Author: pstaniland

Will be selected in the next week or so. This is a useful historical background and contemporary overview from Dawn of how the COAS is selected and who the current candidates are:

I’m heavily using Nehru’s Letters to Chief Ministers for my book, and occasionally I come across quotation gems. Here is one from April 1953 discussing a jaunt through the Northeast:
“these tribal people whom I like so much, even though sometimes some of them are troublesome” (Vol 3, p. 277).

It captures both Nehru’s genuine respect for and enthusiasm for the Northeast, and his perplexed reaction to their inconvenient demands for various things, both themes which carry throughout his writings on the region.

“Vanity is a very widespread quality and perhaps nobody is entirely free from it. In academic and scholarly circles, vanity is a sort of occupational disease, but precisely with the scholar, vanity–however disagreeably it may express itself–is relatively harmless; in the sense that as a rule it does not disturb scientific enterprise. With the politician the case is quite different. He works with the striving for power as an unavoidable means. Therefore, ‘power instinct,’ as is usually said, belongs indeed to his normal qualities.

The sin against the lofty spirit of his vocation, however, begins where this striving for power ceases to be objective and becomes purely personal self-intoxication, instead of exclusively entering the service of ‘the cause.’ For ultimately there are only two kinds of deadly sins in the field of politics: lack of objectivity and-often but not always identical with it–irresponsibility. Vanity, the need personally to stand in the foreground as clearly as possible, strongly tempts the politician to commit one or both of these sins. This is more truly the case as the demagogue is compelled to count upon ‘effect.’ He therefore is constantly in danger of becoming an actor as well as taking lightly the responsibility for the outcome of his actions and of being concerned merely with the ‘impression’ he makes. His lack of objectivity tempts him to strive for the glamorous semblance of power rather than for actual power.

His irresponsibility, however, suggests that he enjoy power merely for power’s sake without a substantive purpose. Although, or rather just because, power is the unavoidable means, and striving for power is one of the driving forces of all politics, there is no more harmful distortion of political force than the parvenu-like braggart with power, and the vain self reflection in the feeling of power, and in general every worship of power per se. The mere ‘power politician’ may get strong effects, but actually his work leads nowhere and is senseless. (Among us, too, an ardently promoted cult seeks to glorify him.) In this, the critics of ‘power politics’ are absolutely right. From the sudden inner collapse of typical representatives of this mentality, we can see what inner weakness and impotence hides behind this boastful but entirely empty gesture.

It is a product of a shoddy and superficially blase attitude towards the meaning of human conduct; and it has no relation whatsoever to the knowledge of tragedy with which all action, but especially political action, is truly interwoven.”

Weber, “Politics as a Vocation”

Below I wrote a post about how America’s militias fall into an ideological “gray zone” in the eyes of the federal security apparatus. Richard Evans’ The Coming of the Third Reich provides another example of how a heavily-armed radical group can be seen as unsavory but tolerable; there is a deep ideological basis to threat perception. On Eugen von Knilling and his Bavarian People’s Party in Bavaria:
“As many moderate conservatives were to do later on, Knilling and his allies felt that the Nazis were a threat, and disliked their violence, but considered that their heart was in the right place and their idealism only needed to be used in a more productive and healthy way. So they, too, were relatively tolerant of the Nazis’ activities.” (pp. 189-190).

A campaign of school burnings is under way in Kashmir. This is not quite as simple a phenomenon as it might instinctively appear. This piece by Arif Ayaz Parrey helps us understand why. A reader may of course disagree with various of his claims, and I suspect the average Indian reader will most decidedly do so. But it’s necessary reading to make sense of contemporary Kashmir.

It’s also a reminder that Kashmir is not just a playground for media narratives from Delhi, but in fact has a lot of smart people who write smart, provocative things that deserve to be read. Indeed, one of the most striking things I’ve noticed is that many Kashmiris separatist intellectuals view the whole Indian national debate as tangential, even orthogonal, to what they view as the key political questions at stake. Too often, Kashmir is reduced to NC or PDP politicians on Barkha Dutt’s show talking about autonomy and human rights, to be chastised by security hawks and the Hindu right talking about national unity, jihad, and Pakistan. Reading what non-cable-channel Kashmiris have to say beyond these lenses is not much work, yet done surprisingly little.

Interested in the politics of the FBI? Check out:

Enemies, by Tim Weiner. A valuable pop history of the FBI’s secret intelligence activities. Any assumption you might have that the FBI has historically been an apolitical group of technocratic law enforcers will be immediately dispelled by this book.

There’s Something Happening Here, by David Cunningham. A scholarly study of the FBI’s perceptions of and responses to different radical and armed actors during the 1960s, based on extensive archival research. This book is part of the basis for my claims below about the views held by the American security apparatus of right-wing militias in the US – they need to be kept an eye on and sometimes need to be cracked down on, but are not existentially threatening or worth full-scale repression. The hard Left, by contrast, was totally baffling and perceived as deeply alien, even when not (or very lightly) armed.

Below is a simple scattergram of the correlation between the vote for the JVP in 1982’s Presidential election and the turnout level in the 1988 Presidential election. I restrict the sample to 19 primarily-Sinhalese districts, since the LTTE and IPKF throw everything off in Tamil areas. In 1982, the JVP was legal and putting huge effort into electoral mobilization, hoping to lead a leftist resurgence in Sri Lankan politics.

While acknowledging numerous caveats (small # of observations, possible confounders, low vote totals in 1982, etc.), what we see here is neither shocking nor unimportant: areas that voted for the JVP in 1982 were substantially less likely to turn out in 1988.The literature is unanimous in arguing that the JVP actively tried to suppress turnout in 1988 and 1989, so lower turnout, all else being equal, is likely to have something to do with JVP activities (r = -.6375). The relationship between 1982 UNP votes and 1988 turnout is the opposite (though it’s less powerful).

This suggests a political-spatial basis to the location of JVP’s ability to suppress voting, rather than a purely military, geographic, or some other functional logic of armed group activity in war. Which shouldn’t be shocking, but does helpfully direct us to get a better handle on the historical roots of JVP support, rather than focusing exclusively on wartime and tactical dynamics.

 

 

This Mother Jones article provides a fascinating glimpse into the world of American right-wing militias. As someone who studies militias, paramilitaries, and other armed groups, it’s worth asking how we can think about these types of actors. Another useful resource is the Southern Poverty Law Center.

First, America’s militias fall into what I refer to in published work (borrowing from Auyero) as a “gray zone” ideological space. They generally seem to be seen as undesirables in the eyes of Washington, DC – a potential problem to be monitored and whose activities need to be contained below a certain level (i.e. not doing Oklahoma City bombings), but not an existential threat to the state or nation. On the ground, it seems like some of these groups are seen by street-level Border Patrol members as more akin to business partners or even allies. They are protected from the kind of full-scale violence monopolization that a mortal enemy would face, instead living in a liminal space between enemy (the stereotypical insurgent/rebel) and friend (pro-state paramilitaries, the armed wings of ruling parties, etc) of the government.

Second, this ideological position is a mixed blessing. The ambiguities of what it means to be a patriotic militia protect it from annihilation – the militias can appeal to the symbols and language of the Constitution, claiming that seek to preserve and uphold the system rather than overthrow it. This is a key reason why large numbers of politicized men with guns are able to operate without attracting the kind of massive crackdowns that a similarly-sized/-armed group of Islamists or Communists would immediately face. Perhaps to their horror, they occupy a similar position as certain Islamist armed groups in Pakistan – unsavory, problematic, but tolerable.

Yet, like with loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, this leads them to attract lower-quality recruits – the formal state security forces are the natural place for highly motivated, educated, and skilled potential recruits seeking to preserve the republic (however, it’s worth noting that a good number of the militia members seem to be former enlisted military).

Though there is surely a lot of variation, one doesn’t get the sense that many of these recruits have articulated a clear political agenda or are able to draw on substantial political, intellectual, or economic resources. Trotskys and Kagames seem scarce. The Mother Jones article clearly identifies the potential dangers of recruiting from this kind of pool: too many unstable, poorly disciplined, and/or unsuccessful individuals who get an adrenaline kick out of playing war, too few of the committed leaders that Reno and Weinstein have identified as crucial for forging enduring rebellion in African civil wars.

Third, this is a hugely fractured movement, rife with rivalries and divisions. Such fragmentation helps militias avoid being perceived as major threats, but limits the movement’s organizational potential. There is no obvious unifying force that can turn localized pockets of discontent into a coherent armed force – depending which militia we’re talking about, these look like what I refer to in my book as fragmented or vanguard groups, with maybe a few parochial groups that draw on specific localities favorable to militia politics.

Without links to parties, social movements, or political entrepreneurs, and in the face of a coherent central security apparatus, this challenge will be enormously difficult to overcome. Nevertheless, potential remains for the various factions and micro-groups to carry out operations that could involve violence or escalation into broader conflict.

Fourth, and finally, this is a reminder that the United States has a long history of political violence: riots, lynching, militias, violent leftist radicals, the KKK, the police, ethnic cleansing, the FBI, etc are all part of American politics. Violence isn’t just something that just happens in the “developing world,” but instead has been central to the formation of our state and society. The American political “mainstream” has been defined by these struggles, and it (and the formal institutions and processes that receive so much study) are garrisoned and made possible by huge, if highly decentralized, security forces. All of this is worth far more attention than it gets.

A useful article in Outlook, with a telling vignette at the end:

“The last border gate at Moreh, manned by the Indian military, closes behind us as night falls. The highway, swathed in darkness and leading down to the valley, towards Imphal, is now practically des­erted. “Only the UGs come out now; we don’t want to encounter them,” whispers the driver, speeding away.”

Which has become, alas, relevant to the American context. Linked to here is a PDF of my 2014 Comparative Politics review essay on democracy and violence, which breaks down different types of election-related violence.