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A cartoon study of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more appropriate given the story used by French cartoonist Jean Plantureux to explain why he initiated the Cartooning for Peace conference held at the United Nations on 16 October 2006. In capturing the speculative and emotional basis for violence, political cartoons offer a unique window into the ideational foundations of conflict. Nazi era editorial cartoons clearly reflected the growing anti-Semitism among the German population that culminated in the Holocaust. International angst over cartoon depictions in foreign papers only makes sense if one believes that the public opinion they reflect affects a country's foreign policy. Designing a research project to test the predictive capacity of political cartoons requires careful consideration. By the 1930s, political cartooning had integrated itself into the political fabric of the Middle East.
This chapter presents an anatomical comparison of the conflicts in Chechnya and Kosovo, emphasising the remarkable similarity between the two. It focuses on to the responses of Russia and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to the respective Chechen and Kosovo problems. The chapter discusses rationales and motives can, in the absence of any convincing Realist interests, best explain NATO's and Russia's decision to go to war. It shows how Chechnya and Kosovo are linked, both by Realpolitik and, perhaps more directly, by each being the focal point of an on-going war of interpretation. The outcome of each of these wars of interpretation may influence the European security landscape more than the 'hot war' in Kosovo. Both the Chechen and the Kosovo conflict are essentially a by-product of the breakdown of the Soviet and Yugoslav ethno-federations.
This chapter presents two significant points. Firstly, the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) is a very significant case for demonstrating that even with the 'war on terror' on the political agenda, the asylum policy in its first phase remained within the constraints of the Geneva Convention, and actually strengthened it. Secondly, the role of the EU institutions in EU asylum and migration has been significantly underestimated. The first serious attempt to shape the EU asylum agenda was the Commission's famous 'White Paper' on the completion of the Internal Market in 1984. In 1991, the Commission took the next steps in its persuasion strategy, constructing the link to both the single market and international refugee norms. The chapter assesses the extent to which the European Commission, in both its normative and policy dimension, has been able to play the role of a supranational policy entrepreneur (SPE) with regard to the CEAS.
The Belfast Agreement requires Ireland to provide an equivalent level of protection for human rights as applies in Northern Ireland, a requirement which would appear to cover the right to equality and non-discrimination. The lack of serious engagement with the North-South dimension is particularly notable given that the Belfast Agreement requires Ireland to provide an equivalent level of protection for human rights. The Belfast Agreement can be said to be explicitly founded upon a set of foundational general principles. Considerable emphasis is placed on the importance of equality as a key animating principle in the text of the Agreement. This reflects the reality that the history of segregation and discrimination in Northern Ireland means that any successful peace process will inevitably have to engage with the lack of equality that has and continues to burden the province.
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book considers enlargement's wider impact on the European Union's (EU) security agenda. It highlights two central issues: internal cohesion and external projection. The book focuses on three areas within such a 'neighbourhood', relations with the Former Soviet Union (FSU), Russia, Turkey and the Greater Middle East and the Balkans. It also focuses on different, yet connected, aspects of the wider EU-Russia relationship, from the Chechen issue to arms trafficking in the Baltic region. This relationship colours a wide array of EU activities, from energy security to counter-terrorism, from the advancement of Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) to the future of the EU's enlargement process, in relation to both the Ukraine and Moldova.
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book uses the examples of Croatia and Serbia-Montenegro to examine the theory and practice of security sector reform in transforming societies, and its wider relationship with normative international policy. The experiences of these two states demonstrate both the utility and relevance of the security sector reform concept as well as some of the major problems and limitations inherent in its utilisation. The security sector reform experiences of Croatia and Serbia-Montenegro between 2000 and 2006 were in many respects quite different, and demonstrate the importance of recognising national and historic specificities in comparative analysis. At the political level, Croatia made substantial progress in democratising its civil-security sector relations. Croatia and Serbia-Montenegro also shared a number of commonalities in their experiences of security sector reform at the organisational level.
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book analyses the role of strategic EU institutional actors, in particular the European Commission, in the process of constructing an 'Area of Freedom, Security and Justice' (AFSJ). It argues that the EU policies on counter-terrorism, asylum and border management, and the institutional arrangements in these areas, are the expression of a political process attempting to construct such an 'area' for different political communities by ensuring their security from external security threats. The book demonstrates how the concept of political entrepreneurship has been increasingly reinterpreted by scholars such as Andrew Moravcsik in order to dismiss the notion of the EU institutions' capacity to act as supranational policy entrepreneurs (SPE).
When the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) undertook military action without an explicit mandate from the United Nations Security Council, it entered a kind of international no-man's land between upholding the sanctity of state sovereignty and that of human life. While NATO members asserted that the humanitarian and strategic imperatives of saving Kosovar Albanian lives and preventing destabilisation in South East Europe drove the action, states such as Russia and China saw the Kosovo conflict as an unacceptable violation of the former Yugoslavia's state sovereignty. NATO's military action best met the description of being an intervention, but this descriptor itself was full of variations, including the one that has been subject to the widest debate: humanitarian intervention. This book has argued that the Kosovo crisis played a smaller and more indirect role in helping initiate the development of the European Union's European Security and Defence Policy than many have assumed. It has also discussed the Atlantic Community, the Euro-Atlantic Area, and Russia's role and place in European security affairs.
Political cartoons are unique in that they are one of the few depictions of current events whose meaning is neither derived nor dependent on written text. Cartoon analysis may also prove useful for studying public opinion in countries hostile to foreign coverage or that stifle free speech. By embracing the exaggerated fears, paranoia, suspicion of a community, cartoons offer insight into the ideational and emotional foundations of conflict. Few conflicts enjoy the media and scholarly attention paid to the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. Changes in conflict were equally visible in the way both sides depicted each other, as negotiators quickly collapsed into enemy imagery once fighting began, degenerating towards greater immorality and irrationality as violence grew. The fact that Israeli and Palestinian cartoons shifted attention, enemy images hardened and mood improved when violence broke out, however, does not support the notion that political cartoons predict violence.
More than a decade on from the Belfast agreement, the sectarian 'force field' of antagonism in Northern Ireland remained as strong as ever. The Belfast agreement restricts north-south collaboration to twelve specified policy domains in an annexe, though the main body of the text speaks of 'at least' six implementation bodies and six areas of policy cooperation. To make the 'external' arrangements work, 'internal' governance of Northern Ireland must place a premium on dialogue and deliberation across sectarian boundaries. This can best be done through a requirement to reach cross-communal majorities on executive formation and dissolution. To implement the constitutional changes, new legislation would be required substantially amending the Northern Ireland Act 1998, passed at Westminster to implement the agreement, and the Northern Ireland Act 2006, which paved the way for renewed devolution.