By pure chance, I managed to see a fantastic documentary that was very apropos of the subject, called Killer Subs in Pearl Harbor. It traces the search for a fifth Japanese midget submarine (unknown to this point and technological marvels, from the East!) that was involved in the attack in December 1941, and reveals a remarkable level of co-operation between US and Japanese academics. There is also a touching sequence in which a veteran of the Japanese imperial army dives with the sub search and upon its discovery shows modern day photos of relatives to the two dead Japanese mariners entombed within it. The degree to which the US Navy cooperates with the subsequent honoring of their memory is also remarkable, bearing in mind that they were part of a mission that killed thousands of Americans and launched the US into World War II. Studies of war and orientalism, in my opinion, are best approached through precise cases for that allows appreciation of the conjunctural and moral dilemmas that attend the subject.

A coda to this best-season-ever was the Champions League final which I watched live on Saturday (thanks to the kindness of my wife) instead of late after the kids were asleep. Chelsea were by far the worst team for the third game in row (previously twice against Barcelona) but they nevertheless won it (they did the same against Wigan). Now, in soap opera terms this is all part of what we’re supposed to like, to find entertaining and unpredictable. But I have to admit, I’m jaded watching football as it is currently organized and played. I’ve an endless list of complaints but let me briefly list the top three.

1. Football reflects the worst of contemporary finance capitalism.

Massive inequality between corporate clubs, huge salaries for players who do not deserve them, no binding systemic rules (salary caps, regulations to ensure fair competition; ‘financial fair play’ promises this but it doesn’t sound serious) and the manifest capacity of oil billionaires to buy success, all the while running clubs that are not financially viable in the long run. Man City lost 197 million pounds sterling this last season, the “greatest financial loss in the history of football” the Guardian has just reported. Chelsea lost 68 million sterling, second place in the greatest loss table (and, most probably for the second year in a row). An unequal playing field, apparent success masking massive losses, and the rule of boy-men. Hmm, that seems familiar.

2. The rules of football are antiquated and encourage cheating.

A lack of goal line technology, dumb officiating decisions, fake injuries and serial diving by the likes of Ashley Young, Wayne Rooney, Mario Balotelli, Fernando Torres, and so many others….My disenchantment with FIFA predated the famous handball incident in Ireland’s crucial qualifier against France but it profoundly deepened after this shambolic affair. FIFA and the Premier League are like many faux public interest regulatory bodies today; they inspire no confidence in the face of manifest regulatory flaws and structural incentives for cheating. Hmm, that also sounds familiar.

3. The public interest always looses.

Competition being fair, better teams beating inferior teams, entertaining football being privileged over ‘park the bus’ anti-football. I used scorn the early efforts of the US to make ‘soccer’ more entertaining in the 1970s — remember the shoot outs to decide games with players taking the ball from the half way line? — but I now think this is precisely what is needed. Games are too boring for too long, and penalties are a terrible, terrible way to decide crucial end-of-the-season ultimate prize games. Withdraw one player progressively, change it up but don’t leave it to penalties.

Contemporary top league football undermines the very idea of a well regulated, rule-bound, meritocratic and fundamentally fair (play) society that privileges the public interest and public good. It reflects the worst aspects of the political economy of our times.

(or, perhaps, I’m simply a long suffering Leeds United supporter. Hooray for Ken Bates).

I am recalling this visit today because General Ratko Mladic has just gone on trial at the same building I visited. Michael Dobbs is blogging on the trial and has recorded a series of video interviews with survivors outside this building. It is disquieting viewing. One, on the one hand, is happy for these victims that they have had a ‘day in court’ with the person with command responsibility for the crimes they experienced and suffered. On the other hand, their horror is re-awakened and overwhelms them and us. No human being should have had to suffer like their much younger selves (minus 20 years) did. Violence can occur in an instant yet its impact, for those that survive its trauma, lasts a lifetime.

I hope, for all concerned, that this trial proceeds in a manner that is rigorous in establishing facts and controlled in its limitation of infantile behavior by Mladic. How sadly ironic it is that a few of the children his forces once brutalized get to view him as an old man behaving in a child-like manner. For a report on the first day see Julian Borger’s account in The Guardian.

In the course of his presentation he cited Trita Parsi’s recent book, A Single Roll of the Dice, which was recently reviewed positively in the New York Review of Books by Steve Coll.

The official Obama administration position is that it is unacceptable that Iran acquires a nuclear bomb. Containment is not an option. Israel’s current government, obviously, has been banging the drum on this issue over the last year and has challenged Obama publicly, and in Congress, in a way that seems to have worked in the short term. Obama made the forceful policy announcement at AIPAC’s annual conference in early March, and has worked hard to keep Israel’s most fervent supporters in Congress and outside on his side, and tried to block the issue of ‘weakness towards Israel’ becoming an issue for the general election in swing states.

Tomasky wrote at the time that this speech made war inevitable. He’s right to the extent  that the issues are extremely dangerous. It seems there is a delicate balancing game being played here between the politics of the issue and the estimates in the field of intelligence (in Israel and the United States). The degree to which that latter domain can withstand political pressure is once again an issue. This game could go wrong if there is no progress in P5 + 1 talks, which met in Istanbul in April and meet next in Baghdad from what I understand from Pillar’s talk.

Lots of rich material here for deep exploration, deconstruction and critical analysis.

Simon Dalby also visited and gave a lecture at Tehran University. Afterwards the hosts generously presented him with the Farsi edition of The Geopolitics Reader (first edition) which was our book (along with Paul Routledge) but with a different title. The translation, of course, was completely unauthorized.

All this is prologue to a remarkable recent essay by another friend, Laura Secor (sister of the equally accomplished and well know Geographer Anna Secor at the University of Kentucky). The essay, in the latest New Yorker, is an account of a five day trip she made to Iran in March to report on the parliamentary ‘elections’ there. Its a wonderfully crafted piece of writing with substantive analysis and a compelling story with a hair-raising conclusion. Its not publicly available but well worth the cost (great reportage like this costs money). The big question is what will be the impact of the tough new sanctions regime put in place by the international community. While the answer to this is unclear, what is clear is that it is worth giving these new measures time so the international community can better assess the answer.

This year I was involved in presenting two papers, with co-authors, one with my graduate research assistant on Karadzic and the second with Laurence Broers of SOAS on Karabakh. I was also a discussant on a de facto state session, one of about 3 on these regions of the world political map. I attended some excellent sessions on the Armenian genocide as well as catching the latest Conciliation Resources film on the Caucasus: Memories without Borders (highly recommended). The First Annual ASN Documentary Audience Award went to the French film Qui a tué Natacha? (Who Killed Natasha?), from director Mylène Sauloy, a wrenching investigation on the murder of human rights activist Natasha Estemirova in Chechnya. A runner-up, also the most attended film of the Convention, was My Perestroika, from US director Robin Hessman.

Bosnia Remade was shortlisted for the book prize but did not win the top award, which went to Roger Petersen’s latest book. The most attended session was Timothy Snyder discussing Thinking the Twentieth Century, his ‘spoken book’ with Tony Judt. This was really interesting and intellectually inspiring (as is the book).  All told this is a great conference, for which the organizers deserve enormous credit.

I’ve written an opinion piece on the twentieth anniversary which is available at the Oxford University Press blog.

I’ve also created some material related to Bijeljina on the Bosnia Remade website.

After destroying Bijeljina’s multiethnic life, Arkan and the JNA moved south and attacked Zvornik, terrorizing it and seizing it on the 10 April 1992.

SDS activists set up street barricades around Sarajevo on 5 April 1992.

A fifth volume is currently in production edited by Klaus Dodds, Joanne Sharp and Merje Kuus officially called The Ashgate Research Companion to Critical Geopolitics. The lineup of authors, and subject material, is impressive. I was unaware of the volume until January when Joanne asked me to write a prologue. Yesterday I finished the short piece, which I will not reproduce here for copyright reasons. Instead, I will post the table of contents of the volume, with an embed link to the video I discuss in the prologue (around minute 2 is the passage I begin with). I expect Political Geographers will be keen to get their hands on the volume. But will Ashgate make it affordable?

Table of Contents

Prologue: Arguing About Geopolitics, Gerard Toal (Gearóid Ó Tuathail)

Introduction: Geopolitics and its Discontents, Klaus Dodds, Merje Kuus, and Joanne Sharp

 I: Foundations

Introduction: Geopolitical Foundations, Klaus Dodds

The Origins of Critical Geopolitics, John Agnew

Realism and Geopolitics, Simon Dalby

Texts, Discourse, Affect and Things, Martin Muller

Visual culture, Rachel Hughes

Heteronormativity, Linda Peake

Sovereignty, Fiona McConnell

Radical geopolitics, Julian Mercille

Neo-Liberalism, Simon Springer

Geopolitical Traditions, James Sidaway

 II: Sites

Introduction: Geopolitical Sites, Joanne Sharp

Borders, Anssi Paasi

State, Sami Moisio

Militarisation, Matt Farish

Media, Paul Adams

Resources, Phillippe Le Billon

Environment, Shannon O’Lear

Global South, Chi-Yuan Woon

Intimacy and the Everyday, Deborah Cowen and Brett Story

Spaces of Terror, Ulrich Oslender

III. Agents

Introduction: Human Agency in Geopolitics, Merje Kuus

Non-State Actors, Alex Jeffrey

International Organizations, Veit Bachmann

Indigenous Groups, Chris Gibson

Journalists, Alasdair Pinkerton

Artists, Alan Ingram

Evangelicals, Jason Dittmer

Intellectuals of Statecraft, Mathew Coleman

Women, Jennifer Fluri

Activists, Kye Askins

The other infamous founding father, of course, is Radko Mladic (insert picture is one I took of graffiti on destroyed building in Srebrenica, summer 2005). Today, Dr John O’Loughlin, my RA and I had an informal presentation at the US Holocaust Museum where we met with Michael Dobbs and a number of others. He is working on a research project on Mladic and has written important background articles which is available on the Foreign Policy web site. He and his RA Sarah Collman are also gathering materials The Mladic Files which are available on the Holocaust Museum website.

Tis great to see that the hard work of research on these two figures now before the ICTY is now occurring. There is still a lot to be learnt about both figures and about the crucial turning points in Bosnia’s decent into bloody civil war.

In the last few days we have seen pictures of murdered children from across the world. Around the city of Homs, there was a massacre of civilians, mostly women and children. Over the weekend, an Army staff sergeant, walking off the outpost, Camp Belambi in the Panjwai district in Kandahar, and murdered 16 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children. And, in Gaza, the Isreali military launched a series of attacks which claimed the lives of at least 25 Palestinians, some of them (to use the euphemism used in some press reports) “militants” but also some civilians, possibly including children (reports are not precise on this). A BBC television report yesterday showed a destroyed building where a family lived but miraculously survived. In the mix these days is also the viral video over the leader of the Lords Resistance Army, Joseph Kony, who recruited child soldiers for his army.

The death of children is one of the most horrific things that we have to come to terms with, as parents, family members and friends. When they are murdered in conflict, the consequences only further entrench polarization and hate. It takes extraordinary human capacities to transcend that. In the incidents described above, it can be claimed that the murdered children were the unfortunate results of state military formations addressing genuine terrorist threats. “We killed them because they threaten our children” is the base response. But these are massive moments of failure for these state military organizations, moments when they have manifestly lost their legitimacy before the world. Recognizing that is hard for these organizations but failing to do so only deepens the problem they claim to be addressing.

In my essay on the terrorist attack at Beslan, I tried to address some of these issues but only scratched the surface. That essay was motivated to a small degree by the experience of my own university on April 16 2007, a horrible black day. Today a jury found that our university leadership was not as responsive as they might have been to the tragedy, a finding that seems likely to be appealed.

There is no easy way to respond to the horror of murdered children but recognizing responses by state military formations contain the capacity to righteously inflict new horrors is a start. The visceral dimensions at which this response works, its groundedness in certain evolutionary impulses of a biological-social nature, needs understanding.

I am speaking at a conference on the former Yugoslavia at the Havighurst Center at Miami University in Oxford Ohio this Friday on the subject of Karadzic and Dodik.