Essays on Numan's Blog ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

Gender makes the world go round

Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Despite the fact that conventional International Relations theory has generally dismissed or trivialised the role of gender identity in international politics, gender is present in the structuring of the small, day to-day administration of institutions that are instrumental in the international, and also of the interstate system structure as a whole. A critical feminist perspective in IR can provide an analysis of what gender is and how it is ideological, how our understanding of gender guides military policy (and how military policy in turn reproduces gender), and how the international system structure, the nation, and war are all gendered.

Defining Civilisation

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The term “civilisation” conveys both a descriptive/pluralistic concept, where a variety of supracultural units co-exist across the globe, and a normative/unitary concept in the sense of ‘being civilised’, as opposed to being uncivilised or barbaric. There is also the idea of a civilising mission, a belief in the need to propagate one’s own civilisational values and systems to other peoples as if it were a virtuous deed.

The descriptive, pluralistic conception of civilisation is the attempt of many late modern scholars to imagine the citied Afro-Eurasian landmass as composed of distinct historical worlds that can be separately understood (Hodgson, 1993, p.9). Each civilisation was understood by some of these scholars to have an essence or special character that could be unlocked through philology, the pursuit of analysing and comparing the civilisation’s languages and its religious and literary tradition (Lockman, 2009, p.68). The literary tradition could include “Great Books” such as the Bible or Roman and Greek classics for Western or European Civilisation, or the Qur’an for Islamic Civilisation, or the Confucian canon for Chinese Civilisation. The essentialist perspective meant that scholars, such as the orientalist Ernest Renan, could make sweeping statements that reduced populations spread over vast geographic regions and time periods into monolithic units with rigid essences (ibid., p.78). Marshall Hodgson, an American Historian writing on global history suggests that, while supranational societies are important as a framework to understand history, these categories overlap and are situated in continuums of technology or urban/rural relation patterns that do not recognise reified monoliths or insuperable boundaries demarcating various “Civilisations” (1993, p.12).

New Wars and Old Wars

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This essay will argue that there are large differences between the social relations of wars fought before and after the end of the cold war era, which are termed “old wars” and “new wars” respectively. The changing character of organised violence is reflected in the shifting aims of actors from ideologically-driven to identity-driven, the different social organisation of actors and how they finance themselves, who the new targets of violence are, and whether the actors use these acts of violence to ultimately compel their opponent to their will.

Defining Empire

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In Empires in World History, historians Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper begin to describe the empire through its contrast with the modern concept of the nation-state (2010, p.8). While the latter aims to represent a single, homogenous group of people proclaiming their commonality, the empire is a political unit that incorporates many peoples while maintaining the distinction and hierarchy between them (ibid.). These distinctions and hierarchies were often not natural, but intentionally worked in order to separate the colonised and coloniser populations (ibid., p.12). This creation of the “we/they” and “self/other” distinctions would resultantly justify empire-building, as the created state would utilise the resources of its possessions among other areas or people to serve a core area or people. Political scientist David B. Abernethy uses this relationship, one between a metropole that has the position of dominance, and a colony that is subordinate, as the defining feature of an empire (2000, p.19).

Four citationless, short essays on IR

Thu, 01 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

1. Who offers a more convincing stance on the role of morality in international politics? Liberals or realists?
Realism offers a more convincing stance on the role of morals within international politics as it recognises that the anarchical state of international politics is immutable as long as sovereign states exist. Maintaining the balance of power, which may involve concessions or gains in the form of limited conflict in peripheries, is perhaps even more moral when observed holistically.
At the root of the conflict between the two theories of liberalism and realism in their approach to ethics is that the former adopts a deontological approach to international diplomacy, while the realists adopt a unique utilitarian perspective. Compared to a realist, a liberal emphasises concepts such as human rights, democracy and international norms in their approach to foreign relations. This is because liberals such as John MacMillan see these values and institutions as ultimately leading to conflict averse societies (2004). As the aim of the discipline of International Relations is greatly concerned with conflict resolution, the prospect of both working within established norms and also fulfilling the aim of the discipline makes the ideas of liberalism very attractive. However, realists argue that the implications of liberalism are dangerous and create instability in search of an idealist world order that ignores how global politics really functions. The realist may be a proponent of actions that break international norms, permit cruelty in the peripheries of the spheres of influence, and work together with authoritarian regimes to realise a working balance of power. This ultimately serves to contain conflict in a way that does not draw in the great powers and prevents greater loss of life and preserving global stability.
One way in which liberal approaches to international politics fail morally is the reliance on international organisations and international law to solve regional issues. Michael C. Desch gives the examples of where collective security completely failed in the interwar era as the League of Nations was impotent to prevent events such as the Abyssinian Crisis of 1935-6 and the following war, the annexation of Austria, and Japanese occupations in China (2003). Furthermore, Desch discusses the implications of liberal involvement in the Bosnian and Kosovo wars, insinuating that the deaths of seven to eight thousand boys and men at Srebrenica was caused by the intent of the international community to safeguard Bosnian Muslims in certain areas, demonstrating a failure of liberal international policy to effectively advance human rights protection (2003). Desch also mentions the Vietnam War as an example of realist virtue, as many liberals had spearheaded the cause while realists such as Kennan, Waltz and Morgenthau as early and cogent critics of US policy in the country (2003), and ultimately it was Richard Nixon’s realist foreign policy which had started the peace process.
A liberal argument for why some of these values are of importance, such as that of democracy, is that democratic countries do not go to war with each other. Though realist arguments against this could be that two countries that go to war are likely to abandon the system of government as democracy and democratic rights could stifle the war effort.
Overall, realist approaches to international politics and morality may end up saving more lives, even if they had not intended to.

Interest-based international relations theories and the European Union

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Interest-based theories of International Relations view the European Union as a functional supranational body and an actor in Global Politics. According to the interest-based view, through the institution of certain procedures and standards such as in many laws, and cooperation throughout a multitude of areas such as the economy, environment and security, international organisations like the European Union can help bring prosperity to countries and help advance their mutual interests. Many different liberal institutionalist theories of International Relations provide different explanations of how and why countries cooperate. Interest-based theories argue that as countries aim to make decisions which advance many interests, not just power, those same countries will be drawn to cooperate as that is more beneficial.

Conservatism as a disposition with reference to the French Revolution

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

French disciples of the Dublin-born British political thinker, Edmund Burke, were the first to coin the word “conservative” in the aftermath of the French Revolution (Hamilton, 2020). It originally referred to those ideas which Burke had espoused in his Reflections on the Revolution in France and was also associated with general anti-revolutionary sentiment throughout Europe in the 19th century. However, today, the word has taken a much broader meaning that has come to refer to a myriad of political ideologies, many of them which lack the essence of conservatism, such as Thatcherism or neoliberalism, monarchism and even radically theocratic ideas of the Iranian Revolution. While elements of conservatism can be identified within these doctrines and creeds, they are not representative of what the term conservative ought to describe, which cannot be an ideology itself but is rather a disposition which tends to oppose it yet can also lend itself to an ideology if there are common, traditional values.

How Turkey's Democratic Party undermined democracy: The 1945-1960 Multi-Party Period and Counter-Revolutionism

Wed, 10 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

[NOTE] This essay was written in sixth form for a nationwide competition. I have preserved the text as it was, and have not fixed improper and inconsistent citation practices. The content is also poorly organised, so I have added some headings. Any opinion or framing does not reflect my current attitudes.

Introduction
Speaking in the Turkish Grand National Assembly on the 18th of January 2023, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of the incumbent Justice and Development Party announced that the first round of elections would commence on the 14th of May. In his speech, he reminds the present MPs of the 1950 election held on the same date, and that ‘Our people, 73 years later on that same day, are going to say ‘enough!’’¹. In recent years, many actions have been taken by the Justice and Development Party to mythicise the personalities of the Democratic Party government (1950-1960) who were overthrown during the 1960 coup d’etat. The principal personality admired by Erdoğan and his support base is that of Adnan Menderes, 9th Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey and leader of the Democratic Party. Menderes has achieved a status of martyrdom among those ideologically conservative due to his execution following the Yassıada trials set up by the military. The online newspaper of the state-owned broadcaster TRT describes the 3 ministers executed as a result of the Yassıada trials as ‘democracy’s first martyrs’² and in 2013 the island where the trials and subsequent executions occurred, Yassıada, was renamed to the Island of Democracy and Freedoms (Demokrasi ve Özgürlükler Adası)³. While it is true that the Democratic Party was beneficial for a while in the advancement of democratic freedoms within the Republic of Turkey, the years that it took power in government became increasingly authoritarian and aimed to curb democracy at every turn. It is not surprising that President Erdoğan, who is arguably an ideological successor to Adnan Menderes, would place so much emphasis on his character and politics, especially after the coup attempt in 2016 which saw his democratically elected government challenged as well. However, the amplified legacy of Menderes and his Democratic Party serves another purpose which presents a dichotomy between the grass-roots, democratically elected conservative, yet populist governments of Turkey and an entrenched secular, progressive elite. The latter clique has consistently been represented by the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi) which in 2023 composed the bulk of the opposition bloc against Erdoğan, and 70 years earlier against the Democratic Party.⁴