Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines how, and to what ends, people of the “mixed race experience” are being discursively contextualized as posterchildren of the “post-race,” “post-nation” era. As early as 1996, Stanley Crouch was proclaiming that “race is over;” since then, others also have rung race's death knell: Holland Cotter in a 2001 New York Times piece, for example, has claimed that the time for "ethno-racial identity" is past, that we are now witnessing the coming of "postblack or postethnic art" that represents what Anthony Appiah recently called a “New Cosmopolitanism.” This presentation argues that “mixed race” has emerged in the context of these “post-race” cultural discourses, discourses which suggest, as Belize in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America puts it, that “race, taste and history” are “finally overcome.” Hybridity for many represents “life after race”(Naomi Zack), a step “beyond race” (Dinesh D’Sousa), a gesture “against race”(Paul Gilroy), the “new racial order” (G. Reginald Daniel), a “new frontier”(Maria Root) advanced by a “new people” (Jon Michael Spencer) who are ushering in a new world beyond race, identity, and nation. My presentation examines this problematic representation of mixed race people as post-nation vanguards in both mainstream media and in the field of pop-culture, and the send-up of the idea that “mixed race” people constitute a new nation-beyond-nationalism in Danzy Senna’s novel, Symptomatic (2005).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Since the end of the Cold War, a growing chorus of scholars has argued that international illegal flows and the criminal networks that facilitate them are representative of a decline in the power of nation-states. Few have considered that such networks may be used to enhance state power. Beginning in the 1970s, Dr. A.Q. Khan and the government of Pakistan cultivated a transnational criminal network to surreptitiously build Islamabad a nuclear weapon, an effort that had succeeded by the late 1980s. Khan, along with elements of the Pakistani government, then used this same network to offer the same capability to other states, namely Iran, Libya and North Korea. Traditional international relations theory would posit that any state that possesses nuclear weapons has enhanced its power. Thus, the case of Pakistan and Khan’s network may provide important insights not only for nuclear proliferation but for our understanding of state power in an increasingly globalized world.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The A. Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network has unsettling implications. A new nuclear state apparently was either unable or unwilling to protect some of the most dangerous nuclear secrets and technologies. The paper examines the evolution of the A. Q. Khan proliferation network: how it was structured, its nuclear transactions with different client states, and its eventual discovery and demise. It focuses on how A. Q. Khan was able to circumvent or co-opt Pakistan's nascent safety and security apparatus. It provides a detailed discussion of the theoretical discussion for command and control in new nuclear states. It provides new empirical data on the Pakistani experience and examines the implications of the A. Q. Khan affair for the "optimism-pessimism" debate about nuclear consequences.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study aims to identify and evaluate the relative influence of systemic/structural factors in determining the international behavior of the nomadic tribal confederations and empires of the Eurasian steppes from the Huns to the Ottomans. These vast state-formations are often ignored by the exclusively systemic approaches of international relations because they precede the modern Westphalian sovereign state model. The behavior of these Turkic/Mongolian empires had been dismissed as non-systemic, and their military campaigns are mostly associated with individual level causes such as power-hungry, glory-seeking leaders and elites. This study is an attempt to evaluate the validity of these arguments by identifying systemic/structural causes for the behavior of the steppe empires, with exclusive focus on the Hsiung-nu/Huns, the ?Blue? Turkish Khanate, The Uighur State, The Seljuk Empire, Chinggis Khan?s Mongolians and early Ottomans. Despite the perceptible distinctions between the nomadic confederations of the steppes and the ?settled? states of western and central Europe, Persia, Mesopotamia, Indian subcontinent, and East Asia, there is little difference between the reasons that propelled state actions. Nomadic empires sought security through power maximization, stopped their expansion at defensible borders, and acted rationally in international politics.