Politics
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is about the relationship between societies and their instruments of coercion at times of great political and societal change. It traces the scholarly and policy origins of the security sector reform concept, locating its recent rise to prominence in earlier debates about development, security and civil-military relations. The book takes a comparative approach to the concept and policy of security sector reform in transforming societies. It examines the security sector reform experiences of two paired case studies, Croatia and Serbia-Montenegro, through a systematic analytical framework. The book analyses security sector reform at the political level, the organisational level and the international level in each country. It discusses the political legacy and the organisational legacy of the 1990s in each country.
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book argues that it is important to evaluate the role of EU institutions for the process of European integration. It conceptualises the role of the different EU institutions, especially the European Commission, in the European integration process, with particular reference to the concepts of supranational policy entrepreneurship. The book investigates the construction of an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) in response to terrorism. It analyses the external dimension of counter-terrorism in the EU. It analyses the external dimension of asylum and migration, including border management. The book also investigates the role of EU institutional actors at the treaty level in the process of constructing an 'Area of Freedom, Security and Justice'.
On his first full day in office as US President in January 2009, Barack Obama appointed the chair of the talks leading to the 1998 Belfast agreement, George Mitchell, as his Middle East envoy. Anticipating the decision, the Washington Post reported that the former Senate majority leader was 'highly regarded as a negotiator for his work in the successful Northern Ireland peace process'. As the former president of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia complained, the US administration interpreted the Goldstone report, scrupulously framed by international standards of human rights and humanitarian law, as an obstacle to progress on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Israeli State had pre-empted Obama's inauguration with the invasion of Gaza, committing war crimes, echoed by its enemy Hamas, according to a 575-page report for the United Nations Human Rights Council by a distinguished team led by Justice Richard Goldstone.
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the impact that enlargement will have on leadership within the European Union (EU), a pre-requisite for policy coherence. It tackles a range of different security issues. The book adopts a broad geographical scope, by examining key security relationships with states and regions in the EU's self-declared neighbourhood, namely Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, the Greater Middle East and the Balkans. Returning to the development of an EU counter-terrorist policy, the book argues that the 2004 enlargement was an opportunity to pause, take stock and refocus efforts, rather than simply continuing the momentum of rhetoric. It also argues that, due to the 'War on Terror', the human rights security nexus has remained at the forefront of EU security policy.
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book begins by outlining the rationale for the research project on political cartoons, while explaining the choice of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a case study. Cartoon analysis is the study of a non-elite communication. It is premised on the idea that audiences inadvertently shape the media they consume by rewarding producers who create content that reflects and reinforces their beliefs. The book identifies the challenges of cartoon research and outlines the methodological approaches available to researchers. It details the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process into full-scale violence by October 2000. It then follows with a description of Israeli and Palestinian media production. The book demonstrates the cartoon's ability to chronicle changes in conflict. It shows that Israeli and Palestinian cartoons also changed the way that each portrayed the other.
This chapter considers a different conceptualisation of reality and representation in relation to the Kosovo conflict. It looks at Ferdinand de Saussure's arguments in order to offer some thoughts on the role of naming in relation to the Kosovo conflict. Using Jacques Derrida's thought, the chapter argues that the existence of a reality, which constrains the author's actions, is itself a representation, which has political implications. The chapter explores how North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATO's) Kosovo operation. It also explores the Federal Republic of Germany's (FRG's) participation were represented as demanded by reality and, building on Derrida's arguments, highlights the problematic nature of these statements. Grasping the conflict as an ethico-political matter requires, or so the chapter examines a rethinking of the limits which we hold to be those of reality. The chapter assesses how the representation of the situation in Kosovo.
Kosovo is the first war in history said to be fought in pursuit of principle, not interest. In the new normative paradigm of Idealpolitik, sovereignty is no longer an ontological given, no longer inviolate. There was no contradiction between Idealpolitik and Realpolitik in Kosovo, as they were both manifestations of the same historical force, the same discourse of power. One of the great paradoxes of the war in Kosovo was that it was not just one campaign but two. There was the ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo and the allied bombing campaign against targets in Kosovo and all over Serbia. The war in Kosovo can be seen as the playing out of the competition between the two most publicised essays on international affairs, Francis Fukuyama's End of History and Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. The prize in the contest was Russia.
Since the end of the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has been significantly reoriented and retooled across the board. This process of change has been captured under two main labels. Internal adaptation is NATO-speak for looking at how the institution works, and whether it can be made to work better and more effectively. The process has embraced the possibility of creating procedures and structures whereby European member states might undertake military operations without the frontline participation of United States forces. This chapter considers the effectiveness of NATO's integrated military command and planning structures. It examines their performance during Operation Allied Force. The external adaptation of NATO is a term that refers, fairly obviously, to the evolution of relations between NATO and its members, and non-member states in Europe. The most important and controversial element of the external adaptation has been the NATO enlargement process. Other elements include ‘outreach’ programmes such as Partnership for Peace. This chapter looks at the impact of the Kosovo crisis on NATO's external adaptation, with particular reference to its implications for enlargement.
The Weberian principle of the state as possessing a legitimate monopoly on violence is fading. Sovereigns no longer hold this monopoly; it now belongs to the international community. This chapter investigates the effects of this fading of legitimacy. Expanding on a framework suggested by the Copenhagen School of international relations, the chapter argues that the Kosovo war is a crucial part of two on-going shifts. In Kosovo, the states going to war as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Alliance represented themselves as 'humanity', the implication being that Serbia was cast as an enemy not only of human rights but of humanity. The Kosovo war defines the epoch exactly because it focused on the simultaneously existing conflict lines upon which politics is constituted. Serbia's attempts to legitimise its stance as a warring state defending the idea of state sovereignty was represented as an anachronism.
In this chapter, the author argues that Kosovo was an episode in the long-term process of the domestication and marginalisation of the United Nations (UN) by the United States (US). Although the systematic domestication of the UN began in the Reagan era, following the defeat of radical Third World calls for reforms, the author starts by reconstructing the 1990s' conflict between the US and Boutros-Ghali's UN. Having completed an analysis of the reasons for Boutros-Ghali's expulsion, he then discusses the functioning of the US-domesticated UN, led by the new secretary-general Kofi Annan. Recent developments, including the Kosovo episode, seem to confirm both the reconstruction of the deep grammar of US foreign policy and his analysis of global relations of domination.