Foodways and Foodwashing: Israeli Cookbooks and The Politics of Culinary Zionism

The paper explores the political narratives produced in English-language Israeli cookbooks. We examine an understudied yet central component of everyday International Relations, everyday nationalism, and identity contestations as practiced through gastronomy, and highlight the dilemma between the different political uses of popular culture in the context of conflict resolution and resistance. Our argument identifies different narratives represented in what we term Culinary Zionism. One narrative is explicitly political, discusses Israeli cuisine as a foodway, and contributes to creating a space of and a path for co-existence and recognition of the Other. A second narrative is found in tourist-orientated cookbooks that offer a supposedly a-political story of culinary tours in Israel. We problematize the political and normative implications of these narratives by exploring the potential role of these books to open space for dialogue and increase familiarity and interest of foreign audiences of Israel and the conflict. We contrast this possibility with their potential to what we term foodwashing, namely the process of using food to symbolically wash over violence and injustices (the violence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in this case)

Too Far Ahead? The US Bid for Military Superiority and Its Implications for European Allies

Since the early 1990s, the US has made an unprecedented effort to keep \u2014 and actually increase \u2014 the military superiority gained during the Cold War. Buzzwords like \u201cRevolution in Military Affairs\u201d and \u201cDefence Transformation\u201d have marked the American defence policy at the turn of the century. To put it bluntly, this commitment was epitomized over the years by constantly high defence budgets, but most importantly by a procurement policy markedly inclined towards innovation and an ongoing attempt at doctrinal adaptation. On the other hand, America\u2019s European partners have been mostly reluctant to follow the US example: not only they have kept their budgets to a minimum, but (with a few exceptions) they have also shown little interest in innovations. As a result, the power asymmetry between the two shores of the Atlantic has grown to the point of endangering the effectiveness of the Transatlantic alliance. The aim of this chapter is threefold: firstly, to illustrate the US defence policy in the past 25 years; secondly, to ponder how NATO has been affected by this; thirdly, to discuss the problems this state of affairs entails for the US and its allies