International Crisis Research Articles

NATO’S POSITION ON THE UKRAINIAN CRISIS AND ITS FUTURE (2014-2022)

The twenty-first century has brought new security challenges, some of which are taking place close to European borders, the most notable of which was the Russian attack on Ukraine, which challenged European political principles and basic values, and which came as a test of the strength of the European Union. The unity and power of the West, and it was a shock that made Europe wake up to threats that were possible and had actually been implemented. It had to respond and acknowledge that it was facing a military threat, and as a result the European Union had to strengthen its security and decided to strengthen cooperation with NATO Increasing the size of defense budgets is the way to do this. The European security strategy needed to be reviewed and updated, taking into account changes in the strategic environment, types of challenges, lack of resources, integration processes, and the positions of European citizens and decision-makers in Europe and the United States. Therefore, the European Union must seriously consider To the new challenges, the complex nature of security threats, the new political environment and the legal framework formulated after the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, In the new strategic concept of NATO in 2010, the problem of the Crimean Peninsula and its annexation to the Russian side demonstrated the importance of its strategic location, which made it the focus of an international crisis, and witnessed positions and interventions that amounted to a Russian-Ukrainian collision (the main parties to the crisis), with the presence of secondary driving parties. It has, largely like the United States and NATO, and the relationship between NATO, which was founded in 1949, and Ukraine, is one of the most important partnerships of the alliance. In 1994, Ukraine was the first country to join - after the Baltic states - the NATO Partnership for Peace, and in 1997 it was established The (NATO-Ukraine) Committee, under which Ukraine adopted non alignment, rejecting aspirations for NATO membership, but all that changed in 2014, after the Russian invasion and the Ukrainian Parliament rejected that status

VOLATILITY AND CONDITIONAL MARKET CORRELATIONS IN PERIODS OF CRISIS

The study analyzed co-movements and contagions in Latin American stock markets, testing the benefits of diversification in times of crisis. The period investigated was from January 2000 to December 2018, testing the correlations through Asymmetric Dynamic Conditional Correlation models. The results indicate that correlations increase in periods of crisis in all markets and sectors, thus reducing the benefits of portfolio diversification. It was also possible to observe that the increase in correlations during an internal crisis is of smaller magnitude than the increase in correlations during external crises, such as Subprime.

The Invention of Anti-American Sentiment －Why North Korea Shifted the Blame for the Sinchon Massacre to the United States－

From October to December 1950, a large-scale massacre took place in Sinchon, Hwanghae Province. North Korea dubbed this incident “Sinchon Massacre” and claims that 35,383 people were slaughtered by the US military. In times of external and internal crises, North Korea has recalled the memory of the Sinchon Massacre to stir up anti- American sentiment among its people and achieve regime integration. However, the atrocious crimes of murder, arson, rape, and torture that North Korea attributes to the US military had actually been committed by members of the right-wing peace preservation corps in retaliation for the North Korean regime’s preventive custody measure. Nevertheless, North Korea shifted the blame for the Sinchon Massacre to the US military because there was a need to embrace the members of the base class who had betrayed the regime during the UN occupation of North Korea. To this end, North Korea included the air raids that indiscriminately killed civilians in the scope of “massacre” and named Harrison as the individual ultimately responsible for driving the North Korean people out to the site where they were eventually massacred. Moreover, former members of the peace preservation corps were classified into “active instigators” and “passive participants”－the scope of the former group was minimized, and the latter group was reeducated through home confinement and other forms of social punishment. Yet, the “counterrevolutionary” ideology prevalent in post-war North Korea proved to be an obstacle in achieving regime integration. In particular, it led to animosities and jealousies among members of production facilities, such as cooperative farms and factories, negatively impacting economic reconstruction and productivity growth. In an effort to resolve this issue, North Korea aimed to achieve societal integration and productivity growth by historicizing the Sinchon Massacre and fostering anti-American sentiment. Accordingly, the site of the massacre was transformed into the museum, and the move also served as a subtle warning to the former “hostile elements.”

Darien Gap Forested Jungles and Waterways (APDDGFJW) of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) in the Post-COVID 19 of the 21st Century

This paper deals with the identification of the Darien Gap as the main channel of continuous clandestine, illegal, undocumented and irregular migratory pathways of African Youths which caught our attention in the post-COVID 19 of the 21st Century with gross ambitions to get richer faster through the slogan of greener pastures with the majority giving off their lives ignorantly and embarrassingly to tilapias of the Mexican deep rivers in an attempt to cross to North American countries of United States and Canada. The end results was the untimely psychological tortures of their parents and sporadic internal crises of blaming even those who never contributed to such unwanted illegal movements but raising voices to educate on the dangers of un official migration both internally or externally. In fact the majority of the youths having such ambitions of illegal crossing of the Darien Gap are totally ignorant of the nature of the route which has been above the imagination of top ranking Engineers to open it to be more possible for vehicles to use. The hilly, mountainous, muddy, swampy, smugglers, kidnapping, ripping and all sorts of trafficking are characteristics of the Darien Gap which none of the agent involve in such illegal route can account to their victims. It is just certain that any of such irregular extra-continental travelling without passing through official diplomatic services which moderate bilateral relations can only be termed as above. It is also our findings that the clandestine pathway routes those using are passing is characterized with wild animals, dangerous human criminals of trafficking, bandits, muddy, dense forested, not motorable as even top engineers have not been able to successfully mapped out a good road that can be constructed with the Darien deadly jungle. Our inspirations were drawn from lecturing of Post-Graduate students on the question of International Migration and Black Diasporas around the World during which most of them were ......

Mediated crises and strategic crisis communication of third sector organizations: a content analysis of crisis reporting in six countries

PurposeThis study aims to contribute to strategic crisis communication research by exploring international media representations of third sector crises and crisis response; expanding the range of crisis types beyond transgressions; and developing a framework that integrates framing and crisis communication theory.Design/methodology/approachQuantitative content analysis was applied to identify patterns in crisis reporting of 18 news media outlets in Canada, Germany, India, Switzerland, UK and US. Using an inductive framing approach, crisis coverage of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) between 2015 and 2018 was analyzed across a wide range of crises, including but not limited to prominent cases such as Oxfam, Kids Company, or the Islamic Research Foundation.FindingsThe news media in six countries report more internal crises in the third sector than external crises. The most frequent crisis types were fraud and corruption, sexual violence/personal exploitation and attacks on organizations. Exploratory factor analysis revealed three components of crisis response strategies quoted in the media, conditional rebuild, defensive and justified denial strategies. Causal attributions and conditional rebuild strategies significantly influenced media evaluations of organizational crisis response. Three frames of third sector crises were detected; the critique, the damage and the victim frame. These frames emphasize different crisis types, causes, crisis response strategies and evaluations of crisis response.Originality/valueThe study reveals the particularities of crises and crisis communication in the third sector and identifies factors that influence mediated portrayals of crises and crisis response strategies of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) from an international comparative perspective. The findings have relevant implications for crisis communication theory and practice.

Threat Construction and Coercive Credibility

How do actors issue credible threats during international crises? While scholarship has traditionally focused on how the context of threats influences credibility, this paper considers how the construction of the threat itself affects credibility. More specifically, this paper introduces the concept of threat justification and theorize how the choice of explanation a leader uses in communicating her threats can influence her coercive credibility. This study employs a conjoint design survey experiment to identify the influence of threat specificity and severity, public versus private threats, and threat justification on perceptions of credibility. This paper finds that more precise threats are perceived as more credible, while threats employing reputational justifications are less credible. There is a minimal amount of evidence that the public versus private delivery of a threat influences credibility. This paper also finds that perceptions of credibility are influenced by whether the audience is domestic versus international and by the severity of the instigating crisis trigger. This study furthers our understanding of the factors shaping coercive credibility and how policymakers can most effectively convey their commitments during international crises.

Microfoundations of domestic audience costs in nondemocratic regimes: Experimental evidence from Putin’s Russia

Do leaders in nondemocratic regimes face public backlash when they threaten to use military force and back down? Whether citizens disapprove of empty threats is central to studying the domestic ‘audience costs’ in international crisis bargaining, but there is little experimental evidence of this phenomenon from autocracies. In this research article, I present the results of an original survey experiment investigating the microfoundations of domestic audience costs in the Russian Federation. My findings showed that even in Putin’s Russia, the citizens expressed attitudes in line with the audience costs theory. However, I also demonstrate that the effect of audience costs treatments was significantly stronger for the opponents of the current Russian leadership than for the supporters. The results of this study represent an important contribution to the existing literature by providing micro-level empirical evidence from a personalist nondemocratic regime.

Protective action as an enduring keystone of risk communication: Effective form, function and process of risk messaging as advocated by global higher education practitioners during a pandemic

AbstractRisk communication is a keystone in crisis prevention and mitigation. For that purpose, many institutions worldwide have the task of translating scientific risk information into actionable messages for public safety. As a collaboration among international risk and crisis communication scholars and practitioners, we sought to identify what risk communication practitioners at higher education organizations in the Global South and North identify as essential elements of effective risk communication, based on 32 interviews in 16 countries during the first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic (June–August, 2020). Results exemplify a shared vision for addressing the stickiest, most wicked challenges to effective risk communication globally. The interviews revealed globally shared best practices related to form, function, and process leading directly to what we consider the keystone of effective risk communication: saving lives (outcome).

Russian Aggression against Ukraine and the Making of Refugees

Abstract This article examines the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the perspectives of Russian ideology, the tools used by the Russian Federation in the war against Ukraine, and refugee-making. The article uses offensive realism as an approach to understanding the actions of Russia against Ukraine. Russian full-scale aggression against Ukraine in February 2022 provoked international crises in numerous dimensions: political, security, humanitarian, and ecological. It became not only a war between countries, but a war between ways of thinking and ideologies. The reasoning and international policies behind this war might have very different and controversial interpretations; however, some explanation can be found by analyzing Russian inner-political discourse during the last two decades and the development of Russian ideology. The key research question of the article concerns the issue of Russian ideology and its role in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Ethnic preferences, domestic audiences and military coalition formation

Ethnically motivated domestic pressure can incentivize leaders to support co-ethnics via military cooperation during international crises. When a leader requires the support of an ethnic group to retain office, she may face pressure to support foreign co-ethnics involved in an international crisis. Supporting co-ethnics can bolster a leader domestically, but constraints on the executive limit a leader's ability to respond to ethnically motivated pressure. Using data on 257 international crises from 1949–2001 and two case studies, we find robust evidence for the conditional relationship between co-ethnicity, the domestic political salience of ethnicity, executive constraints, and the likelihood of military coalition formation.

A critical review of personal protective equipments in relation to pandemics

PurposePersonal Protective Equipment plays an inevitable part in the current scenario of pandemics in the world. A novel coronavirus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Corona Virus-2 (SARS-Cov 2), began as an outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019, and quickly spread worldwide. It quickly escalated into an international public health crisis. This opened up the high demand for the innovation and research of new materials in the Personal Protective Equipment industry.Design/methodology/approachPubMed, Embase and Google Scholar were searched for relevant literature regarding personal protective equipment and the information was organized in a systematic way.FindingsThere are no adequate number of studies taken up in the field of use of textiles in medical applications especially with PPEs.Research limitations/implicationsThis structured review will generate a sense of the significance of using PPE for controlling pandemics and also awaken need for additional research and innovations in this area.Practical implicationsThe authorities of the management should take timely intervention in choosing the right material for their PPE in their hospitals. Hence health care professionals teams have an inevitable role in preventing the adverse environmental impact due to the inadvertent disposal of PPEs.Social implicationsThere is a lack of systematic way of disposing contaminated single-use face masks in a safe, environmentally acceptable manner. The dumping of single-use PPE in domestic garbage has had an adverse effect on the environment. Mismanaged plastic waste endangers the health of ecosystems by polluting marine and terrestrial environments, posing a significant risk of ingestion or injury to animals and contaminating habitats.Originality/valueThis review article provides an in-depth review of the use of different materials in PPE and challenges regarding its long-term use and implications on the environment.

A STUDY ON IMPACT OF GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS ON THE INDIAN ECONOMY: CASE STUDY

This paper explores the complex relationships between international financial crises and the ensuing changes in Indias financial system. It attempts to offer thorough insights into the ways that times of worldwide economic unrest affect the Indian financial market, impacting its composition, dynamics, and general resilience. This paper examines the complex effects of global economic downturns on Indias financial ecosystem using empirical data and in-depth analysis. It looks into the relationships between these crises and changes in important metrics such as currency exchange rates, stock market indices, investment trends, and government reactions. This article also examines the adaptable strategies the Indian financial sector used to get through these trying times. Through an analysis of past examples and current situations, it provides insightful viewpoints on the tactics used by investors, market players, and policymakers to reduce risks and seize opportunities in the face of worldwide economic volatility. In the end, this article aims to advance a nuanced understanding of the complex interactions between global economic crises and Indias financial environment by illuminating the ramifications, difficulties, and possible solutions for bolstering the Indian financial systems resilience in a globally interconnected economy

Automated Motive Scoring and International Crisis Behavior

Abstract Although implicit motives are well established, coding for implicit motives has been a time-consuming and difficult manual process. This study (i) evaluates automated motive coding schemes for Need for Achievement, Need for Affiliation, and Need for Power, (ii) assesses the relationship between these three motives and crisis initiation, and (iii) assesses the explanatory power of other psychological variables for crisis behavior. The results establish the convergent validity of the Need for Achievement and Need for Power coding schemes with hand coding and support findings of a significant relationship between Need for Power and crisis behavior. A unit increase in Need for Power doubles the probability that a leader will initiate a crisis. Even stronger models were obtained by including other previously studied psychological variables. The scope of the dataset (154 leaders across a diverse set of 93 countries) lends weight to the findings and provides many opportunities for additional research.

The International Crisis in Numeracy Education

The OECD recently released results from the 2022 administration of the Programme for International Student Assessment test. As other studies suggest, pandemic mitigation policies resulted in deep learning loss including in basic mathematics which forms the foundation of numeracy. Perhaps of greater concern, however, in many countries pandemic effects amplify declining performance that dates back a decade or more. Losses of two or more years' worth of mathematics education are not uncommon among developed countries. The editorial makes an urgent call for research that identifies practical steps to reverse these trends.

Design and Build the Social Security Equity Crowdfunding Application as Funding Optimization for MSMEs

The existence of MSMEs for the economy in Indonesia is very strategic because of their contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) and high employment. In addition, the MSME sector has proven to be strong in facing national and international economic crises. Even though it has a high contribution it does not mean that MSMEs do not face problems. One of the problems faced by MSMEs is the low ability to develop their business due to limited access to capital. Therefore, this study aims to design and build a funding application (social security equity crowdfunding) for MSMEs. The design of this study uses a research and development approach with four main stages, namely (1). Carry out a preliminary study through theoretical studies and field studies in order to develop an application framework. (2) Compile applications according to the design carried out in the preliminary stage. (3) Conduct expert validation tests and limited-scale trials. (4). The final stage of this research was conducting a large-scale trial of 30 MSMEs in Tulungagung, Kediri and Blitar Regencies. Through research, a funding application is produced with a social security equity crowdfunding scheme that can assist MSMEs in developing alternative funding outside of financial institutions, so as to increase the business capacity and competitiveness of MSMEs at the national and international levels.
 Keywords: social security equity crowdfunding application, funding alternatives, MSMEs

Design and FPGA implementation of a hyperchaotic conservative circuit with initial offset-boosting and transient transition behavior based on memcapacitor

A charge-controlled memcapacitive conservative chaotic circuit with trigonometric function terms is constructed in this paper. By analyzing the characteristics of the infinite equilibrium point and the divergence of the system, it is proved that the system is conservative. Under the influence of system parameters, hyperchaotic and chaotic characteristics can be switched to each other. With the increase of parameters and initial values, the Lyapunov exponent is also greatly improved. In addition, the transient chaos phenomenon accompanied by the internal crisis is also found, which leads to the sudden change of the orbit state of the attractor, and different types of coexisting attractors in different regions of the basins are also found. Through further analysis of the phase diagram, bifurcation diagram and time-domain waveform, it is found that there are three initial offset-boosting behaviors with different characteristics in the system. Finally, the spectral entropy (SE) algorithm is used to compare the memcapacitive circuit complexity under different initial conditions and system parameters. We find that the SE complexity distribution map is consistent with the Lyapunov exponent trajectory, which further reflects the influence of system parameters and initial conditions on the dynamic characteristics of the system. On the platform of Cyclone IV E series, the FPGA main chip of EP4CE10F17C8N is used to complete the hardware implementation of the system. The FPGA implementation results are consistent with numerical simulation, and verify the realistic feasibility of the memcapacitive conservative chaotic circuit in practical application.

An old, novel idea: introducing G-Pub, an original dataset of public bank formation

Amidst growing financial internationalization, public banks are a reemerging mode of financial governance that can serve as a policy tool for counter-cyclical crisis financing, proactive investment (e.g. green finance), or protectionist lending. Yet no systematic studies examine what leads governments to form public banks in the first place, in part due to a lack of data. This paper introduces an original dataset, conceptual framework, and descriptive empirical insights to serve as the basis for future research. I discuss contending definitions of public banks to advance the more targeted conceptualization of ‘government-initiated public banks’ (G-Pubs), or banks that are formed by governments and remain under government control through ownership and/or management. The dataset includes 1,355 banks and spans 195 countries for the period 1401–2020. Using these data, I test prevailing assumptions suggesting G-Pubs are more likely to form in less developed or more autocratic countries. I show that for the period 1970–2020, G-Pub formation is instead associated with developed democracies. Descriptive analysis prior to the 1970s further supports a more complex view. These findings underscore the need for a renewed research agenda on public banking that considers both domestic and international political economic dynamics, including international diffusion, financial integration, and crisis mechanisms.

Propagating a permanent war economy? U.S. FDI in warring host countries

PurposeConventional wisdom suggests that war in the host country makes it unattractive for foreign firms to invest. To see if this is true for US firms on the aggregate, this paper aims to examine the veracity of a “permanent war economy” hypothesis, that foreign direct investment (FDI) may, in fact, increase in the host country not despite, but because of, war, i.e. one that lends credence to the idea that, in the USA, “defense [has] become one of constant preparation for future wars and foreign interventions rather than an exercise in response to one-off threats.”Design/methodology/approachThe authors test the hypotheses using Generalized Method of Moments estimation, with Heckman Selection, on US FDI data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and war data from the Correlates of War2 Project, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program/International Peace Research Institute data set, the International Crisis Behavior Project and the Center for Systemic Peace Major Episodes of Political Violence data set. The final sample consists of 351 country-year observations in 55 host countries from 1982 to 2006.FindingsThe findings indicate that overall US FDI in a host country in a given year decreases if the host country is engaged in wars with multiple countries and if the US Government is involved in the war. Most notably, the results show that US involvement in multiple host country wars is actually correlated with increased US FDI into the host country, providing empirical support for the “permanent war economy” hypothesis.Originality/valueWhile other studies have focused on war and FDI, the authors have sought to show the impact of the involvement of arguably the most influential country, i.e. the USA, in the sovereign matters of a focal host country. By studying FDI from the USA as a function of US involvement in wars overseas, over the years with the greatest use of private military companies by the USA and the largest portion of global FDI accounted for by the USA, this work motivates a research agenda on home-host-"other” relations in the context of war and FDI, with the “other” being the supranational “elephant in the room.”

A Sustainable Model for Healthcare Systems: The Innovative Approach of ESG and Digital Transformation.

In recent years, the globe has faced a series of topics of growing concern, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the international financial crisis, rising socio-economic inequalities, the negative outcomes of greenhouse gas emissions, which resulted in climate change, and many others. Organizations worldwide have confronted these new challenges of sustainable finance by incorporating environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors and digital transformation (DT) in their innovation business strategies. The healthcare sector represents a large share of the global economy (about 10% of global economic output), employs a large number of workers, and needs to rely more on an open innovation model where interested parties, especially patients, are going to have a say in their own well-being. Thus, it is imperative that healthcare providers be efficient, effective, resilient, and sustainable in the face of significant challenges and risks. At the same time, they must offer sustainable development goals and digital transformation to healthcare users through limited governmental resources. This study investigates the role, importance, and correlation of ESG factors and digital transformation to the sustainable finance of healthcare systems through an innovative model. The main purpose of the paper is to present the already implemented ESG and DT factors in the healthcare sector and to propose a mutual and combined implementation strategy based on common evaluation tools, methods, and actions. A set of proposed actions and strategies are presented for the sustainability and resilience of the healthcare sector.

Is digital gold a hedge, safe haven, or diversifier? An analysis of cryptocurrencies, DeFi tokens, and NFTs

ABSTRACT The crypto assets market is growing rapidly, exposing investors to new risks. As a result, finding viable candidates to hedge and diversify crypto portfolios is a critical and timely topic. In this paper, we explore the potential of gold-backed cryptocurrencies as safe haven assets in the context of building a diversified digital assets portfolio. Empirically, we investigate the financial properties (diversification, safe haven, and hedging capabilities) of two gold-backed cryptocurrencies against the three main digital assets categories, i.e. traditional cryptocurrencies, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) tokens, considering major external and internal crises. We also estimate the hedge ratios and the hedging effectiveness of the considered pairs. Overall, our findings indicate that the examined gold-backed cryptocurrencies are good diversifiers, with varying hedging, and safe haven properties depending on the nature of the crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine War, as well as the digital asset category considered. Several financial implications for investors and policymakers are proposed and discussed.