The Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific Strategy promised to make America more competitive, to challenge China’s revisionist global agenda, and to push back against the new ‘gray zone’ conflicts of great power competition. Fundamentally, the strategy required the government to exercise a Whole of Government (WoG) approach to bring to bear all elements of national power. Despite wide-ranging calls for WoG, the administration eschewed basic reforms, destroyed interdepartmental trust networks, and over time expelled the conduits of national security, pushing WoG more thoroughly into the military. While departmental emphasis on Indo-Pacific issues took place in the Trump administration, this occurred largely in isolation of grand strategic goals.

The pursuit of accountability for perpetrators of mass violence is a significant aspect of peace negotiations. However, different groups often hold conflicting views on what justice means to them. While scholars increasingly discuss the contested nature of transitional justice processes, accountability continues to be seen as a relatively objective aspect of justice. However, examining the interpretations of accountability in the theory and practice of transitional justice reveals that the term often connotes very different meanings simultaneously, arousing conceptual dissonance. The paper argues that, unlike contestation, dissonance is characterized by a hidden or suppressed plurality of meaning, affecting the legitimacy and relevance of policy as well as the ability to pursue it coherently. The paper explores the conceptual dissonance around the notion of accountability in transitional justice broadly and its impact on the political and legal negotiations of accountability policies in the two cases studies of Liberia (2003-2009) and Uganda (2000-2007), with broader ramifications for the future of Jus post-Bellum.

While secessionists have had their dreams, both furtive and as announced intentions, throughout American history, we may be entering a period of increased fervor for various ideologically driven campaigns that either seek new state boundary shifts, annexation of portions of the US to Canada or other nation-states, or outright sovereignty as new nation-states. The contestation between perfervid far-right ideologues often associated with Donald Trump and a leftist eco-racial justice amalgam of groups and individuals mutually coalescing around complete separation is not unimaginable presently. There are also dreams and talk of complete independence for descendants of slaves and some indigenous tribes. What are the trends and tendencies in the world around these questions and how might they be expressing themselves in the US? If the culture wars militate separations, can we avoid a devolution into US Civil War 2.0?

Based on a qualitative method, this study narrates the condition and status of women workers engaged in the unorganized handicraft sector in Srinagar. The city, considered Kashmir’s economic hub and business capital, is known for handicrafts and tourism. In this study, 20 women involved in the Kashmiri handicrafts sector were interviewed face to face. The study recruited participants using purposive and snowball sampling methods. After a thorough review of the collected data, it was thematically interpreted. A descriptive phenomenology analysis of the dataset identified three themes: (i) role of conflict in the region, (ii) urge for economic independence, and (iii) social prejudice. This study argues that even though the work environment in the unorganized sector is exploitative and oppressive for women, there is an element of liberation for women in the social sphere.

“Reservation Policy: An Analysis of Scheduled Tribes Reservation on Higher Education in Manipur.” This paper examines how marginalized social groups are admitted to Manipur’s universities, notably Manipur University. In Manipur, the reservation proportion is as follows: unreserved 40%, economically weaker 10%, Scheduled Tribes (ST) 31%, Scheduled Castes (SC) 2%, and Other Backward Classes (OBC) (17%). This research focused on Manipur’s shortage of quota provisions in higher education admissions. Tribal peoples, who already have 31% of the reservation opportunity, were outraged by this. All ministries of the Indian Union Government have a 7.5% allocation for ST. However, the problem with these figures is that they are radically different from Manipur’s current demographic reality. The Indian Central Educational Institutions (CEI) Reservation in Admission Act, 2006, as revised in 2012, is also the basis for the paper.

The general consequentialist argument for the global education of girls is examined with a view toward explicating the necessity of sensitivity to cultural factors. The work of Nussbaum, Chen and Yousafzai is alluded to, and it is concluded that educational work for girls and women cannot meaningfully be done without some advertence to local cultural standards, even if they seem restrictive.

This paper presents a curricular justification for teaching undergraduate college students in the United States about the practice of management. This justification turns on a conception of management as the routine, daily practice of seeking just relationships between an organization and distinct constituents of that organization. This search is an act of essay, the verb. With this interpretation of managerial practice as routine justice inquiry, I convene teachers from dozens of academic disciplines in a hypothetical endeavor to re-purpose managerial practice for purposes of General Education teaching. The resulting justification is an alternative to the customary defense that teaching about business and management enhances a college’s cash flow through substantial enrollments in those classes, a defense that stops well short of anything intellectual, much less curricular.

Nationalist narratives in Bosnia and Herzegovina generate organized hypocrisy against the culture of memory which involves different protagonists of this society. The real name of the culture of memory of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the culture of denial. This is the very structure of its culture. By examining the perpetuation of memory into organized oblivion as a particular form of structural and cultural violence, the author will establish scholarly and axiological criteria in favor of the creation of conditions to end the culture of oblivion. In contrast to the ontology of oblivion, as an instrument of the culture of denial, this article affirms Emmanuel Levinas’s principle of the responsibility for the Other, as a relationship of pure holiness, as an a priori ethical requirement. Also, to reinforce the argument in favor of a responsible culture of memory in the face of its ideological stagnation, the author also examined critical objection to culture of memory by radical left intellectuals, in whose view culture of memory inhibits emancipation of the oppressed class. Although such argumentation should not be dismissed outright, it dances around the reality of post-conflict communities like Bosnia and Herzegovina, where war victims cry for justice, and hold it as important as their very existence.

The intensification of ethnic and religious identity, accompanied by growing tendencies for creating new national states and escalations of regional conflicts, characterize the post-Cold War era. This article examines the growing impact of religion and the potential of religious activism as a tool for peacebuilding. A case study of Bosnia and Herzegovina will be accompanied by a historical-genealogical approach and analysis and deduction methods. By using those methods, I will answer the question of whether religion has a cohesive role (building of civil society) or divisive effect (accentuation of mutual differences and distancing of ‘other’) in the process of peacebuilding. The research results show that religious activism did positively contribute to peacebuilding but that the existent conciliatory potential is not adequately used for overcoming mutual differences and the creation of civil society, primarily due to the political and institutional framework in which it operates.

As displacement increases due to conflict and climate change, it is vital to find permanent solutions to the global refugee crisis. Currently, refugees are predominantly hosted in less-developed states, to the detriment of both the refugees and the communities providing shelter, while developed states with the financial capacity to provide permanent resettlement restrict the number of refugees accepted. Despite anti-immigrant rhetoric, many developed countries are dependent on economic immigrants to provide population influx and economic growth. Examining this dependency while exploring the social factors which facilitate successful newcomer integration, this paper proposes an immigration system which balances the ratio of refugees and economic immigrants to encourage an equitable system of resettlement. Linking refugee resettlement with economic immigration addresses the needs of refugees, ameliorates pressure on less-developed states currently hosting refugees and serves the national self-interest of developed countries.

Habermas and Rawls presented distinctive theories of new world order at the turn of the new century: the Constitutionalization of International Law and the Law of Peoples. Both theories aim to promote peace and justice all over the world. Unfortunately, their theories have been ignored by mainstream IR theorists. Since few scholars make a deep comparative study between Rawls’s Law of Peoples and Habermas’s Constitutionalization of International Law to reveal their crucial difference, this paper aims to fill this gap by clarifying their essential difference and preliminarily exploring how to formulate their proper relationship. I argue that Habermas’s project is a legalistic peace theory. In contrast, Rawls’s Law of Peoples is a modified form of democratic peace theory, putting hope for international peace on the improvement of the domestic political system of sovereign entities. Finally, I present a tentative suggestion to address their relationship, returning to Kant’s systems approach.

This essay explores the prophetic—peacemaker dynamic using Oscar Romero’s theology of the Transfiguration as an interpretative key. I argue that there is a continuum between being a prophet and being a peacemaker and that one is dependent on, and informs, the other. For Romero, the mystery of the Transfiguration involves a journey undertaken by the community from Calvary to the Resurrection. The Transfiguration is a stark reminder that the Cross always leads to the Resurrection and that there can be no Resurrection without the Cross. Before being realised in the community, however, this is embodied in those individuals or communities that sound a prophetic voice, thus acting as peacemakers. In so doing, the community finally partakes of a foretaste of Christ’s Resurrection.

There is little attempt by the Turkish government to end violence directed against queer people or to provide intervention and prevention services. This article explores the social and legal traditions that the Turkish state maintains to oppress the queer community and to prevent people from accessing their basic human needs. In order to understand violence orchestrated against Turkey’s queer people, it is important to explore some of the threats they face on an everyday basis. These threats include unemployment, harassment, discrimination, disowning/honor killings, denial of freedom of expression and freedom of association, and death. Finally, we explore the Gezi Park nonviolent protests as well as providing some important social change recommendations that Turkey must implement with international solidarity.