Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz and the rebirth of the ottoman empire

For more than three decades Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz played a crucial role in the development of military relations between the German and Ottoman Empires. He trained and advised the Ottoman army, and commanded Ottoman troops in the First World War. He was a firm believer in the possibility of the Ottoman Empire's political and military revival, this belief reflecting his own conservative, militarist ideology. From 1898 onwards he was also a firm advocate of a German-Ottoman alliance in a future war against Britain, arguing that Ottoman expeditionary forces sent against Egypt and India could deal mortal blows to Britain's world power.     

Geopolitical perceptions of the world today

Abstract

This article is based on the author's study of geopolitical perceptions of the power of nations made during the last decade.

He describes the thinking of scholars, especially Mackinder, Mahan, and Spykman, as they have related geopolitics to international affairs.

He cites the Soviet domination of Afghanistan as one of the primary current examples of a classical geopolitical objective of the USSR to obtain access to territory opening the way eventually to the Indian Ocean.

He points out that the Soviet Union, dominating much of the landmass of Eurasia, the Mackinder “Heartland,” has polarized world politics and military security alignments because of its totalitarian political system and its expansion into other crucial areas of the world.

For fifty years, the author explains, the United States has been forced to take defensive measures against totalitarian states, in recent times principally the USSR, to prevent their domination of the economic resources and peoples of the world.

The author proposes that the United States, destined geopol‐itically to be a sea power, must have sufficient military strength to develop and protect global maritime and trading links with other seafaring nations on the periphery of Eurasia and in the Southern Hemisphere. The U.S. forces would constitute a peacetime constabulary of the sea to insure the security and prosperity not only of Americans but of their friends and allies.     

Rules of military retaliation and their practice by the state of Israel

A major issue intriguing students of international relations is determining to what extent, if at all, do norms and standard operating procedures (SOPs) affect foreign policy. This question is addressed in this article in the case of Israel's policy of military retaliation. Alternative rules of conduct associated with this policy were deduced from strategic and normative arguments presented by Israeli decision‐makers in order to justify military reprisal attacks against Arab countries. These rules of conduct were then formulized into hypotheses and empirically tested with the aid of a database that contained daily accounts of Arab and Israeli acts of aggression towards each other between 1949 and 1982. In this manner it was possible to identify different decision rules that dominated Israel's reprisal policy at different periods of time.     

Press-party parallelism: The Star's editorial position on the 1922 Miner's Strike

SUMMARY

Against the background of a theory about press-party parallelism the author of this article argues that the Johannesburg based newspaper, THE STAR, supported the use of political violence when this newspaper supported the government of the day. As an example he illustrates how THE STAR vigorously defended the strong steps taken by the Smuts Government against revolutionaries in 1922. This was at a time when THE STAR was associated with colonial control and mining interests. During the mine worker strikes in 1913, 1914 and 1922 THE STAR supported the government's use of military measures to suppress revolt, and identified ‘communists’ and ‘agitators’ as the primary force behind the strikes. Today the same newspaper opposes the government's arguments for strong measures against revolutionaries. According to the author the implications of his historical evidence are disquieting: they suggest that on occasion newspapers are so tightly linked to a political party and other interests that truth, balance and fairness are of secondary interest.     

Killing Nationalism with Liberalism? Austria–Hungary and the Serbian Constitution of 1869

Based on material from the Hungarian archives hitherto unpublished in English, this article examines the contribution Austro–Hungarian diplomacy made to the approval, by the Ottoman government, of a new constitution for its vassal-state Serbia in 1869. The episode reflects the emergence of a Hungarian influence on the Habsburg Monarchy's policy towards Russia, the Ottoman Balkans, and especially Serbia in the years immediately following the Ausgleich of 1867. Hungarian Minister-President Count Gyula Andrássy, through the new Austro–Hungarian consul in Belgrade, Benjámin Kállay, lobbied Vienna to support the new constitution. He did so in the hope that a more liberal political system in Serbia would impede the Serbian government's tendency to foment nationalist unrest within the Habsburg Monarchy and distract Belgrade from its policy of territorial expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire.     

Lord Ponsonby and the Churchill affair of 1836: An episode in the eastern question

William Churchill, a British merchant in Turkey, accidentally wounded an Ottoman boy and, after being savagely beaten, was imprisoned in the notorious bagnio by the Reis Effendi and Achmet Pasha. Lord Ponsonby, the British ambassador, sought dismissal of these ministers. His tactics and threats of demands that his government would make, couched in extravagant language, provoked Russian intervention and alarmed the other powers. Before the British government could react, the Sultan dismissed the Reis Effendi, but Britain's failure to demand dismissal of Achmet left Russian influence supreme. Ponsonby, however, emerged from defeat with credit, and Churchill received compensation.     

The Tragedy of Liberalism How Globalization Caused the First World War

The belief that globalization enhances peace, a central tenet of liberal theory, enjoys substantial support in recent scholarship on trade and conflict. To conclude that liberalism is right, however, is premature and wrong. Liberal theory is not sufficiently grounded in international trade theory to show how globalization generates constraints on military force, nor does it adequately link these constraints to strengthened peace. This article uses the Heckscher-Ohlin model of trade to connect globalization's economic effects to increased constraints on military force and then explores how, in the nineteenth century, globalization affected European peace. As liberal theory predicts, globalization generated substantial constraints on military force in prewar Europe. Yet there are important flaws in liberalism's logic linking these constraints to strengthened international peace. Contrary to liberal theory, globalization did not strengthen prospects for peace in prewar Europe but was a major cause of the First World War.     

France's action directe: Terrorists in search of a revolution

This article focuses on the ideology of the French terrorist group Action directe. Active from 1979 until 1987, AD went through several phases of ideological change. It was originally influenced by both anarchism and Maoism. In the early 1980s, the group substantially revised its ideology. The result was a variant of the Euro‐terrorism which burst forth in a number of countries during the 1980s. After this point, AD drew the inspiration for its attacks from a struggle against NATO and the ‘Americanization’ of Europe. These motives produced a spiral of violence after 1984 and culminated in a series of assassination attempts against French business and military figures. Throughout, AD attempted to realize the same goal: the assembly of a social group willing/capable of taking up the battle for communist revolution. This goal was AD's ‘search for a revolution’.     

German Military Reform 1998–2004: Leadership and the Triumph of Domestic Constraint over International Opportunity

Abstract

The article analyses the processes and outcomes of military reforms during the two Schröder governments (1998–2005). These reforms are the litmus test for Germany's willingness and ability to play an important role in crisis-management tasks as part of NATO, CESDP and the UN. The study argues that, despite its strengths, the concept of strategic culture provides only a partial explanation of military reform in Germany. The article illustrates the strongly self-referential nature of Bundeswehr reform, despite adaptational pressures from the EU and NATO and the role of ‘international structure’. The domestic politics of base closures, ramifications for social policy, economic and financial restrictions consequent upon German unification and commitment to EMU's Stability and Growth Pact were critical in determining the outcomes of the reform processes undertaken by Defence Ministers Rudolf Scharping and Peter Struck. The study also draws out the important role of policy leaders in the political manipulation of reform as entrepreneurs, brokers or veto-players and in controlling the extent of adaptational pressure from NATO and the EU. In doing so, the article shifts the focus of leadership studies in Germany away from the Chancellor to an examination of the role of ministerial and administrative leadership within the core executive.     

Maritime security in the United States: Latent threats and latent vulnerabilities

Americans and their government are seemingly unconcerned about the possibility that maritime facilities and personnel might be at risk to armed violence. Not only are current maritime security efforts minimal, they feature a curious dichotomy: one thrust is directed toward occasional acts of terrorism, the other toward coastal defense in wartime. Despite a manifestly more interactive world marked by the ready availability of powerful, mobile weapons, no serious efforts have been directed toward protecting maritime facilities and personnel in the United States against special operations or unconventional warfare. This indifference reflects the prevalence of the Clausewitzian paradigm in America's attitude toward war and the country's historical experience with coastal defense in the wars of this century. The fragmented structure of civil and military protection available to protect ports and other facilities suggests that protection could not be quickly upgraded in the face of a rapidly‐developing threat.     

The ESDP and Civilian Rapid Reaction: Adding Value is Harder than Expected

Abstract

This article takes issue with the prevailing view that the ESDP capacity building process is easier and has been more successful in the civilian than in the military field. It argues that civilian capacity building is harder than military capacity building, demonstrates that the European Union's (EU's) civilian rapid reaction capacity is considerably smaller and less integrated than is generally assumed and that the capacity goals set for 2008 are unattainable. Yet another major EU expectations–capability gap has been created and there is now a real danger that this gap will seriously damage the EU's reputation as the global leader in civilian rapid reaction crisis management.     

An Endangered Partnership: The Anglo-American Defence Relationship in the Early Twenty-first Century

Abstract

This article examines the contemporary Anglo-American defence relationship. It begins by setting the general historical and contemporary context, including the impact of the Iraq war, before focusing on the military dimension. The main body of the paper addresses UK/US military planning and operations, UK defence budgetary issues, nuclear weapons collaboration and the impact of changing strategic relationships between the UK, US and Europe. The author argues that the longstanding defence partnership is threatened by a number of factors, including interoperability problems, the UK's national and defence spending priorities, the likely impact of a decision to replace Trident and the decline in the importance of the transatlantic strategic partnership in NATO. The paper concludes that changing US strategic priorities and further reductions in Britain's military capabilities are likely to erode the perceived value of the Anglo-American defence partnership on both sides of the Atlantic.     

Explaining institutional Europeanisation in security and defence: the German administration under Schröder and Merkel

Abstract

Participating in EU crisis management operations has affected institutional actors on various levels. As the main deliverers of civilian and military resources to EU operations, national ministries and agencies have been particularly confronted with the need for administrative adaptation. A big member state like Germany is expected to make substantial contributions, but it also faces a rigid administration. This article uses a combined hypothesis of historical institutionalism and organisational learning to explain administrative Europeanisation in German government institutions involved in civilian and military crisis management deployments. The empirical data on the German administrative trajectories under Schröder and Merkel show an explanatory link between political learning and overcoming institutional path dependency.     

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.     

Limits to cooperation: Iterated graduated games and the arms race

The arms race is often modeled as mutual defection in a Prisoner's Dilemma game and arms control as reciprocal cooperation in an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game, while Chicken and other games are used to represent different aspects of superpower rivalry. This paper develops a model of the macro‐structure of superpower rivalry in which each of these games occur at different levels of military expenditures or other measures of military effort. In this iterated graduated game model the two rival states repeatedly select from an ordered sequence of policy options, and each state experiences tradeoffs among the desire to gain an advantage over the rival, the dangers of escalation, and the intrinsic benefits and opportunity costs of military expenditures. Analysis of numerical examples demonstrates that equilibrium in this model corresponds to the intermediate levels of cooperation and conflict characteristic of superpower rivalry. A concluding discussion indicates that this model is also consistent with the existence of policy competition among domestic groups with conflicting interests.     

The 2008 Russian–Georgian war via the lens of Offensive Realism

Abstract

The Russian intervention in Georgia's breakaway republic of South Ossetia in August 2008, Moscow's first-ever use of military force against a sovereign state in the post-cold war period, deserves a theoretical explanation. By following the tenets of Offensive Realism, this article will argue that the US–Russian competition in the South Caucasus is the main cause of the 2008 Russian–Georgian war. During the 1990s, the USA passed the buck to Turkey to contain Russian influence in the South Caucasus. In the early to mid-2000s, however, the Russian–Turkish relations were improved so rapidly that the USA opted, through NATO expansion, to step in as an offshore balancer. Following Bush administration's decision to support the Georgian candidacy for NATO membership and Georgia's ill-fated attempt to seize South Ossetia, Moscow went to war to re-establish hegemony in the South Caucasus. In this way, as the theory of Offensive Realism claims, the Kremlin believes that Russian state will enhance its chances of survival in the anarchical international system.     

The Capability–Capacity Crunch: NATO's New Capacities for Intervention

Abstract

In September 2006 NATO's role in Afghanistan expanded to cover the whole of the country. With 32,000 troops under NATO command Stage 4 of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) represents an open-ended commitment to rebuilding a country long torn by war and instability. The Alliance's showpiece for advanced military transformation, the the NATO Response Force (NRF) represents a down payment on the future of transatlantic military co-operation. Taken together these two developments reflect the reality of NATO's new interventionism of an Alliance that bears little or no resemblance to that which won the Cold War. NATO today is an organisation designed for global reach and global effect, undertaking operations at their most robust. Unfortunately, the re-design of NATO's architecture has not been matched by a parallel development in Alliance military capabilities. NATO's big three, the US, Britain and France, have taken steps to improve their military capabilities. However, the transformation of NATO's other militaries has proved slow and uneven, leaving many members unable to fulfil any meaningful role. Thus, as NATO today plans for both robust advanced expeditionary warfare and stabilisation and reconstruction vital to mission success in complex crisis management environments a gap is emerging. Indeed, in an Alliance in which only the Americans can afford both military capability and capacity most NATO Europeans face a capability–capacity crunch, forced to make a choice between small, lethal and expensive professional military forces or larger, cheaper more ponderous stabilisation and reconstruction forces. This article explores the consequences of the crunch and the implications for NATO's current and future role as the Alliance struggles to find a balance between fighting power and staying power.     

Russia as a ‘virtual great power’: Implications for its declining role in European and Eurasian security

Instead of analyzing just some recent developments of Russia's domestic, foreign and security policies, this article focuses in particular on mid‐ and long‐term strategic trends and the consequences of Russia's decline for European and Eurasian Security. It argues that Russia is still in a long‐term socio‐economic decline and it is unrealistic to expect that Moscow will regain its former status as a Great Power or even Superpower in the mid‐term future even of its economy and military power improve rapidly and substantially. Against this background, two other powers of the Eurasian landmass, the EU and China will surpass Russia in international standing and secure great power status in the coming decades with far‐reaching consequences for the international system and Russia's security as well as for its role in Europe and Central as well a East Asia. In this light, the article analyzes strategic trends in domestic, foreign and security policies, including the impact of often overlooked factors such as demographic trends and the health crisis, of decentralization, regionalization and fragmentation within the Russian Federation, the future of Russia's military reform policies (including Russia's draft military doctrine of October 1999 and its nuclear illusions) and their implications for Russia's future foreign and security policies.     

Norms and Military Power: nato's War Against Yugoslavia

Norms are fundamental constitutive elements of modern military power. Because norms influence military behavior and force structure, contemporary Western military power is produced only by interaction of normative and material factors. Two norms—the civilian casualty avoidance norm and Western societies' demand that their military forces take minimal casualties, or the force protection norm—more strongly influenced the origin, conduct, and outcome of nato's 1999 war against Yugoslavia than the material disparities of mismatched adversaries. Many actors, including the Yugoslav government and the Kosovo Liberation Army, notice the linkage of norms to Western military force structures and operational behavior and therefore strategically use norms instrumentally against states that adopt them. Such strategies generate technological and tactical responses, leading in turn to counter-responses—a dynamic interaction of material and normative factors that increasingly influence military operational outcomes.