Colombia's new president, Alvaro Uribe, is confronting a protracted internal war and moving to assert national political authority. Hopes are being pinned on Uribe, the new “law and order” president who took office on August 7, 2002, with an overwhelming mandate to end violence, narcotics, and official corruption.
In late 2001, China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO), a dramatic step that marks not only the end of a 15-year odyssey for Beijing but also the beginning of a new phase in the country's internal development and its relations with the outside world. It may sound odd to suggest that joining the WTO—an organization focused on rules of conduct for trade and commerce—will influence not only China's economy but also its political, military, and social development, as well as its interaction with the United States. Yet China's efforts to play by WTO rules could affect its internal development far more extensively than has been the case with many new member nations.
In 2001, President Vladimir Putin made a strategic choice for Russia's integration with the West. Indicators of this decision include Putin's quest for better relations with the United States and Europe, his stated commitment to Russian membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), his pursuit of a new relationship with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and his almost casual dismissal of the potential major irritants in the relationship with the United States and its allies—U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, the likelihood of Baltic membership in NATO, sizeable U.S. military deployments to Central Asia, and a growing U.S. military presence in Georgia. Putin has unequivocally crossed these once-insurmountable red lines despite opposition from his closest advisers and the unease of the Russian public over the American presence in Russia's backyard.
To operate effectively, transnational terrorists and criminals need ready access to money and the ability to maneuver it quickly and secretly across borders. On a large scale, such money maneuvers can ripple across entire regions, embroiling global markets and threatening vital American economic interests as well as destabilizing other countries politically. The ability to move vast quantities of wealth rapidly and anonymously across the globe—sometimes combining modern-day wire transfers, faxes, and Internet connections with centuriesold practices, such as the hawala, of personal connections and a handshake—gives terrorist and criminal networks a strategic advantage over many states. Yet it also might be their vulnerability.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Economics, and Terrorism
Despite the current stagnation in South-North dialogue, relations between the Koreas have been subject to sudden shifts. In the warm afterglow of the historic June 2000 South-North Summit in Pyongyang, South Korean President Kim Dae Jung's engagement policy appeared to have created a self-sustaining dynamic. Policymakers in Washington and Seoul scrambled to manage the potential diplomatic and security consequences of a rapid breakthrough in bilateral relations driven by presidential summitry.
Americans have become accustomed to the idea of a forward defense of U.S. interests. Accordingly, the Nation has organized, trained, equipped, maintained, and deployed its military forces to deal with threats beyond its shores—an engagement strategy that generally has been met by stationing or deploying over 250,000 U.S. forces at key points around the Eurasian periphery. The strategic construct is evolving to include an element of internal engagement.
Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, the United States has tried to find a framework for understanding this enigmatic country. America defended its commitments to help an ailing Shah in exile but was ill prepared to deal with the crises that raged in and around Iran in the 1980s: U.S. diplomats were held hostage in Tehran for 444 days, militant clerics tried to export revolutionary Islamic governance across the Gulf, and Iraq invaded Iran, ostensibly to stave off a Shiah Islamist tidal wave.
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Iran, Middle East, and Tehran
The idea of a European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI) has been a feature of the transatlantic security dialogue for a decade. The 1991 Maastricht Treaty foresaw an eventual incorporation of the Western European Union (WEU) as the defense arm of the European Union (EU). Endowing the Union with military capability was a logical extension of the commitment to a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) as stipulated in the treaty. Both ideas, promoted by France and Germany, expressed the general desire of member states to play a more active role in securing the peace and stability of postcommunist Europe. Extending the principle of integration into the foreign policy field served two purposes. It was a means to tighten community bonds in the new, unsettled strategic environment by providing reassurance against the renationalization of defense policies. At the same time, it laid the basis for a collective effort to influence continental affairs consonant with the European venture in an orderly transition to democracy and market economies. The perceived need to add a security building block to the project of "constructing Europe" also reflected apprehension about a possible retreat of the United States from a Europe now free of the Soviet military threat. That possibility added further reason for West Europeans to make contingency plans for an uncertain future.
Topic:
Security and NATO
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, France, Soviet Union, and Germany
The attacks of September 11, 2001, have made Americans acutely aware of their vulnerability to terrorism. Now the Nation is focused on improving defensive measures and rooting out and destroying the global infrastructure of terrorism. In response to the terrorist offensive, the Bush administration has engineered an international coalition against terrorism; dedicated substantial new resources to prevent or deter this blight; undertaken military action against blatant practitioners of terrorism; and established a new Office of Homeland Security, under the leadership of former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, to coordinate the Federal response to terrorism.
Topic:
National Security, Terrorism, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
During situations of national emergencies, natural disasters, conflict and war, state institutions have to act quickly and decisively in order to divert dangers. Every state and its society need to have a competent political leadership and government agencies that are able to act efficiently. From a democratic governance point of view, however, it is equally important that the decision-making process and the resulting outcome is both accepted and valued by the people. In other words, it is essential that the processes and outcomes of the state institutions are legitimate within a democracy.