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391. The Future of the Caucasus after the Second Chechen War

Author:
Michael Emerson, Nathalie Tocci, Bruno Coppieters, Alexandru Liono, Sergiu Celac, Brenda Shaffer, Thomas Waelde, Sergei Vinogradov, Armando Zamora, and Terry Adams
Publication Date:
07-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
The problems surrounding the Chechen conflict are indeed many and difficult to tackle. This paper aims at unveiling some of the mysteries covering the issue of so-called “Islamic fundamentalism” in Chechnya. A comparison of the native Sufi branch of Islam and the imported Wahhaby ideology is made, in order to discover the contradictions and the conflicts that the spreading of the latter inflicted in the Chechen society. Furthermore, the paper investigates the main challenges President Aslan Maskhadov was facing at the beginning of his mandate, and the way he managed to cope with them. The paper does not attempt to cover all the aspects of the Chechen problem; nevertheless, a quick enumeration of other factors influencing the developments in Chechnya in the past three years is made.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, NATO, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Europe

392. The Great Game, Round 2: Washington's Misguided Support for the Baku-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline

Author:
Stanley Kober
Publication Date:
10-2000
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
One of the top foreign policy priorities of the Clinton administration during the last few years has been strong support for building a pipeline to transport oil from Baku, Azerbaijan, to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. The administration has argued that this pipeline, bypassing other routes going through Russia and Iran, would be the best way for the economically struggling countries of Central Asia to get their energy exports to market, thereby underpinning their newly won independence. Washington also stresses the supposed benefit of having the pipeline run through the territory of a NATO ally, Turkey.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, NATO, and Energy Policy
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Washington, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Baku

393. Information Management in the Field of Security Policy in SEE -- 1st Workshop of the Study Group: "Crisis Management in South East Europe"

Author:
Tufik Burnazovic, Athanasios E. Drougos, Gustav E. Gustenau, Wolf Oschlies, Dragan Simic, Avgustina Tzvetkova, Biljana Vankovska, and Vladimir Šaponja
Publication Date:
05-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Austrian National Defence Academy
Abstract:
Secessionist conflicts have become a major feature of the European political landscape in the 1990s. International response to them has varied from full-scale military intervention to half-hearted mediation, generally providing for freezing of most active hostilities and for addressing most urgent humanitarian needs. Europe in the 1990s saw more “peace” operations on its soil than any other region in the world, but still was not able to find satisfactory answers. Kosovo is a tragic illustration of that and the deployment of NATO troops after a massive use of airpower still lacks the framework of a political plan and appears very tentative and opportunistic. Several specifically European factors define the perspective of a possible new wave of secessionist conflicts in the region.
Topic:
Security, NATO, International Cooperation, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe and Balkans

394. POST-NEUTRAL OR PRE-ALLIED? Finnish and Swedish Policies on the EU and NATO as Security Organisations

Author:
Tuomas Forsberg and Tapani Vaahtoranta
Publication Date:
01-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
At the beginning of the 21st century – a decade after the end of the Cold War – two major developments characterise the transformation of the European security landscape. The first development is the NATO enlargement and its evolving strategic concept that was applied in the Kosovo conflict. The second is the EU enlargement and the construction of the European security and defence policy (ESDP) for the European Union in close contact with NATO. Each and every country in Europe is forced to outline their interests and stance towards these developments.
Topic:
Defense Policy and NATO
Political Geography:
Europe and Kosovo

395. The Next Round of NATO Enlargement

Author:
Jeffrey Simon
Publication Date:
10-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
Since the revolutions of 1989–90 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO has emerged as the backbone of Europe's security architecture. In response to the demands of outsiders for collaboration, NATO has consistently adhered to a strategy of inclusion to create a Europe whole and undivided. This was a conscious effort at the July 1990 London Summit, where NATO invited the Soviet Union and non-Soviet Warsaw Pact members “to establish regular diplomatic liaison with NATO,” and at the November 1991 Rome Summit, where it launched the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) to include them. When the Soviet Union disintegrated in January 1992, NATO decided to include former Soviet republics in the NACC, thus attempting to ensure a Europe free and whole. The same strategy prevailed at the Brussels Summit in January 1994, which launched the Partnership for Peace (PFP) comprising members of NACC and those members of the Conference (now Organization) on Security and Cooperation in Europe that were able and willing to contribute. The July 1997 Madrid Summit decision to invite the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland to begin accession talks also was portrayed in terms of inclusion; the Alliance reaffirmed that it remained open to new members under Article 10, adding that “[N]o European democratic country . . . would be excluded from consideration.”
Topic:
Security and NATO
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Poland, London, Hungary, Brussels, and Czech Republic

396. The United States and Europe: Smooth Sailing or Storm Clouds Ahead?

Author:
William Hitchcock
Publication Date:
08-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
Two years ago, when many of us gathered together in the dramatic Alpine setting of Leukerbad to consider the recent past and the likely future of US-European relations, our group was full of dire prognostications. Russia was headed toward collapse, the EU looked weak after the Yugoslav war, NATO expansion appeared to be dividing Europe; the introduction of the euro looked liked a risky gamble that might worsen trans-Atlantic relations; and most disturbing for me as an American, my government was preoccupied with the Lewinsky scandal and the future of the Clinton presidency seemed at risk. Indeed, one of our colleagues, discussing the crisis over after-dinner drinks, declared that Clinton would resign from the presidency within matter of weeks.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Europe, and Asia

397. Through the Glass Ceiling: Towards a New Security Regime for Europe?

Author:
Anne Deighton
Publication Date:
08-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The 'St Malo process' which has being taking shape since December 1998, will bring a qualitative change in the EU's role as an international institution. Many of the big initiatives that the Union undertakes are not fully understood early on - unexpected, and sometimes unintended consequences can result from the changes that the EU agrees to. It takes time for the institutional implications of major changes to emerge: the Single Act was, in the mid 80s, often seen as the 'elephant that gave birth to a mouse'; and the Maastricht Treaty as at once called too federalist, and too timid. Likewise, the exact configuration of the changes that St Malo may bring will also take time to become clear. 'Militarising' the EU, however, ends one of the last policy taboos of a 'civilian-power' European Union and breaks through the 'glass ceiling' of the EU's self-denying ordinance against the adoption of the instruments of military force which has existed since its inception. This paper assesses how far these changes got by the summer of 2000 and asks whether the last eighteen months are one stage in the messy birth of a post-Cold War pan-European defence and security regime with institutions based around NATO and the EU. Europe's institutional configuration tends to matter more to Europeans than to our transatlantic partners; but institutions are the reality of contemporary European international politics. 'Multilateral institutionalism' too, is inescapable, and how institutions relate to each other has become an increasingly significant question. To accept this does not meant that states do not matter, for states also use institutions, as well as being shaped by institutions.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Europe, Asia, and Switzerland

398. NATO's Past, NATO's Future

Author:
John Lewis Gaddis
Publication Date:
08-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization stands at a crossroads. Critical choices lie ahead that will determine its future. I begin my paper this way because it is customary to begin pronouncements on NATO with this kind of statement. Indeed papers and speeches on NATO have been beginning this way through the half-century of the alliance's existence - and yet NATO never quite reaches whatever crisis the speaker or writer has in mind. NATO seems to have a life of its own, which is remarkably detached from the shocks and surprises that dominate most of history, certainly Cold War history. And NATO's members, both actual and aspiring, seem bent on keeping it that way. So what is a crossroad anyway in historical terms? Most of my colleagues, I think, would say that it's a turning point: a moment at which it becomes clear that the status quo can no longer sustain itself, at which decisions have to be made about new courses of action, at which the results of those decisions shape what happens for years to come. The Cold War was full of such moments: the Korean War, Khrushchev's de-Stalinization speech, the Hungarian and Suez crises, the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Six Day War, the Tet offensive, Nixon's trip to China, the invasion of Afghanistan, the reunification of Germany, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War itself. What strikes me as a historian, though, is how little impact these turning points had on NATO's history - even General deGaulle, who tried to turn himself personally into a turning point. The structure and purposes of the alliance today are not greatly different from what they were when NATO was founded. Which is to say that NATO's history, compared to that of most other Cold War institutions, is uneventful, bland, and even (let us be frank) a little dull. That very uneventfulness, though, is turning out to be one of the more significant aspects of Cold War history. It surprised the historians, who have been able to cite no other example of a multi-national alliance that has had the robustness, the durability, the continuity, some might say the apparent immortality, of this one. It has also surprised the international relations theorists, for it is a fundamental principle of their discipline that alliances form when nations balance against threats. It follows, then, that as threats dissipate, alliances should also - and yet this one shows no signs of doing so. An instrument of statecraft, which is what an alliance normally is, has in this instance come to be regarded as a fundamental interest of statecraft. That requires explanation, which is what I should like to attempt here.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Russia, United States, China, Europe, Asia, Soviet Union, Germany, and Berlin

399. U.S.-EU Relations after the Introduction of the Euro and the Reinvention of European Security and Defence

Author:
Pal Dunay
Publication Date:
08-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The current phase and the prospects of U.S. - EU relations can be analysed from different vantage points. The most logical is to deal with the position of the main actors, the United States or the European Union. This paper makes an attempt to analyse the prospects of U.S. - EU relations in light of two major developments: the beginning of the third phase of the economic and monetary union, symbolised by the introduction of the Euro and the verbal (re-)establishment of European defence. The paper makes an attempt to pay attention to the arguments of the United States, though the emphasis is on the European perception of the possible complications of the new phase of evolution that European integration may generate in the relations between the two entities.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Europe, and Asia

400. Beyond Enlargement: NATO's Role in Russia's Relations with the West

Author:
S. Neil MacFarlane
Publication Date:
08-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
In 1996, ex-NATO Defence College fellow Dmitrii Trenin wrote that "in spite of the numerous public declarations of intention by Russia and the United States, Russia and NATO, and Russia and the European Union, so far no reliable foundation for partnership has been laid." Although the remark is four years old, there is little to argue with here. The proposition remains equally valid today. Four years ago, one might have asked: so what? Given the state of affairs in Russia, it didn't matter much anyway. However, things are changing. For the first time in ten years, secessionist wars, submarine disasters and fires in television towers notwithstanding, NATO and the West face a pivotal moment in the effort to normalize the relationship with Russia. The executive has secured reasonable control over the legislature. It is moving towards the reestablishment of central authority vis-à-vis the regions. The government is restoring a disciplined and reasonably orderly approach to foreign and security policy. There is increasingly strong evidence of sustained Russian economic recovery. This is a moment, consequently, of both opportunity and risk in the West's relations with Russia. It is an appropriate time to review where we have been, where we are, where we want to be, and what the role of NATO is in getting us there.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Europe, and Asia