Germany’s approach to security and defence cooperation with Poland by the mid-2020s

The article examines the dynamics of Germany's relations with the Nordic countries in the military-political sphere in the 2010s, taking into account the historical experience of their contacts. The author tries to explore both regional and bilateral (interstate) levels. The article shows that the foreign policy of Prussia and then Germany before the World War II, based on the active use of military instruments, was one of the reasons for Sweden (1814) and Finland (1955) to choose a neutral status in the military sphere. Chronologically, special attention is paid to the period of the new Cold War between Euro-Atlantic security community and Russia. The article attempts to show that Germany is not interested in the rejection of Sweden and Finland from their conditionally neutral status de jure. Another question is how Germany used the new Cold War to deepen and expand its contacts with all the countries of Northern Europe. The article also discusses the influence of the Donald Trump factor on these relations. Starting in 2018, we may face increased use of the Bundeswehr in military exercises organized in the region. The article attempts to analyze the determination and dynamics of this trend.

The issue of stability in the Euro-Atlantic community is related to NATO’s activities and the interaction of European states with the United States. In turn, an important place in the security environment of the European subcontinent is occupied by Poland, due to the geopolitical position of the state (critical influence on the stability in Central and Eastern Europe) and its activities in cooperation with the United States within NATO. US cooperation with Poland has some conceptual background and determined by Warsaw’s participation in NATO operations, military and defense cooperation with NATO allies. There is a certain cyclical nature in US-Polish relations, given the political priorities of both countries (priorities of American Presidents’ administrations and activities especially of the Law and Justice (PiS) party in Poland), however, the security sphere is becoming an element of expanding allied relations. In connection with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, US cooperation with Poland has gained new significance both in the format of strengthening bilateral cooperation and in the regional context. In turn, a tendency to change the European architecture of regional security due to the transformation of the Western European security complex in accordance with the theory of B. Buzan is existed, given the military threat from Russia, which determines the strengthening of Poland’s role in NATO, cooperation with the United States in the Euro-Atlantic community.

Disengagement between the West and the non-West has been becoming more and more noticeable by the early 2020s. The key examples of it are the confrontations between the Euro-Atlantic community and Russia, the USA, its partners and China, degradation of relations between the West and Iran. In such situation cohesion between the liberal democracies should increase. But the Euro-Atlantic faced the phenomena of Trumpism and Brexit. In this regard the article tries to explore the elements of cooperation and competition for the US-German relations in political and military spheres during late February - early November 2022. The article stresses the absence of purely bilateral contacts at the highest level of the dialogue. The determination is shown in the context of the Biden administration’s policy named as «soft hegemony», the US expectations regarding the supply of German weapons to Kyiv. The paper compares the US and German approaches to manning NATO military groupings, especially Forward Presence Force. In 2022 Berlin tries to act symmetrically to the USA. Germany has taken into account the US expectations for growing European member states’ participation in NATO`s activities but at the same time skillfully realized its own ambitions as power. The article also analyses the ratio of approaches on the example of decisions of NATO`s Madrid summit (2022, June) decisions.

Reviewed by: Of Vagabonds and Fellow Travelers: African Diaspora Literary Culture and the Cultural Cold War by Cedric Tolliver, and: Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson by Shana L. Redmond Samantha Pinto Cedric Tolliver. Of Vagabonds and Fellow Travelers: African Diaspora Literary Culture and the Cultural Cold War. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2019. 244 pp. $24.95. Shana L. Redmond. Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson. Durham: Duke UP, 2020. 208 pp. $24.95. When I was an undergraduate at Rutgers in the late 1990s, June Jordan came to give a reading in the Paul Robeson Lounge. She opened her talk by way of a joke—that this man who spoke so many languages, lettered in so many sports, was so incredibly multitalented, could have a lounge named after him. A lounge! Paul Robeson, critically understudied, and the time period he most saliently represents in Black arts and culture—the Cold War era—are finally getting their due in two new monographs: Cedric Tolliver's Of Vagabonds and Fellow Travelers and Shana Redmond's Everything Man. Joining recent work on the Black feminist political history of this time period by scholars such as Keisha Blain, Cheryl Higashida, Mary Helen Washington, and Carole Boyce Davies, as well as the literary studies work of Michelle Stephens, Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, and Eve Dunbar, Tolliver and Redmond map deeply different takes on the legacies of an unsung era of African American cultural and political work. The Cold War era is a time of unprecedented political change and artistic production, sitting as it does amid World War II and burgeoning global decolonization movements. Tolliver and Redmond want to retrace figures in Black literature and culture who didn't toe even liberal lines around Black freedom struggles of the period, rewriting Robeson and others into the legacy of figures like W. E. B. Du Bois, who also recurs throughout Tolliver's text as a key theorist of the significance of culture and class to Black political movements. Tolliver thinks deeply around those who incorporated class and economic struggles as at the center of African American bids for equality with stunning archival work and a nuanced Marxist approach to difference within the African diaspora. He centers "those confrontations in the cultural realm between the US and the Soviet Union that paralleled and reinforced operations in the political, economic, and military spheres" (5) to capture the 'hearts and minds' of a global populace. This populace, particularly in decolonial Africa, was skeptical of the US not least because of its continued racist policies and politics, including legal segregation in the South and economic injustice nationwide. Tolliver's thick (re)description of the history of Black cultural expression in the Cold War political context is both forceful and eloquent in its open insistence on "restor[ing] culture to a primary site of struggle, refusing the capitalist society imperative, intensified during the Cold War, of according culture an autonomous [End Page 343] function removed from the materiality of social reproduction" (16) and claiming some Black artists (and activists) as particularly "disruptive" (17) to this equation and political economy as usual, even as it was difficult to escape what he refers to as its ideological—and often material—enclosures. Tolliver reframes this period of African American literature around the Cold War era in a first chapter that anchors scholarly work on the diaspora by critics like Brent Hayes Edwards in his The Practice of Diaspora into the frame of the Cold War, and engages important thinkers in diaspora literature such as Aimé Césaire through Cold War politics and critiques. From here, Tolliver moves to Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean engagements with US imperial histories in the region. His reading of George Lamming's classic In the Castle of My Skin recasts it as a primer on Cold War development in the shadow of a century of American occupation. The emphasis on US foreign policy in Lamming's and Jacques Stephen Alexis's work here is thought-fully and thoroughly sutured to close readings of their texts that open up African diaspora and Cold War studies of the period's literature. Robeson appears as a...

The child of a small coup rather than an extension of popular will, the Soviet State was intrinsically insecure, its leaders ever fearful of internal and external threats. They did not feel that their regime would be safe until the revolution triumphed abroad, convinced that the outside world was implacably hostile. None felt this more strongly than Stalin. Indeed, as eminent historian of the Soviet Union Vojtech Mastny argues, it was Stalin’s insatiable craving for security, more than anything else, that was the root cause of East-West tensions and the Cold War. In The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity, the long-awaited sequel to his acclaimed work, Russia’s Road to the Cold War, Mastny offers a masterful history of the birth of the Cold War, drawing on extensive research in newly opened Soviet archives. Here Stalin takes centre stage during the critical years 1947 to 1953, stamping East-West tensions with his personal blend of paranoia, ideology, ruthlessness, and wishful thinking. Indeed, given Stalin’s personality and his unquenchable thirst for security, Mastny argues, the Cold War arose as an “unexpected but predetermined” event--far from planned, yet scarcely avoidable. As Mastny unfolds the history of this climactic era, he offers a new understanding of important aspects of the developing conflict--throwing sharp light, for example, on the Kremlin’s relationship with foreign Communist parties (in both Eastern and Western Europe) and its very different responses to Tito and Mao. Indeed, the break with Tito demonstrates the depths of Stalin’s paranoia: the Yugoslav leader actually thought he was doing Stalin’s will, when all along his very similarity to Stalin alienated the Soviets--a case of “incompatible affinities,” as Mastny writes. Here too is a fresh view of the outbreak of the Korean War: Stalin not only approved the attack, he actively armed and prepared the North’s Communist army. And yet, he strangely left the most crucial war decisions to the North Koreans. Mastny brilliantly analyses these events, showing the impact of the fighting in Korea on European relations--especially the question of divided Germany. And throughout the volume, Mastny offers many thought-provoking observations--he shows, for instance, that U.S. covert operations (especially the attempted infiltration of armed agents into Eastern Europe) may have had greater historical impact, by reinforcing Stalin’s paranoia, than the better-known Soviet espionage efforts in the West; and that the West’s failure to exploit instability--especially in East Germany--after Stalin’s death, may have allowed a shaky Soviet regime to regain its footing and survive for another forty years. Russia’s Road to the Cold War provided the definitive portrait of Stalin’s foreign policy during World War II. Now, in The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity, Mastny provides an equally superb account of Stalin’s foreign policy during his last years. Combining important new research with the fascinating insight of one of the leading authorities on Soviet affairs, this authoritative volume illuminates a crucial period in recent world history.

Voice of the Silenced Peoples in the Global Cold War: The Assembly of Captive European Nations, 1954–1972

The last two decades have witnessed a tectonic upheaval in the international political milieu. In Eastern Europe, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant the sudden emergence of newly independent states and required a quick and proper reaction to the changing geopolitical context. Such is the challenge confronting Russia and the European Union (EU), the two major players in the region. In times of economic crisis and political uncertainty, both parties seek to achieve their goals and protect their interests in the shared vicinity by expanding cooperation with their neighbors. However, each side is conducting its actions in a different fashion, according to its own strategic plans. The pressing issue coming out of this situation is whether it is possible to label this dual struggle for broader political clout a new strategic competition. Or it is just an inevitable process of restructuring the regional political environment - a process that is still incomplete after the dissolution of the Soviet Union? Thus, this essay examines the practical nature and the ideological background of both the EU and Russian approaches and policies towards the common proximity of the former Soviet republics.The growing importance of the EU as a strong center of gravity in the European postCold War milieu, coupled with the collapse of the Soviet Union, has sparked the development of a wide range of cooperative mechanisms between the Union and its Eastern European neighbors. The EU's increasing geopolitical weight has taken concrete form through the development of its enlargement strategy and the launch of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), followed by the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP). The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and, most recently, the Eastern Partnership (EaP) have been envisaged in the case of Eastern Europe as alternatives to the enlargement strategy, albeit this equivalency has not been officially stated. They were policies meant to enhance political dialogue and cooperation in many areas, ranging from security issues to trade, migration, visa facilitation, energy, and environment. A number of relevant projects have been set up, such as the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements (part of the Association Agreements), institutional appropriation, common negotiation and cooperation platforms (cross-border links, Euro-regions, civil society and business forums, biennial summits, annual ministerial meetings, etc.). This article holds that the Union's paramount goals in Eastern Europe have been first and foremost regional stability and security. However, Brussels has realized that the EU could best promote stability and security indirectly through measures aimed at encouraging the spread of democracy, human rights, good governance, and market economy. Moreover, in order to attain the aforementioned objectives, the EU should further engage in the wider European security environment (through its CFSP/CSDP instruments) and seek to strike a balanced stance towards Russia. Amid sensitive issues, EU policy makers and heads of state need also to work to arrive at a consensus with Moscow that might involve common approaches for facilitating regional cooperation.The strategy centered on the integration-security spectrum has been the main rationale that stood behind the EU's approach towards Eastern Europe. The ideas under which the European integration process has been conceived dealt with threats and risks in a rather politicized way, rather than using hard power (best reflected in the concentric circles model). This is because Brussels perceives regional stability from a liberal security perspective of normative transformation based on the EU's core values: democratization, rule of law, human rights, and market economy. This perception stands in contrast to the more traditional realist understandings of international relations, premised on material interests and balance of power. However, in the Eastern neighborhood of the EU, this article argues that an interplay of liberal/realist perceptions of security exists, and that it stems from the persistence of a geostrategic competition between the EU and Russia over the post-Soviet Newly Independent States (NIS). …

REVIEWS 393 Milutinović, Zoran (ed.). The Rebirth of Area Studies: Challenges for History, Politics and International Relations in the 21st Century. I. B. Tauris, London and New York, 2020. viii + 216 pp. Table. Notes. Bibliographies. Index. $115.00. This is an excellent edited volume which makes a compelling case that ‘the declaration of Area Studies’ death was premature’ (editor’s introduction, p. 1). As Milutinović explains, Area Studies was declared to be passé for a number of reasons: because globalization had unified and homogenized the world; because Area Studies were too complicit in Cold War political projects; because they lacked ‘a specific method and a clear and unique object’ and because they were deemed incapable of theory-building (pp. 1–2). As this volume shows, these criticisms are all misplaced. It is hard to see anyone standing by that argument in these years of COVID and right-wing populism. In any case, Milutinović rightly observes that the effects of globalization always manifests in locally varied ways (p. 2). As for the second criticism, while it is true that Area Studies expanded during the Cold War period, so did other disciplines. The knowledge production of other disciplines has been used for political ends as well. Meanwhile, many Area Studies scholars have been able to subvert and criticize these power dynamics (p. 4, pointing also to the chapter by Wendy Bracewell in this volume). Milutinović also notes that Area Studies benefits multi-disciplinary and mixed method approaches. But even more than that, Area Studies bring something unique to the table of knowledge production: ‘without knowing what people from an area make of their world — or how they create their world, understood not as the mere physical environment, but as web of meanings — there is no understanding of the social and political world we attempt to study’ (p. 6). Finally, he notes that what is an ‘area’ is not fixed and this gives scholars the freedom to let research problems be their guide (p. 6). The high bar set by Milutinović in his introduction is met by the contributions that follow, which give the reader both a new perspective on the history of Area Studies and more reasons to fight for their continued existence. In chapter two (‘Twenty-first century Area Studies: Blurring genres, evolutionary thought and the production of theory’), Susan Hodgett discusses how Area Studies has evolved since the 1990s, arguing that it ‘is undergoing a period of rich intellectual curiosity, a boundary-crossing productivity, while playing an acknowledged role in informing and supporting other disciplines’ (p. 19). In chapter three (‘How to think about ‘area’ in Area Studies?’), Jan Kubik advances a novel understanding of ‘area’ based on an approach he calls ‘contextual holism’. In chapter four (‘Eastern Europe, with or without borders’), Wendy Bracewell shows that the ambiguities around the term SEER, 99, 2, APRIL 2021 394 ‘Eastern Europe’ help us think about Area Studies in general. It is also my observation that people who work on Eastern Europe and/or the post-Soviet spaces have made some of the most interesting contributions to debates about Area Studies, and the profile of contributors in this volume also confirms this pattern. In chapter five (‘Disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and the plurality of Area Studies: A view from the social sciences’), Mark R. Beissinger outlines the ways Area Studies remains essential to social sciences today, even as that relationship has been transformed from what it used to be in the Cold War period. In chapter six (‘Comparative Area Studies without comparisons: What can Area Studies learn from Comparative Literature?’), Zoran Milutinović tells Area Studies scholars to take a cue from Comparative Literature and to stop worrying about their identity — embrace the uncertainty and pluralism instead. As an IR scholar, I cannot help but think there are other fields besides Area Studies who could use this advice. In the last chapter (‘Rethinking Area Studies: Figurations and the construction of space’), Claus Bech Hansen deploys the figurations approach of Norbert Elias to mount a defence of Area Studies in the twenty-first century. In sum, this is a book that should be of great interest not only to Area Studies scholars but also anybody who...

The Cold War: A World History

The article deals with the dynamics of electoral activity of citizens which comes out as an important indication of the on-going process of consolidation of democracy in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the period from 2001 to 2018 . The comparative analysis helps to show the differences in voter’s behaviour in post-communist and post-authoritarian countries as well as to point out the peculiar impact of social, sociocultural and institutional factors on voter turnout in “new democracies” . The author stresses that sociocultural factor considered as a correlation of survival values and values of self-expression in mass conscience exerts the primary influence on the level of participation of citizens in elections . The author emphasised that the prevalence of survival values in the culture of post-communist societies is the primary reason for utilitarian relation of people to democracy . It, in its turn, contributes to decreasing participation in elections in the conditions of mass disappointment in the results of market economy reforms and low-level electoral activity later on . More to that, weak institutionalisation of political parties in post-communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe proved to be unable to hinder effectively growing absenteeism of voters .

Health inequalities in Eastern Europe. Does the role of the welfare regime differ from Western Europe?

Perspectives on <i>The Soviet Union and the Horn of Africa during the Cold War</i>

The article examines the assessments of the global strategic concept «One Belt, One Road» of the PRC by the representatives of the Central and Eastern European expert community and by the Albanian media. After the Cold War, the formation processes of national states in the post-Yugoslavian space have started in the Balkans, and the region has come under tight probe of the Euro-Atlantic community, of Russia and Turkey as well as of the Peoples Republic of China, which had not displayed earlier such a keen interest in this region. In the context of the global strategy outlined by the party-state leadership of mainland China, the Balkans and Central Eastern Europe have turned into important connecting link in the Chinese geostrategic concept «One Belt, One Road». In the 2010 s, the PRC has begun to establish a wide-range network of transport corridors, designed to start a «new edition» of the historical «Silk Road» and to serve as an instrument for the economic advancement of the PRC on a transcontinental scale. This policy of economic expansion of the PRC, encompassing regions and continents on its way, is being actively discussed in the expert community of Central and Eastern European states from the standpoint of identifying both specific mode of actions engaged by the party-state leadership of the PRC, as well as local conditions, interests and probable results of the implementation of the Chinese project. The author notes that expert assessments range from positive to sharply negative, which indicates the absence of a definitive opinion on this issue. In Albania, a Balkan state closely linked to both Central and Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans, especially due to the presence of a large Albanian ethnic component in a number of countries of the region, the participation in the implementation of the project «One Belt, One Road» was strongly influenced by economic and political relations with the Euro-Atlantic community.

During the Cold War, Nordic cooperation blossomed and the region's identity was strong, yet defence was left outside the Nordic framework. After the end of the Cold War, Nordic cooperation waned and it was largely replaced by cooperation within the framework of the European Union. During the past couple of years, however, Nordic defence cooperation has been boosted by a number of initiatives and common projects. This article analyses this recent rise of Nordic defence cooperation. In terms of theory, it revolves around the question of how material and identity factors explain security cooperation in today's Europe. During the Cold War, identity was an easy explanation for societal cooperation between the Nordic countries, but geostrategic factors and national interests based on them determined (the lack of) defence cooperation. Even today, Nordic defence cooperation is justified more by cost-efficiency and geographical proximity than by common identity. This article argues that Nordic identity nevertheless plays an important role in motivating defence cooperation. It is not driven by pure cost-efficiency or strategic calculation. The role of identity needs to be understood, however, not as a kind of independent force but as part of the political process. Nordic identity explains the rise of the region's defence cooperation in two ways: it facilitates informal cooperation between defence officials at various levels; and it is easy to sell international defence cooperation politically to domestic audiences if it is done in the Nordic context. Yet Nordic cooperation is not seen as contradicting European or NATO cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India’s relations with countries of East Asia reveal its growing profile in the region in economic, technological, diplomatic, political and military spheres. India’s Look East policy, initiated in 1992, is bearing fruit now, as seen in the region becoming the largest trading partner of India, enhanced bilateral and multilateral diplomatic interactions, and long-term commitments in the security (maritime, cyber and space) fields. No doubt, relations between India and East Asia are acquiring depth as reflected in the broad-based interactions at the bilateral and multilateral levels as well as in trade, investments and people-to-people contacts in recent years. While Japan and both Koreas pose no major hurdle to India’s foreign policy goal of garnering support for its basic cause of territorial integrity and sovereignty, the equation with China presents a very complicated picture. The apparent lack of insistence on the reciprocity principle by India in its dealings with China reflects the growing asymmetries in power between the two. As a result, India has been trying to enhance its defence cooperation with South Korea and Japan.