would become enormously powerful. Remarkably, this process of political legitimation would require no official legislation but could happen automatically with growing numbers of participants. The platform would be revolutionary as citizens of autocratic states would be instantaneously empowered to voice their concerns. It would be no immutable destiny anymore to

Part II: A new vision of progress and representation The vision of this article is the formation of a global United People Organisation (UPO) based on democratic online voting and preference formation procedures. The best way to avoid misrepresenting the interests of the global community by dubious institutions or narrow-minded national leaders, would be through the creation of our own global community. This could be achieved through a platform where people can vote for

Social progress in India: A perspective from Tamil Nadu By Yashaswi Bagga

live under a dictator as political rights would extend beyond borders. Censorship could prove a problem, however, cross-platform participation rates would in a first step reveal where access is hindered. In a second step, an alternative way of participation could be devised for autocratic states, such as through NGO-led interviews. Where it is impossible to collect the core values of all people, representative samples of their population could

driving these elections was a feeling of alienation from the political elites translating into anti-establishment protest voting. The UPO could extend democratic rights beyond election days and create a closer link between political authorities and citizens. People would be better integrated into the process of political opinion formation, undermining anti-establishment and elitist fervour. The goal is not to form a world government. States remain necessary to provide order on smaller scales and a global decentralisation of power is expedient for practical purposes. The UPO should rather work as an independent supervisory or advisory body working closely with the United Nations. Instead of calling for subversive strategies against existing forms of political organisation, this article proposes that the international arena needs an additional actor with the ability to accommodate the flaws of the present system. Our world equires nation states to provide domestic order and stability, and we need the UN to coordinate the interests of national states. But we must also supplement the UN by a United People Organisation to finally give the world community a voice.

“The state system has proved to be ineffective in solving global problems, intensifying division and prioritising national interests over the interests of humanity” be a starting point. Critics might argue that the 2016 US election or Brexit referendum suggest that it is inherently problematic to extend democratic rights and that a representative democracy is the only defence against the tyranny of the majority. Yet, such arguments disregard the fact that the central motive

rogress in the sense of a change from old ways of thinking to new ones has always heralded conflict. Those who defend and believe in the incumbents defend their ideas vigorously. The process of globalization and the resulting spread of people all across the world, resulting in increasingly heterogenous societies, introduces in an interesting new dynamic here. Chances of conflict increase if opinions on the issue coincide with social lines, and the idea being questioned belongs to a particular social group. When members of one group see their practices being questioned, they may feel that it is an issue of ‘identity’ or ‘culture’. People may feel obligated to defend the traditions of their group against some perceived threat. In an increasingly globalized world, the chances of such conflicts will only increase- as societies all over the world grow more heterogenous, different groups will disagree on the ways in which society should be organized. As one of the most diverse nation-states in the world, India bares witness to countless examples of the interplay between progress, conflict, and identity. The conflict over the something known as ‘jallikattu’ is just one of them.

A sport native to the state of Tamil Nadu, Jallikattu has become a focus for regional tensions. Reminiscent of Spanish bullfighting, a bull is released into something resembling an arena, and participants attempt to catch and hold onto the bull’s hump for as long as possible, all in front of cheering crowds. It is traditionally played during Pongal, a harvest festival, and the entire event takes place in a carnival-like atmosphere. Bullfighting and such sports are rare in other parts of India, making Jallikattu a uniquely Tamil tradition.

However, animal welfare activists alleged that bulls were often aggravated before being released, such as by rubbing chilli powder in their eyes, or by hurting their tails, as angry bulls would make for a better spectacle. Many organizations, prominently the international NGO PETA, fought for a ban. The last few years have seen several shifts in the government position, as politicians try to juggle between mollifying the people of Tamil Nadu and the rest of India – feats of political juggling also being something reminiscent of many, many other places. Most recently, in July 2016, the Supreme Court issued a blanket ban on the event. This, unsurprisingly, led to major protests by the Tamil community against the ban. Many of the protests invoked the idea of a ‘Tamil identity’, distinct from the larger pan-national, Indian identity. Jallikattu is a distinctively Tamil; this meant that Tamils saw the ban on jallikattu as an attack by the Central administration and the rest of India on Tamil heritage. Tamil identity became a rallying cry. The conflict of Tamil and pan-Indian

identities is by no means new. India is built up of many distinct cultures, and Tamil culture is one of them. They have their own language, food, architecture, and cultural traditions. Before India was unified under British rule, this region and the North that still dominates Indian politics were often under the control of different regimes. After Independence, the Centre tried to impose the dominant language of the North, Hindi, as the official national language, leading to protests in Tamil Nadu, most prominently in the violent agitations of 1967-68, and the issue of language has remained a contentious one ever since. The conflict between Tamil and Indian identities was always simmering below the surface; the jallikattu issue was the proverbial straw the broke the camel’s back, while also functioning as a convenient vehicle for larger conflict. Not only did the movement open pit national and sub-national identities against each other, it also showed that people consider the sub-national identity paramount in some cases. What we learn from this case holds serious implications about how we

Protests against the Supreme Court banning Jallikattu in Chennai, January 2017

think about the future of progress, as it is characterized in the introduction. The ongoing process of globalization increases the possibility of disagreements in which the people doing the challenging and those to whom the idea belongs are of two different groups with highly independent identities, as in the case of Jallikattu, where the Tamil community found itself battling against the opinions of the rest of India. In such cases, the potential for conflict is much greater. There is greater potential for the development of ‘ingroup-outgroup’ or ‘us-and-them’ mentalities, and of ideological disagreement growing into ugly hatred and bigotry. Fuelled by the inherently emotive nature of concepts such as identity, disagreements over individual issues may transform into outlets for deeper resentment, as in the case of Jallikattu, where the debate moved from the sport itself to issues of regional identity. Those being told to change may feel that their identity is being threatened and cling to them even more strongly. This will only result in them withdrawing into highly sequestered and isolated communities, which themselves contribute to the division and the feeling of isolation, à la Molenbeek in Brussels, which was home to many of those who carried out the November 2015 attacks in Paris. In turn, those doing the changing may begin to look upon those resisting change as backward, or some sort of ‘Other’. These conflicts are inflamed by the inherently emotive nature of things like one’s identity, and could result in a high degree of social division, which may shatter national unity and fracture societies, as we have seen in the case of the French burqa ban, where the Muslim

community had to choose between retaining a fundamental element of their culture that the rest of France deemed unacceptable. This is why Jallikattu is so illustrative of these points. The conflict between Tamil and Indian identities is an old one,

“We should be aware of the possibility of conflict inherent in the diverse societies of the future” and allows us to gain a glimpse into what may happen in the future, as increasingly heterogenous societies find themselves arguing over what may initially seem like worthy causes, but may quickly degenerate into the devastating communal conflict that humanity has already seen too much of. Such conflicts will not display productive contestation, but instead call upon tribal rivalries that split societies, with the attendant harms. This article is not intended as a call to close the gates (or perhaps build a wall). We should not avoid these conflicts by instead choosing to cloister in our respective parts of the world, interacting only with those of our own kind, and knowing nothing of other sections of humanity but what we have learnt from television. That would not be progress – it would be a negation of the progress that we have made so far. Instead, we should be aware of the possibility of conflict inherent in the diverse societies of the future, so that we can instead avoid it by fostering an atmosphere of spirited and lively, yet friendly debate, where ideas are judged on their own merit, and not the origins of the person providing them.

Progress bias in the domain of war

By Jeffrey Ding

In a 2015 paper published in the Journal of Consumer Research, University of Colorado researcher Margaret Campbell identifies a phenomenon she calls “progress bias.” Her research revealed a “progress bias” in consumers when monitoring goals; consumers outweighed goal-consistent behaviours, such as saving $45, over inconsistent behaviours of an equivalent magnitude, such as spending $45. Progress bias also afflicts the monitoring of important goals in international relations, namely the prevention of war. Accounts of a less violent world amidst a Long Peace overweigh the gains of modernity and underweigh its failures. In doing so, the progressively greater risk of conflict on an existential scale is discounted. The real danger of progress bias is not that the goal will not be reached, but rather that the belief in the myth of progress will enable backsliding. At face value, the case for progress in combating the scourge of war is convincing. Co-authors of an article titled “War Really is Going out of Style,” Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker and

international relations scholar Joshua Goldstein argue this case by charting trends backed by new anthropological evidence on the rates of violence in past tribal communities. For instance, if the wars of the twentieth century had killed the same portion of the population at the rate of wars of a typical tribal community from early centuries, then two billion deaths would have occurred instead of 100 million. Citing the research of criminologist Manuel Eisner on homicide estimates from Western European localities, Pinker and Goldstein point out that murder rates from the 13th century to the 20th have declined in every nation analyzed. The Human Security Brief supplements the argument further: the number of battle deaths in interstate wars has declined from over 65,000 per year in the 1950s to less than 2,000 per year in this millennium’s first decade. While persuasive on the surface, the picture painted by optimists such as Pinker and Goldstein blurs upon closer examination. Progress believers may be overweighing the incremental gains in peace and underweighing the true risks of war. For one, statistics on battle deaths do not include collateral damage on civilian populations, the innocent casualties of modern warfare whose involvements in counter-insurgency operations have become normalized. Pinker and Goldstein claim that one of the factors for the declining rates of violent death is the modern state’s monopoly on force, and that the very accumulation of power in the modern state has been appropriated for mass killings and state terror. Moreover, two statistical flaws reveal that optimistic numbers

about the decline of war and violence do not tell the whole truth. First, statistician and essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb critiques Pinker’s interpretation of his data and argues that the fat-tailed distribution of warfare demonstrates that the “true mean” of the number of deaths from warfare is higher than the “observed mean.” In other words, the long peace may be a product of luck rather than the actual state of international affairs. Taleb finds that the number of deaths expected over the next half century is approximately three times higher than the past one. Second, other statistical analyses of conflict datasets reveal that conflict generation may follow a Poisson process, used to model seemingly random processes in ecology and geology, that lends support to the notion that wars are randomly distributed accidents over time, not events which can be eliminated on the march toward progress.

“Progress believers may be overweighing the incremental gains in peace and underweighing the true risks of war” Beyond the problem of overestimating the decline of war and underestimating the threats to peace, progress bias manifests itself in the ignorance of singular moments of failure undoing the accumulation of good choices. One reason exercise programs counterintuitively cause people to gain weight is because participants justify “cheat” days – falling off the wagon in terms of eating unhealthily – by rewarding themselves

for their hard work in thirty-minute gym sessions. Unfortunately, the disaster of a cheat day may undo weeks of healthy behaviour. In a similar vein, a cheat day in the context of international warfare could be existentially disastrous. Weapons have become progressively more advanced, as the threat of nuclear winter looms behind every potential conflict. Even if the threat of the war’s outbreak was heightened in centuries past, the potential magnitude of warfare has never been higher. The pathways to a war to end all wars continue to multiply as technological arms races proliferate in realms ranging from space weapons to Artificial Intelligence. The risk of accidental war or escalation due to miscalculation is enhanced by the combination of cybersecurity risks and cyberterrorist ambitions. In

short, humanity’s supposed progress has come with the cost of its potential destruction. It is only human to want to see progress in the domain of warfare, and by extension in the entire realm of international relations. It is important to acknowledge the many indicators reflecting advancements in peace over the past century, but it is equally necessary to problematize the underlying dynamics of those indicators and the gaps in the story they tell. Accounting for progress bias is essential for a clear-eyed approach to evaluating the current state of the international community and its goal to eliminate warfare. In the absence of this clear-eyed reappraisal, humanity may continue to incrementally march forward and upward only to find itself falling off a cliff.

Unveiling progress Imperialism, feminism and the diplomacy of Islamic dress By Margo Munro Kerr

mongst the summer headlines of 2016 there was one that stood out for the outrage it provoked: the burkini ban. Amidst stories of the global refugee crisis and terror attacks across Europe, the ruling by French mayors against the wearing of the burkini on the beaches of France filled social media. Likened by Manuel Valls, the French Prime Minister, to a form of enslavement, the burkini was defended by feminists who pointed out the racist and imperialist reasoning behind the banning of what is essentially a thin wetsuit.

the perceived other was further alienated. Bans on veils have a long history outside of Europe, where the primary reason was not the emancipation of women, but the ‘modernisation’ of the nation. In the 1920s and 30s, in Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkans, veiling – along with traditional male dress – portrayed as backwards by modernists, was discouraged by various government initiatives. Although the regimes in charge of these countries were very different – Turkey was a nationalist republic under Attaturk; Iran and Afghanistan were led by the Western-looking monarchs Reza Shah and King Amanullah; the Caucasus and Central Asia were under communist rule – all saw unveiling as a sign of modernity and as essential to the progress of their nation. With this thinking, veiling kept women from education and employment; it was the cause of health problems; it allowed sexual freedoms in the absence of the real ‘veil of chastity’ that the unveiled woman would have; and it encouraged homosexuality in men, inimical to a healthy, modern, procreating, nuclear family. The unveiled modern woman was freed from the shackles of tradition, a working member of an active, integrated, heterosexual society.

“For those who choose to wear the veil, the ban has become symbolic of the oppression of colonised by coloniser, another form of chauvinism”

The issue at stake was not the amount of skin on show, but rather what the choice of clothing says about the person underneath it. The women who chose to wear a burkini on the beach were seen to represent a threat to the core French value of laïcité, or secularism. In response, the item of clothing was banned so as to remove the outward manifestation of difference and, in the name of integration,

These initiatives linked the ‘emancipated’ woman to states that were seen to be under the sway of western cultural imperialism. Although many of these initiatives were successful in encouraging societies to accept unveiled women, as political Islamism in the 1970s, veiling again came to the forefront of public discourse. In Iran in particular women began to don the chador, a large enveloping cloth without a face-veil, as a sign of opposition

the niqab, or face-veil in 2010, with the Netherlands following suit in November 2016, for many public spaces. In August 2016 a Yougov poll showed 57 per cent of Britons supported a ban on the face-veil, while in Germany, Angela Merkel has declared “the full veil is not appropriate for us, and should be banned wherever legally possible”. What is more, foreign policy has been voiced in the rhetoric of women’s rights. This is a direct continuation of old-school orientalism. Lila Abu-Lughod writes of the beautiful and young Afghan women who graced the cover of Time magazine in August 2010. Her nose had been cut off, and the caption beside her read: “What happens if we leave Afghanistan?” It directly linked the wellbeing of Afghan women to the US intervention in Afghanistan, while failing to mention that the mutilation had taken place while British and US troops were still in Afghanistan. This is typical of US government and indeed European rhetoric. Go to the Bush Foundation’s website today and you will find a video called ‘The Story of the Beekeper’. It likens the situation of Afghan women to that of a queen bee: unable to leave the hive, describing how, after the Tal-

“In the European context, it is not entrenched Islamic tradition that is feared, but the power of a minority to question ‘our’ values” to the Western-looking monarchy. The veil became a weapon in the struggle against the regime’s infatuation with the West. With the Islamic revolution in 1979, wearing the hijab became law for all women and still is. For the past decade, certainly since the US invasion of Afghanistan, Islamic clothing, specifically women’s clothing, has been newsworthy. Bans of female Islamic dress in Europe are a recent phenomenon. France banned

iban years ended, Afghan women were able to go to school and university, seek employment, and even own their own business. The Taliban were indeed terrible for women in Afghanistan. But what the video does not show is the havoc wreaked on Afghanistan by the US intervention, and the subsequent exacerbation of problems that affect women like poverty, malnutrition, illness, and violence, and the arrival of a new fear in the shape of the so-called Islamic State. Rather, this rhetoric directly links women’s rights with modern imperialism. Veils are banned for a variety of reasons. Maintaining hygiene in hospitals, or preserving the importance of identifiable in public spaces and ID photos: these are legitimate concerns. But European countries have issued bans on Islamic veiling in an effort to prevent the spread of the ‘wrong’ cultural values. There are two assumptions here: that enforced secularism is central to a healthy democracy, and that women who are veiling are forced to do so either directly by family members or indirectly by a chauvinistic ideology. Therefore, it is claimed, we as a society have a duty to protect them from the veil. Both are hypocritical and danger-

ous. The veil bans now appearing in Europe do so in a completely different context from that of the 1920s Middle East. But there is a parallel to be drawn. The veil bans of that time linked the removal of the veil to capitulating governments. Yet the bans of today can be linked to western cultural imperialism. For those who choose to wear the veil, the ban has become symbolic of the oppression of colonised by coloniser, another form of chauvinism. Using feminism as a tool for imperialist agendas only damages respect for women’s rights. And following 2016 which witnessed intolerance and hate rising to become a common currency, notions of progress may need to be readdressed. In the European context, it is not entrenched Islamic tradition that is feared, but the power of a minority to question ‘our’ values. When a women’s choice of dress is evidence of family or community control, making it illegal does nothing to address the root of this oppression, which can only be remedied through integration. The argument that forcing women to remove clothes is an act of resistance to chauvinistic ideology is one of glaring hypocrisy.

Global migration in the 21st century

Levelling the scales of economic progress By Daniel Kodsi

t is one of the failures of our society that economic progress is often taken as an adequate substitute for progress. But economic progress in itself means very little at all. It is only valuable to the extent that it makes individuals’ lives better. The welfare of each individual person is where the focus of progress should reside; this is a basic premise of any liberalism that is worth holding. Yet more vacuous is the concept of global economic progress. The world’s gross domestic product is predicted to increase roughly three per cent this year; this is a fact, which is utterly devoid of any meaningful content. It masks the widespread suffering of those who live in the world’s poorest countries whilst projecting an overall positive trend. It is a brute fact of capitalism that wealth becomes unevenly distributed – instead it accrues ever more unevenly to those in rich countries, as those in poor ones remain badly off. The rich reap the benefits of ‘global economic progress’, and their children – those fortunate enough by dint of birth to be born to a family in the developed world – inherit their wealth. “Citizenship in Western democracies”, Joseph Carens writes in The Ethics of Immigration, “is the modern equivalent of feudal class privilege—an inherited status that greatly enhances one’s life chances”. And not only is citizenship in rich countries inher-

ited, it is denied to most others who might wish to enter the borders of Western democracies and share in their wealth. One might think that mass migration would be the inevitable by-product of global economic progress, so that the deviations from net growth could be evened out and everyone could prosper from the growth in the world’s resources. But this is not the pattern that has obtained. Instead a powerful and deeply repugnant strand of nativism has emerged which aims to close off borders, to exclude the less fortunate, and to hoard the wealth of the developed world. This is ignoring, of course, that our wealth is predicated on the exploitation of everyone else’s labour and resources. This is a belief that must be fought tooth and nail – it is antithetical to any political theory, which holds people to be morally equal irrespective of the circumstances of their birth. This truth seems unequivocal and fundamental: unequivocal in that it is a most deep-seated moral intuition, and fundamental in that it is from the principle of moral equality that all other principles of justice must flow. If one accepts this sort of egalitarianism, then one obvious consequence is that I do not deserve to benefit as a result of circumstances that I did nothing at all to bring about – such as being born to relative wealth. And conversely, others do not deserve to suffer because they were

born to relative poverty. It was a mere fluke of birth that I was born an American national, a lucky draw in the genetic lottery. Accordingly, I have no right to exclude others from the benefits that accrue to those with United States citizenship. Recent global economic progress has meant that the well-off today are better off than ever before in history. But it should mean that everyone is better off than previously – and to the extent that wealth remains concentrated, this entails that countries have no right to limit migration. The implications of this argument extend beyond the conclusions most liberals are already prepared to accept. It doesn’t just mean that we should open up our borders to doctors, scientists, and entrepreneurs. It means that citizenship in western democracies should be readily available to anyone who is willing to seek it out (it bears noting that even seeking out citizenship is more than most native citizens have ever done to earn their status). It also follows from this that we should not object to common criminal acts committed by immigrants. People commit crime: if we would not deport a citizen for committing a crime, then there is no reason that we should deport an immigrant. They should be subject to the same criminal laws as anyone else; they should not be subject to the additional onus of immigration law; as Nathan

Robinson writes, "the immigration law should take care of nobody, because there shouldn’t be immigration laws." Consider two identical twins, separated at birth, one of which is raised in a rich country and the other in a neighboring poor one just a kilometer away. It is farcical to suggest that the first is more deserving of a higher standard of life – and a longer life – than his brother. But he will have a longer life, and an easier one. This is wrong, and clearly so. Yet it is no less wrong that my life will be better off than someone born in Haiti – that I have had access to excellent nutrition, education, and health care whilst he has had none of that. Progress, understood generally, is an illusion: though it might cause my life to improve, it might also affect someone else’s life for the worse. However, if we believe that all lives are morally equal, then we must commit ourselves to erasing the effects of global inequality as well as domestic. This means establishing international institutions for redistributing wealth and adjudicating justice. Yet until such time as global economic progress obtains uniformly across countries, then it is incoherent with the principles of liberalism and egalitarianism to limit mass migration. Instead migration should be facilitated and encouraged – in order that each has the chance to benefit from a progress which is constrained to the few.

From a grandmother's grief to a global norm

Progress as truth and justice in Argentina By Sorcha Thomson

n 16 November 1977, Laura Estela Carlotto – a 23 year old history student – was kidnapped by the Argentine security forces. She was taken to a detention centre and tortured for her suspected left-wing activism. Laura – three months pregnant - was one of 30,000 disappearances committed by the ruling military junta in Argentina’s 1976-1983 Dirty War. In 1976, a fascist junta seized power in Argentina, following years of escalating violence between left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries. In power, the new regime power aimed to annihilate all left-wing thought. Disappearances were one tactic in stemming dissent - the ambiguity of the victim’s status breeding fear, and fear breeding silence; the stealing of children from mothers in detention was another - the ‘adoption’ was seen to cull subversion at its root. As the number of disappeared grew, the mothers of those lost children began marching outside the presidential palace. Between 1977 and 1982, the movement grew from 14 mothers to over 2,500 women, meeting every Thursday in a silent vigil calling for the truth about the disappeared. Initially ignored or dismissed by the military as las locas [the crazies], from the Mothers of the Plaza

de Mayo evolved the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, in response to the growing number of pregnant women disappeared and the unknown fate of their unborn children. The family story of Estela Barnes de Carlotto, leader of The Grandmothers, highlights the way in which one family’s grief, and the struggle this inspired, contributed to the evolution of a global norm, through the power of protest. The Ugly Truth behind the Beautiful Game On 25 June, watched by a stadium audience of 71,000 and a further 1.2 billion spectators worldwide, Argentina claimed a home victory as hosts of the 1978 World Cup. In the Estadio Monumental and across the country in homes and bars, football fans celebrated as the national team beat the Netherlands 3-1 in extra time. A triumphant General Videla, leader of the ruling military junta, handed the trophy to the players that had brought victory to the nation. The celebrations poured on to the streets, the success of the Albicelestes [sky blue and whites] in the country’s sacred sport inspiring jubilant patriotism in the Argentinian people. One mile from the stadium, within hearing distance of the cheering crowds,

head torturer Jorge Acosta entered the cells of the Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA) detention centre where almost 5000 people died during the Dirty War - to inform his prisoners of the nation’s victory. That night, Laura Estela Carlotto went into labour. She was taken from her cell to the Buenos Aires military hospital. On 26 June 1978 Laura gave birth to a boy, and named him Guido. One month later, Estela Barnes de Carlotto was called to the police station to collect her daughter’s mutilated corpse – Laura’s once pregnant stomach now a site of inflicted horror. She was told that Laura had been shot having refused an order to stop her car. There was no answer as to the fate of Guido.

‘football yes, torture no’. Reporters were encouraged to look beyond the stadium to the human rights violations occurring across the country. Demonstrations by the Mothers were photographed and appeared in newspapers and on TV screens around the world. But the network forged between the local and international human rights groups experienced limited success. The perpetrators of state terrorism continued to obscure the truth. Justice was subordinate to the totalising fascism of the Argentine regime and their transcendent ideological war. Estela Carlotto collected her daughter’s corpse on 25 August 1978. Five days later, she retired as a school principal and began lobbying for the release of her grandson and other children kidnapped or disappeared by the military. In 1980 she joined the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo in their struggle for justice. The Disappeared: Lost in Transition In 1983, Argentine defeat in the Falklands War prompted the military to coordinate a transition to civilian democracy. But as the old regime continued to exercise its authority, justice was subjugated by the need for appeasement - in order to protect the fragile democracy from a coup. The Grandmothers continued to call for the truth about the fate of the estimated 500 children of the disappeared - stolen from their parents in detention and given to members of the security services to be raised under a false identity. With the assistance of US geneticist Mary-Claire King, a blood test was developed that offered 99.9% accuracy in determining the kinship of a child. With this unprecedented scientific system, the

“From South Africa to Australia, their efforts have provided a model for transitional justice mechanisms ever since” The 1978 World Cup has since been denounced as the most obvious political manipulation suffered by sport since Hitler’s 1936 Olympic Games. Throughout the tournament, the practice of disappearances and mass incarceration escalated in an effort to hide from the world the true nature of the military regime. But for the mothers of the disappeared, the threat of state repression was not enough to still their calls for truth. Working in collaboration the Mothers, Amnesty International – realising the futility of a boycott of the Cup – launched a campaign to educate sports journalists about the military regime, with the slogan

Grandmothers lobbied for the creation of the National Genetic Data Bank (NGDB) - established in 1989. Estela Carlotto was announced as President of the Grandmothers in the same year. In her annual obituary to her daughter, she wrote: ‘In life, you wanted to change the fate of your country. Fighting social injustice was your cause. You loved and were loved, and with love you created Guido… I want, dear child, to remember your life… You live in Guido’. Her demand was – and remains - absolute: the children who were kidnapped as a tactic of war be restored to their legitimate families. It is founded on the belief that these children have the right to recover their identity.

the 114th child of the disappeared to be found, was the product of the continued efforts of the Grandmothers for truth and justice for the disappeared and their stolen children. Through channels of communication, they conceptualised a new human right: the right to an identity. Article 8 – the ‘Argentine clause’ - in the International Convention on the Rights of the Child enshrines ‘the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations’. In 2003, Estela Carlotto was awarded the UN Prize for Human Rights for her contributions to the movement for justice. When asked about the possibility of receiving the Nobel Peace Prize she responded: ‘it is not important, and it is clear: there is no prize more noble than each child that we find’. The story of the Carlottos is a symbolic triumph for justice instigated by civil society. From the silent protests of fourteen mothers to the creation of a new international law, the grief suffered by families under the military regime shaped the trajectory of justice in Argentina. From South Africa to Australia, their efforts have provided a model for transitional justice mechanisms ever since. To this day, the Mothers and Grandmothers continue to march, every Thursday in the Plaza de Mayo outside the Presidential Palace, demanding justice for all the victims of Argentina’s Dirty War.

Waiting for Guido On his 36th birthday in 2014, Ignacio Hurban was told by his parents that he had been adopted as a baby. He approached the NBGD and his doubts were confirmed. Hurban was in fact Guido Carlotto, the child of murdered Laura. On 7 August 2014 Ignacio was united with his grandmother. The President of the Grandmothers expressed her joy in finding the child whose loss was the catalyst for her lifelong struggle: ‘I have closed a chapter, a personal story, and I feel that Laura, wherever she is, is telling me ‘thank you mum, mission accomplished’ with a smile.’ The restitution of Ignacio Carlotto,

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