Metaphors Matter: The Ideological Functions of the Kosovo–Holocaust Analogy

Akrivoulis, Dimitrios E.

doi:10.1080/19448953.2014.993260

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 7 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In Bosnia, the West had remained passive until many foreign journalists reported from "concentration camps" within Bosnia itself, activating a wide range of Holocaust analogies (Akrivoulis 2015). In the Western collective identity at the time, Bosnia was the first instance of non-prevented genocide on European soil since the Holocaust (Cushman and Mestrovic 1996).…”

Section: "My Mindset Is Munich"; the Role Of Holocaust Analogiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Just Another Civil War?

Kushi

2023

World Affairs

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

When do Western powers intervene militarily on behalf of suffering strangers? Political elites’ perceptions of international conflicts may alter options for third-party management. Examining the precedent-setting case of the Kosovo Crisis via multi-language fieldwork, NATO archives, and content analysis, I discuss how Kosovo moved from the periphery of Western attention to becoming the litmus test of the Western security response. Contrary to literature that focuses on humanitarian norms or geopolitical interests as drivers of this NATO intervention, I argue that the Kosovo Crisis “earned” a humanitarian military intervention due to shifting favorable conflict perceptions, which encouraged Western institutional involvement. Such interactions between perceptions and intervention may apply to other global crises.

show abstract

Section: "My Mindset Is Munich"; the Role Of Holocaust Analogiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Just Another Civil War?

Kushi

2023

World Affairs

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This necessitates a shift of our research interest to all those symbolic and wider cultural processes that elevate the obligation to intervene to an international responsibility, especially in the West. 87 The hermeneutics of naïveté allows us here to recognise that a critical investigation of humanitarian intervention needs to start at a level deeper than those of mere distortion (realism/Marxism) and legitimisation (social constructivism), namely at the level of integration. Once we recognise this integrating function, we could better reflect on how we have come to recognise 'universal morality' as an international norm of political behaviour, but to also critically review the pathological content of the other two social functions (legitimisation and distortion).…”

Section: The Hermeneutics Of Naïvetémentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the hermeneutics of suspicion in the critique of humanitarian intervention

Akrivoulis

2016

Rev. Int. Stud.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Realist and Marxist critiques of humanitarian intervention are distinctively materialistic in scope. The IR literature has already described this scepticism as a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’, a term associated with the work of Paul Ricoeur, which aims to unearth the intervenors’ material and geopolitical interests hypocritically hidden behind the pretext of humanitarianism. The article first notes the decontextualised misappropriations of the term as an iconic and omnipotent instrument of doubt, as well as the limitations of the social constructivist response on the matter. By contextualising Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of suspicion as developed in his life work, the article then calls for an extension of critique from a hermeneutics of suspicion to a hermeneutics of naïveté. Applied in the critique of the ideology of humanitarian intervention, the article thus calls for a shift of focus from the examination of the distorting (Marxism, realism) and legitimising (social constructivism) functions of this ideology to its integrating function that has allowed the evocation of humanitarian principles as international norms, and uncritically vindicates this arrangement. The article proposes that this hermeneutical detour could allow critique to proceed to a greater analytical depth, opening up a set of critical questions.

show abstract

“…Western perceptions, both of these historical tragedies were founded upon analogies of genocide, unrestrained by the international community. In Bosnia, as Serbian campaigns of ethnic cleansing escalated, the Western media turned to analogies of Nazi Germany to contextualize photos and eyewitness reports of mass crimes (Akrivoulis 2015). Indeed, the West remained passive in Bosnia until such Holocaust imagery and symbolism gained great traction internationally -as journalists reported from "concentration camps" within Bosnia (Akrivoulis 2015).…”

Section: From Terrorists To Defenseless People -Catering To Western Smentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Bosnia, as Serbian campaigns of ethnic cleansing escalated, the Western media turned to analogies of Nazi Germany to contextualize photos and eyewitness reports of mass crimes (Akrivoulis 2015). Indeed, the West remained passive in Bosnia until such Holocaust imagery and symbolism gained great traction internationally -as journalists reported from "concentration camps" within Bosnia (Akrivoulis 2015). By the mid-1990s, Bosnia was in Western collective identity the first instance of non-prevented genocide on European soil since the Holocaust (Cushman and Mestrovic 1996).…”

Section: From Terrorists To Defenseless People -Catering To Western Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Saving our western neighbors : how regional institutions & conflict perceptions drive humanitarian military interventions

Kushi¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Humanitarian military interventions characterized the political atmosphere of the 1990slegitimizing the phenomenon in which third-party actors use force to end intrastate abuses. While calls for humanitarian military intervention remain numerous, the phenomenon itself is laden with grave skepticism given the large "selectivity gap" in mission patterns. While states and institutions appear to enforce the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in reaction to some internal conflicts such as Kosovo, Bosnia, and Libya, they withhold similar policy options in cases of more intense armed conflict, as in Darfur, Syria, and Myanmar. Much of the research focuses on dichotomous explanations -suggesting that either ethical norms or geopolitical strategies guide patterns of such third-party interventions, but I demonstrate that the "selectivity gap" of humanitarian military interventions is primarily driven by variations in regional institutions and conflict perceptions.Such regional dimensions lead to more probable pathways of intervention within the West, founded upon value-based institutional resources as seen within NATO and EU structures. This project contributes to both theoretical and empirical debates within international relations and security studies. It introduces a new dataset that offers the first quantitative and systematic analysis of humanitarian military interventions, including 1,110 observations of intrastate armed conflict between 1987-2016, paired with a range of international responses, nonresponses, and key theoretical variables. In addition, it introduces an Intervention Index that accounts for the intensity of military interventions across different cases of humanitarian crisis.The aggregated models founded upon this data highlight the importance of regional neighborhoods and conflict perceptions in activating third-party responses, leading to three novel pathways of humanitarian intervention. Using original-language NATO, US, EU, and Balkans archival records and leadership dialogues, I then process-trace how conflict perceptions across Western audiences

show abstract

Metaphors Matter: The Ideological Functions of the Kosovo–Holocaust Analogy

Cited by 5 publications

References 7 publications

Just Another Civil War?

Just Another Civil War?

Beyond the hermeneutics of suspicion in the critique of humanitarian intervention

Saving our western neighbors : how regional institutions & conflict perceptions drive humanitarian military interventions

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About