Multilateral Security Research Articles

Overcoming Isolationism: Japan's Leadership in East Asian Security Multilateralism by Paul Midford

Overcoming Isolationism: Japan's Leadership in East Asian Security Multilateralism by Paul Midford

Overcoming Isolationism: Japan's Leadership in East Asian Security Multilateralism by Paul Midford

Overcoming Isolationism: Japan's Leadership in East Asian Security Multilateralism by Paul Midford

NATO – a Key Platform of Ukrainian-Canadian Security Cooperation

The assessment of the state of security cooperation between Ukraine and Canada on the NATO platform is carried out in the context of the study of Ukraine's role in Canada's actual security policy. The importance of such a study is determined by the priority of solving urgent problems in the field of international support for national security and the implementation of the foreign policy course for Euro-Atlantic integration of our state. The existence of significant threats to the national security of Ukraine in the context of conflict with Russian Federation determines the relevance of studying the theoretical and practical aspects of cooperation with key foreign partners to counter security challenges. Canada remains a staunch supporter of Ukraine’s state sovereignty, regardless of temporary changes in domestic and foreign policy. Such a consistent position of Ottawa defines the significance and effectiveness of the special partnership of this state with Ukraine, in particular, in the field of security policy. The article reviews the main aspects of Ukrainian-Canadian cooperation within NATO as the main multilateral security platform for Ukraine. An important component of Canadian support for Ukraine is the desire to bring Ukrainian military, social and democratic standards in line with the standards of NATO member countries. In this context, Canadian practical and expert experience is extremely important for our country. We are constantly confirming this in the process of meaningful Ukrainian-Canadian political dialogue within international organizations and NATO in particular. Thus, Ottawa actively supports Ukraine's efforts for Euro-Atlantic integration and plays an important role in filling the practical content of Kyiv's cooperation with the Alliance in the military-political and humanitarian spheres.

SOCIAL PROTECTION FOR WORKERS POSTED TO AND FROM SOUTH AFRICA: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT

Given the globalised nature of work in the twenty-first century, labour and social security law issues relating to worker-posting are sure to increase in the years to come. The purpose of this note is to assess critically the social protection of workers posted abroad from a South African perspective. The contribution addresses this topic by discussing various questions. It concludes by stressing the need for the adoption of a coherent approach as far as social protection for posted workers is concerned by, inter alia, promulgating an act of parliament to regulate the social security and labour law entitlements and obligations of these workers as well as their employers.In addition, it emphasises the need for and the importance of bilateral and multilateral social security and labour agreements between South Africa and other countries, particularly those where South African companies have established themselves. A sizeable number of South African companies (such as MTN, Vodacom, SABMiller, Sasol, Woolworths and Debonairs) have established, or are successfully establishing themselves, in African countries and beyond. At the same time, foreign companies (such as BMW, Levi Strauss, Barclays Bank and Vodafone) have registered, or are in the process of registering, in South Africa at an unprecedented rate. It is true that these companies do employ locals. However, situations do arise requiring a global company to send a worker for a limited period (usually not exceeding twelve months) to carry out work in the territory of a State other than the State in which he or she normally works. This scenario is commonly known as worker-posting and does yield some benefits (including international exposure) to the (posted) workers, their employers and the economy in general. Nevertheless, if not properly regulated, worker-posting may have an undesirable effect, particularly on workers. For example, posted workers may find themselves concurrently covered (ie, at home and abroad) by social insurance schemes or not covered at all. As will be explained later, this can yield undesirable results. For example, it unnecessarily raises the costs of doing business for transnational employers. Furthermore, the period of stay for posted workers is limited and, as a result often does not lead to any entitlement to benefits. In addition, in the labour law sphere, posted workers may fall victim to abuse as regards the basic conditions of employment (eg, relating to pay and working time). The purpose of this paper is to assess critically the social protection of workers posted abroad from a South African perspective. According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), “social protection” consists of policies and programmes designed to reduce poverty and vulnerability by promoting efficient labour markets, diminishing people’s exposure to risks, enhancing their capacity to protect themselves against hazards and interruption/loss of income”. The aim of social protection for that reason, is to avert or minimise social risks – in that way preventing or minimising human damage – by increasing capabilities and opportunities. As noted by the UN Commission: “The ultimate purpose of social protection is to increase capabilities and opportunities and, thereby, human development. While by its very nature social protection aims at providing at least minimum standards of well-being to people in dire circumstances enabling them to live with dignity, one should not overlook that social protection should not simply be seen as a residual policy function of assuring the welfare of the poorest – but as a foundation at a societal level for promoting social justice and social cohesion, developing human capabilities and promoting economic dynamism and creativity”. This contribution addresses this topic by discussing the following questions: What is the social protection status, with reference to social security and labour law, of workers posted to and from South Africa? Is the present social security and labour law protection framework ideal for extending social security and labour law protection to posted workers? To the extent that it is not, where and what are the gaps and challenges that are likely to hinder efforts to extend or strengthen social security and labour law coverage to this category of workers? Finally, what are the alternatives for improving, in a worker-posting context, the current social protection framework?

Riding the tide: assessing South Korea’s hedging strategy through regional security initiatives

This article examines how South Korea has used the ASEAN Plus security platforms to hedge between the US and China and why it has not participated in the FOIP strategy. It argues that the platforms’ neutral guise, owing to ASEAN centrality and their global norms-based agenda has allowed Korea to passively voice its alignment with the US, thereby answering to the pressure for a higher commitment from the US and clearing the political risk of linking the alignment decision to its own views. It asserts, therefore, that access to effective multilateral security platforms allows higher leverage to the weaker ally in an asymmetric alliance relationship.

China’s Maritime Ambition, Security Dilemma and Lack of Multilateral Framework

The security environment of the South China Sea has been disrupted as China strengthens its efforts at maritime ambition. The recent security situation in the Asia-Pacific, particularly the South China Sea, is characterised by arms building and balancing against China. It raises the possibility of conflict. For securing stability and peace, it is time to bring multilateralism back in, since a multilateral security framework contributes to taking the edge off power politics. However, there is no reliable multilateral framework to deal with the declining maritime security environment. This article highlights the lack of a multilateral framework and suggests an eclectic approach to multilateralism for securing the Asia-Pacific maritime order.

Restrictions on Trade in Telecommunications: WTO’s Cybersecurity Conundrum

This article examines the role of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in balancing the nexus among a rule-based multilateral trade system, national security, and cybersecurity. It presents a historical account of restrictions placed on the telecommunications trade over national security concerns and focuses on the significant political risks thereof for the WTO if these restrictions are challenged at its dispute settlement system. An analysis based on the WTO Panel rulings in ‘Russia – Traffic in Transit’ and ‘Saudi Arabia – Protection of IPRs’ is revealing in this context. It shows that, despite the obvious cybersecurity concerns, the invocation of the national security exception is not straightforward. The turn to power politics and regionalism highlights the significance of multilateral organizations that provide a more inclusive structure to reflect and protect the interests of all their members, not just those that hold positions of power and control. As long as the stalemate at organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) continues, despite the need for a more legitimate, inclusive multilateral framework, the expectation of a ruling on trade-related aspects of cybersecurity will place an unnecessary burden on the WTO dispute settlement system. Cybersecurity, World Trade Organization, National Security Exception, Telecommunications, Multilateralism, Regionalism, Geopolitics

Japan Takes the Lead in Western Pacific Maritime Security

executive summary: This article demonstrates that Japan has become the unassuming leader of multilateral security cooperation in the western Pacific and the local partner of choice for extraregional powers seeking to expand their role in maritime affairs within the second island chain. main argument After a 50-year history of delivering carefully balanced initiatives aimed at improving the maritime safety and security of Southeast Asian states, Japan has earned the region's trust as a maritime partner. From this position, it has steadily supported multilateral cooperation throughout the region and emerged as the western Pacific's most important maritime leader. Now, as extraregional powers seek to expand their roles in the western Pacific, they are generally turning to Japan as their partner of choice. Japan's Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) vision offers a common strategic umbrella that provides attractive utility for these states. An analysis of these trajectories shows that Japan has become the key regional maritime partner for Australia, the United Kingdom, India, Canada, and France. policy implications • Japan's proactive, balanced, and unassuming approach to security partnerships has earned it favor as the most trusted security partner among Southeast Asian states. • Japan leads by example by quietly facilitating multinational arrangements and lending reliable support to states and multilateral groups in the region. • The FOIP concept has become a common element of extraregional powers' policy approaches toward the western Pacific. The varied FOIP conceptualizations employed by these states are generally more akin to Japan's approach than to the U.S. Indo-Pacific posture, which is regarded as more focused on military aspects. • Japan's expanded efforts to build its bilateral security partnerships have been favorably received by powers outside the region, making it their partner of choice in the western Pacific.

Comprehensive Sovereign Agency? China’s Model of International Recognition

Abstract This article investigates the confluence of China’s rise and International Recognition Theory through a quantitative content analysis of 166 joint statements on state visits between China’s heads of state and the representatives of 80 partners. China’s partnership diplomacy is a continuous, comprehensive, and dynamic diplomatic strategy for the 21st century. Yet, extraordinarily little research has explored the substance of China’s partnerships and the international experience that they offer. To investigate these dimensions, this article develops a typology of international recognition within which to situate China’s partnership diplomacy. We find that partnership documents exhibit a gradation of sovereign recognition that is transformed into “Comprehensive Sovereign Agency”: a type of sovereignty with Chinese characteristics that establishes the agency of the Chinese government over the comprehensive spectrum of China’s foreign relations. In contrast to earlier international experiences that ground sovereign agency in the functions of security, China’s partnership diplomacy yields a network that emphasizes the productive (economic, scientific, and cultural) functions of state capacity and international interaction. China’s partnership diplomacy reproduces the bilateral relations of preference and solidarity that ground China’s regime legitimacy in economic development. Its partnerships operate outside of the liberal multilateral security communities that generate international affinity through a difference-blind multilateral framework, constituting instead a difference-sensitive bilateral framework that provides a source of international recognition and sovereign agency that circumvent the liberal international experience.

India’s East Asian outreach

ABSTRACT India's ambitions in East Asia are evident and pragmatic. It has a growing bonhomie with Japan to collaborate with on bilateral level and within multilateral frameworks as well. In consideration of Japan's caution towards the US and China, it is looking for a sustainable partnership that has mutually appreciative policy axes and the capabilities to achieve bilateral objectives with it. It has repeatedly identified India as the most viable option to adopt this role. The author has taken into consideration multilateral arrangements and larger international relations with countries like China to understand the limitations to Indo-Japanese relations, with recommendations on how to overcome them. Furthermore, the article explores the possibility of a larger multilateral security regime with the Republic of Korea and Taiwan, in light of mutual interests and the latest trends of multilateralism that have swept Asia in the twenty-first century. Finally, the paper observes that India's role in East Asia does not have to be fundamentally defined by or structured on the basis of the actions of a third party.

Protection of the right to social security of the migrant worker in international law

The right to social security is recognised as a basic human right in a number of international instruments. While most nations give recognition to social security rights and generally enforce them within the dictates of domestic legislation to their nationals, the narrative is different for non-nationals, particularly the migrant worker. The article examines the measures that have been deployed at international and regional levels to protect the social security rights of migrant workers, with particular attention to the regular ones. It argues that a number of factors, including the doctrines of territoriality and nationality, account for the marginalisation of the migrant worker in the enforcement of these rights. Some migrant-specific international instruments and series of bilateral and multilateral agreements to overcome these perceived challenges are being hindered by the low number of ratifying countries and disparities in the design and level of development of schemes for specific branches of social security across countries. The article concludes that the social security right of the migrant worker would be enhanced if more countries ratify, domesticate and enforce relevant international instruments on the social security rights of the migrant worker and complement same by a much more coordinated bilateral and multilateral social security agreements.

Британия после Брекзита: особенности военно-политической стратегии

Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union raises questions on how UK defence policy will develop. Significant shifts inside the United Kingdom as well as its changing position in the international arena caused by Brexit require new approaches in its military strategy. National Security Strategy 2015 and UK’s International Defence Engagement Strategy 2017 do not fully reflect current geopolitical realities while new strategic documents haven’t been presented so far. UK armed forces modernization is becoming even more relevant, however there are few signs that London has capabilities to increase its defence budget. The latest statistics shows stable decline in UK military expenditure as percentage of GDP. The armed forces have been shrinking in size for several decades and some large modernization projects have come across considerable difficulties. After years of heated debates an ambitious plan to replace all four ballistic missile submarines with the new ones has been approved. However Brexit caused another wave of claims for Scottish independence raising concerns over the future of the Britain’s only Scotland-based naval facility for nuclear forces. Brexit inevitably poses a dilemma of setting UK’s foreign and defence policy priorities. Though leaving the EU doesn’t mean that Britain will fully withdraw from European defence and security initiatives, active cooperation in this sphere between London and Brussels is highly unlikely. Given that, the importance of NATO as well as other multilateral security mechanisms (especially the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force with Scandinavian and Baltic states) and bilateral defence cooperation (particularly with the US and France) is significantly increasing. Despite numerous challenges for British defence and security policy caused by Brexit these difficulties together with the UK’s traditional strong points such as the special relationship with the US and network of military facilities around the globe may give impetus to a more proactive military strategy aimed at strengthening UK’s global influence.

BOOK REVIEW: Overcoming Isolation: Japan's Leadership in East Asian Security Multilateralism, by Paul Midford

BOOK REVIEW: Overcoming Isolation: Japan's Leadership in East Asian Security Multilateralism, by Paul Midford

China as a peacekeeper: The case of MINURSO

This paper examines the development of active Chinese involvement in the UN missions and contributes to a more nuanced understanding of a growing Chinese presence in the multilateral security field. In this research, the authors have used descriptive and analytical methods in addition to their ongoing fieldwork in several Sub-Saharan African countries and China. After presenting China’s UN-policy, drawn upon relevant literature, the authors test a wide range of the UN resolutions and other data, comparing their case study about MINURSO to other UN Peace Operations. Though MINURSO in Western Sahara was not their top priority, China also participated in this mission, to gain valuable experiences for future cooperation. In conclusion, the paper demonstrates China’s global rise in general, and its ascending position as a global security provider, in particular, via its African engagements.

The Prospects of the US Alliance System in Asia: Managing from the Hub

This paper examines the implications of the United States’ “hub-and-spoke” alliance system in Asia. It argues that the US enjoys a bargaining advantage in the current bilateral security relations with its Asian allies. In contrast to a multilateral alliance, the US can better prevent free riders and joint resistance in its bilateral relations. It can effectively restrain the behavior of its allies and compel them to accommodate American interests. The hub-and-spoke system helps the US consolidate its policy influence over the Asian allies, supervise inter-alliance cooperation, and increase defense cooperation between allies and non-allies. This paper uses episodes of defense cooperation between the US, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and India to illustrate the American alliance management techniques since 2016. During this time, the US allies have increasingly participated in regional security affairs due to US demands and guidance rather than autonomous decisions. Facing strong US pressure, allies have found it hard to challenge the US under the hub-and-spoke system despite common grievances. This leads to two implications for the future: First, the US allies may have less autonomy in their foreign policies, restraining their ability to pursue neutral positions and policies in regional affairs such as the South China Sea dispute. Second, the US may discourage or even undermine the emergence of multilateral security institutions in Asia. The US is likely to maintain the “hub-and-spoke” system to safeguard its strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific.

The multilateral security organizations at stake. NATO, OSCE and the Covid-19 emergency: an opportunity into the crisis?

The Coronavirus outbreak showed how nobody was prepared to this crisis and to its economic, social and political implications which now represent the main challenge for political actors. However, if the measures taken by national states to curb the sanitary emergency seem to have partially restored their capacity to address the events, the Covid-19 has struck a significant blow to the already fragile multilateral system, as exemplified by the allegations – some of them based on coherent elements of criticism, other with less objective basis and misleading – to the World Health Organization (WHO). To better investigate the impact of this unprecedented crisis on the international institutions and its implications on security, the present article aims first to shed light on how two important organizations as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), have reacted and are acting to this crisis: an aspect just partially covered by the public media and that deserves to be better explored to avoid misleading interpretations. Secondly, trying to offer to the national stakeholders and public opinions a useful way to look on the Covid-19’s impact on these forums, the analysis will also reflect on the possibility that this crisis could be turn by the organizations into an opportunity to relaunch themselves and become more aware of the other elements of concern as health risks, climate change and migration which, even not strictly related with the conventional interpretation of security, are posing undeniable aspects of concern. In front of the contradiction between the emerging of complex global challenges and the deteriorating of the multilateral order, this crisis should foster organizations and states to find a new reason to cooperate in answering to the future global threats, recognizing that a better security is possible only through a comprehensive approach.

Historical Antecedents and Post-World War II Regionalism in the Americas

ABSTRACTAfter World War II, the US-led international security order exhibited substantial regional variation. Explaining this variation has been central to the debate over why is there nonatoin Asia. But this debate overlooks the emergence of multilateral security arrangements between the United States and Latin American countries during the same critical juncture. These inter-American institutions are puzzling considering the three factors most commonly used to explain divergence betweennatoand Asia: burden-sharing, external threats, and collective identity. These conditions fail to explain contemporaneous emergence of inter-American security multilateralism. Although the postwar inter-American system has been characterized as the solidification of US dominance, at the time of its framing, Latin American leaders judged the inter-American system as their best bet for maintaining beneficial US involvement in the Western Hemisphere while reinforcing voice opportunities for weaker states and imposing institutional constraints on US unilateralism. Drawing on multinational archival research, the author advances a historical institutionalist account. Shared historical antecedents of regionalism shaped the range of choices for Latin American and US leaders regarding the desirability and nature of new regional institutions while facilitating institutional change through mechanisms of layering and conversion during this critical juncture.

Belgium: the reliable free rider

Belgium traditionally presents itself as a strong supporter of multilateral security cooperation and aims to be a reliable partner in the EU and NATO. Nevertheless, the uninterrupted decline of Belgium’s defence budget paints a different picture, that of a country that rides cheap on the defence efforts of its partners. Belgium does make equitable contributions to multinational military operations, but the lack of defence investments threatens to undercut its ability to continue to make substantial contributions to multilateral operations. This article builds on the literature on small states and military burden sharing to explain Belgium’s post-Cold War defence policy. More specifically, it argues that Belgium’s behaviour is anything but irrational, given that it allows to gain a high degree of security and influence at relatively low political and financial costs.

Alliances Adrift: Is This the End of America's Asian Alliances?

Alliances Adrift: Is This the End of America's Asian Alliances?

Совещание министров обороны стран-членов АСЕАН и диалоговых партнеров (СМОА+) как новый элемент формирующейся архитектуры безопасности в ЮВА

In the recent decades despite the existing broad network of the multilateral security formats in the Asia-Pacific region a high level of conflicts and old disputes remain, while non-military security challenges and threats are becoming more complicated. Among the most well-known are the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the East Asian Summit (EAS). Nevertheless, given the increasing destabilization in the region, one can state that the above-mentioned formats proved ineffective and as a result, new solutions need to be found. One of such possible solutions is an initiative proposed by Vietnam to create a new format known as ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM+).