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981. CERI: New Perspectives on EU-Member State Relationships

Author:
Simon Bulmer and Christian Lequesne
Publication Date:
01-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI)
Abstract:
This paper aims to review the "state of the art" for examining EU-member state relations. It recognises first of all that EU-member state relationships are interactive. Member states are key actors in making EU policy, and their role in this process is central to policy-making studies. However, European integration has an important impact upon the member states: the phenomenon that has come to be termed Europeanization. We review the literatures concerned with these two directions of flow: the analytical issues raised and the theoretical perspectives deployed. We then turn to the empirical literature on EU-member state relationships, and how it operationalises the theoretical literatures (if at all). This empirical literature tends to be organised in two ways: individual or comparative studies of member states' relationships with the EU; or studies of the impact of the EU on types of political actor/institution or on policy areas/sectors. We review both these literatures. On the basis of the identified strengths and weaknesses in the different literatures examined, we suggest a research agenda for future theoretical and empirical work.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Politics, Regional Cooperation, and European Union
Political Geography:
Europe

982. The United States: The Empire of Force or the Force of Empire?

Author:
Pierre Hassner
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
There is no society or policy that does not have its contradictions, but some have more than others, and that is certainly true of the United States. Raymond Aron evoked a classic paradox in giving his book on the United States the title The Imperial Republic. That paradox has two aspects. Firstly, are the republic's institutions (which are designed to guarantee citizens' rights and a separation of powers) suited to the running of an empire, or are they prejudicial to the decision-making ability and continuity that that implies? Conversely, does not the expenditure on empire, in terms of resources and time, and in particular the methods used to acquire and preserve it, affect the economic, political and moral health of the republican homeland? These dilemmas are made even more acute since, on the one hand, this is not a classic empire, like that of Rome, but rather a bourgeois, individualist one based on the acquisition of wealth rather than the winning of wars and, on the other hand, this is the first truly world-wide empire and has appeared at a moment when the threats facing humankind raise key questions on the interests of the international system and the planet itself, over and above those of the 'hyperpower'.
Topic:
Security and Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

983. Enlargement and European Defence After 11 September

Author:
Pal Dunay, Jiri Sedivy, and Jacek Saryusz-Wolski
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
The jury is still out on the extent to which 11 September has changed the concept – let alone the perception – of security. All the more so for European security at large, whose contours are still quite blurred. As for the European Union proper, 11 September has triggered a prompt response in the field of internal security, while the military reaction has been either channelled through NATO and the UN or managed individually (and bilaterally with the United States) by both member and applicant states. More indirectly, 11 September has increased the pressure towards enlargement by pushing for a faster and broader accession of the current candidates in order to further stabilise the Union's immediate neighbourhood: a quintessential case of security policy by other means, one is tempted to say, in line with a long tradition in the European integration process. Moreover, for similar reasons, the Atlantic Alliance, too, is likely to enlarge more quickly and more extensively than previously envisaged. Key decisions in those directions are to be taken in Prague (NATO) and Copenhagen (EU) later this year. For the Union, anyway, the endgame has already started. With it, the enlargement process will have come almost full circle: 'from Copenhagen to Copenhagen', so to speak, in just under ten years.
Topic:
Security and Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and United Nations

984. Terms of Engagement

Author:
Julian Lindley-French
Publication Date:
05-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
Sir Lew Grade comes from a long tradition of failed British film producers. In 1980 he produced a film that bankrupted him. Entitled Raise the Titanic, the film was a box office flop of appropriately Titanic proportions. When asked about his risky investment, he said that on reflection it would have been cheaper and easier to lower the Atlantic than raise the Titanic. Observers of transatlantic security relations could be forgiven for feeling pretty much the same about the state of American-European relations as the shock of 11 September is replaced by the search for coordinated policy. Not only do Americans and Europeans disagree about the means of international relations; they seem increasingly to bicker about the ends.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
America and Europe

985. From Nice to Laeken, European Defence: Core Documents

Author:
Maartje Rutten
Publication Date:
04-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
This Chaillot Paper is the second in our series of core documents on European security and defence. Unlike the first volume, which covered the whole period from St-Malo to Nice (December 1998 - December 2001), this volume and subsequent ones will recapitulate developments in European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) during the preceding year. As the whole world of defence and thus Europe and the ESDP were profoundly affected by the terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001, we have divided this Chaillot Paper into two parts. The first comprises documents on the further development and implementation of the ESDP. The second part contains those documents illustrating the EU's response to the terrorist attacks that we consider most relevant to the goal of this paper.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Europe

986. Democratic Control of Armed Forces: the National and International Parliamentary Dimension

Author:
Wim F. van Eekelen
Publication Date:
10-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
Democracy takes many forms. The basic notion that governments derive their legitimacy from the freely expressed votes of their citizens is translated in many different parliamentary practices. Even the conceptual distinction of the three main functions of government – legislative, executive and judicial – as defined in Montesquieu's Trias Politica, seldom resulted in a complete separation of powers. In many countries the members of the executive also sit in parliament. In the US the separation between legislature and executive is the most complete. The President has wide-ranging authority; his ministers are not responsible to Congress. Nevertheless it works, because of a complicated system of checks and balances affecting both legislationand budget appropriations. In France the President of the Republic regards foreign affairs and defence as his special domain in which the cabinet, let alone parliament, has little influence. A common characteristic of Western democracy, however, is its pluralistic character in which the people elect their representatives and have a choice between different political parties. In some cases the decisions reached in parliamentary assemblies are subject to a referendum as a form of direct democracy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Democratization, and Government
Political Geography:
Europe and France

987. U.S. Policy Toward the Former Yugoslavia

Author:
Steven E. Meyer
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Wilson Center
Abstract:
As long as the Cold War framed the international arena, relations between the United States and Yugoslavia were—for the most part—fairly clear and predictable. Both sides played their assigned roles well in the larger East-West drama. For the U.S., Yugoslavia—after Tito and Stalin split in 1948—was the useful, even reliable, strategically-placed, communist antagonist to the Soviet Union. Certainly, Washington complained at times about Yugoslavia's preference for nonalignment and lamented the fact that it was not part of the Western alliance. The fact that Yugoslavia was indeed a communist state that Moscow could not control, however, more than compensated for these “short comings.” As a reward, the U.S. courted Tito, provided economic aid, and paid virtually no attention to how he ran the country—even his brutal rise to power after World War II was of little consequence.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Cold War, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Washington, Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia

988. U.S.-Russian Relations: Toward a New Strategic Framework

Author:
Eugene B. Rumer and Richard D. Sokolsky
Publication Date:
05-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
In 2001, President Vladimir Putin made a strategic choice for Russia's integration with the West. Indicators of this decision include Putin's quest for better relations with the United States and Europe, his stated commitment to Russian membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), his pursuit of a new relationship with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and his almost casual dismissal of the potential major irritants in the relationship with the United States and its allies—U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, the likelihood of Baltic membership in NATO, sizeable U.S. military deployments to Central Asia, and a growing U.S. military presence in Georgia. Putin has unequivocally crossed these once-insurmountable red lines despite opposition from his closest advisers and the unease of the Russian public over the American presence in Russia's backyard.
Topic:
Security and Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Europe, and Georgia

989. Human Rights and Foreign Policy Discourse in Today's Russia: Romantic Realism and Securitisation of Identity

Author:
Viatcheslav Morozov
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
Most people writing on the subject recognise that within the Russian discourse, the concept of human rights is used somewhat differently compared to Western Europe or the United States. However, the nature of these differences is yet to be properly studied. It is not enough just to say that 'the Western notions of human rights undergo certain transformations when transplanted to the Russian soil. At a superficial glance, the post-Soviet notions of human rights are identical [to the Western ones], but upon a more curious consideration their content turns out to be somewhat different' (Chugrov 2001:3). The essentialist concept of 'the Russian soil' as different from the Western one is of little help since it takes cultural differences as given, and thus all the researcher has to do is to register the differences in political practice, while the explanations are known in advance. More sophisticated essentialist approaches do no more than provide labels for the cultural features (e.g. 'nominalism' of the Western culture and 'collectivism' of the East –see Panarin 1999), but are unable to account for the interaction of these two fundamental principles in the Russian political process. As far as foreign policy studies are concerned, there is also the handy realist option of reducing the differences to an assumed national interest, which, of course, in itself is a social construct that is to be studied, and not a conceptual tool for research of other matters.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Human Rights, and Nationalism
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Asia

990. From Pre-Bush to Bush to Post-Sep-11-Bush: Changes In Transatlantic Relations —The Particular Case of Germany

Author:
Michaela Hertkorn
Publication Date:
04-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Columbia International Affairs Online
Abstract:
"There is the perception that, while France is a complicated country, but not posing a problem, Germany is not a complicated case, but can pose a problem." "America and Germany will never drift apart. We have never been closer. Any tensions are simply due to 'Reibungsverluste durch Nähe'. It is a relationship of grown up kids with their parents.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and Europe