Author: pstaniland

I’ve spent a couple of days in Oxford giving a talk and acting as external examiner on a dissertation, and staying at All Souls College. All Souls has a famously-difficult exam to become an Examination Fellow. The 2016-2022 Politics exam questions are on the website – a very fun read (at least for those of us not taking the exam!). I particularly enjoyed thinking about the following questions (different than having any idea how to answer them, to be clear):

• Is there a non-Marxist account of class?
• Scholars have long scrutinized the causes of political revolutions yet have typically failed to predict them accurately. Why?
• Has Enlightenment humanism lost its appeal?
• Does the observed decline in military coups portend an equivalent decline in the incidence of authoritarian regimes?
• Is populism an ideology?
• ‘This narrow world, strewn with prohibitions, can only be called in question by absolute violence’ (FRANTZ FANON). Is violence the only way to meet societal oppression?
• Does the rise of religious fundamentalism reveal a fatal flaw in Max Weber’s theory of disenchantment?
• ‘Political science provides answers, but political theory asks the questions.’ Discuss.
• Is a nuclear second-strike ever permissible?
• ‘At the core of conservatism lies an irreconcilable tension between nationalism and free-market economics.’ Do you agree?
• Is the US state a weak state?
• Can one be a Hobbesian democrat?

P.S. the History questions are also very interesting.

I enjoyed a fascinating new paper by Terrence Peterson that examines the – to me, puzzling – influence of French counterinsurgency writing/doctrine. I find it puzzling because despite the failures of French COIN in Indochina and Algeria, future practitioners and theorists would nevertheless reach for their Trinquier and Galula for insight. Read Peterson’s work (and his 2015 War on the Rocks take as well):

“Networking the Counterrevolution: The École Supérieure de Guerre, Transnational Military Collaboration, and Cold War Counterinsurgency, 1955–1975“

Over the past several decades, scholars have devoted considerable attention to tracing the influence of French counterinsurgency practices developed in Indochina and Algeria on other militaries during the Cold War. This article builds on that literature to offer an explanation for why French counterrevolutionary knowledge circulated so broadly, and to connect the French military more concretely to an emerging literature on anticommunist internationalism. At the center of French efforts, this article argues, stood the Army’s École Supérieure de Guerre (ESG) in Paris, which trained growing numbers of high-ranking foreign officers after 1945. The ESG taught counterrevolutionary warfare directly, but as this article argues, it also helped constitute an audience abroad for such ideas by cultivating affective bonds, strategic preferences, and personal connections over the longer term. In tracing the partnerships cultivated through the ESG in this period, this article also illustrates the broader entanglements between counterinsurgency, international military cooperation, and professionalization at midcentury. For military partners seeking to professionalize their own forces, the attractiveness of French doctrines lay as much in the easily accessible set of materials, training, and expertise the French military offered as in their capacity to combat subversion. By tracing the transnational networks of exchange knit together by military academies in this period, this article concludes, scholars can better historicize the rise of counterinsurgency as a key paradigm of cold warfare.

A couple recent, valuable pieces on the evolution of Myanmar’s war in Frontier Myanmar:

‘Fear causes more hate’: Beheadings haunt Myanmar’s heartland

“The country has seen a grisly surge in beheadings since the coup – with both pro-military and anti-military figures targeted – a pattern observers say reflects the military’s brutality and the subsequent rage of the people it oppresses.”

‘This small flame’: Hunted and cash-strapped Yangon guerrillas vow to continue struggle

A core group of committed urban fighters continue to wage a guerrilla war against the military, despite mass arrests, civilian casualties, limited success and dwindling financial support.

The series of essays on the Politics of Opposition in South Asia that Milan Vaishnav and I have co-edited has almost wrapped up (he and I still have a joint concluding essay to write); click the link above to see all the great contributions. The final contributor essay is by Rasheeda Didi, exploring the India issue in the domestic politics of the Maldives. This is a topic and context important in its own right, and also particularly intriguing to me given my current book project, so definitely worth a read:

“Like many island nations in Asia, the Maldives is busy grappling with the best way to advance its economic and national security interests in a region where geopolitical tensions between larger Asia-Pacific nations like China, India, and the United States continue to rise.

Unsurprisingly, views among the country’s political leaders on the best course of action differ. The political debate playing out in the capital of Malé offers a vantage point on the tradeoffs and constraints that policymakers in the Maldives and other similar countries must account for as they strive to protect their national sovereignty.

The main issue dominating this debate is India’s controversial military presence in the Maldives, though other ad hoc issues have arisen too. While the current government has actively sought to strengthen such ties with India, Yameen and the main opposition force have pressed the government to weaken such ties or even end India’s military presence altogether, as embodied by the slogan “India Out.”

To amplify the India Out campaign’s reach, the opposition has expanded its appeals beyond the capital to outer islands. The expansion of the campaign and the opposition’s heated rhetoric could create a serious rupture in the Maldives-India partnership with potentially significant consequences for both sides.”

Read more here.

A pair of valualbe recent data projects were recently released that provide new insights into public opinion in India and Pakistan.

The first is this year’s version of the Observer Research Foundation’s survey of Indian urban youth regarding foreign policy. I’m excited about this survey, especially if it continues to be offered regularly – there are very few surveys regarding Indian foreign policy (sample-limited or not) that consistently track opinions over time. There’s lots of interesting time in there, so check it out.

The second is a fascinating new United States Institute of Peace report by Asfandyar Mir and Niloufer Siddiqui, which uses focus groups and surveys to explore the dynamics of conspiracy theory and misinformation in Pakistan. It’s important social science, with important implications; for instance, they conclude that “Many Pakistanis are aware of the prevalence of misinformation, but survey results suggest that simple corrections of misinformation do not effectively counter negative downstream social and political beliefs.”