Rethinking economic security in a globalized world

Economic security is one of the primary dimensions of human security and is closely associated with poverty and related issues. This article takes a non-economic view of economic security and argues that the concept may lose its policy traction and relevance if it continues to be narrowly defined as and associated with poverty per se. If the concept is to continue to be useful to policy-makers and analysts, it needs to champion and embrace issues and concerns beyond poverty and consider the emergent threats affecting the non-poor. It argues, by way of several highlighted examples, that the concept is sufficiently dynamic to capture and incorporate other pervasive threats to the well-being of the people. It also points out that understanding the political impact and influence of economic security is just as important as studying the economic dynamics.     

Violence on Iraqi bodies: decolonising economic sanctions in security studies

Abstract

United Nations agencies report that by 1998, Iraqi infant mortality had risen from the pre-Gulf War rate of 3.7% to 12%. Insufficient food and medical supplies and deterioration of sewage and sanitation systems and electrical power systems reportedly caused an increase of 40,000 deaths annually of children under the age of 5 and of 50,000 deaths annually of older Iraqis. Why is this violence on Iraqis absent from analyses of sanctions in international relations and security studies? This paper is concerned with, first, situating sanctions against the Global South as violence by challenging the conventional theorisation of violence inflicted by the hegemon as a mechanism of ‘national security’. Second, we offer a decolonial reading of the sanctions imposed on Iraq by shifting the locus of enunciation from the state to Iraqi people’s suffering.     

南非非国大通过深化经济变革夯实执政基础

南非是非洲发达程度最高的国家,但种族、地域经济发展水平存在巨大差异,种族隔离制度所遗留的经济结构也极不合理.成立于1912年的南非非洲人国民大会(以下简称"非国大")在领导南非黑人开展废除南非种族隔离制度的斗争80余年后,于1994年4月通过全民选举上台执政.非国大赢得执政地位标志着占南非人口绝大多数的黑人在政治上获得彻底解放.     

加强周边交往促进经贸升级--内蒙古自治区代表团出访俄罗斯、蒙古国纪实

2004年9月28日-10月13日,应俄罗斯联邦有关共和国、州、区及蒙古国工贸部的邀请,内蒙古自治区政府主席杨晶率领内蒙古自治区政府代表团访问了俄联邦赤塔州、布里亚特共和国、克拉斯诺亚尔斯克边疆区(以下简称克区)、伊尔库茨克州(以下简称伊州)及蒙古国.这是内蒙古自治区第一次由主席率规模大、层次高团组出访毗邻国家和地区的重要活动,对巩固和深化内蒙古与毗邻国家、地区的友好往来和经贸合作关系具有重要意义.     

The European Union and its energy security challenges: engagement through and with networks

Energy security remains a vital issue for the European Union (EU), even more so in the wake of the events that unfolded in early 2014 in Ukraine. The EU's already fragile position in the international energy arena in terms of security of supply appears to be more uncertain than ever after its umpteenth fallout with its historic energy supplier, Russia. This situation is untenable and calls for swift and decisive action to adequately tackle the issue once and for all. The article looks at the creation of a single EU energy market through the integration of energy networks in the EU. This article then examines various ways to diversify its energy supply, whether through increasing the import of liquefied natural gas or through its relations with the Eurasian Union. It then explores the International Energy Charter as an example of the EU's engagement with transnational policy networks. It concludes that from energy transit, to technology transfer, to investment protection, energy and trade present interplays across various fields. Improvements can be made to the EU trading system to ensure greater energy security and more efficient energy markets.     

Countering piracy through private security in the Horn of Africa: prospects and pitfalls

Employing secondary research and semi-structured interviews, this article examines the use of private maritime security companies (PMSC) in providing maritime security services in the Horn of Africa. It consists of four parts. The first part explains the origins and development of the use of PMSC in the Horn of Africa. The second section discusses the regulation of the private security industry, paying particular attention to the maritime context. Part three examines the challenges associated with the use of maritime PMSC in the Horn of Africa, including negative human rights implications, compromising the innocent passage of commercial ships, and creating confusion in the hierarchical control of ships. Finally, the paper analyses the findings and concludes that PMSC, despite their apparent short-term effectiveness, cannot be regarded as a long-term solution to the piracy phenomenon in the Horn of Africa.     

Human security/environmental security

This article offers a genealogy of human security and environmental security set against the background of the 1994 United Nations Human Development Report and its demands for a profound transition in thinking. It shows how these two concepts have intersected and overlapped on the one hand, and diverged on the other. The debates within the UN system about what human security does or should mean have taken some account of the impact of environmental degradation on people and their communities though this has often lacked any analytical depth. The concept of environmental security, on the other hand, has become increasingly divorced from its potentially heterodox and critical roots in human security. Rather it has been captured by an orthodoxy that focuses primarily on non-traditional threats to traditional referents (i.e. the state) and that increasingly perceives ‘environmental security’ as a synonym for the threat multiplier dimensions of climate change. Rather than empowering a people-centred approach that places emancipation at the centre of human/environmental security, the author argues (following Mason and Zeitoun) that this has foreclosed rather than protected human freedom and dignity.     

Community security: human security at 21

The concept of human security has come a long way since its introduction in the UNDP Human Development Report in 1994. There are now a number of global and regional initiatives aimed at promoting human security issues. However, the achievements over the last two decades may be less impressive when one starts to explicate the progress of each of the key elements subsumed under the broad concept of human security. This paper will examine the extent to which community security, as one of the elements of human security, has been advanced through the security discourses and practices in the international arena. Using ASEAN as a case study, the paper argues that the massive gaps in human development, security and democracy hinder progress in promoting community security. The paper further argues that in developing states, community security is still very much the domain of the state.     

谋求合作共创未来

第三届亚洲政党国际会议于9月3—5日在北京召开,这是我们党根据亚洲各国政党的要求和亚洲政党国际会议常委会的建议而举办的。这次会议是亚洲各国政党汇聚一堂,共商合作与发展大计的一次盛会;是亚洲各国政党顺应和平发展的时代潮流、适应亚洲区域合作迅猛发展的势头、寻求扩大政党国际交流与合作的重要创举;是亚洲各国政党交流政治理念、寻求政治共识、增进理解与信任的重要论坛。从第一次马尼拉会议到第二次曼谷会议,直到今天的北京会议,亚洲政党国际会议逐渐形成为新形势下亚洲政党谋求发挥自身独特作用,促进区域合作与共同发展的新渠道与新机制。 在为期三天的会议中,与会各国政党代表围绕”交流、合作、发展”的主题,就”地区安全与多边合作、经济增长与社会进步、政党建设与国家发展”三个议题进行了热烈的讨论,达成了许多共识。这次会     

Six general principles of intelligence

The KGB's loyal critic

Oleg Kalugin (with Fern Montaigne): The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West St. Martin's Press, New York, 1994, 375 p., $23.95.

Marks for the Marxists

Craig R. Whitney: Spy Trader: Germany's Devil's Advocate and the Darkest Secrets of the Cold War Times Books/Random House, New York, 1993, 375 p., $25.00.

Miffed in Canada

Mike Frost and Michel Gratton: Spyworld: Inside the Canadian and American Intelligence Establishments Doubleday Canada Limited, 1994, 280 p., $29.95 Cdn.

Will we ever know?

Pavel Sudoplatov and Anatoli Sudoplatov with Jerrold L. and Leona P. Schecter: Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness — A Soviet Spymaster; Foreword by Robert Conquest Little, Brown and Company, Boston and New York, 1994, 532 p., $24.95.

Defense's tormented soul

Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley: Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1992, 387 p., $30.00.

Anti‐Semitic spies

John Loftus and Mark Aarons: The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed The Jewish People St. Martin's Press, New York, 1994, 658 p., $26.95.     

外国一些执政党以改革谋求执政安全的经验教训

战后尤其是20世纪八九十年代以来,随着国际形势的深刻变化,以及科技革命、经济全球化、区域一体化的迅速发展,对各国政治、经济、社会产生重大影响,尤其是对各国执政党的执政能力与水平带来严峻挑战.