There’s no simple way to introduce what it feels like living by a river of historic significance during turbulent times.
Knowing the nooks and cracks that made history, the disheveled justifications, a sense of hopelessness overcomes. The loss of faith in people to do the right thing, not because church or God tells them to, but because their gut knows what’s wrong.
The philosophers will debate plato and the animal that gets trained or the trained animal, I think. They toss the coin on complexities, and some are inspirational, other word play.
The them and us play stands, the identity politics. Yet we are associated creatures on recognition and language, of validity.
The histories flood back. With the tide. They are made, manufactured, manuscripted, and some translate in plain English, speaking for the blossoms.
Institutions first or government first, chicken or egg? That is the question.
Governments can dismantle institutions when they no longer cover their unaccountability.
At the start of the pandemic PHA was asked to minimise the covid spread and threat. Boris Johnson’s government shut it down and created this new entity to promote domestic policy unscrutinised.
What’s next for Johnson’s institutions in the context of the police investigation on partygate?
Will he call to defund the police, no pun intended.
‘If she was white, she would still be here’: Canada’s MMIWG https://aje.io/un3w2e via @AJEnglish
Al Jazeera tells the stories of some of the Indigenous women and girls who have gone missing or been murdered along an infamous stretch of highway in British Columbia, Canada.
The POTUS Inaguration will be remembered amongst other things for the memes that followed, most memorably Bernie Sanders sat on a chair in the bitter cold wearing a pair of hand-knitted mittens.
Most following the story will know Jen Ellis made them and how inundated with requests Jen was following that very memorable day.
Three days after that, having followed the story, I bought them online from Jen Ellis’ shop. All proceeds go to charity in Vermont and the mittens are made in partnership with the Vermont Teddy Bear Company.
In London, I received the mittens this week, over three months later and despite being 15C outside, I am super happy to have them to the point of being tempted to strut them out in the street.
It’s hard to imagine Gorman not growing up with Walcott being recited at home.
The opening lines referencing time, the internalisation of the challenge ahead, the humility of looking introvertily at one’s weaknesses and embracing the imperfections of oneself echoe Walcott’s Love after Love.
I could almost go as far as to say Walcott’s self healing treatment laid bare a platform on which Gorman was able to accelerate this message out of oneself and into the wider healing sense sought in community.
I’ll say no more.
Both poems are copied for your enjoyment.
Derek Walcott’s Love after Love (1940’s)
The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.
Amanda Gorman’s Biden inauguration poem The Hill We Climb (2021)
When day comes, we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry, a sea we must wade.
We’ve braved the belly of the beast.
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.
And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it.
Somehow we do it.
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.
We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.
And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man.
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew.
That even as we hurt, we hoped.
That even as we tired, we tried.
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.
That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.
It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it.
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
This effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth, in this faith, we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption.
We feared it at its inception.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour, but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.
So while once we asked, ‘How could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?’ now we assert, ‘How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?’
We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be:
A country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.
We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change, our children’s birthright.
So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.
With every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the golden hills of the west.
We will rise from the wind-swept north-east where our forefathers first realised revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states.
We will rise from the sun-baked south.
We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.
In every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country, our people, diverse and beautiful, will emerge, battered and beautiful.
When day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it.
I will refer to two recently published articles, from Reuters and Politico, to analyse the developing outcomes as a result of coercive diplomacy in USA’s current international relations. The focus of these two articles is the USA’s negotiating strategies with the European Union and the United Nations International Court of Justice, which I will conclude with a review on the usefulness and limitations of such approaches in the given contexts.
Coercive diplomacy is applied in diplomatic negotiations as ‘deterrence’ or ‘compellence’ (Byman and Waxman, 2008,158 in Holmes and Rofe, 2016) aiming to change the policy or regime of the coerced state. There is a root weakness in coercive diplomacy as it is revealing of intention, and given it is applied in the pre-text of military action, it is also revealing the coercer is on their last option (Kerr and Wiseman, 2013). Coercive diplomacy is often seen as a pre-text for more serious actions (such as military), and is carried on the coersor’s power, military, or economic weight, motivated by a combination of ‘sticks and carrots’ (Jentleson, 2006)
In the Politico article (Cassella, Hanke and Oliver, 2018), the current US president’s application of coercive diplomacy threatens the EU with introducing car tariffs even though in July 2018 the EU and the USA had shared aspirations of zero tariffs between them. USA applied coercive diplomacy through threats of cancelling this proposition, and by attacking EU’s slow decision making, whilst seeking trade deals with non EU states. In the specific three month time-frame, the EU decision making process would not have changed, leading to my conclusion that the USA’s approach is misleading and misaligned with the apparent objectives in which it was applied.
Outside the trade deal issue, the USA may well have aspirations for a regime change in the EU, thus placing the development of an influential market collaboration with the 27 member state block at risk of stalling altogether.
Trade deals
Ammunition
The Law of Treaties
In a Reuters article published 3 October 2018, (Rampton, Wroughton and van den Berg, 2018), the USA threatened to resign from the Vienna Convention to show discontent in response to Iran’s and Palestine’s complain to the United Nations International Court of Justice about the USA’s upcoming tightening of sanctions against Iran.
The Vienna Convention has been followed as a prescription of conduct for international relationships, including facilitating a platform for diplomatic immunity.
USA Secretary of State Mike Pompeo concluded to threaten with USA’s resignation from the Vienna convention, as a result of the application of international law by the United Nations, to unfavourably to the extend it is threatening the domestic security of the USA. Pompeo simultaneously threatens to leave the platform, whilst reminding states they are still very much party to it, undermining the UN.
The application of coercive diplomacy in both situations attempts to manipulate those that have historically been allies of the US.
This is a standard scenario before military action, contradictory to the USA’s objective. Is coerciveness used to widen the gap between prescriptions, thus creating spaces for exploitation?
Bibliography
Holmes, A. and Rofe, J. (2016). Global Diplomacy. Boulder: Routledge, p.199.
Kerr, P. and Wiseman, G. (2013). Diplomacy in a globalizing world. Oxford University Press, p.6.
Jentleson, B. (2006). Coercive Diplomacy: Scope and Limits in the Contemporary World. The Stanley Foundation Policy Analysis Brief, December 2006, p.1.
Our paper, ‘A Potent Fuel? Faith Identity and Development Impact in World Vision Community Programming’, has just been published in the Journal of International Development. Happily, it’s open access, so anyone can read it by following this link. Written with Matthew Clarke, Simon Feeny, Gill Westhorp and Cara Donohue, it is the result of a […]
Kat Smith and Paul Cairney This new blog helps make the insights within Evidence & Policy accessible to all. In this opening post, the current Editors reflect on what they feel are some of the key insights about the interplay between evidence and policy:
Cowboys and effigies 