Putin will remain in power until 2024, barring assassination or revolution, and will become Russia’s longest ruling leader since Stalin. He is not known for his willingness to compromise or surrender Russia’s imperial gains, suggesting that a new time of troubles is looming on the horizon. This will indicate whether the West still sees Russia as a political part of Europe or has concluded that the country cannot be changed and the days of democratization have become a historical footnote.
Because of the deep concern on the part of many UN member states that RtoP could give rise to a regime change agenda and the equally deep global opposition to such an agenda, it is incumbent on us to explore the relationship more deeply in order to ascertain whether there are ways of maintaining a clear distinction between RtoP and regime change without sacrificing the protection of civilians.
The R2P is heralded by many as making political power more responsible and accountable, both to the domestic citizenry and ‘international community’. It has sought to democratise humanitarian intervention in a way which reconceptualises sovereignty as responsibility and looks to protect the ‘victim other’ from imminent mass death at the hands of irresponsible state power.
The actions of the EU in promoting democracy in third countries need to be examined in greater detail. The tangible support (financial, logistical or otherwise) the EU gives to pro-democracy social movements can help us assess just how much the EU acts, or is limited in acting, to promote democracy abroad. In short, if the EU gives direct, meaningful support to such social movements, it could be said to have stopped ‘philosophizing’ and begun to act.
Structure is an anomaly in the field of IR largely because of the nature of its constituent components. Practices of social production and reproduction are not difficult to locate if you relay the relevant evidence, contrary to this idea. The concept continues to be open to wide interpretation, as shown by the respective approaches of Alexander Wendt and Kenneth Waltz.
This essay is concerned with the motivations that drive states to intervene, and argues that their actions are never wholly disinterested. The scope of this essay will be limited to interventions which third-parties have justified on humanitarian grounds, looking in particular at the case of the NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999.
Does Somaliland exhibit modern state qualities? Are we witnessing the development of a ‘beacon of light’ in an otherwise war-torn area of Africa? Or is this an overly positive analysis, resulting in an idealistic, rather than realistic, approach to the problematic of statehood in the region?
In the wake of 9/11, private actors have played an increasingly crucial role at both sides of the conflict. Not only is the war on terror a response to the unprecedented threat posed by non-state actors such as terrorist networks; it is also a conflict characterized by a growing role of commercial actors supporting bureaucracies and military organizations.
Access to information is a vital building block for lasting peace, yet media interventions are not a ‘quick fix’. While they may not be able to solve conflicts, there is certainly an important role for them in spurring debate, reconciling communities and changing behaviour towards peacebuilding.
The primary method of globally managing environmental issues is through the use of carbon trading. This has resulted from the hegemonic success of the ecological modernisation discourse – a discourse immortalised in the Brundtland report in 1987.
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