Withdrawal Of Troops Research Articles

Divided Together: The United States and the Soviet Union in the United Nations, 1945–1965

<i>Divided Together: The United States and the Soviet Union in the United Nations, 1945–1965</i>

The Cambodian Wars: Clashing Armies and CIA Covert Operations

<i>The Cambodian Wars: Clashing Armies and CIA Covert Operations</i>

Strikt functioneel: over de militaire ervaring met het organiseren van de terugtocht

The military is generally considered to act as a professional when it comes to retreating forces from military battleground or international conflict areas. At the same time recent national experiences with the withdrawal of national troops from international peacekeeping operations are filled with disappointments and crises. In this article the authors question the idea that these disappointments and crises are simply due to problems of reduced military competence or military morale. They argue that the military is still the alleged expert who knows how to perform military retreats and other military actions. At the same time they show that network-like decision-making structures that are inherent to the deployment of troops in international peacekeeping missions, have become a major obstacle for the military to act in its own right. The lessons that government can learn from the military experience are firstly, that decisions for national public cutbacks should be accompanied by a more in-depth (re)consideration of public (key) tasks than up to now was considered appropriate, and secondly, that more trust should be shown in the skills, knowledge and motivation of professionals to delineate and constrain the boundaries of their own fields of expertise.

Afghan-Australians: Diasporic Tensions, Homeland Transformations and the “2014 Syndrome”

With the withdrawal of NATO-led troops from Afghanistan pending in 2014, Afghanistan and its sizeable diaspora are facing an ambiguous new beginning. As in Afghanistan itself, the 35,000-strong Afghan community in Australia is negotiating what has been labelled the “2014 Syndrome”—a chronic state of anxiety about Afghanistan's future. Drawing on data from a series of dialogues and consultations held with Afghan-Australians of different ethnicities in Melbourne in 2012 and 2013, this article contextualizes and critically examines the tensions and shared concerns of the Afghan-Australian community in light of the impending withdrawal. Our study shows that the 2014 Syndrome has exacerbated existing tensions over “Afghan” identity in Australia, which has become intertwined with tensions over the status of Hazara asylum seekers and refugees arriving in Australia. Given the widely held belief amongst Afghan-Australians that the 2014 withdrawal will prompt increased flows of asylum seekers from Afghanistan to Australia, this study argues that tensions around identity frame quite different hopes for the future of Afghanistan and the future of the Afghan-Australian community after 2014.

Drill a Gas Well, Bring a Soldier Home? US Domestic Drilling and Troop Deployment

Advocates for increasing domestic drilling for natural gas, particularly hydraulic fracturing of shale formations, have rallied behind the slogan “Drill a gas well, bring a soldier home,” suggesting an association between domestic drilling and reduced troop deployments abroad. But is there any empirical evidence for a correlation? I investigate this question using 60 years of data on US troop movements and domestic gas drilling and a vector autoregression approach to account for factors that affect both. Surprisingly, results of basic specifications not only support the idea of a correlation between drilling and troop withdrawal, but cannot reject that there is a one to one negative correlation. That is, drilling one well may in fact be correlated with one soldier coming home. Results are not robust or conclusive, although there is enough suggestive evidence to warrant further research.

Sub Saharan African Terrorist Groups’ use of the Internet

Recent actions by French military forces in Niger and the global prominence of terrorist groups such as Al Shabaab and Boko Haram, have highlighted the growing counter terrorist focus on the countries of Sub Saharan Africa. Additionally in a post Bin Laden world and with the immanent withdrawal of coalition combat troops from Afghanistan, there is the possibility of Africa as a continent becoming the new front in the Global War on Terror (<em>Mben</em> et al., 2013). However, it is a mistake to assume that Africa’s story is uniformly one of violence and death. Vibrant cultures and a rugged entrepreneurial spirit have combined with a robust Internet backbone, to create the embryonic emergence of high tech hotspots across Africa. With rising IT literacy levels, more and more Africans are becoming connected to the information super highway on a daily basis (Graham, 2010). A tiny minority of these Africans are terrorists.

A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan, by Artemy M. Kalinovsky

A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan, by Artemy M. Kalinovsky. Cambridge, New York, Harvard University Press, 2011. 304 pp. $27.95 US (cloth). At 2012 Chicago summit, NATO members and their partners agreed to withdraw their combat from Afghanistan by end of 2014. As phased withdrawal of remaining 68,000 US inches forward, and as brazen suicide attacks by Taliban mount, Obama Administration anguishes over same questions that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev faced in 1987-88. Will incumbent Afghan government survive on its own? How much funding is sufficient to keep government and army afloat? It is unfortunate that Artemy Kalinovsky's book, A Long Goodbye, not published before 2001, but even if it had been, one wonders if George W. Bush or his closest advisors, who involved United States in Afghanistan (the graveyard of empires), would have read it. Readers who have experienced twenty-first century war in Afghanistan will certainly have a sense of tragic deja-vu in reading this book, as British and Soviet readers in nineteenth and twentieth centuries, respectively, would have had. Kalinovsky focuses primarily on Soviet decision-making process. He poses less common question: Why did it take leaders in Moscow so long to withdraw Soviet troops? Indeed, very soon after intervening in December 1979, Brezhnev leadership realized it had blundered. Even though no one voiced objections at June 1980 plenum, several political and military officials, as well as academics, had communicated their anxieties. Speaking at 1995 conference on Afghanistan in Lysebu, Norway sixteen years later, General Valentin Varennikov--quoting his superior, Chief of General Staff Nikolai Ogarkov--gave reasons for their reservations eerily resonant today: no one in international community would understand if Soviet Union intervened; Soviet soldiers were unfamiliar with Islamic culture, tribal relations, and local terrain; and Afghans should maintain security themselves (p. 22). By early 1981, one of four original advocates of intervention, defense minister Dmitrii Ustinov, was willing to approach other members of leadership with idea of withdrawing troops (pp. 58-59). Significant policy changes were next to impossible during interregnum of feeble General Secretaries Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, but why did it take Gorbachev so long to withdraw after his ascent to power in 1985? Kalinovsky identifies four patterns, or paradigms that shaped Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and delayed withdrawal of troops: the longstanding Soviet tradition of aid to Third World countries; belief that Soviet Union could actually change Afghanistan; lack of coordination among Soviet military and KGB working in Kabul; and US-Soviet tensions in 1980s (pp. 12-13). In first of book's seven chapters, Kalinovsky explains what is now widely known, i.e. that Brezhnev leadership intervened reluctantly. In pre-intervention period, Kalinovsky's paradigm of Soviet belief in Afghanistan's changeability does not always hold true. After all, ever since Saur Revolution in 1978 that brought to power Nur Mohammed Taraki and Hafizullah Amin--the leaders of Peoples' Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA)--Soviet leaders and advisors had urged moderation, cautioning against accelerated communist reforms, but headstrong Afghan leaders did not listen. Some Soviet Politburo members were loath even to extend initial diplomatic recognition to communist PDPA regime, according to Karen Brutents, former deputy head of Soviet Communist Party's International Department, who also participated in conference in Norway. They understood basic incompatibility of Marxism and Islam. Even after uprising in Herat in March 1979, during which some Afghan soldiers defected to side of mujahadeen and more than a dozen Soviet advisors and their families were beheaded, Soviet leaders made a conscious decision not to intervene in Afghanistan. …

Test-firing the ‘new world order’ in Somalia: the US/UN military humanitarian intervention of 1992–1995

The US/UN Military Humanitarian Intervention (MHI) in Somalia has given rise to a vast body of writing to which the MHI's relationships with Somalis and the devastating political and moral impact on them have often remained incidental. This article focuses on how the MHI in Somalia, taken as a whole, was unable to keep or enforce peace, failed to benefit the humanitarian wellbeing and human rights of ordinary Somalis and itself caused the latter new violence. With the benefit of hindsight and drawing on recent political and military memoirs, this article analyses how the US leadership of the MHI's first stage (UNITAF or United Task Force) used the discourse of a ‘politics-free’ humanitarianism to pursue policies that empowered Somali perpetrators of crimes against humanity, undermined the wellbeing of common Somalis and set the UN up for failure in the MHI's second stage (UNOSOM or United Nations Operation in Somalia II). It further shows that, during this second stage, the MHI's military dimension came to overwhelm its humanitarian and peace-building focus so that even US/UN drawdown and troop withdrawal rewarded the very Somali perpetrators of crimes against humanity whose violence had provoked the MHI's military overreach and disaster. By evaluating the MHI's actions in and impact on Somalia, and assessing it as a stage in increasingly militarized global approaches to ‘First World’ interventions into ‘Third World’ lives, this article cautions against uncritical support for MHIs as tools for preventing and containing the large-scale violence and human suffering that characterize complex emergencies.

Exit strategies and statebuilding Oxford University Press, by Richard Caplan, ed.

Richard Cap Ian, ed. Exit strategies and statebuilding Oxford University Press, New York, 2012. 337pp $99.00 (cloth) ISBN: 978-01997601 14Exit strategies have been central to recent discussions in academic, policy, and media circles of military interventions and peace operations, particularly regarding the endgames of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Exit strategies involve a range of military, peacekeeping, and peace-building activities undertaken by a variety of multilateral organizations, such as NATO and the United Nations, as well as interventions led by individual states with the backing of such organizations. Richard Caplan's edited volume Exit Strategies and Statebuilding sheds light on the peculiar type of strategic thinking that is inherent to bringing foreign interventions and state-building to an end.The topic is timely indeed, considering the recent and ongoing UN-backed French intervention in Mali that initially aimed to prevent the advance of radical Islamist troops toward the Malian capital of Bamako. The intervention was designed to be multilateral, as French troops are assisted by troops from Mali's neighbours, including Niger, Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Nigeria.1 The spectre of exit strategy has been looming from the start. Some commentators have feared prolonged French and international involvement in Mali, considering early reports that militants were proving better-armed and equipped2 than expected. The French government pledged that the intervention would be quick and that France's exit strategy would be based on assisting the rapid deployment of the African force,3 as France plans to transfer responsibility to African forces and subsequently assume a support role.This book's primary contribution is to offer an analytical framework with which to think about exit mechanisms, as this is the first work of academic scholarship to provide a comprehensive map of exit strategies with a comparative perspective. Indeed, most of the literature to date has focused mainly on the conduct of interventions in early stages and troop withdrawal later on, as well as on post-conflict reconciliation and democratization efforts.4 Caplan's volume therefore provides a welcome focus on exit mechanisms implemented by intervening actors and coalitions that are designed to pave the way for both follow-up missions and the eventual termination of military and peace operations. The book provides a comprehensive and refreshing outlook on the topic, contributing mainly to two extensive bodies of literature, namely those concerning war termination and postconflict peace-building. Ultimately, Exit Strategies and Statebuilding provides a road map with which to categorize and analyze different types of exit mechanisms across diverse contexts of state-building operations.The book addresses important practical concerns as well, such as the type of mechanisms and criteria that should be established in order for peace to be scaled down and eventually lead to successful military disengagement and sustainable peace. The exit modes and mechanisms that states and multilateral organizations have proposed are useful in preliminary typological theorizing about exit strategies. These include cut and run, phased withdrawal, deadlines, benchmarking, elections, and successor operations (9 11). Caplan's academic analysis of these modes and mechanisms is policy-relevant, marrying practical knowledge with theoretical insight.Exit Strategies and Statebuilding draws on the expertise of leading scholars and practitioners and consists of both thematic discussions and case studies, thereby combining conceptual and empirical analysis, while analyzing a variety of contexts and perspectives pertaining to exit strategies and state-building. The main thesis uniting the volume's contributions is that exit post-conflict should not be conceptualized as a fixed concept and single occurrence but rather as a process or transitional stage (301). …

Warrant Based Targeting: Prosecution-Oriented Capture and Detention as Legal and Moral Alternatives to Targeted Killing

Targeted killing has had significant political and military repercussions around the world in recent years, especially in the wake of 2011 operations against Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Aulaqi. By contrast, adapting a time-tested, prosecution-oriented strategy to capture rather than to kill, search and detention became the de jure required modality of dealing with insurgents and criminals alike in Iraq prior to coalition troop withdrawal. Use of search and detention, called warrant-based since 2008, is also an emergent trend in combined and interagency operations, not only in present-day Afghanistan, but also in the international arena as a military adaptation to the prosecution-support function.Despite popular misconceptions of an inherently bellicose connotation to the words target or targeting, the Department of Defense (DOD) defines target as: An entity or object considered for possible engagement or other action, and [i]n intelligence usage, a country, area, installation, agency, or person against which intelligence operations are directed, and defines targeting as: The process of selecting and prioritizing targets and matching the appropriate response to them, considering operational requirements and capabilities. Warrant-based targeting, then, considers persons for possible intelligence and law enforcement engagement as targets for possible arrest and prosecution, rather than persons to be fired upon or engaged with the use of force.Compelled by strategic necessity, the U.S. military has quietly adapted its procedures to search at the point of capture, and to detain using conventional and Special Operations Forces (SOF) organizational structures in the field, in order to maximize the prospects for host-nation prosecutions — all contrary to conventional wisdom about the incompatibility of such efforts with the military’s of template-able aim points for easy targeting and destruction. Warrant-based targeting follows a guiding principle of military forces working alongside domestic and international security forces. Together, those forces assess threats, build credible bases for judicially-issued criminal arrest warrants, seek those warrants, apprehend suspects pursuant to those warrants while collecting evidence for prosecution, then hand off apprehended individuals along with evidence collected to competent civilian judicial and correctional authorities. As contrasted with proceedings pursuant to military tribunals, such an undertaking necessarily involves the effective use of information to seek a civilian judicial warrant for arrest, and works best in systems where transparent judicial processes militate against secrecy and promote public accountability.This article examines targeting and key lessons learned with respect to such operations, and proposes future locales where it might be effectively employed. Part II is an initial review of historical, targeting examples that follows commentary on legal and operational matters making targeting both necessary and proper in Iraq from 2009 onward. Part III discusses specific tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) involved in targeting in Iraq, now carried over to operations in Afghanistan. From a broader perspective, and in order to apply targeting beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, Part IV’s key lessons regard military cooperation with domestic law enforcement and judicial authorities. These lessons include: the necessity for proper collection and processing of forensic evidence; the inherent dilemma of military forces performing law enforcement roles; and the necessity to overcome a mindset that the military reaches mission accomplished status merely when it obtains the requisite warrant, collects evidence, and then carries out an arrest. Part V establishes what, in a world of ever-changing circumstances, the rule of law has come to mean and why targeting matters to advancing the rule of law. Concluding comments in Part VI consider why this methodology is a meaningful, albeit complicated, alternative to the expediency of targeted killing.

Brithish National Strategy: Who Does It?

Abstract: Since 2010, four Parliamentary committees have criticized Britain's failure to promote its capacity for strategy making. Publicly, this failure is identified with the decisions of 2002-03, and especially with the invasion of Iraq. But the 1998 Strategic Defence Review was in trouble before the 9/11 attacks because it was underfunded. More culpable was Britain's failure to learn and adapt in 2006. The formation of the National Security Council by the 2010 coalition has yet to deliver. ********** On 10 April 2013, the United Kingdom's (UK) House of Commons Defence Committee published its tenth report of the 2012-13 session, Securing the Future of Few of the 39 numbered paragraphs of conclusions and recommendations could be described as laudatory, and most took aim at the British government and specifically the Ministry of Defence. The overall tenor of the report was evident in its paragraph on strategic communications. It is vital that the process [of the hand over to Afghanistan of the responsibility for its own security] is seen as transition and not as a 'withdrawal through fatigue.' We have seen little evidence that the government's communications strategy is fulfilling its objectives. The strategy should contain as a bare minimum the following: what we set out to do; what we achieved; what remains to be done including managing the continuing risk, albeit reduced, of UK casualties; and the manner of the departure of UK Armed Forces. (1) Currently, the British government has yet to reply, but it can safely be said that no one is holding their breath. A communications strategy is impossible without a security strategy, and the absence of both has been the subject of comment by parliamentary committees in addition to that on defense. In March 2011, the Foreign Affairs Committee, in its report on the UK's foreign policy approach to Afghanistan and Pakistan, stated it gained the impression that the focus on tactical military gains in specific provinces is in danger of obscuring the very real security and other strategic challenges which exist beyond the military campaign elsewhere in Afghanistan. Tellingly, these words appeared under the overall heading Tactical Rather Than Strategic Success? (2) A year later the Joint Parliamentary Committee on National Security Strategy examined the National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA) procedure which had been used to underpin the 2010 National Security Strategy. The latter had said Afghanistan had not been included in the NSRA as the risk assessment process was designed to address only future security risks, not ones. The committee expressed its surprise: We remain to be convinced of the Government's reasoning for not including Afghanistan in the NSRA. The Government has said that it is not including immediate security issues, but terrorism, accidents, flooding and cyber attack are included, though they are all current threats. While the date of troop withdrawal may be a firm policy, we take the view that Afghanistan and the surrounding region remain an area of risk for the UK's security and this ought to be reflected in the NSRA. (3) The Joint Parliamentary Committee's comments about Afghanistan in particular were set against a wider worry: that the problem was not confined to Afghanistan alone. Over the last five years a consensus has developed that Britain is not very good at making strategy, and that this represents a fall from grace for a generation inclined to cite Churchill and Alanbrooke as evidence that once it was. The National Security Strategy (NSS) published in 2010 by David Cameron's government, the Joint Parliamentary Committee opined, does not yet present a clear overarching strategy: a common understanding about the UK's interests and objectives that guides choices on investment across government departments, including domestic departments, as well as guiding operational priorities and crisis response. …

Iraq's Mental Health Crisis

The mental health experiences of Iraqis during nearly ten years of international occupation have been underexamined. Contrary to media disinformation concerning “troop withdrawal” and “combat opera...

The Political Effectiveness of Non-State Violence: A Two-Level Framework to Transform a Deceptive Debate

The most striking aspect of the current scholarly debate over the political effectiveness of non-state violence is that, upon careful examination, there is not much of a debate to be found. Despite seemingly irreconcilable positions claiming that terrorism and insurgency “work” or “do not work,” varying case selection and thresholds for success lie at the root of these debates, not disagreements over the empirical record. Although this previously unrecognized empirical consensus helps to resolve existing disputes, it relies on single-level strategic frameworks that fail to capture the effectiveness of violence from the perspective of those who employ it. This article presents an alternative concept of political effectiveness based on a two-level framework that accounts for the fact that insurgencies are not unitary actors, but are instead marked by armed groups that pursue strategic objectives that benefit their larger social movements (such as the overthrow of a regime or the withdrawal of enemy troops), while they simultaneously pursue organizational objectives that benefit the groups themselves (such as increasing membership or funding). Empirical analysis of eight paradigmatic campaigns common to studies of insurgency and terrorism across time and space reveals that the two-level framework better captures the political effectiveness of non-state violence than existing single-level models and primes the subfield for powerful new theories that explain greater variation in the use and effectiveness of non-state violence.

Short- and Long-Term Impact of Violence on Education: The Case of Timor Leste

This paper analyzes the impact of the wave of violence that occurred in Timor Leste in 1999 on education outcomes. We examine the short-term impact of the violence on school attendance in 2001 and its longer-term impact on primary school completion of the same cohorts of children observed again in 2007. We compare the educational impact of the 1999 violence with the impact of other periods of high-intensity violence during the 25 years of Indonesian occupation. The short-term effects of the conflict are mixed. In the longer term, we find evidence of a substantial loss of human capital among boys in Timor Leste who were exposed to peaks of violence during the 25-year long conflict. The evidence suggests that this result may be due to household trade offs between education and economic welfare. JEL Codes: I20, J13, O12, O15 The developmental consequences of violence and conflict are far reaching, affecting millions of men, women, and children (World Bank 2011). The objective of this paper is to examine one important channel linking violent conflict and development outcomes: the education of children living in contexts of conflict and violence. The paper focuses on the case of Timor Leste, particularly the last wave of violence in 1999 during the withdrawal of Indonesian troops from the territory. We analyze the short-term impact of the 1999 violence on primary school attendance in 2001 and its longer-term impact on primary school completion in 2007. In addition, we separately examine the impact of early periods of high-intensity violence (HVI) during the 25 years of Indonesian occupation and the effects of the entire conflict on primary school completion in 2007 to compare the average impact of the overall conflict period with the educational impact of singular peaks of violence. This is a

Islamic Radicalism in North-West Pakistan

The article covers the issue of the evolution of Islamic Radical movement in Pakistan at the present stage. Since 2001 the north-western Pakistan has gained prominence. It witnessed accumulating of various extremist forces opposing the international coalition in Afghanistan. The problem of the presence of radical forces in the volatile Afghan- Pakistani border region remains relevant in this period of decreasing extremist activities. The significance of the problem is amplified by the upcoming 2013 general elections in Pakistan and the forthcoming withdrawal of coalition troops from Afghanistan.

The 912th Forward Surgical Team in Operation New Dawn: Employment of the Forward Surgical Team During Troop Withdrawal Under Combat Conditions

The Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq witnessed the first widespread use of U.S. Army Forward Surgical Teams (FSTs). Although doctrinally designed to support maneuver brigades in a linear front conflict, FSTs were quickly adapted to fulfill area support and special operation support missions as part of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. FST's were also split to cover a greater area in both theaters. We now report further adaptation of the split FST role to meet the unique requirements encountered during the final phase of Operation New Dawn. Maintaining resuscitative surgical capabilities for U.S. Forces withdrawing under combat conditions required changes in techniques, tactics, and procedures. We describe our experience within three different scenarios in which elements of an FST were successfully employed and discuss operational planning considerations.

NATO leaders to consider Smart Defence in Chicago

NATO's Chicago Summit on 20–21 May is likely to be dominated by two themes. The most immediate concern will be Afghanistan: the arrangements for the withdrawal of combat troops, and plans for the future international military presence and its funding. The broader, long-term issue, however, will be the reduction in defence spending by almost all NATO members, and how to prevent these budget cuts from undermining the Alliance's ability to respond to future security crises with credible force.

The American withdrawal from Iraq: ways and means for remaining behind

This article examines the 2011 withdrawal of United States’ regular military forces from Iraq in the context of Gen. David H. Petraeus strategy of the ‘surge’ and co-opting Sunni fighters against forces aligned with al-Qāʿidah through brokering tribal alliances and adding members of the majālis al-ṣaḥwah (‘awakening councils’) to government pay rosters. It is argued here that Petraeus’s strategy of the ‘surge’ was numerically insignificant and – even if he did order US fighting units back onto the streets – was only partly effective. Various factors and internal Iraqi dynamics played a more decisive role in the outcome of events that ultimately gave the Nuri Maliki government a free hand to work in unofficial cooperation with Shiʿite militias to leave major Sunni neighbourhoods in Baghdad depopulated or abandoned and which transformed the capital into a predominantly Shiʿite city. American withdrawal from Iraq was dictated by the need to redeploy US military personnel and material in Afghanistan, which coincided with a new rhetorical framework under Barack Obama for working with the Islamic world that diverged from George W. Bush’s categorizations under his ‘War on Terror’ as well as the recommendations of the new May 2010 National Security Strategy, which set down the broad outlines for withdrawal. Despite the formal military withdrawal, a palpable American presence remains in Iraq through private security firms as well as a constellation of various agreements and deals concluded with mega-corporations and other, not to mention the largest US embassy in the world with its various support apparatuses. While the troop withdrawal of regular forces has taken place and permitted redeployment in Afghanistan, the ways which the Americans have devised to remain behind are many and their de facto presence, albeit in more ‘civil’ forms, is still very much a ‘fact on the ground’.

Hidden Hands and Cross-Purposes: Austria and the Irreconcilable Conflict between Neutrality and Market Laws

Austria emerged in 1955 from a ten-year occupation administered by the four major powers of the successful anti-Third Reich coalition of World War II—France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States—as a united, independent state. The 15 May 1955 State Treaty signed by these countries and Austria spared Austria the fate of Cold War division suffered by Austria's neighbor to the north (in the ultimate East-West breakdown of Germany's parallel postwar quadripartite occupation). Paving the way for Austria's good fortune was a political quid pro quo agreed between Austrian leaders and their Soviet counterparts in Moscow the previous April. In the 15 April 1955 Moscow Memorandum, Austria consented to becoming a permanently neutral state modeled on Switzerland. This neutrality precluded a possible Austrian membership in NATO in exchange for a long-delayed Soviet assent to an end of Austria's occupation regime with a concomitant abandonment of the Soviet occupation zone and the withdrawal of all occupation troops. After the completion of this withdrawal, a fully sovereign Austria made good on its pledge with the passage on 26 October 1955 of a constitutional law declaring Austria to be “permanently neutral” and foreswearing all military alliances.

Geopolitics, Turkey’s EU accession course and Cyprus: power balances and ‘Soft Power’ calculations

Turkey seems to have injected sufficient ‘soft power’ calculations in its foreign policy, presumably aiming at attraction and persuasion rather than coercion. Yet military power combined with a sustained economic growth are arguably the main drivers of its newly assertive foreign policy. This analysis explores Turkey’s regional ambitions, including its potential leverage on conflict resolution, notably in Cyprus, that may conceivably assume significant geopolitical implications on power balances in the region. It is posited that to be successful, Ankara’s new posture necessitates a priori the resolution of several bilateral disputes, ranging from Armenia to the Aegean and troop withdrawal from Cyprus. These steps could be taken irrespective of Ankara’s European Union accession process, assuming that the new policy is designed to project a credible image of a rising regional power.