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Begin New Search Publishing Institution The Geneva Centre for Security Policy

151. Security Issues for Russia in the New International Context

Author:
Yuri Nazarkin
Publication Date:
08-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The starting point for this paper is the National Security Blueprint of the Russian Federation approved by Presidential Decree No. 1300 dated 17 December 1997. As the Blueprint itself clarifies, it is "a political document reflecting the aggregate of officially accepted views regarding goals and state strategy in the sphere of ensuring the security of the individual, society and the state from external and internal threats of a political, economic, social, military, man-made (technogennyy), ecological, information or other nature, in the light of existing resources and potential." It is a conceptual document of a general nature which is intended to be the basis for the elaboration of specific programmes and organisational documents in the sphere of ensuring the national security of the Russian Federation.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Europe

152. Conflict Management and European Security: The Problem of Collective Solidarity

Author:
Fred Tanner
Publication Date:
08-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The dynamics of European security has become considerably more difficult to comprehend in recent years. This is due primarily to two sets of developments. First an "amorphous threat-free post-Cold War security setting" has replaced the distinct Alliance-wide threat from the Soviet Union. Second, new risks and threats have increasingly affected European security from regions immediately adjoining Western Europe. Conflicts and notorious instability loom in the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Balkans and the Mediterranean region, including North Africa and the Middle East. As a consequence, security cooperation in Europe currently struggles to cope with these risks of non-military nature and ambiguous threat scenarios from the "out-of-area".
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Europe

153. New Security Challenge or Old? Russia's Catch—22

Author:
William C. Wohlforth
Publication Date:
08-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The most important security threat Russia faces, and the main threat it poses to the rest of the world, is its own implosion. If traditional security has to do with the manipulation and managment of the use of military force by states, then Russia's major contemporary problems must be understood under the "new security" rubric. Because the world has never before had to deal with the breakdown of a nuclear superpower, the security challenges Russia presents are certainly novel. But if "new security" is supposed to encompass problems that are transnational in nature and challenge state-centric analysis, then it too does not capture today's Russian question. For at the root of Russia's security problems is the absence of an effective government. To be sure, all of these problems are made more complicated by globalization. Many of them would continue to pester world politics even if Moscow had a capable government. But the root of these problems and the reason they present such great potential dangers is the absence of a capable state in Russia.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Europe