Security Regime Research Articles

Military administrations as an element of national security under international and Ukrainian legislation

The article discusses some problems of military and civilian administrations operating in Ukraine with the aim of maintaining the national security regime. In particular, the authors investigate the social and political reasons behind the decision to create special government agencies, in the form of civil military administrations. In addition to the comprehensive analysis of the relevant legislative framework, reference has been made to the practical functions of these administrations. The study methodology includes a variety of research tools aimed at improving the analysis and a problem-oriented approach. The conclusions are focused on improving the legislative as well as organizational frameworks of civil-military administrations in the Donbass region. In particular, based on the basic principles within the civil society, including the supremacy of civil society over the armed forces, the discussed Law should be effectively renamed as the Law "On civil-military administrations" with a continuous approach, potentially within a specially drafted project. It is suggested to include a chapter of the Law, on military support of civilian authorities and official efforts of reconstruction of public order in certain areas of Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

The Study on National Security in Big Data Era

Over the past decade, " big data " has become an ubiquitous buzzword in academia, the professional world and the media. Some commentators have hailed big data as " the new oil of the 21st century " and " the world's most valuable resource ". As technology advances and data becomes more readily available, processing power is increasing, as predicted by Moore's Law in the 1970s. The rapid development of instruments and sensors, digital storage and computing, communications and networks has driven an inevitable " big data revolution ", generating and providing ever more data. This has huge implications for national governance, political and military strategy, national security, corporate decisions and individual lifestyles. In the face of the surging flood of big data, existing national security management methods can no longer meet the security requirements of the era of big data, and national security is facing severe challenges. The exposure to PRISM shows that European and American countries have carried out large-scale development and research on big data, constantly mining big data, analyzing the connection between data information, in order to serve the national security strategy. Therefore, the arrival of the era of big data has brought both opportunities and challenges to China's national security management. In this context, only by closely tracking the development trend of big data can we grasp the trend of The Times, safeguard political security and regime security, and comprehensively improve China's future security strategic advantages.

"No One Can Force Vietnam to Choose Sides": Vietnam as a Self-Reliant Middle Power

executive summary: This essay examines how Vietnam is adapting to U.S.-China rivalry and argues that Vietnam's room for strategic maneuverability is diminishing as it faces growing internal and external pressure for policy adjustments. main argument In the past few years, Vietnam has been increasingly labeled as a middle power. Vietnam's emerging middle-power status coincides with a shifting strategic environment marked by China's expansionism that has nudged Vietnam toward closer U.S. relations. However, Vietnam's persistent foreign policy of self-reliance and independence, informed by the country's historical experiences and concerns over regime security, ensures that Hanoi stays nonaligned. Thus, while retaining autonomy in developing closer U.S. ties, Vietnam strikes a delicate balance between the two superpowers. Instead of relying on a single security guarantor, Vietnam has actively sought to promote rules-based principles and multilateralism in advancing its national interests, particularly vis-à-vis the South China Sea and the Mekong River. However, external and internal developments have strained Vietnam's ability to balance between the two superpowers. policy implications • While increasingly wary of China's behavior, Vietnam is unlikely to enter a formal alliance with the U.S. due to its firmly held values of self-reliance and independence. • Vietnam will continue to leverage multidirectional diplomacy to shape regional security and economic architectures in an effort to counterbalance China's influence and reduce Vietnamese dependence on China. • Vietnam should exercise more flexibility and show greater resolve in protecting its national interests. To this end, without abandoning its foreign policy of self-reliance and independence, Vietnam should explore new options to advance security cooperation with other major and middle powers with which it shares strategic interests.

Summaries

Summaries

China's Party-State Capitalism and International Backlash: From Interdependence to Insecurity

Abstract Contrary to expectations, economic interdependence has not tempered security conflict between China and the United States. In response to perceived domestic and external threats, the Chinese Communist Party's actions to ensure regime security have generated insecurity in other states, causing them to adopt measures to constrain Chinese firms. Security dilemma dynamics best explain the subsequent reactions from many advanced industrialized countries to the evolution of China's political economy into party-state capitalism. Party-state capitalism manifests in two signature ways: (1) expansion of party-state authority in firms through changes in corporate governance and state-led financial instruments; and (2) enforcement of political fealty among various economic actors. Together, these trends have blurred the distinction between state and private capital in China and resulted in backlash, including intensified investment reviews, campaigns to exclude Chinese firms from strategic sectors, and the creation of novel domestic and international institutions to address perceived threats from Chinese actors. The uniqueness of China's model has prompted significant reorganization of the rules governing capitalism, both nationally and globally.

International Law and the Securitisation of Peacemaking: On Chapter VII, the Security Council and the Mediation Mandate in Yemen

Abstract Peace mediation as a form of peaceful settlement of disputes has evolved significantly in the past 20 years, moving away from an informal process between parties towards a more structured undertaking rooted in norms and values of international law. Sitting between Chapter VI and Chapter VII of the UN Charter, mediation is an underexplored aspect of the collective security regime in international law. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to the role of the UN Security Council (UNSC) and the exercise of legal authority under Chapter VII in shaping mediation mandates. This article addresses this gap by developing a theoretical framework for understanding the role of UNSC in the construction of security in the context of peacemaking. Using the mandate of the Office of the Special Envoy for Yemen as a case study, the article traces the progression of the mediation mandate a set out in the UNSC resolutions, interrogating the shift in discourse from UN support for an inclusive political transition into a narrower focus on hard security and the international response to the threat of terrorism. Through this analysis the article demonstrates how the place of UNSC within the Charter system allows for a gradual securitisation of the peace mediation process at the expense of inclusive approaches. At a time when consensus on collective security appears to be weakening the role of the UNSC in constructing and responding to global threats is of significant interest to the future of Charter-based international peace and security.

Britain and the repression of Black Power in the 1960s and ‘70s

This article details the extensive security regimes deployed against Black Power in the Caribbean that were operated by regional governments and the (neo)colonial British state. These regimes of securitisation targeted radical Black political groups and actors whose Black Power ideology placed them in an antagonistic relation to independent West Indian states and Britain. The author argues that the British state’s involvement in the suppression of Black Power in the Caribbean is inseparable from the domestic repression of the British Black Power movement. But also, shared opposition to British (neo)imperialism and the personal ties of West Indian migrants to Britain connected Black Power resistance on both sides of the Atlantic. By drawing on British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Ministry of Defence and Cabinet Office files, as well as political newspapers and publications produced at the time, the author traces the British state’s involvement in the transnational repression of Black Power in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Perceived access to general and mental healthcare in primary care in Colombia during COVID-19: A cross-sectional study.

IntroductionThe COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact both in general and mental healthcare, challenged the health systems worldwide, and affected their capacity to deliver essential health services. We aimed to describe perceived changes in ease of access to general and mental healthcare among patients with a diagnosis of depression and/or unhealthy alcohol use in Colombia.MethodsThis study is embedded in the DIADA project, a multicenter implementation research study aimed at evaluating the integration of mental healthcare in primary care in Colombia. Between November 2020 and August 2021, we conducted a COVID-19 pandemic impact assessment in a cohort of participants with newly diagnosed depression and/or unhealthy alcohol use part of DIADA project. We assessed the ease of access and factors related to perceived ease of access to general or mental healthcare, during the COVID-19 pandemic.Results836 participants completed the COVID-19 pandemic impact assessment. About 30% of participants considered their mental health to be worse during the pandemic and 84.3% perceived access to general healthcare to be worse during the pandemic. Most of participants (85.8%) were unable to assess access to mental health services, but a significant proportion considered it to be worse. Experiencing worse ease of access to general healthcare was more frequent among women, patients with diagnosis of depression, and patients with comorbidities. Experiencing worse ease of access to mental healthcare was more frequent among patients aged between 30 and 49.9 years, from socioeconomic status between 4 and 6, affiliated to the contributive social security regime, attending urban study sites, and those who perceived their mental health was worse during the pandemic.DiscussionDespite the overall perception of worse mental health during the pandemic, the use of mental healthcare was low compared to general healthcare. Ease of access was perceived to be worse compared to pre-pandemic. Ease of access and access were affected by geographical study site, socioeconomic status, age and gender. Our findings highlight the need for improved communication between patients and institutions, tailored strategies to adapt the healthcare provision to patients' characteristics, and continued efforts to strengthen the role of mental healthcare provision in primary care.

Security from the South

Abstract This introduction offers “security from the South” as a method and an analytic to trace the colonial continuities, the imperial geographies, and the forms of difference through which people become subjects of, resist, and shore up security regimes across the world. Rather than one overarching set of politics, practices, and ideas that constitute “security,” the essay insists on a pluriversal lens onto a world in which security regimes appear beguilingly universal. Using a transnational feminist approach, we contest the boundedness of the category of the “Global South,” instead emphasizing the fluidity between supposedly separate scales (e.g., North/South, intimate/global, etc.). Thinking across time and space allows for consideration of the ways in which the US empire has shaped practices elsewhere, but not in isolation, not without tension, and not without links to other empires. Security from the South thus encompasses imperial “war on terror” projects, but has a before and after to such projects, as security regimes across the Global South are enmeshed in longer histories of colonialism and racisms, religion, and gender/sexuality.

Domestic Affairs

Abstract How do protests and security regimes engage each other on the question of difference? This question frames this essay's ethnographic portrayal of the expression of dissent and political claims in a borderland site of national security and the Indian security state's management of such dissent to reinforce its legitimacy as a liberal democracy. Border residents in eastern India, predominantly Muslim or depressed caste, are minority citizens. By closely reading the terms through which they articulate their claims and humiliations and how they are rendered suspect, subordinated, and othered from fulsome democratic rights and citizenship, this essay offers a portrait of the slow violence of affective rule in a place of “no conflict.” Turning away from spectacular instances of militarism and state violence, this essay illuminates the affective force of militarization whose goal is to disable critique and segment minority citizens into subordinated inclusion. It asks how collective political action might be heard and endure in such constrained conditions. This specific locus is instructive for the logic of contradistinction as a mode of security rule more widely. It demonstrates that the intersection of gender and religious identity is not a “dimension” of contemporary national security regimes but must be seen as foundational to their constitution and legitimacy.

Program-target strategy for ensuring the regime of socio-economic security of the development of the coastal territories ofthe Krasnodar Territory

Program-target strategy for ensuring the regime of socio-economic security of the development of the coastal territories ofthe Krasnodar Territory

Commentary: Passwords and Passage

Abstract Drawing into conversation the work of two special issue authors, Redmond continues in exposition of the dangerous contradictions within and inherent failures of the state’s security and citizenship regimes through attention to minoritized testimony and translation. The author of memoir and courtroom or detention witness present as performers of vulnerable narrative projects that are sometimes playful, sometimes grave but always in critical contest, if not combat, with the designs of racial capitalism and exception. In attending to these moments of subversion and illegibility, new opportunities arise for retooling in defense against and circumvention of state procedure and possession.

Nationhood in the Cloud: Cyber Sovereignty in Thailand

ABSTRACT At the height of the 2020 protests, the Thai government implemented vigorous online censorship to curb public criticism of the monarchy. In doing so the government cited its obligation to safeguard Thailand’s ‘cyber sovereignty’, which is the focus of this article. I argue that this concept is constructed as a tool that can be wielded opportunistically to ensure regime security, which largely depends on the security of the throne. Notably, the Thai state’s construction of cyber sovereignty is modelled on territorial sovereignty: it has elements of territorial nationhood, insofar as cyberspace is treated as if it has a physical existence. However, this conceptualisation of cyber sovereignty is flawed: it elides the significant differences between these two forms of sovereignty, particularly regarding sovereign power and its limits. Despite its flawed nature, the Thai case is part of a wider on-going debate about cyber sovereignty, whereby some countries promote tighter Internet controls while others support a more liberal cyber regime.

Left of Liberal Internationalism: Grand Strategies within Progressive Foreign Policy Thought

This article brings leftist-oriented foreign policy ideas into dialogue with mainstream grand strategy literature. It argues that American progressives seek a durable security comprised of peace, democracy, and equality, meaning the grand strategies discoverable within progressive thinking are ultimately projects of worldmaking. Since leftist thought is eclectic, it gives rise to not one but three ideal-type progressive grand strategies. Progressive pragmatism treats oligarchy and kleptocracy as threats, sustains military commitments to democratic allies only, and prioritizes equality at the level of the global political economy. Antihegemonism is a project of robust restraint, positing that US power per se makes the United States and others less secure. Peacemaking aims to change the valence of world politics. It combines a cooperative security regime and gradual disarmament with nonviolent peacebuilding and support for democracy movements. These modes of progressive reasoning entail their own assumptions, wagers, and risks.

Aid, Securitization, and Defense Agreements “Securitization is not something that the West has done to Africa, but rather a set of policy imperatives that some African governments have actively pursued. African governments are thus not victims of securiti

What makes African nations reach out to make pacts with their neighbors and the international community, or to militarize? Fisher and Anderson (2015) claim that African governments readily embrace militarization after internal strife and civil wars and that after 9/11, security agreements with the United States re-enforce this already occurring ‘illiberal’ state building phenomena in Africa; encouraging military security regimes. The cause de jour of this predicament from the US side being fear of terrorist elements spreading across the African continent from Asia and the Middle East all the way to Europe and the United States.[1] A nascent study by Le Van (2010) implies that countries in Africa receiving higher aid packages from the U.S. might be more likely to react positively to the presence of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM)—the US’s newest theater command—and to be more likely to cooperate in international agreements on security and trade.[2]
 

Geopolitics of security and surveillance in Nepal and Afghanistan: A comparative analysis

This article examines the geopolitics and geo-economics of security and surveillance. We comparatively focus on the effects of geopolitically powerful states – China and the United States – and their influence over the use of surveillance technologies in the name of spatial security in relatively weaker states – Nepal and Afghanistan. We use these two areas of comparison to address the similarities in security logics across disparate spaces and to highlight the everyday experiences and responses to both outside influence from powerful states and national security regimes. Through interview data from our respective qualitative research in Afghanistan and Nepal, we show how the logics of security situates particular racialized and gendered bodies as suspicious and examine how individuals living in these spaces experience, understand, and challenge these security regimes. We conclude by arguing for more comparative studies of security technologies and surveillance regimes. Additionally, we view these spaces of heightened security as potential sites for increased violence, rather than security.

Hope from Despair*

Hope from Despair^*

The Security Complex of the European Union

The security regime of Europe has enormously changed in the last thirty years. The European Union has developed not only on the political but also on the geographical level. That means, the former regional interpretation of the European security complex requires a review. With the new challenges and aspects, the European Union must redefine its foreign policy to be able to act as a global power, which is the declared ambition of the EU.

Regional Security Perspectives in South Asia: Indo-Pakistan Rivalry

Inter-state and intra-state conflicts emerged with political, social, and economic factors which increasingly contributed to security dilemmas at global and regional levels. This study investigates the regional security issues which have emerged through the Indo-Pakistani conflict in South Asia. In order to obtain the data for this study, secondary qualitative data and information based on an archival research methodology were used. Books, journal articles, research papers, official websites, and e-Newspapers were incorporated into this archival research. According to this study, the first and second Kashmir wars, the 1971 conflict, the Kargil conflict, the attack on the Indian Parliament, the 2002 Military Standoff, the Mumbai Terror attack, and the Surgical Strikes carried out by India have all contributed to the gradual development of the Indo-Pakistan war, which has led to current concerns about regional security. Interstate strife and tension, hostility between nations, mutual mistrust and animosity posed by terrorism, religious extremism, nuclearization, and economic and political instability have all intensified due to security concerns posed by the Indo-Pakistan rivalry. Finally, as an effort to address these security issues related to the Indo-Pakistani wars, this study has proposed the establishment of a ‘South Asian Regional Security Cooperation’. This proposed Cooperation will be treated under four basic regional security corporation models: alliances, collective security, security regimes, and security communities to reinforce regional security in South Asia.

Potential Food Security Risks and Countermeasures under the Background of Seed Industry Innovation Based on Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0, also known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is characterized by process automation and digitization and the use of technologies such as the Internet of things, cloud, big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and embedded systems, among others. The application of automation technology based on Industry 4.0 contributes to the realization of a sustainable food security regime. Based on the policy guidance of the “No.1 Document” of the Chinese government on seed industry innovation and the quantitative analysis of the application, authorization, research, and development data of new varieties of agricultural plants in China in recent years, as well as the data of food import and export, this paper studies the risks and challenges facing China’s food security at present and explores the significance, existing problems, and specific countermeasures of resolving food security risks through seed industry innovation.