The story of how Yushchenko came to power with high domestic and international expectations that he largely failed to fulfill will be a fascinating area for future research.
To consider the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s role in fostering peace in the post socialist area, this essay will examine the conflicts in Moldova and Chechnya. It will argue that the OSCE has not yet been successful, but that this is largely because there has been no established peace to foster. Any progress is going to take time due to the complexities involved.
Where collective security avenues are blocked, could a State, or States acting jointly, lawfully intervene militarily in another State’s territory without the permission of the Government of that State to halt or prevent it from committing atrocities against its own people? What about intervention where the territorial Government is unable or unwilling to provide basic humanitarian assistance to its people in the face of natural or human-made disaster?
The recent events in the South Caucasus once again highlight the pervasive and destructive forces inherent in ethnic nationalism. These should not be misunderstood as simply local phenomena for they have wider ramifications and are shaped by factors well beyond their locale.
This essay focusses on the Russian energy sector and the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT). These issues reflect Russia’s struggle with liberalization, necessary for increasing revenues and sustaining economic growth. The analysis demonstrates that Russia takes its internal security seriously in word and deed but challenges to economic stability remain.
The ongoing conflict in the South Caucasus is far more than just another example of ethnic strife in the region, Russian aggression or the last stages of the unraveling of the Soviet Union. Wrapped up in this conflict are many of the major issues which have defined international politics in that part of the world for a decade and which will likely continue to define those politics for at least another decade.
If America learns nothing else from the misadventure in Iraq, it should learn the high price of unlawful war. Yet, in an eerie atmosphere of déjà vue, we are hearing the drumbeat for war once again—this time against Iran. Only now we hear virtually nothing about the legal right to go to war. This is particularly odd since the law against attacking Iran is even clearer than the law against invading Iraq.
This work will look at the idea of regionalism and its link to security. It will argue that that Eurasia, in terms of security, consists of a regional security complex. However, looking at the current conditions in the sub-regions of Eurasia, recent experiences emphasize the weakness of regionalism. Regional security is more capable of identifying threats than constructing viable mechanisms and institutions to tackle them.
The European states and the United States are increasingly having to consider what policy they should adopt towards Russia. Aggression abroad, suppression of freedom at home, intimidation of all opposition, murder, corruption and anti-Semitism have given rise to increasing alarm. Germany is struggling to reconcile the political, military and economic issues raised by its powerful neighbour to the east.
Domestically, revolutions cause massive upheavals of the political structures within a state, which affect its relations with neighboring states. On an international level, revolutionaries may actively export their ideology abroad by means of propaganda, by supporting revolutionary movements, or by directly deploying military forces to confront neighboring states. Revolutions threaten the prevailing international order because neighboring states perceive revolutions as a threat to their state’s sovereignty, which may prompt non-revolutionary states to intervene.
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