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Being English/ British/ European and the politics of difference

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By: Henry Redwood

Source: https://i.guim.co.uk/
Source: https://i.guim.co.uk/

To say that it has been a bad couple of weeks to be English (or is it British, or European? I’m not sure anymore…) is an understatement. Violent and racist football supporters in France; racist abuse at home; intolerant and divisive politics in all political parties; “Brexit”; and lastly, losing a football match to a team with more volcanoes than professional footballers. Each of these events has left in its wake a series of finger-pointing and questions over who’s to blame: Roy Hodgson? The working class? The Tories? The press? A complacent left? (Im)migrants and/or refugees? This need for someone, or a collective, to be blamed within society seems to run deep. It was certainly key in the angry protest vote that saw Britain leave the EU. The primary concern within each of these allegations seems to be to find the ‘Other’, upon whom we can unburden our own responsibilities and troubles – the immigrant; the elite; the European bureaucrat; the English -and draw, perhaps, clear lines that strongly delineate what “we are” – and more often what we are not.

However, the ‘blame game’ rests on an unsustainable model, which assumes that clear lines can be drawn which delineate what “we” are – and more often what we are not. The most obvious example here is the notion of “Great Britain”, which has been variously deployed in, often contradicting, ways by different parts of the argument. Underneath each, though, is a conception of a nation – a collective – that remains unchanging; of a set of morals, values, culture etcetera, that is transcendental, frequently constructed by relational difference (we are not European; we are not fascist).

The arbitrariness of this (of course, being arbitrary makes it no less violent) is seen with the difficulty we have in deciding at which point a particular “Great Britain” began. The pretence of unity and solidity of these categories, which was pumped out throughout the referendum ‘debate’, and the confidence that we could ever know what it means to be English, British or European (or all three at once), meant that the debate was conducted from a perspective where we could decide what it meant to be ‘British’ (or even democratic). This decision was made through exclusionary identity politics, rather than considerations on how we might reconfigure these understandings of difference to try to remove the harm caused by arbitrarily signifying Self against the ‘Other’.[1] This is not only directed at those who voted in favour of Brexit; this issue has come up repeatedly in the anti-Brexist arguments since, where Brexiters are labelled as racists, ignorant, idiots, and are consequently de-politicised in the process as their voices are considered irrelevant. This ignores both our (here meaning Remain voters) responsibility, and in these cases our dependency on this ‘Other’ to define us (I am not a Brexiter, I am not racist or fascist), which was perhaps most clearly seen in the celebratory pro-European protest in London on Saturday.[2] This protest summed up this forms of identity politics, and worryingly seemed to recreate the boundaries that de-politicised the voices of Brexiters, reproducing the same political relationships that led to the ostracisation of large sections of the population in the first place; hardly a basis upon which to rebuild the shattered community.

The accusatory, and often angry, politics of the blame game seems to have occupied us elsewhere over the past decades, and perhaps it marks a trend in the new-millennium’s political landscape. At University, and elsewhere, the response to the impact of austerity has frequently been about blame and the fragmenting of larger political ideologies and structures and issues into “bite size” issues. Students are angry at the staff for not providing more contact times; the academic staff resent students for wanting a corporate-inspired ‘transferable skills’ format of education that the University was not designed to deliver, and that they are not trained to deliver.[3] It feels as though something similar has happened in the political realm, where there seems to have been a turn to (possibly thanks to, or as a result of, the digital age) a politics based on fragmented and seemingly isolated issues. A trend most evident in the rise of pressure group politics and organisations like 38 degrees.

Underlying both of these points is a sense that we can distil responsibility – and perhaps importantly with this, a sense of belonging and being – to different individuals and collectives, without considering our shared responsibility and co-dependence. As such, we are failing to explore the culpability of much larger systems that produce these harms and us as recognisable subjects we are not looking at the shared responsibility that we consequently have for the reproduction of that system and the violence that relates to it. Without this understanding, the “immigrant” remains an external entity that we have no obligation to; a burden, rather than an always-already member of our community that we are responsible for.[4] Without this understanding, the Brexit voter remains an ignorant racist, rather than someone who has been subjectivised through the same system that produces others’ (my) privilege; someone silenced for decades whilst a politics was practised that was blind to its violence, and complicit in aggravating inequality.  In both, it is the gap and relation between the Self and the ‘Other’ that needs to be addressed. Not by blaming the ‘Other’, but by reconfiguring the system as a whole. The same system that currently produces the Self and ‘Other’ as different, and as opposing polarities. In a time of rising extremism – islamophobic; homophobic; transphobic; take your pick – such reframing is more important than ever.

 

 

Henry Redwood is a third year PhD student in the War Studies department and senior editor at strife. His work engages with critical theory to explore how international courts construct truths and the normative underpinnings these project. Alongside his research Henry has previously worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and a number of (I)NGOs working in Rwanda. Twitter: @hred44

 

 

 

 

Notes:

[1] See Martha Minow, Making all the difference: Inclusion, Exclusion, and American law (Cornell University Press, 1991)

[2] For an excellent insight into Brexiters see here

[3] http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/transferable-people/

[4] For an wonderful article on migrant identities and borders see, Francis Saunders, ‘Where on Earth Are You?’, 38:5 (2016), pages 7-12

 

Book review: ‘Making Sense of Proxy Wars: States, Surrogates & the Use of Force’ by Michael A. Innes

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Reviewed by: Lauren Dickey

Michael A. Innes (ed.), Making Sense of Proxy Wars: States, Surrogates & the Use of Force (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2012).

making-sense-of-proxy-wars

A Futile Attempt to Make Sense of Proxy Wars

At the end of the Cold War, and especially in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the study of war gradually shifted from a realist-dominated, state-centric discourse to emphasise instead the role of non-state actors and asymmetric dynamics in conflict. The ‘old wars’ were increasingly being replaced with arguments in favour of a new sort of warfare, with explanations pointing to ‘new’ or different motivating factors, support (state versus non-state), and/or forms of violence.[1] Despite this shift, a crucial gap in the literature on war persists: proxy warfare.

Michael A. Innes edited a volume which boldly sets out to ‘make sense’ of proxy wars, poising the text to make an important and timely contribution to the history of conflict itself. Once seen as superpower-induced wars fought on the soil of a third party, proxy wars have since appeared to be shaped instead by regional powers and the cross-border dispersion of armed groups. The growth of proxy warfare is a direct threat to state sovereignty, and a challenge made even more real through the growth of robotics and cyber technologies that enable an inclusion of non-state actors on the battlefield. Proxy warfare is thus a highly fluid concept; it is undefined insofar as there is much about it that remains unknown.

The most significant shortcoming of Innes’ edited volume rings clear within its attempt to lay the groundwork for the contributions of other scholars. Nowhere in the text is ‘proxy war’ explicitly defined. Each successive chapter evades the very concept this book endeavours to parse apart. A brief preface is offered in place of a literature review, as it seems in Innes’ attempt to address the complexities of proxy war, he opted for a brief analysis of the text’s central concept. However, in choosing to omit this critical component, the volume skirts around explanations of why the text should be taken as more than a disjointed compilation of case studies.

Each of the case studies offered by the eight contributing authors is informative when examined on their own. The first chapter, places the concept of proxy warfare at the beginning and end of the analysis with a stated intention of explaining why terrorism creates space and opportunity for proxy wars. Yet the chapter never details how a proxy relationship can come into being; nor does it devote any space to explaining the structure of a proxy conflict, the benefactor, proxy agent, and target agent.

The following chapters offer rich case studies, but little conceptual clarity on the role of non-state actors in proxy warfare. The second chapter on the IRA’s proxy bomb campaign of 1990 challenges basic assumptions about suicide bombing, arguing that scholars and analysts alike should question the intent of the action, rather than assuming such attacks are always acts of martyrdom. The authors believe that the IRA’s main purpose in shifting to proxy bomb operations was to shift tactics and ‘teach British security forces a lesson they would not soon forget.’[2] But public opinion ultimately checked the growth of the IRA’s proxy tactics, angering the community and ultimately weakening the overall legitimacy of the IRA’s struggle.

Chapters three and four offer respective interpretations of proxies in historical context, each drawing comparisons to US counterinsurgencies in Iraq or Afghanistan. Both argue, in one form or another, that the mistakes of the past can be lessons for the US and its coalition partners in the present; yet, both simultaneously fail to recognize the unpredictability of current events and the often subjective interpretations of history. The only true lesson to be garnered from history is that no two wars – not to mention proxy conflicts – are cloned images.

Chapter five makes the closest attempt to anything that has ‘made sense’ of proxy warfare in the volume. Proxyization is traced briefly from classical times when rulers preferred to hire trusted foreigners as mercenaries through to present-day use of private military and security companies (PMSCs). A case is made to assess the activities and services of PMSCs to ascertain what policy and governance mechanisms should be implemented, but does not move its policy recommendations any further. The final chapter is adopted from a RAND report on Shell’s activities as a ‘proxy’ in the oil-rich Nigerian Delta, tactics of both hard and soft security that enable it to maintain its profit margins, but still do not ‘sway the operating environment in the Delta.’[3] The singular study of Shell as a multi-national corporation (MNC) proxy highlights the role of non-state actors stepping in to provide public goods in areas where the government is largely absent, thereby removing some of the sovereign authority of the state.

The case studies within this edited volume unfortunately equivocate proxy strategy with proxy tactics, failing to acknowledge important differences therein.[4] It further neglects an acknowledgement that proxy warfare describes a specific mannerism involving the interaction between benefactor, proxy agent, and target agent. The manuscript was framed by the need to more actively and accurately account for non-state proxies in counterinsurgency and war alike. But in failing to paint a clear picture of what proxy warfare actually entails, there is little meat on the bones of the book. The in-depth case studies make for a compelling read, but its approach to the phenomenon of proxy warfare is lacklustre at best; and, ultimately, the Innes volume falls far short of its attempts to ‘make sense’ of this contemporary facet of warfare.

 

 

Lauren Dickey is a PhD student in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and the Political Science Department at the National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on Chinese strategy toward Taiwan in the Xi Jinping era. She is a member of the Pacific Forum Young Leaders program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC.

 

 

 

Notes:

[1] See the notable work of Mary Kaldor, New & Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, 3rd ed. (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2013).

[2] Bloom and Horgan, ‘Missing Their Mark: The IRA’s Proxy Bomb Campaign,’ in Innes (ed.), pp. 49.

[3] Rosenau and Chalk, ‘Multinational Corporations: Potential Proxies for Counterinsurgency?,’ in Innes (ed.), pp. 149.

[4] Akin to the mistake of employing strategy as a synonym for strategy. On this point, see, e.g., Strachan, The Direction of War: Contemporary Strategy in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013), pp. 11-14.

Are Hamas rockets terrorism? Hollywood weighs in

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By: Lauren Mellinger

QassamRocket

On June 20, 2016, NBC Universal (Universal Cable Productions) filed a lawsuit in a California federal court against its insurer, Atlantic Specialty Insurance Company. At first glance the case appears to be a typical dispute over a contract – a Hollywood production company is suing its insurer for failure to pay the expenses incurred due to last minute decisions made by the production company in response to the last round of fighting between Hamas and Israel during the summer of 2014. Yet, at the centre of the case lies the question: Whether Hamas’s rocket attacks during that conflict should be classified as a war between sovereign nations, or as the militant acts of a terrorist group.

Summer 2014: A Brief Overview of Operation Protective Edge

On June 12, 2014, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered in the West Bank. Hamas would later claim responsibility for the attack but in the ensuing weeks, Israel cracked down on Hamas operatives in the West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza responded with a barrage of rocket fire. On July 7, over 85 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel, for which Hamas claimed responsibility. The next day, the Israel Defense Forces launched Operation Protective Edge. Neither Israel nor Hamas wanted the conflict to escalate – becoming the third in a series of rounds in a war of attrition that has existed between the two sides since Hamas took control of Gaza in June 2007. The operation lasted seven weeks, ending in a cease-fire on August 26.

Now for the obvious question – Why is the operation suddenly being featured in The Hollywood Reporter?

Enter Hollywood

In the summer of 2015, USA network aired the miniseries Dig, the television show at the centre of this lawsuit. When production began the previous summer, the plan was for the mystery-conspiracy-thriller which is set in Jerusalem to film on location in Israel – the location shoot being integral to the creative process. Indeed at a panel at that summer’s annual Comic-Con, Dig’s creators boasted that “[s]hooting there [in Jerusalem] is paramount to the story in capturing the vividness and emphasizing the characters of the show.”

But when the violence broke out that June, only the pilot episode had been filmed. Following a week-long unplanned hiatus (an expensive undertaking for a production company, especially on an overseas location shoot), Universal opted to relocate filming to New Mexico and Croatia for the duration of production for that season. Due to the unanticipated relocation, Universal incurred $6.9 million in unforeseen costs. When Universal submitted a claim to its insurer, Atlantic, for reimbursement, the company denied the claim.

So far – a typical contractual dispute. But now for the added twist:

According to Universal Cable Productions, of which USA Network is a subsidiary, after the violence broke out, the U.S. State Department attributed the rocket attacks to Hamas. At that point, Universal argues, it submitted a claim to Atlantic, which then denied coverage.

In their complaint, Universal maintains that Atlantic’s rationale for failing to reimburse the production company contravenes the official policy of the U.S. government, which to date has not recognised Hamas as a sovereign government. Indeed according to the documents filed with the court, Universal argues that:

“[t]he United States government has officially designated Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Nevertheless, Atlantic has ignored the United States government position and applicable law. It claims Hamas is a sovereign or quasi-sovereign government over the Gaza Strip (even though Atlantic admits the Gaza Strip is not a recognized sovereign nation), in a self-serving attempt to invoke the war exclusion and avoid its coverage obligations.”

Atlantic maintains that the company denied Universal’s claim on the grounds that, per the terms of the contract, coverage is excluded for war or warlike actions. According to documents filed with the court, Atlantic stated that the company informed Universal in a letter dated July 28, 2014 that at the time “the terrorism coverage should not apply” to the events of July 2014, as Hamas’s actions did not target either the United States or its policies, and that “the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury has not certified the [Hamas/Israel] events as acts of terrorism.”

Barring any issue of justiciability per U.S. law, should the case proceed, the California federal court will be forced to confront an issue that has seemingly confounded policymakers and international jurists since January 2006: How to define Hamas.

The Challenge of Defining Hamas

While it is too early in the proceedings to state with certainty, the likelihood is that Atlantic is not taking a stand on political grounds. Rather, it is more likely that they saw the amount incurred by Universal when production was moved at the eleventh hour, and looked for a loophole that would allow them to avoid payment. The fact that Atlantic can even ask the court to entertain its argument is due to what has amounted over the past decade, if not longer, to an “accepted ambiguity” in international law and policymaking regarding Hamas.

This “accepted ambiguity” with respect to accurately classifying Hamas is primarily the result of two factors: first, the fact that the organisation’s victory in the 2006 elections caught Israel and the international community off guard, and many government officials, academics and foreign policy experts found it difficult to explain how an entity, regarded by many as a terrorist organisation, could ascend to power through a democratic process without first having relinquished its armed strategy. (This element of surprise certainly applied to the Bush administration, which had invested in the Palestinian Authority as part of a larger effort to promote democratic governance in the region, and at the time, had encouraged the Palestinians to proceed with the elections.) The second factor has been the subsequent intellectual inertia of policymakers who have failed to adequately respond to the threat posed by the Hamas’s transformation from a terrorist organisation, to a democratically elected terrorist organisation, now with actual governing responsibilities and access to state budgets and other resources.

On January 25, 2006, Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections, when its Change and Reform party list won 74 out of 132 seats. In the wake of the results, some counterterrorism analysts and Middle East specialists argued that participating in democratic elections, and subsequently serving in a government, would result in the group’s eventual moderation. Yet, notwithstanding the periodic moderate statements made by some members of their leadership, Hamas’s actions since the election wholly contradict the assertion that participation in politics will ultimately tame them. Hamas, since coming to power and becoming the de facto government in Gaza, has implemented a system of government that largely adheres to the movement’s core principles – espoused in a founding document the organisation has yet to officially renounce. This includes adhering to the use of violence, and refusing to recognise Israel. Hence, serving in the capacity of a democratically elected government has not impeded Hamas’s efforts to further its militant ideological goals.

In short:

Is Hamas a terrorist organisation? Yes.

Is Hamas a government? Yes.

Is Hamas currently in de facto control of the Gaza Strip? Yes, for the time being, in light of their takeover of the coastal enclave in June 2007, and until such time as the Palestinians hold new legislative elections (or the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority manages to reclaim control over Gaza.)

The challenge for policymakers is to understand the nature of the adversary they are confronting and formulate policies to mitigate the threat posed. It is long overdue for policymakers (and academics) to embrace a new paradigm with respect to Hamas – that of the hybrid terrorist organisation.[1]

In his latest book Global Alert, Israeli counterterrorism scholar Boaz Ganor has proposed a definition for hybrid terrorist organisations. Ganor’s model consists of a single organisation comprised of three interrelated wings: first, the terrorist or guerrilla wing, per the classic definitions. To this a second wing is added – a political wing, that enables the organisation to participate in institutional politics, where it can gain legitimacy, albeit gradually. Lastly, such groups often maintain a robust social-welfare network, the purpose of which is to ensure a steady stream of new recruits to the organisation over time.[2]

That an organisation can exist as a “hybrid” challenges the theory, widely accepted in both academia and among policymakers, that an armed group’s decision to participate in electoral politics is an automatic indication of its eventual transition into a “legitimate” political actor (i.e., a political party that has abandoned its armed strategy.)[3]  Yet, groups like Hamas are challenging the conventional wisdom. In her study of Islamist terrorist and guerrilla groups in transition in the Middle East, scholar Krista Wiegand found that an organisation’s existence as a hybrid or a “dual-status” group does not presuppose the group’s eventual transition to a non-violent political party. Rather, it reflects a rational choice. According to Wiegand, for armed groups that embody a hybrid status, “the use of political violence is a strategic rational choice under certain conditions, while under other conditions, non-violent political participation is more rational . . . violence and non-violence are not mutually exclusive choices.”[4]

In other words, a hybrid group has the best of both worlds – the opportunity to slowly gain international legitimacy while obtaining access to state resources, without ever having to forsake the use of violence.

What Happens Next?

Given the international community’s glacially slow response to understanding the threat posed by hybrid organisations, it is likely that the immediate effect of Universal’s lawsuit will be on Israel’s relationship with Hollywood. In 2014, Dig was not the only Hollywood production filming in Israel that opted to relocate due to the ongoing violence in Gaza. Indeed, one day before USA pulled production from Israel, the FX series Tyrant also decided to move production for season one to Turkey due to the hostilities. Production on The Dovekeepers, a new biblical miniseries that CBS originally intended to film on location in Israel, was relocated to Malta. That decisions such as defining Hamas may be subject to the ad hoc rulings of lower courts may hamper Israel’s efforts to entice foreign production companies to consider Israel when looking for suitable foreign locales for film and television projects.

Still, the growing challenge that hybrid organisations such as Hamas pose to Israel is by no means exclusively a challenge for Israel. Modern history is replete with examples of armed groups that have eventually transitioned to non-violent political parties. At present, what sets Hamas (and for that matter, groups such as the Lebanese Hizballah) apart from other armed organisations that have undergone some form of transition is an issue that lies at the heart of this lawsuit – are these organisations in fact in the process of transitioning? Or rather, do they embody a new type of security challenge for democratic states?

The latter is more likely in the case of Hamas. Therefore, those states that opt to designate only the militant wing of an organisation such as Hamas as a terrorist organisation, excluding the political arm of the organisation, are doing little more than creating an artificial distinction. By effectively enshrining a false dichotomy into law – that an organisation can either be a “terrorist organisation” or “the political wing of an armed group” – the state fails to account for the organisational and operational reality of hybrid groups, namely, that existence as a hybrid is a rational choice, not to be misconstrued with the initial phase in an eventual transition a legitimate political party. Only with an appropriate understanding of such groups can states begin to devise adequate policies to mitigate the threat such groups pose to their security.

 

 

Lauren Mellinger is a doctoral candidate in War Studies at King’s College London and a senior editor of Strife’s blog and journal. Her research specializes in Israeli counterterrorism, foreign policy, and national security decision-making, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You can follow her on Twitter @Lauren_M04

 

 

 

Notes:

[1] For a more in depth understanding of the emerging concept of the “hybrid” organisation see: Boaz Ganor, Global Alert: The Rationality of Modern Islamist Terrorism and the Challenge to the Liberal Democratic World (New York: Columbia University Press), p. 73-83; Amichai Magen, “Hybrid War and the ‘Gulliverization’ of Israel,” Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, 5(1) (2011): 59-72; Benedetta Berti, Armed Political Organizations: From Conflict to Integration (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins  University Press, 2013); Jeroen de Zeeuw, “Understanding the Political Transformation of Rebel Movements,” in ed. Jeroen de Zeeuw, From Soldiers to Politicians: Transforming Rebel Movements After Civil War (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2008); Krista E. Wiegand, Bombs Over Ballots: Governance by Islamist Terrorist and Guerrilla Groups (Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2010).

[2] Ganor, Global Alert, p. 74.

[3] See Leonard Weinberg, Ami Pedahzur, and Arie Perliger, Political Parties and Terrorist Groups (London: Routledge, 2003); Marina Ottoway, “Islamists and Democracy: Keep the Faith,” The New Republic, June 6 and 13, 2005.

[4] Wiegand, Bombs Over Ballots, p. 75-76.

Perim: the strategic island that never was

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By: James A. Fargher

perim-map

Despite lying in the middle of one of the world’s most critical choke points, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait between Djibouti and Yemen, the island of Perim is a remote and often forgotten outpost. Perim is located in the midst of the waterway which separates the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden – the connection between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean and one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Throughout history, Perim has been fought over as a prize by great and regional powers alike in the belief that the island can be used as a gateway to the vital Suez shipping lane. Nevertheless, due in part to the island’s small size and its harsh climate, Perim has proven to be only marginally useful to the regional maritime powers. This article reviews Perim’s modern history, exploring the series of occasions in which powers have attempted unsuccessfully to turn the island into a ‘Gibraltar of the East.’

Perim is a fragment of an ancient volcano, part of a chain of long-dormant volcanos stretching across Africa and Arabia.[1] It lies in the middle of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, three kilometres from Arabia and twenty kilometres from Africa.[2]  Perim has no source of fresh water, aside from occasional rainfalls, and it is located in one of the hottest and driest regions in the world.[3]

Perim was first scouted as a possible site for a castle by the Portuguese explorer and admiral Afonso de Albuquerque.[4]  The Portuguese had launched a fleet into the Indian Ocean in an attempt to seize control of the lucrative Indian spice trade and in 1513 Afonso led his ships through Bab-el-Mandeb into the Red Sea. Failing to discover sources of fresh water on the island, the Portuguese abandoned their plans for building a fortress on Perim. By the end of the 16th century the Red Sea had fallen under the control of the Ottoman Turks.[5]

The possibility of establishing a naval base on Perim was next explored by the British East India Company in 1799.[6] Lieutenant-Colonel John Murray, commander of the 84th Regiment, was despatched by the Company from India to Perim with a force of three hundred men.[7] Following Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, the Company was anxious to control the line of communication between the Red Sea and India, and to forestall any French assault on the subcontinent. Like the Portuguese, Murray discovered that there were no sources of water to supply his troops.[8] Moreover, the artillery pieces at that time did not have the range needed to hit ships sailing through the western side of the Strait, so Perim could not be used to prevent a fleet exiting the Red Sea.[9] Six months after landing on Perim, Murray withdrew his force from the island to Aden.[10]

Following Murray’s failed expedition Perim was left unclaimed for nearly sixty years. Interest in the island was only revived when in 1854 the French engineer Fernand de Lesseps announced his plan to build a canal connecting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, a revolutionary project which when it was eventually completed in 1869 transformed the Red Sea into one of the world’s great oceanic highways. In response to rumoured French interest in the island and driven by the urgent need to construct a lighthouse, the British government despatched a warship to formally lay claim to Perim in 1857.[11] The legend goes that Perim was seized hours before the arrival of a French expedition, the morning after the British consul in Aden had deliberately gotten them drunk, an episode which one Victorian statesman described as a ‘bright ornament in the history of British naval enterprize [sic]’.[12] Indeed, Perim would remain a British possession for over a century until it was ceded to the People’s Republic of South Yemen in 1967.

Despite its timely capture and notwithstanding its location on the most important shipping and communication line in the British Empire, Perim did not prove to be a strategic asset for the British. Although a small detachment of Indian troops was garrisoned on the island and a lighthouse constructed, no fortifications were ever built on Perim. As the War Office concluded in a report in 1882, ‘no advantage would be gained by fortifying the island, although it is doubtless necessary to hold in order to prevent any other power taking it and converting it into a fortress.’[13] Moreover, even the latest artillery was unlikely to have the range necessary to stop ships from slipping through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.[14] For Britain, Perim was only valuable in so far as that owning the island ensured that it was denied to other rivals; only once was it assaulted when in 1916 a small Ottoman force unsuccessfully attempted to storm it.[15] Whilst a small coaling station did operate on the island between 1883 and the mid-1930s, this was purely a commercial enterprise and Royal Navy ships continued to refuel at the nearby imperial fortress of Aden.[16]

The only time in modern history that Perim has been used to blockade the southern entrance of the Red Sea came shortly after it was granted to South Yemen in the 1960s. After failing to secure a UN resolution guaranteeing free passage of Bab-el-Mandeb, Britain had left Perim in the hands of South Yemen, then under the control of the National Liberation Front (NLF).[17] A radical faction of the NLF occupied Perim in December 1967, and attempted to impose a blockade on Israeli tankers passing through the Strait.[18] Armed with only short-range artillery, however, NLF militants were unable to interdict Israeli shipping,[19] and an effective blockade was only implemented once Egypt joined in hostilities against Israeli during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. In October that year, Egyptian troops armed with Soviet artillery pieces were deployed to the island, backed up with naval units.[20] These forces were able to briefly secure the Strait and block Israeli tankers from reaching Eilat, but the blockade was lifted shortly afterwards following a ceasefire.[21]

Since the October War, Perim has not been used as a strategic base. Despite its location in the middle of one of the world’s busiest shipping lines through which 3.4 million barrels of oil pass per day,[22] no state has truly been able to utilise the island’s supposed strategic potential. The lack of water and harsh climate has hampered efforts to establish large garrisons on Perim, as does the island’s small size. Moreover, only modern artillery has sufficient range to engage ships passing through the western strait, and attempting to sever such a vital artery of world trade would likely result in significant political repercussions. With Yemen currently embroiled in a bitter civil war and lacking in naval hardware, it also remains unlikely that Perim will be used as a base for power projection in the short to medium-term.

James A. Fargher is a Doctoral candidate in the Laughton Naval History Unit in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, specialising in British naval and Imperial history.

 

Notes:

[1] DIJ Mallick et. al., ‘Perim Island, a volcanic remnant in the southern entrance to the Red Sea,’ Geological Magazine 127:4 (1990): 309-318.

[2] Ibid.

[3] ftp://ftp.atdd.noaa.gov/pub/GCOS/WMO-Normals/TABLES/REG__I/D1/63125.TXT.

[4] RS Whiteway, The Rise of Portguese Power in India, 1497-1550 (London: Archibald Constable, 1899), 153-157.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Kenneth Panton, Historical Dictionary of the British Empire (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 406.

[7] H. M. Chichester, ‘Murray, Sir John, eighth baronet (1768?–1827)’, rev. Roger T. Stearn, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19633, accessed 19 June 2016].

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, Speech to the House of Commons, 10 March 1884, Hansard Parliamentary Debates, Commons, vol. 285 (1884).

[13] Earl of Kimberley, Secretary of State for India to the Governor-General of India, 18 March 1886, Letter. In Anita Burdett, The Persian Gulf & Red Sea Naval Reports, vol. 6 (Chippenham: Archive Editions, 1993), 55.

[14] Sir E. Hertslet, ‘Memorandum on French and Italian Designs in the Red Sea and its immediate Neighbourhood,’ Foreign Office, 6 March 1882. In Steven Smith, ed., The Red Sea Region: Sovereignty, Boundaries & Conflict, 1839-1967, vol. 1. Arabian Geopolitics 6 Regional Documentary Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 99.

[15] MD Fontenoy, ‘British Control of Red Sea is Due to Coup by Governor,’ The Washington Post, 22 July 1916.

[16] Sir Michael Culme-Seymour, ‘Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean to the Senior Naval Officer in the Red Sea, 1894, Orders.’ In Anita Burdett, The Persian Gulf & Red Sea Naval Reports, vol. 6 (Chippenham: Archive Editions, 1993), 586.

[17] Robert Aliboni, The Red Sea Region: Local Actors and the Superpowers (Routledge Library Editions: Politics of the Middle East).

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Michael Binyon, ‘Egyptians say that Suez is cut off from Cairo and Observers are Blocked,’ Times, 26 October 1973.

[21] Drew Middleton, ‘Israel Sees Peril in Arab Decisions,’ The New York Times, 1 November 1974.

[22] Mohammed Mukhashaf, ‘Gulf Arabs wrest strategic Yemen island from Iran-allied group,’ Reuters, 5 October 2015.

 

 

What Brexit means for UK-China ties

by

By: Lauren Dickey

UK China

The people of the United Kingdom have voted to leave the European Union, and it is a bitter pill for many of its friends, partners, and allies to swallow. This is particularly true for China, one of the rising global powers that has invested no shortage of time and energy in nurturing its bilateral relationship with the United Kingdom. For the United Kingdom and China, the ‘golden relationship’ and ‘golden decade’, as Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne trumpeted last year, are equally under threat.[1] Chinese President Xi Jinping’s aspirations for a ‘united EU’ and constructive British role in ‘promoting the deepening development of China-EU ties’ now look to be fading memories.[2] A Britain outside of the EU stands a chance at saving its valuable linkages to Beijing, but the work ahead will not be easy.

Historically, the UK-China relationship faced a fair share of challenges. China fought and lost two Opium Wars with Britain in the 19th century, resulting in the UK forcing the Chinese to open their borders to trade, including in the narcotic derived from the Asian variety of the poppy flower. The Qing dynasty staunchly opposed the opium trade networks, going so far as to confiscate and destroy much of the drug. One of Britain’s first acts of war in response was to occupy Hong Kong; and, just a few years later in 1841, Hong Kong was formally ceded to the British and the first Opium War was formally ended through the Treaty of Nanking. It was only in 1997 that Hong Kong returned to Chinese control, a transition with continued ripple effects nearly twenty years later.

More recently, the UK-China relationship suggested that such historical troubles had been shelved in order to pursue mutually beneficial ties. China has invested more than US$40 billion in the UK, creating more than 6,000 jobs; a further $60 billion in trade deals were signed during Xi’s state visit last fall.[3] When China kicked off its Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in early 2015, the United Kingdom broke ranks with the United States in stepping up as a founding member of the institution.[4] At a societal level, people-to-people exchanges also continue to flourish, with academic and cultural exchanges as well as tourism on the rise.

But the referendum is a game changer. Brexit threatens what lies at the core of the UK-China relationship: Britain’s promise to serve as an ‘essential partner for an opening China, for the benefit of [both] peoples.’[5] The question ahead for British policymakers — and, importantly the captain that steers the ‘leave’ ship after Prime Minister David Cameron — is whether the United Kingdom can still be the western country ‘most open’ to China’s rise.[6] It is a question that has serious reverberations for China’s economic standing at a time when its economy is slowing and it continues to search for global partners.

Assuming the two-year process to leave the EU proceeds without hiccup or member state opposition, once the UK is fully divorced from the EU, China will lose its access to the European market via Britain.[7] The United Kingdom is no longer an attractive extension of the ‘one belt, one road’ initiative to link markets from Europe to China by land and sea.[8] For existing plans to develop the ‘northern powerhouse,’ boosting economies in Manchester, Leeds, and Liverpool, Britain cannot expect the deep pockets of Chinese investors to save the day.[9] Additionally, with London as host to more than 40 percent of the global market for currency trading — and the second largest offshore centre of renminbi — it will be difficult for the City to retain its lustre and gateway banking position in Europe.[10] While offshore yuan trading centres are largely dictums of Chinese policy, the Brexit will, at a minimum, yield a significant re-think of Beijing’s fiscal posture in the UK.

After the referendum, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying noted that China respects the decision of the British people, and that China will continue to examine and develop UK-China and China-EU ties with a strategic, long-term outlook in mind. She further commented that China wishes to continue cooperation and progress in the relationship between the two countries.[11] Elsewhere, however, signs of Chinese concern started to appear. An op-ed in the Chinese-language Global Times claimed the United Kingdom is back to where it started 300 years ago and that Europe is in decline. Most strikingly, the author opined ‘all that will be left is the little piece that is England.’[12]

The European Union has, somewhat ironically, already begun to assemble new pieces of its strategy toward China for the decade ahead.[13] But for Britain, no such contingency plan appears to exist. The task ahead, for British policymakers navigating the tumultuous waters of leaving the EU must thus also entail prioritising and defining what and how the UK-China relationship will evolve in the post-Brexit era. A new UK-China trade agreement, according to a China Daily estimate, will take 500 British officials ten years to negotiate. Instead, both sides will need to turn to interim steps to preserve politico-economic ties and domestic interests.[14] Furthermore, for Beijing, its largest advocate vis-à-vis the European Union trading bloc will soon recede to a cheerleader on the sidelines. Now, Beijing will likely face tougher restrictions from the EU without sufficient economic liberalisation.

None of the aforementioned challenges that lie ahead for the UK and China as the Brexit moves forward are insurmountable, but much is still unknown. To mitigate the negative consequences for the UK-China economic relationship, policymakers in both London and Beijing must begin immediately to navigate the new terms and conditions of their relationship. The Brexit may indeed be a bitter pill to swallow, but the sooner China is able to stomach this seismic geopolitical moment, the more readily it can look to adapt its ties with both the United Kingdom and the European Union.

Lauren is a first year PhD researcher in War Studies at King’s College London and the National University of Singapore. Her research explores Chinese President Xi Jinping’s strategy toward Taiwan. She is a fluent Mandarin speaker and a member of the Pacific Forum Young Leaders program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Prior to King’s, she was a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. You can follow her on Twitter @lfdickey.

 

[1] Simon Denyer, ‘Britain is bending over backward to prove its friendship to China,’ Washington Post (14 October 2015), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/10/14/britain-is-bending-over-backward-to-prove-its-friendship-to-china/.

[2] Andrew Bounds, ‘China’s Xi Jinping urges UK to stay in EU,’ FT (23 October 2015), http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/df78cae4-797e-11e5-933d-efcdc3c11c89.html#axzz4CWfAzGhZ.

[3] ‘The Brexit result will have China worried,’ Time (24 June 2016), http://time.com/4381309/china-brexit-eu-trade-uk-economy/; ‘China and Britain head into golden era of relations,’ The Telegraph (20 October 2015), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/china-watch/politics/11936897/china-britain-relations-new-era.html.

[4] ‘UK announces plans to join Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank,’ HM Treasury (12 March 2015), https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-announces-plans-to-join-asian-infrastructure-investment-bank.

[5] David Cameron, ‘My visit can begin a relationship to benefit China, Britain and the world,’ The Guardian (1 December 2013), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/02/david-cameron-my-visit-to-china.

[6] Ibid.

[7] The European Union is currently China’s largest trade partner, sending US$389 billion worth of imports into the trading bloc in 2015.

[8] Andrew Browne, ‘A wrench in the U.K.-China relationship,’ Wall Street Journal (24 June 2016), http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-wrench-in-the-u-k-china-relationship-1466768571.

[9] Sarah Gordon, ‘Northern Powerhouse takes the lion’s share of FDI,’ FT (24 May 2016), http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/63d695da-20e8-11e6-aa98-db1e01fabc0c.html#axzz4CWfAzGhZ.

[10] Enoch Yiu, ‘Brexit could dull London’s sheen as offshore yuan centre,’ South China Morning Post (19 June 2016), http://www.scmp.com/business/markets/article/1976870/brexit-could-dull-londons-sheen-offshore-yuan-centre; Mark Gilbert, ‘London Could Lose Its Euro Trading If U.K. Leaves EU,’ Bloomberg View (16 March 2016), https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-03-16/london-could-lose-its-euro-trading-if-u-k-leaves-eu.

[11] ‘2016年6月24日外交部发言人华春莹主持例行记者会 [Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying’s Regular Press Conference on June 24, 2016],’ PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs,  http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/web/fyrbt_673021/t1375085.shtml.

[12] ‘英国回300年前原点，欧洲加速衰落 [England back to starting poitn of 300 years ago, Europe increasingly in decline]’, 环球网 [Global Times] (24 June 2016), http://opinion.huanqiu.com/1152/2016-06/9080633.html.

[13] ‘Joint Communication to the European Parliament and the Council: Elements for a new EU strategy on China,’ European Commission High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, 22 June 2016.

[14] ‘UK vote to leave the EU blows the whole European plan wide open,’ China Daily (24 June 2016), http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2016-06/24/content_25841499.htm.