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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
132996
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| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In a world of flashpoints and European defence cuts the alliance needs strengthening, when the British government offered to host the NATO summit in Wales on September,4-5, few foresav that this would be a defining moment in the history of the Atlantic Alliance.
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| 2 |
ID:
163603
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article sheds light on the converging interests between Iran and Russia in the Middle East as well as persistent points of friction between the two countries. There is an internal debate in Iran about defining a new regional and foreign policy in the aftermath of the Arab Spring and during the administration of United States president Donald Trump. As there are no purely bilateral relationships in the international system, the Tehran-Moscow relationship is, to a certain extent, influenced by US foreign policy.
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| 3 |
ID:
150813
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Locked in fierce battles with Russia, Iran, Syria and a
hesitant United States and trying to protect the territory
it seized in the Levant, the so-called Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is losing ground rapidly. According
to an IHS Markit report released on 9 October, the
Islamic State’s caliphate shrank during 2015 from 90,800
km2 to 78,000 km2, a net loss of 14 per cent. And in
the first nine months of 2016, that territory shrank by
another 16 per cent. As of 3 October, the Islamic State
was left with control of roughly 65,500 km2 in Iraq and
Syria, an area roughly the size of Sri Lanka, the report
notes.
As the Syrian troops, under cover of heavy Russian
air attacks, have begun to close in on areas held by
ISIS and other rebel groups, it is likely that the socalled
Islamic State will continue to lose ground in the
coming months, stalling the group’s growth in that
region. Yet with thousands of fighters – most of whom
are Arabs, fortified by a large retinue of Caucasians
and central Asians and a smattering of fighters from
elsewhere – ISIS may shrink but is not likely to vanish.
Carrying black flags and promoting a hateful brand of
anti-Shi’a Islam, this virulent group could show up in
force in those Islamic countries where governance is
weak. One such location could be the Maghreb region
of north Africa; another is the virtually ungoverned
region that stretches between eastern and south-eastern
RAMTANU MAITRA
22 January 2017. Volume 20. Number 74. AAKROSH
Afghanistan and Pakistan’s Federally Administered
Tribal Area (FATA).
In fact, available ground reports indicate that
alleged followers of ISIS have already begun to appear
in eastern Afghanistan under the name of the Islamic
State in Khorasan Province (ISKP). Though they are
few in number, disunited and lacking both known
sponsors and known connections to ISIS at this time,
the emergence of these fighters over the past several
years seems to be prompting something of a realignment
in the greater south Asia region vis-à-vis the Taliban.
In particular, Iran, Pakistan, China, Russia and Kabul
appear to be converging around support for that
Pashtun-dominated terrorist grouping – which has been
viewed for more than a decade as the primary obstacle
to peace in war-torn Afghanistan by both Kabul and
its various allies – as a bulwark against the ISKP and
Islamic State inroads. What is going on? What is at
stake? What do these developments actually mean? For
answers, we need to take a much closer look.
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| 4 |
ID:
132513
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| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Many see the western Balkans as the back yard of Europe. As the promise and reality of regional economic integration has weakened, however, Russia has returned to the area to play its historically important regional role. In the Balkans, a Russian or Russifying project competes against a European Union project, while Washington has shown little interest in the Balkans during the Barack Obama administration. The instruments of this rivalry are not only, or even primarily, armies but rather economic-political forces: control of energy pipelines and production, the use of that control for political objectives, and the attraction of competing political models.
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| 5 |
ID:
131055
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| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Motivated by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' farewell address to NATO, this article investigates whether NATO burden-sharing behavior has changed during the last ten years. Based on a Spearman rank correlation test, we find almost no evidence that the rich NATO allies shouldered the defense-spending burden of the poor allies during 1999-2009. In 2010, there is the first evidence of the exploitation of the rich. When allies' defense burdens are related to defense benefit proxies, a Wilcoxon test finds that there is no concordance between burdens and benefits after 2002. This is indicative of a less cohesive alliance, in which allies are not underwriting their derived benefits. We also find that allies' benefits, which are tied to their exposed border protection and terrorism risk, motivate defense spending. Allies' benefits, based on economic base and population, are less of a driver of defense spending for most NATO allies. We devise a broad-based security expenditure burden that accounts for defense spending, UN peacekeeping, and overseas foreign assistance. In terms of this security burden, there is evidence of the exploitation of the rich by the poor beginning in 2004. Our findings indicate a two-tiered alliance that faces significant policy challenges.
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| 6 |
ID:
133996
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| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
By a number of accounts, NATO's membership expansion has been viewed favorably, with many analysts pointing to the positive impact NATO's enlargement has on the democratic development of civil-military relations across Central and Eastern Europe. Within this context, Mosès Naím's recent essay in Foreign Affairs was especially striking due to his piercing criticism of Bulgaria due to its significant problems with internal domestic corruption. We examine the potential impact of a Bulgarian mafia-oriented society on NATO from three perspectives, which include assessments of Bulgaria's military, its military capabilities-including its recent weapons purchases-as well as its willingness and ability to participate in NATO's major operations. In our view, these measures provide at least a partial assessment of Bulgaria's role within the alliance in an era that parallels claims of widespread corruption. The findings suggest that Bulgaria's corruption does have some impact on its ability to contribute to NATO's major alliance objectives, which apart from the deleterious impact on Bulgaria, also has broader implications for NATO's ongoing interest in membership expansion.
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