Search

Begin New Search Topic Defense Policy Publication Year within 25 Years

621. Emerging Security Challenges: A Glue for NATO and Partners?

Author:
Ioanna-Nikoletta Zyga
Publication Date:
11-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
When the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) formed as a defensive military alliance more than six decades ago, one of its fundamental tasks was to deter Soviet aggression against Western Europe. Since the end of the Cold War, the Allies have come to understand that their security depends on their ability to face threats emerging from well beyond the Euro-Atlantic space. NATO has thus broadened its focus from collective defense to security management beyond its borders: its numerous operations in this capacity have included peace support, peacekeeping, disaster relief and counter-piracy missions. These operations have taken place not only in NATO's traditional areas of intervention such as the Balkans, but also as far afield as the Gulf of Aden, the Horn of Africa, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, NATO, International Security, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Africa, Europe, and North Atlantic

622. Radicalization in the U.S. Beyond al Qaeda: Treating the disease of the disconnection

Author:
Clint Watts
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Abstract:
The attacks of September 11, 2001 spawned a decade of al Qaeda inspired radicalization of disaffected Middle Eastern and North African youth and a handful of young Western men. Ten years later, foreign fighters to Afghanistan, Iraq and other jihadi battlefields appear to be declining while in contrast analysts have pointed to an uptick in United States (U.S.) based “homegrown extremism” - terrorism advocated or committed by U.S. residents or citizens.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Islam, Terrorism, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, Middle East, and North Africa

623. The Three Versions of Al Qaeda: A Primer

Author:
Clint Watts
Publication Date:
12-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Abstract:
Al Qaeda today only slightly resembles the al Qaeda of yesteryear. Al Qaeda operatives or "al Qaeda-like" organizations stretch throughout North Africa, across the Middle East and into South Asia. This disparate string of organizations hosts a handful of al Qaeda's original Afghanistan and Pakistan veterans but mostly consist of newcomers inspired by al Qaeda's message -- disenfranchised young men seeking an adventurous fight in the wake of a tumultuous Arab Spring. Al Qaeda, or more appropriately jihadism pursued under al Qaeda's banner, has morphed in several waves over the course of more than two decades.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Defense Policy, Islam, Terrorism, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
Middle East, Canada, and Arabia

624. Get "Smart": Paving the Way To A More Efficient Alliance

Author:
Young Atlanticists
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Diplomatic Courier
Abstract:
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen's concept of Smart Defense, defined as "ensuring greater security, for less money, by working together with more flexibility," will be a hot topic at the NATO Summit in Chicago. The Secretary General has stressed that to successfully maintain its strength amid shrinking defense budgets and economic austerity, NATO "must prioritize... must specialize... and must seek multinational solutions." The European Union, much of its membership overlapping with NATO, has endeavored to accomplish a similar task through pooling and sharing, but concerns over sovereignty have severely limited progress. This policy memo provides several recommendations on how NATO can overcome this roadblock to secure state participation in the Smart Defense initiative. As military cooperation remains a sensitive issue, the success of Smart Defense will depend on how well NATO packages and markets these projects. NATO leadership must prove Smart Defense’s utility and dynamism while demonstrating the financial and strategic benefits to be gained by swift and comprehensive implementation. In order to create attractive projects, NATO will have to focus on four policy areas: 1) rework its structure to facilitate a more cooperative environment, 2) provide mechanisms to ensure efficiency, 3) stimulate and secure connections between like-minded states, and 4) find creative ways to include non-NATO actors in Smart Defense projects. It is through these initiatives that Smart Defense’s prospects for success can be raised; a success which is vital if NATO is to become the more efficient and interoperable alliance that its members need.
Topic:
Defense Policy, NATO, International Cooperation, Military Strategy, and European Union
Political Geography:
Europe, North America, and United States of America

625. The New U.S. Defense Strategic Guidance and Its Implications for South Korean Security

Author:
Young Ho Kim
Publication Date:
02-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
East Asia Institute (EAI)
Abstract:
On January 5, 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama paid a rare visit to the Pentagon and unveiled his guidelines for the Department of Defense to set the goals and priorities of its defense strategy for the next ten years. The resulting eight-page-long guidelines, entitled Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense (hereafter DSG), contain the administration’s assessment of changing global security conditions and propose the roles and shape of the U.S. armed forces for the coming decade. Prepared through “unprecedentedly” close consultations between the President himself and senior leaders in the U.S. defense department and military including both service chiefs and combatant commanders, the DSG defines the present as a historic “inflection point” and envisions the future U.S. military as “smaller and leaner, but agile, flexible, ready and technologically advanced.” Moreover, in accordance with the DSG the U.S. defense budget will be cut by $487 billion and the sizes of the Army and Marine Corps will shrink by 80,000 and 14,000 respectively over the next ten years. While a more detailed picture will be revealed next month with the administration’s FY2013 budget request to Congress, the DSG reflects the Obama administration’s arduous effort to rebalance and redirect its defense priorities and spending under severe fiscal austerity. Because of the unusual timing of its publication and the magnitude of the reduction in defense spending, the DSG has generated controversy and concern domestically in the United States as well as internationally. In the United States, particularly people in the conservative wing of the Republican Party have been prompted to criticize the guidelines for putting the nation’s security in danger, whereas some people on the liberal side have advocated seeking deeper and bolder cuts in defense spending. Internationally, China was understandably the first to respond negatively to the DSG. For example, rebutting the DSG’s portrayal of Beijing’s military policy as lacking transparency as “groundless and untrustworthy,” Liu Weimin, a spokesman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, stressed that Beijing was committed to peaceful development and “defensive” policy. What then are the implications of the DSG for South Korean security? Will there be any changes in U.S. defense policy or posture in the region under the DSG that may affect security conditions in South Korea significantly and, if so, require new measures or scrutiny by the South Korean government or the military? In fact, there have been largely four issues raised by the news media in South Korea. I will examine these four issues, and then discuss more challenging concerns that will require closer attention by South Korean foreign and security policy-makers.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, International Cooperation, and Military Strategy
Political Geography:
China, Asia, South Korea, North Korea, North America, and United States of America

626. Europe deploys towards a civil-military strategy for CSDP

Author:
Sven Biscop (Ed) and Jo Coelmont (Ed)
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EGMONT - The Royal Institute for International Relations
Abstract:
Why does Europe develop the military and civilian capabilities that it does? Why does it undertake the military and civilian operations that it does? And why in other cases does it refrain from action?
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and Arms Control and Proliferation
Political Geography:
Europe

627. Worse, not Better ? Reinvigorating Early Warning for Conflict Prevention in the Post Lisbon European Union

Author:
John Brante, Chiara De Franco, Christoph Meyer, and Florian Otto
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EGMONT - The Royal Institute for International Relations
Abstract:
The number and lethality of conflicts has been declining significantly since the end of the Cold War, but five new armed conflicts still break out each year. While costly peace-making, stabilisation and reconstruction efforts have helped to end conflicts, no comparative efforts have gone into preventing them from occurring in the first place. The international community appears stuck in the never-ending travails of managing crises, finding it difficult to act early to prevent new conflicts from escalating. Encouraging signs that this is changing include the United Nations (UN) promotion of the preventive arm of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and the United States' efforts to improve its capacity to prevent conflicts and mass atrocities emerging from the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. Similarly, since the launch of the Gothenburg programme in 2001, the European Union (EU) has embraced the case for conflict prevention in policy documents as well as in the Lisbon Treaty itself, making it a hallmark of its approach to international security and conflict in contrast to conventional foreign policy. Yet, it has fallen significantly short in translating these aspirations into institutional practice and success on the ground. It suffers from the 'missing middle' syndrome between long-term structural prevention through instruments such as conditionality for EU accession and development policy, and short-term responses to erupting crisis through military and civilian missions.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Diplomacy, Peace Studies, War, Armed Struggle, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
Europe and United Nations

628. Death of an Institution. The end for Western European Union, a future for European defence?

Author:
Graham Messervy-Whiting and Alyson J. K. Bailes
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EGMONT - The Royal Institute for International Relations
Abstract:
On 31 March 2010 the ten Member States of Western European Union (WEU) announced that the last organs, staffs and activities of that institution would be laid to rest by 30 June 2011. Having resiled from the Modified Brussels Treaty (MBT) of 1954 which created WEU as a successor to the Western Union of 1948, these nations are now working to dispose of the staff, premises and archives at WEU's Brussels offices and its Parliamentary Assembly in Paris. Little public interest has been shown in these moves, perhaps because WEU's operational and political work had already been taken over by the European Union (EU), in the frame of its new European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), at the end of 1999.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Regional Cooperation, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
Europe

629. Australia and Japan: Allies in Partnership

Author:
Malcolm Cook and Thomas S. Wilkins
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
The post-Cold War era in the Asia-Pacific has not witnessed the triumph of low over high politics. Rather, it has seen the simultaneous intensification of both economic integration and security cooperation and competition. This is true both at the level of the region, and for China and most other countries in the region.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Cold War, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Asia, and Australia

630. Decision-Making in Security and Defence Policy. Towards Supranational Intergovernmentalism?

Author:
Jolyon Howorth
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG)
Abstract:
For scholars and practitioners of European politics alike, the distinction between supranationalism and intergovernmentalism has always been fundamental. This distinction has underpinned the various schools of European integration theory, just as it has remained crucial for European governments keen to demonstrate that the member states remain in charge of key policy areas. Nowhere is this considered to be more central than in the area of foreign and security policy, which has consciously been set within the rigid intergovernmental framework of Pillar Two of the Maastricht Treaty and, under the Lisbon Treaty, remains subject to the unanimity rule. And yet, scholarship on the major decision-making agencies of the foreign and security policy of the EU suggests that the distinction is not only blurred but increasingly meaningless. This paper demonstrates that, in virtually every case, decisions are shaped and even taken by small groups of relatively well-socialized officials in the key committees acting in a mode which is as close to supranational as it is to intergovernmental. The political control of foreign and security policy, which is considered sacrosanct by member state governments, is only rarely exercised by politicians at the level of the European Council or Council of Ministers.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Regional Cooperation, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
Europe