War Through Ages: Arab-Israeli Conflict (1948-1978) A Foucauldian Critique

ABSTRACT

The study presents the impact of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East from 1948 to 1978 in a Postmodernism approach in general and Foucault in particular. The study highlights the different wars between Arab nations and State of Israel.

The study reveals that Arab-Israeli conflict is affected by identity either Arab or Israeli, nationalism either Arab nationalism or Zionism, and state either Arab nations or State of Israel as the typologies based on the notion of Knowledge, Truth, and Power.

It is an undisputed fact that the Arab-Israeli Conflict plays an important role in the Middle East (Walvoord and Hitchcock 2007). The Middle East became the most significant trouble spot in the world. Many events have occurred in the past and those that are happening today can be traced to basic political, economic, social, and cultural causal factors (Winslow 2007).        The Arab-Israeli conflict spans about a century of political tensions and open hostilities. It involves the establishment of the modern State of Israel, as well as the establishment and independence of several Arab countries at the same time, and the relationship between the Arab nations and Israel.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (1948-1978)

The 1948 Arab-Israeli War was the first in a series of armed conflicts fought between the State of Israel and its Arab neighbours in the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. The Arab-Israeli Conflict began as a civil conflict between Palestinian Jews and Arabs following the announcement of the United Nations (UN) plan of November 1947 to partition the country into Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international enclave in greater Jerusalem. For Palestinians, the war marked the beginning of the events referred to as “The Catastrophe”. After the United Nations partitioned the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine into two states, Jewish and Arab, the Arab refused to accept it and the armies of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, and Iraq, supported by others, attacked the newly established State of Israel which they refused to recognize. As a result, the region was divided between Israel, Egypt, and Transjordan.

            The Suez Crisis was a war fought on Egyptian territory in 1956. The conflict pitted Egypt against United Kingdom and France. During the British colonial era, the Suez Canal had been important in the Middle East, as well as for the penetration of Africa and in maintaining control in India. For this reason the British considered it important to keep the canal out of Egyptian control. Thus, in 1875, Isma’il Pasha, under the pressure of foreign debt, sold his country’s share in the canal to the United Kingdom, and the Convention of Constantinople (1888) declared the canal a neutral zone under British protection. The United Kingdom gained control over the canal under the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936. However, in 1951 Egypt declared this treaty null and void, and by 1954 the United Kingdom agreed to pull out.

            The Six-Day War (Milhemet Sheshet Ha-Yamin), also known as the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Third Arab-Israeli War, Six Days’ War,  an-Naksah (The Setback), or the June War, was fought between Israel and its Arab neighbors of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria with Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Algeria contributing troops and arms to their fronts. On 25 January 1967, the Israeli-Syrian mixed armistice commission convened, after an eight-year hiatus, and published a communiqué according to which the two parties had reached an agreement meant to prevent any hostile or aggressive action. On 7 April, in reprisal for Syrian artillery barrages on kibbutzim in the north of Galilee, Israeli planes conducted a raid on the Golan, in the course of which six Syrian MiGs were downed. On 13 May, Soviet intelligence informed Cairo and Damascus that the Israelis were massing troops on the Syrian frontier. In the context of the Egyptian-Syrian defense pact, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser decided to mobilize his army. The following day, several Egyptian units left Cairo for the Sinai.

The Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War or October War, also known as the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the Fourth Arab-Israeli War, was fought from October 6 to October 26, 1973, between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria. The war began with a surprise joint attack by Egypt and Syria on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. Egypt and Syria crossed the cease-fire lines in the Sinai and Golan Heights, respectively, which had been captured by Israel in 1967 during the Six Day War. The Egyptians and Syrian advanced during the first 24-48 hours, after which momentum began to swing in Israel’s favour (Fuare, 2005).

THE NOTION OF KNOWLEDGE IN ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT

           

            Foucault begins with the principles that there are any numbers of different ways of ordering experiences and knowledge. Every existing order in culture, society and knowledge is limited, and alternative orders are always possible. It is important to continually challenge these orders as they often fix and perpetuate forms of social injustice and ignorance. All of Foucault’s work is about order, or more specifically about the co-existence of different forms of order and the continual historical transformation of those orders and their interrelations. These orders exist both within culture and within the physical world.

            One of the most fundamental confusion in our culture is the tendency to assume that words and things have the same structure and that words transparently reflect and represents the structure of things. Or to put it another way, that our way of talking about the world reflects the world as it really is in itself. Foucault argues that there is no necessary neutral and fixed connection between words and things or between knowledge and things. The order of words and the order of things can only exist in analogous relations. An order of words may appear the same as an order of things, but the order of words is using analogy or mimicry or some other process to produce this effect.

            The non-transparent relation between words and things and the fact that somehow our knowledge never quite matches what is actually out there is, in Foucault’s view, the logical consequence of the fact that humans are limited historical beings. Our inability to formulate a knowledge which is fixed and absolutely true is not the result of the loss of an original natural innocence or ‘fall from grace’. Neither is knowledge a mark of a divorce from ‘nature’ and ‘real life’.

            For Foucault, ‘history’ is the tool par excellence for challenging and analyzing existing orders and also for suggesting the possibility of new orders. History is about beginnings and ends and about change and freedom.

In short, history can be used as a tool to show the limits of every system of thought and institutional practice and to break down the oppressive claims to universal truth of any one system. In opposition to eternal, fixed and unchanging entities, Foucault proposes history, the beginning and ends and constant change.

Identity

In both enduring interstate rivalries and bitter ethnic conflict, interests are shaped by images that in turn are partially shaped by identity. What we see as a threat is a function in large part of the way we see the world and who we think we are. Embedded enemy images and collective beliefs are a serious obstacle to conflict management, routinization, reduction, or resolution. Once formed, enemy images tend to become deeply rooted and resistant to change, even when one adversary attempts to signal a change in intent. The images themselves then contribute autonomously to the perpetuation and to the intensification of conflict.

Prospects for reducing and resolving violent conflicts are not as grim, however, as this analysis suggests. I argue that identities that shape images are not given but are socially related as interactions develop and contexts evolve over the trajectory of conflict. Change in identity can reshape images, and changing images can provoke a relation of identity. If they are to be effective, peacemakers, who confront bitter civil wars or enduring state rivalries must address interests in the broader context of images and identity.

            Images of an enemy can form as a response to the persistently aggressive actions of another state or group. A conflict generated by aggressive or militant leaders with vested interest in escalating conflict is generally not amenable to reduction unless intentions change. These kind of individual and group images are not the subject of this chapter.  Rather, I focus on conflict generated by images and fears that form when the intent of the others is not hostile, but action is ambiguous in an unstructured environment; or conflict generated by images that were once accurate but no longer reflect the intentions of one or more parties. Under these conditions, social analysis is important both in the explanation of conflict and in generating prescriptions to reduce its intensity.

            An image refers to a set of beliefs or to the hypotheses and theories that an individual or group is convinced as valid. An image includes both experience-based knowledge and values, or beliefs about desirable behavior (Rokeach 1973, 5). When these individual images are shared within a group and defined in opposition to another group, they become stereotyped (Druckman 1994, 50). A stereotyped image is a group belief about another group or state that includes descriptive, affective, and normative components. Stereotyped enemy images, generally simple in structure, set the political context in which action takes place and decisions are made. Converging streams of evidence from international relations, and comparative politics suggest that individuals and groups are motivated to form and maintain images of an enemy even in the absence of solid, confirming evidence of hostile intentions.

            Enemy images can be a product of the need for identity and the dynamics of group behavior. People have a fundamental human need for identity. Identity is the way in which a person is or wishes to be known by others; it is a conception of self in relation to others. An effective identity includes beliefs and scripts for action in relation to others. An individual almost always holds more than one identity and generally moves freely among these identities depending on the situation. Individual identity is highly situational and relational.

            One important component of individual identity is social identity, or the part of individual’s self-concept that derives from knowledge of his or her membership in a social group or groups, together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership (Tajfel 1981, 255). People satisfy their need for positive self-identity, status, or reduction of uncertainty by identifying with the group (Hogg and Abrams 1993, 173-190).These needs then require bolstering and favorable comparison of the “in-group” with “out-group (Tajfel 1982).” Membership in a group leads to systematic comparisons, differentiation, and derogation of other groups through processes of categorizing and social comparison.

            Social differentiation occurs even in the absence of material bases for conflict. This need for collective as well as individual identity leads people to differentiate between “we” and “they”, to distinguish between “insiders” and “outsiders”, even when scarcity or gain is not at issue. In an effort to establish or defend group identity, groups and their leaders identity their distinctive attributes as virtues and label the distinctiveness of others as vices. This kind of “labeling” responds to deep social needs and can lead to the creation of enemy stereotypes and culminate conflict.

            An examination of massive state repressive leading to group extinction, for example, concluded that genocides and politicides are extreme attempts to maintain the security of one’s “identity group” at the expense of other groups (Harff and Gurr 1988, 359-371). Ethnocentrism, or strong feelings of self-group centrality and superiority, does not necessarily culminate in extreme or violent behavior. However, it does draw on myths that are central to group or national culture and breeds stereotyping and a misplaced suspicion of others’ intentions (Booth 1979).

            Common cognitive biases can also contribute to the creation of enemy images and the sharpening of polarization. The egocentric bias leads people to overestimate the extent to which they are the target of others’ action. Leaders are then likely to see their group or state as the target of the hostility of others even when they are not. The fundamental error leads people to exaggerate systematically the importance of others’ disposition or fixed attributes in explaining their undesired behavior. Leaders are, therefore, likely to attribute undesirable behavior to the “character” of other groups or states rather than to the difficulties they face in their environment (Fiske and Taylor 1984, 72-99). President Hafiz al-Assad of Syria rarely drew a distinction between Israeli’s leaders, ignored differences among political parties, explained Israel’s behavior as a consequence of its Zionist character, and dismissed the impact of public opinion on the policy of a democratically elected leadership. He consistently exaggerates the “disposition” of Israel’s leaders at the expense of the situation they confronted.

            Social identity and differentiation, however, do not lead inevitably to violent conflict through stereotypical enemy images (Mercer 1995, 229-252). If they did, conflict would occur at all times, under all conditions. Differentiated identities and cognitive biases are necessary but insufficient explanations of the formation of enemy images. If they were sufficient, individuals, groups, and states would have strong enemy images all the time. This is clearly not the case. The critical variables are the kinds of environments in which individuals and groups seek to satisfy their needs and the norms that they generate and accept. Certain kinds of international and domestic conditions mediate and facilitate the formation of enemy images (Taylor and Moghaddam 1987).

THE NOTION OF TRUTH IN ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT

            Truth plays a major role in the way Foucault structures his writings. It could even be argued that his entire work is one long effort to reinstate a form of truth that has been consistently marginalized since Descartes – a form of truth that relies on history, on patient and constant work and ‘exercise’ by every individual in their daily lives in the world. It is a form of truth that is accessible to, and is indeed revealed by, the most marginalized of individuals – mad people, ill people, prisoners, those designated as ‘abnormal’. It is a truth that does not have a fixed and unchanging content and is not the province of a privilege few, but can be acquired by anyone through exercises involving choices of action within their own specific historical, social, and cultural settings.

            There has been a great deal of discussion about Foucault’s approach to truth. He is often accused of denying ‘objective truth’ and of introducing an amoral and highly dubious relativism. But he firmly insists that he is not engaged in a ‘skeptical or relativistic refusal of all verifies truth’ (Foucault 1982: 330), noting further: ‘all those who say that for me the truth doesn’t exist are simple-minded’. (Foucault 1984: 456) This is not to say however, that Foucault’s notion of truth is the same as his detractors. He argues that there are strict historically and culturally specific rules about how truth is both accessed and disseminated. One cannot make any claims about truth except from within quite specific cultural and historical settings. Further to this, any system of rules is also a finite system of constraints and limitations; therefore truth is of necessity the subject of struggles for power. In short ‘truth’, like every other category in Foucault’s work, is a historical category. Foucault further specifies that the history of truth he is describing is specific to the West arguing that there has been an overwhelming obligation in Western history to search for the truth, to tell the truth and to honour certain people who are designated as having privileged access to the truth.

Nation and Nationalism

Political division is a key characteristic of traditional global politics.  Nationalism is the world’s “most powerful political idea” (Taras and Ganguly 1998,11). It is the primary political identity of most people. As such, nationalism has helped configure world politics for several centuries and will continue to play a crucial role in shaping people’s minds and global affairs in the foreseeable future. The political segmentation of the world rests in great part on three concepts: nation, nation-state, and nationalism (Mortimer and Fine 1999). Understanding both the theory and the reality of what they are and how they relate to one another is central to our analysis of international politics.

            A nation is a people who (a) share demographic and cultural similarities, (b) possess a feeling of community (mutually identify as a group distinct from other groups), and (c) want to control themselves politically. As such, a nation is intangible; it exists because its members think it does. A state (country) is tangible institution, but a nation, as a French scholar puts it, is “a soul, a spiritual quality” (Renan 1995, 7).

            Demographic and Cultural Similarities.        The similarities that a people share are one element that helps make them a nation. These similarities may be demographic characteristics (such as language, race, and religion), or they may be a common culture or shared historical experiences.

            Feeling of Community            .           A second thing that helps define a nation is its feeling of community. Perception is the key here. For all the objective similarities a group might have, it is not a nation unless it subjectively feels like one. Those within a group must perceive that they share similarities and are bound together by them. Thus, a nation is an “imagined political community,” according to one scholar. As he explains, “It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the mind of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson 1991, 5).

            The central role of perceptions in defining a nation leads, perhaps inevitably, to a “we-group” defining itself not only by the similarities of those in the nation but also in terms of how those in the nation differ from others, the “they-groups.” The group members’ sense of feeling akin to one another and their sense of feeling different from others are highly subjective.

            Desire To Be Politically Separate.     The third element that defines a nation is its desire to be politically separate. What distinguishes a nation from an ethnic group is that a nation, unlike an ethnic group, desires to be self-governing or at least autonomous. In nationally divided states, the minority nationalities refuse to concede the legitimacy of their being governed by the majority nationality.

            It should be noted that the line between ethnic groups and nations is not always clear. In many countries, there are ethnic groups that either teeter on the edge of having true nationalist (separatist) sentiments or that have some members who are nationalists and others who are not (Conversi, 2002).

            The second aspect of the traditional political orientation is nationalism, which is the separatist political impulse of a nation. It is hard to overstate the importance of nationalism to the structure and conduct of world politics (Beiner, 1991). Nationalism is an ideology, a complex of related ideas that establishes value about what is good and bad, directs adherents on how to act (patriotism), links together those who adhere to the ideology, and distinguishes them from those who do not. Specially, nationalism connects individuals, their sense of community, and their political identity in contradistinction to other nations. The links are forged when individuals (1) “become sentimentally attached to the homeland,” (2) “gain a sense of identity and self-esteem through their national identification,” and (3) are “motivated to help their country” (Druckman, 1994, 44). As such, nationalism is an ideology that holds that the nation should be the primary political identity of individuals. Furthermore, nationalist ideology maintains that the paramount political loyalty of individuals should be patriotically extended to the nation-state, the political vehicle of the nation’s self-governance.

            A third element of our traditional way of defining and organizing ourselves politically is the nation-state. This combines the idea of a nation with that of a state. A state is a country, a sovereign (independent) political organization with certain character such as territory, a population, and a government.

            Ideally, a nation-state represents the joining of nation and state. In this arrangement, virtually all of a nation is united within its own state, and the people of that state overwhelmingly identify with the nation. Thus, the ideal nation-state is one in which one nation and one state engenders powerful emotions called patriotism, the extension of identification with the nation to loyalty to the state.

During an address to the UN General Assembly, Pope John Paul II spoke of two nationalisms. One was “an unhealthy form of nationalism which teaches contempt for other nations or culture . . . [and] seeks to advance the well-being of one’s own nation at the expense of others.” The other nationalism involved “proper love of one’s country . . . [and] the respect which is due to every [other] culture and every nation.” What the pope could see is that nationalism, like the Roman god Janus, has two faces. Nationalism has been a positive force, but it has also brought despair and destruction to the world.

Most scholars agree that in its philosophical and historical genesis, nationalism was a positive force. It continues to have a number of possible beneficial effects.

Nationalism promotes democracy. Popular sovereignty, the idea that the state is the property of its citizen, is a key element of modern nationalism. If the state is the agent of the people, then the people should decide what policies that the state should pursue. This is democracy, and in the words of one scholar, “Nationalism is the major form in which democratic consciousness expresses itself in the modern world” (O’Leary 1997, 222). In short, nationalism promotes the idea that political power legitimately resides with the people and that governors exercise that power only as the agents of the people. The democratic nationalism that helped spur the American Revolution has spread globally, especially since World War II, increasing the proportion of world’s countries that are fully democratic from 28% in 1950 to 46% in 2003.

Nationalism discourages imperialism.          During the past 100 years alone, nationalism has played a key role in the demise of the contiguous Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian empires and of all or most of the colonial empires controlled by Belgium, France, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United States. More recently, nationalism was the driving force behind the birth of the newest state, East Timor, one of the last remnants of the Portuguese empire and from 1975 to 2002 a territory annexed by Indonesia.

Nationalism allows for economic development. Many scholars see nationalism as both a facilitator and a product of modernization. Nationalism created larger political units in which commerce could expand. The prohibition of interstate tariffs and the control of interstate commerce by the national government in the 1787 American Constitution are examples of that development. With the advent of industrialization and urbanization, the local loyalties of the masses waned and were replaced by a loyalty to the national state.

Nationalism allows diversity and experimentation. It has been argued that regional or world political organization might lead to an amalgamation of culture or, worse, the suppression of the cultural and government promotes experimentation. Democracy, for instance, was an experiment of in America in 1776 that might not have occurred in a world dominated by monarchical political systems alone. Diversity also allows different cultures to maintain their own values. Political culture varies, for example, along a continuum on which the good of the individual is at one end and the good of the society is at the other end. No society is at either extreme of the continuum. Americans are among those who tend toward the individualism end and the belief that the rights of the individual are more important than the welfare of the society.

            For all its contributions, nationalism also has a dark side. Although it has a number of aspects, the troubling face of nationalism is feeling a kinship with the other “like” people who make up the nation. Differentiating ourselves from others is not intrinsically bad, but it is only a small step from the salutary effects of positively valuing our we-group to the negative effects of devaluing they-groups. Four aspects of negative nationalism are lack of concern for others, exceptionalism and xenophobia, internal oppression, and external aggression.

            Lack of Concern for Others.  The mildest, albeit still troubling, trait of negative nationalism, we tend to consider the they-group as apart from us. As a result, our sense of responsibility – even of human caring – for the “they” is more limited than for our we-group. People in most countries accept significant responsibility to assist the least fortunate citizens of their national we-group through social welfare budgets. The key is what we not only want to help others in our-group but that we feel we have a duty to do so.

            Exceptionalism and Xenophobia.      If the positive emotion of valuing one’s nation is one side of nationalism, its other side involves feeling superior to or even fearing and hating others. Exceptionalism is the belief by some that their nation is better than others.

            Fortunately less frequent but an even more negative way some people relate to they-groups is xenophobia, the suspicion, dislike, or fear of other nationalities. Negative nationalism also often spawns feelings of national superiority and superpatriotism, and these lead to internal oppression and external aggression (Kateb 2000). Feelings of hatred between groups are especially apt to be intense if there is a history of conflict or oppression.

            Oppression and Aggression.  If negative nationalism were confined to feelings, it might not be so worrisome. But a sense of superiority or unreasoned fear or loathing often leads to domestic oppression and external aggression.

            Internal oppression is common. Indeed, it is rare to find a multinational country in which the dominant ethnonational group does not have political, economic, and social advantages over the other group or groups. Perhaps inevitably, this inequality of circumstance causes the disadvantaged groups to become restive.

            Domestic nationalist intolerance can also lead to conflict when, as one scholar notes, it becomes “a scavenger [that] feeds upon the pre-existing sense of nationhood” and seeks “to destroy heterogeneity” by trying to suppress the culture of minority groups or by driving them out of the country (Keane 1994, 175).

            External aggression can also be the product of negative nationalism. Exceptionalism for example can lead to the belief that it is acceptable to conquer “lesser” nations or indeed, even to the notion that they will be improved by being subjugated and having their cultures replaced by that of the conqueror.

THE NOTION OF POWER IN ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT

            Foucault’s name is linked most famously with the notion of power and also with the idea that knowledge and truth exist in an essential relations with social, economic, and political factors. It is well known that Foucault addresses the question of power in his writing subsequent to 1970, but similar themes can also be found in his earlier work even if such themes are not couched in the same terms. Foucault (1971, 159) explains that in the early 1960s he was impressed by the attempts of certain Marxist historians of science to link geometry and calculus to social structures. But the problem with Marxist attempts to link the actual disciplinary content of science with economic, social, and historical factors was that they made the links too simple. In Foucault’s view, the relation between social and economic structures and the actual content of science was in fact far more complex than one simply being the expression of the other. He therefore embarked on his studies of psychiatry and medicine with a view to examining these complexities. In The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault briefly adopted the term ‘ideology’ to refer to these social, economic and political structures, using the term in much the same way as he subsequently used power.

            But whatever the terminology, he remains firm in his rejection of a long-standing assumption in Western philosophy that there is a fundamental opposition between knowledge and power, that the purity of knowledge can only exist in stark opposition to the machinations of power. As he puts it, the accepted view is that ‘If there is knowledge, it must renounce power. Where knowledge and science are found in their pure truth, there can no longer be any political power. This great myth needs to be dispelled’ (Focault 1974, 32).

            In The Archaeology of Knowledge Foucault criticizes the idea that ‘ideology’ and science are mutually exclusive. If the proposition that science does not exist in isolation from power or ideology is now a fairly familiar one, it is usually assumed as a result, that such a relation immediately undermines the truth claims and validity of science. This conclusion is, however, still premised on the notion that knowledge and power can never be mixed. Foucault, for his part, insists that exposing the ‘ideological’ functioning of a science and treating it as merely one practice of knowledge amongst many is not an attack to its legitimacy or the validity of its propositions as a science. Within science there are internal ‘thresholds’ which mark how that knowledge is systematized, how propositions are constructed, formalized and validated. Thus Foucault is able to make a distinction between the ‘archaeological’ level where ‘objects are constituted, subject are posed and concepts are formed’ (Focault 1971, 162) and the ‘epistemological’ level of science.

At the end of The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault asks ‘Must archaeology be – exclusively – a certain way of questioning the history of the sciences?’ His answer to that is, of course, no, and the book he published next, ‘The Order of Discourse’, marks the beginning of his move away from a specific focus on science to broader forms of knowledge relating to social organization. It also marks the introduction of his notion of power.

            What exactly is power? As is the case with archaeology, Foucault uses the term for a while without offering any definitions. Early on, he adopts the classic view of power as repressive, noting for example: ‘for medicine, I tried … to detect relations of power, that is necessarily the types of repression which were linked to the appearance of a knowledge’ (Focault 1973, 410). But he quickly discarded this idea and took another tack. If Foucault’s ideas on power are notoriously changeable there are certain principles to distinguish his own views on power from more traditional – particularly Marxist – models.

The most important feature of Foucault’s theories on power is that for him power is not a ‘thing’ or a ‘capacity’ which can be owned either by State, social class, or particular individuals. Instead it is a relation between different individuals and groups and only exists when it is being exercised. According to this scenario a king is only a king if he has subjects. Thus, the term power refers to set of relations that exist between individuals, or that are strategically deployed by groups of individuals. Institutions and government are simply the ossification of highly complex sets of power relations which exist at every level of the social body. How Foucault characterizes the operation and limits of these exercises of power was co-extensive with the social body. There were no pockets of freedom which escaped power relations, but instead resistance existed wherever power exercised (Focault 1977, 142). This resistance was everywhere and at every level, right down, as Foucault says, to the child who picked his nose at the table in order to annoy his parents (Focault 1977, 407). Although Foucault insisted on several occasions that resistance was not doomed to inevitable failure in the face of the omnipresence of power, numbers of his readers still found it difficult to understand how such resistance could not be compromised, since in effect it could only ever be the mirror of the power being exercised. Foucault tried to get around this problem by briefly proposing something he called the ‘plebs’, which was a certain ‘something’ which existed in individuals and groups that escaped relations of power and which limited the exercise of power (Focault 1977, 137-8). He also toyed briefly with the notion of ‘counter-conduct’ which existed in opposition to the forms of conduct which were imposed by the exercise of pastoral and subsequently governmental power.

            But it was not until his 1979 Tanner lectures and subsequently that Foucault was able to offer a more refined and usable version of the same ideas. In this model, power still pervades the social body at all levels, but it does not encompass every social relation and its exercise if extensive, is limited. He distinguishes power from relationships of exchange and production and also from relationships of communication (Focault 1981, 324), thus distancing himself respectively from both Marx and Habermas. Power becomes a way of changing people’s conduct, or as he defines it, ‘a mode of action upon the actions of others’ (Focault 1982, 341).

            In addition to this, Foucault argues that power can only be exercized over free subjects. By freedom, Foucault means the possibility of reacting and behaving in different ways. If these possibilities are closed down through violence or slavery, then it no longer is a question of relationship of power but its limits. Of course, those exercising power can threaten and indeed exercise violence but those who are being confronted can refuse to modify their actions. It is at this point that the relationship of power breaks down and becomes something else. Foucault provides a useful example of what he means in the Tanner lectures:

            A man who is chained up and beaten is subject to force being exerted over him, but if he can be induced to speak, when his ultimate recourse could have been to hold his tongue preferring death, then he has been caused to behave in a certain way. His freedom has been subjected to power … There is no power without potential refusal or revolt (Focault 1981, 324).

A second way in which Foucault distinguishes his idea on power is by criticizing models which see power as being purely located in the State or the administrative and executive bodies which govern the nation State. The very existence of the State in fact depends on the operation of thousands of complex micro-relations of power at every level of the social body. Foucault offers the example of military service which can only be enforced because every individual is tied in to a whole network of relations which include family, employers, teachers, and other agents of social education. The grand strategies of State rely on the co-operation of a whole network of local and individualized tactics of power in which everybody is involved. Foucault (1977, 406-7) observes that if the police certainly have methods (‘we know what those are’ he adds ironically) so do fathers in relation to their children, men in relation to women , children in relation to parents, women in relations to men and so on. All these relations of power at different levels work together and against each other in constantly shifting combinations. The State is merely a particular, and ultimately precarious, configuration of these multiple power relations. It is not a ‘thing’ or a universal essence.

            The third point Foucault makes about power, again a criticism of more traditional models, is that power is not about simply saying no and oppressing individuals, social classes or natural instincts. Instead, argues Foucault, power is productive. By this he means that it generates particular types of knowledge and cultural order. Power and oppression should not be reduced to the same thing for a number of reasons in Foucault’s view. Firstly, there are multiple and very different relations of power extending throughout the entire social body and to identify power with oppression is to assume that power is exercised from one source and that it is one thing. Secondly, some people want to exercise power and find pleasure in doing so, others find pleasure in resisting power (Focault 1978). Thirdly, power produces particular types of behaviours, by regulating people’s everyday activities, right down to the way school children hold a pen or sit at a desk. This is something that Foucault also describes as the ‘microphysics of power’ and ‘capillary power’: where power reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives’ (Focault 1975, 39). Foucault develops this view of power

States

States are territorially defined political units that exercise ultimate internal authority and that recognize no legitimate external authority over themselves. States are also the most important units in defining the political identity of most people. States are also the most powerful of all political actors. Some huge companies approach or even exceed the wealth of some poorer countries, but no individual, company, group, or international organization approaches the coercive power wielded by most states. Whether large or small, rich or poor, populous or not, states share all or most of six characteristics: sovereignty, territory, population, diplomatic recognition, internal organization and domestic support.

            The most important political characteristic of a state is sovereignty. This term means that the sovereign actor (the state) does not recognize as legitimate any higher authority. Sovereignty also includes the idea of legal equality among states. It is important to note that sovereignty, a legal and theoretical term, differs from independence, a political and applied term (James 1999). Independence means freedom from outside control, and in an ideal, law-abiding world, sovereignty and independence would be synonymous. In the real world, however, where power is important, independence is not absolute. Sometimes, a small country is so dominated by a powerful neighbor that its independence is dubious at best. Sovereignty also implies legal equality among states. That the theory is applied in the UN General Assembly and many other international assemblies, where each member-state has one vote.

            A second characteristic of a state is territory. It would seem obvious that a state must have physical boundaries, and most states do. On closer examination, though, the question of territory becomes more complex. There are numerous international disputes over borders; territorial boundaries can expand, contract, or shift dramatically; and it is even possible to have a state without territory. Many states recognize what they call Palestine as sovereign, yet the Palestinians are scattered across other countries such as Jordan. An accords that the Israelis and Palestinians signed in 1994 gave the Palestinians a measure of autonomy in Gaza (a region between Israel and Egypt) and in parts of the West Bank, and these areas have been expanded through subsequent negotiations. However, the spiral downward in Israel-Palestinian relations in 2002 and 2003 brought numerous Israeli military operations within Palestinian areas. Indeed, at times the Israeli army had the headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat under siege. In sum, depending on one’s viewpoint, the Palestinians have some territory, no territory, or have been expelled from the territory now occupied by Israel. It is also possible to maintain, as the United States and most other countries currently do, that the Palestinians still have no state of their own.

            People are an obvious requirement for any state. The populations of states range from the 911 inhabitants of the Holy See (popularly referred to as the Vatican) to China’s approximately 1.3 billion people, but all states count this characteristic as a minimum requirement.

            What is becoming less clear in the shifting loyalties of the evolving international system is exactly where the population of a country begins and ends. Citizenship has become a bit more fluid than it was not long ago.

            How many countries must grant recognition before statehood is achieved is a more difficult question. When Israel declared its independence in 1948, the United States and the Soviet Union quickly recognized the country. Its Arab neighbors did not extend recognition and instead attacked what they considered to be the Zionist invaders.

            Certainly, the standard of diplomatic recognition remains hazy. Nevertheless, it is an important factor in the international system for several reasons. One is related to psychological status. History has many examples of new countries and governments, even those with revolutionary ideology that have assiduously sought outside recognition and, to a degree, moderated their policies in order to get it. Second, external recognition has important practical advantages. Generally, states are the only entities that can legally sell government bonds and buy heavy weapons from another state. Israel’s chances of survival in 1948 were enhanced when recognition allowed the Israelis to raise money and purchase armaments in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere. Also, it would be difficult for any aspirant to statehood to survive for long without recognition. Economic problems resulting from the inability to establish trade relations are just one example of the difficulties that would arise.

            States must normally have some level of political and economic structure. Most states have a government, but statehood continues during periods of severe turmoil, even anarchy. Afghanistan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and some other existing states dissolved into chaos during the last decade or so, and none of them can be said to have reestablished a stable government that can exercise real authority over most of the country. Yet none of these “failed states” has ceased to exist legally. Each, for instance, continued to sit as a sovereign equal, with an equal vote, in the UN General Assembly.

            An associated issue arises when what once was, and what still claims to be, the government of a generally recognized or formerly recognized state exists outside the territory that the exiled government claims as its own. There is a long history of recognizing governments-in-exile. The most common instances have occurred when a sitting government is forced by invaders to flee.

            The final characteristic of a state is domestic support. At its most active, this implies that a state’s population is loyal to it and grants it the authority to make rules and to govern (legitimacy). At its most passive, the populating grudgingly accepts the authority for any state to survive without at least the passive acquiescence of its people.

            As is evident from the foregoing discussion of the characteristics of a state, what is or what is not a state is not an absolute. Because a state’s existence is more a political than legal matter, there is a significant gray area. No country truly imagines that the Palestinians control a sovereign state, yet many countries recognize it as such for political reasons. By the same political token, Taiwan is functioning state, but China’s power keeps it in a legal limbo. And no matter what the Tibetans and their Dalai Lama say and no matter what anyone’s sympathies may be, Tibet is not and has never been recognized as a sovereign state by any government. Then there are the failed states that remain legal sovereign entities by default because there is nothing else that can be easily done with them.

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Marc Christian Tangpuz comes from the Department of Political Science as a student of Political Science major in International Relations and Foreign Service of the University of San Carlos, Cebu City, Philippines.

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