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1. Arctic Security - An Equation with Multiple Unknowns

Author:
Rear Admiral Nils Wang
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
In May 2008, the five Arctic coastal states - the United States, Russia, Canada, Norway and the Kingdom of Denmark, including Greenland and the Faroe Islands - signed the Illulissat Declaration. The declaration established that the 'Arctic Five' will lay claim to the sea territorial rights awarded to them by the 1982. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and that they will settle disputes within the framework of existing international law. This was a very strong message to NGOs and external state actors, arguing that a protective treaty should govern the Arctic, just like the Antarctic.
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Japan, China, Canada, India, Norway, Denmark, United Nations, and Italy

2. Violent Conflicts as an impediment to the Achievement of Millennium Development Goals in Africa.

Author:
Dickson Ogbonnaya Igwe
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are an international commitment to the reduction of poverty and to promoting human development across the planet. The goals are measurable targets attached to a timeframe for making a difference in the lives of billions of people. In September 2000, over 189 member states at the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the MDGs. The goals are also recognition of the fact that 60 years after the end of World War II, the world remains far from achieving the ideals of peace and prosperity inspired by the end of that global conflict. The MDGs provide a strategic framework for developing, implementing and monitoring poverty-eradication programs at national and international levels.
Topic:
Development and War
Political Geography:
Africa and United Nations

3. The Evolving Arctic Operating Environment: Implications for Defence

Author:
Donald A. Neill
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Effective planning for DND/CF activities in the arctic operating environment requires as reliable an understanding as may reasonably be achieved of what that environment is likely to be, and how it is likely to evolve, throughout the planning period in question. This is complicated by the inherently unpredictable nature of climate; as the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has acknowledged, ‚in climate research and modelling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.‛
Topic:
Climate Change and Environment
Political Geography:
United Nations

4. Politics by other means: Canadian "Strategy" and the Italian Campaign, 1943

Author:
Christine Leppard
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
In 1939 Canada entered World War Two with a tiny military and obsolete kit. Four years later, Canada had raised a five division, two corps army that was defending the shores of Dover, although the immediate threat of German invasion had long since passed. Instead of joining the Allied war in North Africa the Canadian army remained, in the words of Army Commander Andrew McNaughton, the “dagger pointed at the heart of Berlin,” ready and waiting to go ashore in North-West Europe whenever the long-awaited invasion finally came. This posture pleased the Canadian public, who well versed in the laurels won by Arthur Currie and the Canadian Corps in the Great War, anticipated a similar role for the entire Canadian army in the liberation of Europe. Plus, Canada's expected role in the main invasion would bolster its esteem among its more powerful allies, Britain and the United States. Although Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King was speaking about Canadian public opinion when he told one of his cabinet minister's that “he laughed best who laughed last,” it surely also applied to Mackenzie King's view of what Canada's post-war role would be: one with a newly minted role for Canada as an independent ally, neither wholly British nor wholly American, standing independent and tall within the British Commonwealth and the United Nations.
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Canada, Germany, and United Nations

5. From Dogs of War to Soldiers of Peace: Evaluating Private Military and Security Companies as a Civilian Protection Force

Author:
Stephen Wittels
Publication Date:
05-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Like many of its member-states, the United Nations (UN) did not have a clear place in the world when the Cold War ended. For forty years, great power rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union had relegated this organization, originally founded upon Wilsonian ideals of collective security, to the task of monitoring ceasefires. When the wall fell, many in the west believed that the UN was poised to realize its potential and could, thus, be relied upon to contain and diffuse conflict in the post-Cold War order. Unfortunately for all parties involved, this proved to be overly optimistic. As missions in Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Rwanda all made manifestly clear, the UN was unprepared to restore order in situations of pervasive violence. By the mid 1990s, the international community was thus faced with a choice: Either it could provide the UN with the legal space and the material resources it needed to impose peace on conflict ridden societies, or a different actor would have to assume this responsibility.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States and United Nations