Browsing by Subject "Post-Cold War"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4

Open Access
Coda: Ten Questions for a Diplomat
(Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2017-08-05) Weisbrode, K.
Thomas Niles served as a United States foreign service officer from 1962 to 1998. His service included three terms as ambassador: to Canada, the European Community, and Greece. He reflects here on the continuities in the diplomatic profession, and, in particular, on embassies, during a period of notable historic change. While many of the protocols and responsibilities of embassies remained more or less the same as they had been for over a century, there were hints that those, too, were about to change in unforeseen ways, even calling into question the central role of embassies as representing and serving the nation-state, as the other articles in this issue discuss. Nevertheless, to this ambassador, at least, even dramatic changes in technology, politics, and culture rarely happen all at once; and the institutions and the people adapting to them may be more cautious or durable than they sometimes appear in retrospect.
Open Access
Historicising representations of 'failed states': beyond the cold-war annexation of the social sciences?
(Routledge, 2002) Bilgin, P.; Morton, A. D.
This article examines the rise of various representations of post-colonial states to highlight how thinking and practice that arose and prevailed during the Cold War still persists in the present ostensibly post-cold war era. After initially outlining the historical construction of the social sciences, it is shown how the annexation of the social sciences evolved in the early post-World War II and cold-war era as an adjunct of the world hegemonic pretensions of the USA. A critique is then developed of various representations of post-colonial states that arose in the making of the 'Third World' during the cold-war annexation of the social sciences. Yet such practices still persist in the present, as evidenced by more contemporary representations of post-colonial states commonly revolving around elements of deficiency or failure, eg 'quasi-states', 'weak states', 'failed states' or 'rogue states'. A more historicised consideration of post-colonial statehood, that recasts conceptions of state-civil society antagonisms in terms of an appreciation of political economy and critical security concerns, offers an alternative to these representations of 'failed states'. By historicising various representations of 'failed states' it becomes possible to open up critical ways of thinking about the political economy of security and to consider alternative futures in the world order.
Open Access
Individual and societal dimensions of security
(Oxford University Press, 2003) Bilgin, P.
Despite the prevalence of state-based approaches to security studies during the Cold War, alternative ways of thinking about security-focusing on the individual and society-also developed during this time period. However, in the post-Cold War era the primacy of the state in considerations of security has come under increasing challenge from a variety of perspectives. In this essay, the development of the study of individual and societal dimensions of security is traced and discussed against the background of the end of the Cold War. The first part of the essay examines the evolution of thinking about individual and societal dimensions of security during the Cold War. The second part focuses on the post-Cold War revival in thinking about these aspects of security. The essay concludes by considering the future of world politics conceived of as "risk society" and the implications for individual and societal dimensions of security.
Open Access
A return to 'civilisational geopolitics' in the Mediterranean? Changing geopolitical images of the European Union and Turkey in the post-cold war era
(Routledge, 2004) Bilgin, P.
The prevalence of the discourse of ideological geopolitics during the Cold War meant that both Turkey and the EU belonged to the West by virtue of their ideological orientation. In the absence of this prevalent geopolitical discourse, both the EU and Turkey have spent the 1990s trying to locate themselves geographically. Drawing on the literature on critical approaches to political geography and international relations, this article seeks to answer the question of whether the EU's post-Cold War security discourse on the Mediterranean in general and on relations with Turkey in particular point to a return to the earlier discourse of civilisational geopolitics. The article also presents a reading of Turkish policy makers' attempts to resist EU's representation of Turkey in 'non-Europe' (as with the 'Middle East' or the 'Mediterranean') as boundary-producing practices which have served to underline the boundaries between the 'West' and the 'non-West'.