The sources of Russia's fear of NATO

The paper analyzes Russia's perception of NATO since the beginning of its eastern enlargement. Russia's reaction to the enlargement evolved from attempts to diffuse its potential damage through a limited cooperation to passive and then active policies of containment. The latter have resulted in a risky behavior with respect to the alliance and a concentration of Russian military on the Western border. Two factors can assist us in explaining Russia's evolving perception of NATO from a potential partner to a renewed military threat – the historical experience of viewing the alliance, and the West in general, as potentially threatening and the post-Cold war interaction with NATO that served to strengthen the historically developed perception. As of today, Russia has learned from its interaction with the alliance that NATO remains a principle threat to Russia's national security and that through the alliance's expansion the West seeks to exercise its cultural, economic, and political domination in Eurasia.     

Assessing the European Union's engagement with transnational policy networks on conflict-prone natural resources

Transnational policy networks (TPNs) are attracting greater scholarly interest given their impact on the contemporary conduct of international affairs. While this has been a welcome development for International Relations scholars and provided some preliminary insights, there is a need for more scholarly studies of TPNs that delve into specific issue-areas on a comparative basis. The paper addresses the above need by providing analyses of the role of European Union (EU)-based actors – the European Commission, member states, civil society organizations, and firms – in regulatory frameworks on conflict-prone natural resources such as oil, diamonds, coltan, tin, tungsten, and gold. To that end, the paper draws upon participant observations, interviews with state and non-state actors, and access to primary documents in order to provide a comparative examination of EU-based state and non-state actors within the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and draft EU legislation that seeks to prevent the trade of conflict-prone minerals.     

Central Asia and regional security

This paper aims to analyze the politico-military cooperation among the Central Asian countries viewed as a key factor in ensuring the regional security. Today, the geopolitical tension in the surrounding regions, the worsening situation in Afghanistan, as well as intraregional socio-economic problems directly affect the security situation in Central Asia. In this regard, the question arises as to how well the Central Asian states are able to meet these challenges. The analysis of the situation in the region in the 1990s and at the beginning of the new century shows that attempts have been made to establish a regional security system based on military cooperation among Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. However, unregulated interstate relations in Central Asia, the lack of political will to cooperate with leaders of neighboring countries and the combination of external and internal threats have contributed to the creation of a regional security system based on the multilateral structures with the involvement of external actors.