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Insurgencies, Border Clashes, and the Security Dilemma: Unresolved Problems for ASEAN

  • Deniz Kocak
ABSTRACT: The decision to deepen ASEAN cooperation by creating the ASEAN Community and particularly the concept of ASEAN as a Security Community has been debated heavily among academics. As no large scale war has occurred between the member states since the founding of ASEAN in 1967 it is reasonable...

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Understanding China’s Global Search for Energy and Resources

  • Sigfrido Burgos Cáceres
ABSTRACT: The need for massive amounts of energy sources, raw materials, and natural resources is, in part, driving Beijing’s defense, energy, and foreign policies. The dynamic economic growth rates experienced over the past twenty years, coupled with increased manufacturing levels, rising exports of...

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A Meeting of Minds: Sino-Pakistani Military Relations

  • Prem Mahadevan
ABSTRACT: This paper examines defence cooperation between the People’s Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. It suggests that both countries have a strong convergence of security perspectives which encourages continued close ties. However, along with such ties comes the risk of an authoritarian...

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Turkey’s Role in European Security Governance

  • Burak Tangör
ABSTRACT: This article evaluates Turkey’s position in European security governance. In the post-Cold War period, the administration, coordination and regulation of security has been, largely, performed through such an approach which itself is based on three assumptions. Firstly, the meaning of security...

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Bosnia and Herzegovina: From Military Conflict to Political Deadlock

  • Maja Ruzic
ABSTRACT: This article engages in the ongoing debate about the overall value of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (GFAP), which is one of the most challenging issues in the contemporary peace studies scholarship. In order to support scholars who argue that the constitutional...

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Defining an Individual Security Community: The EU and ASEAN in Contrast

  • Jiří Brandýs
ABSTRACT: This work seeks to reveal differences in the understanding of the concept of security between the EU and the Association of South East Asian States (ASEAN) and to adequately account for such differences. This work considers that ASEAN qualifies as a nascent security community confirming that...

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Divide et Impera?: Western Engagement in the Middle East

  • Marek Čejka
ABSTRACT: One, important, reason driving recent instability in the Middle East is the influence of Western powers on local actors. In the first half of the 20th century the UK and France held significant sway; during the Cold War the US and USSR were dominant. After the Cold War, the US emerged as the...

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The Polish Biomass Industry: The Case of Bobolice

  • Yossi Mann
ABSTRACT: The renewable energy industry has recently gathered momentum due to green awareness, the need to diversify energy sources and the rise in oil and gas prices. In many ways, the Polish biomass industry has greater potential than others new EU members (post-2004). Poland’s size, as well as its...

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The Security Council’s Endless Enlargement Debate

  • Shafa V. Gasimova
ABSTRACT: Recent talks on UN Security Council reform mainly focused on enlargement issues based on the competing positions of the G4 (Germany, Japan, Brazil and India) and UfC (core members Italy, Pakistan, Mexico and Egypt); groups which seem unable to reach a compromise in the near future. Even if...

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The EU and the Alter-Globalisation Movement’s Actorness

  • Tomáš Rohrbacher
ABSTRACT: This article deals with two actors – the European Union and the alter-globalisation movement – and their mutual relationship regarding recognition. Both actors profile themselves internationally as environmental and human and social rights defenders; they both create their own discourses, e.g....

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Non-State Military Actors: The Case of the 2011 Libyan Conflict

  • Radana Makariusová
  • Zdeněk Ludvík
ABSTRACT: Non-state military actors (i.e. private military companies, contractors and/or militias) form an inherent part of the present global system. In many cases, however, the role and participation of non-state military actors appears to be rather ambiguous and unclear. In order to illustrate the...

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Five Factors Affecting Stability and Security in the Middle East

  • Yahya Alshammari
ABSTRACT: There are five factors that affect security and stability in the Middle East. The first of these is the ticking bomb of sectarianism between the Sunni and Shiite strands of Islam, which have become more widespread in recent years due to the politisation of sectarian tensions and their transformation...

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Failed States and Theories: The (Re)Securitisation of Underdevelopment

  • Matia Vannoni
ABSTRACT: Over the past two decades, the term “failed state” has been popularised among both academics and policy-makers. This work seeks to adequately provide for the historical and cultural background driving the term and its theoretical and practical implications. However, the bulk of this work is...

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Barriers to Recovery: Continental Crisis and Media Threat Inflation

  • Christopher Whyte
ABSTRACT: From the wars in Vietnam and Iraq to the Arab Spring, recent history is full of examples of how media outlets interact with government processes to shape public opinion and constrain the practical avenues policymakers may take in domestic and international affairs. The recent European financial...

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The Arab Spring in French Foreign Policy

  • Miron Lakomy
ABSTRACT: The Greater Middle East has traditionally played a major role in French foreign policy. Following WWI, the 3rd French Republic acquired Syria and Lebanon which created a foundation for political, economic and cultural ties between France and the Arab world. In the post-Cold War era, French...

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Dynamics of Peace Management: From Interstate to Inter-Humanity Dialogue

  • Kamrul Hossain
ABSTRACT: Traditionally the term “peace” has been defined as the absence of war. Yet, “peace” is closely associated to the term “security” and although “peace” and “security” are both generally referred to in interstate affairs, “peace” is more deeply attached to civil society, since it ultimately suffers...

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Balance of Power versus Complex Interdependence

  • Evaghoras L. Evaghorou
  • Nikolaos G. Mertzanidis
ABSTRACT: Both the concepts of Balance of Power and Complex Interdependence attempt to describe the post-cold war international system. We select Offensive Realism (re: Mearsheimer) and Neoliberal Institutionalism (re: Keohane and Nye), for theoretically contextualising the aforementioned concepts. Through...

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How the Strong Lose Wars: Transformative Goals and the Outcome of Asymmetric Conflict

  • Adam Cianciara
ABSTRACT: This work proposes an explanation of strong actor failure in asymmetric conflict. It proposes and develops the hypothesis of transformative and non-transformative goals and shows the correlation between strong actor objectives and the outcome of asymmetric conflicts. The central argument of...

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Values of the Belgrade Regime

  • Vladimir Dordevic
  • Danko Aleksic
ABSTRACT: This article evaluates the legacy of Slobodan Milošević whose regime ruled Serbia for more than a decade from the end of the 1980s until 2000. The article briefly examines the main political and social aspects of the Milošević regime and analyzes a value equation by questioning the social values...

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The Politics of Nuclear Non-Proliferation

  • Laz Etemike
ABSTRACT: Since the explosion of the first atomic weapon the international system has been saddled with perceived threats to national security based around weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This is best seen through the spate of interest by countries to develop nuclear weapons. Hence, nuclear deterrence...

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Private Security Companies in the Czech Republic: An Exploratory Analysis

  • Oldřich Bureš
ABSTRACT: Czech private security companies have thus far received relatively little attention both internationally and, until recently, domestically. This article attempts to fill this gap by analysing the key characteristics of the market with more than 6,000 private security companies that together...

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Terrorism 2.0 in Eurasia

  • Robert Nalbandov
ABSTRACT: “New” terrorist organisations, characteristic of the post-Cold War period, sharply contrast with their more traditional (“old”) predesessors in Europe and Russia. These latter European terrorist groups (termed here as Terrorism 1.0) were mostly: sovereignty/ideology-driven, geographically limited,...

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The New Terrorist Threat: Destruction of Western Credit Ratings

  • Stephen P. Ferris
  • Ray Sant
ABSTRACT: This work describes how capital terrorists and/or adversarial nations could use Western capital markets to injure Western economies and limit international power projections. Specifically, we analyse a particular vulnerability of international capital markets, the market for sovereign debt,...

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The Abu Omar Case and “Extraordinary Rendition”

  • Caterina Mazza
ABSTRACT: In 2003 Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (known as Abu Omar), an Egyptian national with a recognised refugee status in Italy, was been illegally arrested by CIA agents operating on Italian territory. After the abduction he was been transferred to Egypt where he was interrogated and tortured for more...

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Some Caution, Please: Applying the Concept of Moral Hazard to Humanitarian Intervention

  • Veronika Bilkova
ABSTRACT: The concept of moral hazard, born in insurance studies, has recently been adopted by international relations theory where it is primarily applied to humanitarian intervention. This article cautions against too hasty an embracement of the concept by IR scholars. Arguing that important theoretical...

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Understanding Success of Targeted Sanctions: The EU in Zimbabwe

  • Francesco Giumelli
  • Kryštof Kruliš
ABSTRACT: The European Union (EU) imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe in 2002 and this article aims at evaluating the success of that decision. Applying a broader definition of success, this article assumes that sanctions can coerce, constrain and signal. Contrary to most of the literature holding that sanctions...

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Hungary’s Post-2001Ratification Challenges: Lessons Concerning the V4-Nato Relationship

  • Péter Marton
ABSTRACT: Hungary and the other Visegrad countries (V4), over the past decade, participated in coalition military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but not Libya. This article examines how this has impacted Hungary’s standing in the North Atlantic Alliance, and to this end deploys the concepts of “two...

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Global Power Transformations: Political, Economic and Security Dimensions

  • Miloš Balabán
ABSTRACT: International relations are in the midst of tremendous transformation; to the distribution of political, economic and military power. This work traces such changes by looking at a wide series of indicators and seeks to explain - in a predictive manner - how the international environment will...

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Building a Client State: American Arms Policies Towards Iran, 1950–1963

  • Stephen McGlinchey
ABSTRACT: Precious little has been written in academic scholarship about the US arms relationship with Iran. Much of the scholarly focus has been drained into an orbital vortex caused by twin crises in Iranian history: the 1953 British and American sponsored coup and the preceding oil blockade, and the...

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Poland's Quiet Revolution: The Unfolding of Shale Gas Exploration and its Discontents in Pomerania

  • Edyta Materka
Abstract: This research highlights the unraveling of Poland’s shale gas revolution and analyses the structural problems faced by villagers who oppose testing, drilling, wildcatting, and the production of shale gas in their rural communities in northern Poland. I argue that the bed-fellowship between...

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