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241. Is South Asian Nuclear Politics Different?

Author:
Rajesh Basrur
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
The central question before us is whether it is appropriate for South Asians to learn from the US-Soviet experience of the Cold War. This raises other questions: Are the two sets of relationships comparable? Is there in South Asia a "cold war" essentially similar to the Cold War? Should the theoretical lenses we use for both sets be the same? Can we learn from the one about the other? Is the thinking and practice relating to nuclear weapons in the two sets comparable?
Topic:
Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
United States, South Asia, and Soviet Union

242. Russia's Diasporas: The Case of the Russian-speaking Community in Israel

Author:
Stefani Hoffman
Publication Date:
08-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, Princeton University
Abstract:
The Greek term “diaspora” was first applied to the dispersion and settlement of the Jews outside of ancient Palestine. Subsequently, the term was extended to the Greek and Armenian dispersion and to other migratory phenomena, although scholars continue to refer back to the original meaning. Indeed, particularly since the fall of the Soviet bloc and the acceleration of globalization processes, governmental bodies, NGOs, and academic institutions have devoted considerable attention to defining and studying the various migratory processes and the effects of clusters of immigrant populations on countries in the developed world.
Topic:
Migration
Political Geography:
Russia, Middle East, Israel, Soviet Union, and Palestine

243. Autonomy and Ethnic Conflict: Experiences from the Caucasus

Author:
Svante Cornell
Publication Date:
08-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, Princeton University
Abstract:
Ethnopolitical conflict has, especially since the early 1990s, been a growing source of concern in the international arena. Having grown since the 1960s, it culminated after the cold war with the eruption of conflict in the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Ethnic mobilization among minority populations in multiethnic states has often led to demands for self-rule or to secession. Especially in defined geographical areas where minorities are compactly settled, the creation of a separate state is seen as a feasible goal and control over territory often becomes a chief issue of conflict. Many theorists have found that solutions involving regional autonomy are effective in dealing with ethnic conflict. Ted Gurr, for example, has argued that "negotiated regional autonomy has proved to be an effective antidote for ethnopolitical wars of secession in Western and Third World States." Regional autonomy implies the introduction of ethnoterritoriality - linking territorial control to ethnicity. This is the case either when a region is explicitly created as a homeland for an ethnic group or when a minority group constitutes a large majority of the population of an autonomous state structure and perceives it as its own. Advocates of ethnofederalism argue that autonomy solutions are effective conflict-resolving mechanisms and that further federalization of multiethnic states along ethnic lines will help prevent ethnic conflict. In some of the literature, ethnofederalism has been characterized as what David Meyer terms a "cure-all prescription" for ethnic tensions. There is, however, considerable reason to argue that the institution of territorial autonomy may be conducive not to interethnic peace and cooperation but may in fact foster ethnic mobilization, increased secessionism, and even armed conflict.
Topic:
Ethnic Conflict and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
Europe, Caucasus, Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia

244. Armament and Disarmament in the Caucasus and Central Asia

Author:
Zdzislaw Lachowski, Björn Hagelin, Sam Perlo-Freeman, Petter Stålenheim, Dmitri Trofimov, and Alyson J. K. Bailes
Publication Date:
07-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
The international attention paid to the nations of the South Caucasus region and Central Asia—a group of post-Soviet states beyond Europe's conventional frontiers but included in the Conference on/Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE/OSCE)—has been fitful at best over the past decade. During the last years of the 20th and at the start of the 21st century, after the conflicts in Georgia and Nagorno-Karabakh became (at least partly) 'frozen', security concerns about the regions tended to decline and to become overshadowed both by 'oil diplomacy' and by concern about developments within Russia itself, in Chechnya and Dagestan. In 2002–2003 a constellation of changes in the outside world has started to reverse this pattern. Chechnya is no longer a regular topic of high-level political debate between Russia and the West, and President Vladimir Putin has played the anti-terrorist card with some success to secure his freedom to deal with it as an internal security matter. The factors prompting greater international attention to Russia's south-western and southern neighbours, by contrast, have the potential to undermine—perhaps for good—any Russian pretension to decisive influence or an exclusive droit de regard in these regions. At the time of writing, however, this latest shift could again be called in question by a new diversion of focus to the 'greater Middle East' following hostilities in Iraq.
Topic:
Defense Policy and Arms Control and Proliferation
Political Geography:
Russia, Iraq, Europe, Central Asia, Caucasus, Middle East, Asia, and Soviet Union

245. Democratizing the Middle East: Are we up to the task?

Author:
Mumukshu Patel
Publication Date:
11-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The National Academy of Public Administration
Abstract:
On November 6, 2003 in a speech at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), President George W Bush enunciated his Middle East Doctrine: democratization of the region as the first priority of U.S. strategy, irrespective of past policy considerations. It was the most ambitious policy overhaul for the region, since President Eisenhower's commitment to defend the Middle East against Soviet Communism. Following the Eisenhower doctrine all U.S. Middle East policy reflected strategic U.S. concerns: as long as states in the Middle East cooperated with the U.S., shunned Communism and later rejected theocratic regimes – at least nominally, the United States would ignore their domestic policies, and support them – via foreign aid, military technology and personnel etc. This was the status quo that characterized U.S. policy toward the Middle East.
Topic:
Foreign Policy and Democratization
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, and Soviet Union

246. A Gap in OSCE Conflict Prevention

Author:
Indra Øverland
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
This paper argues that local media have been of great importance in the escalation of inter-ethnic conflicts in the former Soviet Union, and that conflict prevention by the OSCE in the region initially did not focus appropriately on media issues. During the past few years, however, media issues have increasingly come to preoccupy the OSCE, chiefly in connection with human rights issues and freedom of speech, but to some extent also as an element of conflict prevention. The importance of local media for OSCE conflict prevention is analysed in terms of the activities of the High Commissioner for National Minorities and Representative on Freedom of the Media, and OSCE annual reports.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Ethnic Conflict, and Human Rights
Political Geography:
Russia and Soviet Union

247. Stand-off with North Korea: War Scenarios and Consequences

Author:
Colin Robinson and Stephen H. Baker
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Defense Information
Abstract:
North Korea's military threat and somewhat peculiar approaches to international relations have been a central difficulty in dealing with the isolated regime during the past decade. In the early 1990s, North Korea, formally known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), was expected by many observers to collapse, just as communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union did.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe, Asia, North Korea, and Soviet Union

248. The Defense Monitor: Nuclear Recollections

Author:
Bruce Blair
Publication Date:
04-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Defense Information
Abstract:
Rear Adm. Eugene (Gene) Carroll, our beloved colleague who passed away this February, often shared with me his recollections of the role he once played in planning for nuclear war. As quoted in his obituary in the Washington Post, Gene once wrote: “During the horrible confrontation with the Soviet Union we called the Cold War, I frequently stood nuclear alert watch on aircraft carriers. For a period of time my assigned target was an industrial complex and transportation hub in a major city in Eastern Europe … My bomb alone would have resulted in the death of an estimated 600,000 human beings. Multiply that by 40 or 50 times and you can understand what two carriers alone would have done.”
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and Cold War
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Soviet Union

249. Egypt as a Failing State: Implications for US National Security

Author:
Ruth M. Beitler and Cindy R. Jebb
Publication Date:
07-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Department of Social Sciences at West Point, United States Military Academy
Abstract:
Short-term solutions to more profound, long-term problems are not sufficient to safeguard United States interests in the Middle East. This paper challenges the current United States policy towards Egypt and its underlying assumption that regime stability supercedes a US interest in true political development. The key question in this paper queries why the status quo policy towards Egypt is no longer fulfilling US objectives when it has been a successful pillar for US Middle East policy in the past. One can easily understand the seductive nature of adhering to the status quo policy by recalling Anwar Sadat's initiatives moving Egypt squarely from the Soviet camp to the American one, the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, and Egypt's support during the Gulf War in 1991. The United States must take bold new steps towards its relationship with Egypt and leverage Egypt's historical regional leadership to better support US interests for the future.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, Soviet Union, Arabia, and Egypt

250. Social and Economic Decline as Factors in Conflict in the Caucasus

Author:
Svetlana Glinkina and Dorothy Rosenberg
Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
We argue that the conflicts in the Caucasus are the result of the abrogation by the elite of the earlier, Soviet era, social contract. This process was accompanied by the collapse of the formal economy; evidenced by huge national income compression, falling public goods provision, and growing inequality and poverty. In the absence of state provision of basic amenities and governance, ordinary people are compelled to fall back on kinship ties. Declining standards of governance facilitate state-sponsored corruption and criminality in a setting where the shadow economic activity is increasingly important to individual survival strategies. Oil pipelines and the right to control the transit of goods both legal and illegal also underlie conflict in the region. Criminality has replaced ethnicity as the major motivation for conflict and conflict per se has become a lucrative source of income.
Topic:
Economics, Ethnic Conflict, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Asia, and Soviet Union