This paper is designed to elucidate structural geopolitics in Europe. This entails mapping the main structural developments and processes in contemporary Europe in the sphere of spatially and geographically coloured politics, i.e. geopolitics.
In a recent article, Michael Mandelbaum depicted Middle Eastern states as the most combative members of the international community. He painted the picture of a region in which “traditional motives for war – gold and God – are still alive” (Mandelbaum 1999). In line with this rather stereotypical perspective, the Middle East is often viewed as a zone of conflict, in which competition for scarce resources (“gold”) inevitably leads to violent encounters between actors that are guided by irrational ideas (“God”). The long and bloody history of the Palestine conflict has contributed a lot to coroberating this image of a region in which violence seems to be endemic. In terminating the so-called Middle East Peace Process, the current “Al-Aqsa Intifada” marks another violent step in this conflict that has frequently escalated to warlike proportions in the form of popular unrest, communal riots, anti-colonial insurgencies, guerilla and terror attacks, as well as civil and inter-state wars. Yet behind these waves of violence and counter-violence, we can easily discern patterns of a kind of nationalist conflict with which European history is far more familiar than the stereotype of Middle Eastern irrationality admits. Despite the academic obsession with proclaiming the “end of territoriality” and the “decline of the nation-state”, the Palestine conflict represents a painful but vivid remnant of those national conflicts that politically characterized the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Europe.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution and International Organization
European unity has come a long way. As early as 1946 – under the impression of the cataclysm of World War II – statesmen like Winston Churchill dreamed of a better Europe. “We must build a kind of United States of Europe”, Churchill said.
On Saturday, 15 December 2001, over 30 people gathered in Sarajevo to discuss the policy development and challenges of implementation related to Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace (GFAP). The participants came from a broad range of relevant backgrounds, including the museum, culture, preservation, history, archaeology, architecture, civil society, and academic, governmental, and diplomatic fields. While full representation of the relevant government officials from the Federation of BiH (FbiH), Republika Srpska (RS), and Brcko District was expected, on the day before the workshop the representatives from the RS cancelled, and the representatives from Brcko failed to appear the day of the meeting.
Topic:
Civil Society, International Law, and Regional Cooperation
The ECMI Civil Society Project in Bosnia and Herzegovina aims to assist local actors in assuming responsibility for democratic governance in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They are being involved, with the assistance of international experts, in a process of reviewing existing policy on practical issues of concern to all communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and of developing specific policy recommendations to further governance and civil society development within the framework set out by the Dayton Peace Accords (DPA).
Topic:
Civil Society, Peace Studies, and Regional Cooperation
The Standing Technical Working Group was established in March 2001 to address important issues of public policy in Kosovo/a at a technical level. It is composed of experts from Kosovo/a NGOs, from the parties and other civil society representatives. Its membership is fully interethnic and it prides itself on being able to conduct substantive debates about Kosovo/a in an interethnic way. In addition to reviewing technical aspects of policy, the group also formulates proposals and critical questions in relation to them. It then seeks to engage the international and Kosovo/a authorities on these issues. As the 5th and 6th session of the group were devoted to one common theme, it was found convenient to present the proceedings in one report.
The ECMI project “Montenegro Negotiation and Capacity Building” was launched with the aim to establish a Track II informal negotiation process providing a forum for interethnic dialogue between the Serbian and Montenegrin communities, which includes minority communities from the Sandzak border region. Through a series of workshops, the project aims to help promote dialogue, identify issues of common concern and assist in delivering concrete benefits as well as building confidence between the communities involved. By focusing the debate on the concrete needs of these communities, the project seeks to facilitate thinking about future interethnic relations in a less charged atmosphere, irrespective of the deeper political questions on the future constitutional arrangements of the two republics.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, and Regional Cooperation
After a preliminary sketch of the overall aims of the project and the objective of the weekend's deliberations, the fourth meeting of the STWG was formally declared open. The first session was chaired by Dr Gylnaze Syla, who had also chaired an earlier plenary meeting of the Group and convened the Steering Committees on Health. The first session sought to re-examine questions pertaining to civil registration in Kosovo/a and, specifically, to address issue areas that had been highlighted by the Group in its constitutive session in March (identity documentation; registration of births, deaths and marriages; and vehicle registration).
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Education, and Government
This paper compares approaches towards food safety regulation in Europe and the United States. It focuses on mad cow disease and examines how the British Government and the European Union handled the first big crisis in the nineties, juxtaposed to the American response. This worst public health disaster in Europe has led to new agencies and policies. However, these institutional changes do not abolish fragmentation, but extend the existing landscape regulatory bodies. The paper emphasizes that fragmentation-as the American case shows despite its shortcomings-prevents science from being captured by the state, allows interest groups broader access and ensures a distinct pattern of checks and balances.
Macedonian and Albanian political leaders signed a political agreement – hailed by its Western midwives as a peace agreement – on 13 August 2001. NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson and the European Union's High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, flew to Skopje to attend the signing ceremony. But the strange context of the signing showed just how implausible it is that, without further extraordinary efforts, the agreement will actually provide a workable way to keep multiethnic Macedonia out of civil war. Details of the agreement had been hammered out by 8 August in Ohrid, a resort town chosen for the negotiations because it was some distance away from the latest fighting. Signature was delayed five days, however, while Macedonian government troops and ethnic Albanian rebels engaged in the deadliest series yet of tit-for-tat retaliations. Terms of the agreement were withheld from the public lest they provoke violent responses from hardliners on both sides. The ceremony, when it finally occurred, was carried out almost furtively, in a small room of the President's residence, without live television.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Politics, and Treaties and Agreements