Home on Numan's Blog ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

Lions Led By Donkeys Liveshow

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On May 29th I attended the Lions Led By Donkeys liveshow in London at Rich Mix with a longtime friend and a friend from university. For those who do not know about the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, it is a podcast discussing military blunders throughout history hosted by Joe Kassabian, an Armenian-American veteran of Afghanistan who is now firmly anti-war.

I don’t think the topics discussed are light-natured in any way, and the comedic portrayal of military affairs and warfare would’ve rubbed me the wrong way had the host not been a veteran himself, which in my eyes helps to legitimise it. I also do not agree with the podcast’s perspectives on everything. Anyways, the content of the liveshow revolved around the failure of the 1841/1842 Sante Fe expedition.

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.

Carbon Democracy by Timothy Mitchell

Thu, 07 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction:
-Fossil fuels create modern democracy and its limits.
-One limit is distinctive feature of middle east and its lack of democracy.
-Countries that depend on petroleum exports tend to be less democratic.
-”Oil curse”
-Common reason is surplus revenue from oil money gives government resources to repress dissent, buy political support or relieve pressures for more equal sharing of prosperity with handouts and price subsidies.
But that is not the case.
Book is concerned with intransigent engagements and which ways carbon energy helped manufacture forms of agency capable of effective intransigence.
Relation between democracy and oil.

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).

Politics Among Nations by Han Morgenthau

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A Reality Theory of International Politics “The world, imperfect as it is from the rational point of view, is the result of forces inherent in human nature. To improve the world one must work with those forces, not against them.” Six Principles of political realism

Political realism believes that politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have roots in human nature. Human nature… has not changed. For realism, theory consists in ascertaining facts and giving them meaning through reason. What is the rational statesman, acting under circumstances, likely to choose out of given choices?
Concept of interest defined in terms of power.
Realism assumes that its key concept of interest defined as power is an objective category that is universally valid. Max Weber “Interests (material and ideal), not ideas, dominate directly the actions of men. Yet the “images of the world” created by these ideas have very often served as switches determining the tracks on which the dynamism of interests kept actions moving” Power compromises anything that establishes and maintains the control of man over man. “Thus power covers all social relationships that serve that end, from physical violence to the most subtle psychological ties by which one mind controls another.”
Realism maintains that universal moral principles cannot be applied to the actions of states in their abstract universal formulation but that they must be filtered through the concrete circumstances of time and place. The individual may say for himself “Fiat Justitia pereat mundus” (let justice be done, even if the world perish” but the state has no right to say so in the name of those who are in its care. States prioritise successful political action over morals. Lincoln given as an example.
Political realism does not identify moral aspirations of a particular nation with the moral laws that govern the universe… nations have a tendency to clothe their actions aspirations in moral purposes of the universe.

J Samuel Barkin and Constructivist Realism
Constructivism traditionally seen by academics, textbooks, etc. as being in opposition to realism. “TO claim that constructivism is an IR paradigm in the way that realism or liberalism is misleading the the tendency to do so intextbooks is rarely mirrored in the scholarly literature. Constructivism in scholarly literature identified as an ontology, epistemology or methodology, distinct from materialism or rationalism. Recent academics, Krasner/Keohane, identified rationalism-constructivism as the main IR contemporary debate.

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.

On What is History From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White by Keith Jenkins

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

P2 “I feel that Carr and Elton are no longer good enough embodiments and/or guides to the more reflexive debates on ‘what is history’ currently taking place, so that they should now be effectively abandoned in favour of more relevant and generous exponents as to what is going on, exponents from whose number I have chosen to look at just two: Rorty and White.

P17 For historians, of course, never acces the past as such (epistemological problem), so that the problems formulated along the traditional lines of ‘how can hiostorians truly/accurately know the past?’ or ‘if historians cannot access the ‘real past’, then how can we have checks on historians’ accounts that are ‘real’ checks as opposed to be ‘just interpretations’?’ are beside the point. For what is at issue in historiography – and indeed what can only ever be at issue – is what can be derived and constructed from the historicised record or archive. It is the historicised nature of the records/archives that historians access which must be stressed here. For such records and archives, as Bennett explains, only too clearly highly volatile and mutable products of complex historical processes in that, apart from the ocnisderable amount of organised labour (librarians, archivists, archeologists, curators) which goes into their productions (preserving, cataloguing, indexing, weeding out) , the composition and potential of such traces and records vary considerably in terms of their time witness, says Bennett, the influence of feminist historiography in expanding the range of what now counts as the historical record.

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.

Conservatism by Ted Honderich

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“… no one could seriously believe Ronald Reagan had the same politics as such decent Tories as Rab Butler, the enlightened minister of education in the time of Churchill.” (p4)

(p6) “Conservativism by its name announces that it conserves… against change.” “Conservativism as we know it, sometimes aggressive, sometimes in retreat, sometimes seeming to be changing or maybe taking on a disguise, came into existence as a reaction to the French Revolution. It began in disapproval, shock, fear and resistance. Some say, as a result, that conservativism is better identified by what it opposes than what it supports.

Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays by Michael Oakeshott

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Rationalism in Politics: (p5) “The Rationalism with which I am concerned with is modern Rationalism. No doubt its suface reflects the light of rationalisms of a distant past… What I call rationalism in politics is not, of course, the only… fashion in modern European political thinking. But it is a strong and lively manner of thinking which, finding support in its filiation with so much else that is strong in the intellectual composition of contemporary Europe, has come to colour the ideas, not merely of one, but of all political persuasions, and to flow over every party line.” “Almost all politics today have become Rationalism or near-Rationalist”

Reflections on the French Revolution by Edmund Burke

Mon, 28 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Burke relatively unknown prior to his involvement in the debates Chronology

May 1789: Gathering of the Estates General in Versailles June 1789: Social role organisation July 14, 1789: Storming of the Bastille, followed by Great Fear riots in countryside August 1789: Nobles surrender their traditional feudal rights, later that month, adoption of the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen Late 1789: National Assembly confiscated lands of the French Roman Catholic Church, issued bonds back by the revenue from church lands to fund the debt. The assembly undertook a vast reconstruction of local administration July 1790 Assembly issues the civil constitution of the clergy, which required clergy to take an oath of loyalty to the revolutionary government, turning the church into a department of the state. November 1790: Burke writes Reflections on the Revolution in France

Theories of Nationalism by Anthony D. Smith

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Anthony D. Smith defines a nation as a named human population sharing a historic territory, common myths and memories, a mass, public culture, a single economy and common rights and duties for all members. He defines nationalism as an ideological movement for the attainment and maintenance of autonomy, unity and identity of the human population, some of whose members conceive it to constitute an actual or potential ‘nation’.
Source: Warwick Debates

Thomas Hobbes

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

De Cive

(Dedication) “That Man to Man is a kind of God; and that Man to Man is an arrant Wolfe. The first is true, if we compare Citizens amongst themselves; and the second, if we compare Cities”
(Preface) “There are no authentical doctrines concerning right and wrong, good and evil, besides the constituted laws in each realm and government”

Liberty
(De Cive I, 2) “For if by nature one man should love another (that is) as man, there could no reason be returned why every man should not equally love every man, as being equally man, or why he should rather frequent those whose society affords him honour or profit. We do not therefore by nature seek society for its own sake”
(De Cive I, 4) “All men in the state of nature have a desire and will to hurt”
(De Cive I, 7) Will can result in goodness
(De Cive I, 7-8) “Therefore the first foundation of natural right is this, that every man as much as in him lies endeavour to protect his life and members… if the right to the necessary means be denied him; it follows, that since every man hath a right to preserve himself, he must also be allowed a right to use all the means, and do all the actions, without which he cannot preserve himself.”
(De Cive I, 7-8) Everyone is a judge
(De Cive I, 10) that in the state of nature, profit is the measure of right.
(De Cive I, 12) “The natural state of man: War of all men against all men”
(De Cive, I. 13) “other nations have been in former ages, which now indeed are become civil and flourishing, but were then few, iierce, short-lived, poor, nasty, and deprived of all that pleasure, and beauty of life, which peace and society are wont to bring with them.”
(De Cive II, 2) “But the first and fundamental law of nature is, that peace is to be sought after, where it may be found; and where not, there to provide ourselves for helps of war.”
(De Cive II, 3) “but that some certain rights ought to be transferred, or relinquished. For if every one should retain his right to all things, it must necessarily follow, that some by right might invade, and others, by the same right, might defend themselves against them, (for every man, by natural necessity, endeavours to defend his body, and the things which he judgeth necessary towards the protection of his body). Therefore war would follow. He therefore acts against the reason of peace, that is, against the law of nature, whosoever he be,that doth not part with his right to all things.”
(De Cive II, 7) “although words alone are not sufficient tokens to declare the will”
(De Cive II, Rest) Concerns contracts and their validity in civil society, these are not morals but what Hobbes shows to be the best route to peace.
(De Cive III) Concerns other “laws” to provide peace such as forgiving and not being cruel
(De Cive III, 21) But from this ground, that an arbiter or judge is chosen by the differing parties to determine the controversy, we gather that the arbiter must not be one of the parties. For every man is presumed to seek what is good for himself naturally, and what is just, only for peace’s sake, and accidentally; and there- fore cannot observe that same equality commanded by the law of nature so exactly as a third man v/ould do. It is therefore in the sixteenth place contained in the law of nature, that no man must be judge or arbiter in his own cause.
(De Cive III, 29) The laws of nature are immutable and eternal: what they forbid, can never be lawful; what they command, can never be unlawful. For pride, ingratitude, breach of contracts (or injury), inhumanity, contumely, will never be lawful, nor the contrary virtues to these ever unlawful
(De Cive III, 32) The laws of nature therefore are the sum of moral philosophy, whereof I have only delivered such precepts in this place, as appertain to the preservation of ourselves against those dangers which arise from discord.
(IEP, Thomas Hobbes: Moral and Political Philosophy, 5.a.) Although he sets out nineteen laws of nature, it is the first two that are politically crucial. A third, that stresses the important of keeping to contracts we have entered into, is important in Hobbes’s moral justifications of obedience to the sovereign. (The remaining sixteen can be quite simply encapsulated in the formula, do as you would be done by. While the details are important for scholars of Hobbes, they do not affect the overall theory and will be ignored here.)
(De Cive, IV) Shows that laws of nature are laws of God, the name is “That the Law of Nature Is a Divine Law”
(De Cive V, 2) “It is a fond saying, that all laws are silent in the time of war, and it is a true one, not only if we speak of the civil, but also of the natural laws, provided they be referred not to the mind, but to the actions of men”
(De Cive V, 4) “somewhat else must be done, that those who have once consented for the common good, to peace and mutual help, may by fear be restrained, lest afterwards they again dissent, when their private interest shall appear discrepant from the common good”
(De Cive V, 6) Now the gathering together of many men who deliberate of what is to be done, or not to be done, for the common good of all men, is that which I call a council.
(De Cive V, 7) This submission of the wills of all those men to the will of one man, or one council, is then made, when each one of them obligeth himself by contract to every one of the rest, not to resist the will of that one man, or council, to which he hath submitted himself; that is, that he refuse him not the use of his wealth and strength against any others whatsoever (for he is supposed still to retain a right of defending himself against violence) and this is called union. But we understand that to be the will of the council, which is the will of the major part of those men of whom the council consists.
(De Cive V, 8-9) “yet he who submits his will to the will of another, conveys to that other the right of his strength and faculties… Now union thus made is called a city, or civil society, and also a civil person; for when there is one will of all men, it is to be esteemed for one person, and by the word one it is to be known, and distinguished from all particular men, as having its own rights and properties. “

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