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2. Book Talk. Café Europa Revisited: How to Survive Post-Communism by Slavenka Drakulic
- Publication Date:
- 04-2022
- Content Type:
- Video
- Institution:
- The Harriman Institute
- Abstract:
- Please join the East Central European Center at the Harriman Institute for a book talk with Slavenka Drakulic, author of Café Europa Revisited: How to Survive Post-Communism (Penguin Books, 2021), an evocative and timely collection of essays that paints a portrait of Eastern Europe thirty years after the end of communism. This event is part of the Collective Memory and Democratic Backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe series organized by Harriman Institute Postdoctoral Fellow Čarna Pištan, and will be introduced by Aleksandar Bošković co-director of the East Central European Center.
- Topic:
- Communism, State Building, Post Cold War, Post-Soviet Space, and Anti-Communism
- Political Geography:
- Europe
3. Central European Security: History and Geography Matter
- Author:
- Marcin Zaborowski
- Publication Date:
- 02-2021
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- NATO Defense College
- Abstract:
- The post-Cold War enlargements have changed the Alliance, its geopolitics and the definition of its purpose, which is no longer limited to deterring against threats to Allies’ territory. Enlarge- ments have also redefined the security and defence policies of the new member states, by transforming their armed forces, civil military relationships and im- pacting their defence industries. The states that joined NATO since 1989 are usually categorized as Central Europe or Central and East- ern Europe. Within this Central European realm of new member states, one can distinguish between the North-East, the Centre, the South-East, and the West- ern Balkans. All states in these groupings were com- munist prior to the end of the Cold War. Today, with the Cold War fast becoming a faded memory, Central Europeans tend to define their security needs with in- creasing divergence, with major repercussions on their defence policies, in spite of their belonging to the same Alliance. This Policy Brief maps out Central Europe by identifying groups of states in the region and looking at defence policy divergences. It focuses on a number of indicators, such as defence spending, acquisition of defence equipment and attitudes towards hosting for- eign NATO troops on their soil.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, NATO, Regional Cooperation, Military Strategy, and Post Cold War
- Political Geography:
- Europe, North Atlantic, and North America
4. Grand Illusions: The Impact of Misperceptions About Russia on U.S. Policy
- Author:
- Eugene Rumer and Richard Sokolsky
- Publication Date:
- 06-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- A critical examination of U.S. policy misfires in dealing with Russia and its intentions and capabilities over the past several decades is long overdue. Three factors largely account for this problem. All of them continue to affect contemporary policymakers’ approach to a deeply troubled relationship with Moscow. By unpacking the analytical assumptions that underlie these misconceptions, President Joe Biden’s administration and other important policy players will be better equipped to ensure that U.S. policy going forward is grounded in the most realistic understanding of the challenge that Russia poses and the right kinds of tools that the United States should use to contend with it. The first factor is the lingering euphoria of the post–Cold War period. For many Western observers, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the implosion of Russian power demonstrated the permanent superiority of the United States. The perception that Russia’s decline was so deep and irreversible that it would no longer be able to resist Western initiatives made it difficult to accept Moscow’s pushback against Western policies. This was a particular problem when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) pursued several rounds of enlargement in the 1990s and early 2000s under U.S. leadership. U.S. leaders ignored Russia’s objections and underestimated the lengths to which Russian counterparts were prepared to go to secure the homeland against perceived threats. Second, American policymakers and experts have long paid too little attention to the drivers of Russia’s external behavior. Russian threat perceptions are part of an inheritance heavily shaped by geography and a history of troubled relations with other major European powers. They are compounded by the trauma of the loss of its empire, the lingering ideology of greatness, and a sense of entitlement based on its sacrifice in World War II. President Vladimir Putin stokes all of them for domestic political gain. Third, U.S. policymakers have not fully internalized the lessons of the two biggest crises of the Cold War—the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the Euromissile crisis of the early 1980s. In both cases, the Soviet Union went to great lengths to counter what its leaders perceived was a unilateral U.S. threat to the Soviet homeland that could not be tolerated. In 1962 they almost triggered a nuclear war. In 1987, they agreed to eliminate an entire class of intermediate-range nuclear weapons to secure the homeland from U.S. missiles. In both situations, U.S. missiles deployed in Europe would deny the Kremlin the advantage of strategic depth and decision time in a crisis. The lessons of those crises were ignored as anachronisms when NATO embarked on its eastward expansion on the assumption that it would no longer need to worry about, let alone maintain the necessary capabilities for the territorial defense mission. After all, Russia was permanently weakened. When Russia proved otherwise, the alliance was caught by surprise. In another surprise for the United States and its allies, Russian foreign policy has become increasingly assertive, adversarial, and ambitious over the past decade. In the post-Soviet space, the Middle East, Latin America, and parts of Africa, Russia has deployed a diverse tool kit rich in hard, soft, and gray zone power instruments to assert itself as a global power. Russian foreign policy agility and even daring have repeatedly caught the West by surprise and sparked fears of its return as a major threat to Western interests. In reality, Russian gains and tools used to accomplish Moscow’s objectives have not been all that impressive. But Russia has made up for it by capitalizing on mistakes made by the United States and its allies or moving into power vacuums left by them. Still, Russian muscle-flexing and agility in deploying its tool kit, certain to be enriched as new and even more disruptive technologies become available, will remain a top-tier challenge for the president and his senior national security aides. Russia will also remain a serious national security concern for the United States because of its nuclear arsenal and conventional and cyber capabilities—and because of the U.S. commitment to NATO, which is locked in a tense standoff with Russia, in close proximity to its heartland, for the foreseeable future. Getting Russia right—assessing its capabilities and intentions, the long-term drivers of its policy and threat perceptions, as well as its accomplishments—is essential because the alternative of misreading them is a recipe for wasted resources, distorted national priorities, and increased risk of confrontation. In responding to this challenge, it is important to set priorities and differentiate between primary and secondary interests. Europe is the principal theater of the East-West confrontation where Russian actions threaten Western security. Beyond Europe, Russia’s gains have been considerably less than often portrayed and pose a less serious challenge to U.S. interests. The continued tendency to dismiss Russia as a “has been” or declining power whose bark will always be worse than its bite can lead to the United States overextending itself, making unrealistic commitments, and risking a dangerous escalation with the one country that is still its nuclear peer competitor. The push to expand NATO without taking into account the possibility of Russia reemerging as a major military power was an example of such thinking, which is to be avoided in the future. At the same time, the scope and scale of the threat that Russia’s global activism poses to U.S. interests will depend largely on how Washington defines those interests in regions where Russia has expanded its footprint over the past decade. Absent a sober assessment of Russia’s gains and tools for power projection, the United States will position itself to needlessly chase after the specter of Russian expansionism in distant corners of the world where major U.S. interests are not at stake.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, NATO, Power Politics, Geopolitics, Post Cold War, and Expansion
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Eurasia, North America, and United States of America
5. Security Studies in International Relations: Evolution, Approaches and Contemporary Challenges
- Author:
- Ali Muhammad and Sugeng Riyanto
- Publication Date:
- 07-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- AUSTRAL: Brazilian Journal of Strategy International Relations
- Institution:
- Postgraduate Program in International Strategic Studies, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
- Abstract:
- This article examines the growth and evolution of security studies since its emergence to the end the Cold War. Security studies as a subfield in international relations was dominated by realist approach during the Cold War. However, by the of the cold war, the concept of security was debated between the widener–deepener. Not only about the concept, but variety of theoretical approaches also emerged to challenge the traditional realist/liberal approach, such as, constructivism, critical theory, feminism, human security and postcolonialism. There were crucial differences in how these competing approaches constituted referent objects, the sectors to which security is applicable, and epistemological position as well.
- Topic:
- Security, Political Theory, Intellectual History, and Post Cold War
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
6. Russian Strategic Culture after the Cold War: The Primacy of Conventional Force
- Author:
- Amund Osflaten
- Publication Date:
- 02-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- This article examines the Russian strategic culture after the Cold War. That is, what perspective on the use of military force is guiding the Russian strategic community? It compares Russian conflict behavior in the 1999 Second Chechen War, the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, and the 2014 Russian Invasion of Crimea to find systematic components of Russian strategic culture. Consequently, this analysis systematically describes the development of Russian conflict behavior after the Cold War and elucidate the underlying and persistent Russian strategic culture. The analysis points to a continuing emphasis on conventional forces. Moreover, the employment of conventional force is enabled by peacetime preparations, and then deception and secrecy in the initial period of the conflict.
- Topic:
- Military Strategy, Military Affairs, Post Cold War, and Strategic Planning
- Political Geography:
- Russia and Europe
7. Toward a More Proliferated World? The Geopolitical Forces that Will Shape the Spread of Nuclear Weapons
- Author:
- Eric M. Brewer, Ilan Goldenberg, Joseph Rodgers, Maxwell Simon, and Kaleigh Thomas
- Publication Date:
- 09-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
- Abstract:
- The United States and the international community have been relatively successful at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, but there are new reasons to question whether this track record will last into the future. Working with partners, the United States has steadily built a framework of disincentives and barriers to prevent proliferation. These include: 1) international treaties and agreements that have erected legal, political, and normative barriers to the bomb; 2) U.S. security commitments to allies that dampen their own perceived need for nuclear weapons; and, 3) a set of tough penalties (e.g., sanctions) for those who get caught trying to build the bomb. In other words, the barriers to entry to the nuclear club are high, and those countries that want the ultimate weapon need to be willing to accept significant risks. This helps explain why, although many countries have explored or pursued nuclear weapons, only nine states have them today. But several trends are eroding the foundation on which this formidable set of barriers rests. These trends are rooted in, and being shaped by, changes to the nature and structure of the international system: namely, the decline of U.S. influence and its gradual withdrawal from the international order that it helped create and lead for more than 70 years, and the concurrent rise of a more competitive security environment, particularly among great powers. These trends (detailed below) will have three broad implications for proliferation and U.S. policy. First, they stand to increase pressures on countries to seek nuclear weapons or related capabilities as a hedge. Second, they will almost certainly challenge the U.S. ability to effectively wield the traditional “carrots and sticks” of nonproliferation and counterproliferation policy and dilute the effectiveness of those tools. Finally, they could increasingly pit U.S. nonproliferation goals against other policy objectives, forcing harder tradeoffs.
- Topic:
- Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Geopolitics, Nonproliferation, and Post Cold War
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus and United States of America
8. Roundtable on Timothy J. Lynch, In the Shadow of the Cold War: American Foreign Policy from George Bush Sr. to Donald Trump
- Author:
- Jeffrey A. Engel, R. Joseph Parrott, Heather Marie Stur, Steven J. Brady, and Timothy Lynch
- Publication Date:
- 09-2020
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR)
- Abstract:
- Roundtable on Timothy J. Lynch, In the Shadow of the Cold War: American Foreign Policy from George Bush Sr. to Donald Trump
- Topic:
- International Relations, Foreign Policy, American Presidency, Post Cold War, and Diplomatic History
- Political Geography:
- United States and Global Focus
9. The Logic of Geopolitics in American-Russian Relations
- Author:
- Allen C. Lynch
- Publication Date:
- 01-2020
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Warsaw East European Review (WEER)
- Institution:
- Centre for East European Studies, University of Warsaw
- Abstract:
- One of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s first requests as President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor in 1977 was to ask the Pentagon for its plans – including targets – for nuclear war against “Russia”. Brzezinski was outraged when he was presented with the plan for nuclear war against the Soviet Union. He could not believe that the U.S. military had no plans to spe- cifically weaken the Russian core of the Soviet empire. For the Pentagon planners, Russia and the Soviet Union were one and the same.1 I begin with this anecdote because it reflects well an enduring geopolitical logic to American-Russian relations: American policy toward Russia, whether it be in the Tsarist, Soviet, or post-Soviet period, has not been based on opposing a strong Russian state per se. (That state married to communist ideology was something else altogether.) In the after- math of the Russian Civil War, for instance, the United States delayed recognition of Baltic independence until 1922, two years after Soviet Russia had recognized the independence of Estonia in the Treaty of Tartu, on the grounds that Polish and Finnish independence apart nothing should be done to call into question the territorial continuity of the Russian Em- pire.2 Indeed, American officials seldom viewed the Soviet Union as an empire, as the Pen- tagon war plans just cited illustrate. Historically, the logic of geopolitics i.e., the influence of organization in space on international political relationships has often tended to frame American-Russian relations in terms of complementarities of interest. Of course, geopolitics is not the only logic in AmericanRussian relations; ideology, domestic politics, as well as vested institutional interests all play their role in varying degrees under varying circum- stances. But historically, insofar as geopolitical factors have prevailed, American-Russian relations have generally been harmonious, if also remote and indirect in nature. (By indirect I mean that each sees the other mainly in terms of other powers or processes, e.g., the state of the balance of power in Europe and/or Northeast Asia.) Let us recall that Russia, whether it be under Imperial, Soviet, or post-Soviet auspices, is an essentially continental Eurasian power. Its primary state interest for centuries has been to build and consolidate a trans-continental, multi-national and imperial state while also man- aging international power politics with a series of powerful adversaries throughout Asia and Europe. Above all, Russia sought to ensure that no powerful coalition of external (and in Eu- rope technologically superior) powers could unite to challenge the Russian Empire’s territorial or political integrity. Russian diplomats and rulers thus learned to play the European balance of power with considerable finesse (e.g., the Treaty of Nystadt, 1721, under Peter the Great; the Congress of Vienna, 1815, under Alexander I; the Treaty of Rapallo between Soviet Russia and Weimar Germany, 1922; the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, 1939; the Grand Alliance with the United States and Great Britain, 1941–45; and the Helsinki Final Act, 1975, to name just a few instances). As with Great Britain, maintaining a favorable European balance of power has been central to Russian statecraft.3 The United States, by contrast, is functionally an insular power (albeit on a continental scale) with respect to the rest of the world, surrounded as it is by two great oceans and militarily weak and isolated neighbors (i.e., Canada and Mexico). America’s primary foreign policy concern throughout most of its history has thus been, like Russia’s, to prevent the emergence of a hostile European hegemon that could threaten the country’s expansion in North America and its own hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. Once the United States had stabilized its independence from Britain after the War of 1812, U.S. and British geopo- litical interests tended to coincide.4 In this context, American and Russian interests have more often been complementary than antagonistic. It has been primarily the intrusion of ideological elements, reflecting for example Americans’ global democratic aspirations or the Soviet Union’s ultimate objec- tive of the triumph of communism worldwide, that have rendered the bilateral relationship intransigent and even dangerous.5
- Topic:
- International Relations, Cold War, Diplomacy, Bilateral Relations, Hegemony, Post Cold War, and Rivalry
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, Soviet Union, North America, and United States of America
10. The Evolution of Inequality of Opportunity in Germany: A Machine Learning Approach
- Author:
- Paolo Brunori and Guido Neidhofer
- Publication Date:
- 03-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
- Abstract:
- We show that measures of inequality of opportunity (IOP) fully consistent with Roemer (1998)’s IOP theory can be straightforwardly estimated by adopting a machine learning approach, and apply our novel method to analyse the development of IOP in Germany during the last three decades. Hereby, we take advantage of information contained in 25 waves of the Socio-Economic Panel. Our analysis shows that in Germany IOP declined immediately after reunification, increased in the first decade of the century, and slightly declined again after 2010. Over the entire period, at the top of the distribution we always find individuals that resided in West-Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall, whose fathers had a high occupational position, and whose mothers had a high educational degree. East-German residents in 1989, with low educated parents, persistently qualify at the bottom.
- Topic:
- Education, Inequality, Post Cold War, and Reunification
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Germany
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