Coping with U.S. and EU's challenges? Strategic confusion in the Czech foreign and security policy

This article traces developments in the Czech political elite's thinking about structural changes that the region and the country have experienced during the last several years. It is argued that two parallel, external structural constraints have significantly shaped decisions of the Czech political elite as the country has, once again, proven to be an ostensibly “reactive state”. These structural constraints have been the ongoing U.S. recalibration of its grand strategy as well as the financial crisis with a systemic challenge to the European political project in which fiscal and monetary issues have largely replaced previous criticism of the Constitutional Treaty and then the Reform Treaty. It is argued that these developments have posed a notable problem for two predominant ideological convictions present in the Czech political thinking – Atlantism and Europeanism, as neither of them has offered readily answers to deal with such a challenge. As will be shown, this mutually reinforcing dual challenge has further exacerbated previously existing Czech government's lack of political vision, and resorted to a political mentality which has contained elements of denial, rationalization, and political resignation.     

Transatlantic trade and monetary relations: The nature and limits of conflict

The furore that greeted news that negotiations were to start on a transatlantic free trade agreement revealed not only the potential importance of any putative deal, but also the tendency of Europeans to view international politics almost uniquely in economic terms. This neglect of security and broader geostrategic issues is short-sighted and dangerous. It is precisely the liberal world order in place since the Second World War that has allowed Europeans to develop their economic potential. Leaving it to the United States to preserve that order is an increasingly problematic strategy, with the US ever more reluctant to police the world in the way it once did. The US has, for many years, asked its partners to contribute more to the preservation of common security interests. Given the failure of these attempts to date, it might be time for Washington to resort to tougher tactics in an attempt to entice Europeans out of their geostrategic retirement.     

The US post‐imperial presidency and transatlantic relations

The EU’s response to the Arab Spring is seen as one of its biggest missed opportunities. It has been unable to bring together its different tools of foreign, development and security policy into a strategic joined-up approach. The interconnectedness of the socio-economic and political demands of the popular uprisings across the north of Africa represented a unique opportunity to implement such a joined-up approach. The EU’s ambitious rhetoric and pledges to promote ‘deep democracy’ have not been matched at policy level in the fields of money, market or mobility. Whilst certain member states have sought to overcome the different operating logics of the development, diplomatic and security communities in their regional Arab Partnership programmes, a number of structural and circumstantial factors limit the effectiveness of these attempts, at both the EU and member state level.     

Battle Losses and Rebel Violence: Raising the Costs for Fighting

In many armed conflicts, rebel groups deliberately target civilians. This article examines whether such violence is related to the performance of the rebels on the battlefield. It is proposed that rebel groups who are losing battles target civilians in order to impose extra costs on the government. When rebels attack civilians, the government may incur both political and military costs. Violence against civilians is thus used as an alternative conflict strategy aimed at pressuring the government into concessions. The argument is evaluated by using monthly data for rebel groups involved in armed conflict from January 2002 to December 2004.     

A Counterterrorism Strategy for the Obama Administration

This article assesses the scope and nature of the current terrorist threat to the United States and suggests a strategy to counter it. Al-Qaeda continues to pose the most serious terrorist threat to the U.S. today. If the September 11, 2001 attacks have taught us anything, it is that al-Qaeda is most dangerous when it has a sanctuary or safe haven from which to plan and plot attacks. Al-Qaeda has acquired such a sanctuary in Pakistan's Federal Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and its North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and surrounding environs. Accordingly, the highest priority for the new American presidential administration must be to refocus our—and our allies'—attention on Afghanistan and Pakistan, where al-Qaeda began to collapse after 2001, but has now re-grouped. This will entail understanding that al-Qaeda and its local militant jihadi allies cannot be defeated by military means alone. Success will require a dual strategy of systematically destroying and weakening enemy capabilities—that is, continuing to kill and capture al-Qaeda commanders and operatives—along with breaking the cycle of terrorist recruitment among radicalized “bunches of guys” as well as more effectively countering al-Qaeda's effective information operations. The U.S. thus requires a strategy that harnesses the overwhelming kinetic force of the American military as part of a comprehensive vision to transform other, non-kinetic instruments of national power in order to deal more effectively with irregular and unconventional threats. This article first discusses the scope and details of the terrorist threat today and then proposes a counterterrorism strategy for the new presidential administration. It focuses first on creating a micro approach to address the deteriorating situation in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. It then considers the requirements of a broader macro strategy to counter terrorism and insurgency.     

The unexpected EU leadership on landmines: the influence of the Ottawa Convention on the EU

Abstract

The European Union (EU) has led international politics on antipersonnel landmines (APLs) for a decade now, and its foreign policy in this domain is perceived as a success story. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the negotiations that led to the Ottawa Convention, the EU looked unable to play any relevant part. This article addresses the emergence of the EU's foreign policy on APLs by arguing, in a second image-reversed way, that the corresponding international regime has deeply influenced the EU. It has changed Member States' and EU institutions' preferences, and it has empowered pro-Ottawa and pro-integration actors. This article explores the intra-EU conditions that have facilitated this influence and the way in which the regime itself has shaped them.     

The significance of the Cracow summit

This article assesses whether the EU contributes to long-term positive change in societies emerging from violent conflict, helping them ‘mend’ or whether it simply encourages societies to ‘make do’ with the status quo. To do so, the article focuses on two of the principles found in the Treaty, peace and justice for human rights violations. It examines how the EU translates the principles of peace and justice into policy and puts them into practice by analyzing EU engagement in peace mediation, transitional justice, and security sector reform in general and through in-depth examination of EU engagement in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It questions the prevailing discourse that greater inter-institutional coherence would improve EU security provision and considers whether and how the EU prioritizes between peace and justice. The article finds that principles may be translated into policy and put into practice, and practice is often ahead of policy. But this is uneven within as well as across the institutions. Greater coherence between principle, policy, and practice, rather than between institutions, would improve EU security provision and enable prioritization. If the EU settles for making do, it undermines its considerable potential to contribute to long-term solutions to complex conflicts.     

Unforeseen and Unaccounted: the European Union,the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland,peacebuilding, and accountability

This article examines the case of the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland's (CFNI) experience as a primary recipient of peacebuilding aid from the European Union (EU) under the Special EU Programmes Body Special Support Programme for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland (SEUPB-EUSSPPR). The case serves as a lens into the tensions that such efforts create for community-based organizations as they seek both to honor their funder's accountability claims and their own needs to ensure legitimacy and efficacy with those with whom they interact so as to secure space and discretion to seek to catalyze social experimentation and learning. This paper argues the Foundation's experience and frustrations with EU accountability claims point up a difficulty with the SEUPB's comprehensive conceptualization of peacebuilding: It tends in practice to favor Union-prescribed aims and objectives over those its ‘partners’ derive from their daily efforts.     

Dilemmas of implementation: EU democracy assistance in the Mediterranean

The article shows how and why, after having agreed upon a programme for democracy assistance under the name of European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), the EU fell short of its original objectives in programme implementation. This is demonstrated by close analysis of microprojects in Mediterranean countries. The scope of EU action shrank as priorities for action were defined and projects approved. As a consequence, the EU has promoted democracy less than human rights, in relatively less demanding countries, and without spending all the budgeted money. This article shows how these findings are consistent with important themes in Policy analysis and implementation research, and thus supplements other explanations of EU shortcomings. EU democracy assistance, as represented by the EIDHR, is an ambiguous and contested policy, which also suffers from an institutional setting characterized by a long chain of command. This means that there are opportunities for small decisions to gradually shift the focus and downsize the relevance of the policy initiative. The EU is thus unintentionally undermining its own policy goals, as the large number of actors interpret the EU's best interest (and their own position in relation to it) in various and divergent ways.     

Linkages and the promotion of democracy: the EU's eastern neighbourhood

The EU's eastern neighbourhood with its considerable divergence in regime types is a more challenging testing ground for democracy promotion than Central and Eastern Europe. This article explores the diversity of the international linkages in the eastern neighbours (Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) and the role these linkages play in domestic politics. International linkages are filtered and activated by domestic politics. If diverse linkages reinforce domestic political competition, they can contribute to the creation of democratic openings. Conversely, in the absence of domestic political competition, international linkages can insulate a regime from internal pressures for reform, in particular if the linkages are deep and undiversified. This article focuses on one causal mechanism, namely stateness issues acting as a filter for international linkages.