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91. Bosnia's Nationalist Governments: Paddy Ashdown And The Paradoxes Of State Building

Publication Date:
07-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
The return of the nationalist parties to power after the October 2002 general elections in Bosnia Herzegovina (BiH) was widely assessed as a calamity. Some observers went so far as to claim that it signified the failure of the international peace-building mission over the previous seven years. But the new High Representative, Paddy Ashdown, refused to be downcast. Not only was the nationalists' victory narrow, but he was confident he could work with them if they proved faithful to their pre-election pledges to embrace the reform agenda he had been charting since taking office in May 2002. This agenda seeks to make up for lost time: implementing the economic, legal and governance reforms required both to make BiH a prosperous, lawful and peaceable state and to set the country on track for European integration. Lord Ashdown aims to put himself out of a job by putting BiH on the road to the EU.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Eastern Europe

92. Food for Thought the Stability Pact for South East Europe - Dawn of an Era of Regional Co-Operation?

Author:
Gjergj Murra
Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Austrian National Defence Academy
Abstract:
These past three years have been a useful learning process for the Stability Pact. Some achievements are visible, but there also has been much criticism with regards to its real outcome and performance. However, an independent assessment of the process is needed to analyse what is functioning well, and what could be improved, as judged by participants from the region. So far either no through assessment is done, or assessment have been at project level, (technical, in terms of project completion, disbursement, timing, task performed), not in terms of the political goal that projects were designed to achieve. One of the main lessons appears to be the need to refine the approach and priorities. Some topics have already found an answer, while for some other a clearer vision in needed.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, NATO, International Cooperation, and International Organization
Political Geography:
Europe and Eastern Europe

93. Regional Approach - An Obstacle or an Opportunity for an Early Integration of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Into the European Structures

Author:
Vladimir Bilandzic
Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Austrian National Defence Academy
Abstract:
I would have to start this presentation with a disclaimer. When I was kindly invited to give a perspective from Serbia on the issue we are discussing at this seminar, I told the organisers that my contribution could not be regarded as a representative one, since I work for an international organisation - the OSCE - in Belgrade. At the same time, I cannot claim that my views represent the views of the organisation I work for. So, what I am going to say are my personal views, based of course on my experience and research on Southeast European politics, especially in the countries of former Yugoslavia. Therefore, while apologising for not being in a position to give a more authoritative presentation, I will try to give a meaningful contribution on the subject, especially from a perspective of someone coming from Belgrade.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, and Yugoslavia

94. Germany, Multilateralism,and the Eastern Enlargement of the EU

Author:
Claus Hofhansel
Publication Date:
10-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
Since World War II, the most distinctive characteristic of German foreign policy has been its commitment to multilateralism. This commitment has served German material interests, but it has a normative basis as well. This paper analyzes German domestic support for multilateralist policies, defined in terms of the principles of indivisibility, generalized principles of conduct, and diffuse reciprocity, in the context of negotiations on the EU's eastern enlargement. Empirically, the paper focuses on the policy areas of freedom of movement for workers and agriculture. The main theoretical argument is that domestic support for multilateralist policies depends on the distributional consequences of such policies and the ability of political institutions to manage distributional conflicts. Distributional conflict undermines support for multilateralist policies. In the case of Germany, distributional conflicts among different sectors and regions of the German economy have become more severe partly, but not exclusively, due to German unification. Furthermore, German political institutions are less able to resolve such conflicts than in the past. The evidence presented here shows more intense domestic distributional conflicts on the free movement of labor issue than over agriculture, and, as expected, we see more explicitly bilateral and less multilateralist demands by unions and employers.
Topic:
Foreign Policy and Government
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, and Germany

95. Wages of Sin: Confronting Bosnia's Republika Srpska

Publication Date:
10-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
By recognising Republika Srpska (RS) as a legitimate polity and constituent entity of the new Bosnia, the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement embraced a contradiction. For the RS was founded as a stepping stone to a ëGreater Serbiaí and forged in atrocities against ñ and mass expulsions of ñ non-Serbs.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
Bosnia and Eastern Europe

96. The Bulgarian Defense Industry

Author:
Curtis M. Coward and Jeffrey P. Bialos
Publication Date:
07-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
This Report identifies strategic options available to the Bulgarian government and its defense industry, as well as the United States and its NATO partners, for transforming and repositioning the industry for the 21st century and facilitating its integration into the NATO and European Union industrial base. Since other Partnership for Peace (PfP) countries that are aspirants to NATO membership face similar difficulties concerning their defense industries, many of the recommendations herein apply to these countries as well. The report is based on numerous interviews with officials of government entities, private sector firms, and nongovernmental organizations and a review of pertinent governmental and private reports and original documents. A number of the members of the Atlantic Council's working group visited Bulgaria and several of its defense firms in April 2001. Given limitations of time and access to information, the report does not, however, attempt to set forth a thorough review of each firm in the Bulgarian industry.
Topic:
Security and Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
United States and Eastern Europe

97. New Balkan Policy Needed

Author:
Robert D. Greenberg
Publication Date:
04-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Foreign Policy In Focus
Abstract:
In the first months after the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) entered Kosovo in June 1999 and the Kosovar Albanian refugees returned to their homes, the minority Serbs and Gypsies became the victims of Albanian revenge attacks. The few Serbs who have remained in Kosovo live in scattered enclaves under the protection of KFOR troops. Nevertheless, sporadic violence has continued to erupt, including the bus bombing in February 2001 killing Serbs heading to a religious event. KFOR has been unable to stop the violence from spilling over Kosovo's borders to Macedonia and to Serbia's Presevo Valley region, which has a sizable ethnic Albanian minority. Meanwhile, Macedonia has closed its border with Kosovo, raising the likelihood of a serious economic crisis in Kosovo that could induce further instability there.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Foreign Policy, and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
United States, Eastern Europe, Kosovo, Balkans, and Albania

98. Dubious Anniversary: Kosovo One Year Later

Author:
Christopher Layne and Benjamin Schwarz
Publication Date:
06-2000
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
One year after NATO ended its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, the Clinton administration's Kosovo policy is a conspicuous failure. Kosovo is now the scene of a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign carried out by NATO's erstwhile de facto ally, the Kosovo Liberation Army, an organization profoundly inimical to America's interests and professed values. The KLA is also currently fomenting an insurgency elsewhere in Serbia, which promises to destabilize the Balkans even further.
Topic:
Foreign Policy and Genocide
Political Geography:
United States, America, Eastern Europe, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Serbia, and Balkans

99. Serbia: The Milosevic Regime on the Eve of September Elections

Publication Date:
08-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
The regime in Serbia has recovered its footing after the 1999 war with NATO and remains as hard-line as ever. Learning and gaining experience over the years has enabled the regime to “improve” its performance and become more efficient. Most analysts in Serbia agree that Milosevic will be able to stay in power indefinitely.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Economics, Government, Human Rights, and Politics
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe and Serbia

100. The Emergence of a New Geopolitical Region in Eurasia: The Volga-Urals Region and its Implications for Bulgarian Foreign and Security Policy

Author:
Nicolay Pavlov and Plamen Pantev
Publication Date:
12-2000
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
The application of geopolitical methodological instruments to the study of Bulgarian foreign and security policy issues has two fundamental causes: first, for many decades this has been a neglected intellectual instrument of international political research – for political and ideological reasons – and, second, the end of the Cold War necessitated an improvement of the conceptual and the analytical tools of security studies in Europe and the world. The traditional approach of ISIS to search ways of improving the security situation by conceptualizing events and processes in a novel way has focused the efforts of its researchers on security problems that cover a broad strategic zone: the Balkans – the Black Sea – the Transcaucasus – the Caspian Sea. Continued cooling – for more than ten years –of bilateral Bulgarian-Russian relations is conceived as one of the problems of this broader strategic and systemically linked zone. The geopolitical and geostrategic model – imposed on Bulgaria by the Cold War divide, the country’s membership in the Warsaw Pact and the thorough domination by the USSR – ended and was replaced by a different reality. The geopolitical projection of the ideological and socio-economic divide was no longer an applicable paradigm. At the same time the balance of power and the geostrategic approaches of understanding the evolving international environment proved to be inadequate after the end of the 1980s of the 20th Century. Russian, and to a lesser extent Bulgarian, politicians lost the orientation and the perspective of the bilateral links. This led to a dramatic diminishing of the meaning of bilateral relations in the general foreign-political engagements of the two countries. Bulgaria had undertaken a clear orientation to market economy, democracy and rule of law – a philosophic course, which logically prioritized the attraction of the European Union as the efficient integration nucleus of Europe, and of NATO – the symbol of stability and guaranteed prosperity in the broader Euro-Atlantic space. Though NATO was no longer perceived in the Cold War antagonistic pattern by Russia, and the very substance of the Alliance intensively adapted to the post-Cold War realities, Bulgaria’s political and security choice of joining the Euro-Atlantic community of developed democratic nations was negatively assessed by the Russian elite.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Regional Cooperation, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
Europe, Eurasia, Eastern Europe, and Bulgaria