Literature and International Relations

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LITERATURE AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

What they cannot stand is that a writer should give voice to the voiceless or organise them for action. They do not want literature on the streets! Ken Saro-Wiwa

Literature and International Relations Stories in the Art of Diplomacy

PAUL SHEERAN University of Winchester, UK

© Paul Sheeran 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Paul Sheeran has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hampshire GU11 3HR England

Ashgate Publishing Company Suite 420 101 Cherry Street Burlington, VT 05401-4405 USA

Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Sheeran, Paul Literature and international relations : stories in the art of diplomacy 1. Diplomacy in literature 2. International relations in literature 3. Literature - History and criticism I. Title 808.9'3358 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sheeran, Paul. Literature and international relations : stories in the art of diplomacy / by Paul Sheeran. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-0-7546-4613-6 1. International relations. 2. Diplomacy. 3. Politics and literature. I. Title. JZ1305.S485 2007 327.1--dc22 2007023738 ISBN: 978-0-7546-4613-6

Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.

Contents Introduction

vi

1

Utopia and its Discontents: Power and Morality

1

2

Chivalry and Honour: Stories of Supermen and Terror(ists)

29

3

The Madness of Reason: Going Sane is Harder Than You Think

50

4

Building Worlds: Forgotten Homes and Recovered Lands

70

5

Border Flows: Crossing the State Line and Getting Caught

88

6

The Politics of Unreasonable International Relations: Coded Whispers in the Corridors of Chaos

107

7

Listening to Voices: Whispers from the Global Home

129

8

City-States: Words and Weapons in Urban Myths

151

9

Out of This World: Imperfect Future(s), Distorted Pasts

171

10 The Final Dance: The Beginnings of Stories

188

Bibliography

190

Index

203

Introduction

Telling Tales in International Relations International Relations as a discipline is an area of study concerned with the relations between states operating on a global landscape uneven in resources and opportunities. Each country operates with a specific political system underpinned by transient ideologies and pragmatic practice in government that privilege the national interest. Generally, the objective for the ruling institution is to ensure that sovereignty is secure and recognised, collective beliefs are maintained and wealth in the widest sense is protected (whilst there are states that ignore one or more of these generic categories, it is increasingly common to find these attributes present in some form).1 Relations between states through the flow of people, money, information and trade create friendships, alliances and antagonisms, which produce various dynamics that necessitate the need for treaties, agreements, and diplomatic links to reduce conflict and promote cooperation. This takes place in a setting absent of a world government – thus an idea of international relations is relatively straightforward in common sense terms as an area of study and practice. The purpose of the material presented below specifically relates to the complexity that is prevalent in world politics. The implosion of Iraq following regime change, the difficulties in Afghanistan accentuated by a revived Taliban, the tensions felt in response to North Korea and Iran in relation to nuclear ambitions and strategies, and the wider problems between Israel and its relations with Hezbollah and Hamas, neighbours who are anything but good friends, tensions that generate uncertainties that undermine the longevity of a simplistically cast omnipotent and omnipresent PaxAmericana. To paraphrase the former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, the diverging global faultiness is nonetheless part of an

Introduction vii

interlocking series of related crises, a “perfect storm” in international affairs.2 It is ironic that wars between states are uncommon in a traditional sense, the on-going territorial hostilities between Eritrea and Ethiopia being an exception to the rule. Niall Ferguson explicitly makes this point central to his work on The War of The World, arguing ‘to consider twentieth-century conflict purely in terms of warfare between states is to overlook the importance of organized violence within states,’3 a trend that appears to be defining the early part of the new millennium. Interstate diplomacy may have evolved to include state-firm considerations, as well as non-governmental organisations and international institutions, but where on the radar are the diplomatic relations between states and terrorists, recognising the terms can be swapped interchangeably and disputed? Will this general trend towards stability between states be maintained or will territorial disputes be re-inflamed, perhaps in response to the threat posed by energy insecurity? Essentially, Literature and International Relations: Stories in the Art of Diplomacy is book that places cultural diplomacy at the centre of international relations. It suggests at the outset that literature such as the Illiad – a noble war poem sublime in its study of conflict – is valuable to the contemporary study of International Relations. The rivalries between the revived superpowers, particularly China, India and Russia with its wealth accrued from energy may, later in this century lead to a need to contain territorial ambitions of powerful states. The role of North Korea may create cross-border disruption, the Japanese responding to the potentially threatening situation of the regional threat. Despite tension on the political map, it would appear that violence and disruption within the state arising from ethnic and cultural animosities or civil unrest fuelled by social difficulties against hereditary kingdom or despotic regime is increasingly a dominant concern, a situation that may become more acute in Africa where citizens are increasingly vocal in criticising dysfunctional systems and structures that impede development and in numerous cases are ready to take the law into their own hands. Terrorism, in its ill-defined and evolving forms, occurs with spontaneous violence somewhere and anywhere on the global canvas. Its consequences shattering individual lives; unwelcome intrusions in territories and communities that demonstrate the

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limitations of governments in providing security without compromising a loss of liberty and freedom. In seeking to respond to the confusing trends sketched above, the book considers the value of stories in the making-sense of the contradictory nature of international relations. Specifically, the challenge relates to the pursuit of a fresh approach to literary production, from the perspective of global affairs. More importantly, the book seeks to add a further layer of clarity in recognising the nexus of relations between states through recognising the influence of literature on International Relations. This move is an attempt to critically explore social paranoia and cultural prejudice. The book will seek to respond to two direct questions. The first question asks: what it is to ‘read’ literature as a way of studying International Relations? The second key question relates to what literature does when ‘it’ relates to international relations?4 To avoid confusion in the pages below between the international relations of the international world in real terms and a reflection on the content of a field of study recognised as ‘International Relations’, initial capitals will be used to indicate the usage of International Relations, the discipline. Consequently, small letters will be used and maintained to identify international relations, which provides a generic umbrella to define the explicit relations between states.5

Reading International Relations Literature is a valuable medium to measure an understanding of the previous, prevailing and future social and political relations. The book will consider a range of narratives and their influence on International Relations.6 Raymond Williams in his entry on ‘Fiction’ in the widely consulted book Keywords, make clear the value of serious novel, which can inform and guide subsequent actions far removed from the location of the literary production. In concluding the passage, Williams reports that ‘indeed we can now sometimes say that novelettes, or bad novels are pure fiction, while novels (serious fiction) tell us about real life’.7 It connects with established movements and picks up emerging trends through the threads woven by characters and events, narratives that occasionally infect the

Introduction ix

superficial reality masquerading as the dominant truth. Literature has the ability to reveal complex patterns that permeate a range of historic and contemporary settings, the creative device being versatile in recognising how insignificant acts can have magnificent repercussions. Milan Kundera puts the relevance of the novel in understanding the vagaries of life succinctly: In its own way, through its own logic, the novel discovered the various dimensions of existence one by one: with Cervantes and his contemporise, it inquires into the nature of adventure; with Richardson, it begins to examine “what happens inside”, to unmask the secret life of feelings; with Balzac, it discovers mans rooted-ness in history; with Flaubert, it explores the terra previously incognita of the everyday; with Tolstoy, it focuses on the intrusion of the irrational into human behaviour and decisions. It probes time: the elusive past with Proust, the elusive present with Joyce. With Thomas Mann, it examines the role of the myths from the remote past that control our present actions. Et cetera, et cetera.8

John Paterson in the book, The Novel as Faith, captures beautifully the power of literature in edifying rigorous attempts to capture the complex web of factors that shape a specific event. Writing in response to illumination offered by James, Hardy, Conrad, Joyce, Lawrence and Virginia Woolf in piercing sensory and emotional material, the author captured the raison d’être of fiction in its attempt to make sense of puzzling actions: It was the special form of fiction that it was, precisely for the reason that it united the polarities that described both the life itself and the art that imitated it. As the representational form of forms, it couldn’t be this thing or that; it had to be everything. As the representational artist of artists, the novelist couldn’t approach life this way or that, from one angle or another; he had to approach it every way, from all angles at once.9

Not all novels are successful or care to capture the spirit of the age. There is always the presence of the picturesque; life crushed to serve a specific end or device, an artificial world alluded to in overly romantic prose.10 Authors themselves can become ‘detached’ from events in an engaged sense, compare, for example, the 1937 pamphlet, Authors take Sides on the Spanish War, in which key figures became involved directly in the conflict, with the 2004 Authors take Sides on

x Literature and International Relations

Iraq and the Gulf War, a book bristling with insight, but removed from the immediacy in the theatre of engagement. Literary health warnings aside, Hartley in The Novelist’s Responsibility alludes to content of ethical meaning and action when he writes: The novelist – at least I think so – must believe something matters. The popular catchword of today and yesterday – ‘It’s just too bad’, or ‘I couldn’t care less’, or ‘You’ve had it’ – all suggest ironical acceptance of the inevitable, with the corollary that nothing really matters. I don’t think that a novel can be written in that frame of mind, or any art worthy of the name be born from it. Something must matter, either as an object of attainment or avoidance…11

It is the value gleaned from a view that something matters that is the guiding feature within literature, a feature that connects the creative voice to the politician in every human being. In this book, the professional politician, diplomat ambassador is presented with sympathy to the Gramscian sense of the intellectual, a view that ‘all men are intellectuals, one could therefore say: but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals’.12 Similarly, not all of those who are involved in international relations are professional politicians, but immigrants, migrants, soldiers, marines, sailors, tourists, travellers, contractors, expatriate workers, traders and entertainers – all have political concerns, which should not be dismissed and ignored. Elsewhere, it has been noted how influential figures have used literature as a vehicle to glean insight to social patterns that surround them. Alain De Botton in the poetic book The Art of Travel reports how perhaps the greatest visionary of all time drew on literature to piece to together the complex social world. Van Gogh had such faith in the eye-opening power of art: Since moving from his native Holland, he had felt it particularly in relation to literature. He had read the works of Balzac, Flaubert, Zola and Maupassant and been grateful to these writers for opening his eyes to the dynamics of French society and psychology. Madame Bovary had taught him about provincial middle class life and Père Goriot about penniless ambitious students in Paris – and he now recognised the characters from these novels in society at large.13

Introduction xi

How can International Relations ignore the mine of the creative gold above? Is the influence of structural realism dominant; alternative vines left to wither in the sunshine? Can literature be rescued to make sense of international relations? The territory, practice and study of International Relations have been transformed in the opening years of the new millennium. In terms of foreign policy, the content has shifted notably from traditional diplomatic relations facilitated through the channels of embassies and related agents to a multifaceted set of actors that include various non-state actors with the ever shifting and oscillating exigencies of power. Christopher Meyer, former Ambassador to the United States from 1997 to 2003, highlights the need to take notice of a variety of state and non-state actors in safeguarding British interests. In reference to the United States, it is clear that diverse influences are important to diplomacy. As with the ambassador in Washington, so-with the consuls-general in the Great American cities: you had to do everything, to cover all the bases. It was all a single piece of elaborate machinery and you had to be familiar with each of the moving parts. If you knew the top politicians, it helped to get in with the business leaders, and vice versa. If you knew the editors and leading journalists in the broadcast and print media, not only was this a source of indispensable information, it gave you a platform from which to influence opinion – and to get in with the politicians and business leaders. It was all mutually reinforcing.14

Whilst International Relations as a formal discipline has traditionally been concerned with diplomacy, treaties and security, the uncertainty arising with the disturbance of globalization has led to the need to consider the wider impacts of world politics, factors that are not conducive to regimented categorisation and interpretation, which go well beyond business and the media. Events that have revealed the limitations in theories of international relations in responding to major international change can be noted in the following ‘surprises’, which weren’t necessarily considered impossible, but were unexpected in the form that they materialised.

xii Literature and International Relations

The demise of the former Soviet Union without widespread conflict, the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11 2001 and the proliferation of unconventional security threats for example in Bali and Sharm al-Sheikh has made strange the study of war and peace and relations between states. The comfortable regularities that permeate the ‘official study’, which was embedded in the discipline of International Relations in the previous century, have become unstuck: distant mismatches pushed off the radar by the realities of international events. It is not suggested that rigour in investigating international relations has been abandoned.15 Quite the opposite; it is in particular the scope of the field that needs to be widened to include all angles. Chris Brown in an introductory text to the discipline cautions students against adopting positions that present a view of the world of International Relations as if it were an undisputed list of facts, a telephone directory of straight-forward events for the empirically minded. The author concludes in his introduction that a insightful approach to the subject is contained in recognising that we should ‘explore the world of international relations from a number of different perspectives, taking each one seriously while we are examining it, but refusing to allow any one account to structure the whole, denying a privileged position to any one theory or set of theories’.16 Where intellectual dogma is identified, it should be disturbed. The discipline should not be comfortable with the derogatory surprises that generate havoc in international relations. Scott Burchill and Andrew Linklater in the book, Theories of International Relations, locate the foundations of the disciple at the end of The First World War with the establishment of a Chair of International Relations at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.17 The horrors of the ‘Great War’, mechanising death on a grand scale, indiscriminately collecting corpses of various nationalities, professions and locations, (literature not being exempt, the death of Alain-Fournier for example, killed in action, leaving for posterity the classic novel Le Grand Meaulines for future generations to reflect on literary loss), generated a moral purpose in seeking to prevent international conflict. The tragedy of human loss as a result of conflict should not be forgotten in the convolution of theoretical cul-

Introduction xiii

de-sacs; a lacklustre discipline confined by departmental ideologies is far removed from the political decision-making process. Historically, academia has had more impact in the United States in producing figures that straddle the world ivory towers and the dirty business of international politics, Woodrow Wilson and Condoleezza Rice being well-known figures from this unusual (dis)union. In Britain, the remarkable influence of Anthony Giddens on Tony Blair and new labour in embedding the so-called ‘Third Way’ has been wide ranging and influential. Notwithstanding, holding on to traditions concealed inside an institutional straightjacket, restraining fresh ideas, is a failure in understanding the full dynamics of cultural influences on International Politics. In the world of International Relations, regurgitating tired ideas from the relative comfort of overly neat departments is not conducive to creative insight, but it is popular. This is not to suggest that the silence on this topic is total. It is clear substantial work has been achieved deepening the scope of theoretical approaches in the discipline.18 Linda Racioppi and Colleen Tremonte have integrated literature and literary representation in teaching International Relations as a subject. In a superb paper, the colleagues from Michigan State University reflect on pedagogical issues that have arisen in shaping an interdisciplinary curriculum that integrates literature and politics.19 Outside the discipline, fresh approaches to understanding international relations have been introduced by John Baylis and Steve Smith in The Globalization of World Politics, a text that prefers world politics to the restraints of a field defined in the taxonomy of International Relations, the patterns of international political relations being more inclusive of the flows in international relations than the relative narrow confines of state centric-state relations. Nonetheless, the various contributors use the language of International Relations, which echoes a similar debate that emerged with international political economy. Is world politics part of International Relations or is it a separate field of study? It is perhaps a self-defeating puzzle, the territory being familiar, but the approach designating a fresh approach and nothing more. The atmosphere of acknowledging limitations in the various perspectives that seek to understand the relations between states has encouraged a wide reflective pause in the discipline to overcome the

xiv Literature and International Relations

limitations in its value. This book is not interested, however, in lining up respective theorists of International Relations to launch an internal Armageddon within the community, neither does it make grand claims or include readily transferable solutions, which can artificially be applied to make good the numerous fault lines rupturing throughout the social sciences and the real world, contested happenings propelled by a messy globalization and the forces propelling global change. The book also does not believe that state has become redundant. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, news of its death has been greatly exaggerated. The explicit intention of the work is to demonstrate that the content of International Relations is related to cultural experiences, relations shaped and revealed through the engagement with the arts, a fluid and puzzling relationship bubbling throughout global society. Literature in International Relations is a book that does not take a dispassionate look at statesmen, peering over their shoulders in a dream-like objectivity, attempting to read strategies, intentions and intrigue. The temptation to dismiss individuals and their influence on international affairs produces an artificial analysis, in circles of power it is impossible to disentangle the personalities, the politics and the policies and the ideas that struggle to shape them. The book is specifically concerned with the use of literature as a vehicle to make sense of international relations. It is suggested that the use of literature – a literature that speaks through the various voices of fiction, music and art informs actions that may have dramatic consequences in the relations between states. The emphasis is on listening and interpretation; coded directions from Akhmatova. International Relations is not simply a mechanical representation of a billiard ball world screened dispassionately through the multiple channels of the electronic empire – the body electric has a human heart and mind that is influenced by the poetry of everyday life, with its achievements and its destructive tendencies. The game continues even when the lights are switched off. The use of literature to unpack the complexity in International Relations seeks to provide a theoretical vehicle to discern and reveal the meaning of preferences, misconceptions and interpretations that

Introduction xv

populate stories with antagonisms and reprisals, themes that invariably lead to the disturbance of peace and the propensity of war. Literature is global in the sense of universal stories recording the struggles of everyday life.20 Milan Kundera writing in a passage on literature and super-national history of its art (the large context), reflects on Goethe words that: national literature no longer means much these days, we are entering the era of Weltliteratur” – world literature – and it is up to each of us to hasten this development.” This is, so to speak, Goethe’s testament. Another testament betrayed. Open any book, any anthology: world literature is always presented as a juxtaposition of national literatures…as a history of literatures! Literatures in the plural.21

This piece will view world literature in relation to its influence on international relations, embedding in its approach Kundera’s view that the influence of a novel can be assessed without a knowledge of its original language, the important point being its dramatic influence, it relevance to everyday life in a global setting. The world of International Relations has traditionally been cast as a masculine discipline masquerading in the closed corridors of power within the problematic palace of the adult world. Hans Holbein’s painting The Ambassadors, directs the viewer to the world of prominent figures surrounded by the trinkets of civilised life. The material, scientific and the creative flowers of humanity are included carefully to celebrate collective progress. The foreground is besmirched by the constant presence of death, the spectre of war resulting from the failure of peace. It is a picture that works to define the old international relations. The aloof practice for professional ambassadors and diplomats continues in part in the form of the press calls outside the White House or photo opportunities on the lawn of Gleneagles with a meeting of the G8. It is one world of many.22 In International Relations, women and children have entered the discipline. The former have released a powerful voice. The latter continue to suffer as a result of not being heard. Their predicament is noticed. International Relations as a field acknowledges the suffering of children, but fails in its overly theoretical cul-de-sacs to shape policy that eradicates the worst excesses of harm. The revoltingly familiar world of young deaths from conflict, mines, psychological

xvi Literature and International Relations

trauma, unnecessary hunger and disease, should be enough to shake the foundations of academia and office from its collective slumber. The adult world is not kind to children. It is children who learn the rules of the game first. Stories for a young audience prepare the reader and listener for the violence to come. In an incisive study on the meaning and importance of fairy tales by Bruno Bettelheim in the book, The Uses of Enchantment, that author suggests that: to find deeper meaning, one must become able to transcend the narrow confines of a self-centred existence and believe that one will make a significant contribution to life – if not right now, then at some future time. This feeling is necessary if a person is to be satisfied with himself and with what he is doing. In order not to be at the mercy of the vagaries of life, one must develop one’s inner recourses, so that one’s emotions, imagination, and intellect mutually support and enrich one another. Our positive feelings give us strength to develop our rationality; only hope for the future can sustain us in the adversities we unavoidably encounter.23

In the passage above, Bettelheim is concerned with the value of literature in shaping a child’s mind and personality. Children are told stories in all cultures, the exposure to fairy tales, a genre that reveals the harsh realities of growing up, an experience filled with loss and discovery, delight and pain. Marguerite Yourcenar’s Oriental Tales, for example, draws on the folk tales and myths that are prevalent in China, India, Greece, the Balkans and Japan; the scent of Chinese whispers and the Goddess Kali evoking the exotic from the ordinariness of a kitchen reading. Interestingly, it is a former British Prime Minister not widely recognised in his public persona for his poetic depth who captures a common theme, stemming from literature, relating to the power of imagination and its relevance to political behaviour. In his autobiography, John Major writes on his early formative years receiving presents, various childhood fare and classic books: Ivanhoe, Quentin Durward, The Black Arrow, Tom Brown’s Schooldays, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Knights of the Round Table, the Greyfriars stories – all of these and many more were favourites. Thus began my lifelong love affair books…I learned that there is as much to be learned from durable, well-written bestsellers as from more serious offerings. For me, these books

Introduction xvii were more than mere entertainment. They became companions and tutors, cherished friends to be picked up again and again, the true furniture of mind.24

It was rumoured that Major’s mentor carried in her famous handbag poems by Kipling. In her autobiography, the Iron Lady waxes lyrical on the influence of her father and his encouragement in attainting a familiarity with Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, an early education that would prove useful in her famous speech in Bruges in September 1998. The bile unleashed against the socially minded continentals regaled against the advancement of a superstate, a demonic cloud sweeping away the nostalgia for sovereignty. It is argued in this book that literature, primarily in this study in the form of fiction, provides a guide to unlock the considered madness of the adult world, a realm were princes, magic forests and wise old kings are replaced by despots, tyrants, terrorists, environmental wastelands and polluted rivers, a world where civilians are targets, and the military peacekeepers.

When Two Tribes Go To Help In reality, as in great art, there is much going on where each attempt to nail the definitive interpretation is fleeting and open to conjecture.25 Subtleties can be as influential as dominant trends. During the period of Soviet communism, particularly during the considered stagnation of the Brezhnev period, it appeared, certainly in the voluminous pages of strategic studies, that dissent had been eradicated. The reality was deceptive. The Trojan horse of Western culture had been delivered ironically through the efficient international postal service, diplomatic comings and goings, naval excursions outside the Baltic, and other exchanges such as scientific studies, to the heart of the Soviet Empire. In the export of popular music and the coded humour found in the world service broadcasts of rock DJ Seva Novgorodsev, the weapons of cultural terrorism made incursions throughout the totalitarian system to chaotically fuel the alternative view (a political formation in a repressive state).26 Similarly, few analysts working in strategic studies assessing and positing high minded articles on the

xviii Literature and International Relations

Soviet reality, would consider the impact of Playboy magazine, easily the most desired printed item during the assumed dissident free days of the Brezhnev and Andropov, it being a more appealing read than the political samizdat, and more influential in feeding the desire to disturb the official repressive reality of a totalitarian system. Similarly, fiction may consciously attempt to transgress reality, but reality can be equally strange. The collapse of communism without widespread bloodshed in the latter part of the twentieth century, the sight of the jets crashing into the World Trade Center on 9/11, and the natural Tsunami disaster wreaking havoc through Asia, the emergence of bird flu and the quarantine of cities illustrates how everyday life can be made strange, obscured, ruptured by unexpected events. It is suggested at the beginning of this particular story that the recourse of telling tales in international relations encourages recognition of the value of literature. This is coupled with a wider suggestion that International Relations as a discipline needs greater sensitivity to a range of cultural influences and sources to fully appreciate the range of triggers active in a complex multi-layered world, which potentially create insecurity.27 The criticism that International Relations as a field is prone to long bouts of slumber is justified, the veil of science fails to conceal the cracks. The past offers reference points to ‘make sense’ of the present and pontificate on the future – world politics is about life and death, and a whole range of issues beyond explicit territorial concerns. Whilst there is an emphasis on the wider impact of historical events in the novels selected, the intention is not to flatten history with texts that reflect on or usher in specific periods, the objective being more subtle in seeking to make clear how literature informs the complex patterns of preferences that unravel in a non-linear manner in world politics, puzzles populated by mistakes and anomalies. The challenge in seeking to assess how literature directly overlaps with reality is, of course, a conundrum that has long been studied by cultural theorists – it is, perhaps, a contest that cannot be satisfactorily resolved on a grand scale. Therefore, the relevance of cultural products to International Relations lies in the basic assumption that literature is a product of history, it is not inseparable

Introduction xix

from great movements and minor footnotes, the ebb and flow of traumatic events being coded and public. The book is concerned with literature as a gift to scholars and practitioners of International Relations. The gift is cast in the context of the creative process defined by Lewis Hyde in the evocative book, The Gift. This appears relevant to the both the diplomat and the asylum seeker. The spirit of an artist’s gifts can wake our own. The work appears, as Joseph Conrad says, to a part of our being which is itself a gift and not an acquisition. Our sense of harmony can hear the harmonies Mozart heard. We may not have the power to profess our gifts as the artist does, and yet we come to recognise, and in a sense to receive, the endowments of our being through the agency of his creation.28

If ‘we’ initially accept that the territory between fact and fiction in International Relations is a blurred battlefield, further analysis is not compromised, caution is simply heightened in combing the creative territory for insight that may not otherwise be available. Serious political scientists and historians may insist on more obvious and grandiose systems that gather up facts like shells on the beach. This raises several questions. Is International Relations a straight forward science? Is the field flawed by the randomness of goddess Fortune? Is the real world of international relations an enduring reality or is it open to manipulation? For example, Gerald Kaufman posits a serious reflection on the lunacy of international politics worthy of the satirist Swift in a book to mark a television production of Gulliver’s Travels. The most demented of all recent operations in the Caribbean was the American expedition dispatched in 1989 to oust General Manuel Antonio Noriega, the totalitarian boss of Panama. Noriega took refuge in the diplomatic safe haven of the Vatican’s ambassador, the papal nuncio. The Americans tried to blast Noriega out by blaring ‘skull-splitting’ round the clock rock music from a nearby car park. Even the American ambassador in Panama City recognised that his country had gone too far: ‘We received a note from the nuncio protesting either the loudness of the music or the quality, I’m not sure which.’ Swift, thou shouldst be living at this hour.29

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The overlap between fiction and reality in the reporting of international relations is an ever present feature. The double-talk of politicians and diplomats, the layers of intrigue cast by powerful actors and the frequent exchange of flawed information undermines the common sense approach prevalent in the study of International Relations. Defeat in the field of human conflict can be discovered in the venerable poems of the classics. Victory can be derided by a stand up comic and ridiculed on the football terrace. Hollywood/Bollywood film scripts can be a guide to the possibilities of International Relations, the big screen disaster offering glimpses of cultural faultlines and political hurricanes.30 The rich source of clues that can be gleaned from the literature of science fiction has produced insight to the evolving patterns of change initiated by technology, a service that demonstrates how innovation impacts on the prevailing social, political and cultural order. Aldous Huxley in a series of essays contained in the paper, Literature and Science, makes clear the overlap between the two.31 In Britain, the rise of a surveillance culture, in part a reaction to global insecurities, administered by a range of bodies such as MI6 and GCHQ, can be noted in the wider literature relating to debates on social control and manipulation of information. For example, Dennis Potter’s television play, Cold Lazarus and the Tony Scott directed Enemy of the State, written and produced before the global war on terror; highlight the issues related to civil rights and the state and the rights of the individual in the relationship with big business. Literature in International Relations intends to consider a range of cultural products. Specifically, the vehicle of fiction in the form of the novel will form the main body of analysis, but the stories present in other cultural worlds such as paintings, films and lyrics will not be completely ignored.32 It is acknowledged that the author of the book has undertaken research on specific texts that have either been written originally in or translated to English. English is the dominant language in international publishing, an industry not free from natural and creative dissenters, for example Ngugi wa Thiongo, a Keynan who exclusively writes in Kikuyu. It is argued that this is not an impediment to the research: conversations about shared experiences

Introduction xxi

can go forward acknowledging cultural health warnings. Literature in explicit and subtle manners impacts on all cultures and nationalities, the stories of everyday life being local and global, shared and withheld. The passage below alludes to the African cultural tradition where the artist functions as a messenger of history, recording the feats and limitations of society through a narrative capturing the subtleties of great and small events. Key and foremost is the work of Wole Soyinka. He was very influential and still is. I remember that I came to hear of him as a young man in Ghana, and he equally had influence over us as well, particularly by his poems, novels and myths (stories that make reference to threats, warnings and heroes) in his poetry Ogun Abibiman and Mandela’s Earth.33

Some stories will not, however, be referred to in this book. This is not political censorship, but an acknowledgement of the multifaceted and multinational scope of literature that rest beyond the limited net of a single author, unless engaged in an encyclopaedic journey involving numerous eyes and ears. The modest aim of the book can be met by using a selection of works to infer the influence of literature on a range of choices that impact on world politics. This can be demonstrated without the exhaustive inclusion of a multitude of international texts written in a language not spoken by the author.

Beginnings The book Beginnings: Intention and Method by Edward Said provides a vehicle to assess the value of art in re-connecting literary production to world politics. In this context, it is assumed that there is a special relationship between the relevance of literary production to an understanding of International Relations. Umberto Eco, concluding his reflections in the introduction to the book On Literature, makes an explicit political reference in suggesting ‘I believe that one of the principal functions of literature lies in these lessons about fate and death. Perhaps there are others, but for the moment none springs to mind’.34 International Relations as a subject is primarily concerned with life and death. Ian Watt, writing in the book The Rise of the Novel, on the pretensions of narrative realism

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and the ability of Stendhal and Balzac to capture the total picture of life, infers that ‘the various technical characteristics of the novel described above all seem to contribute to the furthering of an aim which the novelist shares with the philosopher – the production of what purports to be an authentic account of the actual experiences of individuals.35 Hudson, in an incisive book guiding the reader to take seriously the study of literature directs attention to the ability of a major work in creative production to capture the essence of an experience or event: A great book grows directly out of life; in reading it, we are brought into large, close, and fresh relations with life; and in that fact lies the final explanation of its power. Literature is a vital record of what men have seen in life, what they have experienced of it, what they have thought and felt about those aspects of it which have the most immediate and enduring interest for us all.36

In reflecting on the value of literature in making sense of the complex process of decision-making in world politics, the scope of the subject is widened in a positive sense to include works and influences that would otherwise be ignored. Within the book, the author has not suppressed the impulse to use international cultural production and its circulation as a means of humanising international relations. In a contradictory global world, all citizens of global society are potential victims. The desire for a deepening meaning into the relations between states has been the guiding principle. In reference to Bettelheim, a meeting that inspired a curiosity to explore the links between international relations and the stories posited by the citizens of global society, which reflect, predict, distort, account, imply and reveal the lies and truths prevalent in the eclectic human mix, is a strategy for engagement. The introduction has made clear the intention of the material below to study two specific questions: what it is to ‘read’ literature as a way of studying International Relations and what literature does when ‘it’ relates to International Relations? It is assumed that through these kinds of questions, insight into the less obvious use of fiction in shaping the political atmosphere, through words, ideas and intentions can be studied to assess narratives that shape, hinder and liberate the possibilities and actions of international relations, an

Introduction xxiii

approach that informs methods used to prevent and limit hostilities between people. The process of gathering material for Literature in International Relations has included a wide study of biography, autobiography, letters and archival records related to the diplomatic service and well known influential international figures active in politics at various periods and times. In seeking to place clues on a firm platform, support will be introduced in the form of qualitative material that has been undertaken using elite interviewing and cross-referencing the material to support the views expressed. The insight gleaned from literature: the stories, characters and plots, set in various locations, provide reference points that transgress borders and uncover cultures in a manner that compliments the “making sense” of a social and political world operating in constant flux. In using literary fiction as a vehicle to think about international relations, it is not suggested that history simply repeats itself through the texts selected, but as Mark Twain famously noted it rhymes, offering clues, comparisons and conundrums that add to the analysis of International Relations, without detracting from its central concerns.

News from Somewhere The texts that have been selected below are not entirely random. There is strong utopian and anti-utopian struggle to be recognised in the further reading of the texts that have been mentioned in the book. Conflict or cooperation rarely takes place without some commitment to make things better for someone or to make things worse for someone. These themes are frequently found in numerous works of fiction.37 Recorded in failings between people, the propensity of malfeasance, accident and jealousy is balanced by the senseless acts of beauty expressed through philanthropy, generosity and care; examples that inspire or shape future actions. In avoiding the temptation to use cultural production as the handmaiden to history, literature will be viewed as a force capable of impacting on decisions, events and trends at the international level; the power of the story being realised as a defining force that speaks

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to, and connects with, an audience receptive to the power of a narrative. Throughout the book, the material steers a deft course between the acknowledgement of the productive power of literary texts and the impact of contextual pressures on literary production. How this rests on making clear how literature sheds light on international relations and more modestly how the latter invariably helps an understanding of the former, is set out in depth in the pages below. Chapter One Utopia and its Discontents: Power and Morality uses two key works as a guide to traverse the cartography of conflict and the possible exceptions of peace. William Shakespeare’s, Julius Caesar, is considered in the context of its insight into the inherent struggles prevalent in political leadership. The manoeuvring by the actors introduces tragedy and power politics to make the text a pivotal work in exploring the deep pessimism in human nature, the recourse to violence and war, and the scepticism in forming international alliances. The play provides the opportunity to explore the related aspirations of power through the lens of Caesar. Aldus Huxley’s book Island, set in an idyllic society in the Far East, provides a study of utopian themes. The book features a communal paradise that is not exempt from external threats, which undermine its security and sovereignty. Island provides an opportunity to re-assess the value of cooperation embedded in peaceful states and the weaknesses associated with sustaining it. Chapter Two Chivalry and Honour: Stories of Supermen and terror(ists) guides the reader to assess material that speaks of heroes and heroism, terror and tyrants during human conflict, an elevated position that traverses the horror and salvation that typifies the best and worst expressions of humanity. The main books under consideration in this chapter will be Cervantes, Don Quixote, Tolstoy’s classic War and Peace, a book synonymous with invasion and defence. Evelyn Waugh’s ‘The Sword of Honour Trilogy’ including, Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, and Unconditional Surrender will be featured to make explicit the conditional nature of moral actions. Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, D.H. Lawrence’s Aaron’s Rod and Laurie Lee’s As I Woke One Midsummer Morning will be introduced to deepen further the theme of the chapter. The poem Beowulf will also be referred to in exposing subtleties that

Introduction xxv

impair the transparency of actions, however pure the intent. In drawing on a heroic age and society, which repeatedly creeps into International Relations policy, comparisons will be made to contemporary events, acknowledging the grey areas, for example, the distinction between freedom fighters and terrorists. Chapter Three The Madness of Reason: Going Sane is Harder than You Think, builds on the darker themes introduced in the previous chapter. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, which details the flattening of Dresden by the allies, presents one sobering apocalyptic scene. Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, which depicts the consequences of nuclear alienation, is still relevant, the on-going tension between Pakistan and India, the instability recognised in North Korea with its disturbing missile tests, and the potential for crude terrorist attacks at any point makes some kind of major nuclear disaster possible. Other texts that demonstrate the flaws in political authority, such as Tony Parker’s Russian Voices, John Pilger’s Distant Voices and Xinran’s The Good Woman of China, Mel Mermelstein By Bread Alone, Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon will be introduced to make clear the flaws of reason and its links to genocide and inhumanity. Chapter Four Building Worlds: Forgotten Homes and Recovered Lands This chapter will reflect on the colonial and post-colonial literature. Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa, Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, Ben Okri’s The Famished Road, E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India, Conrad’s An Outcast to the Islands, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea and Audrey Menhan’s The Prevalence of Witches, provide various routes into this complex and politically sensitive terrain. This rich literature provides an opportunity to consider material outside the mainstream of International Relations. Chapter Five, Border Flows: Crossing the State Line and Getting Caught This chapter offers an alternative approach to studying political issues. Picking up issues such as asylum, refuge, escapism and imprisonment, the material again rescues the heart of International Relations from its overly mechanistic confinement of treaty deliberations and international law, to acknowledge the human content of the subject. The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux; Bruce Chatwin The Songlines; The Beach by Alex Garland; Manuel Puig’s

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Kiss of a Spider Woman and Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being demonstrates the human struggle for survival and well-being. The extremities of human behaviour are introduced in the context of the fragility of human rights, which are repeatedly demolished by human wrongs. Chapter Six The Politics of Unreasonable International Relations: Coded Whispers in the Corridors of Chaos presents an account of the mystifying links that prevail in the active field of international relations. Graeme Greene’s novel The Comedians, set in Haiti gives insight into the operation and organisation of a repressive regime. Greene’s book allows an opportunity to explore the rationale behind political alliances and elites, which is commonly complicated by irrational actions. John Steinbeck’s The Short Reign of Pippin IV, provides an excellent satire on the political process, which is imbued with accidents, mistakes and ignorance. The book precedes the uncomfortable realities of political life providing commentators such as Michael Moore with ample reference points with which to expose the absurdities, weaknesses and folly of professional politicians. The politics of unreason are indelibly linked to an alternative view in opposition to the omnipresent social and political conventions that structure international relations. Dennis Gurrerir and Joan Richards State of Emergency is referred to in directing the reader to become actively involved in the development of an emerging nation and the decisions that are made. The intention of this chapter is to reveal the subtle dynamics of the literary struggle, all the way back to Pushkin. Chapter Seven Listening to Voices: Whispers from the Global Home draws on a range of influential literature flowing from the Non-West. Madrus’s The Book of The Thousand Nights and One Night is introduced to return to the original stories that underpin the Arabian Nights and other classics. This four volume work allows broad insight into one of the world’s great civilisations. The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat is included to reveal the stunning originality which evolved from Persia. Satyajit Ray, Stories, provides a vehicle to explore the treatment of animals in the world and their place in international affairs. Whilst a full survey of world literature is regrettably beyond the scope of this book, key creative works will be

Introduction xxvii

included to demonstrate the value of ‘whispers’ in understanding international relations. Chapter Eight City-States: Words and Weapons in Urban Myths, relates political economy to world politics. Michael Moorcock’s incisive book, Gloriana allows a reflection on the fundamentally damaging struggle between virtue and vice that operates in City States politics, so-called “dirty tricks”. The subtle sneaky alliances that are made in the international corridors of power are examined to recognise the importance of noting double-talk. This is particularly notable in the context of monitoring the powers and interests of States, an arena muddled with the political fantasies of leaders and the wider aspirations for acknowledgement in the anarchic system of states. Martin Amis’s novel Money encourages reflection on the impact on the wider society of the global spread of commercialism, materialism and communications, which is evident in major cities. The work provides a link to the economic drivers of globalization, led primarily by the corporate world, a force unremittingly penetrating global markets through sales and procurement. Chapter 9 Out of This World: Imperfect Future(s), Distorted Pasts. The material in this chapter casts a beam into the world of science fiction to imagine a future landscape of international relations, territories riddled by timeless concerns. H.G. Wells The Shape of Things to Come and Robert Heinmain’s Stranger in a Strange Land begins a journey to make strange the tenets of international relations. William Morris’ News From Nowhere encourages the reader to dream, conscious, however, of nightmares such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Huxley’s Brave New World. References will be made to e-conflict, geo-space hostilities and the plethora of environmental and social risks that are increasingly being studied by practitioners of International Relations. Chapter 10 The Final Dance: The Beginnings of Stories. The final chapter will pull together the various themes covered in the book to respond to the central questions raised in the introduction. The closing pages will assess related questions that impact on the study of International Relations. Is the field of International Relations trapped by a desire to be viewed as a common-sense science damaging its development in the twenty first century or will it achieve release from its academic

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straightjacket to fully recognise the wider consequences of globalization and the democratisation of power? Will the gap between academic research and diplomatic practise be narrowed? Is an understanding of world politics best served by approaching its study from all angles? It is suggested that the insight that can be discovered through the study of creative fields, such as literary fiction, encourages a view that supports the importance of recognising culture not as an afterthought in International Relations, a bolt-on to appease the critical voices on the margins of the discipline, but as a central tenet of analysis in global affairs. The pages that follow will consider this proposition.

Notes 1

This book uses stories to make sense of the influence of cultural diplomacy in international relations. It suggests fiction can be a valuable source of insight to complex problems. Cornwell writing an erudite piece in The Independent on the forces appearing to erode power from the United States suggests that the certainties found in Pax-Americana, and previously Pax-Britainica and Pax Romana, whilst potentially resented, supported diplomacy and order. International policy in the twenty-first century remains centred on national interests, interests primarily shaped, however, by Washington D.C, New Delhi, Beijing, Moscow and London, and a range of related influences. 3 Ferguson (2006) pp. xxxix-xl. 4 I am indebted to Dr Chris Farrands for reading an early proposal for this piece and sharpening the questions pivotal to the study. Thanks must also go to Michael Jardine for helping me set an achievable course with comments on early notes of the book. 5 This distinction is made by Hollis and Smith in their seminal book, International Relations Then and Now. 6 Bennett et al, (2005) define a narrative as a story, told by a narrator about events which may be factual, fictional, or mythical. 7 Williams (1976) p. 135. 8 Kundera (2005 [1968] pp. 4-5. 9 Paterson (1973), p. xi. 10 See David Lodge’s book, The Art of Fiction, for an overall look at the novelist’s tool-kit, from an anglo-American point of view. 11 Hartley (1967), pp. 16-17. 12 Gramsci covers this point beautifully in the book Selections from Prison Notebooks, p. 9. 13 Botton (2002) pp. 189-190. 14 Meyer (2005) p. 62. 15 The literature in International Relations is particularly sophisticated. For example, in the area of realism, Jame Der Derian in the edited book International Theory: Critical Investigations, revealed the rich strands of thought disturbing embedded perceptions. Millennium: Journal of International Studies and the Journal International Organization 2

Introduction xxix

contain numerous articles that challenge and recast the positivist heritage. Despite pressure, the disciple remains locked in a masculine mind set that separates, castigates and ignores material that might provide insight to the less than straight-forward relations between states. 16 Brown (2005) p. 15. 17 This superb book is a must for all students of international relations seeking to get a grip on the theoretical terrain of the discipline, keeping in mind the context of moving targets. 18 Andrew Linklater, Stephan Chan, James Der Derian, Richard Ashley and Rob Walker being recognised troubadours in offering fresh reflections on an often stale intellectual meal. 19 See Racioppi and Trenonte (2003) for an excellent insight into the pedagogical references points in teaching literature and international politics. 20 Literature in a global sense encapsulates more than the production of a western and modern world. It has a global meaning that is communicated in public or shared in a private space, a natural condition where every human being generates, and is part of, a story and stories. 21 Kundera, (2007), pp. 29-30. 22 Historically, stories and diplomacy interconnect through the negotiations that occur between cultures. Berridge notes in his introduction to Diplomacy that early diplomatic relations were reliant on the ‘dependence of communications on messengers and merchant caravans, diplomatic immunity on ordinary codes of hospitality, and treaty observance on terror of the gods in whose presence they were confirmed’. 23 Bettelheim pp. 3-4. 24 Major (1999) pp. 10-11. 25 For a sublime piece on the use of creative manipulation see Trotsky’s, Art and Revolution: Writings on Literature, Politics and Culture. 26 In Cultural Politics and International Relations, the book mapped the importance of indigenous Soviet rock lyrics, which were instrumental in undermining the Soviet reality. 27 See The Novel and the Globalization of Culture by Michael Valdez Moses, which usefully recognises the impact of the novel on a global culture. 28 Hyde (2006 [1979]) pp. xiv-xv. 29 Kaufman, G. (1996) ‘Back Yard Battles’, p. 30. 30 Interestingly, ‘film readings’ as an area of study appeared in Millennium: Journal of International Relations in 2005. 31 Huxley (1962) pp. 6-7. 32 See Nigel Warburton’s The Art Question, and the conditional nature of creativity. 33 Nana Adom, (2006) email communication 31 August 2006. 34 Eco (2006) p. 15. 35 Watt (2000) p. 27. 36 Hudson (1979 [1913]), p. 10. 37 Initial research in a thematic issue-driven sense was undertaken with a review of London Review of Books, http://www.lrb.co.uk/ and The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/.

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Chapter 1

Utopia and its Discontents: Power and Morality Introduction The material in this chapter is concerned with the nature of politics. Specifically, the passages below reflect on struggle between coercion and freedom. Drawing on a range of texts such as William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Aldous Huxley’s Island, the book seeks to consider the efforts to construct a perfect society, and the obstacles that frustrate the acquisition of it. This task is undertaken to illustrate the links between aspirations and consequences in international relations, a cycle seemingly without end. In assessing the various creative influences that interpret the rise and fall of power in empires, nations and states, it is suggested that literature provides a valuable reference point. In seeking to make sense of the world of international relations, the sharing of oral and written stories reflects national and global concerns (small and large contexts), a hybrid narrative that reveals clues to the initial steps taken in the formation of civilisation and the concentration camp. In linking literature and grand designs, the forces that create and destroy various civilisations become apparent, unlocking International Relations.

Window to the Past, Door to the Future Utopia and dystopia emerge from the atmosphere of optimism and strife, crafted by a solitary hand or a collective cast of ideas that spread or fall silent from rejection. Humerto Ak’abal’s sublime poem Paradise, originally written in Mayan, captures the nature of paradise

2 Literature and International Relations

and its subsequent divisions orchestrated through the introduction of power and its need to acquire exclusive rights.1 The piece demonstrates the fragility of utopia and the creative efforts mobilised in reaction to the denial of its potential. History provides the benchmarks for various social projects that arise suddenly or evolve from laborious struggles. The blueprints for Utopia are frequently soiled in conception. Every so often some visionary invents a new Utopia: Plato, Sir Thomas More, H.G. Wells. And always the idea is that the heroic image shall last, as Hitler said, for a thousand years, But the heroic images always look like the crude, dead ancestral faces of the statues on Easter Island – why, they even look like Mussolini!2

Utopia need not be an unpleasant slap. It can evolve with good intentions.3 For example, experiences that produced the Amish and Mennonite communities in Northern Indiana are related to the strife found in the protestant reformation and the persecution that followed. In a modern sense both communities were formulated on the principle that violence and warfare are abhorrent, following strictly the guidance set out in the bible to “love thy neighbour”. Pamela Wallace’s Oscar-winning screenplay for the film Witness, based on the settlement at Lancaster County, Pennsylvania captured the tensions operating in a secular society and a community committed to ensuring maximum effort in ensuring commitment to the family, forgiveness and spiritual duty. Witness introduced a wider audience to the principles of the Amish community, which correspondingly led to the ‘opening-up’ of the everyday activities to visitors through international student exchanges and local dialogue with non-Amish communities. Utopia and its discontents can be discerned in various settings. Value judgements in assessing the criteria for the heaven and hell need to be approached sensitively. H.G. Wells, in the short story, The County of the Blind uses two mutually incompatible systems to make explicit the clash of values and perceptions, a conflict intent on eradicating difference to ensure compliance to the dominant social norm. In the book, a mountain climber encounters a civilisation where all the citizens are blind. Recognising that the stranger uses sight and not the other senses that have been used to forge a natural

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3

existence, he is forcedly encouraged to remove his eyes to become part of the community. Saloth Sar, better known as Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge and the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia), attempted to introduce a utopian communist society in the South East Asian country located between Thailand and Vietnam. Applying radical agricultural reform that included policies to pursue and eradicate intellectuals, re-education programmes in rigid communal schools and the evacuation of the cities to stem a potential bourgeois infection produced a society driven mad by terror. Interestingly, it is easily forgotten how the Western powers were not opposed to supporting the regime, largely because of the anti-Soviet stance and concerns regarding the wider Vietnamese influence in Indochina. Bruce Robinson’s screenplay for The Killing Fields, produced by David Putnam, raised the awareness of a Western audience of the consequences of the genocide that occurred in Cambodia. In a contemporary setting, Cambodia has released its energies in a social and economic sense, achieving stability and solid growth. Reactions to the slide to chaos produce an inconsistent response from the international community, shaped by contending interests.4 Decision-making at the international level takes account of political manoeuvring and the promotion of specific interests, which benefit the dominant powers. This produces difficulties. The failure of international diplomacy to resolve the reaction by Israel to the kidnapping of its solders and aggression by Hezbollah demonstrates the double standards that undermine the legitimacy of the international community as a regime seeking to maintain order and stability between states. It is conceded, however, that the issue of intervention is not straightforward. On the one hand, the UN charter states that sovereign rights should be respected with territory unimpeded by foreign intervention. On the other hand, there is an increasing belief that on the basis of an ill-defined moral obligation, military intervention is required to curtail genocide and humanitarian catastrophes. The commitment to initiate an action invariably includes an objective to reintroduce democracy and well-being,5 a calculation that is not separate from an ideology favourable to the

4 Literature and International Relations

export of globalization, which is contentious in respect to the nature of the democracy. Utopia, and less erudite versions of it, is multifaceted and potentially deceptive. In the book The Beach, by Alex Garland, the central character lured by an interest in Vietnam War movies, seeks a mythical and magical beach hidden in the lush surroundings of Thai territory. Every year backpackers, keen to experience the hedonistic promise of paradise, fall victim to the traps of a presumed utopia, and are kidnapped or harmed by gangs involved in the illegal trade of narcotics, weapons, oil or other valuable commodities. Correspondingly, this requires the intervention of Embassies usually using subtle measures of diplomacy or the less conventional methods used by mercenaries to rescue the abducted and detained. The exotic, the unreal and the mysterious attracts travellers from all over the world. It is a pilgrimage to a place, a location imbued with the fiction of possibilities. Utopia is a noun depicting an imagined perfect place or state of things; it may also be a mask for sinister activities. Utopia – non-place and good-place – dates back to Thomas More’s 1516 essay, penned in the first flush of European oceanic ‘discovery’ and early cartography, which encouraged voyages and travels in search of new lands and experiences. In a contemporary setting, Japanese artist Satomi Matoba uses digital programming to construct a utopia that is part memory part cartographic imagination6 - influences derived from a similar mix of Pagan references, classical images and insight from legends, poems and ethnic stories. In seeking to explore the uneven relationship between power and morality, the two works highlighted in this chapter have been selected to read the dominant themes in International Relations. The nasty, brutish and short world of political life that continues to materialise in various forms with frequent and explosive terror is complemented by cooperative alliances, collaborative relations and integrated organisations, which offer an alternative sketch to adversarial relations, however temporal and contentious in an international setting.

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5

All Roads lead to Rome: Empire and its Discontents Before opening up the pieces by Shakespeare and Huxley, it is worthwhile reflecting briefly on the long-past and its influence on power and morality. This is a vast undertaking in itself, but one that can be narrowed by selecting key points that are relevant to this investigation. Olson and Groom in International Relations Then and Now, remark in their influential book that ‘in the Biblical tradition, the Old Testament represents a literature rich in political insight, all the way from the reference in Genesis to “their lands each with its own language, by the families, in their nations,” to the words in the oracle in Malachi summoning “all the nations against Jerusalem in battle…’7 Whilst the bible is rarely noted on the reading list of scholars of International Relations, it is, nonetheless, a phenomenally influential story that continues to impact on global issues. Particularly, the events that were shaped by the tensions between Rome and the appearance of a radical philosopher, is particularly relevant. The divided loyalties stem from an inconclusive struggle between the Kingdoms in this world with the Kingdom for this world. This is a particular story specifically related to the development of Christianity, but it has relevance for wider beliefs.8 Laurie Magnus in the book, English Literature in its Foreign Relations 1300-1800, comments on the foreign sources of the bible. In comment relating to bible of the middle ages, the author probes: Where was the bible before it was written, before it was written in languages that could be understood? Passing over the Greek version by the Septuagint, or the seventy-two Hebrew scholars who were sent from Jerusalem to Alexandria in the third century B.C., we come down to the Latin Vulgate version chiefly effected by St Jerome and completed about A.D. 400.9

Whilst various cultural inputs flowed into the bible, its growth rested on the contributions that shaped the work and promoted its circulation. Further investigation on this issue is outside the scope of this book. Nonetheless, direction is taken from The Bible as Literature, which considers biblical writings through literary and historic analysis. The intention of this passage is to illustrate the fault-lines that appear between power and morality in international

6 Literature and International Relations

relations, and the use of literature from biblical sources is insightful in making sense of these events. Rome and the origins of institutionalised Christianity are indelibly linked: the tangles between intellectual leadership and civil authority being complicated by the rhythms of history. The emergence of Jesus Christ and the Christian religion during the occupation of Judea under the governorship of Pontius Pilate10 and the imperial authority of Augustus Tiberius11 generated legal complexities that continued with the Rome of the Popes, particularly in relation to the law and the arguments with the Emperor about who ruled what. Gibbon makes clear that ‘a candid but rational inquiry into the progress and establishment of Christianity may be considered as a very essential part of the history of the Roman Empire’.12 Rome was occupying force that crucified dissidents of various backgrounds that attempted to undermine the authority of the Empire. Its ruthless reaction to social obstructions arising from the occupation generated deep seated hostility to the Roman structure that impacted on all areas of social life. Tilbey in the popular book, Son of God, makes clear how rebels against Rome were dealt with. Crucifixion was a form of execution reserved for rebels, enemies of the state. Roman citizens were usually exempt. If they committed a criminal offence they would be beheaded, which at least was a quick death. Only for the most serious crimes of treason could a Roman citizen be crucified, but non-citizens ran a higher risk of ending up on a Roman cross. The very threat of it was a way of keeping subject peoples and slaves in their place.13

In an important passage from Jesus in the Gospels, which is relevant to the world of international relations, an important point relating directly to politics continues to vex commentaries and debates relating to political legitimacy. The concern is related to the line ‘Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s’. In the passage, worldly authorities are justified in collecting the taxes due to them. Spiritual health is the concern of the divine God. The line, however, resonates with ambiguity and it is important to consider it in the context in which it was made. The statement which was formulated in response to an entrapment by the enemies of Jesus is constructed with a specific aim. The Jewish nation had been occupied by the Roman Empire,

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radicals were repeatedly accused of encouraging insurgencies, mischief making, and undermining the authority of the Roman Empire, misdemeanours punishable by death. Therefore, the coded nature of the reply, explains the need for a degree of ambiguity. This is not an accident. It is a reference to political subversive action. In considering the line, it should be recalled that Mark suggests the interrogators were Pharisees and the Herodians, Luke later claims that they were spies acting on guidance from the chief priests. In response to his accusers, which necessities a position by Jesus on whether or not the Jews should honour taxes demanded by the Roman occupiers, Jesus asks one of the number to produce a Roman coin that would be legitimate in covering the debt. On receiving the coin, a metal probably minted in Spain, Jesus asks the name and inscription on the metal. In recognising Caesar’s authority or stamp on the coin, the translation being King Augustus Tiberius, son of the divine Augustus, Jesus responds with a reply that hints at the separation of power between the earthly and spiritual domains. Whilst numerous interpretations exist in reference to the remark by Jesus to his examiners, the key point concerns the separation of powers between the state and church, a divide between power and morality which is blurred by claims and interpretation. On the one hand, the earthly political concerns that are recognised as being the exclusive domain of Caesar do not include the wider notion of the political. On the other hand, morality and duty to the spiritual domain repeatedly clash in an engagement with the political organisation and the administrators of the occupation. In considering the line in its contemporary setting, Canon Wright in a lecture at Westminster Abbey in the Jubilee year reflected on on the matter in a talk entitled ‘God, The Church, The Crown and the State.’ Casting the state in its modern guise, an Enlightenment invention, free from religious influence, the Canon Theologian, referred to the idea of faith being pushed ‘upstairs’.14 The key thrust of the lecture revolved around the theme that the Kingdom of God is for the earth, this is the reason Jesus is killed for: the likelihood that political authority will be challenged by a competing institution if it is allowed to be formulated. The statement is repeated in John 18 and 19. Heaven’s Kingdom is advancing to earth, creating a political combustion that undermines the idea of a neat reading of the

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separation of powers. In justifying the need for a political structure however, which may not be democratic or necessarily just, the literature of the bible instructs that God institutionalises authorities to ensure order is maintained and anarchy limited (although the Christ as a philosopher approach that casts Christ as an anarchist, is a political twist that is not widely encouraged). Wright concludes his lecture with a warning that separating politics from morality creates a secular and modern political realm where harm is magnified in numerous settings producing far reaching negative consequences.

The Decline of Rome and the Rise of the Church Rome as a City has a unique history. The Roman Empire expanded over a period of eleven centuries, oscillating its influence rules and taxes over areas that covered Europe, western Asia and North Africa; globalization of the classical world. It continues to interest popular culture, references in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian to the contributions made by the Romans to humanity notwithstanding, and the BBC/HBO international collaboration series on Rome has been followed by frequent references in literature to this period. The rule of Caesar is central to the rise and fall of authority and the operation of the Empire. On the one hand, it was a secular power spreading its influence throughout Northern Europe to Africa. On the other hand, it became the faith orientated nerve centre of Christianity, dabbling later in the social and political events through the offices of the Vatican. Whitfield captures this brilliantly in the superbly illustrated book, Cities of the World, the transformation of the nucleus of the crumbling Empire from a debauched decline to a spiritual power holding influence over Kings and Princes. By a historical accident Christianity had been displaced from its homeland in Palestine and had taken root in Rome. The bishop of Rome became recognised, in the West at least, as head of the Christian Church. The power and authority of the city shifted from the temporal to the spiritual realm, and the idea of Rome came to dominate the Christian world as it had once dominated the pagan classical world.15

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In drawing on the literature as vehicle to explore pre-Christian and early Christian history in relation to power and morality, the impressive work of the author Robert Graves, captures expansively the period of transition from the Roman Empire to the Christian hegemony, I, Claudius and Count Belisarius being particularly relevant in this context. It has been argued above that responsibility is a key component in the longevity of successful institutions; subsequent Caesars ignore this basic premise to their and Empire’s cost. The follies and crimes of Nero have been widely considered in classical and popular literature. Nero, and previously Caligula, hastened the decline of the Rome with its turn to incestuous debauchery, the destructive culture of fear, and the miss-management in all aspects of power. A hint of the debauchery was captured in the film Caligula, which caused wide controversy on its release. Nero continued the work of the monster, slaughtering family members, including his mother Aprippina and his wife Octavia. He implemented a wider programme of violence that led to the death of his tutor Seneca, and a large number of senators. Funds were seized recklessly to meet the debts from illconsidered ventures, power, greed and stupidity fuelled by paranoia combusted the benefits of the Empire to destabilize the region and the centre. In a contemporary setting, the autocratic Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s first Prime Minister since independence in 1980, whilst not enjoying the scope of influence of Caesar has initiated actions with a familiar menace. Nero’s murderous mayhem accelerated the need for retribution. Tacitus in the The Madness of Nero, sketches the fear and psychotic actions that destabilise the Empire. Churchill in a selective volume on the history of English speaking peoples focuses on the combination of external pressures that battered the parameters of the Roman Empire and led to its collapse. The Roman world, like an aged man, wished to dwell in peace and tranquillity and to enjoy philosophic detachment and the good gifts which life has to bestow upon the more fortunate classes. But new ideas disturbed the internal conservatism, and outside the carefully guarded frontiers vast masses of hungry, savage men surged and schemed.16

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Throughout the empire revolt and incursions signalled the vengeful tide that would sweep through the Empire and leave its columns in ruins. Suetonius records that during the reign of Nero numerous abuses against various groups. ‘Punishments were also inflicted on the Christians, a sect professing a new and mischievous religious belief’.17 J.P. Sullivan in the book, Literature and Politics in the Age of Nero, demonstrates how the methods and techniques of parody, flattery and innuendo were used to further careers. Similarly, in a totalitarian atmosphere where opposition is unwise, literature provided a vehicle for criticism, which gradually became attacked for its subversive power.18 Nero, it was noted earlier, professed to be indifferent to lampoons and verbal or written attacks on himself. There were perhaps two minor instances of legal proceedings taken against notorious public insults, but it was not until 62, when Nero was tiring of his conciliatory attitude to the senate, that he allowed the revival of lex maiestatis, abolished by Claudius in 51, for defamation of the emperor.19

The compulsion of Nero to overwhelm the state with his damaging erratic behaviour infected the Empire with a terminal virus that would wreak havoc on its authority and institutions. Whilst the glory of Rome ebbed in fire and treachery, its borders became less impregnable, and within its heart, the beat of expansion and dominance grew rapidly silent, the demise of the body politic reverberating far beyond the seven hills. The descent and dearth of moral poverty, jealous leadership and weak popular legitimacy created instability and set the Empire Pax Romana as an Empire on a course that would consign its excesses to the embers of history. As mentioned previously, it is ironic that the loss of political authority in Rome is balanced by the ascendancy of the Christian faith and its ability to occupy the vacuum. Despite repression and intimidation, the rise of the Church in Rome as an institution with influence throughout Europe, was a dramatic achievement. Nevertheless, it was a model not without its share of coded criticism and dissent. In 1377, when the Papacy returned from Avignon accompanied by its huge retinue of cardinals, courtiers, scholars, and artists, the glory of ancient Rome

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was slowly reborn. Spacious palaces were built amid the decaying ruins, churches rose in the ancient baths, gardens were laid out around the columns of Palatine, and wide avenues swept over crumbling temples and arches.20

It is in this revitalised sense that Rome continues to be centre of the Catholic faith. On this basis, the Catholic Church is important to international relations. The Vatican is the world’s smallest independent state, the institution of the Papacy shaping policy internationally through it influence on the modern sense of its followers.21 In a wider context, its views on moral affairs influence policies in secular institutions. Similarly, though the mechanisations of international affairs,22 political influence at the international level is recognised in the Vatican having a seat on the United Nations. In the developing world, the Catholic Church is a controversial institution as regards HIV/AIDS and related debates to contraception and family planning. It is ironic that the Church provides extensive nursing skills in a variety of countries to fill the general absence of substantive patient care. In its relations with specific states, the Vatican continues a strained foreign policy. For example the difficulties with China, which go back to the early 1950s when Roman Catholic emissaries were forced out of China following the dictates of Mao Zedong. The mask of the Communist Party in China and the Vatican frequently engage in historical and contemporary tussles over the influence of minds divided by belief and non-belief in the region.23 In cultural matters, the papacy can influence and trigger opposition. In a presentation made at the Regensburg University, Pope Benedict XVI made a speech that generated condemnation throughout the Islamic world. Reflecting on the historical and philosophical differences between Islam and Christianity, and the relationship between violence and faith, the Pontiff referred to Emperor Manual II Paleologos of the Byzantine Empire, the Orthodox Christian Empire, its capital formally being in the Turkish city of Istanbul, making reference to the relationship between violence and faith.24 In the atmosphere of the ‘war on terror’ the speech was interpreted to be a divisive impediment, ignoring the sensitivities that accompany specific readings of history.25

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Political concerns are not absent in the bible or the institution of the Vatican. On the contrary, God’s affairs have not been separated off ‘up there’, bordered in an ‘above skies’ realm. In a poetic vein, The Lord is a man of war: the Lord is his name announced in the Book of Exodus sets out in clear terms the Commander-in-Chief of the good fight. In imposing the spectre of limited power on earth the theme from The Second Book of Samual retorts How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!, a reality check that reverberates through the ages. In the fifteenth century, the inseparability of religious and political concerns are recorded in Carlo Crivelli’s 1486 The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius, a painting hanging in the National Gallery. The painting celebrates the granting of limited selfgovernment to the citizens, under the general control of their Bishop, by the Franciscan Pope Sixtus IV in 1482. It is one image of many, depicting the inter-relatedness of religion and politics, found in the exhibits cluttering numerous museums. The Vatican is not averse to dabbling in the world of Caesars. The manoeuvring found in the 1931 papal encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno, a document through which Pius XI sought to maintain Church authority against State encroachment, defining appropriate roles for each being one of various examples.26 The struggles between morality and power established by the Papal authority found expression through the various religious wars that fragmented religion and empire setting off hegemonic struggles, subversive programs and regional meddling in the affairs of state and social control. The Spanish Inquisition, unfolded in 1478. It was initially directed at Jewish Converts to Christianity, who were punished for the reversion. Correspondingly, the process of integration had benefits to the state, which used the atmosphere of terror to manipulate the mechanism of social control and obedience. It was in revolution in printing, which had been first used by the Chinese using backed-clay letter fonts, that was introduced in Europe using a modified linen press. The man who is credited with inventing the process was Johannes Gansfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg. His new press destroyed the oral society. Printing was to bring about the most radical alteration ever made in Western

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intellectual history, and its effects were to be felt in every area of human activity.27

Pérez recounts the impact made by the printing press in the midsixteenth century in relation to the inquisition and the challenge it posed to the hegemony of the Catholic Chruch. The printing press made it possible to diffuse works which, until then, had been accessible to only a limited elite. Many books – not only recreational literature, but also bibles and treatises on spirituality – were now beginning to appear in the vernacular…this success alarmed the religious authorities.28

In a dramatic symbolic and practical demonstration of power on a national scale, Pope Gregory XIII in 1580 commissioned forty map frescos of Italy and its regions. The vision was to asset his dominion over the Papal States and, Christianity’s spiritual leader, over the rest of Italy. In a beautifully illustrated book, The Gallery of Maps in the Vatican, Lucio Gambi makes the point: The Gallery can be seen as an expression of the self-celebration of power. But its creation also meant the perfecting of an instrument necessary for the wielding of that power. For without knowledge it is not possible to act, govern, or plan, as is clearly stated in the inscription on the plaque placed by Gregory XIII above the north door (in praise of the benefits deriving “ex rerum et locorum cognitione”).29

The Gallery of the Maps feeds into the atmosphere that prevailed in response to the schism in the Church that had been introduced by Luther and the subsequent protestant shift to establish a split from the Catholic Church. Whilst the attempt by the Vatican to stem the slide was temporarily successful, the erosion of its authority in earthly matters continued to wane, certainly in the Chancelleries and the corridors of political power. The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) in which protestant opposition to the absence of religious toleration fuelled a conflict embracing various political and social struggles are noted in numerous subject textbooks in world politics and international relations. The treaty that concluded the hostilities, The Peace of Westphalia is a crucial date in the discipline of International Relations. It effectively legitimated the authority of Princes to set the

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religion of their countries, which [the state] would organise and control its internal affairs independent of external interference.30 The key element noted by Martin Wight in the book Power Politics, being ‘It was not until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, or more truly till the death of Cromwell in 1658, that religious passions went out of international politics’,31 but not completely of course. The Treaty in terms of sovereignty has been eroded in terms of recognising the realities of the global political disorder. Whilst the state continues to be recognised in terms of exercising sole authority in territorial issues and borders, and its recognition by other states, its unity in a general sense has been undermined through trade, communications, finance, economic integration, migrations, tourism and numerous other flows. Chris Pattern, writing in his biography makes clear the relevance of the treaty to International Relations in a world selectively responding to terrorism and humanitarian crisis’s when they occur. Mr Blair is right to argue, as other do, that the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 no longer provides an adequate basis for international law. That treaty, which brought an end to the Thirty Years War and inaugurated the modern European state system, also concluded that one state should only take up arms against another and intervene in its affairs if it were to be attacked by that state. That is plainly no longer sufficient as a central assumption in international law.32

It is not just Caesar who is disturbed. In a contemporary setting, Dante’s The Decent into Hell is ingrained in the Catholic psyche. The enemy is secularism. Pope John Paul’s erudite writing in Memory and Identity, presents an insight into this struggle. Inhabitants of modern societies take day to day living for granted. For some, consumerism and materialism have delivered incredible comforts. The downside of the well-being accrued from the uncontested ascendancy of a capitalist utopia, is the environmental, exploitative and stressful elements, each of which present obstacles to the sustainability of the economic model. Consumers may have abandoned faith for the exuberance of the shopping mall. The election of Pope Benedict XVI in preference to a Cardinal from Latin America, Asia or Africa, was taken in response to the view that in a period of rapid global change, stability is the best strategy to ensure stability in a world made uncertain by the

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forces of globalization, a world in turmoil through its relations with the electronic empire.

Julius Caesar: The Will to Power To place Caesar in an historical context, Julius Caesar was born July 12, 102 B.C. Without doubt an impressive figure who shaped and widened the borders of the Roman Empire with valiant displays in the military field. Whilst tutored in political manoeuvring in Rome, and creative in the field of literature, it is in the spirit of authority that his influential ghost prevails. Longmate in the book Defending the Island neatly summarises the advantages held by Caesar in the formative stages of his political life. every Roma citizen could in theory reach high office but Julius Caesar started a long way up the ladder, being born in Rome itself…into a patrician, i.e. noble family, nephew of the ten consul, the highest office in the state.33

Whilst he may not have been keen in a public sense to adopt the title of King, recognising the sensitivity of the Roman hierarchy in not being overly supportive of an all powerful monarch, Caesar moulded a political and administrative structure that would survive well beyond his death. Buchan marks the achievement in grand terms Caesar ‘performed the greatest constructive task ever achieved by human hands. He drew the habitable earth into an empire which lasted for five centuries, and he laid the foundations of a fabric of law and government which is still standing after two thousand years’.34 Absolute power invariably requires a senate, a politburo or chamber to mediate its hold over the masses, a mask to soften the desire and aims of the key figures involved in the political arena. Colleen McCullough’s Caesar, volume five in the Masters of Rome series, constructs through the fabric of reproduced testimonies the character and personality of Caesar, the emperor casting a spell over all who meet him.35 Solid historical sources such as John Buchan’s work on Caesar, substantiates the view of the man as a figure who encouraged wide allegiance, a claim notable in the foreign campaigns where his exploits were remarkable.

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Caesar’s military successes in Spain, conquests in Gaul and inroads into Africa with the dramatic gains at Thapsus, added to his wider sovereignty over an ever expanding Rome. It is evident that the series of victories were founded on the general’s ability to effectively weld the military virtue within that transpired into strong leadership and rising excellence in the field of combat, an almost impregnable force.36 Michael Grant, in the book The Army of the Caesars, makes clear the skill of Caesar in professionalizing the fighting force through improving pay, rations, and material supplies (it is rare to find military personnel without good uniforms in Dictatorships). Clausewitz sets out in On War, the ability of great leaders to realise the moral power of the army with reference to the ‘Macedonians under Alexander, the Roman legions under Caesar…and the French under Bonaparte’.37 Caesar solidified his authority in military relations to achieve his aims. ‘Caesar addressed his soldiers with sovereign assurance. He never curried favour with them; the more reliant he was on them, the less he let them see it’.38 Ferrill makes the point, however, that professional armies have weaknesses. In recognising how a mission, which was initially widely supported, loses momentum when unforeseen obstacles create complexities in fulfilling objectives, ‘the principle of maintaining a mission is easier to state then to apply in the field, and Julius Caesar was more than once exasperated by one of the most highly trained and disciplined forces in military history when his legions ignored mission and aim’.39 Caesar’s Civil War, the unfinished account of the final struggles that would immortalise the soldier and the student provides a clear link between the sword and the pen. It is perhaps disturbing that Caesar repeatedly escapes death in the field to be slain at the foot of Pompay’s statue, wounds gaping from his body from successive daggers, by comrades: the first blow struck by Casca in the Senate House. The weakening of Caesar’s hand was tied up in the struggle between the ruling class and the dictator. In securing Rome, Caesar had made enemies who feared that his desire to invest authority in his military commanders, in particular Gaius Oppius and Lucius Balbus, who would wrestle influence permanently from the senators and high officials, would lead to absolute power. Two major

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painting’s, Vincenzo Camuccini’s The Ides of March and Laurent Pecheux’s The Assassination of Julius Caesar capture the attack by his enemies. Treachery resulted with the actions encouraged by Marcus Brutus, and Cassius. With the death of Caesar they realised that power was far from an amenable tool. The furore that accompanied the assassination led to civil war. The reactionary forces were quashed at the battle of Philippi in Macedonia (42 BC), a conflict resulting in the spitting of the army between Anthony and Octavian. The former captured the East and the mysterious Cleopatra. In a later conflict, the latter defeated Anthony and the queen of the independent Egypt, a victory that allowed the hegemonic role of the Roman Empire to be established. Caesar as a literary device is important in understanding the rise of great figures, and the considerable intrigue and jealousies that surround the eminently elevated in political affairs; the internal and external enemies constructing ceaseless plots that unchecked and saps the energy of ruling elite, eroding authority and revealing weaknesses that have been previously cloaked by the office of governing. The influence of Caesar on contemporary foreign policy is insightful in reflecting on contemporary global issues. On the one hand, the global empire of the United States is shifting from its traditional republican agenda to engage in the grand delusions of Empire in international affairs. On the other hand, the shift from state-state conflict to ethic tensions within states and the rise of nationalism have complicated the mechanisms of power that aim to sustain order. The Empire, the Nation and the State are grappling with the realities of a new world disorder. This is not necessarily the frame of cycles featured in the book by Paul Kennedy in The Rise and Fall of Great Powers. It is more psychological and cultural. Reaction to counter-strategies continue using familiar methods. Horowitz writing in a chapter on George Santayana makes clear the traditional response to the menu of challenges: civil conflicts, political opposition, and private squabbles are most effectively checked by foreign despots…if national security is a stumbling block to universal peace, it must be crushed wherever it rears its head. Caesar’s peace, an imperialist relationship among nations, must prevail if peace is to be preserved.40

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Caesar has cast a long shadow over military history. It is well known that Hitler admired Mussolini who in turn worshiped Caesar. Keegan suggests that Hitler was inspired by the Caesar through his Italian collaborator ‘whose use of legionary symbolism, including that of legionary banners and the “Roman” salute, he adopted for his own revolutionary group,’ an image mercilessly ridiculed in Charles Chaplin’s movie, The Great Dictator.41 The spirit of Caesar haunts numerous political systems. The complexities that have unfolded since 9/11 make straight-forward repression problematic. The internet, the influence of a global media and frequent international travel make social and political manipulation a counterproductive tool that encourages regime change. In an unsettled world, the dominant question that impacts on U.S. foreign policy is to what degree the Empire should respond to local squabbles outside its traditional borders. Literature implies that the answer rests in understanding small nations and the motivation and support for protagonists.

Shakespeare’s Caesar William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar is a work that maintains relevance in a world riddled by civil wars and social disruption. For example wide acclaim and recognition was directed to the dramatic interpretation of the play by the South African Yael Farber. In a reworking of the play the centre of action takes place in a fictionalised African state called Azania. The use of sound, radio broadcasts, television images and dance to capture the atmosphere of civil unrest, violence, AIDS, and wider political struggles, breathes fresh fire into the verse of intransient treachery. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar is rich in the paranoia of power. Shakespeare’s dread of civil war, which was a reoccurring backdrop in the production of his historical works, highlighted the Elizabethan transition from the rebellion and conflict to stability, destructive slides to local sectarian conflicts in places like Iraq, Rwanda and Bosnia being notable in the failure to maintain order. Shakespeare’s work on Caesar suggests that strong leadership is the best safeguard against civil unrest and conflict, the paradoxes being explicit in the

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unfolding scenes. History demonstrates assassination is a constant threat to leaders good and ill. The riots that followed King Gyanendra on the throne in Nepal reveals how the madness of kings can result in a quick escape in a helicopter. Other examples where strong leadership results in a positive change include countries such as Uganda, which was mired in civil war before the later nineteennineties, a chaotic environment gradually stabilised through the government of Yoweri Museveni. Elected in February 2006, in the first multi-party poll in twenty-five years, stability has been introduced in a country stained by political disruption. The order functions nonetheless amongst claims of intimidation with regards to opposition parties. It is clear that fractional groups have been largely immobilised. In a more explicit and problematic demonstration of social and political manipulation, the rule of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe has been concomitant with repression of the ‘opposition’, particularly in the south of the country where it did not have the support of the Matabele people. Seriously flawed elections, government controlled media, and violence against dissidents, seemingly undermines the goals of liberation. Shakespeare’s play is valuable in reflecting on the often tortuous and contentious process of replacing a leader, a situation that is not exclusive to unstable states. The poetic blade thrust by a previous British Prime Minister’s long-serving Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, in a resignation speech made in November 1990 in protest to Margaret Thatcher’s derogatory stance on Europe, was instrumental in dripping blood on the page and quickening the need for a successor. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar is much more than a play projecting struggles over leadership; it reveals the nature of jealousies present in political leadership and the subtle turns that lead to reproach, reaction and disloyalty. Shakespeare focuses on the weaknesses inherent in exercising sustained authority. Caesar’s successes throughout his tenure in political office encouraged the widening of his power base within Rome, a condition that was fully realised through his dictatorship. The repression of ideas, actions and counterclaims generate animosities and encourage programs that seek to unsettle and remove the cause of the restraint. Caesar is a

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man who is murdered not by a mass organising counter-force to tyranny, but a small group of committed individuals led by the widely respected Roman senator, Marcus Brutus. Brutus believing in the moral right of the action conspires to remove Caesar in the interests of safeguarding the republic. Grant sets out the problems in the immediate aftermath. The conspirators had achieved their purpose: but about what was to happen next they made the gravest possible miscalculation. For once the tyrant was slain, they believed, the old Republic would automatically be restored. Not only, however, did this restoration not take place, but there was never any question that it should or would.42

The emphasis of the play is on treachery. It is the nature of deceit, however unselfishly presented, that exposes the difficulties in securing a neat succession in numerous political systems. There is always unfinished business. It is difficult to authenticate whether or not the funeral speech in Shakespeare’s play was as dynamic as it was in reality. Nonetheless, it is clear that disturbances were widely recorded following the death of Caesar. Anthony takes hold temporarily, but intrigue envelops throughout the legions leading to claims and counterclaims of insurgency and treason. The act of murder leads to civil war and political double-talk. The slide to chaos is stemmed by the emergence of Octavious (Augustus) and the re-assertion of the spirit of Caesar, a spirit institutionalised in the political structure.

Utopia as a Destination In opposition to the world of power politics and its ceaseless struggles for advancement, domination and control, is the escape from the beast of power politics. This can take the guise of a mythical flight to an idealised somewhere, a lost Eden of pastoral idyllic or an imagined place where the balance between human desire and nature has been realised without the presence of conflict. In the novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton, utopia as Shangri-La is hidden in the eastern Himalayas, the snow-capped peak being the clue to its location, separate from the noise of the material world. The struggle

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within the community rests in sustaining the ideal and resisting links with outside agents. The mask of a non-violent gathering is perhaps most starkly noted in recent times by the idealism that accompanied the hippie generation and alternative peace movements. The 1960s, generation who initially ‘tuned in and dropped out’ embarked on a journey celebrating self-sufficiency and material emancipation. The realties of everyday life imploded the dream with many advocates turning to drugs and other forms of escapism to soften the elusiveness of utopia shaped by literature and influenced by Eastern culture. On the other hand, there is the influence of William Goodwin and his suggestion that the structure of utopia must include self-sufficiency, rationality, social integration, and the satisfaction of human wants and needs, in considered moderation of course. Elsewhere, utopia is described by Thomas More as ‘no place’, its realisation being an alternative to the existing political and social environment. Morris in Political Thought in England highlights a flaw in realising a version of Utopia outside a mediaeval mind-set. Its tone is familiar. Utopia is the commonwealth that men might well construct if they were guided by pure reason – without interference from unreasoning passions like cupidity but also without revelation. It is a state resting on Wisdom, Fortitude, Temperance, and Justice – the traditional Pagan virtues. Utopia is a republic and has abolished private property. It has a rigorously planned economy and even controls the size of families. It despises the military virtues. It has few and intelligible laws. It allows free thought in religion provided that man’s immortality and Gods existence are accepted. It sends it’s citizens to bed at eight o’clock.43

‘No place’ can be a bad place. The former architects of the totalitarian system that prevailed in the former Soviet Union gathered inspiration from the seeds of the The Republic, particularly in the form of its professional class, the Nomenclature. Lenin considered the theme in the pamphlet What is to be Done? The text proposes a role for a class of professional revolutionaries who propel society towards an ill-defined collective liberation. Donald S. Johnson writing in the book Phantom Islands of the Atlantic demonstrates the darker side of mythical locations, the isle

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of demons being noted initially on the world map by Andrea Bianco in 1436. Kurt Vonnegut, in the novel, Harrison Bergeron warns of the dangers inherent in an egalitarian desire that corrupts far more than it in repairs. In handicapping the most intellectual citizens through the use of a technology, a process that mutes individualism and excellence, all creativity is eradicated producing a society that functions without a desire to differentiate. Utopia can ultimately be a site of deception that requires fresh additions and interventions to propel the journey onward. The Twentieth Century provided numerous examples against the imposition of Utopia. It has been mentioned above that the revolutionary period in Russia that released a cultural revolution imbued initially with optimism. The struggle led to the Gulag, prisons captured in One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, a project corrupted by the self-interest that it sought to defeat (some are always more equal than others). In Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, the resounding theme of work cautions against the promotion of big ideas: big ideas that are shaped by force and lies. Zhivago’s quest for an elusive truth is played out in his actions in seeking the value of life and not the social mechanisms that force it to operate on party lines. Nonetheless, Doctor Zhivago is: clearly the work is heir to the nineteenth-century Russian novel, in particular to the religious and philosophical preoccupations of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. The effectual Yuri Zhivago perpetuates the type of superfluous man so familiar from Eugene Onegin, A Hero of Our Time, Rudin, and Oblomov. 44

Future conception of the world(s) of utopia will be considered throughout subsequent chapters. In concluding the theme of professional revolutionaries however, the ‘Samurai’, a professional class, again taking inspiration from the Greeks, demonstrates the longevity of Utopian blueprints. In the twenty-sixth century, Zamyatin presents a regimented totalitarian society of OneState, a system ruled by the all-powerful “Benefactor”. The ebb and flow of power and morality is resurrected by each generation, the extent of good and evil repeatedly being conditional on a range of social, political and economic conditions.

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Huxley’s Island: Garden in a Post-Post Modern World The novel Island by Aldous Huxley combines intellectual reflection on humanism and science, and a complex set of philosophical deliberations to offer an image of a ‘good utopia’, a utopia that exists. In the book, Will Farnaby is a refugee from the polluted world of mechanical life and consumer culture finds himself after a shipwreck on the island of Pala, where an ideal society has evolved along close lines to Mahayana Buddhism. The location of the island seems to be positioned somewhere between Sumatra and Sri Lanka. Farnaby is instructed on the good society, shifting through various stages of a pick and mix set of guidelines taken from Eastern and Western philosophy, towards a moral enlightenment. This journey is assisted by the use of moksha, a drug allegedly heightening perception. The central theme of the novel suggests that as long as the island remains detached from the outside world, utopia will be safe. Some inhabitants however, favour capitalism as an alternative to the rigor of self-control and material restraint. Pala is rich in oil and could be rapidly industrialised. This is pursued most starkly by the character Murugan who seeks to realise his ambitions by securing a commercial contract to sell the black gold. Murugan inherits the title of King and in a move with the ruler of Renga, Colonel Dipa, leader of the Pala’s industrial neighbour, sets out to westernize his country in a manner familiar with a number of despots littered throughout twentieth century history. In this context, Philip Thody in an incisive biography recognises the common thread in undermining peaceful societies when he writes ‘once again, moreover, it is a brutish young man who wreaks the paradise’.45 Capitalism comes crashing in like an unwelcome guest, smashing the ambitions for an alternative experience and social model. This can occur within countries as well as between them. For example, the experience of the aborigines in the centre of Australia in abandoning settlements and the ancient aboriginal way of life for the excesses of urban life has resulted in a destructive form of cultural terrorism. The references to oil insecurity are prophetic: international oil interests and local ambitions frequently clash in a number of hotspots around the world. The film Syraina highlighted the ambitions

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of the corporate sector in the international oil industry. The financial benefits linked to the oil industry in developing countries are perhaps best demonstrated by states such as Sudan. Oil money is flowing into Khartoum raising living standards and consumer activity. This wealth is obviously uneven within the City and the wider country. The oil, minerals and metals are there to be exploited. The exponential demand from the economic development in China demonstrates how this activity is occurring throughout the world. Mining corporations are harvesting resources in numerous exotic sites, Madagascar being one, to ensure long term shareholder value. Island contains strong content in identifying the serious issues related to the environment. Using influences from the East, Huxley captures the industrial nature of the West, and its keenness to separate out the environment from society. Firchow recognised this theme in the biography Aldous Huxley, Satirist and Novelist suggesting incisively: The great problems of population and ecology which Huxley tried to resolve in 1962 are only now beginning to dawn on us in all their enormous and horrible proportions…On the ecology level, children are educated to know and respect nature from the moment they enter school…In Pala, man has achieved the most difficult task of all, a balance between himself and nature.46

Duncan Campbell, writing in a piece for The Guardian Newspaper, reflects on forty years since the books publication suggesting ‘in the current climate, the novels warnings about religious fanaticism, the exercise of military power and the geopolitical importance of oil and the development of artificial insemination seem extraordinarily prophetic.’ Whilst the book has failed to materialise on film, snippets of its content that are central to power politics and political economy are repeatedly flashed in broadcasts on Al-jazira and CNN. In the stunning book of photographs included in Reuters’ book on The State of the World, one is struck by the absence of a functioning Island, the reflection of paradise residing outside the contours of the global map. Despite numerous problems associated with realising Utopia, optimism related to it should not be abandoned completely; the mechanical society needs its hopes and aspirations for alternatives. Cyril Connolly’s 1962 review in the Sunday Times highlights a fascinating point in the final pages of the book:

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The conclusion implies that, while the world is so wicked and wrong headed, such an isolated community of perfectionists in living is bound to be swamped, yet good will triumph in some other place or century.47

Cambodia perhaps provides a good example of this potential for positive change. Wrecked by the policies of Pol Pot, the country has steadily been reinvigorated through enterprise and trade. A member of ASEAN, Cambodia continues to recover from its years of strife to achieve the stability that allows its citizens to recover from the memory of trauma. It is notable that the twentieth century is littered with failed social and political designs. The dramatic events that have introduced global turbulence in the twenty-first frequently results in references in a nostalgic manner to flawed ideologies and alternative social models. Utopia should be an important area of study in international relations, keeping in mind the concluding pages of Huxley’s book that human nature is fallible, but not necessarily Hobbesian in a complete sense. May alludes to the key point in his biography on Aldous Huxley: Island begins and ends with the word, ‘Attention’, uttered by mynah birds…the first mynah bird arouses Will Farnaby from his sleep of exhaustion; the last one suggests amongst other things that Will has awoken from his sleep of unenlightenment. In the beginning Will is cynical and frightened (as he has been all his life), but at the end, despite the shooting of Dr Robert MacPhail, he is no longer so. He is an alien intruder to start with, a yahoo come among houyhnhnms, and he remains in treacherous touch with the yahoo world outside Pala.48

Murray, in an incisive work on Huxley, captured the essence of Huxley’s message, a warning to pay attention, to be aware. It is an awareness that is central to the workings of diplomacy. And the mynah birds of Pala, who repeat endlessly the Buddh’s call to awareness (in contrast to the mind-numbing advertising jingles of Brave New World) have the very last word indeed: ‘Attention.’ This was Huxley’s ‘message’ to the modern world: be aware.49

The pessimism in the literature in relation to utopia is notable in its future orientation or imagined corruption, which festers in its

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perceived insecurity. In various writings Antonio Gramsci50 and Noem Chomsky51 have cautioned against indifference and apathy: literature encourages the reader to become aware of the small steps taken by large people.

Conclusion The material above has sketched an annotated link between power and morality from a western point of view. In subsequent chapters, non-Western positions will be considered to ensure a narrow view of the impact of world literature on international relations is avoided. In a broad sense, literature reports on physical, moral, personal, ethical, local, national and international relations through narratives emerging from a diversity of voices. Creative guides lead readers through the establishment of worlds and the destruction of them.52 Through characters, plots and places, transitory forces reveal situations fleeting and fixed, that expose complexities for analysis. This theme reappears throughout this book to shed light on actions relevant to international relations and the parameters in which they take place. The chapters that follow assess the insight that emerges from reflections on stories that are each part of an on-going global mosaic of world literature, a resource that is valuable to the facts of the matter in international relations.

Notes 1

For a translation of Paradise by the Guatamalam poet Humerto Ak’Abal , see Index on Censorship, p.152. 2 Bronowski (1976) p. 425. 3 This can be discerned in a contemporary sense in the motives shaping a council of global ‘Elders’ in the form of Peter Gabriel, Muhammad Yunus, Mary Robinson, Kofi Annan, Graca Machel, Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Li Zhaoxing, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Sir Richard Branson, seeking to engage with the problems destabilizing the global village. 4 Who is and are the International Community? A community of states in the international arena or a collection of Western states, wherever the ‘West’ is, seeking to promote particular interests?

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5

27

What kind of democracy, democracy found in Britain and the United States or Singapore and Russia? 6 Barber (2005) p. 346 7 Olson and Groom (1991), p. 4. 8 Appiah and Gates (1996) p.viii make an important point in the introduction to a book on global culture. In reference to Christianity and the holy book, the authors point out that ‘in the great civilisations of Asia, in India and China and Japan, there are many Muslims, some Christians, a few Jews. But for the vast majority of Asians – for Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains, Confucians, Taoists, and Shintoists – the incarnation of Christ has no religious significance: it is someone else’s story. 9 Magnus (1927) p. 98. 10 The novel, The Master and Margarita, uses a story within a story to set Pilate ‘free’ from the immortal presence of cowardice. 11 It is possible that Tiberius had retired to Capri at this point, and Sejanus was in virtual charge of the Empire before being executed for treason. 12 Gibbon, pp. 285-287. 13 Tilby (2001) pp. 118-119. 14 For a book that captures the institutionalisation of enlightenment ideas in the America see, Henry Steele Commager’s The Empire of Reason, which examines the how the origins of the Enlightenment were introduced in a tangible manner. 15 Whitfield (2005) p. 161. 16 Churchill (1956) p. 35. 17 Suetonius (1957) p. 221. 18 In the book, Cultural Politics and International Relations, I argued similar creative forces where at work in underpinning and destabilising the former Soviet Union and the apartheid regime in South Africa. 19 Sullivan (1985) p. 154. 20 Plumb (1961) p. 245. 21 See Keohane and Nye edited volume, Transnational Relations and World Politics, in which the author’s include reflections on the Roman Catholic Church. 22 Catholic Institute for International Relations, http://www.ciir.org/ 23 See Ruether’s article in Holy Land Studies for a full analysis of the speech at the University of Regensberg. 24 Follow this link to see how cartoons on al-jazeera take a negative view on Pope John Paul II successor: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B41CE0D8-EB00-4EF9-8985-7F7BFC2CC8FC.htm 25 A full reading of the transcript can be found at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/15_09_06_pope.pdf 26 For details of the content in the document see the Catholic Library at: http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_pi11qa.htm. 27 Burke (1985) p. 113. 28 Pérez (2004). p. 180. 29 Gambi (1997) p. 14. 30 Ferguson in the article ‘The Crisis of the State in a Globalizing World’, cautions against placing too much emphasis on the Westphalian Treaty, and ignoring the hegemonic shifts in empires. 31 Wight (1979) pp. 82-83. 32 Patten (2006) p. 113. 33 Longmate (1990) p. 17.

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34

Buchan (1932) pp. 9-10. For a fascinating account of the influence women on Julius Caesar and his successors see Stewart Perowne’s The Caesars Wives. 36 See The Triumphs of Caesar at the Hampton Court Palace, nine canvasses in the Royal Collection, concluding with Julius Caesar on his triumphal chariot. 37 Clausewitz (1832), p. 257. 38 Meier (1995) p. 307. 39 Ferrill (1986) p. 57 40 Horowitz (1957) p. 64. 41 Keegan (1994) p. 367. 42 Grant (1974) p. 198. 43 Morris (1953) pp. 16-17. 44 Griffiths and Rabinowitz (1980), p. 63. 45 Thody (1973) p. 125. 46 Firchow (1972) p. 185. 47 Connolly (1962) p. 446. 48 May (1972) p. 209. 49 Murray (2002) p. 447. 50 See Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks. 51 See Chomsky’s, The Manufacturing of Consent. 52 In Robert Boyers’ The Dictator’s Dictation: The Politics of Novels and Novelists, the author looks at contemporary writers to explore the links between literature and politics, particularly in a reactionist context. 35

Chapter 2

Chivalry and Honour: Stories of Supermen and Terrorists Introduction Tales of heroism, valour and adventurism define moments in history, repeatedly shaping the fortunes of empires, nations and states. Spectacular feats are generally recorded in some form: the oral ballad, the written text, or pictorial representation, creative sketches to inspire, caution and educate successive generations. Conversely, the violation and outrage, destruction and wide civilian harm that results from occupation is not forgotten. It lingers in the poems of resentment, simmering below the mask of acknowledgement. In the ever accumulating global bank of stories, tales of daring, denial, and rescue create heroes and villains that provide reference points and guidance in successive events, comparisons that inspire fear, panic, reverence, hope, despair and resignation. The motivation for heroism is multifaceted. In a well-known classic Western novel Riders of Judgement, by Frederick Manfred, riders are sent by the Lord to the Johnson County War to clean up the state and begin the new age of paradise. The themes of redemption, liberation and sacrifice are common to a visionary idea, which may deliver salvation or destruction. The goodness of a benevolent God or the vengeance of a raging icon is a source of social and political subservience common in literature. It can be random or triggered intentionally as part of a grand design, the charismatic leader taking humanity head long into the apocalypse. In the frenetic setting of contemporary current affairs, the heroic moment, its rise and fall is recorded, relayed and analysed through the noise of the global media hungry for content. The report of the catalytic, conventional, biological, guerrilla, limited and prolonged

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war tumbles through the cables of the electronic empire. Incidents are reported instantaneously. In the incessant flow of images and analysis, humanity is exposed with its civilising tendencies on trial. Moments of honour are present, Jeremy Bowen’s captivating book War Stories, being a fine example for students captivated by the allure of conflict and realm of loss. Additional insight into the everyday mire of human conflict is revealed through more substantive research. Deceit, realpolitik and insincerity emit volumes of dirt from the political mire. Field report filed through programmes such as BBC World Service, From Our Correspondent1, reveal that hope is not extinct, but it is conditional. Before the videophone, the telegraph, blog sites and other methods of instant communications, the legend of the great feat was entrusted to a tale, a lyric and creative conversation weaving through noise of everyday life, reminders littered in the images cast by the poets from Aristophanes to Okudzjava, Rabelais to Ayi Kwei Armah, Icelandic sagas and the Finish national epic, the Kalavala, and the adventures of its heroes to the worlds of the Seven Wise Masters in which an infinite number of stories are woven within a single Persian narrative, and the Bauls of Bengal, scattering reminders and revealing conundrums, which are part of the journey towards greatness and notoriety. Each country, nation, state, community and culture has its heroes written into its collective psychology, influences gleaned from stories, sketches and ballads. The seemingly inconsequential: comedians, criminals, jesters, fools and clowns are not deleted from the otherwise conservation record, their stories are coded and without effort, seemingly impregnable. Events and stories overlap in the sharing, producing an eclectic set of characters that emerge as heroes or villains, supermen or terrorists, gods or demigods. The outcome of grand feats is not straight-forward. Evidence can be presented to contravene the elevation of the hero: stories silenced by history creep into the public domain in the form of exhausted secrets, recasting on occasion initial assessments. It is in the footnotes of history that additions, modifications and elaborations feed into the verdict in the final court, a judgement that is conditional on the information available. It should be relatively easy to place the following figures: Chamberlain, Churchill, Eva Pe
on, Saddam Hussain, Mobuto, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, John F.

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Kennedy and Bill Clinton in camps of celebration or derision.2 How are though, the good and bad measured? Are stories absolutely positive or thoroughly negative? Are there lies in absolute truths and facts in absolute lies? The resource to literature adds substance to the heroic deed. In this chapter, the approach taken shares some similarities with the deliberations taken by Richard Lebow in the paper ‘Fear interest and honour: outlines of a theory of international relations.’ In Lebow’s work, the inspiration to undertake a great feat is presented on the basis that the Greek conception of spirit is valuable as a vehicle for political change. In an annotated form, the material below will seek to assess how the heroic moment emerges in international relations with reference to a varied literature. It shifts, however, from an indepth consideration of the role of the spirit to assess how individuals influence International Relations and international relations shapes individuals through the unfolding nature of events and the motivation to change them. In seeking to make sense of the profiles of protagonists and the peacemakers, the role of honour in international relations, its longevity and relevance to the wider human story is presented in a manner to make sense of and repair the damage initiated by ‘heroic’ deeds and miscalculations.

The Near Past and Beyond: Reflections on the Authentic Hero Literature has long tradition of representing chivalry and honour, the romantic and dramatic chord echoes through successive centuries to rhyme in the dust of the heavily bombed village.3 In the contemporary setting it is popular to suggest that heroes have departed from the battle scene.4 This is nonsense of course, it is extremely unlikely that heroism is any less present, but it is measured differently using a range of cultural and historical reference points. The heroes and villains prevalent in literature provide insight to wider society and relations with outsiders. Discovering the unknown, triumphing over fear and uncertainly, is a key component in the dramatic tale. The oldest story in the world is The Epic of Gilgamesh, originally written on twelve clay tables in cunicturm script. It records the exploits of the historical King of Uruk in Babylonia, on the River

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Euphrates in modern Iraq. J.M. Roberts recounts how Gilgamesh became the first individual hero in world literature, using other references to shape the mosaic of experiences. Literature makes it possible to observe such hints at mythologies of other or later societies. In literature, men begin to make explicit the meanings earlier hidden in obscure relics of sacrificial offerings, clay figures and the ground plans of shines and temples. 5

In an historical turn, stories with simplistic themes may contain complex figures that muddle intentions. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, probably written around fourteenth century, includes the honour of exchange as a chivalrous currency and the hidden accusation. Beheadings, deceit and salvation are notable in the faded manuscripts. The piece informs of a mysterious outsider, the Green Knight. The Green Knight arrives at King Arthur’s court to challenge an illustrious knight. Gawain honourably accepts the challenge. The Green Knight sets the rules of the contest: a single axe blow by each Knight. Gawain may strike first, but the blow will be returned by the Green Knight one year later. The Green Knight is decapitated, but collects his head and reminds the startled Gawain of his promise to repeat the duel. The action of the hero, a figure elevated, willingly or coerced, from general obscurity, engages in conflict and duty, against impossible odds and emerges victorious. Probable death is not an impediment; it is a feature of honour that continues to motivate destructive practices. Chivalry is not without its problems: honour and romance collide to produce story lines that would not be alien to the modern television soap. The legend of Tristan and Isolde is most likely influenced by the tangled triangle involving Lancelot, Guinevere, and King Arthur. It is a notable example of the complications that arise between duty and emotion, the latter potentially being equally destructive in a world structured by duly and obligation.6 In the old-English poem, Beowulf, a grand poem produced in the dark ages of Europe, with an extremely high-degree of sophistication, is a classic example of storytelling and subtlety. The unknown author explores the nature and purpose of heroism, its value as a standard, and its ability to act in the form of a guide. The piece is separated into two parts. Beowulf is the hero of a Germanic

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tribe, travelling to defeat monsters and launch dramatic campaigns. The first section opens with Beowulf defending the Kingdom by killing the monster Grendal. In the second part, Beowulf has become King and defends the Kingdom from a dragon. Fact and fiction merge throughout with the weaving of stories, proving rich diggings for literary and physical archaeologists keen to reveal kingship loyalties and tensions. In this sense, Dorothy Whitelock makes the point that literature speaks to its audience, it reflects its concerns, and seeks to challenge its assumptions and make sense of them: Beowulf, the greatest poem in Anglo-Saxon literature is devoted to the freeing of human habitations from the ravages of supernatural creatures that inhabit the fens and from a dragon residing in a pre-historical burial-mound. The audience for whom the poem was composed would not have felt these themes were either fantastic or trivial.7

In overcoming mythical foes, it is necessary that triumph defeats fear, although this doesn’t need to be presented simplistically. The struggle is part of the romance. In this vein, the poem is useful to Kings, Princes, poets, authors and of course the wider audience seeking insight from the performance. It is not surprising that the professor of medieval literature J.R.R. Tolkein used many of the themes covered in the poem to shape The Hobbit.8 Tolkein entered the world of Beowulf and cosmology to create scenarios that encouraged a contemporary reflection on the conflict between good and evil. This is evident in the Lord of the Rings, which complements the emergence of fascism in the real world as a vehicle to expansionism and world dictatorship. The wide heroic content of The Hobbit, which was recognised in the introduction to the 1957 version of the book by David Wright, captures the essence of hope in the face of adversity and total loss, a strength not lost on Bilbo Baggins or a Winston Churchill, seeking a vehicle to overcome impossible odds. The work Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400), notably in his unfinished masterpiece, the classic, The Canterbury Tales, was inspired by his experiences in military service in the hundred year’s war and his tenure as a knight of the shire for Kent. Chaucer is the most important writer of Middle English. The representation of the knight and squire, and the role of chivalry, is the enduring theme in

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the masterpiece. Chaucer’s other work should interest scholars of International Relations. His first English novel, Troilus and Criseyde, particularly, which was set during the Trojan War. The story tells of another love tangle, a piece inspired by Boccaccio. Troilus woos Criseyde, but is betrayed by his lover and dies in battle, a victim of vanity and deception. Literature from around the world indicates how strength and power are not simply linked to military might concerning empires, nations and states, but are wider reflections on the psychology and culture. The theme of power is central to studies of International Relations. Nonetheless, beyond relational and structural power lies numerous versions of power that evolve from cultural relations and social experiences. These are explicit and coded, impacting on political decision making, particularly in relations with other external political entities. Japanese literature has a strong interest in the nations, the philosophical reflection of classic material being explored in the Kokugaku, a movement keen to privilege the dominance of indigenous national memories and identities. The struggles in dealing with a powerful neighbour is a common theme in Japanese literature; returning to original sources of strength and power. The passage below tells of an early struggle between Japanese and Chinese culture over an expression of power: Nihonshoki is a very old history book written in the 6th century. A part of it explains Japanese envoy to the Tang Dynasty. Tang is an old Chinese dynasty. Japan sent some people to discover the Chinese culture. Another reason was that China was a thriving country in that period so Japan wanted them to recognise Japan as a country. The book explains the envoy’s story. Another example is a fairy tale which is about a Japanese word and a Chinese word. The strongest Japanese man was called Niou. He went to China by ship to see the strongest Chinese man called Dokkoi. He wanted to compare his power with the Chinese man’s power to decide which is stronger by lifting a very heavy thing. When he visited Dokkoi’s house there were many meals for him. This is just because Dokkoi was a big eater but Niou thought he could not beat Dokkoi so he ran away. Then Dokkoi chased him. Niou left the beach with his ship to go back to Japan but Dokkoi threw a very heavy anchor and it struck his ship. He cut the chain of the anchor with a rasp. Dokkoi did not know that Niou used the rasp to cut so was impressed by Niou’s power. Dokkoi thought Niou had more power. Niou thought Dokkoi had more power. Therefore since

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then, when Japanese people lift some thing heavy we say ‘Dokkoi sho’, Chinese (Tang period) say ‘Niou’.9

To add context to the above, the influence of the Japanese imperial family is notable in Japanese history, warlords, shoguns and aspiring figures used connections to the heavenly sovereign to gain advantage, a practice that was concluded following the demands by the United States after World War II. Modern Japanese writing has been led by author Yasunari Kawabata, particularly in the classic, The Old Capital. Kawabata’s work is shaped by the defeat in the Second World War, the sense of loss and frustration being woven into a collection of melancholy characters. From a Chinese perspective, literature is a mirror to social change and collective subservience, it intervenes and makes an impact and in so doing assimilates the consequence in fresh narratives that inform and inspire. Painting is equally influential, using various surfaces. Consider the lengthy passage below. The influence of literature is substantial, but addressed in a manner that acknowledges the full import of the state and its impact on social and cultural life. The passage opens with a reference to Tang Dynasty, established on the short foundations of the Sui dynasty. The Tang Dynasty would create a strong empire that included territories in Persia and Korea. In regard to immortal poets, I would suggest Li Bai or Li Po (701-762) and the Three Hundreds Poems of Tang Dynasty. If you couldn’t make a poem, you can recite the poems” which means you will be a poet yourself. There is a famous book titled: “Three Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty”. This book is like an encyclopaedia of life. People use it like a dictionary for learning classic Chinese, from whatever the age group, from primary school kids to retired academics. So you can see how the poems influence peoples, and how powerful they were. Li Bai is often regarded along with Du Fu, as one of the two greatest poets in Chinese literary history. But, don’t get it wrong; there were too many great poets during the Tang’s, too many beautiful poems to mention about. Li Bai is best known for the extravagant imagination and striking Taoist imagery in his poetry and he is a poet of romantic style. His poetry is still very popular and recited by Chinese children today. There is a rumour that the president of the France, Jacques Chirac, he is going to write a play or script on Li Bai once he is retired. The words are becoming a life philosophy whenever the life goes up or went down. Reciting the poems was

36 Literature and International Relations quite enjoyable things to do in your spare time. Once I retired, I might read the “Three Hundreds Poems of Tang Dynasty” all over again.10

In a contemporary setting, poets continue to be influential in China through offering a subtle alternative view, which does not challenge the political mask directly, but presents it in a slightly different light. The role of women is interesting in Chinese literature, most notably in the legendary women warrior, Hua Mulan, fighting bravely in numerous battles and seeking nothing but service to the Emperor. In a turn to realism, Jin Ping Mei, created a unique modernistic novel in Jing ping mei (The Golden Lotus) a book set in the early twelfth century that reflects the implosion of society in the sixteenth. The book challenged traditional social conventions, particularly in regards to sexuality and the realities of everyday life under the guard of imperial China. Lu Xun, father of modern Chinese literature, died in Shanghai from tuberculosis in 1936. His story of “The True Story of Ah Q” was very famous. It was well known by the Chinese peoples. It is Lu Xun’s most important work. “Ah Q Sprit” means self-satisfaction; a term of mockery. It refers to anybody who chooses not to face up to reality and deceive themselves into believing they are successful. Ah Q is famous for “spiritual victories”, he is a bully of the less fortunate, but fearful of those who are above him in rank, or power. From my personal point of view, “Ah Q Sprit” is a way of compromising. Another work, “A Madman’s Diary” is considered to be the first story written in Modern Chinese. Lu Xun chose to begin writing the way people talk, it was completely different compared to other classic Chinese literature by Lao Zi and Confucius. Lu Xun, hailed as “commander of China’s culture revolution” by Mao Zedong. His real name was Zhou Shuren. Lu Xun wrote stories, poetry, essays, literary criticism and literary history. He produced harsh criticism of social problems in China, particularly in his analysis of the “Chinese national character”. He has often been considered to have leftist leanings.11

The influence of Lu Xun on contemporary life in China, certainly in service of the state, has waned since the selective changes were made in economic policy. Ironically, in an era of globalization, it is the shift to authoritarian capitalism that may subdue the elite interest in the work of the author. The notable disparities in Chinese society

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continue to impact negatively on the rural poor, a sector in society that interested Lu Xun, but ignored by the state. Because of his criticism style of writing, the current Chinese government believe that his works do fit their needs any more. Particularly, Lu Xun’s works were concerned with plight of the poor and the peasants, violence and exploitation of the poor. His radical ideas about Chinese society are a bit embarrassing to the current Chinese government. They see it as a potential hazard in building a harmonious society, in fear of inciting anti-government voice. So, quite a lot of his famous works were deleted from students’ textbooks. He attended Sendai Provincial Medical School in Japan in 1904, eventually abandoned medicine to pursue writing. He famously said: “one scalpel only save one life, one pen can wake up the whole nation”. Why do I consider him a big influence in my early life? Because I have no other choice at all. In the early 70’s in China, you wouldn’t be able find any other literature books on the shelf of the “Xin Hua Books Shop”. Libraries were forced to close, you only can read Mao’s red book. Of course, and it is not a bad way to learn new words and proverbs at times. The only other novel was called “Golden Shining Road”, a story about new country life under Mao’s people’s common society. I’ve read this novel a few times; just found Lu Xun’s works were more interesting. Actually, only selections of Lu Xun’s works were available to the public, not all of his literatures. Why he was so famous in China? Even during the dark days of the culture revolution in the 60’s and 70’s? The answer is quite simple; Mao Zedong canonized Lu Xun as the intellectual forefather of the revolution, as a trailblazer in the early struggles of the communist party. That’s why Lu Xun has a unique role during the Mao’s ruling since 1949 in new China. I still admire him as a great writer in the history of modern Chinese literature. His article is very difficult to understand, quite often mixed up with a few English words or Japanese. It was a bit bizarre at that time; probably that’s why he was called “pioneering soldier” by some one.12

Perhaps slightly more familiar in the West is the author Jing Hua Yuan and his classic novel, Jing hua yuan (Flowers in the Mirror). The book is often compared to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Tang Ao’s journeys through strange lands, lands populated with stupidity and ignorance seem to be in tune with the chronicles of Gulliver. The ability of literature to record and unsettle seems universal. In a solid tradition notable in various unique cultures, storytelling is a vehicle for individuals to engage in social action. The world of the knight, dragons, rescues, crusades and adventures, frequently appear

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in world literature, suggesting similar concerns, but asymmetric experiences and possibilities.

Chivalry: A World Lost? From a distance, chivalry is a vivid force that evokes images of noble tournaments, grand castles and the service for glory; familiar scenes found in Albrecht Altdorfer’s 1510 painting of St George and the Dragon, a scene evoking natural heroism. Nobility and service, honour and duty, are well captured in the arts. Nonetheless, in various theatres of conflict, chivalry as goal was to be forced into hiding; concealed behind sunglasses or other modern masks. Equally, in examining the long past caution needs to be exercised in privileging former knights with excessively exaggerated manners. Keen suggests: It is important not to let this veneer of chivalry obscure the hard facts of war, however. The sort of ideas which the men of the free companies understood was well put by Merigot Marchés, a Limousin captain of the free soldiers who fought for the English. ‘he had done,’ he had claimed, ‘all those things which a man can and ought to do in a just war, as taking Frenchmen and putting them to ransom, living on the country and despoiling it, and leading the company under his command about the realm of France, burning and firing places in it’.13

Campaigns, battles, conflicts, journeys and related feats of adventure provide the opportunity for chivalry and honour,14 and invariably conceal the presence of terror and pain. Chivalry, in the sense is increasingly interested in censoring the realities of war; the chaplain speaks to young service men and women, the combatants realising that they may not return from duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. Despite the retreat of chivalry, it lingers in a world hunger for nostalgia. The romance of chivalry and frustrated love is perhaps best captured in John William Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott 1888, hung in the Tate Britain Collection. In the poem by Tennyson, the Lady of Shallot is under a curse, forced to view the world outside though the reflection in a mirror, or be punished with certain death. Catching sight of Lancelot, she looks at him directly, incurring the

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fate of drifting along in the boat to Camelot ‘singing her last song’, meeting death before arriving at the destination. The thrill of battle is familiar territory in literature. Thomas Malory’s King Arthur’s Last Battle captures the valour of battle and, in a similar vein, the mysticism of dark forces lurking to manipulate the vacuum of epic conflict. The stories of chivalry found in Geoffroi de Charny masterpiece are recounted during the the Hundred Years War. It is a piece that links the campaign to honours, rituals and medals. Under the banner of the crusades, chivalry is rewarded through the benevolence of God and material trinkets that can be obtained along the way.15 Maurice Keen’s evocative book, Chivalry, maps the idea of chivalry from its practices in pageants, heraldry and knights in shining armour to its place in the ethos of the social and moral obligations of nobility. It is an image that persists, the chivalrous knight, defending a moral code in the face of adversity. In the catalogue to a substantial exhibition held at the Royal Academy of Arts 1987-1998, the relationship between the nobility and knights was reflected in a number of exhibits. Primarily, Knights were usually below the highest rank of nobility. They were traditionally able to equip themselves with a horse and all the necessary arms of a cavalryman…The code of chivalry, idealised in romance literature, was institutionalised in England in the Order of the Garter. It was closely associated with beliefs in Christian endeavour, and fighting on crusade continued to represent the pinnacle of knightly courage and endurance.16

Saul, places the emergence of chivalry in the age of the Gothic period, architects using grand arches and motifs in supporting the ‘size and splendour of their buildings’.17 In a balanced article, Keen gives an insight into the dark side of chivalry with its tendency for base adventurism and material gain. In the concluding paragraph, the author captures the institutionalisation of men of action: What was needed was a new synthesis, a new concept of the role of men-atarms and indeed of nobility, and that was something that could only come slowly, as it did, with the growth of an idea of the solider not as a knight errant, but as the state’s servant, not called to seek wars by birth and vocation, but licensed to fight by his sovereign. Chivalry, with its idealization of the freelance fighting man, could not be a force effective in limiting the horrors of

40 Literature and International Relations war: by prompting men to seek wars and praising those who did so, its tendency, for all its idealism and because of it, was rather to make those horrors endemic.18

The publishing phenomenon that triggered the wide success of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, has led to a revival in the wide interest of the The Knight’s Templar. Flows of tourists to Temple Church, The London Headquarters of the Knights Templar located on the London Embankment, visit to dwell over the mythical age of chivalry.19 The Templars were initially church mercenaries, or more palatably soldier monks, accountable to the Pope. The order was founded in Jerusalem following the success of the First Crusade on the site of King Solomon’s Temple. The order was initially charged with protecting pilgrims travelling to and from the Holy Land. Prawer in the book The Crusader’s Kingdom recognises the emergence of a knighthood in service to a monastic and ecclesiastical sphere. The Templars created a new ideology, which metamorphosed into a Masonic order, its secrets seemingly being preserved by special committees, networks of honour and codes that are not exempt from criticism in the modern world. The appeal, and consequently its competitive force, was so strong that the order had to adopt the new ideology while continuing to pursue its original ideas. Thus the order of St. John finally embodied in its rules ideas derived from two different and unrelated premises: a knightlyhospitality and a newer knightly-monastic ideology.20 In facilitating the protective role, wealth had been accumulated through the building of churches and less nefarious means to pay for the expensive operations abroad. The fall of the Holy Land to the Saracens resulted in wide condemnation of the order, which had acquired land and wealth throughout Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. Enemies sought to vilify the order; jealousy and power being causes for recrimination. In challenging the power of the Templars, Christian force accused the sect of heresy, treachery, blasphemy, usury and idolatry, charges that would tarnish the cult. In 1307, at the instigation of Philip IV, King of France, the Order was abolished by the Pope.

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The rise of the Templar order during the crusades, and the wave of European colonialism throughout the Middle East, was part of European expansionism and signalled the first flow of colonialism that would institutionalise an ideology and impact on the culture of Jerusalem. The push by Prince Edward in 1271-72 producing numerous casualties achieved little except adding powers to the Pope and the growing disillusionment with the benefits of the crusades. Under the familiar shield of chivalry, Alexander Dumas in The Count of Monte Cristo reinvigorated the role of honour, justice and the grand cause in his multi-layered adventure. The trials of Edmond Dantè alternate between retribution and self-discovery, the treasure on the islet of Monte Cristo being subservient to the emotional discoveries that reshape his intentions. Works influenced by the piece such as ‘The Mark of Zorro’, originally titled The Curse of Capistrano and published in 1919 demonstrate the allure of capedcrusaders, defending right and defeating the corruptive influence of the powerful. Grand causes continue after the death of chivalry with artists and poets facing peril. Lord Byron in Greece, the death of AlainFournier, Laurie Lee and George Orwell’s experience in the Spanish Civil War, beautifully retold in the classic As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, sustain the flame that overlaps between chivalry and literature. In reflection on great literature that speaks of heroes and heroism, influential books on international relations perhaps are common such as Cervantes, Don Quixote.21 In the parable of sixteenth century romances, Cervantes produced an enduring character that reflected the decline of Empire and the influence of the church. Cervantes life mirrors the exploits of his hero, travelling to Italy to fight in a naval battle at Lepanto. During a return to Spain, the great author was captured by pirates and brought to Algiers as a slave. Cervantes drew on the ballad to weave the sensational web of human insight and fallibility, which acted as moral direction and social warning. Shaping the genre, the birth of novel was created in a dramatic act that would influence the manner of storytelling. The printing and diffusion of ballads reached a peak during the second half of the 16th century. Such was their popularity that serious authors – including

42 Literature and International Relations Lope de Vega, Góngora, Quevedo, Cervantes himself and many others – also started to write ballads of a new kind, some of which were hugely successful: these were collectively known as the romancero Nuevo.22

Don Quixote is not just a book that questions truth and representation; it is father of all novels. Reflecting on the mechanisation of everyday life and the split between science and literature, Kundera writes: To my mind, this ambiguity does not diminish the last four centuries of European culture, to which I feel all the more attached as I am not a philosopher but a novelist. Indeed, for me, the founder of the modern Era is not only Descartes but also Cervantes.23

The value of literature in understanding contemporary international relations derives from its rich sources, which studies human evolution in minute detail. Romance may have been sacrificed for material gain, but important works in literature continue to provide experiences for reflection, a heritage that maybe more honourable than a mere distraction.

Liberation and Enslavement Struggle is a fundamental element in storytelling: enslavement from political systems, natural elements and relationships of all kinds (or the absence of them) being the trigger that initiates words as weapons. The transformation is rarely straightforward; the abused may adopt of the strategies of the abuser, perpetuating the chains that link the oppressor with the oppressed. The heroic settlers in the new world, seeking escape from religious intolerance, would in turn, be intolerant to neighbours not enouncing the ‘right’ faith, the ‘correct’ ideas, and the ‘suitable’ manners of behaviour. The violence of colonialism, undertaken to generate wealth produced the slave trade and exploitation. The spread of ‘Western’ culture across the globe generating fresh forms of cultural terrorism continues to be threat to peaceful international relations. The lust for power sits uncomfortably with the romance of the knight as an idea.

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During the Victorian age, historical novels lost their edge, becoming grandiose sagas, privileging trivia over substance. The twentieth century with its mechanistic approach to warfare and horror, produced a revival in dramatic historical texts that would reflect the carnage on the battlegrounds of Europe. The impact of war being captured in the trilogies: the sword of honour series by Evelyn Waugh and Jean-Paul Sartre’s roads to freedom. Fascination for the Great War and World War II continues with work such as Pat Barker’s Regeneration series and Louis de Bernières Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Globalization as a process is reflected in the confusion of manners, behaviour, and ethics in relation to honour and daring feats. A ceaseless flood of books on the market are reflecting the fall-out from major historical events. In this context, contemporary history is not necessarily being shaped by the powerful. Other stories are being told that refutes the dominant cultural hegemony, and the monopoly of recording history. Deception in one culture can be described as cheating by another. Chivalry and honour are conditional, the feat being magnificent or abhorrent, creative license being recognised in globalization. The experience of travel is important in literature. In Thomas Hardy’s novel, The Return of the Native, the returning ‘native’ Clym Yeobright, captivates Eustacia Vye, who dreams of Paris and adventure, her disappointments sowing the seeds of her disaster. The story of leaving home: moving on from the village, departing from a city, disappearing from a country, has been used as vehicle in literature to examine wider philosophical questions. The departure can be a rite of passage. It can be an escape, a grand tour, or a mammoth feat of endurance. It can pass unnoticed, the slipping of the latch in Aaron’s Rod, a figure departing over a moonlit moor: all journeys start somewhere and end someplace, the adventure being woven by accidents and interventions. Few great figures in the world of international politics are exempt from the contamination of a tainted decision. These may, generously, have been framed in good faith without intentional harm being propagated or have been executed through calculation. The swing of the pendulum between liberation and enslavement is wide, encapsulating various shades of behaviour and pollutes or inspires.

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Literature helps formulate questions that probe the meanings of words such as democracy, tyranny and prosperity, reference points guiding the international community and civil society, a service rich in chivalry.

Journeys and Adventures: Cartography and Experience The world’s first atlas, The Thatrum orbis terrarium published in Antwerp in 1570 provided an early outline of the known global terrain. In a remarkable book, Paul Binding’s Imagined Corners, captured the turbulence of discovery through recognising the tensions that arise between travellers and indigenous peoples. The maps specific to international relations come later with the spoils of war written into the separation of territory, states cordoned off by viewing towers, wire-fences and populations controlled by passports and visas. In Sir John Mandeville’s Travels, the book included the adventures of an English Knight through the Holy Land, Egypt, India and China. This fourteenth century view of the world used fact and fiction to produce an authentic snapshot of medieval life. The age of exploration that encouraged Europeans to seek lands and continents from the late fifteen century laid the early foundations of the processors of globalization. Discoveries of new lands and foreign integration are not, however, without human costs, for example the rape of Ghana of its young population during the slave trade impeded the growth of the nation for generations. In the rush to explore, Ferdinand Magellan, Francis Drake and Juan Sebastián del Cano sailed the mysterious continent and the southern seas in search of wealth and opportunity. Using the routes from Plymouth and Cadiz to Malaysia and Indonesia via the Cape of Good Hope, the ships would arrive at the coasts of Tierra del Fuego and Vancouver Island. Christopher Columbus, the Italian sailing in the service of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, was given credit for discovering and opening up America. The journey was part of numerous expeditions that colonised the Americas, Australasia and Africa and other parts of the world. In 1492, Columbus discovered

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the Bahamas, Cuba and other islands in the West Indies. In 1498 he landed in the lowlands of South America. The old world would expire though conquest and cultural terrorism, conditions that impact on the contemporary global reality through inequality and the issue of land rights. Fifty years later, Sir Francis Drake would sail around the world in the Golden Hind. From the raids on the Spanish, Sir Francis Drake built up a financial chest for himself and his Queen.24 In 1600, Queen Elizabeth gave the royal charter to the East India Company. In late eighteenth century, Capitan James Cook would have voyages of discovery to New Zealand and Australia. Cook was murdered in Hawaii. Pioneers, settlers, adventurers and travellers carried stories and experiences that flow into a world literature, contributions pregnant with multiculturalism. In considering travels and adventures of key figures on land it important not the leave out Chevalier de Seingalt. During the eighteenth century, a grand tour on InterRail was not possible. Nevertheless, Casanova, flits from Venice, Naples, Corfu, Parma, Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam, Cologne, Zurich, Lausanne, London, Berlin, Moscow, Warsaw, Grenoble, Munich, Madrid, Rome and other cites promoting a licentious lifestyle that he would write up in the castle of his friend, Count Waldstein of Bohemia.

Recalling Rebels and Martyrs: The Footprints of Terrorism The entry on terrorism in the Oxford English Dictionary refers to a practise that is related to using violent and intimidating methods, especially to achieve political ends. The keyword is method. Terrorism is a technique that intends to cause physical and psychological harm. James D. Kiras, writing in a section of the textbook, The Globalization of World Politics, elaborates on this view adding that terrorism has being characterized: first and foremost, by the use of violence. Such violence includes hostage-taking, hijacking, bombing, and other indiscriminate attacks, usually targeting civilians. However, the purpose towards which violence is used, and the motivation behind it, is where most of the disagreements related to terrorism begin.25

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Raymond Williams, in seeking to unpack the complexities of terrorism is useful in highlighting the subtleties that exist between violence and volition, the former being defined in a direct physical assault and the later, being more psychological in intent, but no less disturbing. ‘There has been obvious interaction between violence and violation, the breaking of some custom or some dignity,’26 – this can be noted in international travel where the tourist causes a cultural offence, either through ignorance or intent, an action leading to a verbal rebuttal, a violent outburst or considered indifference. Violence can also be extraordinarily subtle, a form of bullying that generates unease and fear, an action which debilitates or creates an atmosphere that is through its suggestive nature, terrifying. In reflecting on terrorism it is important to place the terrorist in context. How is an understanding of terror being approached? The line between freedom fighters and terrorism is a moving target, shaped by interpretation and the acknowledgement that points of view are rarely neutral. Terrorism is a word nonetheless, that strikes horror into the establishment and wider society. It is a word that can be applied to creative, spiritual, political, economic and social activities, which could be under threat from the change process. Terrorism can be presented as heroism and cowardice: each selection being debated using historical, religious or political references. It may contain a heroic element, but the use of violence taints the objective, producing revulsion in the execution of the principle. Terrorism is imbued with complexity. Nelson Mandela was labelled a terrorist during the early days of the ANC. He would be later recognised as a Nobel peace prize contestant, which he received in 1993, along with Frederik Willem de Klerk for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa. The world of the freedom fighters invariably overlaps with the world of the terrorists, but simplistic references need to be proceeded with caution. George Woodcock in the book, Anarchism reflects on the role of the creative prophet ‘here again he was [Tolstoy] teaching a lesson dear to anarchists: that the moral strength of a single man who insists on being free is greater than that of a multitude of silent slaves’.27

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The well-known figure of John Brown is illustrative. Immortalised in the song John Brown’s Body, the lyric recalls the actions of the fanatical abolitionist, John Brown. Brown led a raid on a government arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, intent on starting a slave insurrection. Conservatives labelled the act a form of terrorism. Abolitionists viewed Brown as a Christ-like martyr, challenging ignorance and oppression. Franz Fanon author the Wretched of the Earth, called for actions by any means to defeat the colonial. The book encourages the collective dispossessed to instigate the violent revolution. Is this terrorism or a just war in defeating oppression? Is violence justifiable? Can it be suspended and ended? The pipes of peace echoing through Stormont Castle would suggest so. What of the failures, the violence and the descent to permanent chaos? Is there a genealogy in terrorism? Is the soul of terror universal? In the narrative of the fighter of freedom there are common themes. The journey begins, often with reluctance, through necessity, in opposition to something, something clear and recognisable. During the campaign objectives can become clouded, the hero arrives at a previously unrealised destination in which values are compromised or questioned. In confusion and regret, the cause may be promoted and realised, but it is not understood. The justification is muddled not by an external reference point, but by the realisation that the idea that launched the campaign has been knowingly misinterpreted. Correspondingly, the strategy of non-violence presents an alternative option for dissent and protest, but it no less contentious. Conscientious objectors have been placed in front of firing squads. Mental Illness caused by the warfare has been treated with imprisonment and court-martial. Is the deserter a hero and the judge a terrorist? In a positive frame, non-violence is primarily symbolic, but organised to achieve a specific end. Mahatma Gandhi advocated passive resistance through a modification known as Satyagraha (Sanskrit, “Truth and Firmness”) arguing that acts of aggression against the British correspondingly produced greater violence. Organising passive resistance on moral and indirect political grounds, led the British to commit acts that generated revulsion, widening recruits to the Indian National Congress movement.

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Gandi’s form of passive resistance goes back to Christ through the writing of Leo Tolstoy, it encouraged followers to ‘turn the other cheek,’ a strategy that can frustrate or silence the opposition in certain circumstances. The opposing view would suggest that it can also lead to alienation: the meek do not inherent the world, they are crushed by it. Nonetheless, non-violence has been effective. Despite enormous provocation, Martin Luther King insisted that the mechanisms of social change had to be non-violent. So the bus boycott which was triggered by Rosa Parks and the campaign for voter registration were all non-violent strategies. In both cases Gandhi and King believed their message of social change depended on not resorting to violence.28

The strategy of the Dalai Lama in advocating peace to defend the rights of the Tibetan people uses his global influence through religious expression to argue for the rights of his homeland, which irritate the Chinese Leadership. The policy of non-violence won the Dalai Lama a Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, but resolution on Tibet remains elusive. It is admirable how frustration has not led to violence, but to a revival in commitment.

Conclusion It is suggested that the actions of heroes and villains created International Relations. The discipline is indebted to their stories. Literature in its varied forms reveals the motivations behind great deeds and baffling ills. The reference points are scattered in novels, lyrics, librettos, scripts, letters and poems. Through the consideration of a creative literature, the response discerned in the construction of treaties, international laws, codes and standards can be understood and placed in context. The Herculean effort required to restrain supermen and ill-considered enthusiasm, which may lead great figures to wreak havoc in a vision to secure a just cause, demands vigilance and patience in listening to stories.

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Notes 1

The radio broadcasts of the programme From our Own Correspondent, on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service provides insight into the wider context of news sprayed in sound bites in the insatiable global news media. See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/. 2 See Peter York’s fascinating book Dictators’ Homes, to assess the lavish tastes of villains. 3 In a short piece written by AS Byatt on fairy tales, the author considers how the content of these stories inform contemporary preoccupations. Byatt suggests that ‘in recent times Angela Carter and Salman Rushdie both claimed that there was more energy in the old tales than in the recent social realism’. 4 The world evoked by the nineteenth century British Public School ethos, which promoted ideas of service to Crown and Empire, noted in such sentiments as “the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton” have receded in influence (www.publicschools.co.uk). Nonetheless, this cultural elitism is notable in popular fiction in novels such as Len Deighton’s The Ipcress File, a piece critical of privilege and unfettered elitism. See Jeremy Paxman’s book, The Political Animal for a strong overview of the importance of family connections and elite schools in politics. 5 Roberts (1990[1976]) p. 68. 6 In Norse oral literature, epic poems and sagas known as Eddas combine sophistication and waves of considered expansionism. 7 Whitelock, (1952), p. 25. 8 Tolkien in Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, recognised its significance in sophistication and the link between adventure and morality, the latter being cast in more universal than Christian terms. 9 Minoshima Chiaki, email communication sent 9.10.2006. 10 Jian Guo, email communication, 17/11/2006. 11 Ibid, Jian Guo. 12 Jian Guo, email communication 10/11/2006. 13 Keen (1968) p. 250. 14 Chivalry can be found in the non-West, The Thousand Nights and One Night being particularly relevant. 15 See Steve Runciman, A History of the Crusades, for an excellent overview of the religious excursions. 16 Alexander and Binski (1987) p. 246. 17 Saul (1992) p. 8. 18 Keen (1976) p. 45. 19 See http://www.templechurch.com/ and Revd Canon Joseph Robinson’s Temple Guide, published by Pitkin. 20 Prawer (2002 [1972], p. 253. 21 Various projects have been initiated to film the classic book, the latest attempt by Terry Gilliam being a story that should be consulted in its own right. 22 DÍaz-Mas Csic (2005) p. 94. 23 Kundera, M. (2005 [1968], p. 4. 24 See the book Sir Francis Drake, The Queen’s Pirate. 25 Kiras (2005) p. 480. 26 Williams (1975) p. 330. 27 Woodcock (1963) p. 219. 28 Markham (2007) p. 146.

Chapter 3

The Madness of Reason: Going Sane is Harder Than You Think Introduction ‘Thank Christ for the Bomb,’ recorded the British blues and R&B group, The Groundhogs recognising the ebb and flow of tension and restraint in the slide to obliteration in the fog of the Cold War.1 In the current noise of international relations, North Korea and Iran are testing the ground for the spread of nuclear democracy, and are finding that the reaction from the international community is less than democratic (engaging in madness isn’t conducive to rule governed games, however legitimised). The mood in Pyongyang is shaped by the erratic instructions of its leader Kim Jong-il. The need to maintain relative good relations with China and securing fuel aid is a restraint that is traded in various diplomatic circles. Whilst containing certain ambitions, the erratic nature of the leadership could revise intentions and continue with a nuclear programme that would initiate a reaction by Japan. In Tehran, the keenness to acquire nuclear capabilities is linked to the desire of Iran to maximise its status as a key player in the Middle East. Despite the public views of President Mahmond Ahmodinejab and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the intention in Tehran in regards to nuclear development is linked to maintaining credibility internally and externally, the counterhegemonic momentum to the influence of Western values being a mask to a more considered regional strategy that would limit the ambitions of Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The problem of nuclear democracy is complicated by the interpretation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty composed in 1968 and the uneven balance of power recognised between states.2 It is clear that the old certainties established during the cold war era

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have become relics; the contemporary nuclear landscape is far from straight-forward. Will the spread of nuclear materials create a revival in international conflict in the twenty-first century? Is violence justifiable on a grand scale if the use of the bomb prevents future and greater casualties? Is the mutually assured destruction (MAD) scenario a deterrent in the complex relations between states, and increasingly other actors or is it a trigger for violence? Is dialogue on blog sites and the internet discussing nuclear issues fuelling the production of the dirty bomb and related weapons of terror? Are states and the UN Security Council the most appropriate bodies to limit the nuclear threat, regardless of its source? Whilst global and national societies may be compared to the computer generated world of Civilisation created by Sid Meyer’s, the forces that are part of the rise and fall of great powers are best revealed by literature. The mistakes, accidents and errors that reveal the impact of human decisions in history have been captured and communicated by the creative instinct. The horror of AuschwitzBirkenau, Rwanda and the Balkans, sites included in the itinerary of dark tourism, illustrate how the slide to chaos occurs without an initial countervailing pressure, which may give some credence to the MAD theory.3 Nonetheless, it would appear that literature is a useful guide in revealing the intentions of dark forces and the constructions of their potential horrors. Great art certainly captures and reflects the essence of human conflict and the consequence of war: Picasso’s Guernica, Oskar Kokoschka’s Prometheus Triptych, Francisco Goya’s The Third of May 1808, Van Dyck’s Lord John and Lord Bernard Stuart and the evocative sketches of Ilka Gedo, produced in the Ghetto in 1944 capture the consequence of war. In contemporary setting, authors such as Zadie Smith are signatories to an anti-nuclear petition in Britain seeking to discourage the Government in its replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons system. The Trident system was developed and manufactured by Lockheed Martin in the United States. The Trident II D5 is a submarine-launched ballistic missile system, which is fundamental to nuclear deterrence in the United Kingdom. The opposition to Trident echoes the reaction to the Polaris system that galvanised the Committee of One Hundred4 in the nineteen-sixties, a group that

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included literary luminaries like J.B. Priestley, to non-violent resistance to nuclear war. Nuclear weapons production is a discipline formulated in the principles of science. The work initiated by the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford in 1919 discovered that the collision of alpha particles with nitrogen atoms resulted in a spectacular release of energy. It would develop into nuclear physics. The bomb is a feat of engineering. Its consequences, however, propel its development to concerns linked to global ethics and morals. Andrei Sakharov being perhaps the best well-known nuclear physicist and human rights campaigner who realised the manipulation of the responsibility is embedded in the political system. In recent discussions on the nuclear issue, Stephen Hawking, an astrophysicist and prominent campaigner against conventional and nuclear hostilities has forged links with the literary world in seeking to ‘open-up’ the debate on weapon development, implementation and use. This chapter seeks to relate literature to the bomb to assess its potential in being unreasonable. The material below focuses on the apocalyptic turn in the international relations, which examines the potential consequence of a nuclear debacle, and the related tools of the Armageddon found in bio-terrorism and the so-called dirty bombs. Realpolitik (a term referring to the adoption of policies of limited objectives, which had a reasonable chance of success), balance of power (relative equality in the distribution of power), hegemony (the operation of leadership), security (a range of defensive measures that limit threats), brinkmanship (the art of political decision-making) and diplomacy, (seeking solutions to impossible situations), are introduced to assess the role of nuclear weapons in the twenty-first century, an approach supported by reference to the creative literature.

War Baby! The Sirens of International Relations ‘War no longer exists,’ writes Rupert Smith in the profound and crucial text The Utility of Force – war is anything but conventional.5 Did the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham change everything? Is the bombing of Dresden simply a photograph in a history book?

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History is packed with violence; cities are built on the bones of ghosts fallen in struggles. No empire, nation or state is exempt from an accusation that recalls a tainted past or bloody event. The PingPong diplomacy that typified the political relations between the United Nations and China during the nineteen-seventies has been normalised with frequent visits by international leaders to each others countries and round tables meetings such as the United Nations and the European Union. In the Southern Hemisphere, animosity as a result of colonialism and trade imbalances persist. Innocence is hard to sustain in a world of intolerance and injustice. Thomas Hobbes famously set out in The Leviathan that life is nasty, brutish and short. Is the world more or less secure since the publication of the book? Is the Hobbesain nightmare absent in the world of strong states? In the world of the apocalyptic literature, the trails of everyday life and material that forewarns of strange worlds in science fiction merge and overlap in the list of warnings. The narrative that leads to a crisis and the cataclysmic event that may push humanity on to the post-apocalyptic road is notable in literature. The remarkable piece, Je Jetee, by Chris Marker, captures the flower of regeneration through brutality and experimentation. The radioactive landscapes imaging in a world ravaged by World War Three encourages reflections on the past to shape the future. In saving the present, there is no where else to go. The Future was better protected than the past. After more painful tests, he eventually caught some waves of the world to come. He went through a brand new planet. Paris rebuilt; ten thousand quizzical streets. Other men were waiting for him. This was a brief encounter. Obviously, they refused these scoriae of another time. He said his piece: since humanity had survived, it could not refuse to its own past the means of its survival. That sophism was taken for Fate in disguise. They gave him a power plant strong enough to put all human industry in motion again, and the gates of the future were closed.6

Prophesies regarding the end of world have a long history. Moses, Nostradamus, and various cults have included various interventions that will unequivocally end the human story. In the nuclear context, the apocalypse is shaped by strong states fearing the loss of strength.

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In seeking to avoid the devastation from a nuclear conflict, literature helps shape various scenarios that would result in the use of nuclear weapons. Increasingly, the power-brokers have been beaten by the script writers. Hollywood was ahead of the Pentagon in imaging 9/11. Similarly, works such as H.G. Wells’ The Shape of Things of to Come, which anticipated the extension of World War II, is relevant in assessing increasing unevenness between rich and poor within and between states. Published at end of the peaceful implosion of the Cold War, the seminal study on the history of International Relations by Olsen and Groom, highlighted a contemporary issue that threatens to re-emerge with catastrophic consequences. The passage on strategic studies and deterrence theory made reference to the multiple countries capable of developing and using nuclear weapons. Much of thinking about nuclear deterrence has been in terms of two contending parties with the same cognizance of complications inherent in interstate tensions within the respective alliance systems. This bipolar configuration is rapidly being replaced by a multipolar one, with near-nuclear Powers – India, Israel and South Africa among them, with others – for whom it is a case ‘if they do, we do’.7

Throughout the nineteen-nineties, the race to ensure countries resisted the temptation to process a nuclear capability has partly been limited by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has not stopped countries seeking a gradual step-by-step, laborious and erratic, journey to obtain the capabilities for a nuclear weapon. It is an erratic tide that may produce a series of unwanted storms, global radioactive hurricanes that evolve from surprising sources and locations. It is in the need to assess the possibilities of the nuclear confrontation that fresh consideration and effort needs to be undertaken to make sense of the changing contours of international relations. The world of Field Marshal Montgomery operating in combat in the territorial field has vanished. Ebay, YouTube, Google, al Jaziaria, Bollywood, Emmanual Jol, MySpace, Wole Soyinka and Shilpa Shetty are random examples of the post-post modern reference points that reflect the strains of conflict.8 States and international institutions remain discernable in International Relations, but other actors have joined the ever congested centre stage, lobbying to gain

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influence and authority. James N. Rosenau in the book Turbulence and World Politics laments on the loss of the romantic high ground to a material state that is not conflict free suggesting: with the prospect of nuclear warfare having virtually eliminated the sense of glory that once attached to fighting for one’s own country honour, the avenues for expressing the most virulent form of patriotism have been closed to those for whom national pride is a powerful drive. The military hero, the historic battle, and the cry for vengeance against the country’s enemies are on the way out as cultural values in most part of the world.9

The trend towards a global society sharing similar perspectives is easily rubbished, but the corrosive nature of it not. The tensions that arise from the uncoupling of identity and nationalism, which have been disturbed by a range of global processes, are not necessarily liberating or conditioning, but they are disturbing. The photograph and the name in the passport may describe a mechanical nationality, but the roots of the holder may lie elsewhere. Global society is a contested mosaic; the curious gaze on the faces of immigration officers becoming less and less surprising. Jan Aart Scholte, writing a critical account in Globalization, is useful in presenting four defining elements in reflections on nationhood. These are: 1) the nation encompasses a large population; 2) a nation is distinguished as a form of collective identity by attachment to a specific homeland; 3) a nation defines itself through an emphasis of attributes that set it apart from other national groups. Each nation declares itself unique on the basis of difference; 4) nations are mutually constitutive. They do not arise autonomously, but through inter-natioanl relation.10 In relating identity to nation, the former is riddled with complexities and puzzles. Scholte claims ‘that, identities, often lie at the heart of, and give shape to, political struggles’.11 Rosenau’s view that the military hero has disappeared is perhaps premature when considered in wider terms. The importance in recognising the importance of language and perspective is crucial if a dominant Western view of heroism and other categories is is complemented by a wider cultural menu. Michael Billig in Banal Nationalism encourages caution in assessing languages and boundaries in a narrow frame.

56 Literature and International Relations A world of different languages requires the constitution of categorical distinctions. A problem confronts anyone who attempts to make distinctions between one language and another. Not all speakers of a language speak it the same way. Thus, some differences of speaking have to be classified as being instances of different languages and some will be classified as differences with the same language.12

The juxtaposition of language and dialects is noted in literature, producing a hybrid of cultural stories that are modified and edited. This is notable in a range of literary texts where various cultural imports re-imagine and report the story in a fresh or corrupted manner. For example, the fictional account of the Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Jean de Bourgogne and The Pearl, a mystical poem of lament for a dead daughter influenced by the Roman de la Pose, reaffirms the importance of roots and being. In the (un)natural struggles in a fragmented global society, inexact outcomes are unfolding to produce a limitless source of memories, histories, victories, antagonisms and retributions, which is increasingly being held digitally. This is historic.13 In a similar manner Greek drama influenced modern European opera. It is in the oral fable, the ballad, poetry, folk tale, legends, and the catalogue of novels that the atmosphere of war and conflict is revealed well before the first strike is made and shot fired. The creative urge is also present in the aftermath. It records the consequences of hatred and presents it to a wider audience. In a remarkably defiant response to the ravage of conflict, the Ayam Beirut al-Cinemaiya (Cinema Days of Beirut) went ahead in the immediate aftermath of the bombardment of Lebanon during the explosion of hostilities between Hazbollah and Israel, demonstrating again that the creative spirit of momentarily defeated is not suppressed by rubble and tension, but reinvigorated with a fresh hunger to encourage a change. Looking backwards to classical literature, The Iliad by Homer captivates the modern reader with the scope of the battles, the organisation of the siege, its consequence, its heroes, gods and pawns being cast in on a confusion in the heart of the conflict through mixed loyalties and objectives. The stories that inhabit The Iliad are timeless, each is told in simple terms in a manner that recognises the full scope of human trials. The emphasis on the final days of the siege link the underworld, the Gods, the demi-Gods and the living in

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a rich mosaic that provides guidance in a range of strategic and psychological matters. Researchers in the discipline of International Relations are often reluctant to fully locate their studies in the Greek Legends. Nonetheless the classic piece produced Thucydides The History of the Peloponnesian War, which presents an account of the struggle between Sparta and Athens illustrates to the value of literature from any period. William C. Olson and A.J.R Groom in a standard text, International Relations Then and Now, make clear the value of considering contemporary history to modern readers: its principal value for our purposes lies in the descriptions of the negotiations, the policy alternatives, the strategic concepts, the diplomatic skills (or lack of them) exhibited by the plenipotentiaries as Athens tried first to avoid the war and then to win it.14

It is useful to pause on the seemingly absent references to war as the key event between the classical world and the modern novel that emerged in eighteenth century. This can be partly explained by the localised nature of conflict during this period. It is not sensible to claim that savagery and violence disappeared from the stage of international relations, but it was largely contained through regional and national checks. The absence of an international war literature during the demise of the influence of the church and the rise of the modern state system would be dramatically overturned with the publication of perhaps the most startling text available to scholars and general readers in International Relations, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. The text is rich in scope and depth, revealing in grand sweeps of narrative the invasion and counter measures taken in repelling invading forces of the Napoleonic Wars of 1825-15. On a psychological level, the consequences of war on a nation and the emotional profile of individuals, produced an incisive account of the various threads that are woven in peace and unpicked in war. Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” reveals the nature and soul of the Russian people at the happiest and hardest moments of their lives. Tolstoy depicts the developing characters of his protagonists, showing their life during peace and emphasising the changes caused by war. Natasha Rostova, Pierre Bezuhov,

58 Literature and International Relations Andrei Bolkonski strive to live their lives with purpose, seeking some high sense in their destiny and managing to find it. These people do not wish just to live and exist; they aspire to grasp the depth of what was given to them by the Lord and make sense of their time on Earth. Tolstoy’s talent is in his sharp sensitivity and the deep psychology applied to portray the complex personalities and interweaving of the feelings of the characters. Through their life stories, Tolstoy seeks to find answers to the most significant questions concerning all people: love and compassion, duty and conscience. He also addresses some of the most topical issues facing humankind at all times: freedom and power in both absolute and relative form.15

It is perhaps, in the spirit noted in the above passage that Tolstoy’s great novel War and Peace captures the true heart of the content of international relations. Burton Rascoe eloquently captures the impact of the book on literature when he writes that it captured not a beat, but a symphony of life. It is poetry at the highest level, its relevance timeless. It achieved insight into an all inclusive psychology of war and peace: in a single novel peopled with living characters in every phase of European as well as Russian life, from peasant to Napoleon, and to make you see them go about their daily affairs and participate with them in momentous events; and also with all this drama to give you a unified sense of the whole of a social cataclysm. In that novel he painted for us a tremendous canvas of war and peace in which each figure is as pulsatingly alive as a portrait by Rembrandt, and three-dimensional rather than two.16

While Tolstoy was producing War and Peace, the American civil war was turning state against state. Stephan Crane’s book, The Red Badge of Courage, captures the full drama of conflict, its terror and menace, through the experiences of a young soldier, Henry Fleming. Its heroes and villains being contradictory, which is an accurate reflection of individuals on both sides. The film Cold Mountain similarly captured the scars of the civil war in echoing the pain that pits neighbour against neighbour. The Great War and the Second World War produced a range of works that captured the madness of war in terms of engagement and organisation. In the former, the scars of war on the combatants is captured by the war poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, who recognising the psychological damage on solders in a creative non-

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diagnostic form produced incisive disturbing poems well before it was recognised as medical condition, requiring treatment in a hospital not a firing squad for desertion. Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy captured the psychology of the contradictory effects of war, recognising the limits of human endurance, and the romance men seek in the conflict, an emotion flattened in the subsequent rubble. The theme of the novel revolves around the shell shock that devastated the living and the dead. Personal and social concerns relating to sex and violence are played in central characters most notable in the form of Billy Prior, tapped by conventions and seeking escape routes ironically offered by conflict. From a different perspective on World War One, The Good Soldier Švejk and his Fortunes in the War by the Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek uses humour to satirize war and its operation mechanisms. Kundera catches the irony of Švejk in the comic turn and its relevance to the tone of war. The Good Soldier Schweik is perhaps the last great popular novel. Isn’t it astonishing that this comic novel, whose action unfolds in the army and at the front? What has happened to war and its horrors if they’ve become laughing matters? In Homer and in Tolstoy, war had a perfectly comprehensible meaning: people fought for Helen or for Russia. Schweik and his companions go to the front without knowing why and. what is even more shocking, without caring to know.17

In some ways, ironically, the book is almost Machiavellian, the avoidance of pain through cunning, deception and idiocy. The novel follows the fortunes of Josef Švejk who hears of the assassination Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, which is widely recognised as the trigger for World War I to stumble through a military career. The overenthusiastic reaction of Josef to a range of situations encourages criticism and suspicion, a curiosity that the method is coded: subversion known as svejking. In the next slide to international conflict, Joseph Heller in Catch22 sketched a satire of war based on his experiences of flying missions as a bombardier from Corsica. The book is a valuable piece that exposes imbedded stupidity present in the operation of conflict

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on a grand scale. The book makes reference to the flawed logic that an aircrew can be relieved from duty by claiming insanity; but if they do, this proves they are sane and fit to fly – the unmistakable Catch22. In seeking to acknowledge the presence of psychotic symptoms, the central characters defect from the mechanisation of war. The technique was rediscovered in the American television series MASH, where Maxwell Q. Klinger adopted numerous female costumes to prove his insanity. This approach was defeated by the Catch 22, highlighting sexual intolerance in the United States at the time and the lunacy of war. Norman Mailer in the book, The Naked and the Dead, drew on his service in the Pacific to construct a book that stripped glamour from the reality of conflict and produced a classic that revealed the physical cost conflict. The book features a platoon of foot soldiers engaged in a struggle to capture the island of Anopopei, which was held by the Japanese. Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy echoed the insight of Tolstoy in capturing the absurdity of the loss associated with death, destruction and desolation. The heroism of the crusade being pummelled by the realisation of failure is notable in the disillusion of the central characters. Converting to Catholicism in mid-life, Waugh looked deep into his personal experiences to put his central character Guy Crouchback through similar trials balancing faith, war and personal relations with hypocrisy, insanity and loss. The arrival of the nuclear weapons seemingly removed heroism from war, leaving only terror to rage on the global landscape. The impetus of conflict stimulated the urgency for teams to concentrate efforts on the development of radar and the atomic bomb. Whilst the creative literature led to a series of works that would pursue survivors on bleak landscape buffeted by a terminal winter, conventional struggles continued producing liberation and fresh notions of enslavement. It is perhaps not surprising that a passage from the book Art and War by Laura Brandon captures the genealogy of contemporary modern warfare. After the collapse of the Soviet bloc beginning in 1989, a new threat to western security emerged in Afghanistan and Iraq. Except in Afghanistan,

The Madness of Reason 61 concern again centred largely on nuclear capability. The USA, Britain, and thirty nine other countries participated in the first gulf war (1991). The destruction of the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September 2001 lead to the invasion of Afghanistan and was subsequently used as part of the justification for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 under the command of American and British forces. The various conflicts, interventions, and new domestic security arrangements since then have gained a collective name, the war on terror.18

Benjamin R. Barber captured the adversarial nature of the protagonists in the book Jihad vs. McWorld, a piece exploring terrorism’s challenge to democracy. In responding to the emerging threat, experiences have been invested into fiction. For example, Andy McNab is a former British Solder and SAS commander during the Gulf War. In his book, Bravo Two Zero, the plot revolves around a special mission to infiltrate Iraqi defences. Subsequent controversy following the publication of the book highlighted the unseen footprints of MI6 and exaggerations of real situations that confuse creative licence in seeking to transgress reality. Subsequent novels Immediate Action, Remote Control and Crisis Four continue the subversive military themes, and raise the new realities of conflict that ignore conventions and moral codes. The powerful have a gift for introducing fresh rules to the game.

Mutually Assured Destruction: Sailing with Ship of Fools The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 with wide devastation. Three days after Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb, enriched with plutonium was dispatched from the modified B29 on Nagasaki. The novel Black Rain by Ibuse Masuji captured the damage and the collective shock of violence related to the use of the bomb, the symbolism of loss having a wide impact. The use of nuclear weapons at the end of World War II heralded the dawn of the nuclear age. Every citizen on the planet became potentially drawn into the consequence of international conflict. This was to shape the initial mentality of the Cold War. The US pledged both economic and military resources to the confrontation with the Soviet Union…once the Soviet Union had also developed nuclear

62 Literature and International Relations weapons, a balance of terror called MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) froze confrontation in Europe and made the prospect of direct conflict between the USSR and the US daunting. Colonial powers France and Britain maintained the ability to intervene around the world and also developed nuclear weapons.19

Ulrich Beck writing in The Reinvention of Politics highlights the irony and insanity associated with the revolution of war through nuclear weapons and its relationship with democracy. Beck made the point of levelling nature of a nuclear war and related it to a stage of modernity, a condition that made its advancement problematical. Formulated in the atmosphere of the cold war, the concept suggests ‘that MAD implies a situation of parity where both the superpowers possess invulnerable second strike, delivery systems which enable them credibly to threaten each other with the level of devastation that is reasonably assumed to be unacceptable’.20 Britain and France received wide criticism in testing capabilities the latter receiving a strong rebuke in the early nineteen sixties from Premier Ben Bella, demanding the French negotiate a ban on tests in the Sahara. The non-liner view of history refutes the simplistic victories of the powerful, the defeated or distant feeling the cruel ravages of the fight of someone else. This is most acute in the scenario of a nuclear conflict.21 The passage below, which seems innocent in the context of the wide destructive power of contemporary nuclear weapons, paints a disturbing picture. For countries that were not targeted by nuclear bombs, fear, confusion and possibly civil disorder would spread as they lost contact with the target countries. These would increase as the effects of a nuclear winter were felt and, within weeks, people would be to suffer because of the cessation of trade…in the longer term, world-wide food shortages together with serious health problems would be the greatest threat.22

Whilst internet communication may survive in the short term, the condition of humanity would be immediately desperate and chaotic in the extreme. In a similar passage from same period the view that the impact would be recognised in stages is understated.

The Madness of Reason 63 In the immediate aftermath of a nuclear exchange, blasts would destroy some crops, those in cities and ports. Fire would destroy food stocks, and thousands of hectares of crops would burn…on a global basis, the problem associated with harvesting the crops that survive maybe the greatest of all.23

In the twentieth century, the Cuban Missile crisis made stark the apocalyptic scenario that threatened to consume international relations. It was clear that both powers came close to testing the theories of wide nuclear conflict, a reality check that encouraged a series of treaties and retraining arrangements introduced to limit mistakes and overly zealous interventions. By the mid-1980s, a new world was emerging where the limited possession of nuclear weapons shifted to wider possibilities in developing new capabilities outside the West. Up to now, the international community of statesmen, diplomats and military analysts has tended to regard the prospect of nuclear war as a problem only for the adversaries in possession of the weapons. Arms control and the endless negotiations aimed at the reduction of nuclear explosives have been viewed as the responsibility, even the prerogative, of those few nations in actual confrontation. Now all that is changed. There is no nation on Earth free of the jeopardy of destruction if any two countries, or group of countries, embark on a nuclear exchange.24

In the realist framework of International Relations, MAD analysts could justify the escalation of weapons between the superpowers on deterrence. In the contemporary multi-polar world, nuclear proliferation in countries like Pakistan, North Korea and possibly Iran, alters the previous, but not infallible, arrangements between countries holding nuclear capabilities. It is not without some justification that these states point to the development of Pakistan, India and Israel as an example of nuclear expansion and double standards. A.J.P. Taylor in the classic text, How Wars Begin, suggests that it is not the frailty of human nature that is cause of international conflict but the presence of the state and its interrelations. It is the inevitable consequence of the sovereign states. Every Great Power relies on armaments as a means of deterrence. This deterrent has often worked and has given Europe long periods of peace. There comes a moment of impatience or misjudgement and the deterrent fails to work. With nuclear

64 Literature and International Relations weapons the Balance of Power has been replaced by the Balance of Terror. This only means that the chances of war are less, not that they are eliminated.25

In response to countervailing forces, which are opposed to the dominance of a Western model espousing a particular version of democracy, the international community working though the auspices of the United Nations are committed to non-proliferation. Where states fall short of recognised standards in nuclear agreements weapon inspectors and potentially sanctions are introduced to encourage restraint and the adoption of international agreements. It is understandable that new members will want to join the nuclear weapons club, even if the game is irrational; gamblers enjoy the prestige of the casino. Mearcheimer in a paper titled ‘Strategies for Survival’ capture the logic behind leading on nuclear capabilities: …states will pursue nuclear advantage because of the great benefits it promises. In particular, states will build lots of counterforce capability and push hard to develop effective defences in the hope that they might gain nuclear superiority.26

Defence shields such as the Star Wars system, envisaged by Ronald Reagan has been modified since the attack on the United States to encompass a security shield that is built on global intelligence gathering. In the nuclear defence industry, the superiority of American technology in this area is demonstrated in Britain’s nuclear dependence, which seemingly compromises its sovereignty in favour of the ‘special relationship’. This might prove to be a miscalculation. The United Kingdom and The United States are separate countries. It is a mistake to assume the shared language equates with identical cultural and social values. There are of course similarities, but the differences are wide. The on-going arrangements to share technology through Mutual Defence Agreement also appear to contravene a commitment to nuclear disarmament. The repose from security advisors would claim that the dangers of the world have not disappeared with the end of the cold war, but have become multifaceted, demanding high levels of communications surveillance and collaboration in national and regional defence.27 This ‘reality’, in the Western world, produces foreign security measures that lie somewhere between the dilemmas considered by James Der Darian

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and the scary images raised in the book The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson, a piece that rescues the deluded atmosphere of a Dr. Strangelove for the twenty-first century. The literature that responds to imaging the nuclear chaos and its aftermath is wide-ranging. Fleck in an illuminative chapter on ‘The Lord of Flies’ makes reference to William Golding’s experience of Belsen and Buchenwald, and on man’s inhumanity to man: There were things done in that period from which I still have to avert my mind less I should be physically sick…[the horrors] were done skilfully, coldly, by educated men, doctors, lawyers, by men with a tradition of civilization behind them, to beings of their own kind…man’s propensity to evil…is man’s real nature yet it was ignored or hidden by those who urge man’s perfectibility and pictured his steady climb up the evolutionary ladder towards ‘sweetness and light’.28

This, then, is the viewpoint – that each and every one of us is a morally flawed creature, equally capable of pulling a trigger or pressing a button. Golding’s work is rich in seeking to place mankind’s capacity for good and evil under the microscope, recognising the thin line between civilisation and savagery is conditional on events, which turn rapidly casting relative peaceful characters towards recrimination and conflict. The damage caused by a large scale international nuclear exchange has been widely considered in popular literature. The evocative film Le Jetee, mentioned at the outset of the chapter was used as inspiration for the film by Terry Gilliam, The Twelve Monkeys. The movie again sketches a depressing picture of the nuclear winter. In another film that used time and the nuclear debacle, The Planet of Apes, in which the intrepid astronaut Taylor, is caught in space disorientation, returns to alienated planet ruled by apes, the recognition that the location is earth being revealed in the conclusion of the story, with the protruding statue of liberty, discovered on a deserted coastal strip in the forbidden territory. The continuation of MAD (mutually assured destruction) in contemporary international relations is as probably as mad as it gets in terms end games, which includes terrorist groups seeking

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capabilities that place them on an equal footing with states in causing mayhem. In the post-cold war environment, MAD losses its rationale. Proliferation resulting in the technologies and manipulation of processes democratise the tool of terror. ‘Rouge states’, terrorists, and deluded activists enter the global fray, manipulating technology to ‘customise’ dirty devices, which may, potentially, contain nuclear elements.29 Elements found at airports and container ports suggest that nuclear trade operates. The tension mounting from Iran nuclear ambitions, threatens Israel, the Middle East and world beyond. On another level, in the dark world of the Secret Service, the Alexander Litvinenko mystery, where the former Russian security officer died in London in 2006 following ingestion of the radioactive chemical polonium-210 produced an event that seemed stranger than fiction, with accusations made against the Russian Government. Traces of the polonium were discovered at locations throughout London, in Hotels, restaurants, and even a football stadium. The use of this material in this manner highlights the risks to public safety from a range of nuclear sources. Ian Fleming in the James Bond series captured the allure of the secret service to present a glamorous world of espionage, rouge menaces and despot regimes to cast his stories. This was sketched on a grand scale during the Cold War with agents from both sides launching operations and counter espionage measures in exotic landscapes and satin sheets. Fleming was educated at Eton and Sandhurst and served in naval intelligence during the war. The first book in the James Bond series, Casino Royale, re-launching the lucrative film franchise in the twenty-first century; it is claimed half of the population of the world have seen a James Bond film. More subtlety toned and impressionistic Joseph Conrad in the mesmerising The Secret Agent, a book cast amongst anarchist revolutionaries intent on bombing the Greenwich Observatory captures the fanaticism that often lies hidden, along with the mask of the ideology, which relived reveals the base angst of retribution and hatred. Following in the footsteps of Graham Greene, the stories of Ian Fleming, Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maugham based their bestselling spy stories on their own time with British Intelligence. John le Carré’s classic book Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy continued

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this apprenticeship and caused a modest sensation when the book was serialised on British Television with its seemingly accurate portrayal of the intelligence services. Along with the fears surrounding nuclear hostilities between states on an ideological collision course, terrorism and international intrigue is the concern of nuclear accidents. Civilian and military accidents present challenges that continue to require vigilance and safeguards. In the former, accidents at Chalk River, Ottawa, the Three Mile Island incident at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and the Chernobyl debacle30, are well-known in the public consciousness. The secrecy of military accidents, keep problems quiet, but not silent. In seeking to oppose the nuclear landscape CND and Greenham Common groups popularised the potential of peace studies and practices in international relations, which would result in a bubble of literature from women such as Suzy Charnas’s Motherlines and Vonda McIntyre’s Dreamscape. In a distressing account, Nevil Shute in the book On the Beach completes a harrowing narrative that begins with nuclear war in the Northern Hemisphere. One year later, the radiation has spread around the world. Australia soon becomes the last place on earth supporting human life. In response to a radio signal emitting from rural location in Australia, an American nuclear powered submarine in the Pacific sets a course to investigate the source of the communication in search of life. Thrillers such as Joe Buff’s Thunder in the Deep, an underwater techno-thriller stretch the imagination to warn of the impending scenarios that maybe the signals for World War III. Science fiction and war thrillers are speculative, but scenario planning in considering the possibilities. The view put forward by A.J.P. Taylor that global conflict has not been eradicated with the advent of nuclear weapons, simply delayed, raises the value of this literature to International Relations in conceptualising situations where things go wrong to the extent where the use of nuclear weapons become a possibility. In a chillingly relevant passage, Gil Elliot in the Twentieth Century Book of the Dead, speaks to the future in its reoccurring theme of destruction.

68 Literature and International Relations If national consciousness of the past leads to the conclusion that total war is an acceptable or desirable adventure for the future, then clearly there is something distinctly queasy about national consciousness. As the same time, the desire to see the dead in terms of the living culture of the present is a good, or at least a necessary desire. It is the instinct to let the dead bury the dead. But supposing this good instinct leads to a forgetting of the past, so that the past repeats itself and leads to an unconscious pattern of thought whereby the dead threaten to bury the living? There we have a case where the instinct is good but the pattern of thought unwittingly morbid.31

In Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles series, written in the shadow of World War II, values are explored in relation the selfinterest instinct that is notable in the strategy of earthlings seeking to colonise Mars. The full-scale nuclear war on earth produces a disorientation amongst the colonisers, which produces criticism on the motivations for expansion and growth.

Conclusion: The Current Silence War does not have to be global to have a wide impact. Scenes from Afghanistan, Somalia, Haiti, Iraq and Lebanon seep from the screens of the global media shaping a range of perceptions, which are digested through the channels of the electronic empire. It is the story telling culture that makes clearer the hybrid of identities, which conceal roots and loyalties to complicate the over-simplistic clashes of civilisations. Literature sustains the memory of events; it is not simply a passive device. It is a reference point that reflects and engages in the realities of everyday life. In the concluding lines of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the soldier and the student stand aghast on seeing a scene of devastation in the great hall of Elsinore. The mighty fallen, the powerful impotent, and the grandiose humbled. Words are crucially weapons, potentially more devastating than the smartest bomb in exposing the callous and misguided dreams of the nuclear megalomaniac. It is in the mosaic of global stories, shaped by the words of the witnesses that limit or accelerate the use of military weapons: albeit perspectives silenced through censorship and ignorance.

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Notes 1

http://www.thegroundhogs.co.uk/ The crucial passage in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty lies in Article VI and states ‘each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control’. 3 See Mel Mermelstein’s book By Bread Alone, for the best and worst expressions of humanity. 4 http://www.iisg.nl/archives/en/files/n/10764486.php 5 Smith (2005) p. 1. 6 Passage from the film-novel by Chris Marker. 7 Olson and Groom (1991) p. 317. 8 In a surprising move, BBC News On-Line reported that the US military has taken the war in Iraq into cyberspace with the launch of its own channel on the video-sharing website YouTube. Item posted 11 May 2007. 9 Rosenau (1990) p. 431. 10 Schotle (2005) p. 227. 11 ibid, (2005) p. 224. 12 Billig (1995) p. 31. 13 In recording voices of the Holocaust through various means and mediums see Gregory Jay piece ‘Other People’s Holocausts: Trauma, Empathy, and Justice in Anna Deavere’s Smith’s Fires in the Mirror.’ 14 Olson and Groom (1991) p. 1. 15 Gladkikh (2007) email communication 15 February. 16 Rascoe (1933) p. 477. 17 Kundera (2005 {1968]) pp. 10-11. 18 Brandon (2007) p. 75. 19 O’Brien and Williams (2004) p. 114. 20 Evans and Newham (1992) p. 185. 21 See The Nuclear Threat Initiative for a comprehensive overview of global security concerns linked to the use of nuclear weapons: http://www.nti.org/. 22 Owen, (1985), p. 129. 23 Peterson et al (1982), p 154. 24 Thomas (1984), xxii 25 Taylor (1979) p 16. 26 Mearsheimer (2006 [2001]) p. 65. 27 See Simon Norfolk’s picture essay ‘Military Landscapes’ in War Zones, Granta. The study includes a series of photographs and explanations concerning military landscapes on the West Coast of Scotland. 28 Fleck (1971) p. 190. 29 Conventional methods of military engagement are clearly useless in preventing terrorist incidents such as the 7/7 attack on London transport and commuters, the Bali night-club bombing, and the Madrid train bombing. 30 For an insight into the effects of the disaster on the Chernobyl community see the section of the accident in Tony Parker’s book Russian Voices. 31 Elliot, (1972) p. 89. 2

Chapter 4

Building Worlds: Forgotten Homes and Recovered Lands Introduction The importance of home and the loss of it should not be underestimated by those seeking to understand the important forces in international relations. Home is a place of refuge, rest and belonging, where families are born and lives are shaped or torn apart. Security is an elemental feature of home: it is a protective shell from the threat of external harm. This impression of home makes the presence of domestic violence so abhorrent. Home should be the place where the horrors of the outside world are temporarily removed. Home can, however, implode from within or bombs can be directed to it without warning; the adult world is riddled with destruction. Home shouldn’t be the place to run away from, but it can be worse than a most vile jail. Therefore, home is site of liberation or enslavement, life and death, hope and misery.1 Identity is formulated in the home or it is crushed by it. Identity is partly conditional on the type of home experience. From a home that is located in the concrete dots of the micro-landscape to the home of the shared planet, there is the ever present threat that danger may descend and one might be expelled or joined by others seeking to build a home the process of invasion and occupation. It can also be of course, the realm of salvation, the lost gravitating to the seaside village in search of the perfect and elusive home. Home and violence collide to produce physical and psychological homelessness, a condition resulting in escape or a resolution to endure. Home might be a refuge, but it can be a battleground. Struggles, tensions and conflicts, press occupants to seek new homes,

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but the residue of roots remain stubbornly to question the domicile site of residence. The émigré does not forget what has been lost. The landlord, the secret police and inquisitor knock on the door at 3 am. This chapter is concerned with the meaning of home in literature and International Relations. It is suggested that an understanding of home is valuable in making sense of the external forces that impact on it. The exile, expulsion and the denial of home is driven by a range of political, military or economic factors leading to migration, and resettlement. Home is repeatedly the untold and silent story of international relations.

The Battle for Home: Force, Defence and Offence Homes can be abandoned by fools. The beloved King can sacrifice his home through poor judgement. The founding father can become separate from his people, elevation and power distance being an obstacle to communication. In Shakespeare’s King Lear, the folly demonstrated in a decision to abdicate the responsibilities of the kingdom in a premature step, a mistake producing a series of disasters not equal to the initial wrong. The recovery of home in this sense can often be a tortuous process that fuels animosity and retribution. It leads to a hatred that festers in the ethnic or national literature, retribution burning in the mist of revenge. Jane Smiley’s reworking of the theme central to the King Lear story relocates Lear’s Kingdom somewhere in Britain to Zebulon County, Iowa. The piece is reinvented effortlessly when Larry Cook, owner of the largest farm in the region hands over his land to his three daughters. It is a piece that makes familiar the violence and disruption of home. In a different setting, but no less confrontational, Wounded by Percival Everett, considers the tolerance that masks the hypocrisy in the Wyoming desert country, a simmering hatred that is triggered through prejudice and intolerance when race and sex collide within the community. Home presents a puzzle. In Mark Twain’s classic, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the world of youth collides with the sinister trials of the adult life. In the homes that span the Mississippi River, Twain revealed the contradictions that complicate views of

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right and wrong, murder and revenge, starvation and slavery. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain produced a unique character that revealed the poetry of everyday life that built on the canvass of the civil war. The journey taken by Huck Finn and the runaway slave Jim is a literature of the highest calibre revealing the nightmare and promise of home. Letters to home can be exciting, disturbing and boring. Sophie Amundsen, the Norwegian schoolgirl in the novel Sophie’s World discovers a piece of paper in the mailbox with two questions scrawled across the page ‘Who are you?’ and ‘Where did you come from?’ Sophie is taken on an Alice in Wonderland type tour of a philosophy, meeting a range of ideas from Socrates to Sartre. The book by Jostein Gaarder takes Sophie on a magically intellectual journey, but one that operates within the world of home, a site normally associated with learning and discovery. The bright student, the gifted child and the unwilling infant can be taken from home and placed in an elite school. In the major novel The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse, set in province of Castalia, scholars are pressed to attain the nirvana of personal perfection and social responsibility. It is, however, a game, one which deludes as well as reveals the complexities of the world. Complications however emerge in the adult world. Home can be contested by the DNA of the family and the nation. Rudyard Kipling’s classic Kim, in which the orphan Kim O’Hara is torn between the love of his native India and the demands of loyalty to his Irish-English heritage, is a story increasingly familiar in a globalizing world. The tension that operates between Indian and Anglo-Indian societies is palpable when Kim is forced to choose where his allegiances ultimately rest. Departing from and arriving home is a normal everyday activity. It can also be a unique experience riddled with obstacles and strife. In Charlie Chaplin’s 1917 classic short The Immigrant, the silent black and white film followed the tramp and Edna Purviance on their way through rough seas to America. In scenes familiar to millions of immigrants, the hassles of getting into the land of the free is presented in a form that transcends the period in which it was filmed. The scene in which Charles Chaplin’s character kicks the immigration officer was later cited as “evidence” in the anti-

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American witch hunts, which resulted in his departure from the United States during the McCarthy “Red Scare” period in the 1950s. The invasion of home and the homeland is an ever present threat. Defence and security are issues that prevail in all homes. When the collective home of the nation is threatened the population defends the lands in the name of the home. Bertolt Brecht’s short play, the Horatians and Curtatians, highlights the effectiveness of a determined and resistant population repelling a determined invading army. Similar themes can be also noted in Tolstoy’s War and Peace and in references made in Wagner’s grand opera Tristan and Isodle. The home is fragile, but it can be resilient. Violence can erupt spontaneously, havoc introduced into a quiet room. Raj Kamal Jha in the harrowing Fireproof, gives voices to the dead following the religious disturbances in Ahmedabad, India. The violence unfolds indiscriminately, a tide of rampages killing people and destroying property without reason or direction. The dream of home can prove equally traumatic. In The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux, Allie Fox, escapes from the material crime ridden American nightmare with his family to set up home in the Honduran jungle. The book reveals Allie’s obsession with a utopian dream that does not exist. Compromising the safety of his family, he pursues the home with a vigour that this infected with madness. Despite finding a temporary paradise, seemingly free from the parasites that he has left at ‘home’, the project is short lived. Allie is unable to recognise the limitations of his talents, casting the family into danger and chaos. In an action that focused the eyes of the world on New York City with the attack on the home of commerce and trade, the role of nations, their similarities and differences, hopes and desires, values and faiths, were crystallised in a moment of dramatic violence. Images of the collapse of the Twin Towers were sent around the world on the screens of the electronic empire. The American home had been wounded. The reaction led to a reprisal on the home of others. In this sense, the global home becomes the battleground noted in Benjamin R. Barber’s dramatic book, Jihad vs. McWorld. The limitation of a homogenous global culture was recognised in the attack. In the revival of history, the fault lines that divide society are similar to the tensions that divide states. The view expressed in the The Clash of Civilisations by Samuel Huntington is that the clash

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of civilisation is the greatest threat to future stability in world politics. In responding to the multi-national composition of states, it is overly simplistic to assume cultural diversity is easily compartmentalised. Literature provides a mechanism to understand cultures and acknowledge the wider concerns of international relations. In experiencing a culture through the written word, the cross-border incursions and social bias become less antagonistic and separate, fulfilling the promise of the story. Literature recovers common humanity. It identifies darkness and light, and sends messages of reconciliation concealed in a gesture.2 Home can be a war zone or a place of hiding: the tribal belt that stretches through the snow peaked mountains of the PakistanAfghanistan border is ‘home’ to the Taliban. Correspondingly, the icy compounds that are temporarily ‘home’ to alliance troops provide a sanctuary of a kind from the tussles with insurgents and bewildered tribesmen. In the struggle to secure a safe home, political dominance and subordination plays an important part in the location of the home and the fortunes of its occupants. Machiavelli understood this well in formulating his advice to Princes and rulers. The familiar is part of home: the faces, the sounds, smell, colours and the climate. In The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco, Yambo, a rare book dealer, can remember every book he has read, but through a bizarre memory loss, he forgets everything about his personal life and home. Memory is integral to the interpretation of home, its recovering being instrumental in rediscovering who ‘we’ are. Yambo looks back picking up clues about his life, a life influenced by the light of his first love and its consequences. Anthony Elliott and Charles Lemert illuminating book, The New Individualism, sketches the impact of globalization on homes around the world. The insecurity prevalent in society linked to the war on terror and the embedded materialism in post-industrial societies is generating a range of problems that is leading to social disintegration. The reaction is animating an industry based on insurance and security.

Building Worlds 75 Whether it is actually warfare, or civil strife, or the spread of AIDS, or the selling of children into the sex trade, or grinding poverty, or sewage flowing before the opening of a shanty, violence is present whenever those with the means use their means to protect their privileges against those who want a share of them.3

The above passage represents a large swathe of humanity back to a Hobbesian world of war against all, where greed and animosity are normal features of a global export. Selfishness and material inequalities are increasing within and between states, undermining the foundations of the secure home. The nostalgia for Henry Purcell’s in ‘O well is thee’ an anthem on family joy and mortality is understandable, but its realisation is increasingly remote in the turbulence that is the normal condition of the global home.

The Literature of Export and Import The history of colonialism and domination has impacted on the resident of the home in all parts of the world.4 Ancient Empires and modern political systems have taken lands and occupied homes in an imperial strategy. From the seventeenth century, the indigenous home was invaded and colonised in successive waves of occupation and forcible movement. Although virtually all these colonies have now attained their independence, the process of colonialism reshaped the social and cultural map of the globe. In some regions like North America, Australia and New Zealand, which were only thinly populated by hunting and gathering communities, Europeans became the majority population. In other areas, including much of Asia, Africa and South America, the local populations remained the majority.5

During the 18th Century, Britain became the dominant trading country in the slave trade, transporting from Africa alone an estimated one million people to work on plantations in the Americas and the Caribbean. Great cites such as Liverpool benefited from the trade. Towards the end of the century, social attitudes towards slavery and changing economic realities worked to influence the increasing clamour for abolition. Key figures such as William Wilberforce in Parliament and the former slave Olaudah Equiano

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headed a campaign to raise an awareness of a British public, ignorant of the vile trade. Equiano produced an influential autobiography The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, the African by Himself Other abolitionists including Toussaint L’Ouverture, James Ramsay, Thomas Clarkson, Mary Prince, Elizabeth Heyrick, James Stephen and The Quakers, shaped the protest against the slave trade and contributed to a growing movement that would promote the human rights of slaves. The Abolition of the Slave Trade Bill passed through both the Commons and the Lords. It received Royal Ascent on 25 March 1807.6 The Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe in the influential first novel, Things Fall Apart, followed the break up of the traditional Igbo society during the colonial time, a reflection of the pain that accompanies the implosion of home through the arrival of unwelcome visitors. Okonkwo’s exile and return highlights the drama of a home invaded. Achebe’s novel is commonly viewed as archetypal modern African novel in English. The novel resonates with the importance of roots and folklore, images and poems crackling with anger. The process of disruption, which does not end with decolonization, generates hatred that naturally becomes the content of songs and poems concerned with struggle and liberation. Whilst independence releases the home from its oppressors, the residue of the occupation remains, in the footprints of architecture, education, and administration. In the retreat from occupation there is an imperfect return. Resentment masks the celebration of return or independence. Home can never be the same.7 The forced exile from the traditional home to a second, third or fourth place of residence can be equally traumatic. Ignorance and opposition forces the process of perpetual resettlement. The AfricanAmerican journalist, Ida Wells, set up a local black newspaper, Free Speech in Memphis at the end of 1890s. Speaking out against injustice, she was forced to relocate north to escape threats to her life. Building a new home in a foreign land is riddled with difficulties, negative events are remembered and positive contributions are forgotten. The work of the American playwright and poet Amiri Baraka used absurdist theatre to expose the limitations of racial integration in plays like The Slave.

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Colonialism in some form is notable in the development of all human societies. War, trade, fear and envy produce expansionism generating a cultural and political hold over the oppressed. It is a feature of development which includes social disruption, manipulation and forced segregation. Home is compromised in the process, features of the safe haven remain, but psychologically the home is riddled with unease. Homi Bhabba’s introduction in the Franz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Mask, makes explicit the impact of the relationship on both the coloniser and the colonised, a dictatorship shaped on fear and desire creating cultural terrorism. The operation of the master and the slave dichotomy works to explain the power relationship, but there are anomalies, where mutual respect, and occasionally love, produces surprising trajectories. Nonetheless, the pressure of social convention, particularly before the acknowledgement of multiculturalism forced cultures to be separate and ostracised those who ignored social norms. Firdous Azim in the book, The Colonial Rise of the Novel, hints at the irony in this relationship. The novel, as the discourse of the master, occupies a somewhat anomalous position – its history is one of struggle with and against that master, while it also seeks to be recognised by it and to emerge with full status into the field of English, as both literary and pedagogical text. The history of the novel can either be read as a narrative of growth, or the focus can be kept on the dichotomies and contradictions within the genre, and the tensions of its positioning within literature.8

In expansive invasions through the acquisition of territory through conquest, imperialism is the expression of Empire. The competition between European powers to secure colonies throughout the world from the late 19th century, carried with it the manners and values of the coloniser. The illusion of civilisation was used as a vehicle to build inroads into countries and communities to ensure economic development and a role for social elites abroad. Eustace Palmer in the book, The Growth of the African Novel, suggests that: in the colonial days African culture was adversely affected by the imperialistic experience since everything was judged by western cultural standards and

78 Literature and International Relations there was a tendency, in fact, to suppress those aspects of African culture which could not be reconciled with western culture.9

The essence of African culture was not respected in this sense. The western mind-set, refused to acknowledge cultural reference points beyond generalist labels, which missed the import of the expression, action or feeling that rested dormant before it could be expressed in a positive literature. In seeking to address the opposition of an authentic African literature, the book The South African Novel by Kenneth Parker, written in the trait apartheid, realises the concern in literature to respond to the separation of races. Nonetheless, the realisation of discrimination shapes self-reflection and revulsion, formulating journeys of self-discovery that are riddled with political interventions and forced cultural positions. The passage below refers to the realisation that an indigenous literature is a tool of cultural authenticity and revival. As highlighted in the poems of Wole Soyinka, dedicated to the struggle for liberation in Southern Africa, the first on Mozambique’s 1975 declaration of war against the apartheid regime of South Africa and the second on the South African struggle itself as epitomized by the indomitable Nelson Mandela, then chained, like Prometheus, to the rocks of Robben island, literature played an important part in the struggle. Unlike in the 1960s when the poets were culturally obsessed, nature-oriented, and ‘universal’, today old and young poets are addressing their national issues more aggressively than before. A Ghanaian writer that I'm familiar with is Kofi Awoonor. Namely his poems House by the Sea. Another Ghanaian Kofi Anyidoho’s Elegy for the Revolution and Earthchild. In Kofi Awoonor’s House by the Sea, he mainly recounts his time in jail and how as a political prisoner he was treated. Kofi Anyidoho on the other side has his poems dealing primarily with public, political, historical, and social themes rooted in the traditions and culture of African people. I have seen him give lectures on the meanings in his books. He equally raises a lot of attention in Ghana and Africa to highlight political, social and public themes by means of his poems. 10

The interest in national concerns is not an exclusive goal. On the one hand, ethic concerns are frequently the content of a challenging literature. On the other hand, poets transgress the nation and speak to issues pertinent to global concerns.

Building Worlds 79 Known writers and poets like Okigbo, Clark, and Soyinka who all responded to the Nigerian crisis of the late 1960s, but though Okot p’Bitek touched upon the Ugandan political situation of the post-independence period, none did so from a general African and human perspective. With the excesses of political independence, the poets have come to believe that Africans are mainly responsible for their problems. In their desire to effect changes, they use the nation-state as the starting point. For example, Soyinka’s My Tongue Does Not Marry Slogans, and Mandela's Earth, Tunde Fatoba’s poems, and many of Tanure Ojaide’s poems in Labyrinths of the Delta and The Eagle’s Vision all have the Nigerian society as a backdrop. In the same manner, Kofi Awoonor’s The House By The Sea and Kofi Anyidoho’s Elegy for the Revolution and Earthchild are both based on their particularized Ghanaian national experiences. The poets love their countries but criticize the administrations in power.11

The national experience is one expression of literature. The passage below refers the experience of a woman from Tanzania struggling with the forces of the traditional and the modern. Regarding the question you asked about stories or legends who influenced me when I was growing up and how they may have shaped my view of the world. Well, there are not many as I grew up in Africa at the times where communication technology was not advanced, so it was difficult to know/learn a lot international wise, but since my father did his masters here (at Keele University) and travelled a lot, we grew up knowing a bit of international affairs. Well, to cut a long story short, I was very much influenced by Margaret Thatcher, I grew up when she was a prime minister, seeing her has a woman leader inspired me because I grew up in a culture where women were discriminated against, were considered mainly as house wives, some families were not even bothering to educate girls, so looking at such a powerful leader, made me think women can do a lot when they are given opportunity and not only being house wives. Another person who shaped my view of the world is Nelson Mandela, growing up at the time when he was fighting against apartheid, and I remembered watching the movie called Sarafina cast by Leleti Khumalo and Whoopi Goldberg since the hideous apartheid ideology meant to keep people apart forever, through Nelson Mandela’s struggle to fight apartheid I learnt you can never keep people apart. I try to imagine what will happen in today’s world with globalization in mind if apartheid was not defeated, and I can't even figure it out, this (globalization) is enough to prove you will never be able to keep people apart.12

One of the most widely read African writers, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, whose work has earned him international attention and praise. In exile for more than twenty years, Ngugl wa Thiong’o has become

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influential in encouraging other African writers to put down their experiences in fiction. In a recent novel, the Wizard of the Crow, the author constructs a fictional home to weave a selection of political concerns. The novel reflects on the Africa of the twentieth century in the context of 2,000 years of world history. The novel is set in the “Free Republic of Aburlria” and explores the battle for control of the souls of the Aburlrian people through humour and social insight. The book draws on the enigmatic traditional African storytelling, dispensing with the restrictions of time. The book is a sublime satire on political power and corruption. From another perspective, Kenneth Ramchand writing on the evolution of the West Indian novel recognises the lifting of oppression and its value in maintaining the stories of the legacy of the oppressed. The expression of violation takes various forms that include physical and psychological repercussions. These are found in novels such as The Orchid House by Phyllis Sand Allfrey, Christopher by Geoffrey Drayton and Brown Sugar by James Emtage. The displacement of indigenous peoples from their homes is a reoccurring theme in non-Western literature. The power relationship that functioned between the colonies, expressed through law, and the colonised, subordinated to the authority, would be shaken with the rise of fascism and the experience of World War II. In the aftermath of the events that challenged civilisation in the first part of the twentieth century, the process of decolonisation was instrumental in the break up of the British Empire. This produced the commonwealth of independent states and transformed the French Empire into the Communauté Française. Born on the island of Dominica to mixed parents, Jean Rhys sense of not belonging shaped writing that would flow into the themes of uncertainly and madness in the novel Wide Sargasso Sea. Set in the powerful landscape of Jamaica, the book builds on the Charlotte Brontë’s themes of struggle and acceptance. Ermin, writing a sensitive piece on the book in Forum on Fiction studies the background of the book and the challenges in presents. The image of the looking-glass, a motif running throughout all of Rhy’s fiction, has a particular resonance in Wide Sargasso Sea, where questions of

Building Worlds 81 identity are given the racial and national complications that can only act as a subtext in Rhys’s “English” novels.13

The home as a country is linked directly to the native land, the roots of the nation being inspired by the relationship of the native group to landscape and literature. The example of the loss of homelands, for example with the indigenous American Indians and reconstruction of the native Aboriginal Australia demonstrates how reconstruction is possible, but it is far from satisfactory. The ravages of cultural terrorism forcing customs and traditions into the confines of the indigenous museum and heritage show. Linda Tuhiwai Smith in Decolonizing Methodologies includes storytelling as a valuable research tool, rescuing the context through a series of research projects. Story telling, oral histories, the perspectives of elders and of women have become an integral part of all indigenous research. Each individual story is powerful. But the point about stories is not that they simply tell a story, or tell a story simply. These new stories contribute to a collective story in which every indigenous person has a place.14

Settlements and Diasporas create a variety of homes and reshape the psychology canvas of the (new) country in varied ways. The idea of Diaspora peoples is recognised in the scattering of the Jewish Diaspora, the need to have a home becoming a national priority in the tortuous struggle of the group. This is no less the objective of the Palestinian people in recovering their homeland. The movement of groups is notable in the Chinese Diaspora, the Bangladeshi Diaspora and the black African Diaspora, each having been triggered by distinct political and social upheavals at home. The scattering of peoples during an intense period of globalization is reshaping the location of home. How this is impacting on the roots that link groups to specific countries is in need of research in International Relations. Within Britain, the situation is confused alternates between peaceful coexistence and coded hostility. The British rave culture of the late 1990s, Hanif Kureishi’s novel The Black Album, captured the tensions between the authentic and adopted home, a confrontation where, in this setting, Western ideas clash with Muslim expectations to create confusion and unease.

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In France, the complex inter-locking of culture in cities such as Marseille and Paris, generate cultural ghettos where disadvantages in the labour market produce antagonisms and a national schizophrenia that marginalises more than it unites. David Putner in Postcolonial Imaginings, in reference to the novel suggests that the diasporic themes are prevalent in driving travellers to adopt the persona of the exile, even in their own homes. There is a possibility in The Black Arrow of everybody having gone, as it were, ‘too far’: too far from home (Shahid’s family are, with a nice flourish, travel agents), too far in revolutionary zeal, too far, in the case of Shahid’s elder brother Chili, into a realm of addiction that bears heavily, as we shall see, on the fate of the Diaspora.15

In a remarkable book, Barbara Harlow in Resistance Literature, reveals how words as weapons unsettle and disturb oppression and occupation. In the preface, the author reiterates the use of language as a political statement, which reveals the conditional nature of the creative piece. Although a considerable amount of the literature of resistance has been written in English (the language of one colonial power) much of it has not and is in French, Portuguguese or Spanish (representing the influence of other colonial powers), or in the native language of the area, such as Arabic, Gikuyu (Kenya), South American dialects, etc. The very choice of the language in which to compose is a political statement on the part of the author, country to country.16

The home country is where the heart is underpinning identities with reference to roots. Early influences are not broken easily.17 The flight from a unique (family) home can be motivated by a variety of positives and negative experiences (it may not be present at the outset). Other negative influences break the chain that have shaped generations producing confusion and a nostalgia that is exaggerated in rediscovering the building of new homes.18 In making sense of the foundation of home, the television series How Art Shaped the World, a quest that spanned across five continents, Nigel Spivey, the writer of the programme revealed how creative artefacts of the ancient world and their relevance for generating a national and global imagery. It is notable how signs,

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symbols and icons impact on how the home is imagined within the community and in the outside world. With the introduction of the print, literature complements the meaning of home, interpreting and communicating a nexus of stories that flow into the national consciousness, shaping and instructing the values that contribute to an understanding of the nation. The home is a common in all societies. It is a natural sanctuary, the site of roots. In the passages above it is clear that home is also a place of conquest and violence. In the Bible and Colonialism, Michael Proir explores the narrative that legitimated in terms of culture the benefits of a Western colonising process. In overriding the ‘home’ of indigenous peoples in a move to construct a promised land, ruled and administrated by a legal and moral apparatus consistent with the direction on the scripture, genuine faith was compromised.

Nation and Home: Stereotypes and Ideal-Types Nation and home overlap in a mosaic of factors that include economic relations, culture, politics, landscape, poetry, literature and music. The creative element is beautifully captured in the book, The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin, where the ancient tracks of Australia are recorded in songs not maps, casting the keepers of the knowledge, the Aboriginals, to walk the routes singing the Ancestors’ song. Chatwin suggests that it is in the nomadic innocent world that the home of the ancestors can be accessed; the noise of modern life being an anathema to personal enlightenment. Art related to each of the points noted shapes the context of belonging, either in terms of political economy or culture. The coherent racial, linguistic and historical experience produces the reference points of the nation, its stereotypes and ideal types. In the exhibition Citizens and Kings, presented at The Royal Academy, London, the gallery reflected on royal heritage with Kings and Queens bedecked in ermine jewels. Whilst citizens such as Marat are included, the interventions of the humble, the crafty, the mischievous and the studious operating in the footnotes of history are largely absent from representation in great painting.

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The common home can be, however, a contested site. In a humorous account The Caravan Gallery: Is Britain Great? by Jan Williams and Chris Teasdale presents a series of images from a photographic survey of the nation that records the mundane, the obese, the tacky, the drab, the ‘Chav’ culture and the ordinary in everyday life.19 Looking at the photographs, the pictorial content suggests that the ‘common’ view of Britain as a run down expired society is accurate. Nevertheless, in focusing on scenes from the North of England and various seaside resorts, the book distorts the British reality, or it provides reference points of a community reality that operates within it. The conclusions can be managed by the reader. It differs significantly from a novel such as Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock, which focused on the pre-war Brighton underworld and provided an incisive view of mob culture in a local setting. Obviously, a different selection of photographs could have provided a ‘best’ or ‘worst’ of British culture. The point rests that various perspectives can be constructed to present a view of the home that is positive or negative. Whist an authentic view would need to include a multi-cultural Britain, the story would be frustratingly incomplete. Home is an enigma with secrets and surprises. In a modern sense, the history of citizens is influenced by a cycle for forces that inform nationalism and internationalism. Nationalism can turn to jingoism, xenophobia, fascism and totalitarianism. Internationalism can create cooperation, harmonisation and coordination, but not without obstacles. There can be several nations within the state. Within Europe, Britain and Spain are the obvious examples. Conversely, the revival of national claims in cyber nations spanning the globe linking e-Diaspora is an intriguing development that will unfold in the twenty-first century. Nation is a term that generates anomalies and confrontation. At the international level, the terms League of Nations and Untied Nations suggest a common international ‘group’ sharing uniform customs, desires and expiations. The impression of international solidarity in the form of international institutions and organisations can be misleading, the nation is conditional on its historical development and contemporary circumstances, a position noted in a diverse literature though characters recovering and retelling stories of national identity.

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The experiences, frustrations, hopes and objectives of a nation impact on the ideology and management of state affairs by Government. Bhabha suggests… The emergence of the later phase of the modern nation, from the midnineteenth century, is also on of the most sustained periods of mass migration within the west, and colonial expansion in the east. The nation fills the void left in the uprooting of communities and kin, and turns that loss into the language of metaphor. Metaphor, as the etymology of the word suggests, transfers meaning of home and belonging, across the ‘middle passage’, or the central European steppes, across those distances and cultural differences, which span the imaging community of the nation-people.20

The nation has an ability to unite the group or separate it, a flight from it being a form of treachery. There are, nonetheless, situations where citizens abandon their roots. It is a form of dissent influenced by the need to flee a particular class, family, circumstance or community. In Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native, the immortal character of Eustacia Vye, agitated and crushed by the numbing weight of local mediocrity, dreams of escape to Paris, to experience an excitement in the world not limited by the local conventions. Eustacia is an alien to the nation. Her spirit is international. All nations encapsulate a restraining ethic, it is in their nature to hold on to their component parts. Whilst escapees flee, the nation continues to exhibit a powerful influence, which is fundamental to the facilitation of the home.

The New Imperialism: Online American The developments in information technology and communications particularly through the wide use of the internet and email are animating the multinational shift to a global society. This is producing the anomalies of duel citizenship and tangled alliances, which can lead to confusion in deciding which national team to support or vocally supporting one state against another in confrontational relations between states. The version of an English-American language that dominates email and mobile texts is central to the international business

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language that impacts on all countries. Where ten to fifteen years ago, an employee with a large company would perhaps communicate with a foreign agent, partner or business associate infrequently, generally once or twice a month, it is increasingly common to exchange information internationally several times an hour with diverse recipients located in different time zones and geographical regions. Within business certain formal conventions persist, but increasingly familiarity is generating a deeper understanding of culture, belief and stories. Identity is not necessarily lost in the digital world. In the fascinating book Basque Cyberculutre from Digital Euskadi to CyberEushalherria by Andoni Alonso and Iaki Arzoz, the authors set a cultural strategy that is liberating and utopian. It is also potentially damaging, leading to an epitaph on a web-page. Sustaining cultural reference points in the digital age is conditional on the momentum and commitment of the cultural protagonists in ensuring the longevity of the existing culture that contributes to the home ideal-type. It is a story that is not necessarily unique: the message is delivered in a modified form, but its content shares the frustrations, desires and intentions of previous generations that have used a collective voice in a struggle to defend the home, a cause that is not complete.

Conclusion: Everyone is Everybody Else Everyone has a place to reside, but not everyone has a home. Homelessness is not just a state of being with a home, excluded and denied a permanent address. Homelessness in its widest sense can be emotional and spiritual. Hopes and aspirations can become detached and denied forcibly making the resident homeless in the collective home. Home is a powerful place. The Palestinians and the Israelis know the full value of home. Occupation and struggle focuses the mind on the tentative foundations of home. Literature again provides scholars of International Relations with a useful insight into the meaning of home. Home is invariably a

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contested site. It is somewhere. It is in the nation. It is in the state. Therefore, it cannot escape insecurity.

Notes 1

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s remarkable novel Half of a Yellow Sun recounts the struggle for home through the trial of creating an independent republic in Nigeria in the chaos of Biafra. The book is a rich source of insight into the end of colonialism, responsibility and race. 2 This process is often imbued with complications. Rajaa Alsanea’s novel, Girls of Riyadh presents an alternative view of home in Saudi Arabia, a picture evoking a series of cultural and national controversies. 3 Elliott and Lemert (2006) p. 174-175. 4 See the journal Research in African Literatures for a strong insight into African literary history. 5 Giddens, (1993 [1989] p. 54. 6 In 2007, 200 hundred years after the 1807 act, commemorations were held throughout the Britain. The pain of resettlement, the violence, and the damage caused by the trade to and from indigenous economies continues to generate controversy frustrating full cultural and economic reparations. 7 Home is often remembered through literature and music. Abdullah Chhadeh skill with the qanun for example, evokes Arab music stretching back to the tenth century. 8 Azim (1993) p. 10-11. 9 Palmer (1979) p. 1. 10 Adom email communication 11 September 2006 11 Ibid, Adom. 12 Hiaka email communication 9 August 2006. 13 Erwin (1989) p. 144. 14 Smith (1999) p. 144. 15 Punter (2000) p. 160. 16 Harlow (1987), p. xviii. 17 See George Alagiah’s autobiography A Home From Home and the idea of recovering ‘home’ within the home. Alagiah maps a personal journey that beings in Sri Lanka, then Ghana and then onto Britain. The book highlights the complexity of home and identity in a potent manner, transgressing the reference points of location and heritage. 18 See Philo’s work on the misrepresentations of ‘home’ from an international student point of view. The author studied the impression international students have of Britain before they arrive and found that beliefs were ‘overwhelmingly positive’ seeing Britain as a country of ‘gentle’ people and gentlemen. This view was linked to the images of home created by wellknown writers such as Jane Austen, or characters such as Sherlock Holmes. In this context, it is clear that literature has the ability to distort as well as make clear. 19 This is an extreme opposite to a view of literary Britain found in the book Reader’s Guide to Writers and Landmarks, which may no longer exist, but is part of a particular British story. 20 Bhaba (1990) p. 291.

Chapter 5

Border Flows: Crossing the State Line and Getting Caught

Introduction The flight from home is the concern of this chapter. It links literature, globalization and international thought in a nexus of relations that facilitates the displacement of the familiar, the ‘safe’ and the roots that provide a compass for identity and community.1 The chapter recognises the importance of roots and refutes the overly simplistic claims that homogenising global culture is subsuming or eliminating less resilient cultures. The term glocalization is used sensitively, but placed in the context of flux, the flow of money, people and trade being influential in creating multiple cultures and homes. The material below is concerned with social atomisation and uncoupling, a process of disturbance found in the stories of departure.2 The references relating to globalization focus on the animation encouraging border crossings. It examines the motivations in the flow of people, money, trade and ideas. Picking up issues such as asylum, deportation, refuge, escapism and travel, the material maps the re-emergence of the human content in international relations and links it to capitalism. The extremities of human behaviour are introduced in the context of the fragility of human rights, which are repeatedly demolished by human wrongs that are noted in the struggles for territory, market share and ownership. The style of the chapter differs slightly from previous and subsequent chapters, in the manner of using a subconscious voice that is a collection of questions on globalization that occasionally appear in tutorials. These are loose reflections on dialogues between students and staff that seem appropriate in making sense of the globalising process.3

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In an attempt to steer clear of a mechanical version of globalization, inspiration is taken from Stan Smith edited volume on Globalization and its Discontents, essays and studies that link literature to globalization and the global issues to creative interpretations, which draw on literary and cultural sources. The objective of the chapter continues the theme set out at the beginning of the book in responding to two key questions: the first question asks: what it is to ‘read’ literature as a way of studying International Relations? The second key question relates to what literature does when ‘it’ relates to international relations?

Globalization: Homeless, But Not Alone Globalization is a word frequently used as a weapon by advocates and dissenters in response to the seemingly omnipotent and omnipresent process of global integration.4 On the one very simplistic hand, globalisation is used as a catch all term to celebrate the benefits arising from the flow of people, money and trade. On the other hand, the word is used in derogatory terms, usually directed at the residue of change reinforcing underdevelopment and marginalisation.5 First of all, the entry under globalization in the Dictionary of International Relations6 lists a series of key points including: •

•

The process whereby state-centric agencies and terms of reference are dissolved in favour of a structure of relations between different actors operating in a context which is truly global rather than merely international The implication is that states, held to exercise sovereignty – have ‘lost control’ of these processors and therefore of consequential outcomes.

In an incisive passage, Lindsey considers the expansion of classical free market economic relations and its impact on political institutions suggesting, ‘call it the invisible hand versus the dead hand. That struggle strains and distorts market and social development, and gives rise to the occasional, crippling instability –

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globalization is a consequence of an uncertain and uneven process, and subject to sudden and traumatic reverses and dislocations’.7 Ok, so Globalization is straightforward capitalism? Oh yes, and something bad is happening to the state? Isn’t that Hamlet? It’s disappearing, right? Let’s have a realty check. Let’s say that you are an international student from South Africa studying in the UK. Your fees are pretty high? Sure are. Let’s say that you are studying full time in the UK and your tutors organise a trip to another EU City, Amsterdam in the Netherlands for example. What happens if you don’t get a tourist or Schengen visa before you go, what happens if you don’t make contact with the Embassy? A lot of unpleasantness at the border. Haven’t they disappeared? Maybe for diplomats, VIPs and celebrities The relationship between the spread of capitalism and the institutions and agencies of the state is beguilingly complex benefiting and handicapping unevenly a range of policies and activities within government. The privatisation of many public services has resulted in the spread of commercial activity within the state, a development blurring public/private service. In the international arena, the dead hand of the state may simply resemble a notable development in the global political economy, which suggests that a ‘key feature of globalization has been the creation of new none-state centres of activity’8, engendering, for example, corporate operations, issue groups and lobbyists. Robert Jackson in Classical and Modern Thought on International Relations, echoes views on global Shakespeare and frames the subject in grand literary style when he remarks in his introduction on international thought: A suitable starting point for such an inquiry is to conceive of world affairs as Shakespeare portrayed the human scene: namely, as a great stage on which the dramas of life are played out. To contemplate world affairs in terms of drama, which is an ancient image at least as old as Sophocles’s play Antigone, written in the late fifth century B.C, is to be drawn into a profoundly human world: a

Border Flows 91 scene of various players engaged in activities of seeking security from others or advantage over them or benefits from collaborating with them or conspiring against them. It is, thus, a world of self-regarding, self-interested, and selfseeking behaviour, an instrumental world.9

Didn’t the rock group Rush produce a live album called The World’s a Stage? Yes, they did. Then we had Live Aid. Live 8 and Live Earth. But pop concerts don’t change the world? That isn’t International Relations. What is International Relations? Security What is International Relations? Treaties, law, diplomacy. What is International Relations? Drama and comedy. Vincent Cable in the book, Globalization and Global Governance, opened with an overview of the integration of technology, financial markets and multinational behaviour, which occurred rapidly throughout the nineteen-nineties. This posed an important question. Is globalization desirable? Cable replied that ‘in general it is. But at the level of industrial countries it depends on the specifics of sequencing and timing and on the quality of domestic policies’.10 The picture is less clear in the developing world where the seeds of enterprise are emerging amongst the more historically recognisable activities associated with underdevelopment. In an interesting development, the dispersion of people from Africa throughout the world is responsible for providing a facility whereby wealth accumulated abroad is sent on to various African nations, which correspondingly helps the micro economy, a process that is highlighting the need for investment institutions. This feature is responsible for encouraging a degree of local enterprise and small business activity. The spread of capital is, of course, extremely uneven.

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So, a flow of people from Africa taking up residence elsewhere in the world is positive, it’s globalization working. Even a brief visit to the OneWorld.net network portal illustrates the vast problems associated with the marginalised and disenfranchised people of the world. Not everyone is able to get up and move out. There is always someone left behind. There are so many paradoxes, have you seen the Sher-EBangladesh Nagar: National Capital of Bangladesh Assembly Hall building in Bangladesh? It is probably one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, a jewel in one of the poorest regions? How did it get there? Louis Kahn, the Estonian born American architect with the support of the Bangladeshi people. Globalization, amazing. So globalization is just the consequence of a media driven society? You can also find globalization in Gurinder Chadha’s Bride and Prejudice, in the Beatles’s Revolution 9, in Picasso’s Guernica, in the Frank Zappa bar on a beach in Goa, it’s in New Zealand amongst the Hobbits, it’s in Paul Simon’s Soweto sound, it’s Che on his motorbike and it’s in Mark Manning’s and Bill Drummand’s cult masterpiece, Bad Wisdom; Elvis really did globalise everything. Switch off the TV, the music system and stop shopping on-line for a minute. Phew! Ok, that’s radical. Why not go for a walk and think about the views of these guys. Peter Jay in the book Road to Riches makes a valuable point when he suggests that we cannot unwind globalization.11 ‘We have lived through the successive treaties, agreements, annexes and contracts, in many cases we have supported them and have been a part of the process.’12 Global prosperity has improved, but it has not been distributed equally, even John Stuart Mill foresaw the problems. This is perhaps the most pressing challenge for the twenty-first century not just for politicians and issue groups, but for business too. The leaders of the developing world are right to be frustrated with the weakness of influential institutions charged with helping countries plagued by indebtedness and obstacles to trade. A genuine

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partnership is required here between institutions that represent the interests of wealthy and less wealthy states. This can only be achieved with full sensitivity to cultural aspirations and activities of each party. Understanding cultural goals should be the starting point in shaping workable policies that produce collective benefits. It’s never as easy as that. Why? Politics, it’s a very dirty business. To understand the institutional architecture of the globalising process Joseph Stiglitz in a controversial book, Globalization and its discontents urged a thorough assessment of the three main institutions that govern the economic aspect of globalization.13 The International Monetary Fund, The World Bank and The World Trade Organization operate across the globe, delivering initiatives that are not without social, political and economic consequences The institutions that emerged from the Bretton Woods system, the later evolving from the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, were set up to manage the flaws in the international system, specifically the free flow of capital and international financial speculation, which had contributed to the failure of laissez-faire markets and the rise of extremist forces. An historical study of the institutions, demonstrates how the project was largely abandoned in favour of a return to the principles of Laissezfaire, which continue to become thoroughly embedded in the ceaseless engagement of international economic relations. Globalization isn’t just about the 24/7 financial markets. What is it about? Romeo and Juliet; journeys. You’ve lost me. Did you hear about the star-crossed lovers, a Jewish Israeli and a Palestinian Muslim. They met in Jerusalem and got married. They tried to make a home in Israel, but the Israeli authorities attempted to separate them. They tried to make a home in the occupied West Bank, but were pressured to move on. Love is universal, but it takes place somewhere on the political map. It isn’t just about feelings.

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Reminds me of Verdi’s AIDA, the clamour of war, jealousy and revenge shaping the fortunes of the beautiful Ethiopian slave girl and the Egyptian hero Radames; identity, class, status, history and the consequences of romance. Or adventure. Have you read The Life of Pi by the Yann Martel; the author had placed his footprint in Alaska, India, Mexico, France, Costa Rica, Turkey and Iran before setting in Canada. That’s the book about the adventures of Pi, the 16 year old Indian boy, an Hindu, who seeks one God, and embraces Christianity and Islam. So what do Pi’s adventures tell us? Keep on going through the noise of globalization; and be true. Sometimes you don’t have to move far to get very far away. Thomas King in the ‘The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative’ puts it beautifully. When I was a kid, I was partial to stories about other worlds and interplanetary travel. I used to imagine that I could just gaze off into space and be whisked to another planet, much like John Carter in Edgar Rice Burrrough’s Mars series. I’d like to tell you that I was interested in outer space or that the stars fascinated me or that I was curious about the shape and nature of the universe. Fact of the matter was I just wanted to get out of town. Wanted to get as far away from where I was as I could. At fifteen, Pluto looked good. Tiny, cold, lonely. As far from the sun as you could get.14

And that’s globalization? Why limit ourselves?

The W(health) of Nations: All that is solid melts into air In helping the reader to find firm feet at the outset, it is useful to consult the awarding winning journal, Geographical, to provide an initial compass. In a special geographical dossier three leading academics present versions of globalisation.15 To paraphrase the content, globalisation is integration of the economy, global changes in various categories including the global commons and societal development, and acceleration in global and local relations producing novel consequences.

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Globalization as a process of integrating forces was widely popularised by Marshall McLuhan. The debate on globalization with the reference to the global village found focus back in the 1960s16 (it is perhaps sobering to recall not everyone in the West tuned in and dropped out). Despite the limitations, Robertson is extremely close when he emphatically claims, ‘undoubtedly the 1960s ‘revolution’ in consciousness had an important effect in many parts of the world, in its shaping of the sense of what was supposedly common to all in an increasingly tight-knit world’.17 As suggested, the revolution wasn’t in everyone’s head. Similarly, globalization doesn’t necessarily pull the ground from everybody’s feet. McLuhan liked funny words and pictures too.18 The message, however, contained a caution. In a CBC archive clip from the 1960s, MuLuhan explained how youth facilitates the global shift from print to electronic media (pretty astute if we think of the Internet, email and the MP3 generation). In the context of literature, McLuhan’s vision is remarkable. Google intends to scan every book ever published, and to make the full texts searchable, in the same way that the Web sites can be searched on the company’s engine at google.com. At the book site, which is up and running in a beta (or testing) version, at books.google.com, you can enter a word or phrase – say, Ahab and whale – and the search returns a list of works in which the term appears, in this case nearly eight hundred titles, including numerous editions of Herman Melville’s novel.19

Despite enclaves being opened up by TV crews and travel writers, there are spaces free from the purge of materialism, ethereal landscapes amongst the pipes of pan. In the global village not everyone has gone shopping. Not everyone is an American. Not everyone has a phone or a downloadable Mp3 of a Beatles track remodelled by Oasis. Not everyone has a credit card bearing the image of marble or a goldfish. Or maybe it just seems that way. There is an incisive and relevant passage in the pamphlet of The Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and Frederic Engel’s in 1850 that captures the essence of the on-going process of unfettered capitalism (in an obviously negative but admiring manner):

96 Literature and International Relations The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.20

Marx writes about the vortex of economic interdependence pulverising local conditions and breaking up traditional modes of exchange. Excuse me, Marx! No one reads Marx. Look at what happened in the former Soviet Union. Patrick Bateman, the grotesque character in Bret Easton Ellis’s ‘American Psycho’ certainly didn’t. Hold on, you can’t really blame Marx for everything. There was Lenin, Stalin and the Nomenklature, but that’s another story. Don’t worry or get excited, I’m not going to embark on a long detour extolling the benefit of an in-depth study of Marxism, although many nuggets could be easily mined to illustrate some of the flaws in current economic structures. If you’re really interested in a systematic appraisal of capitalism and don’t get out much then have a look at volumes 1-3 of Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production. That sounds like it’ll take a long time. Think I’ll stick to watching Al-Jazeera and visiting the Glastonbury Festival (if I can get a ticket). Blogs, wikinomics, news scripting provides everyone with the tools to contribute a global perspective. Is it as easy as that? Not for everyone. It is important, however, to consider the development of capitalist relations in an assessment of globalization. Waters makes the case unambiguously ‘Globalization is the direct consequence of the expansion of European culture across the planet via settlement, colonization and cultural mimesis’.21

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In the early 1980s the eminent Harvard professor Theodore Levitt, argued that the powerful force driving converging commonality was technology. On the one hand, Levitt was right, there are moves to standardise technical standards.22 On the other hand, the view that new commercial reality fits neatly with the emergence of global markets for standardised consumer products did not fully materialise. The claim ‘gone are the accustomed differences to national or regional preferences’23 needs to be qualified with a high degree of conditionality. Whilst in some sectors, confectionaries for example, there is evidence that companies have consolidated brands under one name (Snickers for Marathon for example); there has not been a rapid move to standardization in all areas. The markets remain obstinately multifarious driven in part by consumer pressures for differentiation.

Multi-Literary Approaches to Globalization First Witch: All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis! Second Witch: All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor! Third Witch: All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be King hereafter!24 Are they travel guides? Some guides are always willing to deceive for gain of some kind. From within the discipline of sociology, Anthony Giddens, has written extensively on globalization. In the classic textbook Sociology Giddens writes about the globalising of social life: ‘it would be a mistake to think of globalization simply as a process of the growth of world unity…although rapidly developing today, globalization is by no means completely new, during from the time when Western influence started to expand across the world some two or three centuries ago’.25 Obviously, it is extremely debatable whether the exports Giddens refers to were beneficial to a wide range of countries and citizens. It is also important to be aware of the duel flow of experiences, for example the engagement of trade facilitating

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the exchange of resources, products, and a range of stories, legends, misunderstandings and stereotypes,26 which continue to frustrate international business relationships. Giddens studies in globalization are incisive and broad. In the series of Reith lectures broadcast on the BBC, Giddens reiterates the view that globalization is political, technological and cultural, as well as economic. The sociologist is keen to make clear the relationship between agent and structure, an interdependence he explores in the concept of structuralisation, shaping and being shaped repeatedly. In the field of critical social theory, Mike Featherstone in the book, Global Culture27, takes on board an extremely loaded question. Is there a global culture? Featherstone makes it clear that if we mean ‘something akin to the culture of the nation-state writ large, then the answer is patently a negative one.’ Featherstone, however, goes on to suggest that using a wide definition of culture, encapsulating various processes, then it may be valuable to think in terms of the globalization of culture.’ The work flags up a series of health warnings related to global culture, an over emphasis on simplistic flows of cultural practices being an anathema to considered insight. The nuances, countervailing practises, anomalies and ‘play-acting’ generated through the spread in the dispersion of various cultural signifiers in the form of brands, logos and cultural exports related to tourism, television and film crews need to be assessed with caution. Reference to critical social theory is a valuable source of material not widely recognised by strategic think tanks. It is valuable to approach the decision making process in global marketing with a sensitivity to the full range of the cultural content exhibited by the mosaic of social relations. Similarly, anthropology provides useful material on not ignoring the subtleties in the construction and decline of cultural boundaries.28 Identity is frequently shaped by mixed discourses. Practise is embedded in historical conditions that may be resistant to a range of global flows. It is clear that the content of globalization provides a rich menu for digestion both within academia and the decision-making process within organisations of all sizes. The material below continues to unpack the flows of globalization acknowledging countervailing flows, which operate to frustrate entrenched positions.

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Globalisation: One of Many Layers You may have already noticed that a lot has been written about globalization. It’s already taken up a lot of my time. Mine too. Have you visited Disneyland Paris? Sure have. Did you notice anything odd? Um, the Winnie-the-Pooh and friends show, an English children’s story by A.A.Milne, presented by French actors in an American theme park. Globalization isn’t just pop culture, and pop culture isn’t exactly global. It is, for example, only recently that music produced by the rock group Queen has been allowed a market in Iran, the influence of clerics having censured the import of rock music into the Islamic republic. The long list of examples, include Metallica in Egypt and Eminem virtually everywhere. Censorship, whether it is directed at music, books, films, electronic games or other cultural products continues to limit the full spread of globalization if used in a hyperglobal sense. The beauty industry for example, which contains a vast range of contentious issues, pits western lifestyles against faith communities. The monoculture is anything but homogenous. The use of literature and transport is illuminating in considering the processes of globalization. In the book, Between Worlds: Voyagers to Britain, facilitated by the National Portrait Gallery, the stories of non-European visitors to Britain was presented explain how some travellers left home and contributed to a new multicultural British home that included visitors from all over the world. Between worlds is about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century encounters. But is also very much about Britain today. How else could it be when in London alone there are some 300 different languages spoken every day? And when, with varying shades of earnestness and angst, the shifting demography of Britain is pored over each day in lavish detail, its racial and ethnic particularities, is immigration and cultural paradoxes. The stories that unfold

100 Literature and International Relations every day are indicative of a nation intermittingly at ease and at odds with its shifting make up.29

Multicultural London is a melting pot of cultures in a positive sense. Various festivals, cuisines, films and literature are produced in the metropolis for global consumption. On the negative side, is the view presented in the book Londonistan. This book demonises the non-West in a tone that is not keen to acknowledge the benefits of multiculturalism.30 Broadband is multiplying services through the internet and digital TV, a development speeding up the transmission of a new batch of wants to a public gradually being weaned onto t.commerce. Whilst this creative economy re-energises the excitement of the dot.com adventure, it relies on traditional business platforms in ordering and delivering orders to the customer. Accidents, mistakes and errors occur throughout international business relations. Language differences create difficulties, misunderstandings and confusion. There is not a single management model for doing business in the international domain. There will always be an exception to the rule. In the field of international tourism, travel has facilitated a rapid learning process of various cultures and customs. This, like Che’s early travels on his motorbike can be life transforming.31 On the other hand, transient international experiences have also produced a superficial perception of worlds where alienated consumption is privileged over authenticity. Films such as Lost in Translation do little to reproach stereotypes, but magnify misguided cultural perceptions on both sides. The theatrical Nine Years by Lone Twin, records the world tour of two friends, exploring Europe, Scandinavia, North America and Australia. In performing throughout the world the performance seeks to integrate experiences that reveal the journeys taken by travellers and residents.32 In a development from Dark Tourism, volunteering holidays are developing partly from the experience of the Tsunami relief, which encouraged Westerners to become involved in a range of rebuilding projects as part of a holiday. This has evolved into packages such as the Madagascar Wilderness Research Programme, Marine

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Conservation, The Philippines, Community Development work in Coastal Sri Lanka and the Tanzania Community Project.33 The wide dispersion of various peoples’ throughout the world on the move for other reasons than vacation produces interesting and surprising consequences. It appears that individuals become absorbed gradually into the new local culture, however subtle this may be. There is, however, the nostalgia for ‘home’, which generates demand for a range of products produced by the ‘home’ society, creating a network of markets that specialise in meeting the demand of national Diasporas wherever they have settled.

International Business and the State Kenichi Ohmae, author of The Borderless World and the End of the Nation State, celebrated the demise of government and its ability to manage and legislate the movement of people, goods and services passing though its borders. The state, however, has not disappeared. Neither has it withered away. Despite the necessary restructuring undertaken during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, the state maintains numerous departments that operate in various market sectors. The increasing number of agreements arising from state-state relations relating to international property rights, intellectual capital, patients and copyright highlights the authority of the state in shaping and enforcing the regulatory architecture. The relations between states forming collations, alliances and partners form a counterbalance to the unfettered dominance of the market, the European Union being a strong example. The state isn’t separate from the market and market isn’t an autonomous chaotic realm that acts independently. Or maybe it just seems that way. Naomi Klein’s thought provoking book, Windows and Fences, captures the social ruptures resulting from globalization.34 Where a window opens allowing the eradication of a tariff barrier or a similar obstacle to free trade a fence is installed to keep individuals out (for example, the ominously sounding asylum camps). Presenting an eyewitness account, the book makes clear the sites of conflict between pro-globalists and anti-globalists with a chronology that

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collates and presents speeches and protests of the resistance movement to globalization. In Europe, the walls separating people have not entirely disappeared. The division between east and west with the removal of the Berlin Wall in 1989 reunited Germany and re-connected Eastern European states to their European home. The separation of the island of Cyprus however, split between the Greek Cypriot south and Turkish Cypriot north continues to divide national affiliations, economic development and a shared heritage. Perhaps one of the most impressive photographs of the twentiethcentury was the picture Earthrise taken during the Apollo 8 mission in December 1968 by the astronaut William A. Anders. Looking at Earthrise and similar pictures of the blue planet, the viewer is struck by the world in its natural state. There are no borders, no check points, no forced separations, just a planet supporting a diverse collection of living organisms. The global commons, however, oceans and atmosphere, have experienced the residue of globalization. ‘Planet Earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do’ sang David Bowie, longingly, conveying a deep sense of loss in a later song. It is the fear of loss that flows into the closing remarks on this chapter.35 The global issues associated with the environment and climate change continues to be a serious impediment to future wellbeing. Sovereignty and authority have not withered away. They just operate in a slightly different way. In considering the remaining powers of the state, it is notable that ideology has been exchanged for management principles largely drawn from managerial blueprint that stretches back to Henri Fayol’s ideas on management and global politics. With regard to sovereignty, France and Germany and eleven other European states have surrendered their national currencies for the Euro. None of the countries lost their identities. There are now twenty-seven member states of the European Union. Each country retains its distinctive heritage. The French are still French and Germans are Germans. Britain is a multicultural society and polls suggest it doesn’t want the Euro because it doesn’t intend to loose its

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identity to the EU project. Sovereignty and culture present challenging conundrums. In the international domain, the consequence of the state-state relations to the international business community is most recognisable in the legally binding agreements between different countries. Treaties, directives, legislation and regulatory agreements take place daily through institutions such as the European Union, the World Trade Organisation and a multitude of other national and international institutions. There is a need for International Relations, but a discipline that recognises that its self-enforced annexation is artificial. Internationalisation viewed as an on-going shift from the activities of the firm in local home markets to an engagement with markets overseas or more accurately passing immediate borders has been democratised. It is commonplace in business practise to access international customers and suppliers through the Internet. It is, therefore, normal to view businesses of all sizes in an international context, each firm being involved directly or indirectly in global markets. The example of a sole trader working from home using a broadband connected PC is standard in industrialised economies. The engagement with international business may include formulating international contracts with regards to imports and exports and international payments, each category involving a degree of risk, which needs to be assessed and understood thoroughly. There is also a substantial growth in local businesses willing and able to consider partnerships abroad and to engage fully in international business relations. The exponential increase in this activity has introduced fresh dynamics in a range of markets and managerial practices that need to be understood. The need to recast the relationship between the firm, local and ‘overseas’ markets and governments is a pertinent challenge to management seeking to gain from the complexity of the global bazaar. In mapping the construction of the global enterprise, Liam Connell in a paper titled ‘Business as Usual, The Image of the Corporation in the Culture of Globalisation’ assesses how a view of business contributes to our understanding of the discourses of globalisation. This is a brave undertaking, sidestepping debilitating

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prejudice in selecting a series of texts that get under the skin of the corporate world. Despite the work by Connell, the negative view of international business is seemingly becoming a fixed reference point in the public’s thinking related to corporations. The film by Mark Achbar The Corporation maps the worst excesses of big businesses. In attempting to personalise the corporation, the director reveals the psychotic tendencies of the corporation, the core element of greed being recognisable in the earlier quote by Aristophanes. Whilst big business has a poor record in the domain of business ethics and moral responsibility, it is perhaps overly biased, but equally necessarily so, to suggest big business is exclusively a vehicle for harm. The idea of big bad organisations is not new. In an insightful book, Empires of Profit by Daniel Litvin, the author examines the monoliths of wealth during the formation of the British Empire, where commercially led managers used the military to reap the benefits of market expansions. The book is international in perspective and presents an excellent study that reinforces the need for corporate social responsibility and cultural awareness based on history and evolving practice. The material above has striven to ‘make-sense’ of the process of globalization including its anomalies and limitations. It is noted in this study that the field of International Relations should import the cultural dynamics in its study. The world is a stage where the spotlight privileges certain actors; the vast ensemble is in darkness.

Conclusion: Wild Language In shifting from one to many homes, increasing numbers of people are experiencing and exchanging global stories. Conventions in communications are being reinvented. In the global atmosphere cultural injections disturb neat categories to shake certainties. The pulse of information is generating multi-connectivity between people within and between states. It seems impossible for international relations to be one-dimensional,

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limiting its analysis to the composition of the states, the relations between states, and the structural system that contains them. Where are the stories? They are everywhere.

Notes 1

Human migration is a notable historic element of change. Despite the scare stories of waves of immigration and its consequences, King et al (2007), p. 185 suggest 97 per cent of the human population live and die in the country in which they were born. A mere 3 per cent are inclined or obliged to uproot themselves and adapt to a life in a new nation.’ 2 For an incisive piece in fiction on the messiness of contemporary global life, read Kiran Desai novel The Inheritance of Loss, a wonderful work that links the local and the global through the departed and left behind. 3 See Andrew Jones’s Dictionary of Globalization for a comprehensive list of entries that help make sense of the content global processors. 4 Globalization is also a term used to label anything that moves beyond its tradional setting, a view loaded with inconsistencies. See Ben Rosamond’s ‘Babylon and on on? Globalization and international political economy’, which captures the catch-all nature of the debate. 5 Anita Roddick’s informative political tract, Take it Personally: How Globalization affects you and powerful ways to challenge it, (2001), written before 9/11, presents a thought provoking view of the difficulties arising from the distance between rich and poor within and between states, the accumulation of wealth, and the methods of production underpinning wealth creation. 6 Entries selected from Evans, G. (1998) Dictionary of International Relations, London: Penguin Reference, p. 201. 7 Lindsey, B.(2000) ‘The Invisible Hand vs. the Dead Hand’, p. 65 in Goddard, C.R. et al, International Political Economy, Basingstoke: Palgrave. 8 O’Brien, R. and Williams, M. (2004) Global Political Economy: Evolution and Dynamics, Basingstoke: Palgrave, p. 335. 9 Jackson (2002) pp. 1-2. 10 Cable, V. (1999) Globalization and Global Governance, London: Chatham House Papers, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, p. 30. 11 This isn’t exactly the view held by groups such as the European Social Forum, a body of activists keen to implement strategies to achieve global justice. 12 Jay, P. (2001) Road to Riches, London: Phoenix, pp. 360-361. 13 Stiglitz, J. (2002) Globalization and it discontents, London: Penguin Books, p. 10. 14 King (2003) p. 3. 15 See ‘the rise and rise of globalisation’, Geographical, October 2003, pp. 42-49 for a full overview of the globalisation debate with contributions from leading academics Dr Ian Linden, Professor Jan Aart Scholte and Dr Andy Pratt. 16 McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media, New York: Mentor. 17 Robertson, R. (1992) Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture, London: Sage Publications. 18 See McLuhan, E. and Zingrone, F. (1995) Essential McLuhan, London: Routledge for a concise overview of this visionary academic’s output, simply a stunning selection of work drawn for articles and speeches.

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19

Tobin (2007) p. 30. Marx 1848. 21 Waters, M. (1995) Globalization, London: Routledge, p. 3. 22 See www.iso.org. 23 Levitt, T. (1983) ‘The Globalization of Markets’, in The Harvard Business Review, May/June. 24 Macbeth 25 Giddens, A. (1993), 2nd ed. Sociology, London: Polity Press, p. 528. 26 See Tomlinson, J. (1991) Cultural Imperialism, London and New York: Continuum Books, for an insightful view of a form of cultural terrorism. 27 Featherstone, M. ed., (2002) Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity, London: Sage Publications. 28 see Simon Harrison’s article ‘Cultural boundaries’. 29 Ekow (2007) p. 9. 30 It is in the atmosphere of fear and hostility, in which separation leads to isolation and angst against cultural groups that words become the vehicle for undermining social cohesion and community possibility. For example, research by the Centre for Social Cohesion, recently claimed that public libraries in Tower Hamlets, London had been building collections of extremist literature. This is not an isolated development, cultural minorities facing separation repeatedly draw on poetry, literature and faith orientated texts for guidance, which may or may not be positive for encouraging social order. 31 See The Motorcycle Dairies by Che Guevara. 32 www.lonetwin.com. 33 McCullagh, (2007) pp. 6-9. 34 Klein, N. (2002) Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the front lines of the globalization debate, London: Flamingo. 35 Other amazing photographs of the twentieth century, which are part of the globalising process include Martin Luther King, the Kennedy assignation, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the thriller in Manila, Booby Moore lifting the World Cup, Olga Korbut the majestically gifted athlete and the terror of the Munich Olympics. 20

Chapter 6

The Politics of Unreasonable International Relations: Coded Whispers in the Corridors of Chaos

Introduction To focus inwards can lead to terror; the body politic at war with itself. Great powers such as Imperial China, Czarist Russia, late Victorian Britain and The United States have each turned away from the demands of international politics either through choice or necessity before re-engaging with the world outside. Countries without excessive influence on international affairs may pursue a regional agenda or a form of isolation that leads to violence on its citizens. Genocide and internal conflict takes place gradually; sinister acts being perpetrated step-by-step. In other settings, retribution explodes with a sudden intensity, putting ‘right’ for someone, somewhere, a previous wrong. Intense violence in one area envelops regions with a wave of terror leaving bleak wastelands and rivers blocked with the weight of corpses. The implementation of non-legal methods in the management of the state is usually intended to eradicate dissent and silence opposition: dissidents taken from a peaceful protest find themselves in an unmarked vehicle beaten unconscious with a raw truncheon or even worse instruments of torture. Civil disturbance orchestrated by a government creates an atmosphere of fear and terror that paralyses the effective working of the country. In the disturbance, institutions are crippled damaging international trade and regional financial networks. The presence of state terror, death squads and manipulated panic, destabilises everyday life and generates nervousness in the territories of its

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neighbours. Fearing the export of the melting pot of hate or an endless line of refugees waiting at the border intent on fleeing to ‘safe’ camps, measures are taken to limit the exodus that destabilise internal resources, a move that further generates resentment and distrust. This chapter is concerned with diplomatic relations in the widest sense.1 The intention is to assess the use of literature in diplomacy. It is usual to assume that each operates in a separate sphere, the former offering little insight on the decision taken by the latter.2 The passage below reflects on the art of diplomacy. It has been noted earlier that literature aids understanding in International Relations through its ability to make clear the impact of social phenomena. In recognising the profile of a diplomat in a classical form, which acknowledges the importance of a cultured mind, the role of literature is considered through references to fiction and poetry. It is suggested that this is useful to an approach sensitive to recognising the roots of ideas. These include taboos, frustrations, hopes and desires, and the extensive menu of coded aims that are probed in the literary history of an empire, nation, state or a soul. In this sense, an acknowledgement of the stories that are seemingly part of the construction of the country and the self reveal insight that might otherwise be ignored or poorly recognised in the confusing territories of international relations.

Diplomatic Manoeuvres: Managing Wrong Turns It is the duty of the guardians of order to limit the ever-present threat of social implosion and conflict triggered by corrupt leaders, which may lead to political catastrophe and destabilise peaceful relations. The quality of tact, including a cynical version is central to the language of diplomacy. It is a given norm in the coded whispers that populate the corridors of chaos, a quality useful in the search to ensure that conditions which can encourage dialogue and resolution are promoted. Diplomacy is conveyed through the subtle footwork of negotiation, making possible the impossible. In an atmosphere of political instability where kidnappings, disappearances, random snatchings are part of a dirty war against citizens, the brokers of

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diplomacy move with caution, recognising that in the mist of disorder, all are targets. In the demise of a failing state, accountability and responsibility become a scarce currency, extremes accumulating in the noise of desperation. In the process of political implosion, the need for humanitarian aid and an international response to the unrest may become necessary, encouraging wider alliances and counter-measures, to initiate pressures that may be ignored by the ruling, but dangerous and disgruntled elite. In implementing solutions, the ‘peacekeepers’ can unintentionally disguise nefarious elements that lead to horrors such as the scenes recorded by ‘guards’ in the Abu Ghraib prison. States are complex institutions to define, being part government and administrative bureaucracy, historical and social construct, and legal entity that includes the legitimate use of power with regard to its citizens (police) and relations between states (the military). Weak or failing states frequently demonstrate behaviour that is at odds with the expectations, values and ‘normal’ relations of the international community. The international community is defined as the territory that is the basis of the United Nations.3 Robert Jackson and George Sørensen, in an introductory book in International Relations define a realist version of diplomacy from the work of Thomas Schilling. In this sense: Diplomacy is bargaining: it seeks outcomes that, though not ideal for either party, are better for both than some of the alternatives…The bargaining can be polite or rude, entail threats as well as offers, assume a status quo or ignore all rights and privileges, and assume mistrust rather than trust. But…there must be some common interest, if only in the avoidance of mutual damage, and an awareness of the need to make the other party prefer an outcome acceptable to oneself. With enough military force a country may not need to bargain.4

The final line is perhaps most controversial. What happens if power wanes and the accumulated enemies are numerous? Is it reasonable to assume that military force is the important factor in diplomacy? Are other methods more influential than the military option? Are their other stories that could be considered to explore alternative outcomes? Severe break-down or aggressive actions that threaten the general international order generate a reaction that seeks to

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encourage a regime change (internal opposition is identified and supported using money, training or equipment). External measures can be initiated if the situation continues to deteriorate. For example, the impasse in Iraq created by a belligerent President produced an atmosphere where military action became unavoidable; The United States and Britain had made it clear that they were prepared to engage in military action. The solution however, may not necessarily be effective, particularly where internal political and social unrest during occupation, exaggerated through insurgency and indigenous extremism and opportunism, seeks to sustain the destabilizing forces and contribute to a parallel implosion. In operational terms, international relations are managed through the Foreign Office, the ambassador, the embassy, the consulate, the diplomat, the diplomatic corps, the honorary council and the consulate to ensure the interests of the home state are protected and enhanced abroad. Where possible, the flow of trade, finance and people is promoted and impediments removed through advice and expertise where they impact on passports, visas, custom papers, documentation and legal procedures. Heads of State, Presidents and Sovereigns met in summit diplomacy in organisations such as the G8, The OECD and the World Economic Forum. In the ceaseless state-state communications, history, heritage and culture inform trade relations, alliances, cooperation, harmonisation and coordination in a range of fields. Each country seeks to advance its interests, either through traditional polices or collaboration, the issue of respect and economic wellbeing is usually a paramount concern in the operation of international relations. Complementing government and its various departments, is the wider role of international institutions operating under the organisational umbrella of The United Nations. In deploying the Blue Helmets as a peace-keeping and stabilizing force in various countries, the organisation imposes peace using a neutral strategy that is not exempt from direct military force. Outside national governments, regional institutions such as NATO, non-governmental organisations including organisations like Medecin San Frontieres, multinational corporations and a host of agencies work in a range of sectors to complement or frustrate policies of the state. The explosion

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of trans-national links has markedly altered the conduct of international relations, generating a multi-agency approach in various international and regional projects. Despite the efforts to formulate a collective diplomacy under the auspices of the international community, it should be remembered that each state espouses a particular diplomacy that is linked to its culture, heritage and ideology. Therefore, British diplomacy is different to Russian diplomacy, as Indonesian diplomacy is different to an Australian diplomatic operation.5 It is the conditional nature of the nefarious interests of the state that complicates international relations, recognising that each territory differs in the resources at its disposal, encapsulating a unique historical story and belief within its culture. Diplomacy is therefore multifaceted and complicated. It is not a simplistic zero-sum game, but a conundrum of possibilities that deviate and transform in the short and long term. Patrick Brogan in the book, World Conflicts, criticises the alumni of the diplomatic community, suggesting that it is repeatedly the cause and not the solution to tensions and violence in international affairs. Diplomatic incompetence remains one of the great dangers. The ineptitude of a handful of men brought down upon the world the horrors of the Great War and all the catastrophes that followed. It might have easily happened again in the days of Molotov and Dulles, without the nuclear deterrent which protected East and West alike from their leaders’ aggressions, and also from their stupidity. The ultimate folly, and the nearest approach to disaster, was the Cuban missile crisis. The Falklands War was a result of diplomatic misjudgement in London and Buenos Aires, and the Six Days war in 1967 was the result of Nasser’s folly: he thought he could humiliate Israel without fighting. American vacillation and duplicity in the Middle East led Saddam Hussein to believe in 1990 that he could occupy Kuwait unopposed. He was the aggressor, but the US State Department bears some of the blame.6

Diplomacy is not mechanical. It senses the atmosphere and responds accordingly, exchanging communiqués, memos and emails with relevant departments and officials. It functions in subtle circles persuading and influencing where beneficial to the interests of the objectives that best correlate with the central policies of the home state. To reiterate, the art of diplomacy is to make the impossible possible.

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The reaction to a modernist view of International Relations was challenged by key figures in the discipline such as James De Derian, Michael Shapiro and Jim George who encouraged a fresh appraisal of textual material that impacts on international relations. In this sense, the wide post-modernist fiction notable in Ben Okri and James Joyce is relevant to diplomacy. It opens up a fresh area of study. Critics will argue that novels may shape views in politics and international relations, but it is impossible to measure. That is most likely the case. Nonetheless, it should not be dismissed. Weren’t Koestler, Solzhenitsyn, Bulgakov and Pasternak important in understanding the change process within the former Soviet Union? Can’t novels be allowed in Waltz’s prison?7 Diplomacy became normalised with the emergence of great powers, which were keen to ensure good relations were maintained. Diplomats differed from spies in that the objective was to formulate a trust that would benefit both parties seeking exits from impossible conditions. Information gathering, interpretation and communication are fundamental to diplomacy. Of equal importance is the need to formulate a professional approach in the conduct of diplomatic relations, which is sympathetic to the trajectories of others, whilst remaining close to serving the script of the home country. Among the institutions which took their basic shape in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and are still with us today are those of formal diplomacy. Rulers had always sent messages to one another and negotiated, but there were many ways of doing this and of understanding what was going on…After 1500, it was increasingly the practice to use in peacetime the standard device we still employ, the ambassador permanently resident in a foreign country, through whom all ordinary business is at least initially transacted and who has the task of keeping his own rulers informed about the country to which he is accredited.8

In the articles that contributed to the peace settlement that ended the French wars, The Treaty of Vienna embedded the principle of legitimacy in the nineteenth century international order, and helped to create a professional diplomat, seeking through accommodation and the exercise of significant pressure, peaceful resolutions to difficulties.9 The international system of diplomatic rank ensured that disputes between nations could be monitored and prevented through

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diplomatic channels. The Congress was a complicated meeting of diverse interests that challenged diplomacy and tempered political ambitions. In the defeat of Napoleon, Prussia demanded the territory of Saxony. Russia claimed Poland through its support for Prussia. In seeking to maintain a balance in the region, Britain, Austria, and to a lesser extent France, was hostile to the loss of Saxony. Dialogue and negotiation, established through traditional diplomacy and subtle manoeuvrings sought to improve the conditions for bilateral relationships and reduce the prospect of renewed hostilities. Hedley Bull highlighted the importance of the Treaty of Vienna in the classic international relations book, The Anarchical Society. The diplomatic system, whose role in relation to international society was now set out in the writings of Callières and other diplomatic theorists, was recognised to be the concern of international society as a whole by the Congress of Vienna, whose Final Act regularised it and bought it into conformity with the doctrine of sovereign equality of states.10

Though the type of diplomacy in evidence at the Congress of Vienna is a world removed from the multi-agent diplomacy of contemporary international relations, a code of professionalism continues through intellectual engagement in current affairs and the mosaic of cultural production. This complements the recognition that the work of embassies, multinational companies, researchers, NGOs and voluntary organisations increasingly overlaps in response to a wide range of problems that generate difficulties at the international level. This is an important change. Every county has been affected in some form by the war on terror. The diplomacy activated by contemporary security issues has encouraged the wider pooling of information and surveillance. This is notable in extradition arrangements and the every day processing of passports, visas and related documentation. Whilst International Relations as a discipline is not completely lost its central concerns through the ravages of globalization, it is clear that in terms of conflict, state-state tensions have increasingly become overshadowed by the disturbances within states. It is likely that this will continue throughout the twenty-first century, but with a notable increase in the tensions between states.11

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Energy, environmental, development and nuclear diplomacy, will increasingly populate the policies, treaties and directives of international relations. Literature has previously travelled through this territory. Joseph Conrad’s novel, Nostromo, set around a silver mine in the imaginary South American state of Cosaguana in a vacuum of unrest and revolution, illustrates the impact and value of resources on character’s seeking to maximise opportunities. In acknowledging the possibilities that unfold in the uncertainties of world politics, the realpolitik sensibilities of International Relations are frequent remembered and recognised. This is related to a version of realism that can be traced to Thomas Hobbes, Machiavelli and Thucdyesyes. Succinctly formulated by Han Morgenthau in the revised Politics Among Nations, its central concern is with national power in relation to the international arena, where rival forces seek advantage. Of all the factors that make for the power of a nation, the most important, however unstable, is the quality of diplomacy. All the other factors that determine national power are, as it were, the raw material out of which the power of the nation is fashioned. The quality of a nation’s diplomacy combines those different factors into an integrated whole, gives them direction and weight, and awakens their slumbering potentialities by giving them breath of actual power…Diplomacy, one might say, is the brains of national power, as national morale is its soul…In the long run, such a nation must yield to one whose diplomacy is prepared to make the most of whatever other elements of power are at it disposal, thus making up through its excellence of deficiencies in other fields.12

This is the theatre where the stability of the world is contested. It has been tempered, but its rationale has not been eradicated. It is a drama that continues with nuclear submarines lurking in the North Pole and defensive shields being constructed in the ‘new’ Europe. This is not just the substance of thrillers, but a feature of international relations that refuses to dismiss the revival of antagonistic struggles between states. The suspension or breaking off diplomatic relations creates fault lines that damage communications and understanding. This is similar to the implosion of a domestic relationship, an acrimonious divorce that produces severe and long term recrimination. In maintaining functional if not friendly communications, bridges which may have

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been irrevocably burnt in the bile of retribution are maintained and rebuilt in future. Fierke in the book, Diplomatic Interventions, refers to a similar point on the outcomes of destructive relationships that accumulate and magnify the tensions between them in a manner that embeds both parties in a prison of destructive matrimony. The passage below considers a passage from a well-known play that is relevant to the relations in international relations. A play written by Edward Albee in the 1960s, called Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, illustrates the dymanics of an intractable conflict. The main characters, George and Martha, were a married couple who over the course of their marriage had developed a pattern of acting and reacting to the other, in a tit for tat game. One would strike and the other would strike back. Each of them understood the rules of the game, including what would set the other one off and how to retaliate. In this respect, they each were doing the same thing and this kept the conflict going.13

Fierke goes on to explain how George and Martha occasionally tire of the conflict, but can’t escape the system that shapes their hostilities. The allusion to Kenneth Waltz and his classic text Theory of International Politics is natural, but perhaps ignores other factors that are more psychological. Either George or Martha could just give up. This resembles the various institutions in the former Soviet Union such as Komsomol and the CPSU, which abandoned the pretence or continued exhausted as prisoners of habit, a habit perpetuated in a failure to acknowledge the substance of an alternative view. In the Theory and International Politics, Waltz quizzed if either the Soviet Union or Coca Cola would be around in the twenty-first century. He didn’t bet on the fizz of the latter or the impact of coded dissent. The Cold War established strained diplomatic relations between the United States and the former Soviet Union. The tit-for-tat diplomacy created a fault-line throughout the world. Africa, Asia and Latin America were shaped by the push-pull forces of two ideologies that operated during the Cold War. Superpower manoeuvrings legitimated dubious groups and movements that transgressed into formable opponents to order following the peaceful implosion the socially motivated ideology and system. Others were simply

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manipulated. In the atmosphere that recognised the full consequences of conflict, it is not surprising that the stale mate of superpower rivalries could be viewed historically in international terms as a period of relative stability. The scare generated by the Cuban Missile Crisis, where diplomacy seemed to fail to stop the world tripping over the nuclear precipice, encouraged a further period of détente and considered animosity rather than an ideological or boisterous slide to a nuclear Armageddon. In seeking to re-embed diplomatic practise in international relations, The United States and the former Soviet Union installed a hot-line between the two heads of state, a move intended to defuse explosive situations directly. Despite the apparent status quo, events created a momentum in their own right forcing decisions that would otherwise not have been made. Sport diplomacy becomes common in the Olympics, space diplomacy in geo-stationary orbit and the exploration of the stars encouraged eventual collaboration, and geo-political diplomacy, territorial ownership issues lead to accusations, withdrawals from agreements, embargos and boycotts. Diplomacy produces its own particular narrative that stretches back to the formative relations between evolving groups seeking temporary respite from hostilities. Diplomacy is therefore noted in a surprisingly wide bank of stories that report on invasions, withdrawals and occupation: the presence of crimes against humanity and the fall of civilisation being preserved in the passages of poetry. Stories shed light on the actions and motivations of a shift towards hostility. Jim George captured the wider content of diplomacy in a passage that pushed the boundaries and borders of International Relations. To understand diplomacy, thus, and to begin to problematize its givens regarding the state system, it is necessary to focus not on the closed, narrow world of the diplomatic elite but on a much broader historicopolitical process by which diplomacy is discursively constructed and its rules and boundaries are legitimated. In this way – in explicitly reconnecting diplomacy with its historical, cultural, political, and linguistic practices – it becomes more possible to question its universialized (power politics) image of reality and open up its practices to those, for example, who suffer by their estrangement from them.14

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An understanding of the subtleties of persuasion is a necessary step in encouraging international actors to act in a particular manner, particularly if the behaviour not familiar. Threats and inducements can be offered that do not compromise the objective, which is ironically impersonal and national. The silent gesture, the quiet word and the subtle use of considered pressure are tools of the diplomat seeking to guide the protagonist away from the precipice of conflict. In a contemporary diplomacy, a form of managerial influence is curtailing the excessive costs of the diplomatic service.15 With embassies increasingly involved in all manner of activities, encouraging effectiveness can produce a countervailing negative atmosphere that undermines the performance of diplomacy. Whilst, good offices need to be maintained efficiently, the value derived from scaling down operations may be exacerbated in the long term game of diplomacy, which is ever complex in the changing world of international relations.

The Slide to Chaos: Sailors Stories and The Perfect Ambassador Decapitations, executions, bombings, beheadings, torture, concentration camps, poverty and starvation result from indifference to the monsters that haunt the shadows of the adult world. In a political meltdown, fear is driven by the charismatic psychotic. In the turbulence, diplomacy searches for the glimpse of reason, an opportunity to lobby and persuade. In a country like Zimbabwe, for example, where opposition to Government is repressed through collective economic and social punishment, indirect diplomacy is possible through the recognition of a failure inherent in a violent strategy. The ban on meetings opposed to the Government is an initial stage. Further intimidation signals an accelerated course to authoritarianism and. repression.16 In Russia, the recent arrest of Garry Kasparov, leader of United Civil Front Group is a warning to other groups that deviate from the official line that vocal opposition will not be tolerated. This is seemingly not uncommon in a Russia moulded by Vladimir Putin. Whilst debilitating policies are exercised

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in the political domain, wide criticism is tempered by macro improvements to the economy. Literature is comfortable in the chaotic home. In a chapter that reflects on the influence of a megalomaniac, who can lead political office, Jean Bethke Elshtan in ‘Freud’s Discourse of War/Politics’ considers the duel persona that hides in public and rants in private. What about the beast? Images of the beast lurked in the hearts of civilized Europeans of Fraud’s era. Think of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, for example. Whenever Jekyll metamorphoses into Hyde, his behaviour is described by Stevenson as “ape-like.” Recall Kafka’s chilling story, itself called “The Metamorphosis,” as the protagonist, George Samsa, turns into a hideous bug. Ever popular was “The Beauty and the Beast,” imagery of a handsome prince beneath the bestiality, a mirror image of the dominant motif.17

Can literature help scholars of international relations understand the profile of a leader? Do influential political figures change from rational organisers to unpredictable megalomaniacs through domestic frustrations? Where do the clues lie? Why do ordinary people embark on evil? In the break-up of order, how does a gentle act of charity turn to genocide? Can dictators be reformed and presented as men of peace? The diplomat may have the answers. The Estonian writer Eduard Vilde, former Estonian Ambassador in Germany used his skills as a novelist to expose social injustices and psychological dramas in pieces such as The Milkman from Mäeküla. In a recent context, Shashi Tharoor working in the United Nations linked his literary career to politics and literature. Tharoor’s novels are written from an Indian perspective. Works such as Riot, which examines the consequences of a death of an idealistic young American volunteer working in India are provocative. The story weaves Indian history and landscapes with challenging narratives that include insight into political and social forces. Graeme Greene’s novel The Comedians set in Haiti gives insight into the darkness of a repressive regime led by the infamous Papa Doc, Doctor Duvalier, a regime that lashes out indiscriminately at friends and enemies. In the book, the characters Brown, Smith and Jones are each affected by the political disturbances. Mr Brown is the owner of the hotel Trianon in Port-au-Prince. Mr and Mrs Smith are Americans spreading the good message. Mr Jones is creative with the

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truth. The masks and sunglasses on the characters working for the regime conceal ambiguities and mixed signals, which become clear in the unravelling of the story. Interventions made by individuals during the slip to madness and violence are either impotent or influential. Each wave of violence makes an impression on Brown, Smith and Jones, producing reactions that are idealistic, ironic or innocent. This important novel relates to many contemporary themes in International Relations. The novel allows the reader an opportunity to make sense of the rationale that underpins the implosion of a failing state. It is a remarkable piece of work and a must-read book for anyone with an interest in international relations. The suffering that is part of disintegration of a country is expressed in various forms. Hatred may be unleashed indiscriminately on society. It can be more specific, targeting bile against a specific group, movement or ethnic clan. In the grip of anarchy, counter-forces grapple to recover anything that will ensure survival: objectives lost in the exchange of bullets and punches: this is Bosnia, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Haiti; the smiles of Hitler, Stalin, Hussein, Mobutu, Amin, Pinochet, Noriega and Ceausescu etched in the portraits the line the walls of a violent and ever expanding museum. It is in the mist of the madness, that the erudite diplomat moves to ensure nationals and where possible ‘friends’ are given a safe exit. This is orchestrated in a careful manner that maximises the opportunities produced by the situation ensuring that short and long term interests are protected and enhanced. Diplomacy in the service of international relations acknowledges the negative aspects of international anarchy and seeks positive steps in the potential for mediation. Joseph Frankel in an early book in the modern life of International Relations, International Politics: Conflict and Harmony, placed the emergence of institutionalised diplomatic relations in Renaissance Italy. Diplomacy is so much a part and parcel of international life that we take it for granted, although it is an instrument of foreign policy of fairly recent origin. Some sporadic exchanges were inherent in any form of coexistence of independent political units but permanent missions were not established until international interaction had become sufficiently intense to necessitate it.18

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In contemporary life, the removal of the diplomatic community, the closing of a mission or the withdrawal of Embassy staff is concomitant with a major international incident. Embassies are fundamental to world politics, and are a common resident in the leafy expensive districts of global cities. The monitoring, shaping, supporting and enabling of various diplomatic activities seek to encourage the flow of people, money and trade. This is undertaken in the belief that prestige is crucial to the international position of the home state. Diplomacy is a subtle art that demands prudence in dealing with the home and host sovereign. In the Diplomatic Classics, Berridge includes an insightful chapter on Alberico Gentili (1552-1608) and the book De Legationibus Libri Tres [Three Books of Embassies] provides annotated passages from the original text. In a revealing section relevant to contemporary International Relations, Gentili lists the qualities that are required in the profile of The Perfect Ambassador. 1. The qualifications an ambassador should have in order to perform the duties of his office 2. Our requirements with regard to the external circumstances of the ambassador 3. The ambassador must be a man of good external appearance 4. The ambassador should be a man favoured by fortune 5. The ambassador should be a man of superior intellectual power 6. The ambassador should be a good speaker 7. The ambassador should understand the language of the person with whom he is negotiating 8. A wide knowledge of history is required in the ambassador 9. To what extent is knowledge of philosophy suitable for the ambassador? 10. Ambassadors of literary achievements 11. The fidelity of ambassadors 12. The courage of ambassadors 13. The temperance of ambassadors 14. The prudence of ambassadors 15. The prudence and fidelity of ambassadors

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16. Should the ambassador deceive his sovereign if he believes it to be to the latter’s advantage? 17. The power implied in free instructions 18. The prudence and courage of the ambassador19 Point 10, above is particularly relevant to this study. It encourages references to Ambassadors such as the Tehran born British Diplomat and author, Harold Nicolson and others drawn into the diplomatic service with literary credentials. Nicolson married the writer Vita Sackville-West, and produced a range of non-fiction and fiction that reflected his political interest and shaped his diplomatic life. The book, Diplomacy: a basic guide to the conduct of contemporary foreign policy being influential throughout the Embassy community.20 It is interesting that a number of diplomats have also won the Nobel Prize for literature.21 For example, the Mexican Octavio Paz 1990 for works such as A Draft of Shadows and The Labyrinth of Shadows, Pablo Neruda 1971 in recognition of Residencia en la tierra and the collected poems in España en el Corazón, and Ivo Andriv 1961 for the breathtaking The Bridge on the Drina and Gospodjica (The Woman from Sarajevo). In Africa, the connection with literature and diplomacy continued with David Rubadiri, permanent Malawi UN Ambassador. His book No Bride Price and collected poems, Growing Up with Poetry, explored the complexities of power and freedom, love and death, and a range of African themes, which comment on key social and tribal issues. The work of Kofi Awonoor, academic and diplomat, is imbued with political references. In particular, the novel The House by the Sea follows the central character Amamu on return to Ghana and the disillusionment that reveals itself in postindependent Ghana. The Cameroon writer, Ferdinand Oyono in the book, The Old Man and the Medal, highlighted the colonial culture clash by following the fortunes of a villager who is surprised to be awarded a medal by the French administration. The book made an international impact and encouraged other novelists to take up the pen to sketch other stories of oppression and resistance. In Asia, Sri Lankan diplomat and well known playwright Ediriweera Sarachchandra created Curfew and a Full Moon, a piece

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that mirrored the political upheavals in the 1970s on the Peradeniya university campus. The main character is a professor of anthropology, a sincere man who reluctantly and unwittingly becomes involved with challenging the university authorities and social conventions. Other writers such as Nina Sibal, Monana Chandran, Natvtej Sarna, Tiru Murti have successfully welded diplomacy with literature and poetry.

Slaves and Kings, Clowns and Fools In the chancelleries of the world, feet shuffle and tentative handshakes signal deals and bargains that lie outside treaties and bilateral agreements. Whispers are not reported, mediations and guidelines slip unnoticed. The armies of the media monitors, translators, and secretaries are unaware that their skills are not required. Whilst the powers of the diplomat have faded and ebbed with the emergence of the international politician keen to promote a global public profile, the need to collect and understand the motivations of key characters and their intentions has increased markedly. A consideration of the recent past is useful in exploring the context of the point. In the twentieth century, America intervened in international relations to repel fascism. Elsewhere, in the cold war atmosphere America compromised its values to contain the spread of communism. In the twentieth century, no country has influenced international relations as decisively and at the same time as ambivalently as the United States. No society has more firmly insisted on the inadmissibility of intervention in the domestic affairs of other states, or more passionately asserted that its own values were applicable in a universal sense. No nation has been more pragmatic in the day-to-day conduct of its diplomacy, or more ideological in the pursuit of its historic moral convictions. No country has been more reluctant to engage itself abroad even while undertaking alliances and commitments of unprecedented reach and scope.22

The complexities of international politics produce mistakes, accidents and anomalies in behaviour. The inappropriate gesture, the

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damaging rhetoric, the foolish insult and the temptation for megalomania initiates tensions and inflames passions that create the atmosphere conducive to conflict. John Steinbeck’s The Short Reign of Pippin IV, provides an excellent satire on the French Revolution that is incisive to the contemporary political process, which is imbued with errors and confusion that is not distinct from the working of political life, which often masks inadequacies and dubious agendas in smart suits, expensive cars and easy sound bites. In Steinbeck’s book, the presidential vacuum is filled by warring political factions that vie for advantage. The amateur astronomer Pippin Heristal is elevated into the chaos and is given the authority to manage the disruption spreading through France. The farcical engagement with power, politics and government highlights the manoeuvring, back-biting and double-talk that is the norm in the surreal corridors of political power. The book precedes the uncomfortable realities of political life exposed in the work of such political commentators as Michael Moore who seek, often unevenly, to expose the absurdities, weaknesses and folly of professional politicians. It is clear that the politics of unreason are linked to a view of the world that is increasingly schizophrenic in terms of justifying objectives. International relations is in a muddle. This fact is noted in a creative literature, but largely absent in the journals of strategic studies. In an effort to stem the cycle of disorder, interventions can be initiated by the International Community to regain control. In some cases, a government may introduce a state of emergency that suspends the normal operation of everyday life. Curfews, limitations in civil liberties and martial law, provide a temporary respite from social disruption, but the fundamental problems are not resolved. Whilst a state of emergency is often associated with dictatorial regimes, the riots in France triggered by the arrest of two teenagers in the Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois illustrate how order can be disturbed prompting radical measures by the state to restore order and limit the spread of violence. Countries, however, can recover, surprisingly so, from chaotic periods and achieve a form of stable inclusive politics. Cambodia, Chile and Argentina passed through serious social disruption to recover order and economic growth.

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Remaining in Latin America, The Honorary Consul by Graham Greene incisively looks at the downside of a posting abroad where frustration in the guise of Charley Fortnum, a consul numbed by alcoholism, is presented. In a dramatic turn, Charley is kidnapped by a group of revolutionaries’ intent on releasing a group of political prisoners held by the authorities. The book is a wonderful insight into the formulation and challenge of beliefs: faith, love, values, justice, good and evil. The relationship between the prisoner and Eduardo Plarr, the doctor who liaises with the revolutionaries and the authorities, is beautifully portrayed, conveying a power that haunts redemption. In a curious book, Dennis Urrerir and Joan Richards in State of Emergency engage the reader through actively encouraging the reader to be involved in the development of an emerging nation and the decisions that are made. The challenges between stability and growth, order and transparency, inclusion and exclusion are reoccurring themes that need to be resolved. There are points throughout the narrative where the choice of strategy is influenced by the reader. This form of intervention generates multiple possibilities that are far from straightforward. In the destinies of countries, the what if scenario is a valuable exercise, which recognises the complications in the political and state building process. Is there a state of emergency in America? There are claims that civil liberties are under threat. The neo-conservative moral crusade in the United States has been exported through the rhetoric of the war on terror. This is a crusade that is not wholeheartedly supported by Americans, although a stereotypical view of America suggests otherwise. The above refers to a version of the West that is dominant in the global media. There is arrogance at work that is far from diplomatic. This is the Londonistan model writ large. The non-west demonised in a fresh wave of misunderstanding. This is not to suggest that diplomatic affairs are untainted by a range of factors that undermine its effectiveness. Diplomats and embassy staff frequently cause controversy through the shield of diplomatic immunity to escape traffic fines, tax demands and more serious offences. Diplomatic privileges where protected through The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations

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of 1961 and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 1962, which guarantee diplomatic agents or members of their immediate family: may not be arrested or detained; may not have their residences entered and searched; may not be subpoenaed as witnesses; may not be prosecuted. In a slightly frustrating, but revealing study, Diplomatic Baggage by Brigid Keenan, the ‘opening up’ to inspection of the life of a diplomatic reveals the everyday realities of the domestic scene on the diplomatic circuit, an impression that is far from positive. This ‘socially’ flawed, but popular book promotes a degree of cultural arrogance that is damaging to diplomacy. Wider sensitivity and insight can be found in the work of feminist scholars in international relations such as Cynthia Enloe, Gillian Youngs and J.Ann Ticker. Jacqui True in a chapter titled ‘Feminism’ makes valid points on domestic diplomacy when she reflects on Enloe’s Bananas, Beaches and Bases, suggesting: Taking the view from below, feminists have sought to demonstrate that gender relations are integral to international relations. Diplomatic wives smooth over the workings of power among states and statesmen; opaque but trustworthy marital contracts facilitate trans-national money laundering and sex trafficking; global icons such as Cosmopolitan conquer foreign cultures and prepare them for the onslaught of Western capitalism; and women and men organize in kitchens, churches and kin-communities to overthrow authoritarian regimes and make peace in the face of brutal conflict.23

The world of the diplomat is a complicated realm. Clarity and confusion are difficult to separate. On the one hand diplomacy is elevated by fine manners and intellectual minds: sensitivities animated by the heights of cultural decadence experienced in Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans. On the other hand, the diplomat is the passive prisoner to the political will of state, a condition which refuses to acknowledge a superior argument – unless, of course, it happens to be instrumental in its formulation. The diplomat knows how the game is played.

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Seeking Resolution: The Exhaustion of Extremes Good does not always prevail over evil, but it lingers as a tenacious objective suggesting change. Madness runs its course and falls silent, exhausted, temporarily. The rise and fall of great powers are like bubbles, slow uptake and rapid implosion. In relations between states, calculations, bargains and considered interventions can be eroded, nullified or orchestrated in the change process. Interestingly, this seems to be applicable to various regimes throughout the world. The skill of the diplomat is noted in recognising the clues that suggest seismic shifts in policy before the military have been dispatched from the barracks. In the complex world of international relations, it is the fear of the unknown that generates the most damage. Adults have their horror stories: the sudden invasion, the unprovoked attack, the leap in technology that makes a benign state militarily active on the international scene. It is uncertainty and madmen that take nations to war. The noise of international relations is increasingly dominated by the global media and the reports that circulate in 24/7 news environments. The tension between Iran and Britain following the capture of the UK Navy crew in disputed waters was a conflict in public relations that benefited the former and undermined the latter. The subtext of the adventure sent an important signal to the states in the Middle East; wider dominant intentions notable in a coded diplomacy broadcast in the global media. In a book providing an in-depth overview of the development of International Relations in the late twentieth century, John W. Burton and Tarja Väyrtnen contributed a chapter titled ‘The End of International Relations?’ One particular passage on diplomacy suggested: There are many far-reaching consequences of the global changes in the number of units in the international system. Given some hundreds of separate nations or autonomies of one kind or another, old forms of diplomacy in which representatives are exchanged become impossible, especially for small entities. What should have happened years ago when communications made possible a dramatic change in the relationships among countries now must happen: direct communication between authorities and an end to the costly ‘diplomatic representatives’ abroad.24

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Whilst the shift from an over reliance on diplomats to directdecision makes sense on one level, it complicates issues on another. It assumes that the politicians are best placed to make an informed decision. Obviously, diplomats may dispatch information, which can be ignored. This seems to be increasingly common. The implications arising from the decision to invade Iraq to end the reign of Saddam Hussein was engineered by the dominant partner in the relationship between Britain and The United States. The rights and wrongs of the campaign aside, the formulations on foreign policy by Heads of State acting in a politically motivated arena on instinct is flawed without the input from the expertise of diplomats. Without input from practitioners of international affairs, judgement is clouded at the heart of Government. The use of e-diplomacy presents a wealth of problems as it does possibilities. Embassies have limited resources, but the idea that sensitive negotiations could be undertaken by email or satellite phone might please the accountant, but the outcome of negotiations may not be equally successful on the long term balance sheet.

Conclusion Diplomacy and literature are comfortable companions. The former is a guardian of patient dialogue. The latter excels in intrigue, revelations and sublime plot development. Fiction is particularly useful in directing its creative energies to map the rise and fall of a character or a nation. It takes notice of the mundane, the inconsequential and the non-politics, details that fill-in the gaps in the picture. Novels are comfortable in the masquerade, but are poor at keeping secrets. Cultural diplomacy is a global language. The diplomat is an important actor on the international stage. He or she excels in discretion; a tortured spy is collected by a diplomat and is taken to a secret doctor. This avoids embarrassment towards impatient hosts of the country. Human psychology, the building of cautious networks, and the manipulation of relationships all demand schooling in a wide literature. Characters and events drawn from experiences and the imagination help decode the madness that

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engages the adult world. Violence is repeatedly tempered by the subtle arts of diplomacy, and the import and export of stories.

Notes 1

Diplomacy includes nuances, coded words and expulsions, echoes of a cold war diplomacy in the form of expelling spies and subtleties acknowledged in the world of literature continues intermittitingly. 2 Readers interested in the academic journals of diplomatic relations should consult the journals Diplomacy and Statecraft, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy and The Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations. The intention in the above chapter is rescue the stories of diplomacy in a wider sense, encouraging an acknowledgement of cultural diplomacy that in turn generates conversations about shared experiences, goals and disappointments in international relations. 3 http://www.un.org/ 4 Schelling (1980) p. 168. 5 For excellent resource that includes an extensive series of interviews with former British diplomats see the British Diplomatic Oral History Programme: http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0014%2FDOHP 6 Brogan (1998) pp. xi-xii. 7 Don DeLillo’s novel, Underworld, presents a fascinating and insightful picture of the ‘oppositional’ culture of the cold war, an image viewed through the post-post modern kaleidoscope of a material and psychotic world. 8 Roberts (1990) p. 559. 9 For a superb view on the intrigue noted in changing alliances, territorial agreements, and political slight of hands that was part of the Congress, see Adam Zamoyski’s book, Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna. 10 Bull (1977) p. 37. 11 Barry Steiner’s article in Review of International Studies is valuable in highlighting the diplomatic absences and ‘gaps’ in international theory. 12 Morgenthau (1933) p. 155. 13 Fierke (2005) p. 129. 14 George (1994) p. 198. 15 This perhaps not the case with the French Foreign Office. see: http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/ 16 The violent attack on Morgan Tsvangirai, Leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in March 2007, highlighted the decline in political and civil relations inside Zimbabwe. 17 Elshtain (1989) p. 63. 18 Frankel (1969) p. 145. 19 Berridge 20 Anon, email communication, German Embassy, London. 12/3/07. 21 http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/ 22 Kissinger (1995) pp. 17-18. 23 True (2005) p. 214. 24 Burton and Väyrynen (1994) p. 71.

Chapter 7

Listening to Voices: Whispers from the Global Home Introduction The achingly beautiful sound of the Adhan (Azaan), the Islamic call to prayer, summons’s at dawn the faithful from a trivial slumber, a hypnotic ethereal voice skimming like a warm pebble on a dense sea. How can anything so pure and wonderful be threatening? What stories have been told to generate caution and fear? Why are ‘we’ disturbed by the cultural products of other cultures when they impact on traditional beliefs and values, reshaping the atmosphere within boundaries and borders? The cacophony of colours, smells and tastes, the struggle with impenetrable languages inspires interest. It is the celebration of diversity that makes ‘us’ who ‘we’ are. Successive waves of cultural exchanges communicated in international social discourse produce a coded nervousness and tension. Is it because ‘we’ recognise that ‘we’ are the outsiders with participation only perversely intimated? Are ‘we’ more able to understand ourselves than the profiles of others, because we can’t stand in their shoes, or are ‘we’ deluded by the obvious familiarity, a false consciousness perpetually at risk from the decoding of internal misinformation? In this sense are cultural perceptions simply bolted-on to other cultures and vice versa producing cultural imperialism and distortion? In previous chapters, the material considered the changing nature of home in a global setting. This has been discussed in relation to international relations and world literature. The references to multicultural, multinational and inter-faith relations between groups and individuals produce a complex pattern of relations that generate plural identities that are inconsistent with traditional categories and

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expressions. The laden cultural content of the global mosaic has produced segregation and extremism, which needs to be understood within ever changing social parameters.1 The inter-connection between communities can be multifaceted and solitary. For example, the sharing of festivals brings together multi-faith groups2 or cultural havens, purged of cultural infections, is notable in most cities. It is important to ‘make sense’ of the patterns of cultural diversity and alleged homogeneity in a manner that recognises the anomalies and coded actions prevalent in cultural behaviour and relations.3 This chapter considers the misunderstandings and cultural violence between cultures through the creative literature. Literature and art challenge the perceptions of a country. It aims to examine the West and non-West and the deviations inherent in each formation that includes cultural production from ‘outside’ the west. The material reflects on the West and the East before introducing heterogeneous experiences from the wider world; this step is taken not to privilege one group over another, but to include, where possible, a broad selection of global creative material that contributes to a basic understanding of the global home and its multifarious story. Care will be taken not to flatten history, but key events will be included to provide a context in which orientalism and occidentialism evolve. Essentially, the passages reflect on the stories that shape international behaviour that evolve from confusion, frustration, offence and humour in international relations. The challenge to include a comprehensive list of world literature is beyond the scope of this chapter, nonetheless the material strives to include a snapshot of the richness of oral and written stories that contribute to the content of the globalization and the shared cultural home.

The West and the Non-West: ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ and They Everyone knows where the West is? Washington. D.C., The Beatles, Coca Cola, McDonalds, Monmartre, Yusuf Islam, Anne Frank, the internet, telecommunications and the digital media are all pieces in the puzzle of the West. America, Europe and their direct cultural cousins in Australia, New Zealand and Israel are the West. Is that

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accurate? Is Japan ‘in’ the West? Is the West where and what it was? What exactly defines the west? Are reference points identifiable in geography, culture, wealth, living standards, health care, car ownership, violence, disparities between rich or poor, international law, science, prison numbers or number of consumables? What makes the West, Western and can it be experienced outside the West? Is it a state of mind, something that can be adopted or infiltrated? Is western cultural imperialism continuing in explicit and subtle forms or is it a story that is being transformed by globalization? The story of the West rests in ceaseless internal struggles that built cities on a foundation of corpses and established dominant Empires. In the reoccurring wrangles of groups dominating other groups, the common denominator in the human story, civilisation emerged from the consequences, a civilisation built on the pillars of art and violence. The injection of beliefs, values and ideas were formulated through the constructions of the ancient gods, Christianity, the Papacy and the protestant church that emerged in the story of the Rome, the reformation, the ascendancy of colonialism, imperialism and the construction of modernity in a process that continues to unravel leaving a cultural residue on the social landscape. The non-West in this story is formulated partly in the Arab Empire and the spread of Islam. Elsewhere, traditional cultures were demeaned by invasion, slavery, exploitation and racism. This is recognised in the wide cultural terrorism the West exported from the late fifteen century onwards in successive waves of hegemonic influence. The pattern of cultural and material export found wide expression in the Portuguese and Spanish expansionism in the early sixteenth century; the competition between the Dutch and British for territories in the East Indies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the rivalries that occurred between the British and French in eighteenth centuries in Africa and the New World; the conflict between Britain and Germany in nineteenth and twentieth century; the impact of the United States in the twentieth century and the countervailing force of communism, each of which impacted on the non-West in general negative terms. In the administration of territories arrogance was exported that subjected numerous cultural

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expressions to censorship and obedience. In enforcing coercion and consensus, the moral and intellectual leadership by the colonial powers compromised long term legitimate authority and encouraged counter-hegemonic formulations that sought to disturb and defeat the oppression through recognition and independence. The West in imposing its footprint of the non-West: signifies a political cultural-economy in which formalised, radicalized, creolized, and imbricated sets of relationships have developed between unevenly essentialized “European” and “Non-European” designations, where the former exerts hegemony over the latter.4

The events that have contributed to the constructions of the West can be discerned in the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian culture, the renaissance, the reformation, enlightenment, industrialisation, and political, social, economic and cultural imperialism that reached an important peak in the twentieth-century with the implosion of the former Soviet Union and the seemingly universal adoption of a capitalistic economic model linked to varied versions of liberalism and democracy. In the shift from modernity to globalization, the recognition of modernisms is central to understanding the new conditions, processors that cast Western and non-Western heritage in a whirlpool of international relations, a cross-plural computation of stories, tossed by the interventions and continuation of historical processes that becomes universal and inclusive without being even. In other words: Globalization, especially in its dominant popular and media usages, is capitalism, but now without the concrete and institutionalised socialist alternative. The relation between globalization and modernization is somewhat more complicated. It includes the capitalism-to-globalization shift, but also points to a basic reassessment of all that has gone before. In a sense, changing to the idea of globalization is a way of saying that modernization is now no longer regional but rather unavoidably global.5

Whilst a modernist view of the West is dominated by European and American sentiment, a version of globalization that is universal does not simplistically equate to Americanization. America is part of, not the sum of, globalization. In this form:

Listening to Voices: Whispers from the Global Home 133 Globalization may be distinguished from imperialism in that it is a far less coherent or culturally directed process. For all that it is ambiguous in an economic and political senses; the idea of imperialism contains, at least, the notion of a purposeful project: the intended spread of a social system from one centre of power across the globe. The idea of ‘globalization’ suggests interconnection and interdependency of all global areas which happens in a far less purposeful way.6

America is a global hegemonic force in terms of military power. Its security agenda is focused directly on the war on terror. Therefore, its response to global issues in foreign affairs encourages, coerces, cajoles and punishes states that do not support its objectives. This generates support from states through cultural alliances and shared objectives, which on the one hand contributes to international stability. On the other hand, the nonWest perceives the West a coalition of the willing. In exporting a bellicose set of totalising selfish interests aimed at widening its influence, it is perceived that the parts support a hegemonic giant seeking empire status. Each story fits into the narrative of world history and the ceaseless additions of histories provide the canvass for emergence of fresh life stories. The reanimated reality of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRICS) coupled with the resurgence cities in numerous nonWestern states that include Cairo to Phnom Penh, Khartoum to Abuja, are of a global narrative that is generating a global consciousness that is confident in contributing to a mosaic of practices and intentions. Globality brings us into contact with more and more reality, and it is difficult to preserve any sovereignty here. A sovereign individual would be one who decided even his or her entanglements and points of contact with reality. Such sovereignty presupposes an existential power of judgement: that is, a feel for what is really of concern for us; a capacity to distinguish degrees of urgency and the range of our action.7

It is a mistake to view globalization as a product that is a replica of the West. Features of it are Western, but the content of the varied footprints include non-Western attitudes and contributions that question and influence the outcome of contemporary history constructed on narrow cultural lines. Each category applies:

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democracy, liberalism, and capitalism, but each are contested.8 Globalization is tangibly the nexus of social, political, economic and technological relations prevalent in global multicultural setting. East and West are on the move. The battle for visas, passports, discount seats, VIP lounges occupying embassies, airports and train stations.9 In less comfortable conditions human trafficking and smuggling are directed by gangsters and illegal operations directing the human commodity through ports and borders on the global conveyor. Hollywood and Bollywood keep track, noting how scriptwriters capture the varied actions that result in a snapshot of the global story. In Segun Afolabi’s novel A Life Elsewhere, an air traffic controller pauses from his duties to imagine the lives of the passengers on a flight from Hong Kong, characters in transition who originate from Nigeria, Japan, and India and elsewhere. In a novel dealing with departures and arrivals, themes are sketched which apply to passengers everywhere, it is an endearingly global and local story that deals in hopes, disappointments and intentions. In recent expressions of sudden violence notable in the attacks on the World Trade Center, Virginia Tech, Bali and Egypt and elsewhere in numerous theatres of conflict, it is acknowledged that the victims are multinational. In centralised events of bloodshed and violence, stories of life and death are increasingly multicultural in scope. Victims include the care worker and the health professional, the peace worker and peacekeeper, the mother and the child – in terms of the innocent dead, the local is global. Bharati Mukherjee in The Middleman and Other Stories sketched a multinational set of characters including Chinese, Indian, Fililpino, Afgan Sri Lankan, Vietnamese, Italian, and Caribbean, each pursuing high risk strategies to mould their lives beyond national constraints, which results in struggles and guilt. Creative literature allows characters to breath in pockets of social suffocation, traumatic circumstances that make the calm desperate and manic lethargic. Voices are being noticed in the global home. Stories on the move are regularly reported on the BBC World Service’s, World Book Club and Global Voices on-line,10 poems sketched from the memories of the dispossessed. Elsewhere in the e-world, e-ballads tumble from blog sites reporting the unreported. Short stories on every continent producing jewels from a tradition that flows back to

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Vladimir Nabokov, enter the global cycle and circle of stories that make the foreign familiar, and the well-known a stranger.11 It is the heightened risks associated with globalization that triggers nervousness. The rise of Islam and its hegemonic influence on the Arab language and culture is related directly to the Islamic holy book, the Qur’an, which remains in it classical form. Islamic armies exported cultural commodities that impacted on the local customs on a global map that stretched from the Maghreb to Indonesia. It was the former export of Islamic influence and expansionism in the middle ages that shaped western cultural prejudices that persist in some contemporary forms. The rise and fall of the Arab Empire was considered in a book of the same name by the author, Rodney Collomb. In the book, Collomb looked at the hegemonic struggle between east and west, and the perceptions and internal disruptions that became fixed in the view of the non-West. Why should scholars in International Relations be concerned about the Non-West and its natural presence in the processes of globalization? The non-West has a long memory that recalls and continues to experience the influence of Western attitudes on everyday life. It is understandable that the non-west is defending its traditions and reasserting its interests to reject forms of oppression that it believes are fresh assaults on culture, society, trade and finance. By far the most prominent, and indeed the most powerful theme in the nonWestern narrative today is Emancipation. As told by Third World writers, relations between the non-West and the West are essentially stories about undoing dominance/subordination, gaining self-determination and regaining self-respect, reasserting that which has been suppressed, resurrecting that which has been submerged and reclaiming that which has been stolen. The goal is independence (the eradication of dependence); the process is emancipation; the method is ‘resistance’, which means more than ‘standing against’ and something more like ‘ejecting, purging and replacing’.12

The literature of opposition is not romanticism; it’s the essence of action. In the conditions of imposed or implied subordination, a germ of enormous proportions feeds to generate antagonisms, resentments and hatred, which perpetuates expressions of denial from the

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longevity of the system that uses explicit and subtle forms of exploitation to maintain its hegemonic control. The use of magic realism as a vehicle to examine oppression and hypocrisy is part surrealist, part folk tradition, which fuses reality with an unreal dreamlike quality that never cuts its roots to an existing reality that underpins the approach. In a formative book by the Cuban writer, Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of This World, the author used Afro-Caribbean folk-traditions and a realist framework to produce a novel on the revolution in Haiti, and the consequences of slavery and oppression. Influenced by André Breton and surrealism in Paris, Carpentier experimented with his own literary version that flowed into the book focusing on the haunting spell of legend rather than the confine of historical fact authenticated by the coloniser. The violent past of the Haiti dominated by the nineteenth century despot Henri Christophe is unpacked using an elaborate imaging that never loses the impact and consequences of violence and intimidation through the mental gymnastics of a creative and challenging literature. Gabriel Garcia Márquez classic story of seven generations of the Buendia family and Macondo, the town they have built, suspends the confines of a rigid structure for a normative style that allows the imagination to capture the nuances and surprises hiding in the shadows of stories. The book comments on the wider trials of Colombian life, and Latin America through its synergistic style, which combines political realism with magic realism. In a useful article, ‘The Politics of the Possible’ Kumkun Sangari captures the complexity of Latin-American culture and its links to and separateness from the West. The cultural heterogeneity of Latin America is at once different from and determined by the ‘linier’ history of the West, which both nests inside and shapes Latin American history, often by erasure. The simultaneity of the heterogeneous is a matter of historical sedimentation that results from the physical coexistence over time of different ethnic groups (native American Indian, Arab, African, Indochinese, Asian, Spanish) each laden with its respective cultural freight of myth, oral narrative, magic, superstition, Roman Catholicism, Cartesian education and Western rationalism. Simultaneity is the restless product of a long history of miscegenation, assimilation, and syncretization as well as of conflict, contradiction, and cultural violence.13

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In considering the various processors that flow into the universalising, hybrid cultural space of globalization, cross cultural fertilisation is the norm not the exception. Literary bridges between cultures generate insight and comment on multicultural relations. It is the global space that is filled with words and oral traditions, which has been formulating since humans began using images and words to communicate. International Relations should acknowledge fully the move from an Anglo-American straight-jacket and recognise the value of magic realism to ensure its stories are not limited to narrow conceptions of security, sensitivity to insecurity is equally revealing.

Orientalism: Placements and Paradox In the construction of the Orientalism, the struggles between secularism and Islam dominate. Whilst this story is incisive, wider content of the orient that recognises the steps in the construction of the near and far East needs to be acknowledged in the use of the word. From a western point of view, the orient has been shaped by discovery, trade, exploration and conflict. The early and positive presentation of the orient becomes undermined by the interests of the elite social classes and the flawed ideas within the West that legitimate dominance. Extraordinary care is required in dealing with the catch-all nature of the term. It generates problems in the manner that it casts all faith (Islamic, Hindu and Confusion) and non-faith groups representing numerous nations in the ‘Orient’ as a single entity. This is repeatedly presented as a universal challenge to the west simply on the grounds that it is non-western. The area that locates the Middle East on the contemporary world political maps was referred to as the orient during the Roman Empire and the middle-ages. The further Non-West was largely unknown.14 The below acknowledges the groundbreaking work on Orientalism by Edward Said and the western ‘investment’ in the term.15 This was made explicit in the paper by Timothy Brennan in which he highlighted the foundation of Western hegemony. European knowledge –production vis-á-vis the Orient took the form it did because it could. It controlled the land, the trade, the government registers,

138 Literature and International Relations and the means of disseminating information. The process painfully described in Orientatialism is this: no one could counter the European view, and this lamentable hegemony gradually gave way to the belief, backed up by sensitive scholarship, that no one need question it.16

References in classical literature to key events that report on the rise of Persia and the expansion of Islam, the conquests of the Alexandra the Great, and the crusades inform views of the non-west, which gradually widened with the superficial knowledge of the orient. The early relations with the orient produced fabulous stories of mysteries peoples and luxurious landscapes. Early references to the orient are made in the Greek plays. Aeschylus (525 456 BC) being influenced by the drama and exotic spirit of the East celebrated its cultural achievements. Herman in a paper titled the The Scene of the Persians of Aeschylus, reflected on the location of Susa, which to Aeschylus was the capital of Persian rule, and explored the hegemony of its ideas and culture. The struggles between the Greeks and Persia would ensure the import and export of violence would be the central focus. The struggle between the protagonists included battles that continue to resonate in popular culture. This is apparent in the film, 300, by the director Zack Snyder. The film is based on the novel by Frank Miller, which retells the ancient Battle of Thermopylae in which King Leonidas and 300 Spartans fought to the death against Xerxes and a massive Persian army. Is important to place the book in its historical context, the Persian wars occurred between 499-478 B.C. The first Persian expedition was launched under Mardonius sent to punish Athens and Eretria for sending forces to fight against the Darius. In the campaign of Thermopylae, featured in the film, Xerxes, who had succeeded Darius in 486, demanded earth and water (submission) from all the Greek states, which was refused. Xerxes sent an army to exert retaliation over the Greeks. Langer in his sublime account suggests that figure was 180,000 not the 900,000 (or one million in the film) commonly cited. Nonetheless, the heroism of Leonidas and the 300 Spartans is not disputed. Further struggles continued with the Battle of Salamis and the Battle of Plataea, frustrating Persian designs on the Greek states by the latter part of the fifth century. The influence of the east on Greek thought was notable in the form of culture that was derived from Syria, Egypt and

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Mesopotamia. The cultural exchanges were nonetheless subsumed under the conflict between the Greeks and the Persians. In the book, Islamic Imperialism, Karsh traces the rise Islam from the seventh century. In extending its influence, it followed the route of imperialism. Persia is notable for its strong characters. In a talk on Persian Folklore, Ella Sykes spoke on the influence of Rustum, the national hero of Persia. Some eight hundred years ago the Poet Firdusi collected all the old legends referring to the rise of the Persia nation, and made from them a fine epic poem, entitled the Shah Nameh, or Book of Kings. The principal character, however, is not a king, but a hero, the mighty Rustum, who is the Hercules of Persia, and whose wondrous exploits rival those of that illustrious Grecian hero. So much part of the national tradition is Rustrum, that a specially strong man, if referred to in conversation, would be compared to him, and all over the north of Persia, the scene of his exploits, villages named Rustumabad frequently occur.17

In the book, Persian Fire by Tom Holland, the hegemony of Persia is considered through the implications and key characters of the Persian Wars including the leaders of the empire Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius and Xerxes, which highlights the rise of Persia and tensions with the Greeks and their rouge status from a nonWestern point of view. In a continuation of hostilities, tensions between east and west exploded in the eleventh century in the struggles of religion and occupation. Inspired by the appeal from Pope Urban II to Kings, knights and soldiers were ordered to suspend internal hostilities in private warfare and focus on a collective crusade against the Turk to take Jerusalem from the Arabs. The Arabs had been in the land for centuries, but the will of a Christian God dictated the road to the Holy Sepulchre and the Holy Land be made safe. The Arabs would be defeated by the European Knights in a Holy War lasting two centuries. The Holy Land and its cities would be recaptured by Saladin, the Mahommedan hero. In expanding the view of the orient, the travels of Marco Polo in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were influential in opening routes and contacts that were previously unknown. When he was

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seventeen, Marco Polo began with journeys to China. There he was received by the Mongol emperor, Kublai Khan and with support from Khan, Polo explored Tibet and Burma before returning to Venice in 1295.18 In response to the powers of the merchant class and the keenness to continue trade, the Venetians celebrated the rise of Venice in 1310 with the election of the first doge. This was followed with treaties with Constantinople that propelled the republic to hegemonic domination in the Mediterranean and Adriatic. Trade flowed into its ports and merchants buzzed in the offices that formed around the Rialto Bridge, a location and experience that would provide the basis for Shakespeare’s play, The Merchant of Venice. In formulating superiority in the sea, Venice monopolised the route to the Holy Land and provide a lucrative port for both East and West. The prosperity of Venice would be undermined with the discovery of a new route to the Indies. In the mid-fifteenth century, Constantinople was secured by the Ottoman Turks, who had hegemonic influence over a region that stretched from Iran to Morocco. The resurgence of Istanbul as an entry point to the East replaced Venice and Nicosia (in terms of trade) as the site of where the Orient begins for Westerners. In 1570 the Turks attacked Cyprus the most important base of Venetian power in the east, and continued to its downfall. In the early part of the seventeenth century, the Dutch were still at war with Spain, seeking to secure their independence and widen trading opportunities. The period would shape The Dutch Republic and its golden age. The Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602 and was instrumental in Dutch imperialism. The East India Company in England had been established by Royal Charter by Elizabeth I. It is notable that the early representatives from the East India companies married locals and became integrated into the culture and customs of the people. Artists travelling with the companies recorded fashions, styles and landscapes that constructed a positive view of the exotic East. In the dramatic historical upheavals that dominated the eighteenth century, the French revolution led to the rise of Napoleon and campaigns into the Middle East that began with the occupation of Egypt, and wider colonial competition for other states in the Arab

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world. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, manners in the West became infused with an arrogance that would structure the relations with the Eastern Nations.19 This would result in the derogatory use of the term ‘orientalism’ infected with ‘a type of imperialism, racism, and even according to some, anti-Semitism’.20 The clash of ideas regarding faith, worship and social behaviour generated exaggerations, misunderstandings and base lies. The view that the models of oriental despotism found in the eastern hemisphere where subservient to and beneath the constitutional republics and limited monarchies in the West added to the demonising of the orient. Mackie in the book Orientalism demonstrates the subtleties of the debilitating state of inter-cultural relations driven by ignorance and calculated interventions producing mistrust and animosity. The revolutions in France and America and the influence of the age of the Enlightenment generated a period of global destructive criticism that polarised crucial concerns on the organisation of society and faith. Science, republicanism and independence would make an impact that would impact on all aspects of the society, albeit unevenly and in different time frames. In the conclusion of the World War I, the establishment of the League of Nations in Versailles produced an outcome that would see the French and British shape the territories of Arabia, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.21 This resulted in further arrogance and cultural terrorism with the suppression and re-education of peoples deemed to be illiterate and backward. The consequences of the World War II introduced the United States to international affairs: The United States allowed the United Nations to be located in New York and deepened its interests in securing the supply of oil from the Middle East, which was temporarily interrupted by the counter-hegemonic formation of OPEC. The United States, in protecting the interests of Israel, which exerted influence on domestic policies in the United States, entered the complex relations that dominate the Arab-Israel conflict. The intention to contain the export of communism led the United States to become actively engaged in conflict and tensions outside its territorial borders. Within this post-war environment, the vast Muslim communities that were suppressed on the communist rule in China and the Soviet Union reasserted their culture and beliefs.

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The implosion of the former Soviet Union, the desire of the Chinese to embrace a version of social capitalism, and the collapse of strands of Marx-Leninist ideology in Africa, Asia and the Americas led the United States to celebrate its perceived victories. In a surprising challenge, the United States turned its attention to the rapid rise in Japanese economic hegemony that threatened to weaken American interests.22 This generated anti-Japanese feeling that filtered into a negative form of orientatalism. In the book, Rising Sun by Michael Crichton, the author alluded to the fears circulated throughout America at the end of the twentieth century, that Japan would replace the United States as a modern economic superpower. The success of the Japanese work ethic meant that it overtook American labour in terms of productivity, a condition that suggested that Japanese culture was more programmed to hard work and success. The book was influential before the Japanese economic bubble burst under the weight of construction debts and banking malfeasance. Nevertheless, the Asian work ethic continues to disturb American sensibilities in dealing with a resurgent Japan and China.23 In a recent film that failed to adequately engage in Japanese culture, Sophie Coppola’s wooden, Lost in Translation, did well at the box office, but struggled to move beyond the stereotypical view of Asia that is dominant in the Untied States. It is disturbing that the simplistic negative view of the orient persists in popular culture, but in a manner of extreme irony, the west is similarly lampooned. In this sense, Said captures the dominant power relationship inherent in traditional Western and non-Western relations, in this case between Britain and Egypt, but it can be applied further: There are Westerners and there are Orientals. The former dominate; the latter must be dominated, which usually means having their lands occupied, their internal affairs rigidly controlled, their blood and treasure put at the disposal of one or another Western power.24

Despite constructs of the orient in a negative form, literature recounts the cultural richness of the non-west. In the novel, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, the author pursues his interest in seeking to understand the individual purpose in life. The book was inspired by Hesse’s early travels to India and a fascination with the early life of Buddha. The story of Siddhartha by Hesse is influenced

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by the individualism and soul searching found in Europe, but it is enriched by the aspects of Buddhism which are authentic in the context that the fundamental features of the ideas are not corrupted by an ill-conceived view of culture. In a book that captured the imagination of the nineteen-sixties, Robert Persig’s, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, became a cult classic that inspired millions of Westerners to experiment with new ways of living inspired by Tibetan Buddhism and vague oriental philosophy. E.M. Forster’s classic in Western fiction, A Passage to India, inspired and constructed on visits to India, captured the beauty of the Chandrapore and the superficiality of the British expatiate community when they refuse to defend Aziz, a previously respected physician who was popular in the circle, following an incident at the Marabar caves where the doctor is accused of assaulting Miss Quested, a visiting Englishwomen. The accusation is dismissed, but the experience encourages Aziz to break his generally good relations with the British and encourage their departure from India.25 In the book, The Prevalence of Witches by Aubrey Menen, Empire is served by the administration visiting a backward district of India to ensure that the justice of the crown is seen to be operating without prejudice. The world of Limbo is an area dominated by witchcraft and superstition. The annual visit of an English educational office to Limbo encourages a strange story that is aided by a phoney occident ‘Swami’ to secure true justice for a village headman on a charge of murder. In exposing the elite manners of the British Empire, Western morality is exposed as an inappropriate and immoral model imposed on a culture that is free from the hypocrisy of the imperialist occupation. The crime initiated by the chief headman is murder: he has killed his wife’s paramour. He does not, however, consider himself responsible for the murder and claims that he has been directed by witchcraft to commit the act. The education officer and the political agent orchestrate the release of the prisoner. They arrange a miracle to convince the judge that what the Lombodians practise is a religion and urge the chief to let off the man since he was only practicing his religion. Unfortunately, the Judge, a Mr. Chandra Bose, is a notable member of the Rationalist Press Association and treats the miracle

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merely as an interesting case of mass hysteria. In an interesting article by Ajay Skaria, Limbo is shaped by a tangible experience: Limbo is modelled very closely on Dangs in Western India, a 655-square mile forested and hilly region, which during British rule was managed by the Political Agent of Khandesh district in Bombay Presidency. Menen was an Education Officer in Dangs in the 1940s, and drew on his experiences for the novel…Like, Menen’s characters, nineteenth century Khandesh Political Agents often agonised over the rightness of trying Dangi men accused of killing. They tried to resolve their predicament by awarding light sentences.26

This is not the case with the book by Melanie Philips. Londonistan is symptomatic of the confused view that everyone in the Non-West is a direct threat to the West, this infection of ignorance is perhaps the most serious development in contemporary international relations. It is ironic that during the Korean and Vietnam wars, Chinese soldiers were involved in the campaigns, but Western ignorance failed to differentiate the composition of Asian forces active in the conflict because of their similar appearance. In successive terrorist events perpetrated by al-Qaeda and related groups, it is noticeable how revenge attacks in Britain are directed to Hindu bus drivers and other non-Muslim workers in Western cities by ill and misinformed members of the community keen to direct misguided violence towards citizens that look a particular way. The consequences of a revitalised Islamic shift that began with the Iran’s Islamic Revolution and Saddam Hussein’s invasion in Kuwait focused America on a vague Muslim enemy caricatured in Hollywood action movies. The attack on the World Trade Center resulted in the war on terror, which separates the world on crude lines that suggests that countries and peoples of the world are either for America or they are against it. In an incisive paper that engages with Said’s orientalism and its subsequent imaginings, the author makes clear the processes that inform East and West. Together, they have produced a portrait of the modern West deeply divided by the process of representation. It is a West whose self-representation is crossed by the ‘passive’ Orient in which it expresses universality. The Orient also comes to exercise pressure on the West as its founding disciplines appear with a colonial genealogy. The Orientalist venture ends up distorting the West’s

Listening to Voices: Whispers from the Global Home 145 own self image as it is shown to reach out to the crutch of Sanskrit and the ‘Aryan race’ in order to bleach its heritage white. Not only racism but sexism and misogyny also emerge interwoven into the hegemonic culture of the modern West.27

It is noticeable in the West how the orient continues to be elevated in cultural terms, but criticised in its democratic deficit. This raises a key issue in the organisation of states and the role of democracy, the latter being used singly in the rhetoric of the hegemonic West, but applied liberally in practice.

Occidentalism: Tweeds, Obesity and Hedonism Occidentalism is non-Western perceptions of the West. The common reference points are exploitation, materialism, consumerism and secularism, which play a central part in establishing the profile of westerners. This is noted in the manner that capitalism undermines traditional societies, snapping heritage and reshaping expectations. The term ‘Occidentalism’ repeats many of the generalisations found in the conception of the orient. Class, racism and discrimination persist, but counter sensibilities that embrace and promote multicultural experiences demonstrate that the term is complicated. The mix of cultural and national experiences in the West prompts a series of questions that acknowledge the impact of immigration and duel citizenship. What is British culture? What is American culture? What is French Culture? What is Dutch culture? What is a British Muslim? What is an American Hindu? What is a French Arab? What is a Flemish inter-nationalist? Each example encapsulates numerous beliefs, identities, and values that compromise occidentialism, and generates a view that the traditional view of the west is in crisis. In the book, Occidentalism, Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit reject a definition of the term with reference to the CounterReformation to the Counter-Enlightenment in Europe, and the modern chronology of events that seemingly shape the west. The author’s suggest that the focus lies where particular strands of Occidentalism that can be seen in all periods and all places where the phenomenon has occurred.

146 Literature and International Relations These strands are linked, of course, to form a chain of hostility – hostility to the City, with its image of rootless, arrogant, greedy, decadent, frivolous, cosmopolitanism; to the mind of the West, manifested in science and reason; to the settled bourgeois, whose existence is the antithesis of the self-sacrificing hero; and to the infidel, who must be crushed to make way for a world of pure faith.28

The puzzle of fundamentalism is active in the United States. Malise Ruthven in the book The Divine Supermarket, sketches the composition of belief and makes explicit the tensions between capitalism, materialism and faith. The image of a spiritually soulless America misses the diversity that is central to its existence, a collection of experiences and beliefs that are not part of liberal America. It is the spiritual poverty of the infidel that however captures the imagination in approaches to occident. The disillusionment with emptiness of the western soul is one factor in understanding the West. The Non-west equally recognises the impact of western business in developing economies. This is not about policies, but about an idea, almost a vision, of a machinelike society without a human soul. So anti-Americanism plays a large role in hostile views of the West. Sometimes it even represents the West. But it is only part of the story. Occidentalism is not the same as anti-Americanism.29

In a clever story by the film maker, Satyajit Ray, Ashamanja’s Babu’s Dog, the value of a living creature is considered. Many of Ray’s stories include an animal at the centre of the narrative. In the story a dog named Brownie, a name inspired partly by the colour of the dog and an English camera, the animal surprises his keeper with his ability to laugh. Following a report in the local newspaper, a rich American uses the tourist office to track down Ashamanja Badu’s dog. A meeting is arranged and the American is so impressed by the dog’s skills that he attempts to buy the dog with a Citibank of New York cheque. Babu realises why the dog is laughing and refuses to sell. He realises that the dog is laughing at the gentleman and his assumption that money can buy anything. The American leaves without the dog, and the dog returns to his philosophy. Not everything and everyone are for sale.

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Whispers from the Other World World literature is an amazing resource for cultural investigations of all kinds. The breath-taking scope of international literature produces insight to understanding a range of issues active in international relations: common themes that unite literature and civilisation. Each generation struggles to defend or transform the forces that enslave or liberate it, this occurs in the nation and the home. The brief selection below illustrates the point. In the remarkable collection of stories found in the fourteenth century Synlah manuscript Alf laylah wa-laylah and the books of The Thousand Nights and One Night, the pages reveals a magical world that draws on the ethereal beauty of the East and its ability to enchant and transform. This is the world of the Arabian Nights and the characters, Scheherezade, Sindbad, Harun al-Rashid, Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. The characters are well-known throughout the world. In the collection of the stories that appear in the four volumes of the work, a series of magical lands are introduced, places littered with markets, food and scents, benevolent sultans, luxurious gardens and enchanted women. Baghdad in the period of the Abbâsid dynasty, ruled the Islamic world up to the midthirteenth century. The Abbâsids excelled in education, commercial and literary production. It was Hârûn al Rashd who sent Charlemagne an elephant for his coronation, which was influential in the folk-tales that contributed to The Thousand Nights and One Night. In the series of stories by the Kenyan writer Moyez Vasssanji, collected in The Gunny Sack, Salim Juma, Tanzanian Asian and the great grandson of an African slave is left a sack full of curios, which inspire a full host of multinational characters to reveal stories of struggles, hopes and disappointment. On a more unusual journey is the Nigerian writer, Amos Tutuola who uses the storytelling tradition of the Yoruba people to construct a remarkable and ethereal world that reads like a series of surreal folk tales, which use theatre and play as a creative character. The sense of entrapment in Limbo, encourages other references to social, cultural and political confinement. It is however the journey through the spirit world that leads to the possibilities of rescue.

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The Japanese author, Haruki Murakami, provides an alternative, challenging and surreal perspective from a Japanese view of the world. In The Wind-up Bird Chronicle multi-layered narratives guide the reader through the strange and violent images that inspire a web of journeys and one journey. In one of the most important works in Persian literature, The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat challenges the senses. It evokes the atmosphere of the Arabian Nights to shape a macabre story that takes the reader through an opium-like dream, riddled with terrors and panic. The extraordinarily popular, Wild Swans by Jung Chang, presents the stories of three generations: grandmother, mother and daughter that mirror the extremes of China in the twentieth century, a story that makes explicit the impacts of politics on ordinary people engaged in ensuring survival, peace and a modicum of comfort for their families. In the 1997 Booker Prize winning book, The God of Small Things, the novel catapulted the Indian author Arundhati Roy to world attention. The book is set in Kerala, a rural part of India in 1969. The book follows the implosion of a family through flashback and wide cultural references that evoke the poetry of the landscape and the personal, struggles that take part in families torn apart by resentment and generational change.

Conclusion The material above makes reference to the universalising nature of globalization, which encapsulates culturally diverse stories from all parts of the world. It is suggested that the terms orientalism and occidentalism are useful reference points in an historical context, but are increasingly crude in making sense of the contemporary global narrative. Cultural confusion is a natural condition of globalization. Recourse to the language of racism, bigotry, xenophobia, jingoism and the manipulation of nationalism is triggered by fear and ignorance. World literature is useful in educating without instructing. The range of multinational characters that appear in numerous works

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take readers through unique stories, insight that helps make sense of international relations. What is the discipline of International Relations to make of this story of globalization? World literature is valuable to globalization. Can literature be used to make sense of the complicated world of international relations where a ceaseless struggle between the interests of numerous states undermines the potential for world peace? It is a creative resource to heighten understanding between cultures and limit ignorance, a strategy to inject a modicum of calm in the global home. Literature provides signposts to possibilities; dreams and nightmares.

Notes 1

The use of fiction as a tool of recovery is noted in the work Land of Exile, edited by Marshall R. Pihl. In the book, stories evoke the idea and experience of exile, powerful records that reshape the history of Korea. Other sublime works of fiction that rework various notions of the homeland and their good and bad characters include Amos Oz’s Panther in the Basement, Carlos Fuentes The Eagle’s Thorne and Mario Vargas Llosa’s La Fiesta del Chivo. 2 See http://www.mynottinghill.co.uk/nottinghilltv/carnival1.htm 3 This includes the role of ignorance and the challenge of embedded conventions. 4 Goldberg and Quayson (2002) p. 61. 5 Beyer (2006) p. 19. 6 Tomlinson (1991) p. 175. 7 Safranski (2005) p. 67. 8 See Hazel Smith’s excellent book, Democracy and International Relations: critical theories/problematic practices, concerning the need to take a critical approach to the spread of international democracy; recognising its spread is not necessarily good or painless for those being democratised. 9 See David J. Whittaker, Asylum seekers and refugees in a contemporary world, for insight into the animation of human flows. 10 http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/-/topics/literature/. 11 Incomprehension in language between lovers is beautifully sketched by Xiaolu Guo in the novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, which is light-hearted, but contains common difficulties discovered by romantics finding unfamiliar cultural partners. 12 Puchala (1997) p. 131. 13 Sangari (1987) p. 158. 14 The wide and impressive scholarship that occurs in SOAS continues to explore the historical and contemporary ‘realities’ of the non-West. See: http://www.soas.ac.uk/. 15 See Carrier and Gewertz and Errington for an insight into the anthropological genealogy of Orientalism/Occidentalism. 16 Bennan (2000) p. 581. 17 Sykes (1901) p. 261. 18 See Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s nineteenth century poem, Kubla Khan.

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19 See the work of the French political philosopher, Montesquieu and the Persian Letters (Lettres persanes).These were inspired by the literature of the Arabian Nights. The letters follow the form of letters home from three Persians travelling in Europe. A useful resource can be found at: http://www.wm.edu/history/rbsche/plp/. 20 Macfie (2002) p. 5. 21 See Keynes Economic Consequence of Peace. 22 In a valuable paper, ‘Transcending East-West Dichotomies’, Lieberman claims p. 467 that ‘in the post-war environment, fresh approaches in the study of Eurasian history are necessary. The author cites: ‘the retreat of American power in Asia, East Asia’s spectacular economic success, the globalization of information and consumer culture, and the (possibly temporary) erosion of regionally-based political ideologies have combined to weaken selfconfidence, the sensibilities, the psychological assumptions of Eurocentric historiography.’ 23 See David T. Bialock’s book Eccentric Spaces, Hidden Histories: Narrative, Ritual, and Royal Authority from the Chronicles of Japan to The Tale of the Heike, a piece rich with stories going back to the Nara period. 24 Said (1995) p. 36. 25 See Singh (1985) article, ‘A Passage to India, the National Movement, and Independence’ in a special E.M.Forster Issue. 26 Skaria (1997) p. 726. 27 Prakash (1995) p. 211. 28 Buruma and Margalit (2004) p. 9. 29 Op cit (2004) p. 10.

Chapter 8

City-States: Words and Weapons in Urban Myths

Introduction States have not disappeared from the global map, but have in numerous respects become subservient to cities. The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and digital files containing various statistics can be used to formulate a story of a city that presents its land use and formation of spaces. The information that can be derived from these services provides details on the infrastructure and composition of the city. It records parking abuses by diplomats, cultural neighbourhoods, growth and regeneration. It is one method to record and map the city. The stories accumulated and circulated by citizens in cities provide further insight that is relevant to the analysis of cities. Stories are maps in themselves, offering signposts and cautions through episodic and flowing narratives.1 It is suggested that the city is important to studies in international relations. Correspondingly, it is posited that literature can play an important part in understanding a city, sharing experiences through the exchange of stories. This chapter is concerned with the impact of the city on international relations. The continuing rise of the network society links multinational citizens to an international power circuit. The interconnections are refreshed by innovation and enterprise, rendering each new technological idea rapidly redundant. Technology is not independent. It is part of knowledge that includes cultural modifications. The convergence of telecommunications, media and computers is shaped by agents operating in management, design and research

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and development seeking to exploit the opportunities arising in the vivacious markets generating animated change in inter-hyper connected cities. This process of hyper-globalism is a historical stage in the evolving nature of cities.2 The chapter reflects on the influence of mega-cities. It considers the narratives on city-states in historic and contemporary cycles and accesses their impact on wider territory.

The Spirit of Cities: Diversity and (Dis)Order It is suggested that the City be included in the content of International Relations, recognising that cities influence the wider dialogue and policy that shapes international relations.3 In this sense, the material below considers the city and literature and its relevance to international relations. Cities continue to be a magnet for the world’s population seeking work, escapism, discovery, adventure and opportunity – adult pursuits recognised in the early folk-stories of Cinderella, Dick Whittington and other tales involving the possible transformations from poverty to plenty. In the non-west regions, massive urban sprawls redefine the ‘the city’ as a megaregion casting millions in an enthralling built environment that stretches exponentially and increases the challenges in managing the multiple and often conflicting demands arising from the often unplanned shift to dense in dense dwelling.4 Nihad Sirees’ novel The Pastoral Comedy (Al-komedia Al-fallahiya), highlights the flow of tribes to the city leaving the Syrian desert to settle in the Bedouin quarter around the city of Aleppo. The spirit of the city and the spirit of the tribe clash in a manner that is familiar in the urban landscape. Literature can define a city. For example it is impossible to detach the wanderings of the Leopold Bloom through the streets of Dublin from the references points that shape the city. Despite copies of the books being destroyed and confiscated James Joyce’s Ulysses became an international classic. The ordinary actions of ordinary citizens in normal everyday lives are made extraordinary in the heroic journey through a single day. In crime fiction, cities can become characters in books. In Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza books, Rio de Janeiro is presented in all its

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complexities and anomalies; Inspector Espinosa philosophically moving through the December heat. In the novel Gloriana by Michael Moorcock, the author introduced the reader to a world part of surrealism, part alternative history. The location of the book begins with a castle and a city – or a city within a castle – within Elizabethan England. In Gloriana, Moorcook sketched a crucial book for any student of international relations. Gloriana rules an Albion whose empire includes America and most of Asia during a period of enlightenment and peace. In guarding against the influence of Arabia, Gloriana depends on her chancellor, the shrewd Montfallcon and his assassin, Captain Quire, King of Vice to ensure security. The intrigue, political secrets and flawed diplomacy that mirrors the contemporary slight of hand noted in the corridors of power, explode on every page. Cities contain secrets; hiding places that can provide refuge for the creative talent to record experiences into stories: this can be pleasant or traumatic. The output of a Jewish teenager’s jottings in her diary in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam would be turned into the book, The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank. The piece would become a candle of resistance to occupation throughout the world. The reception of the Diary as an edifying, universal message to humanity contributed to its classification as adolescent literature. The tenor of optimism is noticeable in the Diary’s adaptation into a play and into a successful film. Anne Frank herself became a standard presence in the writings and the events produced in commemoration of the Holocaust. She is considered the symbol of universal victimization and, at the same time, an emblem of prevailing humanism.5

In exploring the world of the city, the material below considers a literature that takes a creative scalpel to city life. The City dweller, the resident, the visitor and the disenfranchised, the homeless and the excluded, occupying various spaces in the City are not ignored, but are presented in a manner that informs the wider flow of citizens active in international relations. In considering the transient citizen who arrives and departs the City, a cultural residue remains to recast the city as a living organism evolving in a continual process. In a remarkable book, Peter Whitfield in Cities of the World: A History of Maps, produced a series of illustrations, maps, and

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diagrams that captured the multi-faceted use and development of cities. The forward to the book captures the history and creativity of the city, a sprit of the city and its uniqueness. The form of the city arises from its geographical setting and from its architecture. But where does its spirit arise from? Obviously from its citizens and from the historic events which have been acted out on its streets. In some subtle way, these personalities and events permeate the very air, and shape our perception of each individual city. As Henry James wrote of Rome ‘here was history, in the stones of the streets and the atoms of the sunshine’. Cities are like great theatres, carrying the weight and the intensity of past triumphs. Oxford is so different from Rio, and Boston so different from Lhasa, that when we visit these cities we are different: we experience different emotions, we act different roles, and we become mirrors of the city.6

The acceleration of this process was recognised in the last decade of the twentieth century where the ‘location of the world’s people became more urban than rural’.7 Global cities in the twenty-first century are revitalised commercial and power bases (business and politics unite) in an intense lobbying community that may, however, compromise the democratic process. The division of sectors and communities within the city and the wider world are related to the rapid transformation of cities triggered by innovation and growth, albeit unevenly. The City and its urban sprawl are home to a vast production of the stories that are crafted in and on the spaces in the city and its green pockets. Richard Yates’s novel Revolutionary Road, evokes the promise and poverty of the suburban utopia. Behind the façade of neatly cut lawns and painted fences, secrets and lies push characters to desperation. Old and modern cities, walled and open cities, coastal and industrial, inner cities and suburbs may contain unique architecture and design, but their influence on citizens and the wider world outside are extensive and influence the content of International Relations.8 It is the ideas, beliefs and values of the cities that impress themselves on the various media, on goods and services, on imports and exports. Cities demand attention.

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The City and its Discontents The image of the modern metropolis is usefully conveyed in Fitz Lang’s classic film, Metropolis. The skyscrapers, the traffic, and the power of urban life ooze from the flickering screen. Similarly, the pathé news footage of bombed-out ravaged cities of Coventry, Dresden, Stalingrad, Hiroshima and the industrial city of Nagasaki remain in the mind. The cosmopolitan, multi-cultural city of Bombay, centre of a global entertainment industry, renamed Mumbai in 1995, circulates an atmosphere that permeates numerous stories. Everyone can picture a scene from a city real or fabricated. Benjamin OforiAmoach’s edited book on Northern American cities is a useful text in encouraging a reflection on the size of a city. Is a city, a city? Do issues in small cities include the same problems active in large megacities? Do cities tell similar stories? In a post-post modern form conundrums tumble from an analysis of stories: in Kuala Lumpur the Symphony Hall financed by the Government and a national oil company is home to western classical music; in the centre of Nicosia, divided Turkish and Cypriot communities are kept apart by the blue helmets; and in cosmopolitan Paris, government policy insists French culture is protected. It is noticeable how cities shape the identity and aspirations of the country. Cities exercise an influence on the urban centres and wider territories in a manner similar to the culture of cities found in Ancient Greece where the ideas and the arts shared a common platform in underpinning political organisation and policy.9 Citystates continue at various historical points to become the centre of political, economic and commercial domination. In the later MiddleAges and the Renaissance, Italian City-States operated with autonomy, a model that rhymes with contemporary shifts in City power. The extraordinary energy and growing capacity of urban centres led paradoxically to the early elimination, from central to northern Italy’s political firmament, of any superior – king, emperor, or princes. The cities transformed themselves precociously into city-states with corresponding territorial dimensions and political functions.10

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The multi-cultural and national composition of cities produces winners and losers in the sense that visitors arrive to be settled or crushed. in this context, the disenfranchised, the marginal, the ‘psychologically’ impaired become social casualties in the city, deepening ghettoes and districts that evolve into ‘no-go’ zones. In between the dispossessed and the elites, the middle classes seek advantage and insurance from the pressures on incomes and security. These concerns are not separate from the need in cities to continually reenergise work and its construction, an activity that results in moving home from one part of a city to somewhere else, somewhere that is increasingly international. The relationship between the local and global is embedded in the multitude of strategies that seek to use the network society and its web-like features to secure advantage and limit disputation. Cremer et al reinforces this point below. An examination of sister-cities must begin with the politics of locality and recognition of the individualized operations of specific cities, then move on to an examination of how these particularities are used as a basis for forging city to city links across the globe. Specific to the phenomenon of sister-cities is that these links are made for a range of identifiable purposes and largely outside the auspices of any central government involvement.11

The early work of Castells in The Information City and The Rise of the Network Society was extremely influential in setting up a view of globalization that recognised the impact of interlinked conceptual themes in the shape of aggressive shifts in the widening of capitalism. These include informational capitalism influence by rapid technological change, the emergence of a network society as a platform to study complex forms of interconnectedness including the impact arising from a nexus of institutions and the idea of flows: flows of capital, information technology, organizational interaction, images, sounds and symbols. The speed of change quickly makes text books in technology redundant: hybrid e-landscapes projecting digital images in email attachments, mobile screens and hardware and software innovation are part of the journey. In this sense, in the book, Communities in Cyberspace, the authors reflected on the rise of inter-connected geographical conversations, dialogue that has evolved in to blog culture and fiction.12

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The emphasis in this section focuses on capital cities. It is in these parameters that major decisions are taken: directions that impact on foreign affairs, organisations and financial centres. In parliaments, palaces, commercial headquarters, associations and institutions work moves from the local to the global in a microsecond. Washington D.C., Moscow, New Delhi, Beiing, Sao Paulo, London and Tokyo are among the great financial and trade cities of the world. Each city is visited by the same predators that circle amongst the skyscrapers of the investment market, speculating, merging and acquiring the flesh and silver of troubled empires. This is being repeated in cities from Mexico City to Khartoum, Kale Lumpier to New Delhi, and Vientiane to Addis Ababa. This is the world of the character John Self. In the novel Money, by Martin Amis, the central character is a self-obsessed consumer of a hedonistic lifestyle financed by money making deals and spending in New York and London. In an early book, Arthur Hailey in The Money Changers, revealed the debauched tales of the banking industry and its numerous casualties lost to temptation. Hunter S. Thompson in the sobering Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas takes the extremis of the American dream to the psychotic nightmare of excess. Characters like these exist in cities and in the VIP airport lounges sipping martinis and negotiating deals in-between visiting the bathroom to clear the line of cocaine. This is the world of decadence that corrupts the American dream, a world of absolute excess stretching back to the mysterious figure of Jay Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald’s anti-hero in The Great Gatsby. Self-invention is a feature of the city, creative license propelling careers and breaking them. Tom Wolfe in the book, The Masters of the Universe referred to the ‘big swinging dicks’ throughout his novel. He was referring to the moving and shaking that goes on in the big time markets. In the book using the culture of the city yuppie class, Sherman McCoy, the central character, becomes involved in a racial story that opens the race wounds in a brutal form. The novel takes a literary scalpel to the unevenness and disparities of city life. It is in the atmosphere of exuberance that occasionally consumes the city that propels it towards hegemonic status. This can be negative, everyone wants a piece of the casino type capitalism, but

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few are successful. This is particularly the case with big emerging cities in Asia. Castells identified the creation of the mega-cites: Megacites articulate the global economy, link up the informational networks, and concentrate the world’s power. But they are also the depositaries of all these segments of the population who fight to survive, as well as of those groups who want to make visible their dereliction, so that they will not die ignored in areas bypassed by communications networks. Megacities concentrate the best and the worst…it is this distinctive feature of being globally connected and locally disconnected, physically and socially, that makes megacities a new urban form.13

Taylor et al in an important contribution that alludes to the importance of cities in international relations, outlines the shift from states, a process deepening in acceleration and scope. The new mapping of the world focuses on cities rather than states. It is based upon Castells’ (1996) conceptualization of the contemporary world as network society wherein ‘spaces of flows’ are coming to dominate ‘spaces of places’. The latter space is defined by separation and boundaries, the former by interaction and connections. For instance, the familiar political map of sovereign boundaries is the way in which space of places has been portrayed at the world scale. With globalization, however, trans-national processes are leading to the erosion of the efficacy of these state boundaries. The network society consists of a myriad of flows at many different scales including movements which have created a global network. The world city network is the most discernible expression of the latter.14

Cities are noted for being the centre for embassies, finance, culture, palaces, theatres, monuments, museums, national parks, headquarters of numerous organisations, including media conglomerates and other empires that manufacture consent. In the evolving pattern of global cities, the urban space is dominant in state relations, imposing its needs and wants in securing the environment for its wealth creation. These new relationships between states and global processes have become especially manifested in certain geographies, such as U.S. border zones and urban areas like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, which have emerged on a new scale of importance beyond the nation-state…Soja [Edward] writes that the postmetropolis is characterized not only by the emergence of new urban

City-States: Words and Weapons in Urban Myths 159 forms and the greater diversity of urban residents, but also by the surge in social inequalities among these populations.15

Cities are spaces that are populated by residents. The transient and successive waves of travellers and visitors that put pressure on the various arteries of the metropolitan body impact on the health of the city. A City can lose its residents: Venice for example becomes a virtual ghost city. The cost of property being beyond the financial grasp of local Venetians renders the buildings unoccupied; outside the tourist season shutters closed to the sunsets on the Lagoon.

No Love in the Heart of the City There is an anomaly between the ebb and flow of people that travel regularly to and from the city and its fixed residents: whilst cities are densely populated, loneliness can be a familiar condition; a site of disengagement. In this space vulnerability can lead to depression, self-harm and extreminism. In atmospheric novels, the city is a natural home for the troubled. Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse and J.G. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye are incisive in studying the disconnections in the city. In Salinger’s novel, the story beginning with an expulsion that leads a young Holden Caulfield to a New York baptism of insanity and alienation ghosts and demons stepping from the shadows of Grand Central Station and other sites of urban grime. Similarly, in seeking to make sense of the infected city, Steppenwolf sits silently amongst the noise, pausing to consider the impossibility of love and the plausibility of things. Hesse writing in a sublime collection of papers found in My Belief captured the magic of Salinger’s prose. In a few short lines, which reawaken the possibility of hope, an urban odyssey is again revealed. Behind the repulsive mask, barely touched by the filth, reside noble humanity, high hearted and talented. Perhaps this dear imperilled child will write poems, perhaps too, later on, he will sometime succumb in one way or another and also sell himself to Hollywood.16

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In the areas of the city that suffer from a lack of investment, educational opportunities and unemployment, a ghettoisation occurs that inspires nefarious activities in the form of gang membership and the mafia activities. In an early article on the City, the author Jerry Edes considered the marginalization and segregation. In the article he makes reference to the poor and the rise of criminal activity. In the process of the retreat from the battle grounds, the affiant and the middle classes become willing prisoners in secure spaces that deny where possible access to suggested rouge elements. Elites use technology to split their experiences from: the increased marginalisation of large sections of the poor, who become irrelevant to the mainstream economy and forced to rely on the informal sector. This has political consequences, one of the most disturbing being the rise of local mafias, from New York to Latin America, and from Africa to the new states of the former Soviet Union.17

The gang culture in post-modern cities reflects the dystopian nightmare in popular fiction that generates a culture conducive to criminal acts. External influences keen to manipulate the fruits of disorder recruit elements to causes that increasingly radicalises animosities and frustrations. The lyric of the jungle, the gang and the mob share the microphone to communicate through poetry of rap, rock in the form of Guns ‘n’ Roses, Paradise City and the classic crime fiction of Raymond Chandler in classics like The Big Sleep. In the trade networks of the international human trafficking, narcotics, prostitution and labour, the apprehended share cells, prisons and detentions centres, each holds multi-national citizens. In a passage from an autobiography by Howard Marks, a picture is presented demonstrating the consequences of non-legal activities in the international drug trade, activities that have a major impact in cities. This could easily be the outcome of other types of offences in America. The point in this short passage is the wide scope of nationalities detained. My roommate was a Pakistani, fighting deportation by seeking political asylum. There were almost a thousand inmates of all nationalities: Nigerians, Jamaicans, Nepalese, Pakistanis, Chinese, Indians, Sri Lankans, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Laotians, Spaniards, Italians, Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians, Canadians, Central and South Americans.18

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The problem of crime is compounded by a range social, economic and psychological factors that are pressing individuals to adopt increasingly extreme measures to secure advantages. Crime is pandemic in the city. On the outskirts of one of the world’s most affiant states human cargo is transported for incarceration. Less obviously connected to L.A. are thirty-three great prisons of the Golden State But just as pump-stations bring water and power to the city, so too are prisons part of the political economic force field of Los Angeles. Between the prison and the city flows a steady stream of humanity…the arrivals come caged, white, California Department of Corrections buses while those departing are usually dropped of at the local Greyhound bus station with a one-way ticket back to their county of origin.19

Cities are spaces muddled with contradictions. In acknowledging fragmentation and diversity in a positive sense, communities, festivals, and various forms of social gatherings and entertainment bring people together in a unique space. Elsewhere, separation, alienation and confusion is present in the unsocial spaces simmering with resentment. Unnoticed like an unexploded bomb ticking before a trigger initiates social and political chaos. This has been a long term problem in cities like Los Angeles where social conflict has been split between various groups. Nonetheless, care should be taken in not labelling districts with a derogatory tag if the description no longer fits. More important, the guarded disappearance of black South Central also suggests that the longstanding “opportunity gap” betweens blacks and whites is indeed closing. More and more African Americans in California and nationwide are achieving comfortable living standards and sending their children to integrated schools. Recent figures from the National Urban League show declining unemployment and poverty rates and rising homeownership and white-collar employment rates among blacks nationwide.20

Richard Lehen’s masterly book, The City in Literature, traces the relationship between literature and city using key figures in literature such as Daniel Defoe, Émile Zola, Bram Stoker, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler and Thomas Pynchon to construct the site of urban life. In the closing pages of the

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book, the author recognises the importance of the city in shaping future possibilities. No matter how conceived, the city has played a large part in human destiny for almost five thousand years, it has created a historical rhythm of its own, even as its functions are changing and its reality reconstructed and transformed. Urban constructs must be continuously re-examined: they are, to be sure artificial and diverse; but through them we interpret the past, test our sense of reality, and structure the future. And the city – for better or worse – is our future.21

In setting the parameters of the City it is important to recognise the uniqueness of spaces in the city, which are concealed like the streets of Diagon Alley – the secrets of guides or the luck of discovery illuminating spaces is not made clear in the street maps. Every city is special in its heritage and history. Each city has formed international relations with other international cities through events and trade. In the informative book, New Keywords, James Donald, highlights contradictions in conceptualizing an impression of the city that is simply transferred to all cities. One on the difficulties with the city is that, however the term is used; it invariably attempts to capture more than can be contained by a single concept. When we talk about specific cites like London, Paris, New York, New Delhi, Beijing, Sao Paolo, or Sydney for example, we recall less their similarities than the distinctiveness of their layout, landscape, history, and (in this age of tourism and marketing) their ‘image’ or ‘identity’. At the same time, the idea of the city evokes a host of contradictory images and connotations…given this diversity and elusiveness, does it make sense to suppose that cities, whether actual or imagined, have anything in common that warrants the use of that singular noun, the ‘city’?22

Despite the caution above, the uniqueness of cities in Europe can be noted in literature, past and present. Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast uses Paris as a canvass to sketch characters that are part of the atmosphere of the Left Bank. Nathanial Hawthorne’s poetic The Marble Faun: The Romance of Monte Beni is shaped in the city of Rome as a living and vibrant museum. Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, a comic and studious masterpiece that was constructed during the repression of the Stalin years, continues to wield its magic. The novel reports on a visit of the

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devil to Moscow. In helping to decode the irrationality that prevails, surrealistic happenings, biblical and insane, become part of the mundane, conditions naturally at home in the period the book was set. In using the City as a vehicle to explore of a range of psychological and creative ideas, the location of the character is influenced by the environment he or she operates in. John Irving’s A Widow for One Year, steps into the red light district of Amsterdam in a novel that follows a life in three parts – sketches of Ruth Cole. Outside the dominant cities of the west, failing and reviving cities can be discerned in Africa and Latin America. Reviving cites have been rapidly modernised through the influx of oil revenue that has been filling up bank accounts and foreign reserves. Declining cities that are starved of resources through mismanagement and disorder are not reaping benefits from the expansion of the informational city.

Faith in the City: Radicalization and Extreme Living The City as a bustling cauldron of culture produces a surprising mix of cultural interloping. In this context views on religion become contentious or ignored. Beliefs that generate fault-lines, bitterness and coexistence are notable in most cities. Through inter and multifaith dialogue leaders representing various groups encourage compromise in seeking to provide a peaceful environment for peace in one city. This is only partly successful. Faith and its institutions: cathedrals, mosques and synagogues are present in some form in cities. In glancing at stories in the local news: the quiet moment that demands attention to a problem, the rush of relief from avoiding a near-death collision with a motorbike courier, and the sudden pain in the chest; each momentarily focusing thoughts on faith in the interest of the faithless. Divisions and diversity are different situations constructed through opposite intentions. The former is being shaped by tradition, parental guidance and social construction. In the city people are forced to engage in social relations, even if it is the unavoidable sharing of a carriage on the metro. Silence may indicate a natural position amongst the passengers. Diversity prevails. It is in the exchange and circulation of stories that barriers and defensive

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postures are adopted: this is most explicit on topics relating to religion, sex and politics. In the absence of faith, it is assumed that life takes on a mechanical existence that functions in a manner that denies the full possibilities of the human spirit. It is a view that falls flat in secular circles. Nonetheless, it is well reported in creative literature. It is the self-obsessed existence found in novels on the city such as Candace Buchnell’s Sex and the City, Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho and the series of dark comics that are part of the Frank Millar Sin City series that unnerve sensibilities and inspire an extreme reaction in response. In the Sin City series, familiar city sites such as red light districts, central train stations, run down amusement parks, rich enclaves, the docks, strips clubs and bars provide the setting for debauched sex and violence; backdrops to the fall. Strange things occur in the city that relate to international relations. The flow of people, trade and money are obvious, but the circulation of dark ideas that spread secretly is difficult to locate on urban radar without infringing civil liberties. Surveillance and monitoring frustrates some expressions. The steps to violence usually pass unnoticed until the consequences claim the lives of the innocent, the cause ignoring pleas for mercy. The city as target was rejuvenated with the series of terrorist attacks on The World Trade Center, Madrid rail attacks and the 7/7 attacks on London. This violence demonstrates the continued vulnerabilities of cities to attack. Cities are attacked outside the West. The rockets falling on the airport in Colombo highlight the rejuvenation of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Whilst harsh events and issues are common themes in the city, the urban sprawl continues to function, acknowledging, but ambivalent to the pockets of unrest, which generate large scale unrest. Images and graffiti appear on the walls like the characters in Hogarth prints and Banksy’s eclectic activities.

Losing Cities: Nothing Stays the Same for Very Long Will all cities become megacities? The mention of Venice earlier in the chapter made reference to the silence of the most serene republic

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when the tourist season ended and the Venetians returned to their homes on the mainland. The ever increasing cost of property is forcing residents out from the centre of numerous cities. This is changing the atmosphere and social composition of cities in unique ways. This can generate animosity. The inequality in incomes produces situations where by the indigenous resident can no longer live in certain parts of the city because of the cost of housing. The transient multi-national professional worker moves into the modern apartment with the luxurious river view or the line of trees that shield the central green park. Restaurants and cafes appear serving cuisines not common to the district. The change occurs and the city breathes in fresh sounds and smells. This is particularly notable in cities like Prague where following the velvet divorce the city was swamped in foreign investment. This led to a change in the city, January became one of the few months in the year that authentic Czech city life could be experienced (under falling snow and freezing conditions). Cities go through cycles that are shaped by internal and external events. The city can be lost and recovered in a memory: the lost cities of Atlantis, Babylon and Troy and found cities of Teotihuacán invoke literature to imagine and recast. In the history of literature, few stories have received as much attention as the astonishing story of Atlantis. Books on the subject run well into the thousands. Since Plato explicitly tells us the Atlantis story is “true”, the general reader assumes it to be so. On the other hand, the vast majority of classical scholars take the story as “intermediate” between the first two, i.e., a “likely story” or as a “synthesis” of them, i.e., a myth written in the form of a history.23

A volcano may consume cities, but earthquake zones do not deter the building of them. The declines of cities are primarily linked to economic conditions. In the twentieth century industry and cities were synonymous, producing international commodities that defined the style of the city: Detroit motor city; John Player and Sons, Nottingham, coal mining in Blaenafon, Wales. The previous century witnessed the rise of industry. Among them only Great Britain and Belgium had a large majority of their population living in urban districts in the middle of the nineteenth century and the census of 1851 showed that agriculture was still the biggest single

166 Literature and International Relations employer of labour among British industries (it was rivalled only by domestic service).24

Traditional industries with international reputations eroded rapidly with the transformation caused by the rise of trans-national intellectual capital and the demise of manufacturing in the West. Cites were transformed from production centres and conduit of goods to spaces that produced services and devoured consumables.

London: Global City The city demands that citizens are not silent. It is in the bustling vibrant noise that the life city functions like breath to the lungs. Whilst silent zones and periods operate between certain hours, the city is comfortable with animation. The city should be noisy; it needs to be alive with energy to survive. This is a common experience found in the mega-cities each day. The metropolis evolves with new buildings, new ideas and new faces. London provides an interesting example of the world in one city.25 Multi-cultural and national expressions make an imprint on the collective social character. Despite objections from the long serving indigenous population, a Londoner evolves like the patterns produced in turning the lens of a kaleidoscope. The City shifts gear like a car, speeding and stopping when the rhythm of its engine demands change. There are zones in London where the unspoken rules of traffic are suspended and you go with a different flow, or get stopped to wait for someone’s conversation on the street. Go up Coldharbour Lane, especially in summer, Electric Avenue or Atlantic Road, and you enter the Bermuda Triangle of Brixton Market, one of those places where you pass from the fluent curses of the London traffic to the stop-start acceleration of shouts in the street, standoffs and stylish getaways. As the road slips from mainstream London road culture [altered substantially with the congestion charge]26, it hits an interchange with the pulse of Jamaican street life, the go-slows of Lagos.27

London is the largest city in Europe.28 Its cosmopolitan credentials are recognised throughout the world. The composition of cultural districts formations transgresses neat categorization, placing life in the city on a global stage. Its stories collide, connect and

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collapse in the drama of everyday life. Events intrude on the daily odyssey with random interventions, changing, shaping and destroying. The bombings of 7/7 were positioned without regard to the nationality and culture of the casualties; this is commonly the case with attacks on civilians. Photographs and flowers replace lives that have been violently taken; the city continues, wounded but not defeated; senseless acts of beauty complementing the arrival and departure of terror. In seeking to understand the composition of the population in London, references have been made to the British Government website of The Office of National Statistics. This site includes extensive data sets and material linked to the census data. It is a valuable tool in considering the profile of demographics and lifestyle in the capital.29 In a study that presented data on the immigration map of Britain, figures were included that set out the story of London up to 2001.30 The figures demonstrate that if no additional foreignborn people had become residents in London in the decade to 2001, its population would have fallen, rather than increased. Wembley recorded more than half its residents as being born abroad. The studied revealed that the composition of the top five nationalities living in Wembley by birth were (highest first): India, Caribbean, Sri Lanka, Kenya, and other South and East Africa nations (flows from the Non-West). It is useful to compare this with the resident community in Hyde Park (highest first): USA, Other Middle East, Australia, France, India (flows largely including nationalities of the West). The break down of nationalities within cities is valuable in directing resources to a range of services including education, health and social care, community development and regeneration. Similar data sets can be found in the United States through the U.S. Census Bureau31 and Tokyo Yokohama Information.32 France does not record the number of people belonging to ethnic minorities, classifying people by their ethnicity is illegal in France. The French nation enshrines the notion of liberty, equality and fraternity. It insists that all people should be considered equally French with no differentiation. In practice, discrimination has not been removed, distinctions that can be traced to nationality and culture.

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London encapsulates the common features of major cities: entertainment, museums, land marks and a financial district. The City of London is the square mile that includes major financial institutions such as The Stock Exchange, Lloyd’s of London, merchant banks and other related institutions. The area of Canary Wharf complements the City of London with its vast banking and business heart that beats to an international drum.33 Canary Wharf feels like a City within a City, sharing many architectural similarities with a City like Toronto. The ‘old’ East End culture lingers.34 In the city’s popular magazine, Time Out, the cultural vibrance of the city is set out in a weekly magazine.35 The vast range of offerings from a diverse cultural menu is presented in an attempt to include each cultural interest that may appeal to a wide range of nationalities. London’s daily paper, The Evening Standard, reveals and tells a million stories in its rooms-to-let and lonely heart pages. Literature reveals the culture of a City. Dickens and E.M. Forster set the tone in writing about London in a historical sense. In a contemporary setting Hanif Kureishi’s novel The Buddha of Suburbia, captures the cultural clash and tension in a coming of age story that places a London British-Pakistani in a ‘foreign’ world of sex and punk. Zadie Smith’s first novel, White Teeth used North London Willesden as a canvass for her story. Mark Timlin’s realistic crime fiction, in the form of the junkie detective begins with the book, A Good Year for the Roses. In the novel, the main character Nic Sharman, gets under the skin of south London and its local characters. In the faith of hedonism, London provides a rich menu from which to select. The book High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, the obsessive male record collector reveals the weaknesses, lies, and distortions that prevail through a vein of City Life.36

Conclusion The city and the stories it generates are unique. They are universal stories that are relevant to the historic and contemporary world of globalization. The world within a City theme connects cultures and

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nations in international relations. It is clear that the City can be a place that inspires the best and the worst of experiences. The shift from the familiar spirit of cities in the twentieth century to the still forming dynamics in mega-cities and urban sprawls, generate existing and fresh challenges. There is need to approach the city with sensitivity in International Relations, acknowledging fully the internal and international dynamics that shape and impact on the City.

Notes 1

These voices can be passive, deluded or manic. Julie Choi’s article ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life in the Novel’ considers the operation and import of money in urban social life and its action on the psyche. 2 Cities are frequently associated with wealth and materialism, Arthur Miller’s play The Price, considers social responsibility and the value of things bought and sold in the human bazaar. 3 Cities and urbanization generate wide demands on energy and food. Managing these issues and resources will be crucial in maintaining international peace in the twenty-first century. John L. Seizt’s book, Global Issues sets out clearly the challenges arising from sustaining well-being in global human life. 4 See the series of cases in Aprodicio Laquin’s book, Beyond Metropolis which examines the growth of mega-urban regions in Asia and the enveloping process of seemingly continual expansion, a condition that redefines the limits of the city and the challenges it presents. 5 Brenner (1996) p. 106. 6 Whitfeld, (2005) p. 8. 7 Clark (1998) p. 85. 8 Cities generally become ‘guardians’ of international history, migration and conflict through their museums and public records. For example, The British Museum in London, The Prado in Madrid, The Vatican museums in the smallest independent state and the Metropolitan in New York are examples of the collected past with exhibits displayed in particular conditions. 9 See La Vie internationale dans la Grèce des Cités (International Relations of the Greek City-States). 10 Chittolini (1989) p. 689. 11 Cremer, et al (2001) p. 378. 12 See http://blogsearch.google.com/ 13 Castells (1996) p. 404. 14 Taylor et al (2001) pp. 213-214. 15 Sadowski-Smith (2002) p. 6. 16 Hesse (1978) p. 351. 17 Eades (1994) p. 18. 18 Marks (1998) p. 15. 19 Parenti (2002) p. 48.

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20 Sides (2003) p. 205. The passage refers to the National Urban League. For current statistic see http://www.nul.org/ 21 Lehan (1998) p. 292. 22 Donald ((2005) p. 32. 23 Naddaf (1994) p. 189. 24 Roberts (1990) p. 657. 25 Michael Moorcock’s novel Mother London maps the lives of unconventional Londoners, a chorus of past and present city dwellers locked in a vibrant capital that is itself a complex and multifaceted character. 26 My italics. 27 Gbadamosi (1999), p.186. 28 See http://www.london.gov.uk/ for an overview of various public services. 29 http://www.statistics.gov.uk/focuson/london/ http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1307 30 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/uk/05/born_abroad/around_britain/html/london.stm 31 http://www.census.gov/ 32 http://www.paperlantern.net//basics/population.html 33 http://www.canarywharf.com/mainfrm1.asp 34 This is portrayed in the popular television series Eastenders. In literary fiction, the East End can be found in novels such as Peter Ackroyd’s The Pluto Papers. 35 http://www.timeout.com/ 36 In the excellent textbook Global Shift, Peter Dicken suggests that the rise in the ‘informal and hidden economy, a world of interpersonal cash transactions or payments in kind for services rendered, a world much of which borders on the illegal and some of which is transparently criminal’ is being accelerated by the wide changes occurring in major cities. This is perhaps notable in the increase of various transients being pulled into unregulated labour markets selling copied goods such as games software, DVDs and other commercial entertainment products. Worlds in this environment overlap with other serious criminal activities in the form of drug supply and distribution, prostitution and human smuggling, profit centres fuelling international criminal activities and terrorism.

Chapter 9

Out of This World: Imperfect Future(s), Distorted Pasts

Introduction International Relations as a disciple is not overly keen in looking into the future.1 Instead it directs its energies to analysing the relations between states through historic and current disputes. The world could/should be a safe place, but it isn’t. Someone somewhere is planning disruption; improbable ideas resulting in real and damaging programs. Despite the discovery of kryptonite in Serbia, Superman remains silent; imprisoned in a genetically modified organic cage. The X-men are occupied. In news flashes from the Daily Planet, the bodies pile up. Sanctions are considered in the United Nations and diplomats nod and wink, seeking a resolution in midnight meetings that will force the protagonists to adopt a compromise. In the business of international treaties, legal considerations and regulatory environments, the long term consequences of the policies are left to the fortune tellers and time travellers. Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon are on location. In a classic work relevant to International Relations, J.M.Keynes warned of the unresolved tensions and their impact on the consequences of peace stemming from the Peace Palace Treaty formulated in Paris at the end of the First World War, a glimpse of an evil future dismissed.2 Invariably, the emphasis of a rationale to manage international relations is driven by short term calculations that produce immediate and public results. The potential for political frustrations seeking a shift in the balance of power are continually present. This becomes increasingly obvious with the rough justice of international negotiations felt by weaker states: animosity and revenge plotting on the sidelines for a future opportunity to reappear in a dramatic burst

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of bravado that may not consume relations on the international stage, but may be damaging nonetheless. This chapter is concerned with the possibilities of international relations through the lens of the literature of science fiction. It is not meant to be an expansive tour of the science fiction literature, which requires extra-terrestrial qualities to complete. The material below seeks to travel to the future, like the survivors scurrying in the catacombs of Paris in the film le Jete, initiating experiments to glimpse the future to repair the past and the present. This can only be undertaken with a reference to the literature of science fiction. It is a path widened by the BBC Television series, Dr Who, and the humour that infects Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, which encourages exploration of novel settings and issues. The latter piece follows the trials of Arthur Dent, the last surviving human when Earth is destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Dent travelled throughout the universe and in the sequel visited a restaurant at the end of the universe to witness the destruction of time. Using fantastic settings, weird science and futuristic technology, science fiction contributes to a substantial literature that engages with the shapes of worlds, ethereal and realistic, ravaged by the visions that have been formulated by good and evil. Whilst the general approach in this chapter is to draw on the content of science fiction, the role of fantasy in literature will be integrated, a detour that requires some explanation.

Defining and Refining Science Fiction and Fantasy: Fact is Stranger than Fiction The literature of science fiction and fantasy share some common themes, but the ‘real’ in science and the ‘unreal’ in fantasy generate problems. In privileging a future orientation, the field of science fiction can literally include everything. Essentially, science fiction is valuable in imagining the worlds to come. In this sense, humanity shares some foreboding in the dominance of science and technology in pursuit of developing capitalism. This was brilliantly conveyed in the novel by Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land. This novel

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would have a major impact on the sixties generation in a similar manner to that which William Burroughs and the beat generation had in the 1950s. The novel centres on the experiences of the character Valentine Michael Smith, who is adopted by Martians following his birth on a mission to mars. He was the only survivor among the explorers and has no direct experience of earth. Valentine returns to earth and discovers the full extent of spiritual poverty corrupted by materialism and greed. In recognising the challenges in making rigorous distinctions between science fiction and fantasy, Brian Stableford, in an introductory passage to a dictionary on the historic field of science fiction, suggested exploring several possibilities, the sum of these arguments favours the ‘stronger’ compromise, which unhesitatingly accepts that science fiction is a kind of fantasy but also asserts that such classification does not weaken the case for asserting that some science fiction has unique virtues arising from its scrupulous mimicry of the scientific method.3

Ironically, science fiction is influenced by the time it was produced. Therefore, is it imaged or does it reflect realty? Will technology become independent? Is utopia a dream or a nightmare? How will what is happening today shape tomorrow? The drawings of Leonardo De Vinci were seen as futuristic images of a madman/genius. The work Frankenstein by Mary Shelley gave the world an alien, but in a familiar body that haunts the nightmares of humanity. Science is present in the novel form in the strange contraptions. These are found early in the works of Julies Verne. The futuristic and devastating submarine, The Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, was influential in shaping conflict at sea. The remarkable body of work produced by H. G. Wells widened the field of science fiction with two late nineteenth century novels, The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. In directing phenomenal leaps of imagination, Well’s removed the obstacles to time travel and explored contact with alien beings. Matthew Beaumont, in an article in the journal Science Fiction Studies, considers the utopian impulse in The Time Machine, and the reoccurring theme recognised in the need to liberate the classes from

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subservience to the means of production. In failing to resolve the problem, each utopia is flawed by the emergence of a slave society, which is hidden, ignored or made animalistic. This is ultimately the capitalist utopia, one that accepts a permanent division between the classes even if it hopes to make society completely pacific. Bloch recognised this in his passing comments on The Time Machine…remarking that it is premised on the popular bourgeois conformist conception, according to which “since man never changes” there will still be classes even in hundreds of thousands of years.4

In the LA Times 1990 Book Prize for the work Disappearing through the Skylight, the author O.B.Hardison, JR. could claim ‘computers now share the human environment’.5 Digital worlds and human domains are synchronising in various settings producing fresh environments that demand study. Science fiction is useful in setting the parameters in the investigation or breaking them. Adam Roberts in the book Science Fiction makes explicit the content of genre being composed in terms of: • • • • • • •

Spaceships, interplanetary or interstellar travel; Aliens and the encounter with aliens: Mechanical robots, genetic engineering, biological robots (‘androids’) Computers, advanced technology, virtual reality; Time travel; Alternative history; Futuristic utopias and dystopias.6

Tom Shippey, in a piece outlining the content of fantasy suggests its content is driven by reference to similar worlds found in ancient legends and fairy-tales, populated by magic and mythology: • • • • •

elves dwarves trolls wizards talking dragons

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• •

hobbits humans7

The overlap between the scientific method and science fiction can be difficult to separate. A look back at early post-war science fiction looks surprisingly familiar in the twenty-first century environment of the internet, mobile and satellite phones, deep space probes, genetic modifications, nanotechnology and other technological achievements. Colatrella in an article in American Literary History makes a useful point in suggesting that the grandiose content of science fiction in the information age is increasingly seen as becoming mainstream: it being consumed in various genres. The fantastic is part of the everyday fabric of global society. Defying the strict conventions of science fictions, narrative conventions dependent on extraordinarily mechanistic and biological possibilities, supernatural powers, and immortality are now routinely incorporated in mainstream fiction, film and television, for ‘vampiric,’ ‘ghostly’, ‘alien’, or even ‘angelic’ figures frequently appear within quotidian stories in these media.8

Nonetheless, science fiction continues to surprise and to shock The novel Under the Skin by Michel Faber is a book the pushes boundaries in a psychosexual drama. Why do people go missing? Why is there no trace? What are the possibilities that lie outside the X-Files? This chilling book explores this world. The revitalization of projects such as Star Wars (STI) conceptualised as a shield, but viewed widely as a weapon might lead to potential conflict between peoples and planets. The Strategic Defence Initiative was designed to intercept long range incoming missiles aimed at the United States. Ronald Reagan announced to a startled world in March 1993 that the Star Wars project would generate new defensive measure through the use of particle and laser beam technology. The Star Wars project, continued by George W. Bush is causing serious problems between the United States and Russia. The announcement of the location of missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, demonstrates that the war on terror is but

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one theatre of insecurity that the United States is concerned with. Vladimir Putin has been vocal in denouncing the move, which he claims is part of the nuclear weapons system of the United States. In returning to a strategy that reverts to a language of mutual destruction, the world of fact slides towards a series of fictions, fictions of bluff and counter-bluff, which is the language of international affairs. However, in abandoning treaties such as the treaty on anti-ballistic missiles, fiction may become fact in a rerun of superpower rivalry.

Time Travel, Songs from Outside: The End and the Beginning of Time The end and the beginning can be refreshed. Both poles can be repeatedly re-set making fixed starting or end points futile, it can be whatever ‘we’ want it to be. In the 1920s, Albert Einstein’s work on relativity would open minds and universes: fact and fictions collided in a work of science art. Aldous Huxley, in the book, Brave New World constructs a society set several centuries into the future. This is denoted as AF (after ford). The prospect of utopia is again considered. In sensibly removing poverty, ill-health and conflict, passive beings are encouraged to remain dormant with help from brainwashing, genetic engineering and hallucinogens. Humans are divided into five castes, ruled by Alphas and Betas at the top. Children are bred in bottles. Science releases humanity of its burden, but snatches too its humility. Is it utopia? Through the application of science to the production of goods, through the redistribution of existing income and property relationships, through the abolition of ‘costly’ and wasteful desires, the Utopians of the last five centuries had hoped to construct a perfect society in which men and women could enjoy the ultimate degree of happiness which, it is implied, they were denied through the folly and wickedness of their present rulers.9

The consequence of controlling and removing passions results in a loss of humanity, which is implicated in the error of the project. Relationships are operated on non-emotional terms. Sex and

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jealously are not related, the former being exclusively used for pleasure. Long term relationships are not encouraged in the pursuit of a controlled leisure. Feelings are suppressed, passions denied. The world of the brave new world is threatened when the central character Bernard Marx, visits one of the ‘savage reservations’ where ‘Indians’ preserve the old, ‘dirty’ ways. The ‘savage’ returns with Marx producing a series of consequences resetting the destination of the story. In Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, the author presents a society set in the future which is directly influenced by a fundamentalist religion and masculine control. This is the Republic of Gilead. Fertility is a central problem and women are forced to breed and be servile to the elites. In challenging subservience, an alternative history is constructed by Offred who dissents from the directions set out by the ruling elite. In opposing conventions that make a slave class of women, desire and the human spirit are again inspired to oppose things as they are and not what they might be. The novel turns on the idea of freedom and the freedom to choose, which is central to conceptions and concerns of the future. The Handmaid’s Tale worked as an excellent piece of science fiction and opened the territory to an ironic mini-revolution. Atwood’s futuristic novel of 1986 is an important book for may reasons. In particular, The Handmaid’s Tale, plays a significant role in the evolution of women’s writing in so far as it represents one of the few commercially successful and critically recognised (if not universally acclaimed) contributions by a women writer to a literary genre dominated by men – namely, satire.10

Jane Donawerth, writing in the excellent, Frankenstein’s Daughter, recognises Atwood’s achievement in highlighting strands in the politics inherent in socio-biology. In her critique of socio-biology, Atwood reveals the ideological underpinnings of our contemporary science, exposing them as value-laden and aligning them with a dogmatic right wing religion of Gilead. Atwood’s novel explores the experience of one woman, offered as a refutation of her containment in the role of childbearer, the only role she is permitted to have in this society and by this science.11

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Cults, religions and idealists seek to make an imprint on the future. These take varied forms. In Japan, the doomsday cult of Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth) founded by Shoko Asahara launched a fatal gas attack on the Toyko underground in 1995. In the United States, a UFO cloning sect, The Raelians, are increasing their influence through a sex recruitment campaign masquerading as sensuality. The Raelian group believe that aliens have been visiting earth for some time and have been populating it through cloning. In an established group that includes a number of well-known celebrities, Scientology is international in scope. Scientology was founded in the USA in 1952. It has received extensive criticism as respect to impacting its belief on mental health. It has been widely accused of forcing a repressive form of indoctrination on its members. The movement was founded by the L.Ron Hubbard. Hubbard’s reputation as a writer of science fiction was established with the publication of Battlefield Earth, a book set in the future of an alien occupied earth. The human rebellion is orchestrated through a savage called Tyler, who engages with the alien invaders. In the context of scientology, Bainbridge and Stark in a paper titled: Scientology: To Be Perfectly Clear set out details that promblematise the re-programming of a person’s past, scientifically and ethically.12 The use of technology to re-programme the performance of the brain was explored in a short story by Michael Moorcock written in 1961. In Harrison Bergeron, an educational egalitarianism has been established in 2081. Through the use of a device that quashes intellectualism beyond a permissible level, which is regulated by a totalitarian hierarchy, ability is standardised. One day, Harrison removes the device and begins to think. In Cold Lazarus, Dennis Potter scripted a remarkable piece of work that captured the technological developments taking place in the media and biological research. The piece provided a glimpse of a dystopian capitalist future. The head of the central character, Daniel Field, frozen for 400 years, is revived. In emitting thoughts and images of the past, Field relives his memories on a television show, which is financed by a conglomerate. Field’s life is replayed on a

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macabre reality show, which becomes hungry for ever more explicit revelations.

Conflict Science: Conventions and Preventions Science fiction is a valuable source of material that informs analysis of conflict and defence. It provides information to scenarios that potentially compromise the security of the city, the state, and the continent. The repeated warnings from the Home Office in Britain and the State Department in the United States concerning potential terrorist threats arising from al Qaida and other groups read like the contents of a science fiction novel. The value of science fiction in imagining scenarios that relate to security issues is brilliantly recognised in the edition book by Phillip John Davis, Science Fiction, Social Conflict and War. If direct connections with the politics of confrontation can serve to bring science fiction into disrepute, it may nevertheless be that science fiction is a literary form particularly suited to the analysis of conflict and war. Some science fiction takes within its remit the hardware of science and political priorities being as they are, much of the hardware of science is war – or, if you like, defence related.13

The language that is used by the international security community is familiar. Phrases like ‘incalculable damage’, and ‘potentially devastating’ are used to gauge the outcomes of threats directed against energy supplies, container shipping, hotels, bars and restaurants, computers, telecommunications and the banking sector. In an amazing piece from the 1970s, unearthed in the journal International Organization, Dennis Livingston included a far-sighted passage that considered the value of science fiction on future world order systems. The process of developing science fiction plots often implicitly use the same methods as nonfiction futurology – the extrapolation of current trends, the systematic survey of expert opinion, and the comparative analysis of the present with the analogous past. To these techniques science fiction authors add creative imagination, an unquantifiable ingredient which makes the possible outcomes of current disparate trends coherent.14

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Science fiction and fantasy do not ignore deep psychological concerns. In the well-known saga that presents the struggle between the old republic and the Jedi knights, a pivotal scene is included that links the emotional trigger that results in the slide to continued violence. Anakin Skywalker’s slaughter of the men, women and children of Tusken Raider tribe in response to the death of his mother is a familiar journey in literature. It is a step that many have taken towards the retribution. In becoming consumed with the need for revenge, the memory of life before the tragedy is muddled by hate, a slur that acknowledges the past can never be remembered in the same way. The impact of a bad experience at a young age can sow the seeds of bitterness, resentment and the need for aggrandisement through a life time: the faults of a Darth Vader, requiring a world or a universe to repay the debt of his mother’s life reveals the fragile bounds that hold reason and madness, a condition that shapes the development of stories riddled with troubles. On the other hand, the series is conventional in its simplistic use of good and evil, slipping occasionally into farce and embarrassment. Roberts recognises the flaws in the superb book, Science Fiction. Star Wars (1997) begins with the caption ‘A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Away…’; and the action of that film owes more to the past and specifically to director George Lucas’s youth, than to any coherently imagined future. His spaceships are more like warplanes, going off on sorties straight out of the 633 Squadron or The Dam Busters than spaceships: this is why they make screaming and whooshing noises when flying through the noiseless vacuum of space.15

Isaac Asimov combined scientific and religious topics in his work and produced a phenomenal output that is relevant to international relations. The Foundation series being incisive with its tales of an intergalactic empire, alliances and protagonists. In a series that is incisive to the increasing energy concerns of the twenty-first century, Frank Herbert’s The Dune Chronicles, leaps to two-thousand and five hundred years in the future to explore the empire conflict between the Imperium and the Great Houses. The desert is a key location because it contains an invaluable resource, the ‘melange’ which directs and shapes the relations between the powers.

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In the original short story, The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke, which would evolve in to the Space Odyssey series, the author produced a poem of the future. The sentinels have been scattered through the universe providing a promise of life to a world uncertain how destructive technologies and events would evolve. Arthur C. Clarke is a colossus in the science fiction genre, blending fiction and scientific research in a far reaching manner. His work establishes reference points in the transformation of humanity, a journey that is far from being concluded. Science is repeatedly used on “the people”. In Ray Bradbury’s chilling Fahrenheit 451, leisure is dominated by television. Books are thought to be the source of all unhappiness. Therefore, all books should be destroyed. The novel follows the story of Montag, a ‘fireman’ trained by the state to destroy books. In the totalitarian dystopia, radicals memorise classic literature for a future point where literature can again be publicly considered and exchanged. In a moment of dissent, Montag pauses in his inflammable pursuit of books and begins reading the pages. In the work of Philip K Dick, the author combines humour with science fiction in an ironic style that is able to cut through the superficial character of social conventions to expose flaws in the human project. In the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, a book that would inspire the influential film, Blade Runner, the author combines the themes of Frankenstein and post-modern detective techniques to produce a dystopian sketch that rhymes with the global political economy of contemporary reality. The Blade Runner theme and the genre of cyberpunk would be influenced strongly by the author William Gibson. His first novel, Neuromancer captured the shift from analogue to digital environments driven by the introduction of cyberspace, and virtual worlds. The novel introduced the Matrix, worlds within worlds, a linked community of users in a consensual ordered chaos.

Science and Fantasy: Beyond Good and Evil, and Kansas Fantasy literature tends to be more emotional in content, although this is perhaps an exaggeration. More accurately, the emotional is

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subtly privileged over the science in Fantasy. This element is weaved into supernatural tales that contain an element of impossibility.16 This element is noted in previous references in earlier parts of this book made to the Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf and the book of One Thousand and One Nights. In this sense: this latter use of folklore, to help decode literatures of the remote past and therefore substantially removed from the world in which we live now live, is a key to that juxtaposition: the writer of fantastic literature, the creator of impossible worlds, has need of and uses folklore to make those imagined words…in short, fantasy and science fiction authors use traditional materials, from individuals motifs to entire folk narratives, to allow their readers to recognise, in elemental and perhaps subconscious ways, the reality and cultural depth of the impossible worlds these authors have created.17

The boundaries between fantasy and other forms of literature are, however, vague in some cases. This may produce a confusion, for example in Shakespeare’s The Tempest and As You Like It the nature of fantasy is recognised easily, but the context in which it takes place may lead it to be viewed as political or confusingly, scientific. This is not the case in stories like C.S.Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. Whilst the theme of the good and evil are considered on the grand scale, Lord Foul, Dark Lord Sauron and Lord Voldemort, it is the personal and psychological challenges that shape the actions of hobbits, wizards and lepers that drive the stories.18 In the The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, Covenant confronts beauty and violence. In the ‘real’ world he is a leper, sick and troubled, in the world of Lord Foul he is the legendary saviour. Covenant wears the white gold, which is powerful in outer earth, but fails to use it to save the people of the land. Conevant is impotent in the land because he refuses to believe. He witnesses the power of the white gold, but he does not share a belief in it. He allows friends to suffer because he is suffering. His personality is not necessarily mean, but he presents a view that communicates the futility of fighting when the battle has been lost within. The Earthsea series by Ursula Le Guin, draws on the uses and abuses of magical power, this is notable throughout the work, A Wizard of Earthsea. The important character in the novel is Ged, who reaches above his abilities. Whilst being an apprentice wizard,

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he exhibits special emotional and intellectual qualities. This is a formative novel in the series that focuses on the beginnings of the wizard’s power. Science fiction in children’s books such as Northern Lights by Phillip Pulman, cross the the devide between the child/adult readership because it creates a world in which good and evil fight in worlds likes ours but are not like our own, children and adults recognise that other worlds might exist, emotional spaces and worlds composed of imagination both conscious and sub-conscious.

Green Politics: Two Headed Science In the era in which the environment has come to be seen in terms of an uncomfortable truth, the issues relating to climate change, deforestation and scarce resources are unnervingly recognised as science fact. Technology is seen both as a cause and a solution to the issue of sustainability of the earth’s resources.19 This is triggering a range of international treaties and regulatory codes to manage the negative aspects of technology. Various disasters such as the Exxon Valdez, Union Carbine and Chernobyl have had consequences in terms of liability and legislations. Similarly, the inter-relations between technology and the military industry are vast. This produces a range of environmental consequence in the theatre of war zones. These are notable in Iraq’s scorched earth policy to the immune deficiency noted in the gulf war syndrome caused by inoculation against chemical warfare.20 John Steinbeck’s novel The Log from the Sea of Cortez is a wonderful example of a work that combines biology, fiction and philosophy. The book records a trip taken by Steinbeck in 1940 with his friend, the biologist Edward F. Rickets, to collect marine invertebrates from the beeches of the Gulf of California. The pages of the book present the study as a form of science poetry, science and literature working together in a harmonious piece of writing of the highest order. The fiction of John Steinbeck has had a special appeal to the scientist, for of all the major American writers of fiction in this century, Steinbeck alone has

184 Literature and International Relations had an abiding interest in natural science and brought that to his writing…furthermore, if Steinbeck does have a claim on the attention of future generations of readers, much of that claim will be based on his concern with science, since he alone, among American novelists of his time, saw man as part of an ecological whole.21

In a prophetic novel, J.G. Ballard in The Drowned World foresaw the flooding of New Orleans, the erosion of small Ireland states and repeated flooding, the new Triassic age. In The Downed World and The Drought, Ballard imagined the environmental apocalypse had been accelerated by the poor guardianship of the human race. Drawing on scientific material and extensive research, Ballard is a key author that has raised public awareness in the environmental debate, which is animating activism and social change. The novel The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, uses biological fears linked to science fact in the form of Ebola and Marburg –like viruses, which present global dangers if not checked. References to the WHO (World Health Organization), CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and USAMBIID (U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) provide institutional support for a “what if” scenario. In a film of the book, Outbreak, the disease arrives in a town in the United States, which is quarantined and selected for eradication by the military in an attempt to stop the spread of the disease. In a classic piece of science fiction, The Day of The Triffids by John Wyndham, the novel uses alien plants in a takeover of earth. Wyndham produced a series of environmental novels that highlighted the potential flaws in using genetic engineering and other scientifically orientated interventions in nature. The Triffids were giant intelligent plants that used a deadly sting to repel attacks. The far-fetched, but forgivable element of the book is the blinding of virtually all of the populance following a meteor storm that brought the Triffids to earth. In another invasion of earth, H.G. Wells in The War of The Worlds let Martian’s take to the streets of London in a vengeful attack. This remarkable book drew on Wells’ biological studies at the Normal School of Science (now London University). Well’s story includes a flaw in the Martian’s overwhelming strength, a weakness revealed in the final pages of the novel.

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In taking a global view of environmental disaster, Michael Crichton’s novel, State of Fear, responds to the language of the climate change lobby, producing a text that provides a view of the environmental debate, often muddled by agendas and doubletalk. The work of environmental fiction is vast and is required reading for sceptical or hesitant politicians imprisoned by the support of commercial organisations and the influence of the lobbying body intent on protecting companies from regulation that extenuates rising costs.

2050: Go Get Harrison The future of international relations poses numerous difficulties in the organization of politics, economics and society. Whilst history provides examples of successful and limited interventions in human affairs, each must be viewed in context, recognising the influences and possibilities of the period. Grand visions that attempt to transform society are problematic. The impact of Internet, nanotechnology, genetic engineering and a range of other technological processes are producing unique developments and patterns in international relations, which are not independent of human control, but are extremely complex in facilitating positive interventions. New possibilities in communication technology are liberating. The book, The New Individualism explores these issues with a focus on the emotional costs of globalization. In terms of living in a confessional culture: as people have become more sophisticated in the use of new technologies, including laptops, video cameras and wireless connections of all varieties, this has meant that more and more often it is through the use of such technologies that individuals launch their engagements with others as well as reflective considerations about their own lives.22

In the context of this book, it is suggested that the works of science fiction will become as important to the study of international relations as key texts in the form of the largely Anglo-American tradition such as Hedley Bull’s The Anarchical Society,

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Morgenthuas, Power Amongst Nations and E.H.Carr in the The Twenty Years Crisis. This suggestion does not demean the literature of international relations, which is sophisticated, valuable and vital to study. It is a straightforward suggestion that the perils in the twenty-first century can be decoded using science fiction. In a work of stunning originality, Laurence Manning’s The Man Who Awoke, the central character Norman Winters succeeds in an experiment to put himself to sleep for five thousand years at a time. The novel begins in 5,000 AD with forest dwellers struggling to survive after the devastating age of waste; in 10,000 AD the world is governed by “the Brain”, freedom is a memory; in 15,000 Ad humans sleep a reality; In 20,000 AD the age of anarchy takes hold spreading terror; In 25,000 AD humanity discovers the secret of eternity. The blog culture mentioned in a previous chapter and the increased possibilities arising from the e-book, demonstrate that words are as important as images in the media driven world.

Conclusion Science fiction challenges directly the content of International Relations. Will the strengthening of the United Nations lead to a world government keen on a form of totalitarian control? Will a weakened United Nations produce a “star wars” type conflict in the planetary battles between a dominant Empire and rebels? Are international relations safe from the genetically modified products that are part of everyday life? Will artificial intelligence stop being artificial? Is science fiction an extension of philosophy? Is it the highest form of literature? Should International Relations abandon science for literature? Science fiction allows the rewriting of beginnings and endings. There is always a possibility a continuing or regressing, to restore what was there before like a convenient software programme. It is that simple? Are we already singing the body electric? Will humanity be able to restore its existence to a previous date or will it find that it is has exercised the patience of science.

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International Relations as an area of study requires a reality check; science fiction is a good beginning. Real science is only part of the story. It is time to listen to the music and get with the dancers at the end of time; Jherek Carnelian is in the building.

Notes 1

The exception would be Greenberg and Olander’s, International Relations through Science Fiction, published in 1978. 2 See The Economic Consequences of the Peace, a key text for all students of international relations. 3 Stableford (2004) p. xxxvii. 4 Beaumont (2006) p. 241-242. 5 Hardison (1990) p. 5 6 Roberts (2000), p. 15. 7 Shippey (2002) p. 43. 8 Colatrella (1999) p. 556. 9 Kessler (1957) p. 566. 10 Hammer (1990) p. 39. 11 Donawerth (1997) p. 17. 12 See Bainbridge and Stark (1989), pp. 128-126. 13 Davies (1990), p. 2. 14 Livingston (1971), p. 255. 15 Roberts (2000) p. 34. 16 See Nexon and Neumann’s useful book on combining the world of Harry Potter with International Relations. 17 Sullivan (2001) p. 279. 18 This is consistent with the view presented in Hudson (1910, p.151) in his classic studies in literature, which identifies different types of plot and characterisation in novels, “In common talk we distinguish roughly between two classes of novels – those which the interest of the character is uppermost, while the action is used simply or mainly with reference to this; and those in which the interest of plot is uttermost, and characters are used simply and mainly to carry on the action”. 19 See Science Fiction Studies, Volume 33, Part 1, March 2006, for a series of articles covering techno-culture and science fiction. 20 See the veteran pages on: http://www.gulfweb.org/. 21 Benson, 1977) p. 248. 22 Elliott and Lemert (2006) p. 131.

Chapter 10

The Final Dance: The Beginnings of Stories

How does the story end? How can ‘we’ judge if the stories we hear are fabricated? Equally, if ‘we’ are discouraged from believing the facts, who are ‘we’ to believe? Will the sceptical, tutored in shrugs and painful grimaces, be convinced? Do they believe their own stories? It was presented in the introduction that the book will seek to respond to two basic questions. The first question asks: what it is to ‘read’ literature as a way of studying International Relations? The second key question relates to what literature does when ‘it’ relates to international relations? The novel provides a series of discoveries that complement the process of assessing tensions. References littered in the pages of creative works all the way back to Cervantes provide insight into the complications of the human spirit. Further treasures can be discovered in sagas and folk traditions that can be traced back to epics involving dragons and shadows. Literature in its widest sense provides information on numerous issues that plague scholars and practitioners of International Relations. It opens spaces to meanings that would otherwise remain closed. It gives an insight to how things look, how things are. If there are some lies in truths, then there may be some truth in lies. Creative literature is comfortable with invention, distortion, and elaboration. Non-fiction is allegedly grounded in science emits truth, rigour, and empiricism. Therefore, should any relationship between science and literature be rejected or ignored? Should science not sleep with literature, or is literature too busy to sleep? In the great novels with solid foundations, trivial embellishments are included to

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keep the easily bored entertained. Facts reside in thrillers and mistakes reside in science. Literature provides an opportunity to view International Relations from a different point of view. The mathematician, Lewis Carroll, used Alice Through the Looking Glass to encourage readers to look at the world from a different perspective. *** Novels are “true” stories. Stories may evolve in mythical tales, science fiction, or an urban myth, a narrative that conducts creative gymnastics in its telling, but it is something, an event measured against the fabric of every day life, a journey taking a lifetime in the hours of a single day ~ supported by real things. *** International Relations has been criticised as a masculine discipline that likes to endlessly pick at its own stories. It isn’t keen to acknowledge views that seek to tell different stories about the world, alternative views that do not fit neatly into a school of thought. Is Tolstoy’s War and Peace a true story? Is War and Peace untrue? Is War and Peace a fantasy? *** Somewhere a diplomat opens a travel case and removes a novel. *** Words travel with people. *** Literature in International Relations is as valid as fact ~ stories invariably shape the science.

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Index Aberystwyth xii Abu Ghraib 109 Achebe, Chinua 76 Adhan 129 Afghanistan vi, 38, 60 Afolabi, Segun A life elsewhere 134 African Novel 77 AIDS 75 AIDA 94 Ak’abal, Humerto ‘Paradise’ 1 Alain-Fournier ‘Le Grand Meaulnes’ xii Albright, Madeline vi Al-jazira 24, 54 American Psycho 96 Amish 2 ANC 46 Anglo-American influences 137 Anti-Nuclear Movement 51 Anglo-Saxon literature 33 ASEAN 25 Auschwitz-Birkenau 51 Australia 23, 81 Bai, Li 35 Balance of Power 63 Balance of Terror 63 Bali xi Bali Bombing 69n Balkans xvi, 51 Balzac xxi ‘Madame Bovary’ x Bangladesh 82 Assembly Hall 92 Barker, Pat 59 Bauls of Bengal 30

BBC World Service 30, 49n World Book Club 134 Beatles, The 92, 130 Beijing 162 Beowulf 32, 49n, 182 Bettelheim, Bruno xxii ‘The Uses of Enchantment’ xvi Bible, The 5, 83 Blade Runner 181 Blair, Tony xii Blue Helmets 110 Bollywood xix, 54, 134 Borderless World 101 Bosnia 18 Bradbury, Ray The Martian Chronicles 68 Brave New World 176 BRICs 133 British Intelligence 66 British Empire 80 Brown, Dan ‘Da Vinci Code, The’ 40 Brown, John 47 Brutus, Marcus 17, 20 Byron, Lord 41 Byzantine Empire 11 Caesar xxiii, 6, 8, 12, 15, 16, 17, 20 Wives 27n Canvass 27n Caligula 9 Cambodia 3, 25 Carroll, Lewis Alice Through the Looking Glass 189 Cartography 44 Casanova 45

204 Literature and International Relations Catholic Church 11, 13 Centre for Social Cohesion 106n Cervantes 49n, 188 Don Quixote xxiv, 41, 42 Chaplin, Charles 72 Chaucer, Geoffrey ‘The Canterbury Tales’ 33 Troilus and Criseyde 34 Chernobyl 67, 69n China, vi, xvi, 11, 24, 36, 141 Chivalry 32-39 Christ, Jesus 7 Christian Faith 10 Chronicles of Thomas Covenant 182 Cinderella 152 Cities 151 sustainability 169n Civil disobedience 107 CND 67 CNN 24 Coca Cola 130 Cold War 54, 115 Colonialism 75 Columbus, Christopher 44 Communications 156 Conrad, Joseph ix, xviii Corporation, The 104 Crichton, Michael Rising Sun 142 State of Fear 185 Crime fiction 168 Cromwell, Oliver 14 Crusades 40 Cuba 136 Cuban Missile crisis 63, 116 Cults 178 Cultural diplomacy 127 Cyberculture 86 Cyprus 102, 155 Dark Tourism 100 sites 100-102 de Botton, Alain ‘The Art of Travel’ x de Derian, James xxviiin Deighton, Len

The Ipcress File 49n Democracy 26n Dickens, Charles ‘The Tale of Two Cities xvi Dictators 119 Diplomacy 108-109 incompetence 111 behaviour 120-121 international literature 121 Vienna convention 124 gender 125 literature 121-122 Disneyland Paris 99 Drake, Sir Francis 45, 49n Dr Who 172 Dumas, Alexander ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ 40 Dune Chronicles 180 Earthsea 182 East India Company, The 140 Eco, Umberto ‘On Literature’ xxi Enlightenment 141 Epic of Gilgamesh, The 31-32, 182 Eritrea, vii Ethiopia vii Euro, The 102 Europe 43 European Social Forum 105n Fanon, Franz 77 ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ 47 Fantasy defined 174 Farber, Yael 18 Fear 106n Ferguson, Niall vii Folk tales 56, 152 Forster, E.M. Passage to India 143 Frank, Ann 130, 153 Free Speech 76

Index 205 Gallery of the Maps 13 Gandhi, Mahatma 47 Garland, Alex The Beech 4 G8 xv, 110 Gandhi, Mahatma 47 Gawain, Sir and the Green Knight 32 Gedo Ilka 51 Genocide 107 Geographical Information Systems 151 Giddens, Anthony xii Gidson, William 181 Girls of Riyadh 87n Glastonbury Festival 96 Globalization 55, 88, 97, 132 defined 89, 105n Global Voices 134 Gloriana 153 Goethe xiv Goodwin, William, 21 Google 54, 95 Gramsci 25 Great Dictator, The 18 Great War 58 Green, Graham The Comedians 118 The Honorary Council 124 Gulf War ix Guns ‘n’ Roses 160 Hardy, Thomas ix ‘The Return of the Native’ 43 Half of a Yellow Sun 87n Hamas vi Hamlet 68 Hampton Court Palace 28 Handmaid Tale, The 177 Hašek, Jaroslav 59 Hawking, Stephen 52 Heller, Joseph 59 Heroism 29 Hesse, Herman 72, 159 Siddhartha 142

Hezbollah 3, 56 Hilton, James ‘Lost Horizon’ 20 Hiroshima 61 Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 172 Hitler, Adolph 18 HIV/AIDS 11, 18 Hobbes, Thomas 53, 114 Holbein, Hans The Ambassadors xv Hollywood xix, 134, 144, 159 Holocaust 69n Holy Land 40, 44 Home 70, 101 Homer Iliad, The 56 Horatians and Curtatians 73 Hubbard L. Ron 178 Hundred Years War 39 Hussain, Saddam 30, 127, 144 Huxley, Aldous 25 Literature and Science xx ‘Island’ xxiv, 23 Hyde, Lewis The Gift, xviii Iliad, The 56 Illegal economy 170n Immigration 160 India vii Indian National Congress 48 International Community 26n International Monetary Fund 93 Internet, The 103, 130, 185 Iran vi, 50 Iraq 18, 38 Islam 131, 135 Israel vi, 56, 66 Italy 41 Jamaica 80 James, Henry ix James Bond 66 Japan 130

206 Literature and International Relations Japanese Literature 34 Je Jettee 53 Joyce, James 161 Ulysses 152 Kahn, Louis 92 Kalavala 30 Kawabata, Yasunari ‘The Old Capital’ 35 Killing Fields, The 3 King Lear 71 King, Martin Luther 48 Kim 72 Knights Templar 40 Korea Land of Exile 149n Kuala Lumpur Symphony Hall 155 Kundera, Milan viii-ix, xiv Lady of Shalott, The 38 Lama, Dalai 48 Lawrence, D.H. ix, xxiv ‘Aaron’s Rod’ 43 League of Nations 84 Lee, Laurie ‘As I Woke One Morning’ 41 Literature 118 Litvinenko, Alexander 66 Live Earth 91 Live 8, 91 Liverpool 75 London 166 Bombing 7/7 69n Census 167 Londonistan 124, 144 Lord of the Flies 65 Los Angeles 161 Lost cities 165 Macedonia 17 MAD 51, 62, 65 Madagascar 24 Madame Bovary x Madrid 164 Madrid bombing 164, 69n

Magic realism 136 Mailer, Norman 60 Major, John xvi adventure stories xvi-xvii Malory, Thomas ‘King Arthur’s Last Battle’ 39 Mandela, Nelson 46, 79 Mandeville, John 44 Manfred, Frederick ‘Riders of Judgement’ 29 Mao, Tse-tung 11, 37 Maps 154 Marks, Howard, 160 Marx, Karl 95 MASH 60 Medecin San Frontieres 110 Mega-cities 157-158, 169n Mei, Jin Ping ‘The Golden Lotus’ 36 Metropolis 155 Midsummer Morning’ xxiv McLuhan, Marshall 95 Meyer, Christopher xi Middle East 41 Middle English 33 Migration 105n MI6 61 Moorcock, Michael Mother London 170n Mozart xviii Mukherjee, Bharati The Middleman and Other Stories 134 Museveni,, Yoweri 19 Mussolini, Benito 18 Nabokov, Vladimir 134-135 Napoleon 58 National Portrait Gallery 99 NATO 110 Nation 84 Nepal 19 Nero 9, 10 New York City 73 Nobel Peace Prize 46, 48

Index 207 Non-Western Literature 80 North Korea vi, vii, 50 Novel writing 187 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty 50, 69n Oasis 95 Occidentialism 130, 145 Octavia 9 OECD 110 Olympics 116 OPEC 141 Orientalism 130, 137 Owen, Wilfred 58 Pakistan 63, 160 Paradise 1 Parks, Rosa 48 Pasternak, Boris 22 Peace Palace Treaty 171 Persia 35 Persig, Robert Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 143 Playboy xvii Politics 123 Pope Benedict XVI II Pot, Pol 3, 25 Potter, Dennis Cold Lazarus xx Printing press 12 Python, Monty 8 Rabelais 30 Ray, Satyajit xxvi Realpolitik 30 Resistance literature 82 Return of the Native 85 Reuters 24 Rice, Condoleezza xii Roddick, Anita 105n Rome 7, 10, 16 Roman Empire 6, 8, 137 Royal Academy of Arts 39, 83 Rushdie, Salmon 49n

Russia vii Rutherford, Ernest 52 Rwanda 18, 51 Said, Edward ‘Beginnings’ xxi Salinger, J.G. The Catcher in the Rye 159 Sao Paolo 162 Sarafina 79 Sassoon, Siegfried 58 Saudi Arabia 50 Science fantasy 181 Science fiction Defined 174 Seneca 9 Sex and the City 164 Shakespeare, William 90 ‘Julius Caesar’ xxiii, 18 Shangri-La 20 Sharm al-Sheikh xi Shelley, Mary Frankenstein 173, 177 Shetty, Shilpa 54 Slavery 75 Slave Trade Bill 76 Smith, Zadie 51 SOAS 149n Soviet Union xi, 115, 132 Soyinka, Wole 54, 78 ‘Mandela’s Earth’ xx Space diplomacy 116 Spain 16 Spanish Civil War ix Spanish Inquisition 12 Sparta 138 Sport diplomacy 116 Sri Lanka 87n, 101 Star Wars System 64 Film 175, 180 Steinbeck, John 183 St. George and the Dragon 38 Stormont Castle 47 Stranger in a Strange Land 172 Sudan 24

208 Literature and International Relations Swift, Jonathon ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ xix, 37 Syraina 23 Taliban vi, 74 Tang Dynasty 34-35 Tanzania 79 Tate Britain 38 Temple Church 40 Terrorism 46-48, 170 in science fiction 179 Thatcher, Margaret 19, 79 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 71 The Black Album 81 The Life of Pi 94 Thirty Years War 13, 14 Three Mile Island 67 Thucydides 57 Time travel 186 Tolkein, J.R.R. ‘The Hobbit’ 32 ‘The Lord of the Rings’ 32 Tolstoy, Leo 189 ‘War and Peace’ 57, 58 Treaty of Vienna, The 112 Treaty of Westphalia 27n Tristan and Isolde 32 Trojan War 34 Tsunami xvii Turkey, 50 Twain, Mark xxii United Civil Front Group 117 United Nations, The 11, 84, 109, 171, 186 UN Charter 3 Security Council 51 United States Foreign Policy 18 Utopia 2, 4, 21, 22 Thomas More 4, 21 Vatican xix, 8, 11, 12, 13 Venice 159, 164 Verdi 94

Visas 90 Travel documents 90-91 Vonnegut, Kurt ‘Harrison Bergeron’ 22 wa Thiongo, Ngugi xx War literature 58-61 Waugh, Evelyn 60 Wells, H.G. 173, 184 ‘The Country of the Blind’ 2 ‘The Shape of Things to Come’ 54 ‘The War of the Worlds’ 184 West, the 130 Westphalia, Peace of 13, 14 White House xv Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf? 115 Williams, Raymond ‘Keywords’ vii Wilson, Woodrow xii Witness 2 Woolf, Virginia ix World Bank, The 93 World Cup, The 106n World Economic Forum 110 World Health Organisation 184 World literature 147 World Trade Center xii, xviii, 61, 134, 144, 164 World Trade Organisation, 93, 103 World War I (The Great War) 43 World War II 43, 61, 80 Xun, Lu 37 YouTube 69n Yuan, Jing Hua ‘Flowers in the Mirror’ 37 Yourcenar, Marguerite ‘Oriental Tales’ xvi Zimbabwe 9, 19, 117, 128n Zero-Sum Games 111