Variety Of Non-state Actors Research Articles

Framing South Africa’s Soft Power through Non-State Sources

South Africa arguably stands well above its regional counterparts in terms of soft power resources. This is not entirely unconnected with the uncalculated attempts by non-state actors to extend the reach of the country’s soft power status across the world. This article probes the contributions of the informal drivers of South Africa’s soft power. These ‘soft powered’ institutions and individuals (with no definite state affiliation) are critical contributors to South Africa’s soft power diplomacy. The country’s soft power is in part driven by the unintended outcome of the actions of a wide variety of non-state actors including civil society, the media, iconic individual personalities and multinational corporate entities. The article argues that South Africa can realise its greater foreign policy ambition and cement a benevolent hegemonic profile in Africa by focusing on specific roles that its informal soft power sources can play. Therefore, as an emerging power, South Africa is well placed to harness the substance inherent in its soft power instruments and resources by paying attention to these unofficial soft power sources but also strategically fine-tuning the same with official policy goals in subtly achieving Pretoria’s ambitions as a key player in international political discourse.

Making Sense of Hybrid Warfare

IntroductionSince the Russian Federation invaded Crimea in March 2014, analysis and commentary on the concept of warfare have increased exponentially.1 An Internet search will identify hundreds of entries covering the phenomenon. Hybrid warfare has become the most common term used to try and capture the complexity of twenty-first-century warfare, which involves a multiplicity of actors and blurs the traditional distinctions between different types of armed and even between war and peace. Hybrid warfare has ceased to be a topic only for military strategists, as it has now entered the broader public domain and become a major security concern for Western governments. Both NATO and the European Union (EU) are working on strategies to strengthen defensive capabilities and prevent attacks.This article seeks to clarify the different ways in which the term warfare and related terms have been used by scholars and policy analysts and summarize discussion on the topic to date. The paper will examine, in particular, the Russian approach to warfare as demonstrated by operations in Ukraine and will briefly assess the significance of these developments for Western security policy.Defining Hybrid WarfareNot surprisingly, there are many definitions of warfare. The concept has been delineated in different, if related, ways and these definitions have evolved in a relatively short period of time. Defining warfare is not just an academic exercise. The way the term is defined may determine how states perceive and respond to threats and which government agencies are involved in countering them.One approach to warfare takes an historical perspective. This defines the term simply as the concurrent use of both conventional and irregular forces in the same military campaign. Military historian Peter R. Mansoor, for example, defines warfare as conflict involving a combination of conventional military forces and irregulars (guerrillas, insurgents, and terrorists), which could include both state and non-state actors, aimed at achieving a common political purpose.2 Viewed from this perspective, warfare is clearly nothing new. There are numerous examples of techniques and approaches at the tactical, operational and strategic levels stretching back at least as far as the Peloponnesian War and the writings of the Chinese philosopher, Sun Tzu, in the fifth century BC. Irregular fighters have proved to be the bane of numerous conventional militaries. Formidable armies such as Napoleon's Grand Armee and Hitler's Wehrmacht struggled to combat irregular fighters who understood and exploited the local human and geographical terrain and targeted vulnerable logistic bases and lines of communication. Over time, guerrilla operations had a significant and lasting impact on the broader conventional military campaigns of which they were part. Recent counter insurgency (COIN) campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have once again highlighted the difficulty of defeating de- termined irregular fighters without committing human rights abuses against the local population and consequently undermining domestic and international public support for the campaign.During the 2000s, the use of the term hybrid became a common way to describe contemporary warfare, particularly because of the increasing sophistication and lethality of violent non-state actors and the growing potential of cyber warfare. Although there was no agreement that this necessarily constituted a new form of warfare,3 definitions of warfare emphasized the blending of conventional and irregular approaches across the full spectrum of conflict. For example, in 2007 Frank G. Floffman, a leading analyst of the concept, defined warfare as Threats that incorporate a full range of different modes of warfare including conventional capabilities, irregular tactics and formations, terrorist acts including indiscriminate violence and coercion, and criminal disorder, conducted by both sides and a variety of non-state actors. …

Global Public-Private Partnerships in International Law

Over the last decade, public-private partnerships between states and a variety of non-state actors have proliferated as vehicles for functional co-operation at the global level. In parallel, there has been an emerging trend to accord such partnerships the privileges and immunities normally reserved for intergovernmental organizations (“IO-type privileges and immunities”). After identifying the legal and normative issues associated with this trend, this article argues that IO-type privileges and immunities should be restricted to entities that are clearly established under and governed by international law, and that any approach to IO-type privileges and immunities as a uniform package deal, regardless of the precise functional requirements of the global public-private partnership and its different categories of staff, or the specific conditions in the relevant national jurisdiction where a given privilege or immunity is sought, should be avoided.

The need for a United Nations space policy

The international community is entering an era of shared global utilities from space and is increasingly reliant on space systems and activities that support a myriad of applications and utilities on Earth. A growing number of states are seeking to develop or extend their space capabilities. At the same time, a variety of non-state actors are also extending their involvement in space activities. The United Nations is the principal inter-governmental forum to deal with various space issues of global importance. Moreover, the United Nations system itself has become increasingly reliant on space systems for its day-to-day operations. In order for the United Nations to play its necessary role in the space arena, it will need to be supported by a space policy. A United Nations space policy would provide over-arching guidance on space activities for UN stakeholders in the space arena; it would inform UN participation in space activities and would promote improved coordination and cooperative governance of outer space activities. A world without a common UN space policy will not be able to respond to the challenges of the rapidly evolving space arena in the 21st century.

PEERING INTO THE ABYSS

The George W. Bush administration has successfully reoriented national policy and convinced the international community of the absolute necessity of denying weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups. In addition to utilizing the tools of existing export control regimes, Washington promulgated the Proliferation Security Initiative and helped push through United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540 to expand the toolkit available to states to prevent the spread of dangerous technologies and weapons to terrorist groups. While these efforts are long overdue, they address only one aspect of the proliferation threat posed by non-state actors. Current efforts focus on the “demand” side of proliferation from terrorists but inexplicably leave unaddressed the role that a growing variety of non-state actors may play in shaping the supply side of an emerging 2016 proliferation market substructure. The proliferation supply network established by Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan provides a precursor to a dangerous new proliferation environment dominated by transnational corporations, quasi-governmental entities, and individuals operating on the fringes of government control in weak or failing states that lack the will and the resources to implement effective export-control regimes. All states need to develop a more comprehensive and holistic view of the future role that a burgeoning plethora of non-state actors will play in nuclear proliferation by 2016.

II. Caspian Energy: Oil and Gas Resources and the Global Market

AbstractThis article develops several concepts of critical geopolitics and relates them to the energy resources of the Caspian Region. Energy resources beyond borders may be accessed by trade, respectively by conquest, domination and changing property rights. These are the survival strategies of human groups in the international system. The article differentiates between demand-induced scarcity, supply-induced scarcity, structural scarcity and the creation, respectively, transfer of property rights. Together, the behaviors referred to by these concepts create a field of social forces that cross state borders involving state and a variety of non-state actors. During World War II, the US began to separate the military borders of the country from its legal-territorial borders. By dominating the world's oceans, the Anglo-Saxon power presided over the capacity to induce scarcity by interdicting maritime supplies to allies and enemies alike. Today, overland transport increasingly connects economies and energy supplies on the Eurasian continent. The US has therefore to go on land in order to pre-empt the land-based powers from unifying their economies and energy supplies.