Identity In Persona

By 1957, Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman had already established himself in the industry with films like The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries. These films served as a foundation for his work that would only go deeper into the exploration of the meaning of art film. After being hospitalized for a long period of time, Bergman started writing a new film, which would eventually be his 1966 Persona. Persona serves as Bergman’s first film that delved deeper into the process of exposing cinema in a self-reflexive way while tackling themes of one’s identity.

The Democratic War Thesis argues a direct connection between democracy and inter-state conflict. This argument, is however, split between a strong and weak variant, with the former claiming that by nature, democracies are prone to war, while the latter notes democratic norms and structures that offer avenues for conflict, as to facilitate war (653). Bell points out that as the U.S. public called for war against Spain, “The people, it turned

The purpose of this essay is to inform on the similarities and differences between systemic and domestic causes of war. According to World Politics by Jeffry Frieden, David Lake, and Kenneth Schultz, systemic causes deal with states that are unitary actors and their interactions with one another. It can deal with a state’s position within international organizations and also their relationships with other states. In contract, domestic causes of war pertain specifically to what goes on internally and factors within a state that may lead to war. Wars that occur between two or more states due to systemic and domestic causes are referred to as interstate wars.

The parties involved in many civil wars are often not just limited to the country in which the war is actually taking place. Often, other countries will give aid to one side of the conflict or even involve their own military forces. Recent examples of such occurrences include Russian, American, and Turkish involvement in the present Syrian Civil War and the NATO bombing campaign during the Kosovo War. These countries expend massive amounts of resources and lose great numbers of troops in these conflicts often to uncertain ends. This begs the question: Why do foreign powers involve themselves in the civil wars of other countries? It is possible that such interventions occur because the intervening party believes that they could make strategic gains by doing so. Another theory is that countries intervene when they feel that there is a moral obligation to get involved in the conflict (Kim 2012, 19). However, even when circumstances seem to be in favor of a foreign power intervening, they do not involve themselves. This paper will test these hypotheses by examining the intervention by the United States and Russia primarily in the current Syrian Civil War and attempt to discern their motives for

After decades of cynical and often interventions by the US, Britain, France, Russia and other outside powers, the region’s political institutions are based largely on corruption, sectarian politics, and brute force. Backroom dealings and violence continue to rule the day. Western powers do not like Arab democracy, because of the great anticipated possible risks on US oil interests. After having tried installing, toppling, bribing, or manipulating the region`s government, trillions of dollars and thousands of lives were spent over the last decade, meanwhile causing massive suffering in the affected countries. At the same time, the interventions are actually preventing the Middle East from reaching mutual accommodations through unintentionally injecting the belief to the affected countries that the external powers would deliver a decisive victory on behalf of the countries in the region. Professor Sachs thinks that there is enough hatred, corruption, and arms in the region to keep Middle East in crisis for years to come. Nobody should expect stable democracies any time soon. However, US and other foreign powers should pull back and leave the

This paper will be using historical analysis to observe and analyze the changes of great power intervention in the Middle East politics over time. To understand how their involvement, seem to create more conflicts and wars in the region. It is important to look closely at the great power’s incentives to get involved. To elaborate more on the central argument, the paper will start with the heating up of 1956 war of attrition and ends with the explosion of the 1973 Yom Kippur–Ramadan war. As evidence to support my claims, I will provide the consequences of each of these wars due to great power intervention. Then, you should expect counter arguments followed by refutations. Lastly, I will conclude my paper with critical analysis.

The wars of the Middle East over the past one hundred year are very complicated. When the Ottoman Empire chooses the losing side in WWI, then France and Britain started drawing new borders to the region as a result of the Sykes Picot agreement. After WWII, the United States intervened its force to change the governments of countries in the Middle East. Now, the same behaviors have been continued by the major powers in the world for their own interests, as stated by Jeffrey D. Sachs, the special advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations on the Millennium development

In the post -World War II era, the competition of global supremacy between the superpowers of the time, United States and the Soviet Union resulted in the Cold War. Many countries in the world were pulled into this rivalry including many of the states of the Middle East. Allies against the Soviet Union received substantial quantities of United States aid and were encouraged to purchase weapons of Western means. Those who were in opposition to the United States’ power received economic and military assistance from the Soviet Union. The United States were inclined to view the rivalry between them and the Soviet Union as a vie for global supremacy. The challenge of attaining democracy in the Middle East has been insufficient leadership specifically in those who shared a common border and were in proximity to the Soviet Union. The United States, in their determination to impede the threat of expansion of the borders of the Soviet Union as well as contain the spread of communion, provided economic and military assistance to keep Iran, Iraq and Turkey politically stable. Although this was the goal of the United States, they actually impeded the democracy and political stability of these countries through its persistent influence in government affairs, determining its future’s livelihood.

“In an interconnected world, social and economic catastrophe in one country spills over onto its neighbours” (Chauvet, et al., 2007, p. 3). “Failing States” are often blamed for housing terrorist groups and transnational criminal enterprises, for the proliferation of small weapons, the spread of infectious disease, and endangering global energy security (Patrick, 2007; Lynch, 2016). They also account for a disproportionate amount of civil wars around the world and large number of refugee movements (Chauvet, et al., 2007). Outside countries, and agencies alike often find themselves intervening in the affairs of failing states to prevent “failure” from crossing boundary lines. On occasion the collapse of one administration can initiate a domino effect in neighbouring countries. The recent “Arab Spring” is one of the greatest examples of a “spillover” or domino effect in recent history (de Blij, et al., 2014). What began as an act of protest by a young Tunis man burning himself in December 2010, quickly grew into a number of public protests. A couple weeks later the Tunisian government was forced to step down and within months protests against established autocratic administration had diffused to nearby countries, and Libya, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, and Bahrain were experiencing similar public outcry (de Blij, et al.,

Many different explanations have been brought forth to explain why democracies do not fight one another . Among academics, the most prominent theories can be divided among three schools of thought: liberal institutionalist, realist, and liberal constructivist. Beyond academia, often-simplified interpretations of these theories have guided many Great Powers’ foreign policy decisions. This paper will first seek to outline what most academics agree to be the empirical correlations between democracies and war. This paper will then outline and examine the competing theories behind the Democratic Peace. This paper will argue that although some of the realist critiques are plausible and should not be entirely dismissed, the liberal constructivist theories offer the most accurate explanation of why the Democratic Peace exists. This paper will finish by examining the foreign policy implications of this thesis, with reference to recent and potentially future military engagements undertaken by today’s democratic Great Powers.

The following wars have been divided between 1.) Wars caused by ethnic issues and 2.) Wars not caused by ethnic issues. After determining the cause of war, I will focus on particular aspects of the war predominantly the death toll, how long the war lasted, if core states got involved in the conflict and if so how far removed were they from the region of conflict. Finally and most importantly, I will compare and contrast the two types of wars (1.) Wars caused by ethnic conflict and 2.) Wars not caused by ethnic conflict) and determine how these wars were ultimately resolved. More specifically, I am determining if wars caused by ethic issues are resolved by internal means or whether they are resolved by external factors such as core states or states that have an invested interest in the matter.

Much of the modern political Arab world was born at the end of World War I, as outside powers divided up their shares of territories that were loyal to their regimes. For example, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon came to exist along side the precarious state of Palestine. By World War II, these states had begun to want independence, and the following decades would witness revolution, regime change, violence, and, ultimately, a break from the grips of the Ottoman Empire and European powers (Provence). Today, the so-called “Arab Spring” uprisings, ongoing now for several years, are in part as a result of mid-20th-century political rule and administration by outside powers.

In order to assess to what extent the First Arab-Israeli war was a political conflict, a working definition of ‘political conflict’ is needed. In this essay, the phrase ‘political conflict ’ refers to conflict motivated or influenced by a nation’s government or by the power, interests and security of a state.

The Middle East has been the world’s hotspot in terms of political and armed conflict since the end of the Cold War. In the last decade, the region has witnessed the collapse of regimes that have ruled for decades one after the other, some through the intervention by foreign military force and others through revolutions. The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 has become one of the most controversial events in international relations as neither the invasion nor the occupation was legal under international law and the fact that the invasion has left Iraq in a state of chaos with no bright future in sight. More importantly, the reasoning behind the intervention remains problematic as Iraq is an oil rich country, but is still struggling

Many people question themselves, what is it exactly that makes them unique? What is it that defines them as a unique person that no one in the world possesses? In philosophy, these questions do not have just one answer, and all answers are correct depending on which theory appeals most and makes sense to you. In general, there are two ways people approach this question, some say that a person’s identity is the “self” that carries all of their experiences, thoughts, memories, and consciousness (ego theorists), and some say that a person’s identity is just a bundle of experiences and events that a person has been through in their life, these people deny that the “self” exists (bundle theorists). In this paper, I will be arguing that a person’s identity is just a bundle of experiences, denying the self and the memory criterion.