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41. Two Concepts of Liberty: U.S. Cold War Grand Strategies and the Liberal Tradition

Author:
Brendan Rittenhouse Green
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Realist, liberal, constructivist, and hybrid theories of international relations agree that the United States made historic commitments to the defense of Europe shortly after World War II. These commitments, however, were neither as intense nor as sweeping as many claim. Initially, Washington sought withdrawal from Europe through a strategy of buck-passing.Only after a decade and a half did it adopt the familiar balancing grand strategy providing for a permanent presence in Europe. This shift suggests the need for a new theory to explain U.S. grand strategy, both past and present.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Washington

42. Turkey in the Balkans: Taking a Broader View

Author:
Dimitar Bechev
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
Turkey's activism in former Yugoslavia is a continuation of the country's post-Cold War strategy in the broader context of South East Europe. It is driven largely by structural shifts related to the spread of democracy, Europeanization and globalization, rather than by ideology or Ottoman nostalgia. Despite its vanishing appeal, the EU remains essential in understanding Turkey's place in regional politics. The Union's expansion has deepened interdependence across South East Europe and transformed the Turkish approach: from power politics to a multidimensional policy reliant on trade, cross-border investment, and projection of soft power. Although Ankara is acting in a growingly unilateralist manner and could be viewed as a competitor in some Western capitals, Turkish policies are benefiting from Brussels and Washington's investment in the stabilisation and integration of the Western Balkans.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Europe, Washington, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Balkans, and Brussels

43. Constructing a German Europe? Germany's Europe Debate Revisited

Author:
Timo Behr and Niklas Helwig
Publication Date:
02-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
Germany's ambiguous role during the eurozone crisis has stoked fears that a more self-confident and dynamic Germany is threatening the political independence and economic well-being of its neighbours and will lead to a “German Europe”. German weakness, not power, is the main challenge to EU integration. In order to build a supranational EU and a “European Germany”, Germans will have to overhaul their Cold War institutions and traditions that have become a brake on EU integration. Germany's political elite continues to favour a federalist vision for the EU, but faces a somewhat more sceptical public as well as strong domestic veto players, such as the Federal Constitutional Court, which limit their pro-integrationist tendency. While Germany continues to support the use of the “Community method”, Angela Merkel has increasingly resorted to the “Union method” that places function over form and prioritizes pragmatic problem-solving to address the current crisis. Germany's uncompromising attitude towards the eurozone crisis and its sometimes erratic foreign policy are the product of its deeply embedded stability culture and instinctive pacifism, rather than a sign of growing global ambitions. European partners will have to help Germany in its indispensable leadership role by jointly formulating a vision for the European integration project and by assisting Germany in adapting its political institutions and culture.
Topic:
Cold War, Economics, Regional Cooperation, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

44. Correspondence: Debating the Sources and Prospects of European Integration

Author:
Ulrich Krotz, Jean-Yves Haine, Norrin M. Ripsman, Sebastian Rosato, Richard Maher, David M. McCourt, Andrew Glencross, and Mark S. Sheetz
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
In "Europe's Troubles," Sebastian Rosato argues that the high water mark of European integration has passed and that the fate of the European Union (EU) is increasingly uncertain. The European project, he claims, had a geostrategic imperative during the Cold War: unable to match Soviet power individually, the small and medium powers of Western Europe sought to balance the Soviet Union through economic integration. The Soviet collapse and the end of the Cold War removed the strategic rationale for preserving the community that European governments had built over many decades. At best, according to Rosato, Europe will continue to muddle along. At worst, the entire European project will collapse.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Europe

45. Strategic Thinking about Future Security

Author:
Marian Kozub
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Connections
Institution:
Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
Abstract:
The reality that we face at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century renders security issues, and in particular the ways of providing security, central to international attention, both in its present and future aspects. The reasons for this centrality are not only the revolutionary changes in science and technology, but also perhaps even more importantly the characteristics of the already diagnosed and existing threats and predicted challenges for the global security environment for which we have not yet found sufficient responses. This essay focuses on the notion of challenges and opportunities created by the world in transition that we undoubtedly face, instead of relying on the "language of threats" and the responsive, symptomatic approach towards them that has characterized the discourse of the strategic community in the past. Discussing a new security environment requires a new set of terms.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Europe

46. The Impact of NATO's New Missions on the Interests and National Security of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Book Review)

Author:
Fahimeh Ghorbani
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Center for Strategic Research (CSR)
Abstract:
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), originally created in the post-WW2 world as an organization dedicated to the collective defense of its member states and a countervailing force against the Warsaw Pact, has undergone tremendous change since. The first major turning point came in the wake of the end of the Cold War and the bipolar world. The new situation changed the Organization's mission, functions, and policies mainly within the European theatre, as best reflected in NATO's military intervention in the Balkans (former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The second wave of change came in the wake of 9/11 and the subsequent direct engagement in Afghanistan; NATO's new function as a military arm of the United Nations – which continues to date.
Topic:
NATO, Cold War, and United Nations
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Europe, Yugoslavia, and Balkans

47. Richard Stahler-Sholk, Harry E. Vanden, and Kuecker, Glen David, (eds), Latin American Social Movements in the Twenty-First Century: Resistance, Power, Democracy (New York: Rowman Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2008).

Author:
Alexander B. Makulilo
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
After the end of the Cold War imperialism in the form of neoliberalism exerts its hegemony over the entire world. Under what came to be known as the “Washington Consensus”, which emphasizes liberal democracy, market economy and foreign capital investments, the U.S sought to enhance and consolidate its access to cheap natural resources and raw materials from Latin America, thereby capitalizing its domination over the region. Challenging the neoliberal paradigm, the masses in Latin America developed a series of social movements to protest this form of foreign domination. In line with this move, contemporary scholarship in the region is preoccupied with theorizing and understanding the nature, development and impact of these social movements in emancipating the region. Merging theory and practices, Latin American Social Movements provides an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of social movements in the region. It traces the historical origins, evolution, strategies and implications of social movements and their resistance to neoliberal and global capitalism. And therefore, the book challenges the mainstream literature that focuses on “transition to democracy” and that views social movements as merely temporary resistance to authoritarianism and electoral politics that unseat repressive regimes.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Europe, Washington, and Latin America

48. Turkey's "Demonstrative Effect" and the Transformation of the Middle East

Author:
Kemal Kirisci
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
A string of uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt followed by those in other countries have rekindled the issue of Turkey constituting a model for reform and democratization in the Arab world, a point raised by many Western and Arab commentators. Independent of this debate, what is lacking in the literature is an analysis of how come there is a “demand” for the Turkish model. This article develops the concept of a “demonstrative effect” and argues that it is this “effect” that makes the Turkish model of interest to the Middle East and that this “effect” is a function of three developments: the rise of the “trading state”, the diffusion of Turkey's democratization experience as a “work in progress”, and the positive image of Turkey's “new” foreign policy. The concluding part of the article discusses several challenges Turkey has to meet so that its “demonstrative effect” can have a positive impact.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Hiroshima

49. (Not) Reconciling International Security (IS) with Non-traditional Security (NTS) Studies: Westphalia, the 'West' and the Long Shadow of 1944

Author:
Shaun Breslin
Publication Date:
08-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS)
Abstract:
Understandings of what constitutes international security have been largely influenced by the historical experiences of the great powers. The failed attempts to prevent war in Europe from the 17th century onwards, and latterly the more successful (in its own terms) prevention of a third World War in the second half of the 20th century, did much to establish what was to be secured and how this security could best be achieved.
Topic:
Cold War, War, International Security, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
Europe

50. The Cold War in retrospect

Author:
Geoffrey Warner
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
The Cambridge history of the Cold War is a three-volume work by 75 contributors, mostly from the United States and the United Kingdom, and is intended as 'a substantial work of reference' on the subject. The bulk of the text deals, in frequently overlapping chapters, with the main protagonists of the conflict—viz. the United States, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China—and the areas in which they clashed. At the same time, it aims to go 'far beyond the narrow boundaries of diplomatic affairs', although it is not always successful in doing so. In analysing the origins of the Cold War, the contributors pay perhaps too much attention to ideology as opposed to geopolitics, a flaw which is made easier by the absence of sufficient historical background. On the other hand, the duration of the conflict and the failure of various attempts at détente is more successfully explained in terms of the zero-sum game nature of the conflict and its progressive extension from Europe across the rest of the world. When it comes to the end of the Cold War, the overall conclusion is that this came about through both a shift in the international balance of power following the Sino-Soviet split and the political and economic problems of the Soviet bloc. It is generally agreed that Mikhail Gorbachev's willingness to abandon old shibboleths both at home and abroad was a major factor in bringing about the end of the conflict. The three volumes, while not always an easy read, are the outcome of considerable research and expertise in both primary and secondary sources and will repay careful study.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States, China, United Kingdom, Europe, and Soviet Union