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| 1 |
ID:
135874
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| Summary/Abstract |
The article looks at structural analogies between the strategic situation in Europe in the summer of 1914 and in East Asia today, with particular emphasis on the probability of the outbreak of a major war. The author examines analogies regarding the nature of the international system, i.e. is the international system characterized by outright anarchy or by a more or less developed and institutionalized understanding among the main actors about the way to preserve peace and to organize economic exchange? The article addresses domestic factors (nationalism, democratic, authoritarian or semi-democratic regimes) and investigates military dynamics against the backdrop of geography and the availability of military equipment and technologies. Possible routes of military escalation are also discussed. Special attention is paid to states that have isolated themselves and that dispose of military means that might promise swift victory. The article comes to the conclusion that there are very few similarities between Europe in 1914 and East Asia today, but that both the high degree of militarization of the Korean peninsula and the evolving military competition between the US and China in the region do imply the possibility of a major armed conflict in a not too distant future
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| 2 |
ID:
135871
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Today the international community seems at a loss as to how to transact peace between Israel and Palestine (and Syria). UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967 provides the principles for that peace. Yet there has always been a perceived ambiguity about its withdrawal clause. Diplomatic and UN records show clearly what the Security Council intended in Resolution 242. Nine of 15 members wanted total withdrawal, and the minority saw the virtue of small adjustments to the 1949 Armistice Line to accommodate Israel's demand for ‘secure and recognized’ borders. Every Security Council member upheld the overarching principle, ‘the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force.’ Those who drafted Resolution 242 seem not to have checked that its terms were consonant with the Fourth Geneva Convention, even though they recognized the Convention applied. The Convention renders it illegal for those under occupation to agree terms with the Occupying Power which infringe the rights and protections of the Convention. Since the Convention remains in force until the end of occupation, no peace agreement which includes the adjustment of borders or ceding territory may be concluded until after a full withdrawal has taken place—a requirement fully consonant with Resolution 242's ‘inadmissibility’ principle, and removing any doubt regarding the requirement for a full Israeli withdrawal. To comply with it themselves and to avoid misapprehension, Quartet members must tell Israel, Syria and Palestine that they cannot recognize a peace agreement which would violate the Convention's terms.
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| 3 |
ID:
135873
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A truly democratic European Union seems to have become the graal of European politics, the project's redemptive promise and unreachable horizon. Much has been written about the gap between promise and performance and about the obstacles to EU democratization. Here, we suggest that one way to apprehend the ‘democratic deficit’ debate as it has evolved in the wake of the euro crisis is to think of it as a ‘democratic trilemma’. We argue that European legitimacy requires responses in different realms: first, an acknowledgement of Europe's ‘transnational democratic interdependence’; second, an anchoring of the functionalist European superstructure in ‘national democratic legitimacy’; and third, a grounding of both European and national power in ‘local democratic legitimacy’. While the very notion of trilemma points to the tensions that arise in trying to satisfy these requisites simultaneously, we nevertheless need to look for ways of alleviating the trilemma rather than coming up with democratic magic bullets in a single one of these realms. While our main goal is to reframe and open up the debate around the key concepts of empowerment, mutual recognition and flexibility, we also provide examples of what this may mean.
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| 4 |
ID:
135872
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines NATO's transformation from the Cold War to the present and offers a framework of interpretation. Transformation has entailed a downgrading of territorial defence and an upgrading of out-of-area crisis management, as well as diplomatic engagement and partnership. NATO has thus become a more diversified and globalized alliance. The article traces the evolution post-1989 of the principled policy areas for the alliance—defence, crisis management and partnership—and explains difficulties of development within each area. It also enters into the controversy of interpreting NATO. It explains NATO as an outcome of America's enduring need to engage in the management of Eurasia's rim and Europe's equally enduring need for outside assistance in organizing a concert of power inside Europe. NATO has historically been strong when Europe's and North America's power capabilities and concepts of order are in equilibrium and thus when NATO governments have defined the geography of the Atlantic peace in such a way that both pillars can contribute to it in substantial ways. The article puts this perspective in opposition to two mainstream frameworks of thinking—liberal idealism and retrenchment realism—and applies it in a critique of the diversified and globalized profile that the alliance has developed. The article finally offers a moderately positive assessment of NATO's September 2014 Wales summit as a contribution to renewed geopolitical equilibrium, and it suggests how this contribution could be further strengthened.
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| 5 |
ID:
135869
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| Summary/Abstract |
The fall of Mosul in June of 2014 was followed in July by the establishment of a self-proclaimed Caliphate by the Islamic State of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Since then, the Islamic State has continued to expand its operations, persistently pushing into Sunni-dominated parts of Iraq and Syria, nearly defeating the Kurds of Iraq, and moving against the Kurds of Syria, in Kobani, as well as army units of the Syrian state. By doing so, it has maintained an astonishingly high tempo of operations and has shown itself capable, agile and resilient. It has also proved itself to be adept at utilizing social media outlets, and in pursuing brutal tactics against civilians and prisoners that have been aimed at shocking adversaries—potential or actual—and observers both in the region and beyond. The rise of the Islamic State poses a challenge not only to the security of Iraq and Syria, but to the state system of the Middle East. Western powers have been drawn into a conflict in a limited fashion—through air strikes and advising ground forces; the UK, while engaging slightly later than other countries against the Islamic State, has followed this pattern, though targeting Islamic State forces solely in Iraq. This article considers the nature and scale of the threat posed by the Islamic State, and assesses three possible areas of further policy engagement that they UK may, or may have to, follow.
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| 6 |
ID:
135868
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| Summary/Abstract |
There are several strands in western antipathy to Russia which predate the Soviet era by more than a century. Public opinion was always divided on how to respond to the Russia problem; however, neither western nor Soviet leaders sought out war. There is fresh and credible evidence that Brezhnev was a ‘dove’, who was not interested in world revolution and genuinely wanted reconciliation with the United States. The attainment of democracy requires not only an enlightened leader but an intelligent opposition. However, the crucial factor in democratic transition is the avoidance of economic collapse. Nevertheless, the consensus in both Russia and the West in the 1990s was that a laissez-faire policy was the only viable strategy. This article suggests another strategy which might have avoided or mitigated economic collapse. The consensus in both Russia and the West in the 1990s was that nothing should be done to impede the breakup of the USSR. The example of President Kennedy in the aftermath of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is an example of magnanimity and a model of constructive reconciliation. In the present crisis over Ukraine there may be no alternative to confrontation—but confrontation in itself is a totally inadequate response. Western attitudes must not become an obstacle to reconciliation. Western public opinion can play an important part in forcing the clarification of such attitudes.
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| 7 |
ID:
135866
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The Russian military interventions in Ukraine, which have led to the annexation of the Crimean peninsula and to the entrenchment of separatist enclaves in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, directly challenge the post-Cold War European state system. Russia has consistently denied any wrongdoing or illegal military involvement and has presented its policies as a reaction to the repression of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers. This article argues that it is important to examine and contest unfounded Russian legal and political claims used by Moscow to justify its interventions. The article proceeds to assess in detail three different explanations of the Russian operations in Ukraine: geopolitical competition and structural power (including the strategic benefits of seizing Crimea); identity and ideational factors; and the search for domestic political consolidation in Russia. These have all played a role, although the role of identity appears the least convincing in explaining the timing and scope of Russian encroachments on Ukrainian territorial integrity and the disruption of Ukrainian statehood.
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| 8 |
ID:
135870
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| Summary/Abstract |
Recent trends in the Syrian civil war have caused important shifts in alignment among neighbouring states. The conflict has exhibited a sharp turn towards ethno-sectarian violence, fighting among rival factions of the opposition and loss of central command over peripheral districts. In conjunction with the rise of the radical Islamist movement called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, these developments precipitated a raging, multisided battle that spread across Syria's northeastern provinces, and sparked renewed sectarian conflict inside Turkey and Iraq. Turkey and Iran responded to the growing ethno-sectarianization of the civil war by taking steps to conciliate the largely autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), as well as one another. Rapprochement with the KRG alienated Turkey and Iran from Iraq, prompting Iraqi officials to step up military operations along the Syrian frontier. These moves set the stage for large-scale intervention in Iraq by ISIL, which further weakened Iraq's positon in regional affairs. The resulting reconfiguration of relations accompanied a marked increase in belligerence by non-state actors, most notably the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which buttressed Turkey's newfound ties to the Kurdistan Regional Government and Iran.
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| 9 |
ID:
135867
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| Summary/Abstract |
The Arbitration Commission of the Conference on Yugoslavia provided the basis of the post-Cold War territorial settlements in Europe. These included democratization criteria for the recognition of the new states in central Europe and a new territorial concept that allowed the internal borders of federated states to serve as international borders. In the process, the commission endorsed cultural nationalism within fixed borders and encouraged a significant degree of political self-determination. The commissioners also supported identity nationalism as a genuine aspiration, giving rise to ‘an interesting direction of thought’ concerning the interpretation and meaning of the self-determination of peoples, and these provoked an enhanced understanding and protection of the rights of minorities. This was to provide a basis for the legitimacy claims not only of Bosnian Serbs and Kosovars, but also of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Crimea.
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