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For over five decades, the Cold War security agenda was distinguished by the principal strategic balance, that of a structure of bipolarity, between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR). This book seeks to draw from current developments in critical security studies in order to establish a new framework of inquiry for security in the Middle East. It addresses the need to redefine security in the Middle East. The focus is squarely on the Arab-Israeli context in general, and the Palestinian-Israeli context in particular. The character of Arab-Israeli relations are measured by the Israeli foreign policy debate from the 1950s to the 1990s. A dialogue between Islam and Islamism as a means to broaden the terrain on which conflict resolution and post-bipolar security in the Middle East is to be understood is presented. The Middle East peace process (MEPP) was an additional factor in problematizing the military-strategic concept of security in the Middle East. The shift in analysis from national security to human security reflects the transformations of the post-Cold War era by combining military with non-military concerns such as environmental damage, social unrest, economic mismanagement, cultural conflict, gender inequity and radical fundamentalism. By way of contrast to realist international relations (IR) theory, developing-world theorists have proposed a different set of variables to explain the unique challenges facing developing states. Finally, the book examines the significance of ecopolitics in security agendas in the Middle East.
’s precious thurible (a liturgical implement for diffusing incense). 6 There are also clear signs of economic mismanagement. The monks manage to spend forty marks of silver given to them by a patron to buy land and are then forced to conceal their misuse from him, 7 and an incompetent custos runs the community into deep debt. 8 Further, a series of failed attempts to found and reform other communities results in the overextension of the monastery’s economic and human resources. 9 There is a certain anxiety suggested by the chronicler’s assertion that God will never
to present ‘multi-year stability plans which shall contain special targets for deficits, state revenue, state expenses, the strategy to achieve these targets and the schedule for implementation thereof’. States would be audited with regard to adherence to their programmes. The March summit therefore finalised an overarching operating framework for member states, which would seek to ensure the coordination of their economic policies and the oversight of all developments so as to prevent further economic mismanagement.20 With regard to developments at the summit, it
, the amount which, as laid down in the Treaties, a country is allowed to borrow.16 To acquire credit in excess of this figure, member states would have to issue their own national bonds, for which they would be exclusively responsible. For this solution to function there would have to be much closer scrutiny in the EMU of the economic management of each member state, to ensure that economic mismanagement in one did not afflict all. The proposed solution, in any case, hardly helped countries such as Greece, with sovereign debt standing at approximately 150% of GDP
far greater supervision of the major banks, bank deposit guarantees by the EU and mechanisms for the recapitalisation of the banking sector. 2 The Fiscal Compact and related fiscal control mechanisms to deter economic mismanagement and ensure stability. 3 Most controversial in this debate was the institution of eurobonds, a system of mutual solidarity for repayment of debts. According to German analysis, the Treaties forbid burdening one country with the debts of another member state. Eurobonds could be discussed only within a framework of religious adherence to
Dublin; monks in Glenstal; community workers in Moyross and tourists on the Hill of Tara’. The message he was getting, as though on a ‘lift loop’, was that his country had become a land of two tiers, where ordinary people were paying a high psychological price for political and economic mismanagement, as the austerity measures in the fallout from the international financial crisis of 2008 continued to devastate public services and reinforce division. Yet what reinvigorated Ruairí was not just the amazing support he received – accommodation, online funding of his
, opting to privatise services. Now in government, he immediately took steps to limit the generous benefits paid to public-sector pensioners and pursued generally tight fiscal policies. These market-friendly policies prompted some left-wing dissidents to quit the party and form a new organisation of the left, but investors were delighted. By 2004 the new government’s “commitment to economic stability and reform had become clear”. 12 The China dividend With the threat of economic mismanagement fading, two other changes boosted business confidence. From the late 1980s
economic mismanagement took their toll in both instances, as did association with ‘sleaze’. The Profumo scandal of 1963 had hastened the end of Harold Macmillan’s premiership; ‘never had it so good’ was replaced by the satirists’ jibe ‘never had it so often’. Labour could also claim, in 1964 as in 1997, to have more dynamic leadership. Macmillan’s successor, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, was ill-suited to the emerging age of television politics. His grouse moor image and ‘matchstick’ grasp of economics was skilfully exploited by the arch-meritocratic Wilson, who as opposition
economic structures built during the dictatorship have remained hidden under a veneer of democracy, a veneer that became exposed during the 2008 global financial crash, which was exacerbated in Spain by economic mismanagement and political and institutional crises. The film, therefore, is not an abrogation of content in the pursuit of aesthetic mastery. On the contrary, it is a formal challenge to the use of these very same surfaces in social and political discourse about contemporary Spain. La piel draws attention to its use of aesthetics as a trap, luring viewers
Spain, ‘though Lord of all the treasure of the West-Indies’, was in unmistakable decline by the 1670s. 1 From Europe’s dominant power in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when Hapsburg threats of universal monarchy had frightened all of Protestant Europe, Spain had become ‘weak and feeble’, particularly in the face of the rising menace from Louis XIV’s France. 2 Across the continent, political and economic commentators recognised that years of warfare and economic mismanagement, combined with weak leadership under King Carlos II, had resulted in