Complexity and simplicity: Landmines, peace and security in Central America

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 19, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 45-61

  Faulkner, Frank ^a   Pettiford, Lloyd ^a  

^a NOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DEVELOPING REGION; LANDMINES; POST-WAR SOCIETY; REGIONAL SECURITY;

CENTRAL AMERICA;

EID: 0031776356     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01436599814523     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. See J Pilger, 'Return to year zero', New Internationalist, 242, 1994.
2. See B Buzan, People States and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations, Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1983.
3. For example, L Pettiford & N Poku, 'Practice and theory in the security debate', Security Dialogue, 27 (3), 1996, pp 256-258.
4. See F Faulkner, 'The most pernicious weapon: landmines', Contemporary Review, 270 (1574), 1997, pp 136-142.
5. L Pettiford, 'Changing conceptions of security in Central America', PhD Thesis, Southampton University, 1994.
6. L Pettiford, 'Towards a redefinition of security in Central America: the case of natural disasters', Disasters: The Journal of Disaster Studies and Management, 19 (2), 1995, pp 148-155.
7. L Pettiford, 'Changing conceptions of security in the Third World', Third World Quarterly, 17 (2), 1996, pp 289-306.
8. M Curley, N Poku & L Pettiford, Changing Security Agendas and the Third World, London: Pinter, 1998 (forthcoming).
9. See K Booth (ed), New Thinking About Strategy and International Security, London: Unwin Hyman, 1990.
10. See W M Adams, Green Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World London: Routledge, 1990. See also A Escobar, Encountering Development, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
11. See W M Adams, Green Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World London: Routledge, 1990. See also A Escobar, Encountering Development, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
12. See A Dobson, Green Political Thought, London: Routledge, 1995.
13. As Melissa Curley has pointed out to us, this omission may have, again, to do with the emotive and personal nature of the issue. For this and other comments we are very grateful.
14. S Walt, 'The renaissance of security studies', International Studies Quarterly, 35 (2), 1991, p 223.
15. J George, Discourses of Global Politics: A Critical (Re)Introduction to International Relations, London: MacMillan, 1994, p 33.
16. R Devetak, 'Critical Theory' in S Burchill & A Linklater et al., Theories of International Relations, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996, pp 147-151.
17. A Linklater, Beyond Realism and Marxism: Critical Theory and International Relations, London: Routledge, 1990, p 12 (emphasis added).
18. K Booth, 'Security in anarchy: Utopian realism in theory and practice, International Affairs, 67 (3), 1991, p 534.
19. These initial observations have a lot to do with our own experience of learning about postmodern thought, which was about as satisfying as the current teaching of sex-education in British schools.
20. George, Discourses of Global Politics, p 211-212.
21. Our apologies to those who find this section unnecessary; it can easily be skipped. However, in seeking an article of broad relevance we think it is a worthwhile section to include.
22. George, Discourses of Global Politics, p 209.
23. P Rosenau, Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads and Intrusions, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992, p 8.
24. M Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, edited and translated by C Gordon, New York: Pantheon Books, 1980, p 132.
25. D Campbell & M Dillon (eds), The Political Subject of Violence, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993, p 29.
26. Rosenau, Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences, p 10. Here, discourse is a 'matrix of social practices that gives meaning to the way that people understand themselves and their behaviour' thus generating 'the categories of behaviour by which reality can be understood and explained'.
27. George, Discourses of Global Politics, p 194. George also notes that 'it is worth recalling Isiah Berlin's proposition that there are at least 28 major representations of Machiavelli's textual legacy acknowledged by political theorists'. However, 'International Relations continues to insist on only one - the power politics interpretation, which...is little more than a crude and opportunistic caricature of a complex and sophisticated body of work'. p 227.
28. It is somewhat strange, therefore that Bob Keohane and Stephen Walt have demanded of postmodernists that they specify a research agenda.
29. However, ATMS, when fitted with an anti-handling or anti-disturbance device, effectively become antipersonnel mines. This is an area yet to receive extensive international deliberations.
30. For an excellent summary, including photographs, see 'Landmines: trail of terror', New Internationalist, 294, 1997, p 11.
31. Ann Clwyd MP, in her pamphlet Landmines: An Unacceptable Weapon, notes that many experts suggest a failure rate of 5%-10% and that this may be as high as 50% in the case of some countries' mine production.
32. Dynamit Nobel, The Dynamine Family of Mines (promotional literature), Graz: Dynamit Nobel AG, undated.
33. B Tigner, 'Diplomats see little hope for Europe-backed mine ban', Defense News, 3-9 April 1995, p 8.
34. R McGrath, Report of a Symposium on Anti-Personnel Mines, Montreux, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 1993, p 65.
35. See P Davies, War of the Mines, London: Pluto Press, 1994, p 127.
36. McGrath, Report of a Symposium on Anti-Personnel Mines, p 9.
37. United Nations, International Meeting on Mine Clearance, Geneva: UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs Document, July 1995, p 1.
38. S Roberts & J Williams, After the Guns Fall Silent: The Enduring Legacy of Landmines, Oxford: Oxfam Publications, 1995, p 3.
39. F Coupland, 'Review: the effects of weapons: surgical challenge and medical dilemma', extracted from a lecture to the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, 6 October 1995.
40. ICRC, Landmines Must Be Stopped, Geneva: ICRC, May 1997, p 6.
41. Ibid, p 68.
42. This term refers to the effects on the flesh of the impact of a projectile in tumbling trajectory; for further explanation, see Prokosch, The Technology of Killing: A Military and Political History of Anti-Personnel Weapons, London: Zed Books, 1995.
43. ICRC, Landmines Must be Stopped, p 93.
44. Physicians for Human Rights, Landmines: A Deadly Legacy, New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993, pp 131-132.
45. R McGrath, Landmines: Legacy of Conflict - A Manual for Development Workers, Oxford: Oxfam Publications, 1994, p 32-33.
46. US Department of State, Hidden Killers: The Global Problem with Uncleared Mines, Washington, DC: USDS Political-Military Affairs Bureau, 1993, p 8.
47. For various historical reasons which need not detain us here, these five republics have frequently been grouped together and analysed as 'Central America'. The term Central American crisis therefore applies to these countries and does not include Mexico, Belize (British Honduras) and Panama.
48. See for example the splendid introduction to the subject by James Dunkerley, Power in the Isthmus, London: Verso, 1988 or the more rhetorical but compelling Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide: US Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace, Montreal, Black Rose Books, 1987.
49. See for example the splendid introduction to the subject by James Dunkerley, Power in the Isthmus, London: Verso, 1988 or the more rhetorical but compelling Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide: US Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace, Montreal, Black Rose Books, 1987.
50. For example Nicaraguan incursions into Costa Rica (1948 and 1955) and the so-called 'football war' between Honduras and El Salvador (1969).
51. In effect, the Central American crisis was a social crisis viewed as a Cold War crisis.
52. Honduras and Costa Rica are not normally included in definitions of the Central American crisis. However, in the sense that peaceful Honduras and democratic Costa Rica represented US 'success stories' in the region they inevitably form part of the crisis seen in broader context. US attempts to direct the political futures of both countries involved huge amounts of aid and interference.
53. F Faulkner, 'Anti-personnel mines: a necessary evil?', International Relations Journal, XIII (4), 1997, p 41.
54. USDS, Hidden Killers, p 132.
55. Physicians for Human Rights, Landmines: A Deadly Legacy, p 218.
56. Ibid, p 132.
57. Mines are known to drift several hundred metres in sandy conditions, can be displaced by soil erosion or flooding, become hidden in dense vegetation, and so on.
58. Physicians for Human Rights, Landmines: A Deadly Legacy, p 216.
59. Roberts & Williams, After the Guns Fall Silent, p 267.
60. Physicians for Human Rights, Landmines: A Deadly Legacy, p 216-217.
61. New York Times, 19 July 1986.
62. R Fernández, 'Deactivating mines: pacifying nature', Envio, 14 (170), 1995, pp 36-41.
63. USDS, Hidden Killers, p 85.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid, p 40.
66. Physicians for Human Rights, Landmines: A Deadly Legacy, p 184. For information on the more limited extent of landmine related problems in the other countries of the region see USDS, Hidden Killers, pp 75, 97, 99.
67. Physicians for Human Rights, Landmines: A Deadly Legacy, p 184. For information on the more limited extent of landmine related problems in the other countries of the region see USDS, Hidden Killers, pp 75, 97, 99.
68. Literally, a God from the machine. Used to describe a phenomenon that arrives at just the right moment to rescue or revive a situation in want of revivification. While it may be apt for the purposes of this paper, it should not be taken in its strictest literal sense.
69. For anyone wishing to gel involved as well see 'Landmines: trail of terror', p 30.
70. This point can be graphically emphasised by looking at ibid, p 22.