Washington Agreement Research Articles

The Origins of Peter W. Galbraith’s Mission to the Balkans

One of the biggest challenges for the international community at the beginning of 1990s became the issue of the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Peter Galbraith’s appointment as the US ambassador to Croatia in 1993 came at a critical juncture in the Balkan conflicts. Prior to his ambassadorship, Galbraith was an advisor to the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He visited the countries of the former Yugoslavia several times as an expert in the early 1990s. Ambassador Galbraith played a crucial role in addressing the Balkan conflicts. As the first US ambassador to Croatia, he actively supported the country’s territorial integrity after the breakup of Yugoslavia. Galbraith’s diplomacy was instrumental in fostering U.S. pressure that ended the Croat-Muslim conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, laying the groundwork for the Washington Agreement of 1994. This agreement, seen as a diplomatic success, paved the way for the Dayton Agreement in 1995.

Kosovo’s path to Jerusalem: Orientalist political communication and the free world discourse

This article proposes that the Kosovar political communication toward Israel exemplifies Kosovo’s positioning as a proxy for the US, and highlights the significance and simultaneous absence of Palestine in the meaning-making of Kosovo’s political identity and its place in the world. Through an analysis of Kosovo’s recent political communication toward Israel, the author suggests that the Kosovar political elite has applied the Orientalist discourse of the ‘free world’ in order to establish analogies between Kosovo and Israel as brave and threatened democracies defending Western civilization and frontiers. A detailed engagement with the position of Muslim-majority Kosovo at Europe’s periphery and Palestine as a site of European settler-colonialism situates the current narrative presented by the Kosovar political elite within the broader contexts of colonialism, Orientalism and Islamophobia, with particular focus on the 2020 Washington Agreement brokered by US President Donald Trump.

ИННОВАЦИОННЫЕ ПРОЦЕССЫ В ВЫСШЕМ ТЕХНИЧЕСКОМ ОБРАЗОВАНИИ КНР

The article is devoted to the analysis of the innovative development of engineering education in the PRC in the last decade. The authors examine the changes that have occurred in China engineering education since the government of the PRC launched the New Engineering Education Initiative as a response to the country's signing the Washington Agreement in 2016 and the need to train highly qualified engineering personnel for Industry 4.0. The article concludes that the main innovative changes in the system of engineering education in China at the present stage include diversifying of the role of various universities in ensuring the quality of higher technical education, increasing the role of industrial partners, developing national standards for specialists in accordance with international standards.

Discrete Mathematics Teaching Reform and Practice for Engineering Certification in Computer Science

Engineering education professional certification is the certification of engineering majors in higher education institutions in accordance with the standards and processes of the Washington Agreement. It is an effective means to improve the quality of engineering education, promote continuous improvement of the profession, and enhance the international competitiveness of professional talents. Discrete mathematics is the core backbone course of computer science and technology and related majors. Under the guidance of the certification concept of engineering education, the curriculum outline of discrete mathematics, the core basic course of computer science and technology, has been revised to focus on cultivating students’ graduation abilities, refine teaching objectives, closely adhere to graduation requirements, support graduation indicators, and continuously reform teaching methods, teaching modes, and assessment forms. Teaching practice has shown that students’ mastery of computer mathematics theoretical knowledge is more solid, their ability to solve complex engineering problems is improved, and good teaching results are achieved.

Application of Sustainable Development of Teaching in Engineering Education: A Case Study of Undergraduate Course Design of Raman Spectroscopy Based on Virtual Reality (VR) Technology

One of the core objectives of the Washington Agreement, the most influential international agreement on the mutual recognition of degrees in engineering education, is to ensure the continuous improvement of professional teaching. Education for sustainable development is a vital direction of teaching reform and development of higher engineering education. Taking a Raman spectroscopy course as an example, this paper discusses VR-based course design and the strengths and limitations of a VR-based course. The idea of computational thinking and immersive learning is realized by introducing VR technology. Based on the research status in the field of Raman spectroscopy, the contents of 10 Raman spectroscopy courses are redesigned. Through a questionnaire survey, peer review, and interview, the rationality of the course design is evaluated, and based on this, a feedback mechanism is established to ensure the continuous improvement of the course. Eventually, the advantages and disadvantages of the new curriculum are evaluated, and the development direction and limitations of the corresponding teaching model are put forward. According to the research, although 85% of the students said that it is difficult to accept the VR-based course at short notice, 90% and more of the students recognize this new teaching model. They believe that the VR-based course changes their traditional learning habits and helps cultivate self-learning ability. The research results can be utilized as a crucial reference for engineering education reform and provide a reliable model for the sustainable development of education.

The Effect of the Consortium Agreements on the Competence of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID): Analytical Study of the Saudi Foreign Investment System and the Washington Agreement of 1965

This study determines the extent of the impact of the consortium agreements between commercial companies on the jurisdiction of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). For the settlement of foreign investment disputes, if the issue arises from the same dispute between foreign investors from several countries, who are linked to each other by a nodal group on the one hand, and with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as the host country for investment on the other hand. This study has shown that in some cases, consortium agreements have an indirect role in the emergence of several simultaneous judicial or arbitration procedures for the procedures of the center for settling foreign investment disputes in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, considering that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a member of the Washington Agreement of 1965. In this study, we rely on the comparative analytical approach by studying the special nature of the consortium agreements that arise from the alliance of several companies or projects from different countries. These parties bring together an independent legal entity with an independent legal personality to explain that the consortium is considered one of the indirect reasons for the emergence of Simultaneous arbitration procedures for the ICSID. We also rely on the comparative approach between the Saudi Foreign Investment Law of 2000 and the Washington Agreement of 1965 to determine the extent of the impact of these agreements on attracting foreign investors in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Additionally, we try to identify the legal means to prevent the occurrence of this phenomenon or control it if it occurs.
 
 Received: 16 November 2022 / Accepted: 27 December 2022 / Published: 5 January 2023

Chile, the United States, and the Korean War “Copper Problem”

On May 2, 1952, Chilean President Gabriel González Videla, a staunch U.S. ally, suddenly terminated the Washington Agreement governing the sale of copper to the United States, in effect, imposing an embargo and nationalizing the export of copper in the midst of the Korean War. For U.S defense planners, who had based their mobilization and rearmament program upon the strict control of copper, steel, and aluminum, the metals that enabled them to “control practically all production” in the nation, this was an unexpected and dangerous blow. “The loss that we would sustain by not having access to Chilean copper would be irreparable,” the head of the National Production Administration (NPA) Copper Division warned, “as there is no conceivable way whereby we could meet current programs.”1 Although it was always clear that the embargo was a negotiating tool rather than a belligerent act, subsequent threats to sell copper across the Iron Curtain and nationalize the mines lent the move additional gravity. This “copper problem” only ended when González Videla’s successor, Carlos Ibañez del Campo, under U.S. pressure, enacted a new copper law, the Nuevo Trato (“New Deal”), in 1955. The Nuevo Trato represented a triumph for rightists in Chilean politics, the failure of Chilean efforts to challenge the U.S. government and copper companies, and a temporary lull in efforts to exert control over Chile’s most critical industry.

Serbia and Kosovo between secession and normalisation

The Washington Agreement on Kosovo and Serbia economic normalisation (2020) is the subject of this enquiry, while its aim is to examine the role of news media in Serbia in the discourse on normalisation between Belgrade and Pristina. The main hypothesis is that the Washington Agreement was manipulatively used for self-promotion of political elites that negotiated in Washington. The research relies on Critical Discourse Studies, instrumentalist approaches to secession, media framing and agenda-setting theories. We conclude that the issue of Serbia and Kosovo normalisation in Serbian media is mostly framed with aim to mobilises citizens’ support for executive authorities. The media thus reproduce political hegemony within Serbian society, while pluralism is obstructed in a manner characteristic for competitive authoritarianism.

The Washington Agreement: A Supplementary document to the EU effort in Kosovo?

This paper analyses the Washington Agreement (WA) in the context of European Union (EU) efforts to facilitate the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia. The starting point is based on the idea that EU-led negotiations seek consensus between leadership in Belgrade and Pristina, as opposed to unilateral or imposed solutions. The central question is as follows: is the WA a supplementary document to the Brussels process? While certain points of the agreement are a mere repetition of previous agreements signed by the two parties, the agreement commits Kosovo to the mini-Schengen and brings a novelty into the dynamics of the Belgrade-Pristina relationship, such as in the case of the joint management of Gazivode/Ujmani lake. With a new Kosovar government, the mini-Schengen point, together with the point of Kosovo and Serbia’s pledge to open/move embassies to Jerusalem, remains the most contested part of the Agreement. Finally, the two sides have reaffirmed their commitment to Western values and agree to become less dependent on Russia’s energy and China’s technology supplies.

Političke i vojne prilike u Tuzlansko-podrinjskom kantonu u godini Deytonskog mira

At the beginning of the paper we explain the territorial differences between the Washington and Dayton Peace Solutions, which especially refers to the Tuzla-Podrinje Canton and focuses only on the Tuzla region and its specifics in relation to other regions in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We then present the basic elements of the Washington Agreement, the meetings that preceded it, the content of the agreement, the principles of the Vienna Agreement important for the organization of the canton, as well as active monitoring and consideration of the agreement by the Tuzla District Assembly and its views on international community plans. We also monitor the implementation and importance of the implementation of the Washington Agreement in the Tuzla region and the creation of the Tuzla-Podrinje Canton, explain the name of the canton and use demographic data based on the 1991 census to indicate that Podrinje is a Bosniak-majority region. Then we give an overview of how the implementation of the Washington Agreement reflected on the normalization of food prices, the situation in the canton and the strengthening of the combat power of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, ie the II Corps of the Army of B&H. The paper describes the jurisdiction of the President of the Canton, the Government of the Canton, national representation by agreement of SDA and HDZ, the composition of the government, the reasons for non-participation of Serbs in implementation and talks with the Serb Civic Council to participate in organizing ministries. We especially present the activities of the President and the Government of the Canton on supporting the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, II Corps and strengthening defense, budget funds for these purposes: action: „We are all B&H Army“, support for displaced persons and improving living conditions in protected areas of Srebrenica and Žepa We also describe the activities of the authorities during the fall of the protected zones of Srebrenica and Žepa, for the care of the displaced population, as well as the requests to the institutions of the international community to stop and prevent genocide against the Bosniaks of Srebrenica. We especially emphasize the activity of the Tuzla-Podrinje Canton Ministry of the Interior in preserving public order and peace. We are especially dealing with the military situation in the Tuzla-Podrinje Canton, presenting significant military successes through the liberation of Lisača on the Kalesija front, Vis near Gračanica, Vijenac near Lukavac, Greda on Majevica, as well as the crushing of enemy offensives „Spreča-95“ and others. In this paper, we argue the support of Russian diplomacy to the aggressor and link Russia's diplomatic activities through the contact group and other accomplices of the conspiracy group towards the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In a complex situation such as that in Bosnia and Herzegovina, when a Serbian aggressor with the support of insurgent Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina commits genocide, a joint criminal enterprise with the support of the Croatian state led by Tuđman and Croats mainly from Herzegovina win over Fikret Abdić to organize a quisling creation „autonomous region of Western Bosnia“ and opening a conflict with the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The support of the Tuzla District Assembly to the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina in their efforts to stop the war and find a peaceful solution was significant. Also, the authorities of the District of Tuzla vigorously condemned the divisions on the national principle as well as the division of the territory of the District of Tuzla. In this paper, we have processed the proposals of the Assembly of the District of Tuzla to the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina according to individual peace solutions. The inadmissibility of the Dayton Peace Solution for the Tuzla-Podrinje Canton authorities and the SDA Cantonal Committee was specifically addressed as well as the reasons and request to President Alija Izetbegović and the negotiating team of Bosnia and Herzegovina to leave the Dayton negotiations, and then the request to Izetbegović to clarify the reasons for accepting such an unjust peace agreement.

Dejtonski mirovni sporazum – Okončanje velikodržavnih pretenzija?

Dejtonski mirovni sporazum – Okončanje velikodržavnih pretenzija?

Chair of HGV and HSER of KNUCEA: 90 years of the path from classical traditions to the future of education

The article analyzes the relevance of the traditional components of the educational process in a higher technical school on the basis of 90 years of experience in training engineers at the chair of Heat and Gas supply, Ventilation and the use of Thermal Secondary Energy Resources of the Kharkov National University of Civil Engineering and Architecture. In particular, the developed laboratory and technical base, targeted educational and methodological support, close communication with related departments of other higher educational institutions, the ultimate coordination of the scientific activities of the chair with the needs of production, the presence at the chair of teachers with extensive experience in practical activities in the specialty, systematic training of their own talented highly qualified teaching staff, the combination of teaching and research work of the chair staff with administrative and social activities at the university, continuity and stability of the department leadership.
 It also analyzes promising ways and methods of improving the quality of higher education in Ukraine in the third decade of the 21st century. Among these activities, the close integration of training with production, increasing the competitiveness of a future specialist in the face of dynamic changes in the world labor market, training of teachers in foreign universities or design and production firms, attracting students to scientific work at the early stages of training, the formation of professional competencies among undergraduates of higher technical educational institutions according to the Washington Agreement (WA), improving the organization of students “independent work”, implementing the imperative in the student's mind about the need for professional self-improvement throughout life and teaching him the skills of this self-improvement, enriching the standard components of the educational process with additional non-standard creative "zest", stimulating students' creative imagination for extraordinary ideas and projects.

Civil Society, Governance and Development

Yeni Kurumsal İktisat Okulunun etkisi ile değişime uğrayan neoliberal kalkınma anlayışında yönetişimin önemine sıklıkla vurgu yapılır. Post Washington mutabakatı sonrası kalkınma yazınında kendine giderek daha fazla yer bulan yönetişim kavramı, devlet, piyasa ve sivil toplumun karşılıklı uyum içinde hareket etmesi anlamını taşır. Yönetişim kavramının dayandığı üç sacayağından biri olan sivil toplum bu çalışmanın odak noktasını oluşturmaktadır. Çalışmanın amacı sivil toplumu iktisadi bağlamda analiz etmek ve bilhassa kalkınma açısından üstlendiği rolü değerlendirmektir. Bu doğrultuda çalışmanın literatüre katkısı sivil toplum kalkınma ilişkisine Yeni Kurumsal İktisat Okulu perspektifinden bakmak ve birer kalkınma kurumu olarak değerlendirilen STK’ların temsil güçlerinde ve strateji geliştirme davranışlarında meydana gelen değişimleri ortaya koymaktır.

Exploration and Research on the Cultivation of Computer Professionals Under the Background of New Engineering

In 2016, China became an official member of Washington Agreement, the mutual recognition agreement of international undergraduate engineering degree, and China’s higher engineering education reform ushered in new challenges, while constructing new engineering disciplines is the main solving way. Based on the summary of the important significance of new engineering construction and the requirements of National Standards for Teaching Quality of Computer Majors, this paper carries out some useful explorations and researches on the training modes and training programs of computer professionals and the construction of teaching staff under the background of new engineering.

Rechtsnatur und Spruchpraxis der Schiedsinstanz für Naturalrestitution

The Arbitration Panel for In Rem Restitution of Publicly Owned Property, created by the Joint Statement of the Governments of Austria and of the United States of America of 17 January 2001 (Washington Agreement) and formally established by the Austrian Federal Law on the Compensation Fund (Entschadigungsfondsgesetz), was an international body consisting of three members, two of them nominated by the contracting parties, with a chairman agreed upon by the two arbitrators. On the basis of individual claims filed by victims of the National Socialist era or by their heirs for the restitution of real estates seized by the Nazi regime and still in public ownership on 17 January 2001, the Panel had to consider supportive evidence and relevant findings of the Austrian Historical Commission and – as a result – make recommendations for restitution to the competent Austrian Federal Minister. However, previous relevant decisions of Austrian authorities or agreements of the parties themselves were not subject to revision, unless the Panel decided unanimously that those settlements constituted an extreme injustice. After having considered 2,307 claims in the period of seventeen years, the Arbitration Panel concluded its work at the end of August 2018.

The effects of global monetary policy on foreign debt and debt crisis

Economic policy of western developed countries is based on Washington agreement principles - liberalization, deregulation and privatization, with as little as possible participation of state in economic movements. Such policy is supported by the biggest financial institutions, from the World Bank, IMF, US Federal Reserve, European banks and other. Although such policy gave a range of bad results in practice, its basic postulates are still in power. On the other hand, global economic crisis lead to the fact that many highly developed countries have problems of high foreign indebtedness. This problem is even more complex in countries in development and, so called, transitional countries, where Serbia belongs, which, by the relation of foreign debt towards GDP belongs to a group of countries with an intermediate debt, according to the World bank's criteria.

Reflections on new currency solutions

The Washington agreement of last December achieved an important result in one respect: through an adequate realignment of major currencies it corrected the overvaluation of the dollar, thus setting in motion a process of reabsorption of the fundamental disequilibrium between the U.S. and its main trading partners, to be completed in two years or so. Therefore, it has fully succeeded in solving the immediate problems brought to the surface by the May-August exchange crisis. However, no advance has been made, beyond the identification of the main issues, in solving the structural crisis which has plagued the international monetary system since the beginning of the sixties. The present article examines the adjustment, confidence and liquidity problems of the international monetary reform, the second activation of SDRs and intra-EEC monetary relations.

Veto Players and Central Bank Gold Sales

In this article I explore the effects of veto players in formal government institutions on gold sale policies in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Germany. One of the most active areas of recent ...

On U.S. Foreign Policy in the Balkans in the 1990s: Spotlight on Croatia

In the 1990s, despite a change of administrations, U.S. policy towards the Balkans remained consistent. Post-Gulf War, the United States urged Europe to take the lead, but ultimately humanitarian considerations forced the United States to take an active, military role. Within the U.S. government, a struggle between ``incrementalism'' and a longer-term ``visionary approach'' characterized internal debate. Incrementalism ultimately prevailed. The framework for U.S. policy decisions, especially in the early 1990s, led the United States to active involvement, including a lack of consensus in the United Nations on the use of force. Events, culminating in the ``Washington Agreement'', led Croatia to seeing that its interests coincided with those of Bosnian Croats and Muslims. Only later did Croatian and U.S. interests diverge. Since Dayton, U.S. focus in Croatia has been on democratization, human rights, and the implementation of the accords. As U.S. Balkan policy evolved, seeing a stable European future for the region became a fundamental security interest of the United States. The Balkan Wars contributed significantly to changing perceptions of the transatlantic relationship and of the U.S. global role.

Peace and Human Rights Education in the Middle East: Comparing Jewish and Palestinian Experiences.

The Washington agreement of 1993 gave a new impetus to attempts by Palestinian and Israeli leaders to find a peaceful solution to their differences. The author asks to what extent this process has been accompanied by peace/human rights education programmes for Israeli and Palestinian children. While such programmes exist, they are very limited and have so far made little impact in reversing the long educational legacy of mutual distrust and hostility, which the article examines in detail. Furthermore, the continuing conflicts between the two communities make peace/human rights education difficult. However, despite the enormous obstacles, the author concludes that the efforts of peace/human rights educators are not wasted.