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212. Worse, not Better ? Reinvigorating Early Warning for Conflict Prevention in the Post Lisbon European Union
- Author:
- John Brante, Chiara De Franco, Christoph Meyer, and Florian Otto
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- EGMONT - The Royal Institute for International Relations
- Abstract:
- The number and lethality of conflicts has been declining significantly since the end of the Cold War, but five new armed conflicts still break out each year. While costly peace-making, stabilisation and reconstruction efforts have helped to end conflicts, no comparative efforts have gone into preventing them from occurring in the first place. The international community appears stuck in the never-ending travails of managing crises, finding it difficult to act early to prevent new conflicts from escalating. Encouraging signs that this is changing include the United Nations (UN) promotion of the preventive arm of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and the United States' efforts to improve its capacity to prevent conflicts and mass atrocities emerging from the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. Similarly, since the launch of the Gothenburg programme in 2001, the European Union (EU) has embraced the case for conflict prevention in policy documents as well as in the Lisbon Treaty itself, making it a hallmark of its approach to international security and conflict in contrast to conventional foreign policy. Yet, it has fallen significantly short in translating these aspirations into institutional practice and success on the ground. It suffers from the 'missing middle' syndrome between long-term structural prevention through instruments such as conditionality for EU accession and development policy, and short-term responses to erupting crisis through military and civilian missions.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Diplomacy, Peace Studies, War, Armed Struggle, and Peacekeeping
- Political Geography:
- Europe and United Nations
213. Death of an Institution. The end for Western European Union, a future for European defence?
- Author:
- Graham Messervy-Whiting and Alyson J. K. Bailes
- Publication Date:
- 05-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- EGMONT - The Royal Institute for International Relations
- Abstract:
- On 31 March 2010 the ten Member States of Western European Union (WEU) announced that the last organs, staffs and activities of that institution would be laid to rest by 30 June 2011. Having resiled from the Modified Brussels Treaty (MBT) of 1954 which created WEU as a successor to the Western Union of 1948, these nations are now working to dispose of the staff, premises and archives at WEU's Brussels offices and its Parliamentary Assembly in Paris. Little public interest has been shown in these moves, perhaps because WEU's operational and political work had already been taken over by the European Union (EU), in the frame of its new European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), at the end of 1999.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, Regional Cooperation, and Treaties and Agreements
- Political Geography:
- Europe
214. Decision-Making in Security and Defence Policy. Towards Supranational Intergovernmentalism?
- Author:
- Jolyon Howorth
- Publication Date:
- 03-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG)
- Abstract:
- For scholars and practitioners of European politics alike, the distinction between supranationalism and intergovernmentalism has always been fundamental. This distinction has underpinned the various schools of European integration theory, just as it has remained crucial for European governments keen to demonstrate that the member states remain in charge of key policy areas. Nowhere is this considered to be more central than in the area of foreign and security policy, which has consciously been set within the rigid intergovernmental framework of Pillar Two of the Maastricht Treaty and, under the Lisbon Treaty, remains subject to the unanimity rule. And yet, scholarship on the major decision-making agencies of the foreign and security policy of the EU suggests that the distinction is not only blurred but increasingly meaningless. This paper demonstrates that, in virtually every case, decisions are shaped and even taken by small groups of relatively well-socialized officials in the key committees acting in a mode which is as close to supranational as it is to intergovernmental. The political control of foreign and security policy, which is considered sacrosanct by member state governments, is only rarely exercised by politicians at the level of the European Council or Council of Ministers.
- Topic:
- Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Regional Cooperation, and Treaties and Agreements
- Political Geography:
- Europe
215. The role of EU defence policy in the Eastern neighbourhood
- Author:
- Ariella Huff
- Publication Date:
- 05-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- European Union Institute for Security Studies
- Abstract:
- The launch of the EU's Eastern Partnership in 2009 intended to signal a new, elevated level of EU engagement with its Eastern neighbourhood. Yet there remain several long-simmering and potentially destabilising conflicts in the region, with which EU engagement thus far has been sporadic at best. The Union's use of its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) in the region and to help solve these disputes has been particularly ad hoc and inconsistent, wracked by inter-institutional incoherence and undermined by Member States' inability to agree on a broad strategic vision for engagement with the area.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Security, and Defense Policy
- Political Geography:
- Europe
216. The internal-external security nexus: more coherence under Lisbon?
- Author:
- Florian Trauner
- Publication Date:
- 03-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- European Union Institute for Security Studies
- Abstract:
- Since the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam, the EU has intensified its efforts to establish closer coordination between the internal and external dimensions of the EU's security policies - i.e. between the fields of justice and home affairs (JHA) and foreign and security policy - based on the assumption that this serves the interests of all actors involved. More inward-looking actors, typically from the ministries of the interior and justice in individual Member States, believe that they can strengthen their internal problem-solving capacities if the EU uses its foreign policy instruments and capabilities in a targeted and focused way to improve internal security and to engage third countries in achieving its goals in the JHA domain. At the same time, JHA expertise and actors have become an indispensable resource for traditional foreign policy actors in terms of dealing with today's security challenges and achieving the EU's main foreign policy objectives, such as promoting the rule of law and preventing state failure.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, and Treaties and Agreements
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Amsterdam
217. EU Conflict Prevention Revisited
- Author:
- Jonas Claes
- Publication Date:
- 05-2011
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- United States Institute of Peace
- Abstract:
- So far the European Union has not operated as the leading actor on prevention that it aims to be. The recent launch of the European External Action Service (EEAS) in December 2010 could present a breakthrough in this regard. Most of the existing prevention instruments will be relocated to the new Service. A tentative organogram of the EEAS also reveals the establishment of a Directorate for Conflict Prevention and Security Policy. It remains to be seen whether this institutional innovation can address the challenges that have constrained the EU's role in prevention so far, including the EU's coherence, consensus, conceptual clarity and ambition.
- Topic:
- Conflict Prevention, Security, and Defense Policy
- Political Geography:
- Europe
218. Trends in the military research and development strategy of the UK from 1997 to 2010
- Author:
- Joachim Burbiel
- Publication Date:
- 05-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Security Sector Management
- Institution:
- Centre for Security Sector Management
- Abstract:
- The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of issues, trends and changes in British military research and development, with an emphasis on the time of the last Labour government (1997 to 2010). The analysis is focussed on doctrinal documents issued by government institutions. Tensions in British defence matters are highlighted by documenting responses to these documents from parliamentary bodies and a wider public
- Topic:
- Defense Policy and Government
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom and Europe
219. Implementing an Arms Trade Treaty: Lessons on Reporting and Monitoring from Existing Mechanisms
- Author:
- Mark Bromley and Paul Holtom
- Publication Date:
- 07-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
- Abstract:
- The aims, scope and coverage of an arms trade treaty (ATT) will determine the format and types of information to be provided to an ATT reporting mechanism. It is expected that one of the obligations under the mechanism will be for states parties to provide information on their arms transfers and transfer control systems. A key consideration when designing an ATT reporting mechanism is its future interaction with existing reporting mechanisms. In this context, voluntary reporting of information on arms transfers to the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms (UNROCA) and of information on transfer control systems to the UN Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in A ll Its Aspects (POA) and the UN Exchange of National Legislation on Transfer of Arms, Military Equipment and Dual-use Goods and Technology (UN Legislation Exchange) are particularly relevant. Other UN instruments that provide potential lessons and areas of potential over- lap, include UN Security Council resolutions imposing arms embargoes and UN Security Council Resolution 1540, which obligate states to provide information on aspects of national transfer controls. At the regional level, member states of the European Union (EU), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are requested to provide information on transfer controls and international arms transfers, while members of the Organization of American States (OAS) are required to provide information on arms acquisitions. It is inevitable that the reporting requirements under an ATT will overlap with some of these instruments, particularly the voluntary UN reporting mechanisms. If an ATT is to increase transparency, then existing obligations should serve as the baseline for reporting under the new treaty.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Treaties and Agreements, United Nations, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
- Political Geography:
- Europe
220. European Defense Trends: Budgets, Regulatory Frameworks, and the Industrial Base
- Author:
- Matthew Zlatnik, Joachim Hofbauer, Roy Levy, and Gregory Sanders
- Publication Date:
- 05-2011
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Abstract:
- An in-depth understanding of the supply and demand sides of the European defense market and the regulatory framework that governs it is critical for evaluating broader European defense policies and capabilities. This annotated briefing assesses defense budgets in 2001–2008 for 37 European countries (the demand side), developments in the regulatory framework governing European defense trade, and the financial health of the European defense and security industrial base (the supply side). It then integrates the analysis from these three elements to generate a new way of looking at the European defense market.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy
- Political Geography:
- Europe