Search

Begin New Search Publishing Institution Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Publication Year within 25 Years

91. The Impact on Domestic Policy of the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports The Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Spain

Author:
Mark Bromley
Publication Date:
08-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
In the 17 years since the European Union (EU) first formulated common standards to be applied in arms export decision making, there has been a rapid expansion in the EU's role as a coordinator and generator of policy in an area that was previously the exclusive domain of national governments. Most relevant to this change has been the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports (EU Code of Conduct), which was adopted by the Council of the EU in June 1998 and will celebrate its 10th anniversary in June 2008. The Code takes the form of a Council declaration— it contains political commitments but is not legally binding. Under the Code, EU member states commit themselves to set 'high common standards which should be regarded as the minimum for the management of, and restraint in, conventional arms transfers' and 'to reinforce cooperation and to promote convergence in the field of conventional arms exports' within the framework of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). It lists eight criteria that member states agree to take into account when assessing applications for arms export licences. More importantly, the Code outlines reporting procedures and consultation mechanisms intended to ensure consistent interpretation of the criteria.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Arms Control and Proliferation, and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe, Spain, and Netherlands

92. Conflict in Southern Thailand: Islamism, Violence and the State in the Patani Insurgency

Author:
Neil J. Melvin
Publication Date:
09-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
Patani is a name often used to refer to a region in the far south of Thailand along the border with Malaysia. The name comes from the former sultanate of Patani, which was founded in 1390 and annexed by Siam (Thailand's historical name) in 1902. At the time of the annexation, Patani included the modern-day Thai provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala and parts of Songkhla along with neighbouring areas of Malaysia. The Malay spelling of Patani is used here to refer to the area currently affected by insurgency, whereas the Thai spelling, Pattani, is used to denote the province of that name.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Islam, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Thailand and Southeast Asia

93. Countering Bio-threats: EU Instruments for Managing Biological Materials, Technology and Knowledge

Author:
Frida Kuhlau
Publication Date:
08-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
The urgency of fighting terrorism has been heightened by the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States and subsequent attacks around the world. The use of anthrax to attack targets in the USA in September–November 2001, reinforced the need to include various potential biological threats—such as the deliberate use of disease as a weapon—on the anti-terrorism agenda. This paper identifies the instruments available to the European Community and examines how they are employed as part of the wider effort to reduce the potential threat posed by biological agents. However, it is important to recognize that these instruments and their use are only one aspect of European Union (EU) activity towards that end and that Community actions are set within the wider EU context.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

94. Foreign Military Bases in Eurasia

Author:
Zdzislaw Lachowski
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
On 16 August 2004 the President of the United States, George W. Bush, announced that some 60 000–70 000 US troops stationed in Asia and Europe would be returned to the USA over the coming decade. This realignment of forces signals a major change in US global and regional policies that will affect the structure of US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) base deployment (referred to as 'basing' or 'forward basing' by the military) throughout the world. In the 1990s Russia had begun pulling out of its cold war spheres of influence, but it either halted or began to reverse its base withdrawal process at almost the same time as Bush's plan was made known.
Topic:
Security and Defense Policy
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Europe, Eurasia, and Asia

95. Building Stability in the North Caucasus: Ways Forward for Russia and the European Union

Author:
Neil J. Melvin
Publication Date:
05-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
The North Caucasus is a mountainous region in the south of the Russian Federation, bordered by the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to the west, Georgia and Azerbaijan to the south, and the Caspian Sea to the east. In this Policy Paper, as in much policy discussion about current developments in the region, the term 'North Caucasus' refers to eight republics of the Russian Federation—Adygeya, Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Kalmykia, Karachai-Cherkessia and North Ossetia (Alania)—as well as the predominately ethnic Russian territories of Krasnodar krai and Stavropol krai.
Topic:
Islam and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Russia, Caucasus, Azerbaijan, and Georgia

96. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization

Author:
Pan Guang, Mikhail Troitskiy, Pál Dunay, and Alyson J. K. Bailes
Publication Date:
05-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
Established in 2001 with China, the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as members, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has remained one of the world's least-known and least-analysed multilateral groups. It makes little effort itself for transparency and is only patchily institutionalized in any case. Such useful research materials as are available on it are often in Chinese or Russian. Outside its participant countries, the SCO has attracted mainly sceptical and negative comment: some questioning whether it has anything more than symbolic substance, others criticizing the lack of democratic credentials of its members and questioning the legitimacy of their various policies. These points have been made especially strongly by commentators in the United States following the inclusion of Iran—along with India, Pakistan and Mongolia—as an SCO observer state and hints that it may attain full membership.
Topic:
International Cooperation and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Shanghai, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan

97. Regionalism in South Asian Diplomacy

Author:
John Gooneratne, Mavara Inayat, Jamshed Ayaz Khan, Swaran Singh, and Alyson J. K. Bailes
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
In any survey of present-day regional cooperation, South Asia is liable to be cited as one of the problem cases. The dominant strategic feature of the region is the tension and rivalry between India and Pakistan, two powers that have more than once gone to war or to the verge of war and that now have nuclear weapons. Unlike the East–West confrontation of cold war times, this confrontation has not (yet) led to more than a few fragmentary elements of a larger structure of confidence building and conflict avoidance. Even this major challenge is only one of the difficulties in the way of a non-zero-sum multilateral security order for the region. The discrepancy of size and power between India, a nation of over 1 billion people, and all its neighbours leads to natural concerns among the latter about India's dominance in the region and potential interference in their affairs. At different times this has been a significant strand in the policy thinking of states such as Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka and has led them to seek security assistance first and foremost from outside South Asia when they need it.
Topic:
International Relations, International Cooperation, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Asia, India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal

98. 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

99. The Terrorist Threat and the Policy Response in Pakistan

Author:
Aarish Ullah Khan
Publication Date:
09-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
Terrorists manipulate fear through the use of violence to achieve their objectives. An understanding of what motivates terrorists to employ mindless violence against civilian or non-combatant targets is essential for assessing the phenomenon. The current discussion of 'root causes' often focuses on finding the causes of antagonism towards civilization in the mind of a fanatic terrorist at the individual level. The debate about what motivates a terrorist, however, overlooks the factors that enable a terrorist to conduct terrorist activities. As argued by Walter Laqueur, even if better control can be achieved over the extremist motivation for terrorism, there will still be a few isolated individuals for whom the temptation to employ terrorism—if the opportunity remains—will be hard to resist.
Topic:
Security, Religion, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Pakistan and Middle East

100. The European Security Strategy: An Evolutionary History

Author:
Alyson J. K. Bailes
Publication Date:
02-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
The adoption by the European Union (EU) of its first official and comprehensive security strategy—'A Secure Europe in a Better World'—in 20031 may be seen (aside from any practical results it leads to) as a conceptual and procedural turning point in the development of the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Set against its specific political background, it was also an important stage in the developing self-awareness and ambition of the EU as a player in the global arena.
Topic:
Security and Defense Policy
Political Geography:
Europe