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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
172554
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| Summary/Abstract |
When powerful liberal democratic states are found to be complicit in extreme violations of human rights, how do they respond and why do they respond as they do? Drawing on the example of the United Kingdom's complicity in torture since 9/11, this article demonstrates how reluctant the UK has been to permit a full reckoning with its torturous past. We demonstrate that successive UK governments engaged in various forms of denial, obfuscation and attempts to obstruct investigation and avoid accountability. The net effect of their responses has been to deny the victims redress, through adequate judicial processes, and to deny the public adequate state accountability. These responses are not simply aimed at shielding from prosecution the perpetrators and those who have oversight of them, nor preventing political embarrassment. The various forms of denial and obstruction are also designed to ensure that collusion can continue uninterrupted. A core concern of intelligence officials and ministers has been to prevent any process that would lead to a comprehensive prohibition on involvement in operations where torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment are a real possibility. The door remains wide open, and deliberately so, for British involvement in torture.
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| 2 |
ID:
105719
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2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines the nature of US oil intervention in West Africa and in particular the ways in which US strategic policy is increasingly being wedded to energy security. It argues that academic debates of a 'new oil imperialism' overplays the geostrategic dimensions of US policy, which in turn underplays the forms of globalization promoted by Washington in the postwar world. Specifically, the US has long sought to 'transnationalize' economies in the developing world, rather than pursue a more mercantilist form of economic nationalism. This article argues that US oil intervention in Africa conforms to this broader picture, whereby processes of transnationalization and interstate competition are being played out against the backdrop of African oil. The recent turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa will add to these dynamics in interesting and unpredictable ways.
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| 3 |
ID:
168743
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While the UK's official position is that it neither uses nor condones torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment (CIDT), it is now a matter of public and parliamentary record that UK security services and military personnel colluded in rendition, torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, both as part of the CIA's Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) programme, at military detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq, and through involvement in the detention and interrogation of prisoners by allied security forces. This paper will explain why the government is falling short of its obligations under international law, and why considerable risks remain that UK intelligence and security services will continue to collude in torture and CIDT.
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| 4 |
ID:
132916
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2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
President Obama has continued to emphasise the strategic importance of stable energy supplies to US national security interests, with the oil-rich Central Asian region a key part of global energy markets. This region has seen significant economic and strategic inroads by the United States over the last decade in a broad attempt to integrate it within the US-led liberal order. This article examines these policy developments and draws upon theoretical debates on US grand strategy to argue that, rather than necessarily signalling increasing geopolitical rivalry with other powers such as China and Russia, US policy is designed primarily to incorporate the region through deepening market interdependence. As such, while there is a complex mix of geopolitical rivalry and economic interdependence developing in the Caspian, even in the face of purported US decline and increase of its domestic supplies through fracking, Washington remains committed to acting as a hegemonic stabiliser in the Caspian.
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