Global Security Architecture Research Articles

Changes in the Inter-Korean Policy of the DPRK and the ROK and Prospects for the Development of the Situation on the Peninsula

At the December plenum of the Central Committee of the WPC in 2023 and the January session of the National Assembly of the DPRK in 2024. North Korea has radically changed inter-Korean policy, abandoning the course of "unification of the country." The authorities have disbanded relevant structures and intend to "completely remove from the national history of our Republic the very concept of "unification", "reconciliation" and "compatriots". According to Kim Jong-un, the DPRK and the Republic of Korea have finally become "hostile states" for each other, their relations are no longer determined by belonging to the same people, so the peaceful unification of the Korean peninsula is no longer considered possible. This course testifies to the recognition by the country's leadership of objective reality and does not lead to an increase in the probability of an inter-Korean conflict initiated by Pyongyang. This change of course was largely the result of the processes in the south of the peninsula, where the government of Yoon Seok-Yeol, on the contrary, strengthens the rhetoric of "achieving peace through force". The author considers President Yoon's speech on March 1, 2024, formally dedicated to the 105th anniversary of the March 1, 1919 movement to be a sign of the new course. This speech can be considered as a program of a new inter-Korean policy aimed at eliminating the DPRK by the international community. The changed relations between Seoul and Pyongyang should be perceived as a consequence of changes in the world order and the global security architecture, as the concepts that do not meet the new reality are revised or canceled. At the same time, Russia may be satisfied with the presence of a cold war on the peninsula, if it does not turn into a hot one, as well as with the further rapprochement between Moscow and Pyongyang, united by a common threat.

Neoauthoritarianism as a Challenge to Global Security

The purpose of the study is to determine the features of neoauthoritarianism as a political regime, its tools, and consequences for global security. It is reasoned that neoauthoritarianism is an undemocratic system of methods and means of exercising centralized state power, which is characterized by the formalisation of democratic principles, institutions and procedures, and the use of digitalization to realize the goals of the regime. The features and tools of neoauthoritarianism are systematized, and the probable consequences of neoauthoritarianism on a global scale are assessed. The following features of neoauthoritarian regimes are determined: reduction of the role of ideology; integration into the global capitalist economy; imitation of a democratic facade; covert forms of pressure and control, manipulation, propaganda; providing a legal basis for any undemocratic initiatives; using the advantages of democratization, globalization, digitalization to achieve the regime’s destructive goals, etc. The following tools of neoauthoritarian influence are determined: power tools, tools of influence within the scope of “soft power,” tools of subversion, tools for changing values, electoral tools, tools of pressure on international organizations, etc. It is proven that due to neoauthoritarian intervention, the risks to global security are increased. The main consequence of ascending neoauthoritarianism on a global scale is the fact that neoauthoritarian regimes have endangered democracy as the dominant global model, reshaping the global security architecture.

Status i znaczenie Trójmorza w konstrukcji współczesnej globalnej architektury bezpieczeństwa

This article covers a cross-sectional and updating reflection on the phenomena taking place in the security sphere of the region, the so-called Three Seas. The research subject of the article is the Three Seas Initiative format as a potential subjective keystone of the security of Central and Eastern Europe, treated taking into account historical and current events, as one of the foundations of not only the European or Euro-Atlantic, but also the global security architecture. The priority research goal was to present and analyze the progress and integration and institutional perspectives of the Three Seas Region, and thus an attempt to search for the status arrangements of this format, by analyzing this geopolitical space in the light of, above all, the concept of regional security complexes (but also, among others, geopolitical wedges, the influence of superpowers of the global balance of power). The findings presented in these investigations signal both attempts to comprehensively bind the region with interdependence, attempts at far-reaching rapprochement and co-creation of soft security architecture – in the form of development-progressing infrastructure, as well as pragmatic and conservative behavior, resulting from both the geopolitical dynamics and current national calculations of the Three Seas countries.

The Impact of the Russian War on Its Ability to Project Power Geopolitically

In recent years, Russia has gradually lost influence in peripheral states that traditionally used to gravitate around Moscow. China’s significant investments in infrastructure development and trade with Central Asian states have isolated Russia, causing it to lose its importance and guiding role in the region. At the same time, Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine has led to a complete breakdown in Russian-European relations and increased cohesion among Western nations. Although Russia has lost its role as the world’s second-largest power to China, Sino-Russian relations remain a vital issue in regional and international dynamics due to the conjunctural alliance designed to shake the leading role of the US in the global security architecture. The struggle between the West and Russia creates imbalances throughout the international system, and the current World Order seems more disrupted than ever in the last 30 years.

Impactul războiului rus asupra capacității sale de proiecție a puterii în plan geopolitic

In recent years, Russia has gradually lost influence in peripheral states that traditionally used to gravitate around Moscow. China’s significant investments in infrastructure development and trade with Central Asian states have isolated Russia, causing it to lose its importance and guiding role in the region. At the same time, Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine has led to a complete breakdown in Russian-European relations and increased cohesion among Western nations. Although Russia has lost its role as the world’s second-largest power to China, Sino-Russian relations remain a vital issue in regional and international dynamics due to the conjunctural alliance designed to shake the leading role of the US in the global security architecture. The struggle between the West and Russia creates imbalances throughout the international system, and the current World Order seems more disrupted than ever in the last 30 years.

Эволюция военной политики Франции

The article studies the evolution of the military-political course of the French Fifth Republic. The authors provide a comprehensive analysis of the four editions of the French White Paper, which are the conceptual foundations of the country’s defense and national security strategy. Particular attention is paid to the impact of the domestic political situation, international political and economic processes, as well as membership in the European Union and the North Atlantic Alliance on the formation of France’s defense policy. The methodological basis for the study of the French military policy evolution is a systematic approach: a comprehensive study of the Fifth Republic’s defense and national security strategy as parts of the global European security architecture, which consists of closely related components. In addition the authors use the concrete-historical method, as well as induction, deduction, content analysis and comparative analysis of the Fifth Republic’s regulatory and legal documentation in the field of national defense and security, which allowed identifying elements of the specifics and continuity of the military-political course of France. With the help of forecasting, as well as a statistical method based on official data from government departments and research centers, the authors assessed the state of the French Republic Armed Forces. The excessive involvement of the French armed forces in various external and internal military operations, accompanied by a reduction in the number of personnel and deterioration of their equipment, weakens of the combat potential of Paris.

The impact of political, military, and social factors on the repositioning of Belarus within the regional security architecture

The next phase of Russian aggression against Ukraine demonstrated that despite lacking a large military, territorial, population, or raw material potential, Belarus could play a significant role in the project to construct a new regional, continental, and even global security architecture. The purpose of this article is to discuss the problem of repositioning Belarus, which was affected not only by the multidimensional change in Belarusian-Ukrainian relations as a result of the war but also by long-term efforts to elevate Belarusian-EU relations. In this area, the fundamental research question is whether the war in Ukraine, the breach of the so-called Budapest Memorandum and the deepening of the multifaceted Russian-Belarusian integration within the Union State (including the militarisation of Belarus and the allocation of tactical nuclear weapons) will cause the projects for the redefinition of Belarus-EU relations (which are instrumental in reducing the intensity of political turbulence in the region) to disappear from the EU diplomatic agenda for a long time, with a direct negative impact on the future of European security. The article verifies the hypothesis that due to the specificity of the Belarusian authoritarian model, despite the systematically deepening Russian-Belarusian integration and the ever-expanding sanctions policy towards Belarus, (2) due to the shape of Belarusian-Ukrainian relations after 2014 and the periodically satisfactory Belarusian-EU relations, (1) there are still prospects for Belarus to pursue foreign policy diversification and repositioning of the European vector in it.

Rethinking the relationship between a US‐based global security architecture and global capitalism

AbstractA comment on Felix Mallin and James D. Sidaway's ‘Critical Geoeconomics: A Genealogy of Writing Politics, Economy, and Space’.

The conflict in Ukraine and its global implications

ABSTRACT Russia’s intervention in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, has been subject of serious concern for the international community. Specifically, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which was previously regional, has evolved into a global dispute, drawing in all major powers and their alliance systems. Above all, this conflict became a test for global economic and security architecture and challenges the decades-long dominance of the transatlantic alliance system and its "rules-based international order." To address this special issue’s topic and contributions, we discuss how the 2022 intervention constitutes a test of resolve for Russia as the intervener and the West as the supporter of Kyiv. Then, we frame the debate regarding the causes of the kinetic intervention. Finally, we examine the varying international reactions to Russia’s invasion as an indicator of a changing international order.

Reconsidering the role of the Black Sea region for global security

For decades, the Black Sea region has rarely been considered among the most important strategic spaces in the world; the West has not had a coherent strategy for the region, and officials, experts and academia have not paid much attention to political and security developments in the Black Sea. This attitude changed only after the outbreak of the war, which changed the balance of power in the region and threatened the global security architecture. Officials and experts in Europe and the United States have finally recognised the region's importance to global security, which gives hope that it will receive the proper attention in the future.

War-Tested Resilience in Ukraine: Surviving Year One

Abstract The war in Ukraine, a NATO-Russian proxy war, continues to influence the global security architecture, but the immediate consequences are felt especially by those in the conflict area. The local population decided, through the actions carried out from the very first moment of the invasion, to oppose the Russian occupation and was categorized as an extension of the armed forces and a central pillar of the Ukrainian resistance. The paper analyzes the pressures to which the civilians in Ukraine were subjected during the first year of the conflict, such as: the bombing of residential areas, energy blackmail, torture, killings, rapes, robberies or the deportation of children from the occupied areas. After a year of war, the resilience of the population continues to fuel the morale of frontline troops, and a future peace agreement cannot be concluded without holding those guilty of war crimes or crimes against humanity accountable.

GLOBAL NUCLEAR SECURITY: CURRENT POLICY EMPHASIS

The article presents an analysis of the understanding of global nuclear security in terms of political accents. The relevance is explained by the processes that are currently taking place all over the world, taking into account the military operations in Ukraine. In addition, the global nuclear order is changing, the climate is changing, your oil price volatility, and the increasing problem of energy security. This speaks of the relevance and importance of turning to the study of issues of the future use of nuclear energy. The nuclear future requires significant efforts to strengthen international organizations and the regulatory framework that governs global nuclear affairs. It was noted that nuclear security requires global solutions, networks of national measures, international legal agreements and voluntary initiatives that form the basis of a comprehensive and effective global security architecture. Without a comprehensive and effective architecture, the progress made by countries is diminishing and it will be difficult for countries to sustain progress forward. Today, the country's approaches to nuclear security are very different, creating the danger that small links have been created to get rid of terrorists, looking for the easiest route to weapons-grade nuclear material. Only a general system that holds all states accountable to the same standards can ensure this. All countries must effectively exercise their sovereign security over their nuclear materials and facilities to prevent an act of catastrophic nuclear terrorism and thus preserve the benefits of peaceful nuclear energy.

The Containment Bias of the WHO International Health Regulations

Abstract The ordinary meaning of the term ‘prevention’ is to prevent harm from occurring. But what ‘harm’? For over 170 years, the system now embodied in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Health Regulations (IHRs) has answered this question by focusing on the prevention of disease ‘spread’ across countries, rather than on the ‘spillover’ of pathogens from animals to humans, which constitute the main source of pandemic risk today. This bias towards the containment of disease has deep roots. In the historical context from the IHRs emerged, focusing on pathogen spillover was beyond the possibilities of the science of the time; it was also pointless to the extent that the effort focused on pathogens which were already prevalent in humans, causing diseases such as cholera or plague. Transposed to the present day, this containment bias has important consequences for global health governance. Most importantly among these is that the global health security architecture still lacks a specific system to prevent spillovers of pathogens at the origin of outbreaks and subsequent spread of diseases such as COVID-19, SARS, MERS or Ebola. This article investigates the roots of this focus on containment. Relying on the proceedings of the International Sanitary Conferences that preceded the IHRs, as well as on an untapped documentary archive relating to the revision of the IHRs between 1995-2005, the article explains the reasons underpinning this enduring bias and its implications for global health governance.

NEW THREATS AND VULNERABILITIES REGARDING NATIONAL SECURITY IN THE CONTEXT OF THE CONFLICT IN UKRAINE

The events that took place at the end of the twentieth century led to important transformations that determined the need to reconfigure the geopolitical and geostrategic environment in terms of risk diversity, threats and interests of the actors involved. Russia is a key element in establishing the new security architecture as it seems to focus all necessary forces and means on maintaining its influence in Eastern Europe. In this article, I will address not only the main security threats and vulnerabilities deduced from Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, whose purpose is to reconfigure the security environment and restore the new world order, namely the Black Sea region, but I will also refer to the weapons of the mass destruction, cyber-attacks, climate change and, last but not least, the flow of refugees. All these new risks and threats to national security demonstrate once again Romania’s strategic role in shaping global security architecture. Strengthening Romania’s national security is a key element in the coming years in the unpredictable context of the regional security environment.

Transatlantic Cooperation and New Euro-Asian Security Architecture

Russia's second aggression against Ukraine launched in February 2022, compared to the one in 2014, shows all the brutality of the Russian regime. In same time aggression disregard agreed cooperation mechanisms in crisis management processes with the aim of avoiding stronger conflicts and wars. Is it necessary, as a consequence of this Russian aggression, to change the existing global security architecture completely or should it be upgraded? Considering the hybridity of existing and emerging conflicts and wars, societies and states should be prepared for these challenges by integrating their own capabilities at the national and international level. In this process, the protection of critical infrastructures plays a significant role. Especially those that are considered as a key critical infrastructure.

ПЕРЕОСМИСЛЕННЯ ЧИННИКА ЧОРНОМОРСЬКОЇ БЕЗПЕКИ НА ТЛІ РОСІЙСЬКОЇ АГРЕСІЇ

This paper examines the rethinking of the Black Sea security factor based on the analysis of primary sources, including the texts of speeches by officials and experts, quantitative analysis of scientific publications on Black Sea issues in the Web of Science Core Collection, as well as the results of an international research project on Black Sea security, in which the author of this publication participated, and which included semi-structured interviews with diplomats and experts, as well as a questionnaire expert survey. The study gives grounds to conclude that since the end of the Cold War, the Black Sea region has not been considered one of the most important strategic spaces for a long time, and its security issues have been out of focus for decades, both in Europe and in the Euro-Atlantic community. The reassessment of the importance of the Black Sea security factor for Europe, the United States and the world as a whole occurred only after and under the influence of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which changed the balance of power in the region and threatened the global security architecture. Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine has moved the Black Sea region from the periphery to the centre of Euro-Atlantic security processes, and has shown that this region should be considered an integral part of the overall European security system. The return of largescale war to Europe has forced the countries of the continent to more soberly assess their vulnerabilities and the value of collective defence within NATO. Awareness of the rapidly growing security threats has prompted officials, experts and scholars in Europe and the United States to recognise the strategic importance of the Black Sea region, the need for a clear strategy for the region by Western countries and their regional allies and partners, and the need to take urgent steps to return peace, security and stability to the region.

Distressing a system in distress: global nuclear order and Russia’s war against Ukraine

ABSTRACT While prosecuting its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has relied heavily on nuclear threats, turning the war in Ukraine into a dangerous nuclear crisis with profound implications for the global nuclear order and its two constitutive systems of nuclear deterrence and nuclear restraint. These two interconnected systems, each aiming to manage nuclear possession and reduce the risk of nuclear use, are at once complimentary and contradictory. While tensions between these systems are not new, the war in Ukraine exacerbates them in unprecedented ways. The system of nuclear deterrence seems to be proving its worth by inducing restraint on Russia and NATO, while the system of restraint is undermined by demonstrating what happens to a country not protected by nuclear deterrence. The latter lesson is particularly vivid given Ukraine’s decision to forgo a nuclear option in 1994 in exchange for security assurances from nuclear powers. Russia’s use of nuclear threats as an enabler for escalation and the specter of Russian tactical nuclear use against Ukraine goes well beyond its declared nuclear doctrine. The outcome of the war in Ukraine thus has critical importance for deciding the value of nuclear weapons in global security architecture and for resolving the conundrum between the systems of deterrence and restraint.

Evaluating Peacebuilding Strategies Applied by Sub-County Peacebuilding Committees In Mombasa County

The changing nature of conflict and the emergence of new security challenges alongside a relatively underfunded global peace and security architecture has put to question the continued relevance of the strategies used in peacebuilding.

An effective pandemic treaty requires accountability

An effective pandemic treaty requires accountability

The Weimar Triangle: France, Germany, Poland in the Middle East. United Arab Emirates Perspective

The article’s scientific goal is to investigate the Weimar Triangle countries’ relations with the United Arab Emirates. Therefore, the author asks the research question. Are the Weimar Triangle states’ role and significance increasing in the external dimension of the European Union? Based on the example of the United Arab Emirates, the research adopted a hypothesis. It is the statement that after Brexit, the Weimar Triangle countries have a chance to improve their importance in the EU external activities. Apart from case studies, to revise the hypothesis, the author performed a meticulous comparative analysis. Moreover, the research implemented International Practice Theory as an appropriate tool to investigate the presented issue. This empirical research and its findings resulted from over ten years of the author’s direct observation, analysis, and participation in many initiatives, both in the European Union and in the United Arab Emirates.
 The Middle East for the Weimar Triangle countries is more significant than just from a trade potential perspective. The situation in this region is also affecting Europe, as well as global security architecture. For this reason, one should develop a coherent and comprehensive EU foreign and security policy towards the region, and the Weimar Triangle formula should be one of its pillars.