Other News

When Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited the White House on November 13, 2019 he said a landmark resolution passed by the House of Representatives in October recognising the Armenian genocide had “hurt deeply the Turkish nation”, and had the “potential to cast a deep shadow over our bilateral relations”.

This article by Dr. Maria Koinova in The Conversation discusses how the Armenian diaspora, preoccupied with issues of genocide recognition, became instrumental in passing this resolution in the US, and building coalitions with other ethnic groups to advocate globally.

https://theconversation.com/how-the-armenian-diaspora-forged-coalitions-to-push-for-genocide-recognition-126703

Nastia van der Meer, BA (Hons) History and Politics, 2019, has won the Undergraduate Dissertation Prize competition of the Council for British Research in the Levant – for best UG dissertation on the Levant in 2019.

Nastia's dissertation, supervised by Nicola Pratt, compared the non-violent resistance methods used by indigenous populations to resist settler colonial oppression in the contexts of Apartheid South Africa and modern-day Israel-Palestine. The assessors found the dissertation to be “highly original and cutting edge with a sophisticated approach”. Congratulations to Nastia!

We are delighted to invite Professor Richard Samuels, Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for International Studies at MIT, as a special guest speaker for our East Asia Study Group (EASG) seminar.

Professor Samuels will discuss the evolution of Japan’s intelligence community and its future, based on his 6th book from Cornell University Press, Special Duty: A history of the Japanese Intelligence Community (published in October 2019). He is one of the very most distinguished international experts on Japanese politics. Professors Chris Hughes, Richard Aldrich, and Chris Moran will be hosting this talk. Although this event is out of term time, we are very fortunate to have Professor Samuels visit, and really hope you can make the effort to attend. A private book signing will take place immediately after the talk. If you plan to attend this seminar, please email easg@warwick.ac.uk.

Further details below:

Title: Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community

Time: 17 December 2019, 15:00-17:00

Venue: Council Chamber, Senate House

Abstract:

Intelligence communities are everywhere and always in motion. Japan's has been no exception, often shifting in response to dramatic analytical and organisational failures, changes in the regional and global balance, and sudden technological developments. In the first half of the 20th century, Japan had a full spectrum intelligence apparatus. This came apart with defeat in WWII and subordination to the United States. After the Cold War, shifts in the security environment and major intelligence failures stimulated rethinking by Tokyo. Following a period of half-hearted and incomplete reforms, the Japanese government began to enhance its collection and analysis capabilities, and to tackle in earnest the dysfunctional stovepipes and leak-prone practices hampering its intelligence system. Where do matters stand today?

Tom Long and Sebastian Bitar published a new entry on "International Security in Latin America," for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American Politics. The chapter surveys the state of the field relating to Latin American security, including topics such as state security, transnational organized crime, high homicide rates, borders, and more. In the region, "isolated state responses are insufficient to respond to transnational dynamics; although some coordination has been achieved, intergovernmental responses have produced limited gains and substantial unintended consequences." The piece emerged from collaboration during Dr Bitar's visit as an IAS in 2018; Dr Bitar is an associate professor at Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia.

The piece is available here: https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-1735

Andreas Murr has published an article in the British Journal of Political Science on why vote expectations are a better tool for predicting election results than vote intentions. 

The results of the article are summarised in a post on the LSE's British Politics and Policy Blog.