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Five Factors Affecting Stability and Security in the Middle East
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 3-4
ABSTRACT: There are five factors that affect security and stability in the Middle East. The first of these is the ticking bomb of sectarianism between the Sunni and Shiite strands of Islam, which have become more widespread in recent years due to the politisation of sectarian tensions and their transformation...
Failed States and Theories: The (Re)Securitisation of Underdevelopment
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 3-4
ABSTRACT: Over the past two decades, the term “failed state” has been popularised among both academics and policy-makers. This work seeks to adequately provide for the historical and cultural background driving the term and its theoretical and practical implications. However, the bulk of this work is...
Barriers to Recovery: Continental Crisis and Media Threat Inflation
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 3-4
ABSTRACT: From the wars in Vietnam and Iraq to the Arab Spring, recent history is full of examples of how media outlets interact with government processes to shape public opinion and constrain the practical avenues policymakers may take in domestic and international affairs. The recent European financial...
The Arab Spring in French Foreign Policy
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 3-4
ABSTRACT: The Greater Middle East has traditionally played a major role in French foreign policy. Following WWI, the 3rd French Republic acquired Syria and Lebanon which created a foundation for political, economic and cultural ties between France and the Arab world. In the post-Cold War era, French...
Dynamics of Peace Management: From Interstate to Inter-Humanity Dialogue
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 3-4
ABSTRACT: Traditionally the term “peace” has been defined as the absence of war. Yet, “peace” is closely associated to the term “security” and although “peace” and “security” are both generally referred to in interstate affairs, “peace” is more deeply attached to civil society, since it ultimately suffers...
Balance of Power versus Complex Interdependence
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 3-4
ABSTRACT: Both the concepts of Balance of Power and Complex Interdependence attempt to describe the post-cold war international system. We select Offensive Realism (re: Mearsheimer) and Neoliberal Institutionalism (re: Keohane and Nye), for theoretically contextualising the aforementioned concepts. Through...
How the Strong Lose Wars: Transformative Goals and the Outcome of Asymmetric Conflict
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 3-4
ABSTRACT: This work proposes an explanation of strong actor failure in asymmetric conflict. It proposes and develops the hypothesis of transformative and non-transformative goals and shows the correlation between strong actor objectives and the outcome of asymmetric conflicts. The central argument of...
Values of the Belgrade Regime
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 3-4
ABSTRACT: This article evaluates the legacy of Slobodan Milošević whose regime ruled Serbia for more than a decade from the end of the 1980s until 2000. The article briefly examines the main political and social aspects of the Milošević regime and analyzes a value equation by questioning the social values...
The Politics of Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 3-4
ABSTRACT: Since the explosion of the first atomic weapon the international system has been saddled with perceived threats to national security based around weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This is best seen through the spate of interest by countries to develop nuclear weapons. Hence, nuclear deterrence...
Private Security Companies in the Czech Republic: An Exploratory Analysis
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 2
ABSTRACT: Czech private security companies have thus far received relatively little attention both internationally and, until recently, domestically. This article attempts to fill this gap by analysing the key characteristics of the market with more than 6,000 private security companies that together...
Terrorism 2.0 in Eurasia
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 2
ABSTRACT: “New” terrorist organisations, characteristic of the post-Cold War period, sharply contrast with their more traditional (“old”) predesessors in Europe and Russia. These latter European terrorist groups (termed here as Terrorism 1.0) were mostly: sovereignty/ideology-driven, geographically limited,...
The New Terrorist Threat: Destruction of Western Credit Ratings
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 2
ABSTRACT: This work describes how capital terrorists and/or adversarial nations could use Western capital markets to injure Western economies and limit international power projections. Specifically, we analyse a particular vulnerability of international capital markets, the market for sovereign debt,...
The Abu Omar Case and “Extraordinary Rendition”
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 2
ABSTRACT: In 2003 Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (known as Abu Omar), an Egyptian national with a recognised refugee status in Italy, was been illegally arrested by CIA agents operating on Italian territory. After the abduction he was been transferred to Egypt where he was interrogated and tortured for more...
Some Caution, Please: Applying the Concept of Moral Hazard to Humanitarian Intervention
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 2
ABSTRACT: The concept of moral hazard, born in insurance studies, has recently been adopted by international relations theory where it is primarily applied to humanitarian intervention. This article cautions against too hasty an embracement of the concept by IR scholars. Arguing that important theoretical...
Understanding Success of Targeted Sanctions: The EU in Zimbabwe
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 2
ABSTRACT: The European Union (EU) imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe in 2002 and this article aims at evaluating the success of that decision. Applying a broader definition of success, this article assumes that sanctions can coerce, constrain and signal. Contrary to most of the literature holding that sanctions...
Hungary’s Post-2001Ratification Challenges: Lessons Concerning the V4-Nato Relationship
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 2
ABSTRACT: Hungary and the other Visegrad countries (V4), over the past decade, participated in coalition military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but not Libya. This article examines how this has impacted Hungary’s standing in the North Atlantic Alliance, and to this end deploys the concepts of “two...
Global Power Transformations: Political, Economic and Security Dimensions
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 2
ABSTRACT: International relations are in the midst of tremendous transformation; to the distribution of political, economic and military power. This work traces such changes by looking at a wide series of indicators and seeks to explain - in a predictive manner - how the international environment will...
Building a Client State: American Arms Policies Towards Iran, 1950–1963
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 2
ABSTRACT: Precious little has been written in academic scholarship about the US arms relationship with Iran. Much of the scholarly focus has been drained into an orbital vortex caused by twin crises in Iranian history: the 1953 British and American sponsored coup and the preceding oil blockade, and the...
Poland's Quiet Revolution: The Unfolding of Shale Gas Exploration and its Discontents in Pomerania
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 1
Abstract: This research highlights the unraveling of Poland’s shale gas revolution and analyses the structural problems faced by villagers who oppose testing, drilling, wildcatting, and the production of shale gas in their rural communities in northern Poland. I argue that the bed-fellowship between...
NATO, Discourse, Community and Energy Security
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 1
Abstract: This work analyses the relationship NATO has been constructing through its Strategic Concepts (1999 and 2010) between the military alliance and the “world-word” of energy security. Both NATO Strategic Concepts are viewed as meta-narratives which have been constructed to re-invent a role for...
The Controversy of Putin’s Energy Policy: The Problem of Foreign Investment and Long-Term Development of Russia’s Energy Sector
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 1
Abstract: This work evaluates the long-term effects of Putin’s energy policy on the development of the Russian energy sector from the perspective of Critical Security Studies. One of the concerns related to recent developments of the Russian energy sector is the increasing level of governmental control...
Uncovering North Korea’s Energy Security Dilemma: Past Policies, Present Choices, Future Opportunities
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 1
Abstract: Over the past two decades, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has allegedly developed nuclear energy while suffering near collapse caused by catastrophic economic policies. This work presents an evaluation of North Korea’s contemporary energy policies and stances and suggests...
Worth the Energy? The Geopolitics of Arctic Oil and Gas
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 1
Abstract: Climate change is literally and metaphorically bringing the Arctic in from the cold in international affairs with new economic opportunities emerging with the retreat of the ice sheets. Prominent amongst these is the prospect of previously inaccessible oil and gas sources in the High North...
The Impacts of International Aid on the Energy Security of Small Island Developing States (SIDS): A case Study of Tuvalu
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 1
Abstract: Tuvalu is a small island developing state (SID) with least developed country (LDC) status. The island has gained international attention due to the threat to its land territory as a result of climate change and subsequent sea-level rises. At the United Nations Climate Change Conference, held...
Moldova’s Political Self and the Energy Conundrum in the Context of the European Neighbourhood Policy
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 1
Abstract: This article employs a method of discourse analysis from a social constructivist perspective to evidence the emergence and stabilisation of a discourse of sovereignty in Moldova over the last decades. Within this context, it also explores the meaning of Transnistria and energy security for...
The Political Economy of Energy Security and Nuclear Energy in Jordan
Issue:
2012 - Volume 6, Issue 1
Abstract: In 2007 the Jordanian government announced its intention to build one nuclear power plant by 2015 and a number of others by 2030. The objective of this nuclear energy programme was to provide a sustainable domestic energy supply and relieve the burden of reliance on external energy sources....
Why Isreal Fears a Nuclear Iran: Realism, Constructivism & Iran’s Dual-National Identity
Issue:
2011 - Volume 5, Issue 3
Abstract: This work compares and contrasts the theoretical models of realist and constructivist thought within international relations theory as they relate to the subject of Iranian nuclear proliferation. The spread of nuclear weapons to Iran and to the Middle East represents a unique international...
Civic Activism, Social Capital & Social Media in the Modern MENA Region
Issue:
2011 - Volume 5, Issue 3
Abstract: The unfolding unrest in the Middle East opened up new debates on the relationship between social capital and civil society. This work has a threefold focus: first, it explores how the existing stock of social capital spurred on the contemporary civic activities in the search of constructing...
Remaking US Foreign Policy for a Fresh Start with the Muslim World: Linguistic and Discursive Features of Obama’s Cairo Speech
Issue:
2011 - Volume 5, Issue 3
Abstract: Since his inaugural speech on 20 January 2009, Barack Obama has consistently kept the eloquence of his political speech that addresses the issue of change and the need to remake America by reintroducing it to itself and the world at large. In his Cairo Speech, delivered from the most populous...
Democracy & Human Rights Promotion in US Foreign Policy
Issue:
2011 - Volume 5, Issue 3
Abstract: This article delves into the driving forces behind the US’s human rights and democracy promotion policy. To facilitate the investigation of this work, liberal internationalism is deployed. This theoretical framework has been selected because of its insistence on the logic of consequences and...