Since World War Two, the United States dollar became and remains the global reserve currency. This status in international trade and investment has given the US the ability to exercise hegemonic power around the world. In recent years, there have been attempts by competitor nations notably China, Russia, and Iran to replace the dollar's exclusivity in bilateral trade. Their intention is to undermine the ability of the US to continue as the world's hegemon. It is argued that this outcome is unlikely to be achieved in the near term, because of the continuing reliance on the US dollar.

With the Arab tribal system in Syria playing a critical role in the social, cultural and economic fabric of the state, little scholarly attention has been given to their crucial role in the Syrian War. The article gives a detailed explanation of the complex tribal system in Syria and the wider region, as well as their historic origins, while also exploring tribal reactions to the Syrian War that began in 2011. With dozens of different armed groups operating in Syria and adding to the complexity of the war, the tribal elements has been ignored in favour of analysing the role of states such as the United States, Russia and Turkey to name a few, as well as non-state actors such as Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda and ISIS. This paper analyses where certain Arab tribes have given their allegiance and reasons why some tribes have opposed the status quo in Syria.

During the late nineteenth century huge numbers of rabbits swept across south-east Australia causing widespread damage. Farming and grazing sheep and cattle became difficult on many properties, but the rabbit industry boomed. For farmers and graziers who tired of efforts to reduce rabbit numbers by shooting, trapping or poisoning, the solution seemed to lie in total extermination with a biological agent. In the late 1880s, the New South Wales (NSW) government took up their cause and offered a £25,000 prize for a biological remedy for the rabbit problem, but the prize was not awarded. Twenty years later farmers and graziers took matters into their own hands and hired the noted French scientist, Dr Jan Danysz, to provide a biological agent to exterminate the rabbits. Danysz's employment and experiments became a battle between sectional interests. Rural workers, who had begun harvesting rabbits, and rabbit industry investors opposed the Danysz virus for financial reasons, while farmers and graziers supported it because they wanted the rural landscape to support their traditional economic practices. While the NSW government supported landowners, other state governments and the federal government opposed the experiments.

This article examines Islamism as phenomenon and category in the context of the study of religion. It enquires about the experience of Islam in modernity at the juncture of Islam, justice, and civility in order to problematise the discourse on Islamism as political Islam. The argument is made that Islam is not a political religion, but a religion that has historically seen political power as part of its religious project. Further, that Islamism as a modern religio-political and socio-economic experience of Islam is inspired by contact between Islam and Marxism.

With Venezuela having the world’s largest oil reserves and located within the supposed US-dominated Western Hemisphere, Venezuela’s sovereignty and limited control of its own oil has threatened the control of US capitalism in the majority of Latin America. The 2017 crisis in Venezuela caused by US-backed opposition is seen in the context of the US attempting to remove a sovereign and independent government from power, resembling the Syrian crisis in 2011. This paper will analyse the context of the current crisis in Venezuela as a coordinated effort by Washington to target the Bolivarian revolution. The most critical question though is why? Washington is attempting to counter a Chinese penetration into Latin America and to stop a threat to the US dollar’s domination on the region. However, despite Caracas blaming Washington for its current crisis, do the opposition have legitimate claims to the failures of the Bolivarian experiment?

Much like the Brexit referendum result and Donald Trump's ascendency to the White House, the revival of Pauline Hanson and the One Nation Party's (ONP) 2016 federal election success has rocked Australian politics. With more than fifty-nine thousand first preference votes cast for the ONP group ticket nationally, the party secured 4.29% of the Senate vote, resulting in the election of four ONP senators including Hanson (Australian Electoral Commission, 2016a). Since then, the ONP has become influential in federal politics as the third largest non-government voting bloc in the Senate. At the state level, the ONP may yet repeat its 1998 success in the coming Queensland elections. It had a poor showing in the recent Western Australian election, but this setback can probably be attributed more to State-level issues like the reaction to the ONP/Liberal preference deal in Western Australia, rather than a rejection of the party and its politics.

The ten-year Maoist insurgency in Nepal ended in 2006 with Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA). A Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established to address the human rights violations including societal impacts which occurred during the insurgency and to bring justice to its victims and perpetrators. Hence, this paper explores the role of the TRC in facilitating and establishing peace by analysing and comparing similar TRCs’ operations in South Africa, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. For this, the study utilizes primary information data collection methods and content analysis to critically examine the role of TRCs in the peace process. It identifies the key achievements of these previous TRCs and recommends ‘6R’ measures to Nepali TRC for justice and peace establishment in Nepal.

With Somalia in the midst of the worse famine in decades, where the international community failed to delivery to the country, Turkey effectively responded to the crisis. This was in conjunction with significant development into the impoverished state. Although a sentiment of brotherly relations dominates the rhetoric, the Turkish investment into Somalia represents a Turkish push into Africa. This can represent Turkey attempting to expand its sphere of influence and demonstrate its growing capabilities as a middle power. With China making significant inroads into the continent, particularly in neighbouring Djibouti and Ethiopia, is Turkey as a NATO member attempting to block the Chinese pivot into Africa, or is it acting in its own self-interests? As resource security becomes imperative, the Horn of Africa only becomes increasingly strategic, however, only Turkey has recognized the importance of Somalia in a changing world.

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-7976.2016v23n36p334This article explores how the local situation – politically, economically and socially – contributed to the occurrence in Indonesia of two crucial and interlinked Cold War events, the Indonesian coup and massacre. The article explains how an Indonesian army general, Suharto, was able to utilise Cold War narratives to instigate anti-communist fervour, which resulted in the massacre of more than half a million alleged communists. Suharto was able to gradually usurp power and eventually replace Sukarno as the president of Indonesia. It is argued that the convergence of domestic factors was critical to these events, which can be understood as a localised Cold War.

This article analyses the implications of the establishment of the US dollar as the global reserve currency. The political and economic context of the founding of the dollar as the reserve currency is examined, and key changes that have occurred since the dollar was installed as the global reserve currency are explored. Challenges to the future of the dollar as the global reserve are analysed. The article argues that the dollar as the global reserve currency is an instrument of US hegemonic power, but it is one that has been largely overlooked in the existing literature on US hegemony.

The Caucasus has been a major flashpoint of contention between NATO and a resurgent Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The rivalry saw the escalation of hostility in the region during the brief 2008 Russo-Georgian War where a NATO-backed Georgia challenged South Ossetia supported by the Russian military. In 2011, NATO officially recognised Georgia as a potential member, challenging Russia's traditional sphere of influence in the Caucasus. Moscow says the Eastward expansion of NATO into the Baltics and to include Georgia as a member state is a method of containing a resurgent Russia. However, the former Soviet Republics of Ukraine, the Baltics and Georgia, maintain that Russia represents a threat to their sovereignty, as seen by the Russian support of the breakaway unrecognised Republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. A hostile rivalry between the Russian-backed Armenia and Azerbaijan, which is reliant upon NATO-member Turkey, intensifies the polarisation in the Caucasus.

This article aims to examine how localised conditions contributed to the shaping and maintenance of the Cold War in southern Africa during the last three decades of the Cold War. In particular, its focus is on the period 1961 – 1989, during which ‘brushfre’ conficts erupted in the Portuguese colonial territories of Angola and Mozambique, in Rhodesia (and later Zimbabwe), South-West Africa (now Namibia) and the Republic of South Africa. The result of colonisation and decolonisation, racial and ethnic tension and the wider East - West confrontation, the Cold War in southern Africa was never one homogenous confict – evidence strongly attests that it comprised many ‘little Cold Wars’. The forces and governments of the regional states, as well as international powers such as the United States, the USSR, the People’s Republic of China and, most remarkably, communist Cuba, all had clashing geo-political and geo- strategic interests in the southern African region during the last three decades of the Cold War. Their political, economic and military manoeuvring meant that the region played host to some of the most complex localised conficts of the Cold War period. This article will reconceptualise the history of Cold War southern African by demonstrating that, although intrinsically linked, these southern African conficts constituted not one homogenous but several little Cold Wars and that localised conditions were the driving forces for confict, not the wider East-West ideological confrontation.

The rabbit industry was a boon for thousands of workers in the bush of south-eastern Australia between 1870 and 1950. While different forms of trapping required experience in specific methods to maximise income, little capital was required to get started. Contrary to their depiction as precarious proletarians constantly falling prey to the vicissitudes of climate, season and global markets, many rural workers were successful rabbiters enjoying high earnings and easier work. Rabbiting ended the continual search for low-paid, seasonal farm work and deprivation during winter months. Rabbiters and their families enjoyed relative financial security and severe economic downturns had little impact on the rabbit industry. The rabbit industry caused labour shortages across all types of rural work and reduced the ranks of the reserve army of labour in the bush. Different rural dwellers, from clergy to wheat lumpers, used these shortages or rabbiters' high earnings to secure higher pay. By making farming uneconomic in many areas, rabbit plagues made the impetus to trapping all the greater. These findings warrant a radical revision of the accepted wisdom about the nature of life and labour in rural Australia.