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111. AFRICA AND THE EMERGING POWERS: THE SOUTH AND THE UNHOLY COOPERATION

Author:
Paulo Fagundes Visentini
Publication Date:
06-2014
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:
One of the most remarkable phenomena of Contemporary International Relations is the fact that Africa became object of a new global race, like in the end of the 19th Century. In the beginning of the 21st Century, however, the most dynamic protagonists of such movement are the emerging powers, and not the European metropolises. Such process occurs in a frame of economic and social development in Africa, besides a diplomatic protagonism, which represented an unexpected feature for many. Africa, in marks of globalization and the end of the Cold War, experienced a second "lost decade", with bloody internationalized civil wars, epidemics (HIV/AIDS, cholera and the Ebola virus, among others) and economic marginalization.
Topic:
International Relations and Cold War
Political Geography:
Africa, Russia, Europe, Canada, and India

112. Beyond good and evil: Ethics in a world of complexity

Author:
David Chandler
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article seeks to analyse the shift away from the moral certainties of the Cold War epoch and of humanitarian interventions in the 1990s, to suggest that 'evil' plays a very different role in politics and international relations today. In current constructions of the world – as much more global, complex and non-linear – the past certainties of liberal internationalism appear to be a symptom of problematic moral hubris. Rather than the transcendental moral certainties of good and evil, globalization and complexity seem to suggest a more immanent perspective of emergent causality, eliciting a reflexive ethics of continual work on 'good' public modes of being. In which case, 'evil' is no longer considered to be an exception but becomes normalized as an ethical learning resource. The 2011 case of the mass killings by Norwegian Anders Breivik will be highlighted as an example of this process. This article suggests that this 'democratization' of evil is problematic in articulating evil as a revealed or emergent truth in the world that requires social and personal self-reflexivity, thereby suborning moral choice to onto-ethical necessity.
Topic:
International Relations and Cold War

113. Repairing NATO's motors

Author:
Mark Webber, Ellen Hallams, and Martin A. Smith
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
When NATO heads of state and government convene in Newport, Wales, in September 2014, it will be their first meeting in the UK since the London summit of July 1990. A quarter of a century ago, NATO was reborn. The London Declaration on a Transformed Alliance was NATO's keynote statement of renewed purpose, issued in 1990 as the Cold War was drawing to a close. In it we find the beginnings of the tasks which would come to define the alliance in the post- Cold War period, along with an appreciation of a fundamentally altered strategic landscape. Europe had 'entered a new, promising era', one in which it was thought the continent's tragic cycle of war and peace might well be over. The 2014 summit communiqué is unlikely to reflect such optimism, but what it surely needs to do is to recapture the spirit of enterprise that NATO has on occasion been able to articulate in demanding times.
Topic:
NATO and Cold War
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Europe, and London

114. The UN and the African Union in Mali and beyond: a shotgun wedding?

Author:
Thomas G. Weiss and Martin Welz
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
After the initial post-Cold War euphoria about the potential for the United Nations (UN) to maintain international peace and security, as imagined in its Charter, from the 1990s onwards subcontracting from the world organization to regional organizations has become essentially the standard operating procedure for major military peace operations. While UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali was bullish in his 1992 An agenda for peace, the UN has by and large withdrawn from the peace enforcement business following debacles in Somalia and Rwanda—as Boutros-Ghali's 1995 Supplement to 'An agenda for peace' and the 2000 Brahimi Report recommended.
Topic:
Security and Cold War
Political Geography:
United Nations, Rwanda, and Somalia

115. Crafting the Nuclear Regime Complex (1950–1975): Dynamics of Harmonization of Opaque Treaty Rules

Author:
Gregoire Mallard
Publication Date:
05-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
In recent years, international lawyers have increasingly debated the normative consequences of the 'fragmentation' of international law. More rarely have they studied empirically how tensions between overlapping systems of rules emerge, how conflicts are harmonized, and with what effects. This article explains such dynamics in the case of the nuclear non-proliferation regime (NPR) complex. Based on original archival fieldwork conducted in the private papers of American and European diplomats in the early Cold War, it shows how Western states solved the tensions that existed between contradictory commitments contracted in the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) Treaty and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1968 (NPT). To lessen the tensions between regional and global orders, the Euratom control rules were used as a source of inspiration for the new rules used to monitor compliance with the NPT at the global level. In retrospect, this outcome was puzzling, as the Euratom Treaty was not originally concerned with non-proliferation issues. That the knowledge of the original intentions behind Euratom was lost to the policymakers who negotiated the NPT thus had grave consequences in the future. This case shows the importance of studying the concrete knowledge of international legal rules that gets transmitted across generations of policymakers in order to understand how regime complexity evolves.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Germany

116. Debt Sanctions Can Help Ukraine and Fill a Gap in the International Financial System

Author:
Anna Gelpern
Publication Date:
08-2014
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
The escalating crisis in Ukraine has prompted the United States and Europe to impose the toughest economic sanctions against Russia since the end of the Cold War. Continued instability and military conflict in eastern Ukraine are straining Ukrainian finances. Despite a generous international support package, the government faces shrinking revenues, rising costs, and a spike in foreign debt payments over the next two years.
Topic:
Cold War, Debt, and Economics
Political Geography:
Russia, Ukraine, and Asia

117. From the Margins to the Mainstream: Toward an Integrated Multilateral Response to Organized Crime

Author:
Walter Kemp and Mark Shaw
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
Since the end of the Cold War, organized crime has moved from being a marginal problem in a few cities and regions to being a mainstream threat to national stability and international peace and security. While the threat has become transnational, the multilateral response has been slow, disjointed, and reactive. Broad structural changes are needed to deal more effectively with illicit trafficking and other activities of organized criminal groups. This new report—the third in a trilogy of publications by the "Peace without Crime" project of the International Peace Institute (IPI)—calls for a more integrated multilateral response to organized crime. It highlights the impact of organized crime, provides an overview of international efforts made to tackle the problem, and suggests steps toward a more effective response.
Topic:
Cold War, Crime, International Cooperation, and Governance

118. Rethinking Peacebuilding: Transforming the UN Approach

Author:
Michael von der Schulenburg
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
Since the end of the Cold War, the UN has found itself intervening directly within its member states to help them end intrastate conflicts and rebuild their war-torn countries. Peacekeeping missions that were originally designed to keep opposing national armies apart and that had the consent of the host state are now expected to secure a much more comprehensive peace, intervene much more deeply in states' internal affairs—with tenuous legitimacy—and resolve active conflicts where there is no "peace" to keep.
Topic:
Cold War, Peace Studies, War, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
United Nations

119. The impact of regional dynamics on US policy toward regional security arrangements in East Asia

Author:
Galia Press-Barnathan
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
This paper examines American policy regarding regional security arrangements (RSAs) in Asia. It argues that it is American perceptions of regional interest in such RSAs and of the compatibility of the goals of regional partners with those of the United States, which eventually shape American policy. After discussing the potential value and cost of RSAs, it suggests that actual policy choices are shaped largely as a reaction to regional states' motivations and policies. Since in Asia, there was limited functional pooling effect to be gained from RSAs, changes in American policies reflected much more a reaction to changes in regional interest in such arrangements. This interaction is demonstrated through a review of post-Cold War developments regarding US RSA policy, distinguishing between the early years of transition to unipolarity and the erosion of unipolarity since the late 1990s. These are also compared to earlier American policy regarding RSAs during the Cold War.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States, America, East Asia, and Asia

120. The Risks of Future Defence Capability Development

Author:
Andrzej Paczkowski
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Obrana a strategie (Defence & Strategy)
Institution:
University of Defence
Abstract:
In the post-Cold War era the main purpose behind developing defence capabilities in NATO countries has been to achieve a technological advantage over the potential enemy. While it is reasonable in its own right, the complexity and the cost of newly developed military equipment are becoming an issue at both strategic and operational levels. Taking into account all the potential threats in the near future, I will argue that this struggle for ultimate technological superiority might actually decrease the overall effectiveness of the modern armed forces. To analyse this notion, I will describe and assess the current trends in developing armament and, based on the outcome, try to predict the long term effects.
Topic:
NATO, Cold War, and Development