Search

The interaction between Russia and Turkey since 2015 suggests a new quality in foreign affairs combining tactical alliance and strategic competition. The Russian invasion of Ukraine did not change this. By studying the cases of Syria, Libya, and Nagorno-Karabakh, we observe not only elements of geopolitical competition and cooperation but also that the combination of the two contradictory approaches in foreign affairs created new opportunities beneficial to the two sides. Russian-Turkish interactions are a unique case study in international relations and are conditioned by their geopolitical competition with the west, a fact that the war in Ukraine did not alter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental challenges as a factor of security problems have entered mainstream discourse. Various international organisations have developed new instruments to look at the overlap between environmental problems and security threats. One such theatre of late has been the Maghreb, a sensitive region bordering the European Union. By looking at EU-Maghreb relations, this paper argues that, very often, environmental discourse is part of several other discourses and policy options, and rarely the dominant one. It coexists with other discourses such as 'economic reforms', 'democratisation', and 'good governance'. Yet, under conditions of rapid liberalisation and privatisation, these have simultaneously brought the Maghrebi economies under Western influence and kept them away from sustainability. As a result, environmental concerns become instrumentalided to re-design new hierarchies, or to legitimise old hegemonic relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the five days' war between Georgia and Russia, a highly politicized debate began about 'who started the war'. While this debate is far from over, it is important to analyse whether the 2008 war marks an important evolution in the series of conflicts that started in the Caucasus simultaneously with the weakening and collapse of the Soviet Union. While in the late 1980s and early 1990s the conflicts were the result of mass mobilization around the banner of the nation, marking a revolutionary period of paradigm shifts, the 2008 war was much closer to classical wars between states and their centrally commanded armies. The direct Russian military intervention, Moscow's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as 'independent' states, further modifies the nature of the Caucasus conflicts. The 2008 war also reveals how much the Georgian state has evolved since the Rose Revolution, from one described as 'weak state' to a state capable of surviving a military defeat without internal collapse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]