The Effect of the Ukrainian Crisis on NATO's Transformation

NATO was a product of the Cold War, and the USSR/Warsaw Pact was its top priority. After the Cold War, Russia was still a rival of NATO,but it was no longer regarded as its only opponent. However, with the start of the Ukrainian crisis in 2014, relations between Russia and major Western countries have become tense, and NATO has stepped up efforts to confront Russia. Thus the country is once again attracting NATO＇s attention. Will this interrupt NATO＇s transformation？ What is its future path？ This article will attempt to make some preliminary assessments.     

北约东扩背景下的俄罗斯与波罗的海三国

本文首先分析了北约东扩因素对俄罗斯与波罗的海三国关系的影响;立陶宛、拉脱维亚和爱沙尼亚积极准备加入北约,俄则强烈反对.在对三国、俄罗斯和西方的政策、立场进行对比分析的基础上,本文认为三国在2002年被北约接纳的可能性有两种,一种可能是立陶宛率先加入北约,拉脱维亚和爱沙尼亚稍晚加入,第二种可能是三国都不会接到北约的邀请,但它们终究会加入北约.其次,本文分析了俄罗斯与波罗的海三国关系中的其他主要问题,即讲俄语居民的地位问题、边界问题和经济合作问题等.再次,本文归纳出俄罗斯对波罗的海三国的战略目标,即在鼓励地区经济一体化和双边经济合作、安全不可分、尊重少数民族权利的基础上,同三国实现睦邻友好,建立起建设性的国家关系模式.最后,本文勾勒了俄与三国关系的未来发展方向:俄罗斯与波罗的海三国的关系将长期处于相互磨合碰撞之中,实现与三国,尤其是与拉脱维亚和爱沙尼亚睦邻友好、相互合作的道路仍然艰难而漫长.     

Separable but not separate forces: NATO's development of the combined joint task force

This article argues that the Combined Joint Task Force has profoundly affected the European security architecture. The CJTF structure shifted the terms of the European security debate from whether NATO should have a role in the post‐Cold War world to how NATO should act in this new security environment. The CJTF therefore helped NATO to survive its post‐Cold War existential dilemma, and to emerge with the same level of cohesion and cooperation that it possessed during the Cold War.     

冷战结束后北约对独联体地区的扩张及其前景

冷战结束后,北约为实现向外扩张的战略目标,不仅蚕食了原苏东国家,还不断强化对独联体的渗透,并以乌克兰、格鲁吉亚为切入点,东扩目标直指独联体。北约此举引发俄罗斯的强力反弹,俄采取了援助关系密切国家、打压与俄离心国家,以能源诱压"西靠"国家等手段牵制北约渗透。未来,俄将会进一步强化对"战略利益区"的控制,北约也不会放弃向独联体扩张的战略意图。俄罗斯与北约在独联体地区的争夺将更趋激烈和复杂化。     

Reform of the stability and growth pact: Looking beyond the commission's proposal

Policymakers, military strategists and academics all increasingly hail climate change as a security issue. This article revisits the (comparatively) long-standing “environmental security debate” and asks what lessons that earlier debate holds for the push towards making climate change a security issue. Two important claims are made. First, the emerging climate security debate is in many ways a re-run of the earlier dispute. It features many of the same proponents and many of the same disagreements. These disagreements concern, amongst other things, the nature of the threat, the referent object of security and the appropriate policy responses. Second, given its many different interpretations, from an environmentalist perspective, securitisation of the climate is not necessarily a positive development.     

Assessing the balance

Save for the single issue of balance of power theory's relevance to the current system, where we and some of our critics are in real disagreement (and they are wrong), every aspect of this symposium has been highly productive. Our critics do not directly dispute the proposition that a rapid end of a single superpower world is extremely unlikely. They generally endorsed our core finding that the systemic constraints featured in IR scholarship are largely inoperative with respect to a United States that remains the sole superpower. These essays are consequently devoted mainly to discussing the implications of our findings and the future research agenda. In particular, they developed serious challenges to the idea of US led institutional revisionism, generated new ideas about both systemic and non-systemic constraints, and suggested potentially powerful theories about constraints on other states besides the United States.     

The construction of NATO's medium term defence plan and the diplomacy of conventional strategy, 1949-50

This article examines NATO's first strategic project, the Medium Term Defence Plan (MTDP) of 1950, and the plan that led to the 1952 Lisbon Force Goals, a landmark in the evolution of NATO's strategic thinking because the failure to reach the Lisbon goals allegedly drove NATO into its subsequent dependence on nuclear weapons from which it has never been weaned. The article disputes this interpretation by showing that the MTDP was conditioned by the desire of the United States to maintain its autonomy over the use of atomic weapons, and its freedom from the constraints of the new alliance. The MTDP was a paradox: a conventional strategy designed to mask the rules governing the balance of decision-making power within NATO which maintained American peripheralism against the integrative pressures of the alliance. Lisbon was actually part of a deepening nuclear commitment on the part of the United States, sustained by the willingness of the Europeans to endorse the rearmament plan in exchange for promises of further economic assistance.     

Corporate accountability to the poor? Assessing the effectiveness of community-based strategies

This paper investigates how, why, and when community-based strategies are effective in promoting corporate accountability (CA) to the poor. It argues that mainstream approaches to corporate social responsibility (CSR) underestimate the importance of power in the relationship between corporations and the communities in which they invest, which limits their applicability to many developing-country contexts in particular. In addressing this neglect, the article draws on literature on power, accountability, and citizen participation in order to analyse cases where communities have attempted to hold corporations to account for their social and environmental responsibilities. The paper argues that more attention should be paid to a number of state-, corporation-, and community-related factors, which are found to be key to the effectiveness of strategies aimed at enhancing CA to the poor.     

From car bombs to logic bombs: The growing threat from information terrorism

The vulnerability of the critical infrastructure has led to increasing concern that it will be the target of terrorist attacks. This article explores definitional aspects of information terrorism and identifies two groups likely to find information terrorism attractive: conventional terrorist groups and information culture groups. As computer sophisticated youth move into the ranks of conventional terrorist groups, the groups will increase their reliance on computer technology, and information terrorism will be incorporated into a hybrid tactical repertoire. Information culture groups, however, confine their attacks to cyberspace. In contrast to the powerful group dynamics of the traditional underground terrorist group, networked groups, particularly information culture terrorists, may only be in contact electronically, and are subject to a radically different group psychology, virtual group dynamics, that significantly affects their decision making and risk taking, and has dangerous security implications.     

Unity in the face of threat? Exploring the empirical relationship between strategic threat perceptions and public support for a common European army in Germany

ABSTRACT

Perceptions of threat from Russia’s military activities in Ukraine and President Trump’s critical attitude towards NATO have put the idea of a common European army on the agenda of European politics. Do these strategic threat perceptions also influence public support for the creation of a common European army? Previous research has largely overlooked strategic threat perceptions as individual-level determinants of public support for a common European army. This article explores the empirical relationship between strategic threat perceptions and support for a common European army at the individual level of analysis with representative German survey data from 2018. The multivariate analysis shows that perceiving Russia’s military activities in Ukraine as a threat to Germany’s security, and U.S. foreign and security policy as a threat to the cohesion of NATO significantly increases support for the creation of a common European army, even when the influence of numerous other determinants is controlled for. The findings highlight the importance of considering strategic threat perceptions in future analyses of public opinion on European defence cooperation and integration.     

Transatlantic investor protection as a threat to democracy: the potency and limits of an emotive frame*

Abstract

A campaign by civil society organizations (CSOs) turned a relatively obscure area of international economic law—investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS)—into the focus of opposition to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and later the European Union (EU)–Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). This article analyses how CSOs impacted on the EU’s position, while highlighting the limitations of their influence. Combining insights from constructivist International Political Economy literature with scholarship emphasizing the importance of emotions in advocacy framing, I contend that CSOs were able to create a polysemic ‘injustice frame’. The characterization of transatlantic ISDS as a threat to democracy and the rule of law aroused anger, while being ambiguous enough to garner widespread support. The ambiguity of CSOs’ advocacy frame and the concreteness of its target, however, were also the frame’s Achilles heel. These aspects provided space for the European Commission to reform a specific element of the agreement and thereby repair the latter’s overall legitimacy. The Commission’s counter-frame emphasized the reform’s democratic credentials by representing TTIP as an opportunity to move ISDS towards a system of ‘public law’. While this reframing failed to satisfy most opposition, it placated pivotal actors and allowed the Commission to move forward.