Bilateral Security Agreements Research Articles

The United States and Twenty-Three Other Countries Enter into Bilateral Security Agreements with Ukraine

The United States and Twenty-Three Other Countries Enter into Bilateral Security Agreements with Ukraine

UKRAINIAN-BRITISH RELATIONS AFTER BREXIT: BILATERAL COOPERATION AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION OF UKRAINE

The article examines the development of relations between Ukraine and the United Kingdom after the latter's withdrawal from the European Union. Expert assessments of the consequences of Brexit on Ukrainian-British relations, as well as the analysis of joint documents signed between Ukraine and the United Kingdom in the post-Brexit period, are taken into account. It turns out that, despite the decision to leave the integration association and its influence on political processes within the European community (loss of contributions to the common budget, lack of state representatives in key European institutions, strengthening of Eurosceptic tendencies in the rest of the EU member states), the United Kingdom remained an important international partner of Ukraine in bilateral relations and did not change its favorable attitude to Ukraine's European integration, guided primarily by foreign policy and security interests, but has lost access within the EU to levers of influence on positive decisions regarding Ukraine in this direction. The strategic level of partnership is laid down in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement of 2020, and later strengthened – already during the hot phase of the Russian-Ukrainian war – by additions to this agreement in terms of trade liberalization with Ukraine, as well as by the later agreement on security cooperation in 2024, which became the first such precedent in a number of bilateral security agreements between Ukraine and other partner countries. Since 2022, the United Kingdom has been actively providing the armed support necessary to repel the Russian invaders, which consists in the transfer of various types of weapons and the training of the Ukrainian military. In the end, the Ukrainian issue became a point of contact in European-British relations, guided by the common interest of protecting the region from escalation by Russia and preventing it from undermining the fundamental principles of the international order.

Media Framing of Bilateral Security Agreement between Afghanistan and USA

Security in the region is one of the most important matters in international studies because it had many ups and downs during last decades. Although International Society leading U.S. sent troops to Afghanistan in order to fight against international terrorism, but still security challenges are remained the same. However, currently there is more consideration on roots of terrorism in Pakistan, but they are going to withdraw troops from Afghanistan after 2014. Some countries were pessimistic on presence of U.S. because they think U.S. has interests in Asia, controlling China, Russia and Iran. But others are worrying about future of region; especially that extremism is being expanded to the east part of China, Central Asia, and even to the south borders of Russia. Strategic agreement between Afghanistan and U.S. may have both negative and positive effects and impacts on security in the region. This research paper investigates Afghan media towards bilateral security agreement between Afghanistan and USA and its impact on regional peace and security. For this purpose, it examines the type of coverage's about security agreement get in newspapers. Content analysis of news reports from years 2014 to 2017 has done in order to know the framing of security agreement. Results reveal that media has been releasing favorable, natural and unfavorable coverage on security agreement.

Security options for Eastern Europe

The European continent remains fragmented with Eastern Europe as the most vulnerable region where the grey zone comprising Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia lacks security and challenges regional security. “Countries in-between” were distinguished in a grey zone basing on common internal and external threats; staying outside major functioning security and economic systems shaped by the EU/NATO and EEU/CSTO, actors of which exert a significant impact on the marginal states; burdened by asymmetry of power interaction with neighboring states and entities; weak and unstable political and economic systems. United by common threats and challenges the grey zones states can search for joint options to escape from the marginal status. Thus, regarding strategic environment and aiming to overcome the existing threats and challenges the grey zone states may navigate within the following options: maintaining current status quo; neutrality with strong guarantees of major powers; relying on strengthened / modified international security mechanisms or establishing new ones; sub-regional cooperation and alliances; bilateral security agreements with the US; joining one of the existing security systems. The author stresses that the most viable and efficient are the last three ones.

The South Korean–Japanese security relationship and the Dokdo/Takeshima islets dispute

In 2012, South Korea and Japan came very close to signing a bilateral security agreement that would help to address mutual security threats: China's rise in power and North Korea's missile testing and nuclear status. Yet the South Korean government halted the signing of the agreement due to domestic opposition, putting a stop to this and other future security agreements for now. Why have South Korean governments been unable or unwilling to pursue security agreements with Japan? This research first examines whether the security agreements are necessary, and second, the role of the Dokdo/Takeshima islets territorial dispute as a major symbolic deterrent for such security agreements. I argue that security agreements are necessary, yet domestic accountability in South Korea regarding the Dokdo islets and related tensions with Japan strongly oftentimes impedes furthering security relations with Japan. An examination of Korean domestic public opinion, actions of civil society groups, and actions and decisions of South Korean politicians demonstrate that domestic accountability has played a major role in preventing further security relations with Japan.

Welfare Impacts of Afghan Trade on the Pakistani Provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Amidst all the concerns of uncertainty over the future of Afghanistan, recent developments have given hope to the world, specifically south and central Asia. A coalition government has now been established following the deadlock that came after the May 2014 elections. President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Officer Abdullah have already signed a Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) between Kabul and Washington, according to which 9800 troops will remain in Afghanistan beyond 2015. Furthermore, the government of Afghanistan seeks the support of the neighbouring countries to keep peace in the region. Despite all these concrete steps, there has been an increased number of terror attacks and drone operations which has put a big question mark on the stability of the country. How Afghanistan tackles these rising problems will be crucial in defining its future, the trickle-down effects of which will determine the stability of the Afghan-Pakistan region. Concerns about what the future holds for this region with a long history of violence and insurgency are currently being voiced at many levels of society, including on talk shows, at government meetings, within NGOs, and at business forums. Unlike most of the studies done on the Afghan-Pakistan region that focus on the security of the region, this article focuses on the welfare and economic impacts of post-2014 Afghanistan on the neighbouring Pakistani provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, at the household level.

Symposium: Developments in Afghanistan: Implications for Pakistan and the Region

Last few months have seen some significant developments in Afghanistan including, but not limited to, the presidential elections and the formation of Ghani-Abdullah national government and subsequent signing of the pending Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with the US. These developments will undoubtedly play an important part in shaping the internal and external dynamics of the country in years to come. It is also an established fact that any development, small or big, in Afghanistan has a bearing of one sort or the other on Pakistan as well. It was in this background that Policy Perspectives sought the analysis of selected but key Pakistani opinion makers, representing various sections of society, as to what the developments taking place across the Durand line will mean for Pakistan in addition to their overall impact upon and linkages with the regional situation. This symposium is a product of the responses thus generated over past few months' period.

Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law

• Progress Is Made Implementing U.S.-Russia Framework for Eliminating Syrian Chemical Weapons• United States Advocates for Syrian Peace Conference• United States Extends Deadline for Signing of Bilateral Security Agreement with Afghanistan• China Announces New Air Defense Identification Zone over East China Sea, PromptingU.S. Response• United States and Six Other States Reach Interim Agreement on Iranian Nuclear Program

Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law

• Progress Is Made Implementing U.S.-Russia Framework for Eliminating Syrian Chemical Weapons• United States Advocates for Syrian Peace Conference• United States Extends Deadline for Signing of Bilateral Security Agreement with Afghanistan• China Announces New Air Defense Identification Zone over East China Sea, PromptingU.S. Response• United States and Six Other States Reach Interim Agreement on Iranian Nuclear Program

Inadequate Revenue Threatens Afghanistan’s Stability

If Afghanistan is to maintain some semblance of stability in 2014 and beyond it must prepare for a substantial donor funding reduction and seek to grow its domestic revenue. Funding for the Afghan government’s operating expenses as well as further development projects is heavily dependent on donor support. Unfortunately for Afghanistan, its fiscal position is eroding as domestic revenues decline, expenses rise, and donor aid falls. Security gains as well as public services and economic development are at risk due to this mismatch. Afghanistan’s challenge in the coming years will be how to deal with this mismatch without fueling instability. It cannot simply assume that donor funding will continue to cover its funding gap. This paper assesses Afghanistan’s deteriorating fiscal situation and concludes with some observations on what the Afghan government and the donor community must do, preferably in concert, to address it. It assumes that Afghanistan and the United States will ultimately sign a bilateral security agreement allowing a continued coalition military presence, without which the country’s fiscal situation could rapidly deteriorate.

The United States and Afghanistan: A Diminishing Transactional Relationship

The United States has a long and varied history of engagement with Afghanistan. But through all the tortuous turns and ups and downs, the relationship, from the U.S. perspective, has almost always been a transactional one. Given its front line status, Afghanistan has usually been a pawn in a bigger strategic game, initially between the Communist bloc and the capitalist countries in the region (including Iran under the shah, Pakistan, and India) and subsequently between the secular world and radicalized Islam. Afghanistan's current status as a ward of the United States and international community is unusual and will not last.This essay suggests that regardless of whether a bilateral security agreement (BSA) is signed between Afghanistan and the United States, and assuming Afghanistan does not again become a haven for terrorism targeting the United States, U.S. interest will diminish. So too will U.S. resources invested in the country-whether military, economic, developmental, or diplomatic. Neighboring powers, such as India, Iran, and Pakistan, who have an immediate stake in a secure, stable Afghanistan, will become more important players. Long memories, the need for strategic depth, and the fear that Afghan soil will once again become a battleground for proxy warfare will militate against the realization of the Afghan government's vision of the country as the peaceful and prosperous heart of Asia.The History of U.S. Engagement in AfghanistanA brief review of the relationship between the United States and Afghanistan is instructive. Following World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union competed to maintain influence with Afghan rulers, as the British and Russian Empires had done in the previous century, using modest levels of technical, military, and development assistance-the Great Game once again played out in Afghanistan. After the invasion of 1979, the United States sought to undermine Soviet power by supporting the mujahideen, using Pakistani security forces as the delivery mechanism. Once the Soviet Union left in 1989 and the Najibullah regime collapsed in 1992, Afghanistan dropped off the U.S. radar until the Taliban swept into Kabul in 1996. Then followed a period in which the United States had an ambivalent relationship with Afghanistan: not recognizing the Islamic emirate that controlled 90% of the country, but intermittently engaging with its authorities through intermediaries on specific issues; providing some humanitarian support through the United Nations and the Red Cross/Red Crescent; encouraging private-sector interest in a pipeline across the country; and expressing concern about women's rights.All that changed with September 11. Having decisively ejected the Taliban in a lightning military campaign, the United States promoted a Western and largely multilateral agenda to stabilize and reconstruct the country and rebuild its institutions and economy. But by 2006, as the Taliban reasserted their presence and security began once again to deteriorate, the United States had moved to a counterinsurgency approach. By 2009 and the Obama administration's surge, this had mushroomed into a full-blown military and state-building campaign with an annual price tag over $120 billion-perhaps the most ambitious the world has seen in the last 50 years.Next Steps in U.S.-Afghanistan Relations: The Short TermU.S. engagement in Afghanistan will continue to evolve. In the short to medium term, much depends on whether a BSA between Afghanistan and the United States is signed. As for the longer term, predictions are unwise, but the country's strategic importance to the United States is likely to diminish unless Afghanistan once again becomes an incubator for transnational terrorism.Afghanistan with a BSA. If a BSA is signed, there is no guarantee that Afghanistan will continue to be a recipient of exceptional levels of U.S. assistance-currently higher in per capita terms than any other country excepting Israel1-but the prospects will be stronger that the administration will have enough political support to honor the pledges it made in Chicago and Tokyo for military and civilian support, respectively, until 2016. …

Afghanistan Beyond 2014: The Search for Security in the Heart of Asia

On November 26, 2013, National Security Advisor Susan Rice left Kabul in frustration as President Hamid Karzai refused to compromise in negotiations over a bilateral security agreement that would govern U.S. military forces remaining in Afghanistan following the conclusion in late 2014 of the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission. President Karzai's intransigence-several senior Afghan political leaders and advisers had urged him to reach an accommodation on the agreement-was likely due to a misreading of the appetite within the United States for continuing to provide high levels of support for Afghanistan, despite the shortcomings of the Karzai government and its episodic intemperate outbursts toward Washington. Stephen Biddle likened the situation to a game of chicken, in which each side expected the other to swerve at the last minute to avoid a damaging collision.1The U.S.-Afghan negotiations over a security agreement in the fall and winter of 2013-14, still ongoing as this roundtable went to press, have taken place against a growing chorus of voices assessing the impact of the long Afghanistan campaign on U.S. national security interests in the heart of Asia. These analyses range from discussions about how a decade-long focus on counterinsurgency operations has affected U.S. military readiness to critical assessments of the costs and benefits of the ISAF mission and whether the United States should cut its losses and seek a definitive departure from the region.2A prevailing assumption in many of these assessments is that the United States is likely to shift its focus away from the region toward other security challenges in Asia, such as China's increasing assertiveness in the East and South China seas or the threat of instability in or provocations from North Korea. In this Asia Policy roundtable, Xenia Dormandy and Michael Keating review the history of U.S. engagement in Afghanistan and argue persuasively that other issues in the Asia-Pacific will most likely capture Washington's attention following the conclusion of the ISAF operation in 2014. Certainly there are many within the U.S. policy community who seem to agree with the notion that providing billions of dollars a year to Afghanistan, perhaps for another decade or more, is no longer feasible.In the event that the United States does pull back, other powers will continue to vie for strategic influence in the region, and the outcome of that competition could have significant implications for broader U.S. objectives in Asia. The purpose of this roundtable, which comprises nine national and regional assessments, is to examine the range of strategic interests and priorities that Afghanistan's neighbors and other regional powers possess. Developed fully in the pages that follow, these interests can be grouped into three broad categories.The first is the search for security, and in particular the desire to prevent a resurgence of the Taliban for fear that Afghanistan will once again provide refuge to terrorist groups such as al Qaeda. This motivation, of course, first drove the U.S. intervention in 2001, and it remains a key concern for U.S. national security managers. Security is also a primary motivation for leaders in Russia, as Mark Katz points out; in the front-line states of Central Asia (namely, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan), which Kathleen Collins argues are preparing for a coming Afghan spillover of conflict, refugees, Islamist extremism, and drug trafficking; and in Iran, which, as Sumitha Narayanan Kutty notes, backed the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance during the civil war of the 1990s and was one of the earliest supporters of the U.S.-led intervention. China, too, has significant concerns about Islamism, which Beijing views as a key driver of the ethnic and religious tensions it is struggling to contain in Xinjiang. 3A second category revolves around economic interests and the protection of investments that have been or are being made in major energy, natural resources, and transportation projects in Afghanistan. …

The Fall and Rise of Peace Treaties

When the United States terminated its seven-year occupation of Japan in 1954, it did so having signed a peace treaty. By contrast, the United States tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade Hamid Karzai to sign a Bilateral Security Agreement to accompany the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Even if Karzai had agreed to sign, the draft agreement bears much stronger resemblance to an alliance than to a peace treaty; it does not reference hostilities between the United States and Afghanistan, nor does it include any version of the term “peace treaty.”

Conventional arms control for Korea: A proposed approach

Abstract : Conventional arms control negotiations should (1) help achieve U.S./ Republic of Korea (ROK) military objectives on the peninsula, and (2) produce a verifiable agreement. These are important objectives and we will return to them. However, there is a more important objective not always associated with arms control-how arms control could help the United States achieve its regional security objectives. In Northeast Asia, the United States has four main security objectives: (1) maintain ability, (2) maintain access and influence, (3) prevent a power vacuum or the rise of any regional hegemon, and (4) prevent nuclear proliferation. Conventional arms control can indirectly help the United States achieve these regional security objectives. Except for the possibility of nuclear proliferation in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK), these regional objectives are being achieved by maintaining ROK and Japanese security through bilateral security agreements between the United States and each ally. Because it has no territorial designs, the United States has served as a regional balancer and an honest broker in the region. To the extent that the United States can continue in that role, we will probably continue to accomplish American regional objectives.

Evolution des structures politiques de l'Europe : un point de vue polonais

The Evolving Political Architecture of Europe : a View from Poland, by Wojtek Lamentowicz The paper explores four policy options of the East-Central European states as for as the future of the Warsaw Pact is concerned and concludes that there is no real opportunity for revival of the Soviet dominated military and political coordination in Central Europe. The author argues that Central European governments — ie. Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Hungary — are highly interested in extended responsibility for NATO. Old and new missions of NATO are being discussed and the sequence of reasons for the extended responsibility is being presented : bad experience with the WTO, preventing security strategies from being re-nationalized, non military threats to stability, preventing the security vacuum and unpredictable futures, eliminating barriers which separate Central Europe from the West, assurance of being on the same side as Germany, opportunity to reform NATO by preparing for the bilateral security agreements betgween NATO and Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

United States' Support for Iran's Independence and Integrity, 1945-1959

Iran served as a catalyst which changed the American perception of the nature of Soviet policies in the postwar period and provided the first stimulus for a radical reorientation of U.S. foreign policy and strategy. American policy toward Iran was formulated in stages corresponding to the crisis involving Iran, its close neighbors, and the Soviet Union. The process began with the Azerbaijan crisis of 1945-46; it followed the Greek-Turkish crisis of 1947, and the Iranian oil crisis of 1951-53. United States policy was expressed in (a) unilateral—direct or indirect—support for Iran's independence, as exemplified by specific and general policy statements and actions of the Truman era; (b) multilateral defense arrangements of the Eisenhower period (Baghdad Pact, 1955) ; and (c) bilateral security agreements with the Northern Tier states, including Iran, in 1959. As a result, the American policy of containment of international communism, with specific reference to Iran, could be regarded as having achieved its objective.