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41. The Transatlantic Bargain After "the Pivot"

Author:
Barry Pavel and Jeffrey Lightfoot
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
The "tough love" farewell speech of former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates last June was more than a major policy speech on the state of NATO. His remarks were also highly symbolic, coming from a legendary Cold Warrior whose forty-year career had been oriented around the transatlantic relationship. Secretary Gates used his final appearance at the bully pulpit not only to warn Europeans that declining defense budgets risked undermining the credibility of the Alliance among US policymakers, but also that a new wave of American decision-makers would not necessarily share his generation's knowledge of, concern for, or sentimental attachment to the transatlantic alliance.
Topic:
Defense Policy, NATO, International Cooperation, and International Security
Political Geography:
United States, America, Europe, Middle East, and North America

42. Conventional Arms Control in Europe and Related Regional Security Concerns

Author:
Isabelle Francois
Publication Date:
12-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
Conventional arms control in Europe remains relevant more than two decades after the singing of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE). Today, it could serve as a useful vehicle for collaboration with Russia on a broad range of security issues, and productive movement forward would also do much to reassure and secure smaller NATO allies and regional partners. Ultimately, what is needed is a paradigm shift away from "mutual assured destruction" and towards a concept of "mutual assured stability."
Topic:
NATO, Arms Control and Proliferation, Diplomacy, Regional Cooperation, and International Security
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Asia

43. Emerging Security Challenges: A Glue for NATO and Partners?

Author:
Ioanna-Nikoletta Zyga
Publication Date:
11-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
When the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) formed as a defensive military alliance more than six decades ago, one of its fundamental tasks was to deter Soviet aggression against Western Europe. Since the end of the Cold War, the Allies have come to understand that their security depends on their ability to face threats emerging from well beyond the Euro-Atlantic space. NATO has thus broadened its focus from collective defense to security management beyond its borders: its numerous operations in this capacity have included peace support, peacekeeping, disaster relief and counter-piracy missions. These operations have taken place not only in NATO's traditional areas of intervention such as the Balkans, but also as far afield as the Gulf of Aden, the Horn of Africa, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, NATO, International Security, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Africa, Europe, and North Atlantic

44. (Not) Reconciling International Security (IS) with Non-traditional Security (NTS) Studies: Westphalia, the 'West' and the Long Shadow of 1944

Author:
Shaun Breslin
Publication Date:
08-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS)
Abstract:
Understandings of what constitutes international security have been largely influenced by the historical experiences of the great powers. The failed attempts to prevent war in Europe from the 17th century onwards, and latterly the more successful (in its own terms) prevention of a third World War in the second half of the 20th century, did much to establish what was to be secured and how this security could best be achieved.
Topic:
Cold War, War, International Security, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
Europe

45. Bioracism, or, Spiritual Evolutionism

Author:
A. Kiarina Kordela
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
On November 10, 2004, eight days after the murder of the film director Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam, Etienne Balibar was invited to Radboud University in Nijmegen, the oldest city in the Netherlands, to offer that year's Alexander von Humboldt Lecture in Human Geography. The title of his talk, which was subsequently translated and published in several European languages, was “Europe as Borderland,” indicating that far from “being a solution or a prospect,” “the issue of citizenship and cosmopolitanism” in Europe must be based on the fact that “Europe currently exists as a borderland.” By this, Balibar means that “the question of 'borders'…is central when we reflect about citizenship and, more generally, political association”; and the question of borders itself in turn presupposes “address[ing] the issue of political spaces” as a means of representing specifically “European borders” (194).
Topic:
International Security
Political Geography:
Europe and Netherlands

46. Nuclear Issues for NATO After the Strategic Concept

Author:
Walt Slocombe
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
What Does the 2010 Strategic Concept Say (and Not Say) About Nuclear Weapons Issues? The Strategic Concept (SC) adopted at the Lisbon Summit in November 2010 includes a number of propositions that define NATO's future nuclear policy which, explicitly or otherwise, serve to highlight the questions that remain to be resolved. Most fundamentally, the SC, having enumerated NATO's "core tasks" as collective defense against attack, management of crises "that have the potential to affect Alliance security," and cooperation with others "to enhance international security," declares that "[d]eterrence, based on an appropriate mix of nuclear and conventional capabilities, remains a core element of our overall strategy."
Topic:
Defense Policy, Nuclear Weapons, and International Security
Political Geography:
Europe, North America, and Lisbon

47. The Future of NATO

Author:
Whitney Shepardson
Publication Date:
02-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
If the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) did not exist today, the United States would not seek to create it. In 1949, it made sense in the face of a potential Soviet invasion to forge a bond in the North Atlantic area among the United States, Canada, and the west European states. Today, if the United States were starting from scratch in a world of transnational threats, the debate would be over whether to follow liberal and neoconservative calls for an alliance of democracies without regard to geography or to develop a great power concert envisioned by the realists to uphold the current order.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, NATO, International Cooperation, International Organization, and International Security
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Canada, and Soviet Union

48. The EU's Contribution to the Effectiveness of the UN Security Council: Representation, Coordination and Outreach

Author:
Nicoletta Pirozzi
Publication Date:
07-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
This paper aims to assess the EU's contribution to the work of the UN Security Council (UNSC) and outline the prospects for future developments under three main dimensions: representation, coordination and outreach. The first part analyses the EU's presence in terms of its unitary representation and coordination among the EU members of the UN Security Council, with a particular focus on the innovations introduced by the Lisbon Treaty. The second part is dedicated to the EU's contribution, in terms of process and outreach, to the main policy areas within the SC's competence. These include traditional SC matters, such as peacekeeping and non-proliferation, as well as emerging and still contested competences of the UN's supreme organ, such as climate change. The paper was prepared for the second meeting of Working Group I on “The Reform of the UN Security Council: What Role for the EU?”, held in Rome on 14 May 2010, in the framework of the IAI-University of Kiel project on “The European Union and the Reform of the United Nations” (Effective Multilateralism).
Topic:
United Nations and International Security
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Lisbon

49. Report of the Seminar "The Reform of the UN Security Council: What Role for the EU?"

Author:
Jacopo Leone
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
In the framework of the IAI-University of Kiel project on “The European Union and the Reform of the United Nations” (Effective Multilateralism), the present report offers an account of the positions and ideas that emerged during the second meeting of Working Group I on “The Reform of the UN Security Council: What Role for the EU?”, held in Rome on 14 May 2010. With its concise overview of all the papers presented at the conference and the relative debates, this report is meant to provide a basis for fruitful further reflection in view of the project's final conference, to be held in Berlin at the beginning of 2011.
Topic:
Regional Cooperation, United Nations, and International Security
Political Geography:
Europe

50. Combining Realism with Vision Options for NATO's new Strategic Concept

Author:
Riccardo Alcaro
Publication Date:
05-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
Elaborating a Strategic Concept is a delicate undertaking which implies a good deal of resolve, far - sightedness, and realism. Allies should neither search for a new North Star nor give in to the temptation of de facto acceptance of the status quo as the optimal solution. Instead, they should make choices reflecting a synthesis, not just a list, of their security priorities. In particular, they should consider the future of the allied deterrence and defence strategies in a security environment characterised by significant political and technological changes, including by thinking about steps towards withdrawing US nuclear weapons in Europe and creating an integrated missile defence system; learn the lessons from the Balkans and Afghanistan and accord greater priority to stabilisation than to rapid reaction capabilities; recognise that compromises will be inevitable if they are serious about considering Russia as a partner, and start by pausing for a while with enlargement. Allies should also make it clear that they have no ambition of turning NATO into a world gendarme and shift towards cooperative crisis management.
Topic:
NATO, Treaties and Agreements, and International Security
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Russia, United States, and Europe