International Security Strategy Research Articles

DYNAMICS OF THE RUSSIAN-UKRAINEAN WAR. AN ANALYSIS OF THE IMPACT ON FUTURE SECURITY AND DEFENCE POLICY

In the context of geopolitical developments and international tensions, the war in Ukraine is a crucial contemporary reference point, capturing the attention of the international community by its complexity and scale. This conflict, which began in 2014 following the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and intensified in the eastern regions of Ukraine, has generated a series of profound transformations in the landscape of security and international relations. Detailed analysis of the dynamics of the Russian-Ukrainian war becomes essential for understanding its long-term implications for security and defence policies. This analytical process is not limited to investigating the conflict itself, but extends to assessing how events in Ukraine have shaped and will continue to shape national and international security strategies. Shaping future security and defence policy in Europe, with direct implications for Romania, given its position on the border with Ukraine and its membership of NATO, should be based on a comprehensive and coordinated approach.

Examination of Security Challenges in the East African Community (EAC) Region

It is well settled worldwide that the most basic purpose of the state is to make people safe or feel safe within their secured state thereby gaining confidence, reassurance, and predictability of life. Partner states in the East African Community (EAC) strive to individually and collectively ensure that the security and development of the region and its people is guaranteed. This paper seeks to critically examine the security challenges in the EAC region, which range from resource – based conflicts, climate change, and organised crimes to maritime security. Data was collected through documentary review. It is concluded that much as the EAC region faces security challenges, efforts are made to address them. However, given the dynamic nature of those challenges, the efforts seem to be inadequate. The author recommends the establishment of a specific organ dedicated to security, having regional strategic engagement to tap the marine resources, strengthening regional security initiatives, enhancing the implementation of the legal regime to address the security challenges, the need for regional multijurisdictional taskforces and joint operations and spearheading implementation of regional and international security strategies.

China-Europe Strategic Issues

Today, a shakeup of forces and a great power competition have begun on the global geopolitical scene. This competition is mainly due to the rise of China, the deepening of globalization and the interdependence of countries, and violent movements that transcend borders, such as international terrorism. In particular, the increase in China's national power has led to a change in the world order that emerged after the Cold War, and geopolitics is once again taking a central role on the global agenda. The geopolitical focus on the Asia-Indo-Pacific Ocean complex has evolved into a geostrategic rivalry where China is seen as the main threat. This approach is reflected in the international security strategy. In addition, it also manifests itself in the practices of international organizations led by the West forces. We see the most important example of this in the European Union's view of China.

Security forecasts of terrorist attack

This article deals with security developments in terrorism. In the introductory part, the article deals with the history and current situation of terrorism. Furthermore, the national ones are analyzed and International Security Strategy Papers on Counter-Terrorism. In the next part of this article, long-term safety forecasts from the Czech Republic are analyzed and foreign authors with a focus on terrorism. The main outcome of the article is a proposal for an alternative scenario of possible security developments in the area of terrorism within the European Union.

‘No Boots on the Ground’: Reflections on the US Drone Campaign through Virtuous War and STS Theories

Abstract Since 2004, the US Air Force (USAF) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have persecuted insurgents in Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan with armed drones. Despite its alleged efficiency, this practice has been widely criticised on the grounds that it contravenes international humanitarian law. In order to understand the controversies involving this practice, we examine how this new technology was linked to and allowed the emergence of a new US international security strategy first applied in the Middle East. Drawing on James Der Derian’s post-structuralist theories about virtuous wars, the sociotechnical approach allowed by Science and Technology Studies (STS), and Gregoire Chamayou’s theories about drones, we argue that the US intention in adopting these technologies was not to enhance its military capability but to allow the USA to remain active in several risky theatres while avoiding the political and social costs of conventional military engagement.

Preventive Empires: Security Dynamics at Multiple Levels of Governance

Shifts in the security paradigm evolve from deeper societal transformations, and are addressed in national and international security strategies. The re-framing of security strategies rests on the notion of prevention , with features such as risk-assessment , pre-emption , and pro-active monitoring of conduct. This precautionary principle prevails in all levels of security governance. However, this raises several philosophical, legal and political questions, such as the reliability of early indicators and the upholding of the classic presumption of innocence. This article discusses the contractual relationship between the state and its citizens and identifies some governance issues that require legal and political rebalancing.

International Security Strategy and Global Population Aging

To be successful, grand strategy requires objectives, concepts, and resources to be balanced appropriately with a view to defeating one’s enemy. The trouble is, of course, that Generals are always well prepared to fight the last war. In the words of Yogi Berra, predictions are always difficult, especially when they involve the future. Yet, grand strategy is all about the future. But how is one to strategize about a future that is inherently difficult to predict? One way to overcome this conundrum is to rely on independent variables that can be projected into the future with reasonable accuracy. Aside from environmental indicators, the most consistent of those is demography, specifically demographic change and difference. The demographic approach to international security leads to strategic conclusions about the integration of military, political, and economic means in pursuit of states’ ultimate objectives in the international system. This article is available in Journal of Strategic Security: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol3/iss4/7 Journal of Strategic Security Volume III Issue 4 2010, pp. 27-48 DOI: 10.5038/1944-0472.3.4.2 Journal of Strategic Security (c) 2010 ISSN: 1944-0464 eISSN: 1944-0472 27 International Security Strategy and Global Population Aging Christian Leuprecht Royal Military College of Canada christian.leuprecht@rmc.ca

New Multilateralism in Action for Peace: A Case Study of the US-Led Operation Unified Assistance in the Asian Tsunami Disaster

In the aftermath of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami in December 2004, the ensuing multinational relief, humanitarian, and rebuilding efforts of the Operation United Assistance (OUA) are new examples of international cooperation to sustain and rebuild Asian communities in the post-9/11 security environment. An analysis of the cooperative efforts in light of differing theoretical perspectives provides a forum for debate on the nature of cooperation in the international arena and the implications for ethnic and civil wars in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Once described and explained by multiple theories, the relief operations can then be used to predict and perhaps even prescribe future international cooperation in natural disasters and conflict resolution in civil war environments. As a case study, this paper also examines international security strategies and the implications for economic prosperity and political stability in sovereign but weak nation-states.

Canada's International Security Strategy

Beyond reason hut not hope?The failure of Canadians to define a satisfactory strategic policy or to produce a native school of strategic thinking may to some extent be attributed to the difficulty of producing a rational strategy for an irrationally conceived country.John W Holmes, 1983'These observations, made over a quarter century ago, were debatable at the time and remain so today. They were made mere weeks after US president Ronald Reagan's star wars speech advocating the construction of a global antiballistic missile (ABM) defence system. They also came just three months before the shooting down of Korean Air Lines flight 007, an event that would help trigger the second most tense confrontation of the Cold War - the Soviet nuclear alert that coincided with NATO's Able Archer 83 command post exercise later that November. The rising nuclear tensions of the period, in the context of what Holmes later termed the brutal unilateralism of Reagan's declaration, probably generated his speculative observations.2Several objections may be made to Holmes's comments. First, what country has ever been conceived rationally? Second, how many countries, great or less-than-great, can actually be said to have developed rational security strategies and then attempted to implement them? And of those states, how many have done so successfully? Since 1945, with the exception of the last years of the government of John Diefenbaker when CanadianAmerican relations were in severe disarray, have Canadian international security policies ever been seriously out of step with Canada's national interests or those of its allies? Rational or not, Canadian international security policy may have been more or less appropriate given the limitations inherent in the country's middle-power status.Holmes's remarks probably reflected a continuing frustration with Canada's limited ability to influence its ally's strategic behaviour. Occasional bouts of excessive American nuclear aggressiveness had been a problem, and not just during the lead-up to the Cuban missile crisis. Korea 1953, Dien Bien Phu 1954, the Chinese offshore islands crises of 1955 and 1958, Berlin 19 61, and the American nuclear alert during the Middle Eastern crisis of 1973 had all been cause for concern regarding nuclear risk-taking or possible nuclear use. The Soviet nuclear alert during the Czech crisis of 1968 also had been an occasion of significant nuclear risk but was not understood to have been so until years later. Having Ottawa press for a stronger, more dynamic commitment to stable nuclear deterrence and cooperative nuclear arms control agreements during the 1980s may have been what Holmes had in mind - and the related idea that a robust school of Canadian strategic thought someday might better help to restrain both American fits of nuclear imprudence and conventionally armed interventionary zeal - even though the diplomacy of constraint had yielded no visible record of success in either Korea or Vietnam.3Those rare instances of successful strategy may actually be manifestations of retrospective evaluation and imaginative reconstruction by historians, political scientists, and national security officials with a theoretical or literary bent. Strategizing may be more a matter of aspiration and afterthe-fact myth-making rather than the deliberate, thoughtful creation of national security goals linked to efficient instrumental means for their attainment. Such imagined reconstructions may most typically mask the real historical processes of non-rational state adaptation (for example, the accretion of territory in the British empire), idiosyncratic politico-military experimentation and bureaucratic infighting (American decision-making over the Vietnam intervention or Soviet policymaking on Afghanistan), or outright non-rational gambling with respect to issues and choices of war and peace (Winston Churchill's irrationally defiant refusal to make a political settlement with Germany in 1940-41, noted by David Eaves in his essay for this issue). …

Günümüzde uluslararası güvenlik stratejileri: Kavramsal çerçeve ve uygulama

In our article, which deals with the different conceptual features, diversities, and application problems of international security strategies, we emphasized, in eclectic context, the divergent directions of the subject. Before all else, we aimed displaying some comparisons between national and international security strategies from various angles and stating expressly the differences between them. International security strategies in application, generally come on the scene in two forms: cooperativepeaceful strategies and conflictual-coercive strategies. Furthermore, international security strategies can also take several shapes in changing coordinates system of the peace-crisis-war triangle. We also tried to analyse them in conceptual context. Besides, international security strategies, the contrary of national strategies, couldn’t exactly be understood without taking into consideration the collectivity phenomenon. Accordingly, we discussed the various collectivity levels within these strategies. As for today, the international security strategies are being forged powerfully by the combat against the international terrorism more than before. In this framework, we scrutinized this subject, as comparing the US-EU ways of strategic preferences.

New Multilateralism in Action for Peace: A Case Study of the US-led Operation Unified Assistance in the Asian Tsunami Disaster1

In the aftermath of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami in December 2004, the ensuing multinational relief, humanitarian, and rebuilding efforts of the Operation United Assistance (OUA) are new examples of international cooperation to sustain and rebuild Asian communities in the post-9/11 security environment. An analysis of the cooperative efforts in light of differing theoretical perspectives provides a forum for debate on the nature of cooperation in the international arena and the implications for ethnic and civil wars in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Once described and explained by multiple theories, the relief operations can then be used to predict and perhaps even prescribe future international cooperation in natural disasters and conflict resolution in civil war environments. As a case study, this paper also examines international security strategies and the implications for economic prosperity and political stability in sovereign but weak nation states.

Threat level green: Conceding ecology for security in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the predicted scenarios of Central Asian water wars and catastrophic nuclear accidents have failed to materialize. However, the Aral Sea continues to shrink apace, and dangerous Soviet-built nuclear reactors have since proliferated in the former eastern bloc. These seemingly paradoxical outcomes can in part be attributed to the framing of these environmental issues as security matters by leading international regulatory, aid and lending institutions. Integrating these environmental concerns with the realist worldview of security studies systematically emphasized security dimensions at the expense of ecological concerns even amongst organizations distant from traditional defense affairs. This article proposes that international security strategy in this period is one of environmental appeasement defined as the systematic granting of ecologically unfriendly concessions in order to reduce short-term security risks. The article presents evidence that this appeasement strategy generated seemingly impressive results in terms of ameliorating short-term security risks, while actually exacerbating the underlying ecological situation. The article argues that while the foundational environmental risks remain unaddressed, the associated security threats have likewise not been ultimately resolved.

The International Realm, Framing Effects, and Security Strategies: Britain in Peace and War

In combining the domestic and international levels, I contend that the international environment can enable a domestic win-set and thereby guide the formation of a state's international security strategy. The trigger is the nature of and changes in the extant international setting. Based on findings from framing effects and prospect theory, I contend that periods of external crisis, conflict, and war will shift the public's domain to one of relative losses. In this realm, it will be easier for foreign policy advisors who favor offensive security strategies to frame the national debate. Periods of international peace, tranquility, and prosperity will shift the public's domain to relative gains, which will make it easier for advisors who favor risk averse and defensive strategies to frame the national discussion. The outcome can be a more offensive or defensive strategy than the state would have otherwise pursued. I apply the model to Britain to examine Britain's decision to adopt a Limited Liability strategy between 1912 and 1914, and to escalate to a Continental Commitment by 1916. A version of this paper was presented at the 2003 Annual International Studies Association Convention. I would like to thank Jane Cramer, Tom Rice, and Jeffrey Taliaferro for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Misanthropy without borders: the international children's rights regime.

The issue of children's rights has become key to human rights-based international security strategies. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) is being operationalised in complex political emergencies. Children's rights now inform humanitarian principles. Universal concern for children is viewed as transcending political and social divides and able to mobilise societies to confront social problems and prevent war. The operationalisation of child rights is accompanied by the development of psycho-social programmes to rehabilitate the child victim. Critically analysing the implications of the children's rights regime for the right to self-determination, the paper unpacks the assumptions underlying children's rights and psycho-social intervention. The paper begins by examining the conceptualisation of the rights-holding subject universalised under the UN Convention and then goes on to consider Article 39 on the right to psycho-social intervention. Equally important as the novel conceptualisation of childhood and children's rights under the international children's rights regime is the (unspoken) mistrust of adulthood and political rights that informs the imperative to institutionalise children's rights as higher law. Moreover while the rights-based approach consciously sought to move away from the earlier moralising child-salvation model, psycho-social rehabilitation reveals a similar preoccupation with deviancy, but conducted through the paradigm of psychological functionalism. Rather than representing a trend towards more humane international relations, the paper suggests that the elevation of children's rights is premised on a profound disenchantment with humanity. The logical implication of the international children's rights regime is to challenge both the moral and political capacity of individuals and their right to self-determination and to institutionalise a more unequal international system.