On regional security governance once again: how analysis of the Southern Caucasus can advance the concept

Already introduced to the academic and political debate some years ago, the concept of “security governance” still needs to be clarified. In particular, four main shortcomings need to be overcome to make the concept more useful for an assessment of current security dynamics: in the first place, attention has been devoted more to “governance” than to “security”, while failing to consider the role of the understandings and perceptions of the actors involved in the governance system. Second, the literature on the actors (governmental or not) involved is still fragmented. Third, the literature on security governance has too often been detached from reflections on regionalism, while it would be useful to further explore the relationship between cognitive definitions of regional and security dynamics. Fourth, the literature has predominantly focused on Europe and the transatlantic area, overlooking processes of “region-building” in security terms in other “unexpected” geographical spaces. After proposing avenues to overcome the current gaps in the literature, the Southern Caucasus is chosen as a case study to show the different instances of security governance emerging, thanks to definitions of the region in security terms that have involved regional and external actors, of a state and non-state nature.     

Embracing “embedded security”: the OSCE's understated but significant role in the European security architecture

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is perhaps the world's least-known major security organization. However, the same characteristic which puts the OSCE seemingly continually on the verge of irrelevance with respect to the other actors in European and global security is in fact what has allowed it to endure and is in fact its greatest asset. That is, the OSCE's distinct combination of modern and postmodern characteristics in both its composition and its activities allows it to create what can be called “embedded security”. Tracing the evolution of one particular set of decision-making rules embedded within a normative framework which questioned the fundamental meanings of “security”, and exploring present-day activities, this article reinterprets the OSCE in the light of this new model. In so doing, it re-contextualizes both the OSCE's origins and its contemporary relevance. Instead of a modernist, functional, rule-driven interpretation which situates the OSCE on the periphery in a crowded field, this explanation puts the OSCE at the centre of the postmodern and normative European security architecture.     

Italian Aid Policy in the 60's

The search for common language has become a demanding issues in the Russia-EU relationship. One of the strongest messages contained in Russia's “sovereign democracy” concept is its desire to be regarded as a “normal” country, a full-fledged member of the international community. The concept embodies a search for its own subjectivity, which is ultimately felt to be a pre-condition for its self-assertion vis-à-vis Europe. Russia does not question any of the basic European norms; instead it seeks to offer an alternative version of each of them. For the Western audience, analysis of these concepts is essential for a better comprehension of Russia's foreign policy arguments.     

The Center-Periphery Cleavage Revisited: East and Central Europe from Postcommunism to Euroscepticism

The article examines the evolution of Eastern and Central European party systems from the previous communist/anticommunist conflict to the emergent division between pro-EU and Eurosceptic forces and puts forward a revised view of the traditional center-periphery cleavage in six countries: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. The first part addresses the question of “stateness” and the second the Rokkan spatial approach while the third develops a revised view of the center-periphery cleavage in relation to space at the national (minority ethnic groups vs. state), regional (EU vs. Eastern European member states), and global (USSR vs. satellite countries during the bipolar system) levels.     

Against Food Security: On Forms of Care and Fields of Violence

This article addresses recent changes to the policy landscape on global food security. It argues that a new consensus is emerging on how to tackle (or more hubristically “end”) global hunger and spur agricultural development. The consensus I speak of is evident in recent briefings by the World Economic Forum (especially its “New Vision for Agriculture”), the “New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition”, initiated by the G-8 (now G-7), the Grow Africa network, the US government's “Feed the Future” programme, the philanthropy-led Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, not to mention the many flagship reports emanating from the international financial institutions as well as key statements from global food retailers and leading agribusinesses. The article argues that this “new vision” for global agriculture is deeply problematic. Indeed, the projected “solutions”—in so far as they aim to radically transform agricultural life, especially in Africa—may well cause more harm than good. To put this argument more forcefully: what today is commonly called “food security” is perhaps better seen as a way of subjugating the poor under the pretence of doing them good.     

The Complexity of Global Security Governance: An Analytical Overview

By suggesting predictable and controllable patterns of development, the literature on global governance seems to simplify the world for decision-making tractability. In this respect, security narratives often remain analytically frozen, while the dynamics of global life are not. Relying on complexity thinking, this article both comments on the construction and potential reconstruction of the concept of security as it relates to the question of global governance and engages with the cognitive multiplicity of the notion of global security governance. Such an exploration suggests the need for the complexification of the discourses and practices of security governance through the adaptive contingency of “security as resilience”, which rejects the detachment between human and natural systems and the ability of the former to control the latter. The argument is that the logic of “security as resilience” is more appropriate than the conventional logic of “security as control”. In policy terms, therefore, the complexity of global security governance intimates an ability to cope with vulnerabilities, defy adversity and construct a new proficiency in response to the uncertainty, cognitive challenges, complex unbounded risks and the need for continuing adaptation prompted by the alterations in global life.     

(En)gendered Security? The Complexities of Women's Inclusion in Peace Processes

As peacebuilding discourses increasingly stress the importance of including women, to what degree have security-related practices taken heed? It has been over 10 years since the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security, yet it remains a “confused and confusing” tool for scholars and practitioners in assessing women's inclusion in peacebuilding. This article adds to our understanding on women and peacebuilding by engaging 1325 as an operationalizable concept and then applying it to peace agreements to understand how women's security is addressed as part of formal peace processes. Given previous difficulties in operationalizing 1325’s mandate, this article engages it as a three-level concept useful for studying the ways in which women are “brought into” security, called (en)gendered security. Using this concept of (en)gendered security, I assess intrastate peace agreements between 1991 and 2010 to elucidate where and how women are included in peace processes. This article illustrates the potential of a systematized and practical approach to security embodied in 1325 and a preliminary discussion of what accounts for better approaches to (en)gendered security during peacebuilding.     

The EU,Russia and the Manichean Trap

Conceptualizing the EU as a postmodern cooperative power that “transcends realism” provides ideological scaffolding for an exclusive conception of “Europe” and veils a zero-sum geopolitical project as “European integration”. Neoclassical realism considers assigning morally opposite political identities to the EU and Russia to be “rational” to the extent it strengthens internal cohesion and mobilizes resources to enhance security in accordance with the balance of power logic. Yet, the artificial binary construction can also produce a Manichean Trap when compromises required to enhance security are depicted as a betrayal of indispensable virtues and “Europe”. The ability to harmonize competing security interests diminishes as the conceptual space for comparing the EU and Russia is de-constructed. Competition is framed in uncompromising terms as “European integration” versus Russian “spheres of influence” and democracy versus authoritarianism.     

Has-Been,Wannabe, or Leader: Europe’s Role in the World After the 2003 European Security Strategy

In December 2003, the European Union presented its “security strategy”, endorsed by all member states, to provide guidance for Europe’s common foreign security and defense policy. In substance, this document is not an expression of a growing strategic rift between Europe and the United States. One of the purposes it serves, however, is defining Europe’s own, separate “identity”. It reflects the increasing awareness that Europeans need to employ their power more effectively in the service of international peace and security, as much as politically possible. Disagreements on key issues remain in Europe, however, and the practical implications of the security strategy still need to be worked out.     

“The Last of the Mohicans?” The IRA's “Operation Harvest” in an International Context

In 1956, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) launched “Operation Harvest,” an overtly ambitious guerrilla effort that was meant to secure the political unity of Ireland by force of arms. It was waged against the backdrop of a “thaw” in international relations and drew inspiration from successful anti-colonial guerrilla struggles in Algeria and Cyprus. The IRA was unaware of the simultaneous, parallel, unsuccessful irredentist efforts in Central and Eastern Europe in which anti-communist guerrillas clashed with totalitarian security apparatuses of the USSR or its satellite states. Studying the latter campaigns, which had begun earlier and were conducted by far larger and more effective guerrilla forces, might have convinced the organisation that such insurgencies in post-1945 Europe had very little hope of success. This article for the first time thematically contrasts the irredentist efforts of the IRA and the parallel Central and Eastern European guerrillas. It aims to bring to light cases that are hardly ever discussed in the Irish context but which could be of surprising use if one wishes to comparatively assess Ireland or the IRA.     

Cooperation in EU disaster response and security provision: circulating practices

There is a profound disconnect between the practice and scholarly study of security in Europe. The 2010 Internal Security Strategy added disasters such as forest fires, earthquakes, and floods to the list of European Union (EU) internal security concerns, expanding on the more traditional anxieties over militaries, border protection, and the effects of poverty. This article explores how evolving practices of disaster response, a policy area once separate from EU security discourse, have become part of the EU's wider security provision and with what implications. Based on interviews conducted at the Directorate-General (DG) for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (ECHO), it provides a detailed study of three EU disaster response practices – monitoring, training, and information co-ordinating – and their circulation to the wider field of EU internal security provision. It uses this case to outline that new understandings of what it means to “voluntarily co-operate” in European security projects have been radically under-theorized.     

Quo Vadis Europe? The “Russian Question”

This article revisits the key factors that have reshaped European security to serve as a baseline for framing two distinct paths that will determine the continent’s security architecture in the coming decades. At the center of this discussion is Europe’s answer to the “Russian question”: the role that Russia wants to play in Europe as compared to the level of influence it may be able to achieve through economic pressure and military force. It posits that the answer is inextricably connected to how Germany’s foreign policy evolves going forward, especially the German-Polish relationship and military trilateral cooperation between the United States, Germany, and Poland. It will also touch on the issue of Brexit as arguably the most significant development that will continue to shape European security for years to come, and, by extension, America’s European strategy.     

Useful Knowledge: Snouck Hurgronje and Islamic Insurgency in Aceh

Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1858-1936), a Dutch scholar of Islam, served as a “military anthropologist” during the Aceh war in the Dutch East Indies. The Acehnese fighters viewed their anti-colonial struggle against the Dutch as a jihad, construing themselves religious martyrs fighting “infidel invaders,” and carrying out suicide attacks with a machete or dagger. To combat this insurgency Snouck Hurgronje, one of the first Westerners to visit Mecca and author of many books on Islam, developed the so-called “Aceh method,” which became the basis of modern Dutch counterinsurgency strategy. This article addresses the question: what can we learn from the life and times of Snouck Hurgronje?     

Logic of the Chinese developmental state and China’s geo-economic engagement with Central and Eastern Europe

Asia Europe Journal - This study addresses China’s cooperation with Central and Eastern European (CEECs) countries, centred around what is popularly known as the...     

The transatlantic dialogue on Iran: the European subaltern and hegemonic constraints in the implementation of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran

This article analyses the US–EU transatlantic dialogue on the Iranian nuclear dossier with a particular view to the implications for EU foreign policy on Iran. Doing so, it uses neo-Gramscian scholarship to put the EU’s “over-compliance” with Iran sanctions into perspective. Constrained by the imperatives of hegemonic coercion in the form of US financial Iran sanctions against third country entities and with the hegemonic consent of a Western US-led “historic bloc”, Europe was relegated to a subaltern below its mediatory potential. It will be shown how this finding complicates the EU’s ambition to renew relations with Iran. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with experts and delegation members from the P5+1, this article thus analyses “the normative element” in the transatlantic security dialogue on Iran at a time where the latter is undergoing a sea change in the wake of the implementation of the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” of July 2015.     

Israel and the Emerging Strategic Architecture in the Middle East

The Middle East has undergone significant changes in the past two decades. Most significantly, the region has experienced the dissolution of the post-1991 America-centric regional security complex as the United States reduces its forces and retools its center of effort toward the Indo-Pacific, and the creation of a new gas-centered sub-regional security complex in the Eastern Mediterranean. These changes have impacted Israel’s stature in its region and have led to significant changes in Israel’s foreign and national security policy. While in the past, Israel viewed itself as a “villa in the jungle”—not as an integral part of the region—it now sees itself as part of its surroundings and is pursuing a much more regional-centric policy. This change is clear in issue-specific alliances and collective security arrangements, as well as in long-range economic relationships. This article analyzes the regional changes and their impact in Israeli strategic thinking and policy.     

“Gendering” European security: policy changes,reform coalitions and opposition in the OSCE

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has rarely been considered in scholarship on gender and security, even though it was one of the regional security organisations whose gender policy predated the United Nations Security Council’s call for more international attention to issues related to women, peace and security in October 2000. Based on an analysis of official OSCE documents and on semi-structured interviews, we trace the integration of gender issues in the OSCE and explore the rationale behind and the challenges associated with it. We identify two phases of gender policy change in the OSCE and show how the integration of UNSCR 1325 brought about an expansion of OSCE gender policy from an exclusive focus on “soft” security issues towards increased inclusion of gender in the area of “hard” security. Drawing on historical and feminist institutionalism, we argue that reform coalitions were crucial for the policy changes in the OSCE but that they encountered institutional and ideational barriers, which hampered implementation of the gender policy. In light of rising opposition, our analysis warns of a backlash that might jeopardise current achievements.     

A Military Anthropologist Looks at Islamic Insurgency in Aceh

Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1858-1936), a Dutch scholar of Islam, served as a “military anthropologist” in during the Aceh war in the Dutch East Indies. The Acehnese fighters viewed their anti-colonial struggle against the Dutch as a jihad, construing themselves religious martyrs fighting “infidel invaders,” and carrying out suicide attacks with a machete or dagger. To combat this insurgency Snouck Hurgronje, one of the first Westerners to visit Mecca and author of many books on Islam, developed the so-called “Aceh method,” which became the basis of modern Dutch counterinsurgency strategy. This article addresses the question: what can we learn from the life and times of Snouck Hurgronje?     

The rise of “diminished multilateralism”: East Asian and European forum shopping in global governance

The article argues that the “principled multilateralism” of the immediate post-Cold War period is increasingly giving way to what may be called a “diminished multilateralism.” Newly emerging global and regional powers such as the BRICS states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and other rising powers in the Global South are increasingly questioning the legitimacy of the existing international architecture which they regard as a vehicle of the USA and Western countries to conserve their international influence in an era of rapid change. In the process, international institutions have increasingly become arenas of power rivalries which take the form of contests over access and membership, decision-making rules and normative order. The result is an increasing paralysis of these institutions and their inability to solve global problems. One aspect of these institutional power struggles is “forum shopping.” The article shows that East Asia and Europe have both become active players in forum shopping. Three conditions facilitated forum shopping: major crises and external shocks; sentiments of frustrated entitlement in connection with exclusive and discriminatory international institutions, and extra- and intra-regional power shifts.     

改革开放40年来的中国(中)东欧研究:基于学科建设的初步思考

中国学界对东欧文学和东欧历史的介绍与研究很早就开始了,但从国际问题或世界政治的视角对(中)东欧问题进行全面研究大抵与改革开放同步。从研究对象的变化看,改革开放40年来的中国(中)东欧研究大体分为20世纪80年代的东欧研究和东欧剧变后的中东欧研究。而从研究的系统性和变化趋向来考察,中国(中)东欧研究则经历了一个不对称的“N型”进程,即20世纪80年代到21世纪初的“显学”、2004年数个中东欧国家加入欧盟前后至2011年期间的“险学”以及2012年中国—中东欧国家合作倡议启动以来的“热学”。在此过程中,中国(中)东欧研究的内容与重点不断发生变化,呈现强政策导向性、重热点追踪性以及国别关注非均衡性的特征。与之相适应的是,有关研究机构经历了从恢复新建到骤然减少再到蓬勃发展的过程,从业人员则出现由相对集中到部分改行再到“跨界汇”的趋向。为强化学科建设和提升国际话语权,未来中国(中)东欧研究应重点关注以下几点:剖析老中青三代学人的差异,总结中国(中)东欧研究的阶段性和连续性;查找中国学界与国外学界的差距,归纳中国(中)东欧研究的普遍性与特殊性;探求中国学界对于该区域的定义,形塑中国(中)东欧研究的唯一性或中国范式。