Hisham Tohme | Lebanese American University (original) (raw)

Papers by Hisham Tohme

Ever since the Russian armed forces intervened in Georgia in 2008, there has been increasing ques... more Ever since the Russian armed forces intervened in Georgia in 2008, there has been increasing questions on whether or not the Russian bear has awoken. These questions remain largely unanswered, since analysts are still influenced by twenty years of academic consensus over the wisdom that Russia was done for on the geopolitical scene. Similarly, studies on the behavior of China at the international level still lack proper understanding of what China is doing exactly, as professed by most of the analytical accounts trying to come to grasp with Chinese foreign policies and geostrategy.

When I first started working on this paper's abstract, the Syrian uprising was still in its infan... more When I first started working on this paper's abstract, the Syrian uprising was still in its infant stages. While it was still April 2011, there were clear signs that the major news media channels will treat the Syrian case exactly as they did in Egypt and Libya. News reports were indeed biased in favor of the rebels; featured information was obviously discriminating as events that favored only one narrative of the conflict found their way into news coverage. This is not, by far, a generalization of all news media outlets, as some local (albeit influential) news channels sided with the regime while some foreign media outlets remained more or less neutral -or as neutral as one can be in such circumstances. The channels that I first talked about were simply the ones that were being credited with the success of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, namely al-Arabiyya and, most importantly, al-Jazeera. And these introductory comments were back then a product of simple observation by an involved local observer; I saw events happening that were never broadcasted, analysis that never properly explained what was happening nor who were the actors in this conflict, and also blatant and unintelligent distortions of the pictures and videos being shown on television.

Books by Hisham Tohme

Russia's Geostrategic Outlook and the Syrian Crisis, 2020

In this groundbreaking study, international relations scholar Hicham Tohme offers a critique of c... more In this groundbreaking study, international relations scholar Hicham Tohme offers a critique of current academic, scholarly, and public understandings of Russia's geostrategic outlook through the lens of the ongoing Syrian crisis. This critique is based on a reassessment of four key concepts that shape our knowledge of Russia's foreign policy. First, the Westphalian state system is an inadequate point of reference when applied to a country that still perceives itself and behaves as an empire. Second, justifying aggressive foreign policy as a counterweight to a perceived deficiency in the legitimacy of Russian President Vladimir Putin's leadership oversimplifies Russian political culture and public values, which do not overlap with Western norms and institutions. Third, analysis of Russian foreign policy, as well as of Russia's global role, remains restricted to what can be best described as a "post-Cold War framework,", a static image of global history for the past thirty years. Finally, most geopolitical and foreign affairs analyses focus on diplomatic and foreign policy rhetoric, rather than foreign policy praxis, as the primary data on which to draw conclusions. Offering an alternate explanation, this study examines Russia's intervention in the Syrian crisis to reveal practices that have come to characterize its global strategy and outlook for the past decade. As such, Russian policy in Syria will be presented as part of a praxis that can describe many facets of Russian global disposition. This clearly places geopolitical practices, not rhetoric, at the heart of the analysis. Further, this book relies on the concept of habitus to explain how these practices inhere in a long tradition of Russian behavior, advancing the notion that they must be understood as part of a historical continuum of Russia's political culture, mainly when it comes to its perception of its neighbors. By adopting a non-Westphalian framework and escaping the epistemological and methodological foundations of traditional foreign policy analysis, this book seeks to answer two key questions: How can we best describe Russia's geostrategic predispositions? And how can we understand Russia's involvement in the Syrian crisis in light of this analysis?

Ever since the Russian armed forces intervened in Georgia in 2008, there has been increasing ques... more Ever since the Russian armed forces intervened in Georgia in 2008, there has been increasing questions on whether or not the Russian bear has awoken. These questions remain largely unanswered, since analysts are still influenced by twenty years of academic consensus over the wisdom that Russia was done for on the geopolitical scene. Similarly, studies on the behavior of China at the international level still lack proper understanding of what China is doing exactly, as professed by most of the analytical accounts trying to come to grasp with Chinese foreign policies and geostrategy.

When I first started working on this paper's abstract, the Syrian uprising was still in its infan... more When I first started working on this paper's abstract, the Syrian uprising was still in its infant stages. While it was still April 2011, there were clear signs that the major news media channels will treat the Syrian case exactly as they did in Egypt and Libya. News reports were indeed biased in favor of the rebels; featured information was obviously discriminating as events that favored only one narrative of the conflict found their way into news coverage. This is not, by far, a generalization of all news media outlets, as some local (albeit influential) news channels sided with the regime while some foreign media outlets remained more or less neutral -or as neutral as one can be in such circumstances. The channels that I first talked about were simply the ones that were being credited with the success of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, namely al-Arabiyya and, most importantly, al-Jazeera. And these introductory comments were back then a product of simple observation by an involved local observer; I saw events happening that were never broadcasted, analysis that never properly explained what was happening nor who were the actors in this conflict, and also blatant and unintelligent distortions of the pictures and videos being shown on television.

Russia's Geostrategic Outlook and the Syrian Crisis, 2020

In this groundbreaking study, international relations scholar Hicham Tohme offers a critique of c... more In this groundbreaking study, international relations scholar Hicham Tohme offers a critique of current academic, scholarly, and public understandings of Russia's geostrategic outlook through the lens of the ongoing Syrian crisis. This critique is based on a reassessment of four key concepts that shape our knowledge of Russia's foreign policy. First, the Westphalian state system is an inadequate point of reference when applied to a country that still perceives itself and behaves as an empire. Second, justifying aggressive foreign policy as a counterweight to a perceived deficiency in the legitimacy of Russian President Vladimir Putin's leadership oversimplifies Russian political culture and public values, which do not overlap with Western norms and institutions. Third, analysis of Russian foreign policy, as well as of Russia's global role, remains restricted to what can be best described as a "post-Cold War framework,", a static image of global history for the past thirty years. Finally, most geopolitical and foreign affairs analyses focus on diplomatic and foreign policy rhetoric, rather than foreign policy praxis, as the primary data on which to draw conclusions. Offering an alternate explanation, this study examines Russia's intervention in the Syrian crisis to reveal practices that have come to characterize its global strategy and outlook for the past decade. As such, Russian policy in Syria will be presented as part of a praxis that can describe many facets of Russian global disposition. This clearly places geopolitical practices, not rhetoric, at the heart of the analysis. Further, this book relies on the concept of habitus to explain how these practices inhere in a long tradition of Russian behavior, advancing the notion that they must be understood as part of a historical continuum of Russia's political culture, mainly when it comes to its perception of its neighbors. By adopting a non-Westphalian framework and escaping the epistemological and methodological foundations of traditional foreign policy analysis, this book seeks to answer two key questions: How can we best describe Russia's geostrategic predispositions? And how can we understand Russia's involvement in the Syrian crisis in light of this analysis?