Re. Betz vs. Mazarr: not taking a side on this one, because it’s not an either/or issue – except to suggest that the crystal clear answer to the question "which major conventional aggression are we talking about" is the next one. Obviously.

Three points:

1. The question that consistently rears its head in asymmetric scraps is whose interests are served by the actions of irregular forces and their outcomes? Such interests almost always defers to those of states. Surrogacy is, like sanctuary, and extremely elastic concept. The implication of this is that irregulars as extensions of statecraft are de facto components of the conventional arsenal, notwithstanding their roles as ultimately autonomous agents.

2. Definitionalism and categorization can also too easily and quickly become excuses for glossing over contingency. The trend has been to consider local conflict detail more carefully, not default to macro perspectives. Granularity is the new spatial mantra.

3. "War amongst the people" is an essentialist crock. We dealt with that in the 1990s. Then, it was thought of in slightly less charitable, genetically-embedded terms: "they’ve always been that way", and intervening or helping is an exercise in futility, so let’s not bother. That kind of fundamentalism doesn’t sit well in this corner. We know R2P is dead – witness how neatly we now respect Sudan’s and Burma/Myanmar’s sovereign borders. That’s no reason to concede to neo-con pap.

 

WTF?!?

Bryan Finoki’s latest entry at Subtopia, Of Steel and Bone, commenting on a New York Times Picture of the Day for 30 May. The NYT’s caption identifies it like so:  "In Bangalore, India, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members watch through a fence as their leader B.S. Yeddyurappa, not shown, is sworn in as the chief minister of the southern state of Karnataka. The party won the largest share of government seats in the recent state elections." Bryan, because he’s like that, looks a little more deeply into the meaning of it.

"Intriguing to me is this anonymous chain of arms and hands seeping through the fence", he writes, "a fence equally anonymous, and a scene that perhaps could be found dispatched at so many different coordinates around the world."

It may not be intentional, but the way the photo reduces humanity to a random assembly of arms and hands detached from any bodies casts an effective portrayal of how refugees and migrants are perceived and treated by national governments in the current geopolitical climate. As if the detained, or even those just enclosed – more so, those who have been disenfranchised – aren’t even seen as full bodied human beings, but as an excess of ‘othered’ limbs seeking to worm their way past the wrought iron gates, resting their tired elbows and emptied hands before recocking them towards some sort of handout.

He wonders "if this image of bare-knuckled laborers provides an accurate critique of how the media distorts representations of the world’s excluded populations, or whether it is merely another dehumanizing consequence of the media".

Either way, I find something subtly revolutionary in this photo – a suggestion that fences alone wont stop the power of unwanteds or completely shun them out from finding their spaces in or through the gaps. There is a solidarity in these arms lurking below the depiction of the fence as being able to hold back a mob, that symbolizes how – not only is the border fence itself forged equally of bone and steel – but the human connections interwoven in the border are far more powerful than any bolted or welded barricade. To not see this human side is to accept then that the humanity in this photo is simply just another piece of the fence itself, as if body parts are an acceptable supplemental materiality in the composition of the barrier.

There’s more. Go read it.

Nothing on Sprol: Worst Places in the World, since December last year. Now, since the quakes in China, the world has a new worst place.

Still, no one’s shooting at anybody there, right? 

See here for a high-powered conference that just took place at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, on Exploring the Need for Additional Norms to Govern Contemporary Conflict Situations. H/T (again) to Bobby Chesney. 

[Slow day, so I’m covering new readings…. come to think of it, I’ve just decided to compile and post a Reading List on Regulating Complex Terrain in Counterinsurgency to the CTLab blogsite – consider it a corollary to Abu Muqawama’s COIN Reading List. Stay tuned.] 

Back to the conference – among the papers that were presented:

Prof. David Kretzmer
Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Ramat Gan Academic Center of Law and Business; University of Ulster
Rethinking application of IHL in non-international armed conflicts

Prof. Dino Kritsiotis
University of Nottingham; University of Michigan
War, armed conflict and characterizations of the war on terror

Prof. Yuval Shany
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Possible directions for regulating the situation in Gaza

Adv. Rotem Giladi
University of Michigan
Hidden agenda: The broad normative setting of occupation law

Adv. Michael Lieberman
Steptoe & Johnson LLP, Washington DC
Pragmatism and principle in International Humanitarian Law

Ms. Daphné Richemond-Barak
Tel-Aviv University
Private military companies and combatancy status under IHL

Prof. Emiliano Buis
University of Buenos Aires
From La Tablada to Guantanamo Bay: The challenge of new conflict situations in the experience of the Inter-American system of human rights protection

Mr. Gilad Noam
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Complementing IHL: Is there a role for international criminal courts and tribunals?

Dr. Ralph Wilde
University College London
Complementing occupation law? Selective judicial treatment of the suitability of human rights norms