Chick-fil-A and Campus Pride

An inspiring piece from Shane Windmeyer, founder of LGBT organization Campus Pride, in the Huffington Post.  This acts as a type of truce between Chick-fil-A and LGBT groups which boycotted Chick-fil-A last summer and demonstrates the courage and wisdom of Mr. Windmeyer and Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy. Initiated by Mr. Cathy, the two men began to engage in sincere, respectful dialouge to try and understand the perspectie of the other. Particular telling was Mr. Cathy's desire to first understand rather than be understood. At the same time, Mr. Cathy (nor Mr. Windmeyer) did not compromise his beliefs (i.e. his Biblical-based views about marriage defined as union between man and woman).

This dialouge resonates with the themes of some of my own research about discovering mutual respect and finding common ground among people despite polarization stemming from different worldviews. These lessons definitely apply to politics (i.e. read Congress). Windmeyer writes

"It is not often that people with deeply held and completely opposing viewpoints actually risk sitting down and listening to one another. We see this failure to listen and learn in our government, in our communities and in our own families. Dan Cathy and I would, together, try to do better than each of us had experienced before...It is about sitting down at a table together and sharing our views as human beings, engaged in real, respectful, civil dialogue.

Our mutual hope was to find common ground if possible, and to build respect no matter what. We learned about each other as people with opposing views, not as opposing people. During our meetings I came to see that the Chick-fil-A brand was being used by both sides of the political debate around gay marriage. The repercussion of this was a deep division and polarization that was fueling feelings of hate on all sides."

 

Out of this dialouge, Campus Pride has ended its campaign against Chick-fil-A.  Chick-fil-A has also diverted some of its philanthropy away from more controversial, political groups. This is not selling out or compromising beliefs - but an action fostered out of learning and growth through respectful dialouge.

Another Drone Base...This Time Niger

Drone bases are proliferating. Most surveillance drones are housed in East Africa (around the Horn of Africa) but the U.S. is now scoping  out places in West Africa. Here's another link on the story from the NY Times.

Jeju Naval Base Protests in Seoul

I've given several talks about the Jeju anti-base protests the past few months, the latest one at Stanford's  FSI/Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. The Jeju anti-base movement has survived longer than I (and probably activists themselves) anticipated. Here's a good overview from a Hawaii activist...although I remind readers that the article tends to embellish if not overexaggerate the "threat" of U.S. military presence. 

Not having heard much about Jeju Island, several researchers at FSI took interest in Jeju Island. They'll probably be hearing more about Jeju now that a major film about the Jeju 4.3 Uprising took the top prize at Sundance. It'll be interesting to see if activists capitalize on this Sundance victory to rejuvenate protests. The obvious frame extension is that war and suffering must not be repeated again on Jeju Island.

U.S. Base Reduction in the Azores

The U.S. is downsizing its presence at Lajes Field, an air base in the Azores. While some (i.e. activists) may welcome this news, the community on the Azores will feel the effects. A reminder that there are always pockets of supporters for U.S. military presence - even if only for economic reasons. Mid-air refueling and the longer range of planes has made the Air Field obsolete. But the downsizing is also a part of further U.S. troop reductions in Europe.

U.S. Drone Policy: Establishing a Legal Framework

Rep. Keith Ellison on drone policy in the Post. He writes, "The heart of the problem is that our technological capability has far surpassed our policy." He argues that the executive branch exercises too much authority over drone strikes with not enough Congressional oversight. Like many others, Ellison is calling for a stronger legal framework guiding who we target and when we decide to pursue strikes.

In the U.S. drone strikes are perceived as effective, winning wide public support as the graphic to the right suggests. Two social scientists have also examined the impact of drone strikes and find merit in the program (although the authors caution against an expanded campaign). Can strikes be equally as effective with the type of oversight Ellison recommends: independent judicial review over "kill lists"; collaborate with other countries in developing legal standards for strikes? Nevertheless, an international legal framework for such drone strikes will have to be implemented in the near future for self-interested (if not moral) reasons as other countries begin to acquire drone technology. Given the unpopularity of drone strikes in other parts of the world, the U.S. might incur reputation costs. More importantly, U.S. citizens will not want to to be on the other end of another countries' kill list.

Peace Activists, Realism, and the Asian Pivot

Peace activists concerned about Washington’s strategic re-balance towards Asia organized the Working Group for Peace & Demilitarization in Asia and the Pacific. I hadn’t received their e-newsletter in a while but I received one today. Their opinions tend to veer to the left, but they do a great job (and service) presenting news and updates. For instance, I learned about the upcoming meeting between Washington and Tokyo next week where the two sides will discuss revisions to the defense cooperation guidelines. The last review was in 1997. Both sides will likely strengthen relations which have flat-lined a bit under the DPJ. Two issues to watch are cooperation in the areas of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and the possibility of Japan expanding the role of its Self-Defense Forces (SDF), a move more plausible under the newly elected LDP.

The newsletter also alerted the group to the impending “boom” in arms sales to Asia as a result of the strategic re-balance. I was aware that the U.S. had approved sales of the Global Hawk to South Korea (the post didn't mention though that the Koreans intended to play hard-ball). But other allies also have their wish lists: Japan selected the F-35 to replace its fleet of F-4s; Singapore and South Korea are also eyeing this plane; Taiwan is upgrading its existing fleet of F-16A/B fighters.

I'm interested in how these news and facts are interpreted. Activists are informing their network about the impending danger and perils heading towards Asia as the region further militarizes. Many policymakers probably take these facts as a positive sign that Washington is playing an active role in supporting our allies and keeping the peace in the region. Who is right in this debate? It's a bit ironic that both sides resort to realist arguments to stake their claim. It's the security dilemma for peace activists and the balance of power for policymakers.

The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe

I finally had a chance to read Daniel Nexon’s The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe. It’s not a quick read (not the first half at least). But the book is refreshingly different from standard IR fare making it worth reading. Although not his main argument, Dan makes a compelling case why realism as an analytic paradigm doesn’t travel as well as we believe across space/time. He does this though in a manner which doesn’t completely dismiss or ignore the “states-under-anarchy” framework.  

Dan’s work provides fuel for not one, but two of my research agendas so my mind was in overdrive trying to figure out how to apply/incorporate his work with my own. I’m not going to review the book but instead I’ll glean a few useful insights from it for my own work on a) social movements and world politics and b) East Asian international relations.

Social Movements and World Politics

Yes, it’s the title of my blog.  As you recall, the blog was created as a space for me to write up thoughts about my research on said topic.  As I wrote in my research statement, “I attempt to craft a coherent theory synthesizing social movement approaches with international relations (IR) theory …To do this, I unpack various mechanisms which link social movements to systemic consequences (and vice-versa).”

Dan’s book falls squarely into this research agenda.  At the most obvious level, he shows how mobilization against dynastic rulers and the rise of religious movements (the Protestant Reformation) triggered a set of processes which exposed, exploited, and eroded the weak political structures inherent in “composite states” (or dynastic agglomerates) characteristic of early modern Europe. As Dan argues, transnational religious movements “altered the structural opportunities and constraints of power-competition” (4).  These movements played a significant (although by no means sufficient) role in the development of the modern nation-state system.

A broader contribution is his linking of collective action problems and mobilization at the domestic and international level through the concept of nested relational networks.  Dan writes, “Treating structure of international interaction in terms of nested relational configurations allows us to link variation in the structure of polities (i.e. states) – and other corporate actors (i.e. social movements) – to international structures. Not only does this analytic move capture the co-constituted relationship between agents and structures at different levels of analysis, but it provides a way to think about how transactional patterns give rise to opportunity structures for collective action in world politics” (51). In particular, the density of network relations and degree of identity cohesion between actors at the domestic and international level shapes the opportunity structure of actors for mobilization and cooperation. 

So Dan addresses two of my proposed research goals a) synthesizing social movement approaches with international relations and b) unpacking various mechanisms which link social movements to systemic consequences   

East Asian International Relations

The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe is as far as one can get from contemporary Asia. Yet I found Dan’s relational institutionalism applicable to the persistence of U.S. bilateral alliances and  the structure of post-Cold War Asia.  Although I take an ideational-institutional approach in explaining alliance resilience, the inertia of patron-client relations also helps explain the continuation of bilateralism in Asia.  Affective and material ties between the U.S. its Asian alliance partners (i.e. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) encourages cooperation.  Ikenberry (2011) describes the type of order produced by patron-client relations as “rule by relations.” Rule by relations may move from a strong to weak form of patronage (colonial rule à neocolonial ruleà client-state relationship à special relationship), but such shifts don’t necessarily reduce the affective and material ties present in bilateral alliances. “Clients” in special relationships may still act out of loyalty to the patron or out of material interests in the form of prestige, security, or wealth. 

Finally, Dan’s clarification of relational structures helps me think about my own relational approach to East Asian security. I’ve been working forever on a paper which criticizes traditional structural approaches (i.e. polarity) applied to Asian security and instead advocate a relational view of East Asian order. The ties generated by East Asian international relations suggests a bifurcated network with China and the U.S. centered as hubs. Reviewers have uniformly agreed that the first half reads much better than the second half so hopefully insights from Ch. 2 of The Struggle for Power in will help improve the second half of the paper.