Beyond humanitarian intervention: the new politics of peacekeeping and intervention

This article reviews patterns of peacekeeping and military intervention in the post-9/11 world. It argues that while Western states have become increasingly reluctant to engage in the types of humanitarian interventions they undertook in the 1990s, a new model of peace operations is emerging that lies in the middle ground between traditional United Nations peacekeeping and classical humanitarian intervention and combines elements of both. The emergence of this new generation of peace operations indicates that, despite the post-9/11 reluctance of Western states to intervene militarily for humanitarian purposes, there is continued momentum behind the normative shift away from an absolutist conception of state sovereignty and towards the view that the international community has a right and a duty to intervene in internal conflicts and crises.     

Myanmar: analyzing problems of transition and intervention

Myanmar's State Peace and Development Council touts the 2010 elections as an important milestone on the roadmap to democracy. While the consensus among scholars is that the result is a foregone conclusion, these elections may also mark the beginning of a transition. As a transition from authoritarian rule may lead to internal chaos and result in calls for external intervention, the relevant dimensions of intervention are explored. The capabilities, interests and approaches of key external players in the context of Myanmar are identified. Both India and China have capabilities and multiple interests in Myanmar. However, the India–China rivalry and the lack of consensus around the responsibility to protect the doctrines are identified as risk factors. In spite of its shortcomings, the ASEAN Regional Forum remains the most appropriate venue to explore possible responses in case of chaos in Myanmar, which would be a tough test of its aptitude and relevance. The forum should upgrade organizational and practical capacities to respond to major crises such as a hypothetical collapse of central authority in Myanmar.     

Global South solidarity? China,regional organisations and intervention in the Libyan and Syrian civil wars

Why was China responsive to regional organisations’ call for intervention in the case of the Libya crisis, where it supported sanctions and an International Criminal Court referral, and acquiesced to a no-fly zone, but unresponsive to pressure from regional organisations for intervention in the Syria crisis, issuing repeated vetoes instead? Using interviews and other primary data, this article explains the variation by highlighting that China is most responsive to regional organisations when these groups remain cohesive, congregate around the same policy position and when they publicly criticise or isolate China.     

Anti-corruption or accountability? International efforts in post-conflict Liberia

This paper analyses anti-corruption efforts in post-conflict Liberia. It highlights citizens’ views on the definition of corruption and argues that, in the past, anti-corruption efforts have often focused on institution building and formal justice mechanisms without sufficient understanding of accountability dynamics on the ground. Anti-corruption approaches in Liberia have only nominally examined whether there is a shared understanding of what ‘corruption’ is and why it is regarded as a problem. The paper examines the social norms and perceptions that underlie understandings of the term corruption. It argues that the international community may have overlooked the fact that ‘corruption’ has become an all-encompassing term that masks a myriad of differing priorities and concerns. The authors posit that ‘accountability’ may be a more useful lens for those actors hoping to improve governance in these contexts.     

Between willing and reluctant entrapment: CEE countries in NATO's non-European missions

The article focuses on Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries' experiences related to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, three non-European theatres of Western military operations, in predominantly Muslim lands, in the decade between 2001 and 2011. CEE countries readily became involved in two of these foreign missions (Afghanistan and Iraq) because of their deep ties to Western politico-economic structures, without direct security interests compelling them to do so, but not without normative convictions regarding what were seen by them as virtues of the two missions. In Libya, however, they were reluctant to join the Western intervention. In light of this, the article is interested in examining how political elites within the region relate to the generally constrained security policy agency that they have. A key argument advanced is that such agency may be located in how external hegemony is mediated in elite discourses of threat and legitimacy construction. This as well as the three case studies outlined in the article show that the seeming changes in CEE countries' behaviour in fact boil down to a simple set of rules guiding their behaviour. Having identified this “algorithm” as an implicit pattern of CEE foreign policy behaviour, originating in the intra-alliance security dilemma within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the article formulates its conclusions about the alliance policy of these countries largely within a neorealist framework.     

Middle Eastern terrorism in Europe: Trends and prospects

Abstract

Europe has been the preferred operational area for Middle Eastern terrorist groups—some 418 attacks from 1980–1989. Unlike European Marxist revolutionary or separatist terrorist groups, the Middle Eastern groups present Europe with a regional security problem. The most dangerous element in this Middle Eastern terrorist threat is the state‐sponsored activities of Iran, Libya, Syria, and Iraq. These countries provided the fuel for a decade of Middle Eastern terrorist bloodshed in Europe. Given the problems of solving the various political conflicts and feuds in the Middle East and the continuing attractiveness of Europe as a substitute battlefield for Middle Eastern terrorist elements, the threat of Middle Eastern terrorist activity in Europe should continue into the 1990s.     

The prism of strategic culture and South Asian nuclearization

In this paper, Ken Booth's concept of strategic culture is drawn on to examine India and Pakistan's nuclear policy options/policies. The thrust of the argument is that the perceptions of India and Pakistan's strategic insecurities as interpreted by their security managers, through the prism of their strategic cultures, have, in conjunction with material, domestic and technological factors, defined their nuclear trajectories. In framing the argument, although appreciative of the material (realist) realm, attention is drawn simultaneously to the inter-subjective (constructivist) realm, namely, that productions of insecurities are also ‘cultural’. This constructivist line of analysis, which draws attention to culture ‘as both a source of insecurity and an object of analysis’ in international relations, has implications on the future of a nuclearized South Asia.