Search

Begin New Search Topic Defense Policy Publishing Institution Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

11. Sizing and Shaping European Armed Forces Lessons and Considerations from the Nordic Countries

Author:
William Hopkinson
Publication Date:
03-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
There are many threats in the current security agenda that call for collaborative international action: they include environmental degradation, organized crime, disease, natural disaster, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Sometimes collaboration is political or diplomatic, and sometimes it is economic. In other cases, security needs will require either the direct application of force or the use of organized, disciplined groups that may ultimately have to use force to protect themselves and others. Javier Solana, the European Union (EU) High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), pointed out: 'We need to develop a strategic culture that fosters early, rapid, and when necessary robust intervention. We should think particularly of operations involving both military and civilian capabilities'.
Topic:
Defense Policy and NATO
Political Geography:
Europe

12. Sizing and Shaping European Armed Forces Lessons and Considerations from the Nordic Countries

Author:
William Hopkinson
Publication Date:
03-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
There are many threats in the current security agenda that call for collaborative international action: they include environmental degradation, organized crime, disease, natural disaster, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Sometimes collaboration is political or diplomatic, and sometimes it is economic. In other cases, security needs will require either the direct application of force or the use of organized, disciplined groups that may ultimately have to use force to protect themselves and others. Javier Solana, the European Union (EU) High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), pointed out: 'We need to develop a strategic culture that fosters early, rapid, and when necessary robust intervention. We should think particularly of operations involving both military and civilian capabilities'.
Topic:
Defense Policy and NATO
Political Geography:
Europe

13. The Future of the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms

Author:
Siemon T. Wezeman
Publication Date:
08-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
In December 1991, in Resolution 46/36 L, the United Nations General Assembly established the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms (UNROCA), a 'universal and non-discriminatory Register of Conventional Arms' to which nations were invited to report annually, on a voluntary basis, their imports and exports of certain types of conventional weapons during the previous calendar year. The main purpose of the Register was stated as being 'to prevent excessive and destabilizing accumulations of arms'. Resolution 46/36 L also mentioned as goals: (a) implementing new confidence-building measures, (b) the reduction of arms transfers (which by the mid-1980s had reached their highest level since 1950), (c) addressing the problem of the illicit and covert arms trade, including its effects on human rights, (d) reducing the burden placed by arms acquisitions on countries' economies, and (e) the reduction of military expenditures. In practical terms, nations were to start reporting in 1992 on weapons delivered in 1991, and the process was to be reviewed periodically by a group of government experts to consider the need for improvement.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Human Welfare, and United Nations

14. Armament and Disarmament in the Caucasus and Central Asia

Author:
Zdzislaw Lachowski, Björn Hagelin, Sam Perlo-Freeman, Petter Stålenheim, Dmitri Trofimov, and Alyson J. K. Bailes
Publication Date:
07-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
The international attention paid to the nations of the South Caucasus region and Central Asia—a group of post-Soviet states beyond Europe's conventional frontiers but included in the Conference on/Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE/OSCE)—has been fitful at best over the past decade. During the last years of the 20th and at the start of the 21st century, after the conflicts in Georgia and Nagorno-Karabakh became (at least partly) 'frozen', security concerns about the regions tended to decline and to become overshadowed both by 'oil diplomacy' and by concern about developments within Russia itself, in Chechnya and Dagestan. In 2002–2003 a constellation of changes in the outside world has started to reverse this pattern. Chechnya is no longer a regular topic of high-level political debate between Russia and the West, and President Vladimir Putin has played the anti-terrorist card with some success to secure his freedom to deal with it as an internal security matter. The factors prompting greater international attention to Russia's south-western and southern neighbours, by contrast, have the potential to undermine—perhaps for good—any Russian pretension to decisive influence or an exclusive droit de regard in these regions. At the time of writing, however, this latest shift could again be called in question by a new diversion of focus to the 'greater Middle East' following hostilities in Iraq.
Topic:
Defense Policy and Arms Control and Proliferation
Political Geography:
Russia, Iraq, Europe, Central Asia, Caucasus, Middle East, Chechnya, and Georgia

15. The Future of the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms

Author:
Siemon T. Wezeman
Publication Date:
08-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
In December 1991, in Resolution 46/36 L, the United Nations General Assembly established the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms (UNROCA), a 'universal and non-discriminatory Register of Conventional Arms' to which nations were invited to report annually, on a voluntary basis, their imports and exports of certain types of conventional weapons during the previous calendar year. The main purpose of the Register was stated as being 'to prevent excessive and destabilizing accumulations of arms'. Resolution 46/36 L also mentioned as goals: (a) implementing new confidence-building measures, (b) the reduction of arms transfers (which by the mid-1980s had reached their highest level since 1950), (c) addressing the problem of the illicit and covert arms trade, including its effects on human rights, (d) reducing the burden placed by arms acquisitions on countries' economies, and (e) the reduction of military expenditures. In practical terms, nations were to start reporting in 1992 on weapons delivered in 1991, and the process was to be reviewed periodically by a group of government experts to consider the need for improvement.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Human Welfare, and United Nations

16. Armament and Disarmament in the Caucasus and Central Asia

Author:
Zdzislaw Lachowski, Björn Hagelin, Sam Perlo-Freeman, Petter Stålenheim, Dmitri Trofimov, and Alyson J. K. Bailes
Publication Date:
07-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
The international attention paid to the nations of the South Caucasus region and Central Asia—a group of post-Soviet states beyond Europe's conventional frontiers but included in the Conference on/Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE/OSCE)—has been fitful at best over the past decade. During the last years of the 20th and at the start of the 21st century, after the conflicts in Georgia and Nagorno-Karabakh became (at least partly) 'frozen', security concerns about the regions tended to decline and to become overshadowed both by 'oil diplomacy' and by concern about developments within Russia itself, in Chechnya and Dagestan. In 2002–2003 a constellation of changes in the outside world has started to reverse this pattern. Chechnya is no longer a regular topic of high-level political debate between Russia and the West, and President Vladimir Putin has played the anti-terrorist card with some success to secure his freedom to deal with it as an internal security matter. The factors prompting greater international attention to Russia's south-western and southern neighbours, by contrast, have the potential to undermine—perhaps for good—any Russian pretension to decisive influence or an exclusive droit de regard in these regions. At the time of writing, however, this latest shift could again be called in question by a new diversion of focus to the 'greater Middle East' following hostilities in Iraq.
Topic:
Defense Policy and Arms Control and Proliferation
Political Geography:
Russia, Iraq, Europe, Central Asia, Caucasus, Middle East, Asia, and Soviet Union