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Mobilising the concept of strategic culture, this study develops a framework for understanding developments in German security policy between 1990 and 2003. Germany's contemporary security policies are characterised by a peculiar mix of continuity and change. From abstention in the first Gulf war, to early peacekeeping missions in Bosnia in the early 1990s and a full combat role in Kosovo in 1999, the pace of change in German security policy since the end of the Cold War has been breathtaking. The extent of this change has recently, however, been questioned, as seen most vividly in Berlin's response to ‘9/11’ and its subsequent stalwart opposition to the US-led war on terrorism in Iraq in 2003. Beginning with a consideration of the notion of strategic culture, the study refines and adapts the concept to the case of Germany through a consideration of aspects of the rearmament of West Germany. It then critically evaluates the transformation of the role of the Bundeswehr up to and including the war on terrorism, together with Germany's troubled efforts to enact defence reforms, as well as the complex politics surrounding the policy of conscription. By focusing on both the ‘domestics’ of security policy decision making as well as the changing and often contradictory expectations of Germany's allies, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the role played by Germany's particular strategic culture in shaping policy choices. It concludes by pointing to the vibrancy of Germany's strategic culture.
it unfolded in the German Bundestag – the debate’s major public forum – in the period between the first Gulf War in 1991 and the war against Iraq in 2003. It analyses how external events and pressures influenced the debate and how Germany’s actual policy towards the international crises of the post-Cold War era responded. It aims to understand why German policy makers abandoned the policy of strict military abstention in out-of-area conflicts and to discern the premises of the new policy that has taken its place. In other words, it seeks to answer the questions what
resources had a significant adverse impact on intelligence community capabilities. Nonetheless, during the 1990s the intelligence community confronted numerous crises in which to demonstrate the relevance of intelligence analysis to policy deliberations. Regional conflicts, such as the first Gulf war and follow-on sanctions against Iraq, the breakup of Yugoslavia, and emerging threats from North Korea and
The Arab–Israeli conflict has been at the centre of international affairs for decades. Despite repeated political efforts, the confrontation and casualties continue, especially in fighting between Israelis and Palestinians. This new assessment emphasizes the role that military force plays in blocking a diplomatic resolution. Many Arabs and Israelis believe that the only way to survive or to be secure is through the development, threat, and use of military force and violence. This idea is deeply flawed and results in missed diplomatic opportunities and growing insecurity. Coercion cannot force rivals to sign a peace agreement to end a long-running conflict. Sometimes negotiations and mutual concessions are the key to improving the fate of a country or national movement. Using short historical case studies from the 1950s through to today, the book explores and pushes back against the dominant belief that military force leads to triumph while negotiations and concessions lead to defeat and further unwelcome challenges. In The sword is not enough, we learn both what makes this idea so compelling to Arab and Israeli leaders and how it eventually may get dislodged.
humanitarian world (from the UN agencies to some NGOs) supported the ‘interventionism’ of the Western governments; on the other hand, it has highlighted that the relief organisations as a whole increased their volume of work and gained greater visibility in the context of the first Gulf War (1990–91) and the post-war context. 2 This happened also because of the military forces which offered the humanitarians the necessary protection and built up a collaborative relationship with them. 3 In other words, over the last quarter of a century the various central players in the
screens during the first Gulf War was accompanied by the ‘magnified, overexposed, sexually caricatured image of Saddam Hussein’. Scarry’s analysis here could equally apply to the second Gulf War: ‘As we watched missiles going into targets that appeared to have no people within, it was as though either no one would be killed or the Gruesome Tyrant alone would be killed.’ Ibid., p. 48. Ibid., p. 52. Ibid., p. 53 See also Myra Macdonald, ‘Politicizing the personal: women’s voices in British television documentaries’, in Cynthia Carter, Gill Branston and Stuart Allan (eds
– ‘Op Plan 1003’ – did not fit the secretary’s goals for transformational warfare. Op Plan 1003 was essentially a formula for re-fighting the first Gulf War which had, after all, been spectacularly successful from an American military standpoint. To Rumsfeld, though, it was unsatisfactory. Op Plan 1003 relied upon the Powell doctrine principles of a long, slow build-up of a large, overwhelming ground
This book presents new research on the histories and legacies of the German Expressionist group, Der Blaue Reiter, the founding force behind modernist abstraction. For the first time Der Blaue Reiter is subjected to a variety of novel inter-disciplinary perspectives, ranging from a philosophical enquiry into its language and visual perception, to analyses of its gender dynamics, its reception at different historical junctures throughout the twentieth century, and its legacies for post-colonial aesthetic practices. The volume offers a new perspective on familiar aspects of Expressionism and abstraction, taking seriously the inheritance of modernism for the twenty-first century in ways that will help to recalibrate the field of Expressionist studies for future scholarship. Der Blaue Reiter still matters, the contributors argue, because the legacies of abstraction are still being debated by artists, writers, philosophers and cultural theorists today.
recognized the legitimate and political rights of the Palestinian people while in return the PLO renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist in conditions of peace and security (Rynhold 2007 : 423). Problems and policies Like in the Greek case discussed above, international developments, in particular the end of bipolarism but more importantly the 1991 first Gulf War, brought along new preoccupations in the Israeli foreign policy. First, the United States put pressure on Israel to foster closer relations
constituency I am talking about not only opposed the Iraq War, but also opposed the intervention in Afghanistan before that, and in Kosovo before that, and so on back to the first Gulf War that evicted Saddam Hussein’s armies from Kuwait. And Berman’s other reasons – (1), and (3) through (6) – did not figure, or did not figure every time, in the previous conflicts I have mentioned. But the United States as the foremost embodiment of global capitalism, on one side, and (speaking loosely) regimes and movements of an utterly ghastly kind politically, on the other-these have