Mohammed NuruzzamanNorth South University · School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Mohammed Nuruzzaman
PhD (Political Science) University of Alberta (2003)
About
88
Publications
109,854
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Introduction
Dr. Mohammed Nuruzzaman specializes in IR theory, global political economy, human security, politics and international relations of the Middle East. He was awarded the Durham Senior Research Fellowship 2016-17, KFAS Research Grants in 2013, F.S. Chia Doctoral Scholarships (University of Alberta) in 1998, GUST - UMSL Fellowship in 2011, and has published in leading international journals, including Cooperation and Conflict, Int'l Studies Perspectives, Canadian Journal of Political Science etc.
Additional affiliations
February 2012 - present
Position
- Associate Professor of International Relations
Description
- Teaching courses in international relations, comparative politics, Middle East politics, and introductory politics; research and publications focus on all these areas plus security studies (especially human security) and global political economy.
August 2006 - July 2009
Position
- College Professor of Political Science
Description
- My position entailed both teaching and research responsibilities. Additional responsibilities included administrative tasks and other services to the Okanagan community.
September 2004 - July 2006
Education
September 1998 - May 2003
Publications
Publications (88)
“Responsibility to protect” (R2P) emerged as a powerful moral and political norm in 2001 signaling a shift away from traditional state sovereignty to human sovereignty. North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) 2011 R2P intervention in Libya, however, created controversies giving rise to sharp differences between the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India,...
This article probes the viability and survival of BRICS in the context of intensified China-India conflicts and strategic divergences. It argues that occasional eruptions of serious tensions in China-India relations, underpinned by their 1962 border war, threaten to make BRICS an ineffective or weak organization. The article shows that the threats...
This article probes the viability and survival of BRICS in the context of intensified China–India conflicts and strategic divergences. It argues that occasional eruptions of serious tensions in China–India relations, underpinned by their 1962 border war, threaten to make BRICS an ineffective or weak organization. The article shows that the threats...
Dominant International Relations theories—realism/neorealism, liberalism/neoliberalism, and constructivism—have so far developed no rigorous theoretical attempts to interpret the Arab Spring, though some marginal efforts have been made to critique the failure of realism to interpret this historical development. This article presents a neorealist in...
Iran-US relations are in a state of flux due to President Trump's draconian sanctions, what is dubbed the 'maximum pressure' campaign, to force Iran to renegotiate the 2015 nuclear deal. Iran's 'counter pressure' policy, in contrast, has sought to blunt the effects of sanctions and compel the Trump administration to return to the nuclear deal. This...
BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) has emerged as a powerful economic group in the global economy and politics, apparently posing threats to the survival of the post-war liberal world order. Its member states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are seeking to democratize the post-war liberal world order to increase th...
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a major actor in Middle Eastern as well as global politics. Founded in 1932 by King Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, commonly known as Ibn Saud, the kingdom rests on an alliance between the Al Saud royal family and the followers of 18th-century Islamic revivalist Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. The strategic and geo-economic signific...
Religious violence, primarily stemming from Shia–Sunni conflicts, has occupied the center stage in contemporary Middle East. It’s most recent brutal expression, which is viewed as a symptom rather than the cause, is the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS; also called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant; ISIL) in the summer of 20...
Islamic theories of international relations (IR) have been traditionally dominated by debates between two distinct approaches—traditionalism and modernism. A third perspective, often labelled the ‘jihadist perspective’, has emerged following the 11 September 2001 attacks and this radical perspective principally embodies the worldview of al-Qaeda an...
Despite US opposition, Iran seems to have emerged more powerful in recent years and has now expanded its sphere of influence in the Persian Gulf region and in the Levant. Iran's enhanced power and influence has necessarily challenged US efforts to create a pro-American regional order, secure access to Gulf oil and the capacity to defend traditional...
During his highly controversial presidential election campaign, President Trump successfully but bizarrely exploited anti-Muslim rhetoric, among other factors, to capture the White House. His post-election policy actions, particularly the executive order to ban Muslim entry into the US, first issued on January 27 and followed by a watered-down vers...
Traditionally, the Shi’a–Sunni divide and the associated dynamics of the geopolitical struggle for power and dominance, between the minority Shi’as and the majority Sunnis, have defined intra-Islamic relations. Often sidelined were the political differences between and among groups and movements within Shi’a as well as Sunni Islam. This paper seeks...
The failed July 15 coup in Turkey has generated a whole range of debates on who was really behind the coup, Turkey's future relations with NATO and the U.S., and President Erdogan's possible pivot to Russia and Iran. A more serious debate that did not receive much media attention is the intra-Muslim debate – the controversies between the Muslim mod...
Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, sought to chart out an independent course for Iran in regional and global affairs: ‘neither East, nor West, the Islamic Republic.’ The independent course, as he defined it, consisted of two integral components – political and economic independence from the imperialist West, and the sove...
China’s recent economic ascendance and its probable impact on the post-war global order have divided China watchers or sinologists into two broad opposing camps - the school of alarmists and the school of deniers. While the alarmist school exaggerates China’s rise as the beginning of a new Sino-centric world order, the denial school rejects the pot...
Scholarly opinions on the linkages between foreign military interventions and human rights promotions or violations are highly divided across the board. While many scholars see military interventions as effective means to save and promote human lives and rights from the clutches of repressive regimes, others reject such interventions as harmful to...
This paper investigates the role played by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in mediating disputes since its creation in 1981 to 2011, the year of the outbreak of the ‘Arab Spring’. It analyzes the contributions of the GCC as a conflict mediator by cross-checking this sub-regional group's institutional structure and policy approach, and presents t...
President Barack Obama won the 2008 US presidential race with promises to restore America’s lost image and status in the world, to lead the world again to achieve peace and dignity, and to start a “new beginning” with Muslims worldwide. This article examines Obama’s promised “new beginning” with Muslims in the Middle East and assesses his Middle Ea...
The Islamic State, proclaimed on 29 June 2014, has tremendously shaken up the Middle East and the whole world forcing hostile and friendly states alike to close ranks and create a collective military platform to fight and contain this new danger before it spirals out of control. This analysis probes the threats and the challenges the Islamic State,...
Saudi Arabia, supported by an Arab coalition plus Turkey and the US, launched its second air campaign against Yemeni Houthi rebels in late March 2015 to achieve two big objectives – to restore the ‘legitimate’ government of fugitive President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and to protect the Yemini people from Houthi attacks. This analysis crosschecks the...
Qatar, a backwater state in regional and international politics until 1995, has in recent years pursued a high-profile foreign policy in the areas of dispute mediations, maintaining balanced relations with allies and adversaries alike, adept use of soft power tools, and even military interventions in fellow Arab states, Libya in particular, to aid...
President Barack Obama won the 2008 US presidential race with promises to restore America’s lost image and status in the world, to lead the world again to achieve peace and dignity, and to start a “new beginning” with Muslims worldwide. This article examines Obama’s promised “new beginning” with Muslims in the Middle East and assesses his Middle Ea...
International Relations scholars and policy-makers are increasingly paying greater attention to a new category of fragile and failed states across Asia, Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Latin America and the Middle East. While effective policy responses are necessary to strengthen these politically fractured, economically collapsing and socially...
Qatar, a backwater state in regional and international politics until 1995, has in recent years pursued a high-profile foreign policy in the areas of dispute mediation, maintaining balanced relations with allies and adversaries alike, adept use of soft power tools, and even military interventions in fellow Arab states, Libya in particular, to aid t...
Link to the article: http://www.ia-forum.org/Content/ViewInternalDocument.cfm?ContentID=8123
The 'responsibility to protect' (R2P) doctrine, after its first ever implementation in Libya, has halted in Syria. In the last three years, R2P has failed to find a way to Syria to stop the most tragic humanitarian catastrophe of recent years, a catastrophe that has seen more than 120,000 Syrians already killed, millions more internally displaced o...
Two consecutive rounds of negotiations under the Geneva II peace process to resolve the Syrian conflict ended up in fiasco. Neither the government nor the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), an umbrella organization for diverse and often clashing rebel groups, found a common thread to tie them together to hammer out a negotiated political settlement o...
The Syrian civil war, which has seen a stalemate for nearly three years, shows no signs of a negotiated political solution. The Geneva II peace talks that opened on 22 January are highly unlikely to result in a breakthrough, absent a miracle. There is irreconcilable tension between the oppositional Syrian National Coalition's (SNC) demand for a fut...
The interim nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) signed on November 24, 2013, has created hopes for a negotiated long-term settlement of the decade-old dispute over Iran's nuclear program. For good reason. For the first time since 1979, the deal has brought Iranian and US leader...
Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) have finally struck an interim deal on the former's disputed nuclear program in Geneva on 24 November 2013. The deal is a historic achievement on many counts: it succeeds in closing the gaps between Iran and the West, at least, for the time being; it breaks down...
Iran's nuclear program has long been an explosive issue in its relations with the West, particularly the US. Despite a series of open and secret negotiations held between Tehran and Washington since President Barack Obama stepped into the White House in January 2009, the dispute drags on. The US is particularly concerned about the possibility of a...
Proponents of the “responsibility to protect” doctrine, commonly
referred to as R2P, claim that it came of age with NATO’s
successful military intervention to protect the civilian population
in Libya. This commentary raises questions of whether NATO’s intervention
under UN Security Council Resolution 1973 followed
the original 2001 R2P report and o...
The March 14, 2011 Saudi military intervention in Bahrain to suppress pro-democracy uprisings created serious regional and global concerns. Political analysts and commentators have interpreted the Saudi intervention primarily in terms of domestic and regional political and strategic dynamics. This paper analyses the intervention issue from both pol...
The February 11, 2011 victory of pro-democracy forces has ushered in great hopes for actual political and social changes in Egypt. The military-led long authoritarian rule has come to an end, and Egypt has stepped in a new era of transition to democracy. This paper probes the prospects of democratic transformation in Egypt in light of its unique pr...
The Arab Spring was ignited by an undeniable human security goal of achieving freedom from want, freedom from fear and freedom to live in dignity. This article analyses how human security concerns have figured in the Arab Spring and shaped its course. It makes two related arguments: firstly, that the pro-democracy forces, long deprived of basic hum...
The post-2003 Persian Gulf sub-region has witnessed intensified geopolitical conflicts and competition between Iran and the Gulf Arab states, particularly between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Scholars and experts have mostly analysed the conflicts through political and strategic prisms while neglecting their economic dimensions. This article analyses the...
Multiethnic, multilingual and socially divided large states usually, though not always willingly, prefer a federal system of government to build state institutions and promote national integration. Recently, there has been a surge in interest in federalism following the US-led invasions of Afghanistan in October 2001 and Iraq in March 2003. There a...
International Relations scholars and policy-makers are increasingly paying greater attention to a new category of fragile and failed states across Asia, Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Latin America and the Middle East. While effective policy responses are necessary to strengthen these politically fractured, economically collapsing and socially...
The Islamic Republic of Iran is on the rise. Emboldened by Shi'a empowerment in Iraq after 2003 and the emergence of a Shi'a Crescent from Tehran to Beirut, Iran is gradually but firmly emerging as a great actor in regional and global politics. This paper critically examines the factors that contribute to Iranian power and influence and argues that...
Social resistance to globalization forces is a dominant feature of the current phase of international relations and global political economy. But there exists no satisfactory theoretical framework to study social resistance from the perspective or context of the peripheral societies. This article highlights the problems of theorizing social resista...
Liberal institutionalism has traditionally emphasized the need for institutional arrangements to initiate and sustain cooperation among states. The theory regenerated much interest in the capacity and potential of international institutions, particularly the United Nations, for sustained international cooperation and peace in the post-cold war worl...
Over the years, since the mid-1990s, World Bank-prescribed health policy reforms have successfully introduced market-based private-managed healthcare model in the developing world. This article presents a portrait of the private healthcare model, explores the factors that facilitated the introduction of this model in developing countries and examin...
Proponents of human security paradigm, in emphasizing the individual as the fundamental referent of security and in highlighting the non- military sources of threats to security, strongly claim a paradigm shift from the state-centric realist paradigm of security. The article disputes this, arguing that the claim for a paradigm shift from the tradit...
The American war on terror and the invasion of Iraq remain spectacular developments in the history of international relations. This article probes the explanatory powers of the existing academic realist theories to account for the Bush administration's war against Al-Qaeda, a nonstate shadowy organization, and the invasion of Iraq. It argues that t...
Pro-market economic reforms enjoy less social support in most developing countries, including Bangladesh. Labor response to reform policies, in particular, has been quite unfriendly and often violent. This article analyzes labor resistance to pro-market economic reforms in Bangladesh in the decades of 1980s and 1990s. It explores the underlying cau...
In recent years the neoliberal economists have sought to establish the claim that economic liberalization unfailingly promotes growth and reduces poverty in the developing countries. Liberalization of markets in the developing countries, according to them, promotes economic perfection by intensifying competition between domestic and external econom...
Bangladesh has been implementing neoliberal structural adjustment policies since the early 1980s. This article analyzes the economic and social outcomes the reform policies have created in the past two decades. It argues that the reform policies, instead of distributing benefits among different societal groups, have brought an economic windfall mai...
Questions
Questions (4)
Greetings. Looking for a quality/standard comparative politics textbook for an undergrad class, in terms of simplified theoretical discussions and empirical investigations. Could you please make any suggestions?
In recent years, particularly after the infamous 9/11 attacks, the US has often played morally and ethically controversial roles in global affairs. Beginning with the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, rhetorically justified on Saddam regime’s WMDs and promoting liberty, freedoms and rights for all Iraqis but ending up pushing the Iraqis further down the abyss, to the 2011 NATO-led intervention to save the Libyans from the atrocities of Gaddafi but again incrementally turning Libya into a den of ethnic/tribal fighters and criminal terrorists to the release of the Senate report on CIA’s untold torture practices in early December 2014 the US has continually slid down the scale of global moral authority. As recent as in the Yemeni crisis, the decision-makers in Washington have comfortably positioned themselves against the oppressed and the marginalized, whatever strategic calculations there might be.
Given this track record, can the US reclaim global moral leadership in the future? Can there be an alternative set of moral and ethical values in global affairs with a new power leading the way?
I’m looking for books, journal articles, research monographs etc. focusing on conflict mediation by the Arab League, the African Union and the European Union from comparative perspectives.
Thanks in advance for your help and cooperation.
The intense nuclear negotiations Iran and the P5+1 powers are conducting for quite some time, especially following the November 2013 interim nuclear deal, are gradually making progress, as often claimed by top negotiators from both sides. A final deal would involve high stakes not only for Iran and the US; Tehran’s regional competitors – Israel and Saudi Arabia, in particular, who see Iran’s regional preeminence as a major stumbling block to their respective regional strategic designs and ambitions, would be affected as well. But any deal with Iran, it can be safely argued, is likely to give some degree of legitimacy to Tehran’s much sought after dominant role from the Persian Gulf up to the Mediterranean via Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. If that becomes the unsavory reality for some regional countries:
What color, contents and texture would the post-deal regional security structure develop? What security/strategic theories/models would better capture and explain the emerging realities and security dynamics in the Middle East? Will a cooperative security framework with Iran leading the way take roots gradually? Or, will an overt and covert counter alliance forged by Israel and Saudi Arabia, with support from Egypt and Jordan, emerge to keep the Iranians at bay? Can Israel and Saudi Arabia, the ideologically and politically opposite poles, minimize their differences and join hands just for realizing some common strategic goals against Iran?
Please share your views.
