By applying an international political sociology to NATO’s military intervention over Libya, this paper proposes an analysis of securitization processes developed into particular military technologies and representations of the use of violence in the context of international military interventions. Our aim is to study securitization logics contained in the use of highly sophisticated military technologies allowing to create a particular sense of (in)security fixed on the referential of the use of violence. We try to demonstrate the different ways through which the use of violence is represented as more or less securing by an analysis of a practical and discursive construction of an opposition between NATO’s instrumental-rational use of violence and Gaddafi’s one, portrayed as irrational and indiscriminate.
Topic:
Security, NATO, Military Intervention, Conflict, and Violence
Political Geography:
Europe, Libya, North Africa, and United States of America
Social agents in charge of the coordination of local security committees dedicated to delinquency and its prevention seem to integrate submissvely the tools offered by the “new criminology” (such as local observatories, statistics, mapping, population profiling). In reality, such tools are mobilised for various reasons that are not only geared towards efficiency. The agents in charge not only use quantitative techniques because they believe in their legitimacy. They also use them as a way to consolidate the legitimacy of their roles. These roles are indeed quite new in the security landscape in France, and mobilising such criminological tools enable the agents to claim a particular form of expertise.
Unidad de investigación sobre seguridad y cooperación (UNISCI)
Abstract:
La estrategia de seguridad nacional de 2013 establece una clara continuidad respecto a la estrategia de 2011 respecto al
tratamiento de la alianza y las relaciones con EEUU, aspecto positivo que demuestra un acuerdo en una política de Estado
fundamental para España. Sin embargo, tiende a ser más un documento de consenso político y declarativo/informativo, que
una estrategia de seguridad con mayor calado y profundidad. En este sentido, el análisis y la construcción de la estrategia
denota discutibles concepciones y percepciones sobre la estructura del sistema internacional y la conducta de las grandes
potencias, que pueden crear narrativas, estrategias y políticas peligrosas en una situación de reducción de capacidades que
pueden llevar a un dilema de seguridad. En este sentido, las alianzas y políticas estratégicas de España pueden moverse entre
su reforzamiento (chain gangs) o su abandono (buckpassing), incluyendo planificaciones estratégicas más realistas. Una
revisión del Convenio de Cooperación para la Defensa dentro del marco de profundización de la Declaración Conjunta de
2001 sería una opción estratégica de primer orden para la política de seguridad de España.
Topic:
Security, Bilateral Relations, Alliance, and Strategic Stability
Political Geography:
Europe, Spain, North America, and United States of America
Unidad de investigación sobre seguridad y cooperación (UNISCI)
Abstract:
Las operaciones de gestión de crisis realizadas desde el fin de la Guerra Fría han puesto de manifiesto la
necesidad de armonizar la cooperación multinacional para incrementar la coherencia de la operación. Éste es el
principio fundamental del Enfoque Integral, definido como la concertación de las estrategias y las acciones de
los actores participantes en la gestión de crisis a todos los niveles y planos de la misma. Desde 2008, la Unión
Europea está definiendo su propio modelo para mejorar su unidad de acción en materia de gestión de crisis,
ampliar su cooperación práctica con el resto de los actores implicados en la resolución de la misma y apoyar el
desarrollo de capacidades civiles y militares. El trabajo analiza sus antecedentes y estado actual.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Civil Society, Military Affairs, European Union, and Crisis Management
Peter Seeberg & Musa Shteiwi wrote an article on the "European Narratives on the "Arab Spring" – From Democracy to Security".
The article discusses the EU’s reaction to the developments in the MENA-region in the period 2011-14.
Initially relatively optimistic metaphors like ‘the Arab Spring’ or ‘the Democratic Tsunami’ were part of the media-comments from Western leaders, but three years.
later the situation in the region seems to have changed significantly and consequently the narrative in the EU has switched from a predominantly pro-‘Arab Spring’ discourse to a focus on security aspects in a broad sense and, especially concerning the situation in Syria (to some degree also Lebanon and Libya), a focus on counter-terrorism.
The article are concluding remarks by Peter Seeberg and Musa Shteiwi from a workshop on EU-Middle Eastern relations held at the Center for Strategic Studies in Amman in May 2013.
Dr. Musa Shteiwi is the director of the Center for Strategic Studies, University of Jordan.
Peter Seeberg is the director of the Center for Contemporary Middle East Studies in the University of Southern Denmark.
Topic:
Security, European Union, Counter-terrorism, Democracy, and Arab Spring
Political Geography:
Europe, Middle East, Libya, North Africa, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
Consider the artist Michelangelo standing in front of a block of Carrara marble rough-hewn from the quarry. As he later described that moment, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” Sculptors need the patience to recognize that many small steps will be needed to realize their vision. The sculptor needs a strategic sixth sense that can continuously adapt the design to the conditions of the material while testing whether each small incision, however immediately appealing and easily achieved, will end up weakening the final structure. The sculptor needs the confidence to know that the design can be adjusted in response to the inevitable small slips and misjudgments made along the way. Call it the ability to hold the desired ends in mind while being continuously aware of the ways open for achieving them and the means that are at hand. Even the most technically skilled sculptor equipped with the sharpest chisels needs to have a clear sense of the end state – to see at the outset, “the angel in the marble” – that could be the final result of all the labor to come. That is the strategic cast of mind needed for planning modern counter-terrorism.
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
We live in an increasingly wicked world, both in the common understanding of the word (given the growing number of serious security bushfires around the world threatening to join into a larger forest conflagration) and from a systems engineering perspective;1 where interrelationships between concurrent and coincident actors and events necessitate increasingly complex solutions, to even the most seemingly simple crisis, if unintended consequences are not to dominate outcomes.
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
Despite the apparent strength of their case, the community of planners, veterans, think-tankers and civic activists working in external security and humanitarian missions are puzzled and frustrated with the past and present performance of the United States in such missions, and anguished about the future.2 It is not that the United States has not taken action in foreign conflicts, regional instabilities or humanitarian catastrophes. It is not that the response to fragile or failed states has not been a key agenda item in U.S. foreign and security policy throughout the post-Cold War era. Where America as a polity has come short is in failing to recognize, as a permanent national security interest, the need to design and pursue a strategic policy on stabilization and reconstruction. While the concept may be debatable and the capability may be constrained by developments, what those devoted to the cause call for is a policy with a sustainable balance between ends and means and commensurate to the responsibility of U.S. global leadership.
EGMONT - The Royal Institute for International Relations
Abstract:
Asia is a prominent export market for Europe while in the East and South China Seas, tensions continue. Europe has searched for its political role in Asia. This policy brief presents an analysis and argues the role of Europe in enhancing cooperative security in Asia and the Pacific, which would promote stability and peace there.
Topic:
Security, Emerging Markets, International Cooperation, and International Trade and Finance
EGMONT - The Royal Institute for International Relations
Abstract:
At his regular press briefing on 6 May 2013, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, dramatically threw down the gauntlet to Europe's leaders ahead of this December's European Council. Emphasising the need for improved cooperation and coordination between NATO and the EU, he called on Europe's leaders to ensure that, as a result of the first discussion about European security since the financial crisis at the European Council in December, Europe would be both willing and able to act in the interests of transatlantic security.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Defense Policy, and Treaties and Agreements