The Imia/Kardak affair, 1995–96: A case of inadvertent conflict

On Christmas Day 1995, a Turkish freighter ran aground on a rocky islet in the northern Dodecanese islands, setting off a chain of events that would lead Greece and Turkey to the brink of war. Senior officials in Washington later admitted that the countries were literally hours from conflict over an issue of which decision makers in America and Europe were completely unaware prior to military forces being deployed. The Imia/Kardak affair raised significant questions on all sides about how relations between two NATO countries with well‐known, ongoing tensions could have deteriorated so rapidly without drawing international attention till the last moment. The conflict highlighted problems in both Athens and Ankara related to the exchange of information between civilian and military leadership. It also revealed that strategic warning in emerging conflicts might not appear when the cause of the incident remains unknown until after the commitment of forces or when the pace of conflict moves too quickly. In such a situation, decision‐making architecture within a coalition or alliance may prove too cumbersome to react to unexpected problems.     

The roles of conflict resolution scholars in Georgian–Abkhaz and Georgian–South-Ossetian conflict and conflict resolution

The evolving close relationship between the scholarly study of conflict resolution and the practice of waging and resolving conflicts can be seen in Georgian–Abkhaz and Georgian–South-Ossetian relations from 1992 to 2008. This article focuses on two related case studies of the many roles played by international conflict resolution scholars in Georgian–Abkhaz and in Georgian–South-Ossetian relations from 1992 to 2008. Drawing on interviews with insider-partial conflict resolution scholars, relevant international scholar-practitioners of conflict resolution, and the leadership of all parties of the conflicts, conducted between 1996 and 2008, the article presents a comprehensive analysis of the variety of roles conflict resolution scholar-practitioners have played in these conflicts during the wars and the recovery from war. The analysis suggests the need for clear ethical guidelines that cover traditional scholarly roles as well as scholar-practitioner roles including advising conflict parties, facilitating conflict resolution processes and analysing the conflicts. In particular, dilemmas emerge as scholar-practitioners move back and forth between these modes of engaged scholarship.     

Justifying forceful resistance to ethnic separatism: The case of Russia versus Chechnya, 1994–96

This article examines how states try to mobilize mass and elite support for wars against ethnic separatists, and what factors affect their success in this effort, using the 1994–96 Russian‐Chechen conflict as a case study. It argues that governments fighting ethnic separatists usually appeal to three sets of normative principles to gamer support for this effort: democracy and rights, law and order, and territorial integrity and unity. After showing how the Yeltsin government relied on these principles in its campaign to justify the war, the article examines and explains the extent to which these appeals were successful.     

Structures of influence and cooperation‐conflict

This paper outlines a structural approach to the analysis of patterns of influence and amity‐enmity in international politics. Structure is defined as a set of relations between pairs of social units, which justifies the use of graph theory to represent structures. Graph theoretical models of international structure are explored—one for each of the two types of relations. The author devises some typologies and observes changing structures. A tendency toward hierarchy in influence structures and toward bipolarization in cooperation‐conflict structures is discussed. It is hypothesized that high degrees of hierarchy and polarization are inimical to international peace. The graph theoretical studies yield intuitively reasonable results and the models appear to be useful in making several concepts of international relations theory more precise.     

Interaction and participation in sub‐war conflict, 1959–63

This research is concerned with the spread of sub‐war conflicts. It is hypothesized that higher levels of interaction with the contestants in such conflicts increase the probability of participation. A study of the behavior of the states in the CREON data set toward the Cold War during the years 1959–63 supports this contention. Attention then centers on determining the types of states that are most prone toward high levels of interaction. The findings in this section indicate that alliance members have significantly higher levels of interaction than non‐members. For members there is a strong negative logarithmic relationship between a state's geographical distance from the center of conflict and its level of interaction. This suggests that security interests strongly affect the inclination of such states to participate. Among non‐members of alliances, economic involvement in the international system and ties to the Warsaw Treaty Organization are most closely associated with interaction.     

The sack of Mostar, 1992–1994: The politico‐military connection

To date, most of the academic and journalistic accounts and analyses have treated the Bosnian War as a relatively uniform conflict among two or three warring parties along a nearly 1,000 km‐long front line. Yet the most militarily charged and conflictual spots along this line were several strategic urban areas such as Bihac, Mostar, Sarajevo, Brcko, Tuzla, Srebrenica and Gorazde. The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina can thus also be viewed as a collection of local wars. By focusing on the case of Mostar the authors argue that these local conflicts were part of a state‐building process, but that, due to the connivance among the different militias and state armies on the ground, the Mafia‐style war economy, as well as thanks to the newly emerged ethnically based institutions and ruling elites, such process resulted in a polity that more resembles a seventeenth‐century pirate colony than a modern state. In this sense the word ‘sack’ instead of ‘war’ describes more aptly the politico‐military dimension of the war waged in and around Mostar.     

A process tracing plausibility probe of uneven democratization's effects on cooperative dyads: The case of Zambia and Zimbabwe 1980–1993

In this article we conduct a plausibility probe of the hypothesis that uneven democratization decreases cooperation within primarily cooperative dyads. This hypothesis is derived from a combination of Remmer's theory of democratization and international cooperation with democratic peace theory. The case of cooperation and conflict between two small powers, Zambia and Zimbabwe, from the latter's independence in 1980 to 1993 fits Eckstein's criteria for a useful plausibility probe. In addition to overall, bilateral and regional interactions between the two countries, we examine relations in the political, economic, strategic, and physical environment issue areas. Methodologically, we combine time series analysis of events coded in the COPDAB format and interviews with policy makers. We find that, although net cooperation between the two countries remained positive during the entire 1980–1993 period, it decreased significantly overall and in economic issues after the beginning of the Zambian democratic transition in June 1990. Our data allow us to trace the process involved in this decline in net cooperation, ruling out some alternative explanations but not concurrent Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), and showing how even slightly uneven democratization was an important cause because it decreased similarity and trust, while not decreasing transparency, and increased uncertainty and thus nationalist responses. We conclude that this plausibility probe justifies further systematic research on the effects of uneven democratization on cooperative dyads to test our hypothesis on cases with and without SAPs, and suggests the utility of further probes of the effects of different types of uneven change on various types of dyads.     

Opposition parties and parliamentary oversight: The norwegian case, 1970–96

The numerous studies of parliamentary oversight and institutional design have largely ignored the ability of parliamentary opposition to strengthen and utilize mechanisms of parliamentary oversight by which they can challenge incumbents. This article explores the evolution of oversight mechanisms in Norway during 1970–96, and the ways new mechanisms have been utilized by the opposition to penetrate the policy‐making world of public bureaucracy. An analysis of two cases investigated by the new Standing Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs in 1994 and 1995 reveals that opposition members imposed institutional constraints on the incumbents. That in turn produced a move away from the traditional fixed control system, and towards a shifting‐focus control mode. In addition, the strategic creation of oversight arrangements appears to offer incumbents very little control over the evolution of oversight arrangements. Some control, however, may be exercised over the conclusion of oversight cases due to the leadership's ability, through the use of selective incentives, to persuade parties to join the government in the final vote in the Committee.     

The lawless presidency: Economic crisis and democratic accountability in Mexico, 1970–94

The Mexican government has adopted policies of market‐oriented reform since 1982 which have for the most part been praised by professional economists. Mexico even joined the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 1994. However the performance of the economy has been disappointing. Yet a failure to achieve any real per capita economic growth over an extended period is unusual among Latin American countries which have consistently pursued policies of market‐oriented economic reform. A large part of the explanation has to do with the character of Mexico's political institutions, most notably a lack of democratic accountability. The unmistakable trend toward greater democracy since 1982 has so far been expressed principally in terms of greater honesty and competitiveness in the electoral arena. But there has been no significant reform of the executive branch of government, which has for many years been run on authoritarian principles. This makes it difficult for the Mexican government to control corruption, limit the economic consequences of political shocks and prevent the shifts in political power which occur at the end of each sexenio from destabilising the economy.     

Saving the league: V.K. Wellington Koo,the league of nations and Sino‐Japanese conflict, 1931–39

In 1919, VK. Wellington Koo, the most famous Chinese diplomat of the early twentieth century, participated in the creation of the League of Nations at the Paris Peace Conference. Little over a decade later, as Japanese forces expanded into Manchuria and North China, Koo struggled to save the League he had helped found. He argued that inability or refusal to brand Japan as an aggressor would sound the League's death knell. In vain, Koo tried to convince European statesmen that the Far Eastern Crisis was a litmus test of the League's viability as a collective security organization. From 1936 on, League inaction in the face of Japanese, German and Italian expansion left Koo thoroughly disillusioned. The lessons of the League were not forgotten during World War II, when Koo argued that a more effective collective security organization, in the form of the United Nations, be created on a basis similar to Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Policemen concept.     

Promote People-to-People Connectivity through Communication and Exchanges——CAFIU Vice-President Ai Ping Visits Germany,Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro

正At the invitation of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung(FES)of Germany,Bi H Center for Promotion and Development of Belt and Road Initiative of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Green Home of     

‘The limits of international leadership’: The Eisenhower administration,East‐West trade and the cold war, 1953–54

This article examines the Eisenhower administration's trade policy towards the Soviet Union in 1953–54. It argues, contrary to previous scholarship on the subject, that the liberalization of East‐West trade controls in August 1954 cannot be attributed solely to the presidential leadership of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Instead, whilst Eisenhower played a significant role in changing American embargo policy, it was the Churchill government which provided the impetus required for the revision of the international export control lists. Despite conflict and confrontation over the shape and contents of the new embargo between Washington and London, the two governments forged a compromise in the summer of 1954.     

Terrorism,counter‐terrorism and democracy: The assessment of national security threats

The development of radical Islamist strategic thinking and the impact of post-modern, Western styles of thought upon the ideology that informs that strategy is often overlooked in conventional discussions of homegrown threats from jihadist militants. The propensity to discount the ideology informing both al-Qaeda and nominally non-violent Islamist movements with an analogous political philosophy like Hizb ut-Tahrir neglects the influence that critical Western modes of thought exercise upon their strategic thinking especially in the context of homegrown radicalization. Drawing selectively on non-liberal tendencies in the Western ideological canon has, in fact, endowed Khilaafaism (caliphism) with both a distinctive theoretical style and strategic practice. In particular, it derives intellectual sustenance from a post-Marxist Frankfurt School of critical thinking that in combination with an “English” School of international relations idealism holds that epistemological claims are socially determined, subjective, and serve the interests of dominant power relations. This critical, normative, and constructivist approach to international relations seeks not only to explain the historical emergence of the global order, but also to transcend it. This transformative agenda bears comparison with radical Islamist critiques of Western ontology and is of interest to Islamism's political and strategic thinking. In this regard, the relativist and critical approaches that have come to dominate the academic social sciences since the 1990s not only reflect a loss of faith in Western values in a way that undermines the prospects for a liberal and pluralist polity, but also, through a critical process facilitated by much international relations orthodoxy, promotes the strategic and ideological agenda of radical Islam. It is this curious strategic and ideological evolution that this paper explores.