Workforce Policy in the European Sector

Recently, a number of new forecasts have been published pointing out the considerable demographic crisis in the NASA workforce. Although a few years ago there were signs that the problem of an ageing workforce in United States would be less severe than in Europe, we cannot ignore the effects of new developments in the European space sector. Indeed, a number of mergers and a slightly regressive space turnover took place in Europe, and the effects of this on the workforce population have not been re-evaluated.

For this study, a questionnaire was developed to investigate this effect, with a major emphasis on the future requirements of the European space sector's future workforce, in particular the desired hard and soft skills, and the current prevalence of those skills. This questionnaire was distributed amongst human resources departments of space organizations in Europe with help of the European Association for International Space Year (EURISY) network. Preliminary data on planned recruitment and present demographic distribution were collected, and these are presented herein.     

The Internationalisation of the Russian–Chechen Conflict: Myths and Reality

The article provides a critical reading of various related discourses, depicting the political motives behind the conflict in Chechnya as a battlefield of the global jihad. These narratives have sought to present the involvement of external Islamist groups as a major factor in the conflict, and to portray many of the main groups within Chechnya as subscribing to a jihadist ideology. The authors suggest an alternative narrative focusing on the significance of the blood feud in the societies of the North Caucasus. It is argued that it is necessary to differentiate between the radicalisation of the resistance as such and the strengthening of the ideology of jihad. It is concluded that the resistance currently assumes a supranational character, yet one which is delimited regionally rather than globally.     

Understanding Havel?

The presented article tries to make sense of Václav Havel, a man of many qualities and professions yet not a professional in the conventional sense of the word. The aim is to offer deeper insight into diverse cognitive elements which formed Havel's political reasoning and attitudes. The idea is to provide an alternative interpretation and get beyond the customary explanations expressed through traditional IR language seeing Havel as a dissident idealist who was pushed by some realist impulses to clearly define real political and later also geopolitical stands. In doing so, the article is divided into three parts. The first part discusses conceptual frameworks (rather than a single framework) within which Have saw and understood the political world. The middle part examines Havel's political agenda, namely the issues of the return to Europe, the German question, and relationships with Russia, the United States and toward multilateral institutions. The final part that utilizes primary data obtained through personal interviews with many Havel's close collaborators presents two faces of Václav Havel: the dramatist and the ideologue.     

Georgia’s frosts: ethnopolitical conflict as assemblage

Asia Europe Journal - This article is a reinterpretation of ‘frozen conflicts’ as assemblages binding together and strategically orienting a variety of components from both human and...