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521. Russia's Quest for Strategic Identity

Author:
Stanislav Secrieru
Publication Date:
11-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
Since the end of the Cold War, post-Soviet Russia has experienced a profound crisis of strategic identity. Previously a self- sufficient and autonomous international actor, post-Soviet Russia not only had to rethink its domestic political and economic organizational model in depth, but also had to “confront the most significant transformation of its surrounding strategic environment in the past five centuries – the greatest change since the rise of Muscovy.” Russia was challenged not only by the losses of strategically pivotal terrestrial and maritime strongholds, and the rise of powerful actors in its immediate vicinity, but also faced profound changes in the entire international political framework with blurred prospects for the future world order.
Topic:
International Relations, NATO, and Development
Political Geography:
Russia and Soviet Union

522. Defense Reform and the Russian Navy

Author:
Yuri Krupnov
Publication Date:
10-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
As recently as 1991 Russia maintained one of the world's largest military establishments. Moscow's powerful armed forces included one of the largest nuclear weapons arsenals. Owing to the profound political, economic and geostrategic transformation that Russia has experienced since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian armed forces have gone through a terrible crisis. The consequences of this crisis persist today. The Russian armed forces must, therefore, continue implementing reforms to deal with the new internal situation and the international security environment.
Topic:
International Relations, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, Soviet Union, and Moscow

523. A Roadmap for Ukraine's Integration into Transatlantic Structures

Author:
Oksana Kozlovska
Publication Date:
06-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
Ukraine's return to Europe, or in other words the process of its becoming a member of key international organizations – namely the EU and NATO – appeared to be complicated, lasting and far from any romantic notions. Besides the need for consensus from society as a whole and from the Ukrainian leadership, appropriate governmental and parliamentary decisions were also required; these factors demonstrating the necessity of serious, internal changes in all spheres of state activity. In practical terms, the basis for these requirements remains to be established: a mutual understanding of key questions of state life, national and international security, internal and foreign policy priorities.
Topic:
International Relations, NATO, and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe and Ukraine

524. NATO-EU Cooperation in Post-Conflict Reconstruction

Author:
Chris Morffew, Alec Aalto, Christopher Alexander, Mihai Carp, Bernard Carreau, Jean Dufourcq, Karen Guttieri, Zalmai Haquani, Birgitte Juul, Eikka Kosonen, Natalino Ronziti, David Yost, and Richard Zink
Publication Date:
05-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
On 3-4 November 2005 the NATO Defense College hosted a seminar, co-sponsored by the Ministry of Defense of Finland, regarding NATO and European Union post-conflict reconstruction operations. The participants included officials from NATO and the EU, as well as experts and officials from NATO, EU, and Partnership for Peace nations. The seminar objectives included:-promoting more effective EU-NATO teamwork in such operations,-evaluating the main problems and achievements to date, and-assessing lessons from operations in Afghanistan in particular.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, NATO, and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Afghanistan and Finland

525. Integrative Processes in the South Caucasus and their Security Implications

Author:
Leila Alieva
Publication Date:
03-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
The issue of threats and risks, and policy responses to them, acquired a profound importance after 2001. The post-Soviet developments in the South Caucasus is an interesting case study, reflecting problems and contradictions in the relations between the West and the East, developed democracies and states in transition, Christians and Muslims. It also contributes to the current debates about: asymmetric threats and ways of addressing them, relations between democracy and security, which effect integration processes may have had on the security challenges of the century.
Topic:
Security, NATO, and Democratization
Political Geography:
Middle East and Soviet Union

526. Developing EU Civil Military Co-ordination: The Role of the New Civilian Military Cell

Author:
Giovanni Gasparini, Gerrard Quille, Stephen Pullinger (ed), Nicoletta Pirozzi, and Roberto Menotti
Publication Date:
06-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Security Information Service
Abstract:
The scope of this Report is to analyse the recent developments in EU Civil Military Co-ordination (CMCO), with a particular focus on the establishment and role of the new Civilian Military Cell (CivMil Cell): an issue that is likely to be of great interest in European and Transatlantic (NATO) debates in the next few years. The Report is divided into two parts: the first reviews the main stages and obstacles in the process of establishing an EU CivMil Cell in the current European and Transatlantic security and defence context; and the second examines its particular impact on Italian policy and planning.
Topic:
Defense Policy, NATO, and Development
Political Geography:
Europe and Italy

527. Relics of Cold War: Defence Transformation in the Czech Republic

Author:
Miroslav Tuma
Publication Date:
09-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
On 28 October 1918, the newly created Czechoslovak Republic—incorporating the historic Czech lands (Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia) and Slovakia— declared its independence after three centuries under Austrian and then Austro- Hungarian rule. This First Republic, initially led by its popular first president, Tomá G. Masaryk, lasted until the resignation of his successor, Edvard Bene, in October 1938. This followed an agreement between France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom forcing Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland to Germany. From March 1939 until the end of World War II Czechoslovakia was split into the German Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia and the nominally independent Slovakian State, which was also under de facto German control. Czechoslovakia regained its independence in 1945. The Communist Party took over government in 1948 and in 1955 Czechoslovakia signed the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance (the Warsaw Treaty) along with Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Soviet Union and, from 1956, the German Democratic Republic. A period of hardline communist rule followed. Attempts at democratic transformation in 1968, the so-called Prague Spring, were ended by a Soviet-led invasion by the forces of fellow Warsaw Treaty Organization members in August 1968, after which the leading reformists were replaced with orthodox Communists. Czechoslovakia's Communist regime relinquished its monopoly on power in November 1989 following more than a week of popular demonstrations, a series of events known as the Velvet Revolution. A former dissident, Václav Havel, was elected president of the renamed Czech and Slovak Federal Republic. On 1 January 1993, the federation was peacefully dissolved and the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic (Slovakia) became independent democratic states. In 1999 the Czech Republic joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and in 2004 it joined the European Union.
Topic:
NATO and Cold War
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Eastern Europe, France, Germany, Italy, Czech Republic, and Slovakia

528. Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic Ambitions: Building an Effective Policy Coordination Process

Author:
F. Stephen Larrabee, Jeffrey Simon, Jan Neutze, and Steven Pifer
Publication Date:
02-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
Since his inauguration in January 2005, Ukrainian President Viktor Yush-chenko has repeatedly stated that his foremost foreign policy goal is his country's integration into European and Euro-Atlantic institutions. “Joining Europe” today, be it preparing a country for a bid to enter the European Union or NATO, is an extraordinarily complex business. It will require the development of a consensus on a Euro-Atlantic policy course among the country's political leadership. It will also require an effective and coherent policy coordination structure. As the experience of other Eastern European countries has demonstrated, integration into the European Union or NATO is not just the responsibility of the foreign and defense ministries. It also requires coordination with the ministries of economy, justice, agrarian policy, transportation and communications, internal affairs – indeed, virtually every ministry in the Ukrainian Cabinet.
Topic:
International Relations and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Ukraine, and Asia

529. Transatlantic Transformation: Building a NATO-EU Security Architecture

Author:
David C. Gompert, Jan M. Lodal, Leslie S. Lebl, Walter B. Slocombe, and Frances G. Burwell
Publication Date:
03-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
Since 1989, the security environment facing the United States and its European allies has changed beyond recognition. The Soviet Union has disintegrated, as has the division of Europe between East and West, and new threats have arisen. The disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s demonstrated that instability and war emerging from failing states could affect the peace and security of Europe. After 2001, global terrorism became the priority threat, especially when linked with the prospect of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Topic:
Security, NATO, and Development
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia

530. Inevitable Decline versus Predestined Stability: The Structure of Disciplinary Explanations of the Evolving Transatlantic Order

Author:
Gunther Hellmann
Publication Date:
04-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
The future of NATO has been a hotly debated topic at the center of IR debates ever since the end of the Cold War. It has also been a very complicated one given the discipline's conceptual and theoretical difficulties in studying change. Most analysts now agree that NATO (and the transatlantic order more broadly) are going through some major changes. Yet while there is consensus that the depth as well as the pace of these changes is more far-reaching than in past decades it is unclear exactly how deep and how far these changes reach. In order to come to grips with these changes most of the chapters in this book are exploring the character as well as the sources of these changes. This chapter approaches the topic by examining how the discipline has dealt with the question of the evolution of the transatlantic order in the past. It argues that IR has not been very well equipped conceptually to deal with the phenomenon in question, ie. large-scale processes of change. In applying a typo-logical framework developed by Paul Pierson the chapter discusses what types of causal accounts have dominated in the IR literature – and what this may tell us about particular strengths, biases and potential blind spots in coming to grips with the evolution of this order. In essence it argues that the structure of the most prominent explanations is often quite similar irrespective of paradigmatic descent. Inspite of major differences – inspite, even, of mutually exclusive predictions – as to the expected path of the order ́s evolution realist, liberal and constructivist accounts heavily rely in equal fashion on causal arguments which emphasize large-scale causal processes which are almost always framed in rather statist structural terms even though they essentially entail slow moving causal processes. This temporal dimension of the causal processes presumably shaping the future of the transatlantic order is seldom spelled out in detail, however. Thus, if one examines the debate as a whole one sees a picture of IR scholarship which essentially oscillates between two extremes: the position that NATO (as the core institution of the transatlantic order) was (and is) certain to survive and the position that it was (and is) certain to collapse. What is more, these extremes on a spectrum of possible positions on the transatlantic order ́s evolution between breakdown on the one hand and successful adaptation on the other are not hypothetical but mostly real. Thus, the debate does not gravitate towards the center (ie. a position which, for instance, envisages a loser but still cooperative relationship) after the usual give and take of exchanging scholarly arguments. Rather it mostly sticks with either of the two extreme positions. The chapter illustrates the problems associated with this point in some details and discusses potential remedies.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, NATO, Cold War, and Politics