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1211. Defying United Nations Sanctions: Three Reasons for African Engagement with North Korea

Author:
Tycho van der Hoog
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
Abstract:
The United Nations (UN) sanctions against North Korea are weakened by structural evasion techniques and weak enforcement. The African continent is a crucial node in the global illicit networks of North Korea. This paper examines three motives for African states to cooperate with North Korea, with a particular focus on the context of southern Africa: historical affinity (reciprocity), the practical issue of maintenance dependency (necessity), and the presence of weak enforcement regimes (opportunity). Based on a deep reading of UN Panel of Experts reports, academic literature and policy papers, novel archival material, and an interview with a defected North Korean diplomat, this paper argues that solutions to strengthen the sanctions regime can be successful only if they are grounded in African initiatives.
Topic:
Security, Economics, United Nations, Sanctions, Engagement, and Dependency
Political Geography:
Africa and North Korea

1212. Debunking the Korean Peninsula "Arms Race": What's Behind South Korea's Military Force Development?

Author:
Markus Garlauskas and Axel Catellier
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
Abstract:
Following a record number of North Korean missile launches, as well as tests by South Korea, assertions have been widely and uncritically made that Seoul is participating in an inter-Korean arms race. This paper challenges that paradigm by arguing that South Korea’s military acquisitions, displays, and testing of new weapons are better explained as proactive efforts to build military capabilities to support national security priorities in a broader context, rather than reactions to the threat from North Korea. While North Korea’s reasons for weapons testing are well-documented, South Korea’s military buildup in recent years has received far less attention. This paper examines drivers behind South Korea’s military investments and makes recommendations for how the Republic of Korea (ROK)-United States alliance could incorporate these capabilities into alliance military operations beyond simply deterring or defeating North Korea. To do so, it examines how broader drivers affect ROK strategic thinking, the demands this puts on the ROK military, and how those demands translate to specific defense acquisitions. With the start of a new ROK presidential administration, it is an opportune time for Seoul and Washington to coordinate approaches on capabilities development in ways that would benefit both countries in the years to come.
Topic:
Security, Weapons, Arms Race, and Military
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, and North Korea

1213. Inter-Korean Reconciliation and the Role of the U.S.: Facilitator or Spoiler?

Author:
Gabriela Bernal
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
Abstract:
Although the Korean Peninsula has been divided for over 70 years, North and South have not been able to make lasting progress in terms of reconciliation. While there are multiple factors directly influencing the extent to which inter-Korean relations can progress, this paper focuses on the role of the United States. When it comes to inter-Korean reconciliation efforts, is the U.S. more of a facilitator or a spoiler? By looking at three case studies spanning three South Korean administrations—Roh Tae-woo, Roh Moo-hyun and Moon Jae-in—this paper attempts to find patterns and lessons related to Washington’s role in the complex inter-Korean reconciliation process. The cases reveal that the U.S. has played the role of both facilitator and spoiler in each case, and that whatever role the U.S. plays depends on its own relationship with North Korea at that time. The U.S. is most likely to play a facilitating role when the administrations in Washington and Seoul are both willing to engage diplomatically with Pyongyang, when progress is being made in denuclearization talks, when the geopolitical environment is conducive towards diplomacy and engagement with North Korea, and when the U.S. adopts a reciprocal negotiating strategy. The paper concludes by considering the conditions necessary to achieve inter-Korean reconciliation and to establish long-term peace on the peninsula. Key factors include the need for trust-building and reciprocity between the U.S. and North Korea, and adopting a more holistic approach that goes beyond the nuclear problem and aims to establish a lasting relationship between Washington and Pyongyang.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Bilateral Relations, Geopolitics, and Reconciliation
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, North Korea, and United States of America

1214. Finland and Sweden in NATO: the potential of new security providers

Author:
Hanna Ojanen
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO is occurring at an accelerated pace. In January 2022, neither government was considering NATO membership; in May 2022, they moved decisively into the application process. In response, NATO member states have rush processed their membership, with most NATO countries ratifying Accession Protocols. In November 2022, they are a mere two ratifications short of membership. Both Finland and Sweden are sending a strong message to Allies and Russia by joining NATO without preconditions as already active contributors and security providers within the Alliance. For its part, NATO would not only gain two new member states but also a new regional subgroup of Nordic countries that have their own perspectives and strategic cultures. Moreover, Finland and Sweden will bring a model for bilateral defence cooperation.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, NATO, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe, Finland, and Sweden

1215. The unrealized potential of cooperative security in the Arab Gulf

Author:
Silvia Colombo
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
Over the past three decades, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has undergone a geopolitical transformation, punctuated by a series of critical junctures: the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990-1991, the American and NATO operations in Afghanistan the following decade, the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the Arab uprisings of 2011. These regional geopolitical shifts – often dictated by domestic drivers – have been accompanied by global geostrategic changes. As a result, the Gulf sub-region, encompassing Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries,1 Iraq, Yemen, and Iran, has emerged as the new center of gravity in the MENA region. Thus, NATO should give the Gulf sub-region special consideration in its strategy for the South. This sub-region is distinctive and important for NATO for two reasons. First, it plays a key role in global energy geopolitics, a role further reinforced by the fallout of the Ukraine war. Second, the specific security challenges confronting the Gulf sub-region (e.g., terrorism, maritime insecurity and piracy, cyber-attacks and climate change-related threats) are more in line with what NATO can deliver for the security of the area. No other sub-region along the southern flank holds the same potential for NATO. Yet, the current partnership framework, structured around the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI), has major flaws in terms of format and substance. This Policy Brief investigates NATO’s political and military cooperation with the GCC countries.2 So far, the political dimension of the NATO-GCC countries partnership remains underdeveloped. This has had signifi- 1 They include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). 2 Iraq is beyond the scope of this analysis. * Senior Researcher at the NATO Defense College. The author would like to thank Cinzia Bianco, Ashraf Keshk, Youssef Mnaili, Marc Ozawa, Cynthia Salloum and Thierry Tardy for their feedback on previous drafts. cant implications for practical cooperation. However, there is now a window of opportunity (and a growing imperative) to align political and military relations between NATO and the GCC countries with changing regional geopolitical and geostrategic dynamics. One way to do so is to invest more in cooperative security.
Topic:
Security, Regional Cooperation, Partnerships, and Gulf Cooperation Council
Political Geography:
Middle East and Gulf Nations

1216. El por qué de la guerra en Ucrania y su posible impacto en América Latina

Author:
Lila Roldán Vázquez
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Argentine Council for International Relations (CARI)
Abstract:
El artículo recorre las razones históricas y políticas que, a juicio de la autora, han derivado en la guerra desatada por la Federación Rusa contra Ucrania. También es su objetivo analizar los impactos inmediatos y mediatos de la guerra a nivel internacional, así como sus posibles consecuencias en el ámbito regional de América Latina.
Topic:
Security, Politics, War, Economy, History, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Ukraine, and Latin America

1217. U.S. SOUTHCOM Fights Through COVID-19

Author:
Michael T. Plehn
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
As I boarded my flight in Bogotá, Colombia, to return to the United States on March 14, 2020, after participating in the joint Colombia-U.S. Exercise Vita in the Guajira Peninsula, the reality of how the COVID-19 pandemic was going to affect our lives over the next year began to manifest. Arriving back in Miami, where I was the Military Deputy Commander for U.S. Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), I went straight home to begin a 14-day quarantine in accordance with new policies from the Department of Defense (DOD) for travelers returning from overseas. It was the first of many adaptations that we would make in the coming months. In May of 2019, shortly after assuming command at USSOUTHCOM, Admiral Craig Faller, USN, established three primary lines of effort to guide our activities: strengthen partnerships, counter threats, and build our team.1 Less than a year later, we were tested in all three areas by the pandemic. One of the great strengths of USSOUTHCOM is the network of engaged and willing partners in the region. We work closely with them as we guide all U.S. military activity across much of Latin America and the Caribbean. We are neighbors and friends who share common values, ties, and interests. Our neighborhood is not only rich in natural resources but also beset by many longstanding challenges and several emerging issues. While there is no current armed conflict between countries in the region, it is one of the most violent areas on the globe, much of it fueled by transnational criminal organizations and longstanding structural, societal issues. According to a 2019 global study on homicide by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the rate of intentional homicide in Central and South America is four times the global average.2 Particularly virulent, transnational criminal organizations—flush with cash—constantly seek to expand their lethal trade through extortion, corruption, intimidation, and violence. These actions, in turn, erode the power and legitimacy of local, state, and federal governments, reducing their ability to fight this scourge.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Armed Forces, COVID-19, and SOUTHCOM
Political Geography:
South America and United States of America

1218. China, the West, and the Future Global Order By Julian Lindley-French and Franco Algieri

Author:
Julian Lindley-French and Franco Algieri
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
The primary purpose of this article is to respectfully communicate to a Chinese audience a Western view of the future world order. China needs the West as much as the West needs China. However, the West has awakened geopolitically to the toxic power politics that Russia is imposing on Ukraine and China’s support for it. China is thus faced with a profound choice: alliance with a declining and weak Russia or cooperation with a powerful bloc of global democracies that Russia’s incompetent and illegal aggression is helping to forge. The West is steadily morphing into a new global Community of Democracies with states such as those in the G7, Quads, and Quints taking on increasing importance as centers of decisionmaking.2 All three groupings reflect an emerging implicit structure with the United States at their core, European democracies on one American geopolitical flank, with Australia, Japan, South Korea, and other democracies in the Indo-Pacific region on the other American geopolitical flank. The force that is forging such a community is China as it morphs into a superpower. Specifically, China is choosing to be an aggressive putative superpower. President Xi Jinping’s aggressive worldview is of a China defined by its opposition to the United States and, by extension, America’s democratic allies and partners. A new world is being forged from within the increasingly hot cauldron of U.S.-Chinese strategic competition. However, does that mean this new world is inevitably now set on a crash course to conflict, something akin to a re-run of the collapse of pre–World War I Europe into systemic war? Or is it not too late for both sides to forge a pragmatic peace—a peace forged from respect, rather than destructive and disrespectful confrontation? On the face of it, President Xi seems to have made his choice, but in some very important respects siding with Russia in geopolitical conflict with the community of democracies seems counterintuitive when we look at China from a Western perspective (as this article does). This perspective also implies China’s “choice” might not be as firm as some would have it—a profound but essentially simple choice between siding with Vladimir Putin and confrontation with the West or continued growth, wealth, and power through collaboration with the West? The facts speak for themselves. Using the most favorable economic statistics for the combined Chinese and Russian economies—purchasing power parity—their combined economies are worth some $27 trillion in 2022. Using the same data for G7 countries, the core of the emerging Community, the total is $39 trillion.3 Add Australia and South Korea to the aggregate and the figure is $42 trillion. If nominal gross domestic product (GPD) is compared, the contrast is even more striking with the combined GDPs of China and Russia in 2022 totaling $20.2 trillion, while the combined GDPs of the G7 countries amount to $45.2 trillion, which when Australia and South Korea are added increases to $48.8 trillion.4 Critically, China’s trade with the democracies is over 10 times greater than that with Russia,5 while in 2020, China’s merchandise trade surplus with the rest of the world totaled $535 billion, with much of that figure due to surpluses with both the United States and Europe.6
Topic:
Security, Geopolitics, Strategic Competition, International Order, and Superpower
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, and United States of America

1219. The 21st Century's Great Military Rivalry

Author:
Graham Allison and Jonah Glick-Unterman
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
A quarter-century ago, China conducted what it called “missile tests” bracketing the island of Taiwan to deter it from a move toward independence by demonstrating that China could cut Taiwan’s ocean lifelines. In response, in a show of superiority that forced China to back down, the United States deployed two aircraft carriers to Taiwan’s adjacent waters. If China were to repeat the same missile tests today, it is highly unlikely that the United States would respond as it did in 1996. If U.S. carriers moved that close to the Chinese mainland now, they could be sunk by the DF-21 and DF-26 missiles that China has since developed and deployed. This article presents three major theses concerning the military rivalry between China and the United States in this century. First, the era of U.S. military primacy is over: dead, buried, and gone—except in the minds of some political leaders and policy analysts who have not examined the hard facts.1 As former Secretary of Defense James Mattis put it starkly in his 2018 National Defense Strategy, “For decades the United States has enjoyed uncontested or dominant superiority in every operating domain. We could generally deploy our forces when we wanted, assemble them where we wanted, and operate how we wanted.”2 But that was then. “Today,” Mattis warned, “every domain is contested—air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace.”3 As a result, in the past two decades, the United States has been forced to retreat from a strategy based on primacy and dominance to one of deterrence. As President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and his National Security Council colleague Kurt Campbell acknowledged in 2019, “The United States must accept that military primacy will be difficult to restore, given the reach of China’s weapons, and instead focus on deterring China from interfering with its freedom of maneuver and from physically coercing U.S. allies and partners.”4 One of the architects of the Trump administration’s 2018 National Defense Strategy put it less diplomatically and more succinctly: “The era of untrammeled U.S. military superiority is over.”5
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Deterrence, Strategic Competition, Rivalry, and Military
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, and United States of America

1220. Spring 2022 edition of Contemporary Eurasia

Author:
Vahram Ter-Matevosyan
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Contemporary Eurasia
Institution:
Institute of Oriental Studies, National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia
Abstract:
CONTENTS LILIT HARUTYUNYAN SYRIAN REFUGEES IN LEBANON: “NEW COMMUNITY” IN LEBANON’S CONFESSIONAL POLITICAL SYSTEM ............................................................... 5 GRIGOR VARDANYAN RESHUFFLINGS WITHIN SYRIAN SECURITY SYSTEM IN 2019: DETERMING POLITICAL MOTIVES AND OBJECTIVES ...............................20 VERONIKA TOROSYAN UNPACKING THE CONCEPT OF NATIONALISM WITHIN RUSSIAN EURASIANISM ...................................................................................................... 27 GOR HOVHANNISYAN TURKEY’S EXPANSION IN EASTERN AFRICA: THE CASE OF SOMALIA. ............................................................................................................. .44 WORKSHOP ARMENIA-TURKEY: LESSONS AND REALITIES………………………………………………………………………..58 CONFERENCE GULF ARAB COUNTRIES AND THE ARMENIAN COMMUNITIES: CURRENT TRENDS AND ISSUES………………………………………………………………………….…61
Topic:
Security, Bilateral Relations, Refugees, Domestic Politics, Syrian War, and Armenians
Political Geography:
Africa, Turkey, Caucasus, Middle East, Armenia, Lebanon, Syria, Somalia, and Gulf Nations