Penetration,Overlay, Governmentality: The Evolving Role of NATO in the Western Balkan Security Dynamics

ABSTRACT

According to the Regional Complex Security Theory (RSCT) external involvement in regional security can take either the form of penetration or overlay. We theorise governmentality as the third form of external involvement aimed to responsibilise regions in order to govern them indirectly and at a distance. We illustrate our argument in a study of NATO’s role in the Western Balkans since the dissolution of Yugoslavia. In particular, we posit that the predominant role of NATO in the region has evolved over time from penetration in the 1990s, through overlay in the early 2000s, to today’s governmentality.     

The European Union Blowback? Euroscepticism and its Consequences in the Western Balkans

While there exists a large body of literature investigating the European Union’s intervention in the western Balkans, and in particular the influence of so-called ‘enlargement fatigue’, rarely is the western Balkans’ own fatigue towards the EU given serious consideration. This paper examines domestic views about Europe, arguing that aspiring new EU member states have been experiencing various forms of Euroscepticism due to a number of socio-economic, cultural and political factors. The growth of Euroscepticism has helped Russia to play a more assertive and influential role in the region. However, as this paper argues, Euroscepticism is not a rejection of the European perspective and the search for alternatives, but rather a critique of the actual methods, timing and impact of the integration process.     

NATO’s continuing adaptation

Despite US President Donald Trump’s noted hectoring on European NATO defence spending, several European NATO countries have been modestly increasing their spending for some time owing to national threat perceptions. The real challenges are to ‘spend better’, in ways that genuinely enhance military capabilities and in particular increase reassurance and deterrence vis-a-vis Russia, and to improve internal cohesion.     

The British secret service in neutral Switzerland: An unfinished debate on NATO's cold war stay-behind armies

In 1990, the existence of a secret anti-Communist stay-behind army in Italy, codenamed ‘Gladio’ and linked to NATO, was revealed. Subsequently, similar stay-behind armies were discovered in all NATO countries in Western Europe. Based on parliamentary and governmental reports, oral history, and investigative journalism, the essay argues that neutral Switzerland also operated a stay-behind army. It explores the role of the British secret service and the reactions of the British and the Swiss governments to the discovery of the network and investigates whether the Swiss stay-behind army, despite Swiss neutrality, was integrated into the International NATO stay-behind network.     

Balancing Democratic Civilian Control with Effectiveness of Intelligence in Romania: Lessons Learned and Best/Worst Practices Before and After NATO and EU Integration

This article reviews Romania's intelligence reform after 1989. Specifically, it looks at intelligence reform before and after Romania's accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2004, and the European Union (EU) in 2007. It finds that Romania has made considerable progress in intelligence reform. That is because Romania, which expressed its desire and commitment to join NATO/EU after 1989, has worked hard to comply with these organizations’ membership demands (including intelligence reform). After NATO/EU integration (when demands on balancing control and effectiveness virtually vanished), despite continued openness efforts made by agencies, control/oversight diluted. Thus, post-NATO/EU, while effectiveness is being strengthened, democratic control lessens.     

The wider implications of Zapad 2017

Russia's Zapad 2017 exercise, in which Russia defended Belarus against externally supported extremist groups, conveyed Russia's determination to re-establish its sphere of influence in the face of NATO's perceived expansionism. NATO must not allow the fact that Zapad was less aggressive than some had feared to blunt its message of greater vigilance and preparedness, nor shake its firm commitment to eastern European allies.     

Enforcing and disrupting circular movement in an EU Borderscape: housingscaping in Serbia

ABSTRACT

This article examines Western Balkans/EU bordering and debordering practices through a borderscape method in the context of the geopolitical positionality and (de)institutionalization of migrant housing in Serbia. From this perspective, a new ‘border variation’ can be seen emerging after the securitarian turn, transforming the external borderscape of the EU into a space of circular movement. The article sheds light on discourses, practices and places that constitute these spaces of circular movement within the EU external borderscape. In particular, the Western Balkans borderscape is investigated with reference to Serbian migrant housingscapes emerging at the intersection of state-run camps and migrant collective self-organized squatted housing. The focus on migrant housingscapes points to the interconnectedness of camps and squats in the process of facilitating circular movement by the state, the production of mobile commons as a debordering practice, and the production of visual representations of the external border as stabilized ‘scape’ for the EU.     

21世纪初危机应对中的俄罗斯国家形象塑造

危机发生后,一国政府如何应对危机一定程度上损害或修复着国家形象。21世纪初的十来年,世界上发生了一系列与俄罗斯相关的国内外危机,面对这些事件,在苏联解体后俄罗斯国际形象受损的颓势背景下,俄罗斯政府积极应对,既灵活务实,又顽强有力,客观上塑造了资源丰富、经济回升、政局稳定、政权有力、追求多极化、在国际上有发言权的世界大国形象。     

The prospect of union between Russia and Belarus

Russia has used an economic dispute to pressure Belarus for closer integration. Such integration could provide President Vladimir Putin with an option for retaining power after the end of his term in 2024. The dispute should be understood primarily, however, within the context of Russia’s long-standing attempts to reduce its subsidies to Belarus and its more recent goal, in the light of tensions with the West, of preventing Belarus’s escape from Russia’s orbit.     

A Difficult Compromise: British and American Plans for a Common Anti-Communist Propaganda Response in Western Europe, 1948–58

The launch of the Western Union in 1948 and the creation of the NATO Information Service in 1950 were important steps in the coordination of the Western response to Soviet and Soviet-inspired propaganda campaigns. By examining how the British Information Research Department worked closely with the International Organizations Division of the CIA in shaping the foundation and early activities of these intergovernmental agencies, this article offers new insight into the role of national information agencies within international organizations and contributes to explaining why, in the early Cold War, the West struggled to produce a coherent and fully coordinated propaganda response to communism.     

Finland's NATO membership: Continuous shelter-seeking strategy

This article offers a challenge, in the form of an illustrative case study, to the notion that Finland's NATO membership is a radical reversal in security policy. With the use of shelter theory, it examines how Finland (as a small state), beginning in the Cold War, has actively sought to achieve political, economic and societal shelter from Western organizations. However, due to geopolitical restraints, the country has at various times been unable to fully adopt preferred shelter arrangements, especially within the military security sphere. The analysis indicates that the institutionalisation of Finland's shelter strategy has often been a tedious, diplomatic quest to integrate with the West, contingent upon opportunistically taking advantage of external ‘critical junctures’ to solidify its own interests. The article posits that Finland's pursuit of Western economic and societal shelter during the Cold War transformed into further Western political shelter-seeking in its aftermath and, finally, membership of NATO in 2023. The case of Finland indicates that shelter theory captures the foreign policy strategy of a small neutral/nonaligned state. Nevertheless, our specific case also indicates that the theory ought to take a closer look at four features regarding relations between small and large states, that is how an agressive neighbour can restrict a small state's foreign policy choices, how economic and societal shelter relations may precede political shelter relations (or vice versa), the role of critical junctures within shelter theory, and, finally, how a history of cooperation may be transitioned into full-fledged shelter.     

A European Security Policy? The Attitudes of Candidates for the European Parliament*

It has been argued that the credibility of the American nuclear deterrent is declining in Western Europe. Whether this is true or not, it seems clear that support for the NATO alliance had reached a remarkably low level among Western European political elites as the 1970s drew to a close. One possible alternative to continued reliance on the Atlantic Alliance would be for Western Europe to develop its own independent defence capabilities. Certainly, in terms of economic and technological resources, this option should be within reach of an integrated European Community. And indeed there seems to be widespread support among European political leaders for the principle of having Western Europe play a more independent role vis-à-vis both superpowers. But there is no clear consensus in favour of the increased defence expenditures that such a policy would entail. Nor is there a consensus in favour of developing a unified West European security system inside or outside the institutional framework of the European Community. Our evidence in support of these conclusions is based on interviews carried out with candidates for the European Parliament in all nine member countries during the months immediately preceding the first direct elections in June, 1979.     

NATO’s look East

Russia's military modernisation and aggressiveness have prompted NATO to refocus on European security and especially on reassuring worried Eastern members of the Alliance, and spurred NATO members to spend more on defence. But differences remain among allies over the specific measures required to ensure effective deterrence and sufficient comfort. NATO also faces complex challenges involving terrorism, state failure and humanitarian strife on its periphery.     

The impact of ‘Tempest’ on Anglo-American communications security and intelligence, 1943–1970

ABSTRACT

This article examines the impact of the discovery by Britain and the United States in the late 1940s/early 1950s that cipher machines produced compromising emissions, a phenomenon which became known as Tempest. The British and Americans were forced to develop security measures to protect their encrypted communications but the Soviet Union was still able to exploit Tempest emissions from cipher machines in Western embassies in Moscow and read their diplomatic traffic. At the same time, Tempest became an important new way for the NSA and GCHQ to gather communications intelligence, particularly from developing world states and NATO allies.     

Tutors and Pupils: International Organizations, Central European Elites, and Western Models

In the past decade, political elites in Central and Eastern Europe have often sought to imitate Western organizational and institutional models, while organizations like the EU and NATO have often acted as “institutional tutors” in the region. Using evidence from Hungary and the Czech Republic, this paper demonstrates why imitating Western structures has been both administratively expedient and useful in building political coalitions. It also stresses that the short‐term benefits of doing so are followed by longer‐term costs. The paper answers four questions: How have certain models been held up to CEE elites? Why might some such models be targets for elites to imitate? How does such imitation occur? And what results from imitation? Contrary to expectations that institutional modeling would be merely technocratic and used only yearly in the transformation, the paper's threefold heuristic of templates, thresholds, and adjustments shows that the process is both politically contentious and sustained.     

Security Identities and ‘No More,No Less’ Operations: On Making NATO's Involvement in Darfur Possible

This article explores NATO's support mission to the African Union's peacekeeping operation in Darfur, Sudan between 2005 and 2007. NATO policies are commonly presented as functional responses to events, but how did a conflict on the African continent become the Atlantic Alliance's business? In this essay, a poststructuralist practice-oriented approach is used to understand the way in which discursive practices progressively establish a policy option as ‘natural' in a given situation. It is argued that the normalization of NATO's support mission to the African Union in Darfur and the integration of this operation in NATO's security identity were the result of complex and conflict-ridden social interactions between different discursive practices supported by different actors.     

Propaganda,Internal Security and Alliance Politics: Greek Proposals to NATO in the 1950s

In a prolonged multidimensional conflict such as the Cold War, military threats were aggravated by the challenges of internal subversion and propaganda. These posed huge problems to the smaller NATO members, who lacked the resources to respond to Soviet bloc/communist tactics. This article focuses on two Greek proposals to NATO, in 1952 and 1958, which intended to address such issues. In the first instance, Athens contributed to the creation of the NATO Special Committee. In 1958, a Greek proposal on psychological warfare was brushed aside. The article tries to interpret Greek motives, the alliance's response and the reasons which led to the rejection of the latter proposal.     

Space Engagement with Russia and Ukraine: Preventing Conflicts and Proliferation

The collapse of the Soviet Union brought about a number of serious concerns that space and missile technologies—including weapons-related technologies—might be exported by Russia and Ukraine to states that might use them for hostile purposes. In fact, inadvertent contribution to ballistic missile programs through space collaboration and technology sharing is considered one of the major “routes” of missile technology proliferation. Incidentally, in the case of Russia and Ukraine, out of all the potential risks associated with technology transfers, proliferation of ballistic missile technologies has been the major concern for the Western nations, and engaging these two countries in joint space projects has been viewed as a powerful incentive to comply with missile nonproliferation norms and ideals.     

Transatlantic Military Space Cooperation: Addressing the Capabilities Gap

Attempts to address the transatlantic capabilities gap in military space is complicated by the rivalry between NATO and the European Union's ambition to undertake a greater role in European security, as well as being held hostage by the extent and nature of the EU's role in this crucial policy area. In light of this, transatlantic military space cooperation is likely to be modest and on a bilateral basis between Washington and the various European capitals, though NATO may yet play a larger role in this area.     

The evolution of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

The 17-year-old Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) – the world's largest regional organisation in terms of geographic coverage and population – has evolved into a legitimate forum for the political and economic interaction of its members without direct Western involvement. But Russia and China still set the agenda, and the SCO remains focused on relationship-building, rather than achieving concrete outcomes.