Browsing by Author "Huebert, Robert Neil"

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    Great Power Politics Among Asante and its Neighbours in the 18th and 19th Centuries: An Offensive Realist Explanation
    (2017) Yankey-Wayne, Valerie Anne; Huebert, Robert Neil; Ferris, John Robert; Hiebert, Maureen Sharon; Keeley, James F.
    Pre-colonial African history has been excluded from realists’ analysis of great power politics because they consider Africa to have had no significant history of influence before the World Wars. This thesis seeks to determine whether a pre-colonial African states system was equivalent to the European model, and whether the same factors influenced security competition and the motivation to maximize military power. The thesis answers the above assertion by testing Mearsheimer’s offensive realism’s central proposition—‘maximizing military power with the ultimate aim of becoming a hegemon is the logical solution in an anarchic environment’—against the international relations of Asante and its neighbors in the 18th and 19th centuries. Although both Africanists and realists may reject the application of offensive realism to pre-colonial African history, there is evidence to suggest that this maybe a viable argument. The Asante case, just like Mearsheimer’s great power politics of Europe, was characterized by the lack of higher authority, which generated a climate of uncertainty that manifested itself through maximization of military power, formation of alliances and wars. The African polities’ drive to maximize their military power arguably made the concept of ‘balance of power’ unworkable, in the sense that almost all the polities in the system were prepared to use military power to achieve their objectives, and this made wars more frequent. In this case, whereas Asante used military aggression to aspire for hegemony, its neighbors rather used military aggression to defend their status quo, that is, their control of the trade routes. Mearsheimer’s theory was useful in explaining how structural factors such as anarchy and the distribution of military power strongly shaped the behavior of the polities of the Asante case, but it has little to say about why Asante, a revisionist state was revisionist. Furthermore, although Mearsheimer introduces the argument that nationalism, a sub-unit factor can directly influence structural factors, it may benefit realism to build on Mearsheimer’s theory by looking into non-Western ways of thinking, which incorporates non-structural factors like collective identity (glorification of the nation) and regime (personal) power into their understanding of great power politics and revisionism.
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    Incorporating Traditional Ecological Knowledge into Western science in the Arctic Council: Lip service?
    (2020-09-21) Sidorova, Evgeniia (Jen); Huebert, Robert Neil; Hiebert, Maureen; Keeley, James F.
    The utilization of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in wildlife management has been a prominent topic for several decades. Since its establishment, the Arctic Council (AC) has emphasized the importance of TEK and its utilization in its work. Yet, the AC has not been successful in the process of knowledge coproduction. Why has TEK not been meaningfully incorporated into the Arctic Council? To answer this question, the study created and applied the Participation-Indigenous-Local-Application-Cross-cultural evaluation scale to the AC documents in order to analyze to what degree TEK has been incorporated into them. The research included interviews with 15 Indigenous leaders, officials, and scholars who were involved in the work of AC and/or worked with Indigenous communities and TEK projects. This study argues that lip service occurred as a result of several factors: state diversity in the perception of TEK as a concept, lesser effectiveness of Permanent Participants in the incorporation of TEK, politicization of TEK, and the resistance of Western scholars to TEK.
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    Institutional Counterinsurgency Frameworks in Africa’s Lake Chad Basin and the Operations of the Multinational Joint Task Force Against Boko Haram
    (2021-04-30) Adela, Gershon; Stapleton, Timothy; Huebert, Robert Neil; Apentiik, Rowland Anyebadek
    The Islamist group, Jama’atul Alhul Sunnah Lidda’wati wal Jihad, translated as “people committed to the propagation of the Prophet’s teachings and jihad” is commonly known as Boko Haram which means “Western education is forbidden.” Boko Haram originated in Nigeria’s northeastern state of Borno in 2002, but its violent activities extend into neighboring Cameroon, Chad, and Niger in the Lake Chad Basin. Such transnational dimension of the group’s violence and its increasing sophistication necessitated the establishment of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) as a sub-regional coalition to combat it. The Task Force comprises troops from the affected member states in the Lake Chad Basin and Benin Republic with the African Union (AU) as its strategic partner. The MNJTF’s member states are split between the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) and the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS). Nigeria, Niger, and Benin Republic are members of the former while Chad and Cameroon belong to the latter. Irrespective of the existence of a sub-regional counterinsurgency force, Boko Haram remains very resilient and continues to launch lethal attacks across the Lake Chad Basin. Yet, the institutional conditions that account for the ineffectiveness of the MNJTF’s operations have not been studied. The thesis explored the influence of the counterinsurgency frameworks of AU, ECOWAS, and ECCAS on the operations of the MNJTF against Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin. The thesis utilized the Regional Security Complex Theory by Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver as the framework of analysis and Policy Analysis as the methodological approach. The study found that the institutional counterinsurgency frameworks of the AU, ECOWAS and ECCAS have undermined military cooperation and intelligence sharing among the MNJTF’s member states due to their emphasis on single-state counterinsurgency efforts, their respect for and protection of states’ territorial sovereignty, and distortions in their counterinsurgency approaches. The study, therefore, recommended that the Lake Chad Basin Commission formulates its own counterinsurgency strategy. Also, the MNJTF should establish common values and principles for its member states, adopt a top-to-bottom joint command and coordination mechanism, and establish its own technical units to aid its operations.
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    Redirect: Countering Radicalization in Calgary Using Community-Based Policing
    (2023-01-23) Reyes, John Alexander; Peric, Sabrina; Terriff, Terry Richard; Huebert, Robert Neil
    During the height of the wars in Iraq and Syria, the city of Calgary experienced a notable increase in the number of citizens who were radicalized and recruited by the Islamic State (IS). In response, the Calgary Police Service (CPS) attempted a new approach to address radicalization within the city – the Redirect Program. Redirect is a community-based program that forms a partnership between police and civilian professionals to implement an intervention-style counter-radicalization program. The program signified a unique shift in traditional security discourses by suggesting that community involvement and individual stressor mitigation were necessary to prevent an individual from progressing down the path of radicalization. As such, my project focuses on how Redirect understands stressors like marginalization as a pathway to radicalization, and how it integrates civilians into program directives to counter the radicalization process. Using a combination of interviews with Redirect staff and survey data collected from University of Calgary students, my project explores how each of those groups understand the foundational structures of community-based policing and radicalization. The results of my study from the perspective of police suggests that Redirect recognized radicalization as a process and that counter-radicalization needed to be a process in turn as well. It also suggests that intervention-style programs need to address individual stressors on a case-by-base basis. From the student perspective, post-9/11 discourses on Islamic-based terrorism and perceptions of current events were influential in their understanding of radicalization and community-based policing. Moreover, one of the most significant findings of my study is that there was still a notable disconnect between traditional policing systems and the way community-based police programs integrate civilian participation. Students categorically did not clearly differentiate between traditional policing methods and community-based police programs. As such, the perceived limitations and criticisms associated with traditional policing remained present in the way students perceived Redirect, despite the program’s focus on creating pathways to build positive relationships between police and communities.
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    Rethinking Grand Strategy for an Era of Climate Change
    (2024-01-15) Verklan, Christopher; Huebert, Robert Neil; Huebert, Robert Neil; Ferris, John Robert; Terriff, Terry Richard
    The strategic security environment has changed drastically over the last decade, with the passing of the American unipolar moment leading to the beginnings of a new era of strategic inter-state competition. However, unlike past eras of competition, this iteration will see states compete within an increasingly destabilized climate system because of climate change. This thesis explores how the impacts of climate change will shape the upcoming era of competition, focusing on its effects on grand strategy, given the latter’s important role as a ‘bridge’ that links the means and ways of a state to its ends. In particular, the central question addressed by this thesis is as follows: Do the observed global environmental changes because of climate change necessitate the broadening of the geographic understanding of grand strategy? This thesis argues that climate change has and will continue to impact the conduct of strategy in the future. It also argues that climate change must be explicitly incorporated into modern understandings of grand strategy given its ability to undermine the economic underpinnings of states that enable the pursuit of their goals in a feasible and sustainable manner. In making this argument, this thesis develops a conceptual framework linking climate change through to the implementation of grand strategy, using the case of the 2022 Pakistani floods as a demonstrative case study to show how climate change can generate significant impacts on the grand strategies of states.
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    The Ontology of Violence: United Nations Peacekeeping Response to Mass Atrocity Violence in Sudan and South Sudan
    (2023-11-24) Winger, Sara Marie; Heibert, Maureen Sharon; Cameron, Gavin Ian; Huebert, Robert Neil; Blue, Gwendolyn Gail; Alvarez, Alexander
    This research identifies significant shortcomings related to the United Nations (UN) conceptualizations of violence. It is based on the starting hypothesis that the UN’s ineffectiveness in stabilizing conflicts is partly due to an inadequate consideration of specific forms of violence. The primary research question that this dissertation answers is: What approach has the UN taken to ensure that responding to violence is a strategic priority in peacekeeping missions? A secondary question is: Are there opportunities for the UN to better incorporate understandings of violence into peacekeeping to potentially improve the efficacy of the missions? The three cases this research explores are the three separate peacekeeping missions within the greater Sudan: the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) to address the violence between Sudan and southern Sudan, the UN and African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) to address conflict in the west of Sudan, and the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) to assist in solidifying peace after South Sudan declared independence. I analyze how the UN considers violence in peacekeeping missions through my cases. This research demonstrates that forms of violence are significant enough that the UN should actively consider them in the makeup of its mission. The forms examined in this dissertation are communal violence, conflict-related sexual violence, and the recruitment and use of child soldiers. The research demonstrated that throughout history, these forms of violence have been widespread and have continued throughout the conflict. The commission of these forms of violence destabilizes the region, thus making the work of the UN more challenging. The findings of this dissertation offer insights into how missions could improve.