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This work proposes an explanation of strong actor failure in asymmetric conflict. It proposes and develops the hypothesis of transformative and non-transformative goals and shows the correlation between strong actor objectives and the outcome of asymmetric conflicts. The central argument of this work gravitates around the theme that strong actors are more likely to lose if it pursues transformative goals and, on the contrary, is more likely to win if it pursues non-transformative goals. The hypothesis is supported with results of research on asymmetric conflicts, which occurred between 1990 and 2008.

Pluralist Universalism: An Asian Americanist Critique of U.S. and Chinese Multiculturalisms is an extended comparison of US and Chinese multiculturalisms during the post–Cold War era. Her book situates itself at the intersection of Asian American literary critique and the growing field of comparative multiculturalism. Through readings of fictional narratives that address the issue of racial and ethnic difference in both national contexts simultaneously, the author models a “double critique” framework for US–Chinese comparative literary studies.The book approaches U.S. liberal multiculturalism and China’s ethnic policy as two competing multiculturalisms, one grounded primarily in a history of racial desegregation and the other in the legacies of a socialist revolution. Since the end of the Cold War, the two multiculturalisms have increasingly been brought into contact through translation and other forms of mediation. Pluralist Universalism demonstrates that a number of fictional narratives, including those commonly classified as Chinese, American, and Chinese American, have illuminated incongruities and connections between the ethno-racial politics of the two nations.The “double critique” framework builds upon critical perspectives developed in Asian American studies and adjacent fields. The book brings to life an innovative vision of Asian American literary critique, even as it offers a unique intervention in ideas of ethnicity and race prevailing in both China and the United States in the post–Cold War era.

The international system developed after the Peace of Westphalia placed at its core the idea that nation-states are equal units that cannot intervene in the internal affairs of other states, an idea which ultimately led to the conclusion that international anarchy is a reality of international affairs. Is political conditionality, as developed over the past decades, compatible with the Westphalian philosophy? If not, how has political conditionality succeeded in challenging the legitimacy of the old paradigm? This article answers these questions by placing them into the framework of the external relations of the European Union (EU), using a historical perspective and following a constructivist research agenda. Challenging realism, this article suggests that the context of the 1990s in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War cannot completely explain the importance political conditionality has gained in the conduct of foreign policy in general and of EU external affairs in particular. Indeed, the EU practiced political conditionality long before the end of the Cold War and therefore before this conditionality was regarded as a “mechanism” and formalised into a “policy”. This has opened the door to the normative discourse practiced by the EU in its foreign affairs during the 1990s.

The collapse of the Socialist regimes and the end of the Cold War gave an impulse to a new world order in which there has been a rupture with the traditional ways of humanitarian work. In that context states are using humanitarism like a tool to look for geostrategic, political and economic goals. Political usage of humanitarian action, alongside other elements, has threatened the traditional principles that are basis of humanitarism. It has started a debate around the viability and the appropriateness of those principles and has caused what has come to be known as the “humanitarism crisis”

The article is aimed at studying the evolution of the United States' strategic thought since the end of the Cold War until the present day. Its development can be divided into three different periods – the immediate post-Cold War (1989-2001), the war on terror (2001-12) and nowadays (2012-) – any of which based on a paradigm that has determined the country's strategic thought, defence policy and military posture. Regardless of those transformations aimed at anticipating to the risks or respond to the threats, the American strategic thought has maintained a great deal of continuity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

References to area studies occasionally appear in cultural studies discourses, and vice versa, but most of them consist of terse comments made in passing. This article attempts a more substantive enquiry into a possible convergence of cultural and area studies, with specific reference to Southeast Asia. It argues that one promising scenario for studies of the region will take the form of a cultural studies, with the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies project as one model. The issue will be examined in the contexts of two related developments: the initial attempts to build locally based studies about the region, and the internationalisation of cultural studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the demand of military expenditure among Southeast Asian countries since the end of the Cold War. By using a dynamic panel approach, I find that military spending in the region has been jointly determined by economic, strategic and socio-political factors. In particular, surging foreign debt burdens and the rise of China – two regional issues that gained prominence in the post-Cold War period – show their significance as determinants along with other generalist variables. The results therefore ask for the development of even-handed and region-sensitive approaches to studying military build-up in the region of Southeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central premise of the article is that the assumptions and approaches of the 'anticorruption industry' that debuted in the 1990s framed the issue of corruption and substantially shaped scholarly inquiry on the subject. These assumptions and approaches also limited the ability to see other forms and patterns of corruption on the horizon. This article ( a) critically reviews prevailing assumptions and approaches to the study of corruption during and especially after the Cold War, ( b) examines the impact of economic frameworks and the anticorruption industry on post-Cold War scholarship, ( c) explores contemporary forms of potential corruption, ( d) argues that prevailing approaches to corruption may make it more difficult to see contemporary forms of the age-old phenomenon and are ill-equipped to study them, ( e) considers how corruption might be reconceptualized to encompass the new forms, and ( f) argues for a reintegration of ethics and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work proposes an explanation of strong actor failure in asymmetric conflict. It proposes and develops the hypothesis of transformative and non-transformative goals and shows the correlation between strong actor objectives and the outcome of asymmetric conflicts. The central argument of this work gravitates around the theme that strong actors are more likely to lose if it pursues transformative goals and, on the contrary, is more likely to win if it pursues non-transformative goals. The hypothesis is supported with results of research on asymmetric conflicts which occurred between 1990 and 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I analyze how the histories of the Baltic Sea region have been constructed and used in the post-Cold War period. After 1989, historians assumed the role of region-builders. Historical narratives were constructed based on a definition of the region as a place of networks, with the aim to break with the traditional historiography of the belligerent Baltic Sea region. This approach, which was most visible in the 1990s, was conditioned by political and economic processes; but it failed to encompass the whole region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically examines Pascale Casanova's recent theorization of the world literary space from the point of view of postcolonial and especially post-Cold War debates on global literary comparativism. It investigates whether her Bourdieu-derived ‘field’ approach, with its overwhelming conceptual dependence on ‘market’ and ‘nation’ metaphors, equips her to make valid qualitative judgements on vast swathes of ‘non-European’ and ‘transnational’ literary spaces. In annexing all literatures of the non-European, postcolonial world to a historiography of European literatures, Casanova's book, this article argues, is not well positioned to theorize contemporary forms of literary ‘worldling’ where Europe is but one node among many others and scarcely the ‘Greenwich Meridian’ of literary taste. Finally, the article discusses alternative ways of studying world literary spaces and histories that have emerged in recent years, especially in the works of David Damrosch and Franco Moretti. In the process, it also weaves in aspects of a post-1989 Anglophone world literature project the theoretical and geopolitical assumptions of which are in quite some tension with those of Casanova's book. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the benefits that Canada has gained after engagement with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It informs that NATO was formed by the North Atlantic Treaty as a collective defence system. Canada is one of the members of NATO and whenever any of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic attack Canada, the NATO member states always come in its defense.

In this article, I argue that after having experienced a distinctly cool relationship throughout most of the post-war period and for the 10 years following the end of the Cold War, India and North Atlantic Organization (NATO) are now gradually moving towards each other. Indeed, during the past decade, NATO's 'out-of-area' operations have taken it eastwards from the Mediterranean, while India's 'extended neighbourhood' framework has brought it westwards from the Indian subcontinent. This has created a geopolitical overlap between these two actors, most notably in Afghanistan but also elsewhere in the Indian Ocean. Common advocacy of liberal democracy and overt concerns over jihadist destabilization have brought these two actors together. In NATO's post-Cold War search for relevance and India's post-Soviet search for partners, they have found each other. Unstated potential concerns over China are also a feature in this strategic convergence. However, while NATO has adopted a flexible range of 'Partnership' frameworks, India's sensitivity on retaining 'strategic autonomy' will limit their cooperation to informal ad hoc arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the foundations of the ‘rogue states’ security narrative in the United States developed prior to the declaration of the George W. Bush administration’s ‘Global War on Terror’ and President Bush’s representation of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an ‘axis of evil’. The article argues that the puzzle of how US post-Cold War foreign and defence policy came to be focused on ‘irrational’ — but militarily inferior — adversaries can be understood through analysing how actors within the US defence community discursively constructed discrete international crises as the trigger for a major shift in US threat scenarios. This is developed through an examination of two crucial episodes in the construction of post-Cold War US national security interests: the crisis in the Persian Gulf in 1990–1 and the North Korean nuclear crisis in 1993–4. The article suggests the importance of historicizing contests over the interpretation of international crises in order to both better understand the process through which a country’s national security interests are defined and to gain greater analytical purchase on how security narratives are reconstructed during processes of systemic change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines Africa in post-Cold War world politics by looking at political, strategic and economic relations in the world. The findings suggest that Africa had suffered marginalization in the past, and is suffering it in post-Cold War world politics. This is because dominant international actors like powerful nations (the US, Britain, France), international organizations (the UN, Commonwealth etc), International Financial Institutions (the IMF, World Bank etc) do not consider Africa as a priority entity in world affairs, yet Africa is coming under more constraints to follow values and beliefs of these same international actors, which has led African states to greater dependence for policy reforms. The consequences have resulted in increased debt, social hardship, environmental degradation, poverty, unemployment, crime, iknter and intra-state conflicts in post-Cold War Africa. The paper concludes that, in addition to collective action, African states should individually redefine and redirect their national interests with a view to enhancing their national power to play active role in the power equation of world politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international system developed after the Peace of Westphalia placed at its core the idea that nation-states are equal units that cannot intervene in the internal affairs of other states, an idea which ultimately led to the conclusion that international anarchy is a reality of international affairs. Is political conditionality, as developed over the past decades, compatible with the Westphalian philosophy? If not, how has political conditionality succeeded in challenging the legitimacy of the old paradigm? This article answers these questions by placing them into the framework of the external relations of the European Union (EU), using a historical perspective and following a constructivist research agenda. Challenging realism, this article suggests that the context of the 1990s in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War cannot completely explain the importance political conditionality has gained in the conduct of foreign policy in general and of EU external affairs in particular. Indeed, the EU practiced political conditionality long before the end of the Cold War and therefore before this conditionality was regarded as a "mechanism" and formalised into a "policy." This has opened the door to the normative discourse practiced by the EU in its foreign affairs during the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the so-called “greed theory” (or “greed hypothesis”) of civil war, which is one of the most influential theories of civil war, adopted in recent years by many scholars and policymakers around the world. Applying the greed theory to the sixteen cases of African countries involved in civil wars during the post–Cold War period (1989–2006), the article assesses how well these cases fit into the theory's argument and policy recommendations. As a result, the article argues that the greed theory does not provide a good explanation of the outbreak of civil wars in these countries, nor does it provide good policy recommendations that would help resolve and prevent most of these civil wars. Ultimately, recognizing the deficiencies of the quantitative and deductive research methods used by the authors of the greed theory, the article makes the argument that the alternatives to this theory should be based on qualitative and inductive research methods that would take into consideration not only the existence of different levels of analysis of civil wars but also their dynamic nature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How is the world organized at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century? What are the structure and the character of the geopolitical order in place today? What elements it is constituted of? How it took form? How can it evolve in the future? What are the factors driving these processes? Those question marks have been at the center of the problematic and the thematic of international relations since its inception as a discipline and emerge forcefully today in view that the international scheme that took form after the Cold War was over has been modified over the last decade by a series of events that have altered its structure and working dynamics. The purpose of this paper is to make an effort aimed at finding an answer to them in reference to the order in place today, and stress the implications of the resulting findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the perceptions of Greek public opinion concerning NATO's intervention in Kosovo as a case study for Greek anti-Americanism and, especially, its post-Cold War expression. Greek opposition towards NATO intervention in Kosovo (1999) has often been attributed to bias, nationalism and emotionalism. However, the main influential factor in the shaping of the Greek perception of the Kosovo war was the anti-American legacy. It should also be emphasized that the post-Cold War version of Greek anti-Americanism has distinct qualitative characteristics, the most important of those being its diffusion into the ideological and political spectrum. Based on a qualitative analysis of the press, this study attempts to show how this generalized anti-Americanism functions like a prism during the Kosovo crisis and to illustrate the influence of a complex set of historical myths and conceptual schemes, as well as the role of several secondary factors such as political strategies and party competition. In the conceptual field, the legacy of the Kosovo narration is the establishment of the totalitarian argument as far as the US is concerned and the shaping of a negative image of American society that is directly linked to US aggression in foreign relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The profound cause of the conflicts which lead to Yugoslavia dissolution is a research issue that has not been exhaustively studied yet. The analysis of conflicts religious dimension must be done separately from the social or economical dimension, even if there are natural relations among them. The ethnic-religious and identity conflicts have been justified by the need of minority groups to claim their civil rights in the new created countries, although Popper said that "what we have to require is not only our protection, but also the others' protection of the state"1 . One of the post-conflict conclusions is that in a multiethnic state the minority's loyalty to its structures can not be guaranteed, but the loyalty to their linguistic and cultural values. Too much trust have been invested in the economic factor as being the only instrument able to take the conflict area out of crisis, but there has not been pointed out that culture and mass mentality decisively contributed to generating conflicts. From this point of view, the religion may be considered to have been the constant element which gained after the peace treaties were agreed upon to end these conflicts. This is the reason why, in these states, the religious dimension moved from the conflict area to peace area, getting a distinct sequential importance in the national security plan and enforcing its responsibility in supporting the linguistic, identity and ethnic traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Reflexión Politica is the property of Universidad Autonoma de Bucaramanga, UNAB and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the strategic partnership between the European Union (EU) and Japan in the post-Cold War era by focusing on the bilateral political and security cooperation. To this end, the discussion explores the motivations of both sides for strengthening ties, the constraints on cooperation and the main joint initiatives. The article demonstrates that, on the basis of shared values and common goals, as well as the two partners' focus on soft power, the Euro-Japanese partnership has since the early 1990s become more action-oriented and has acquired a certain strategic dimension. Nevertheless, different foreign policy priorities and structural limitations concerning the role Japan and the EU each can assume as international political and security actors suggest that the bilateral partnership is not likely to move far beyond its current 'paper value', and hence become a more intense and genuinely strategic one, in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of UNISCI Discussion Papers is the property of Unidad de Investigaciones Sobre Seguridad y Cooperacion International (UNISCI) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article reviews inter-Korean relations in the period from 1980 to 1997 during which Chun Doo-hwan, Roh Tae-woo, and Kim Young-sam led their respective governments. Détente became more prevalent around the division system on the Korean peninsula with various actors' choices intersecting with one another. At the peninsular level, the South and the North agreed on a new set of definitions for mutual recognition—albeit with limitations—in the 1991 South-North Basic Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-Aggression, and Exchanges and Cooperation, which created the so-called the S-N Basic Agreement "regime." However, the regime broke down soon after, making the Korean peninsula problem an international issue. In 1994, the United States and DPRK made a breakthrough in the Geneva Agreed Framework, despite which the division system developed minor fissures but remained intact. This failure shows that, despite changes in the international system surrounding the Korean peninsula, the division system will be extremely difficult to overcome unless each actor realizes a change of the mindset that is supplemented by a strong resolve to act on it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along the 20th century, Europe lost its preeminence in international affairs. It was no longer the epicenter of the world, but a mere shadow of its former self. This new Europe was most visible after 1945. During the Cold War, the old continent reached the threshold of its vulnerability, and needed American protection in order to survive, rebuild itself and prosper. After 1989, Europe suffers from security confusion, especially when it comes to its relations with America. Is contemporary Europe capable of ensuring its security without Washington's interventions? Is this scenario desired by the USA, or even by all the European countries? How can the former "axis mundi" redefine itself in terms of security? These are the main questions the present paper is trying to take into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article situates Hou Hsiao-Hsien's films in the post Cold-War global setting. It discusses two common interpretive approaches to Hou Hsiao-Hsien's films - French auteurism and 'national allegory' - and puts these two approaches within their historical context of Cold-War and post Cold-War global politics. The article places the rise of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's films parallel to the rise of the mainland fifth generation of film directors, pointing out that their apparently opposite directions - Hou Hsiao-Hsien going political in his Taiwan trilogy and the fifth generation film directors going apolitical - are part and parcel of the same phenomenon of alternative politics in its particular contexts and the reconstruction of a new identity politics. Particular attention is given to Hou's Taiwan trilogy, Flowers of Shanghai, and Coffee Jikou. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically examines Pascale Casanova's recent theorization of the world literary space from the point of view of postcolonial and especially post-Cold War debates on global literary comparativism. It investigates whether her Bourdieu-derived 'field' approach, with its overwhelming conceptual dependence on 'market' and 'nation' metaphors, equips her to make valid qualitative judgements on vast swathes of 'non-European' and 'transnational' literary spaces. In annexing all literatures of the non-European, postcolonial world to a historiography of European literatures, Casanova's book, this article argues, is not well positioned to theorize contemporary forms of literary 'worldling' where Europe is but one node among many others and scarcely the 'Greenwich Meridian' of literary taste. Finally, the article discusses alternative ways of studying world literary spaces and histories that have emerged in recent years, especially in the works of David Damrosch and Franco Moretti. In the process, it also weaves in aspects of a post-1989 Anglophone world literature project the theoretical and geopolitical assumptions of which are in quite some tension with those of Casanova's book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore the state of African security in the context of both the Cold War and post-Cold War periods. Then, I unmask the dangers inherent in the conceptualisation of security in the realist perspective. I contend that since African security quagmires are multifaceted, the realist thesis is misleading and fails to address the complex nature of African security, hence the need for rethinking African security. Since socio-economic insecurity is the continent's bane to guarantee human security, I argue that non-military security issues/concerns should be the utmost priorities of African leaders. Doubtless, the birth of the AU, NEPAD, African Calabashes etc are commendable, but these efforts can only bear fruits if, and only if, there is strong political will and commitment on the part of African leadership and Africans in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the end of the bipolar international system, regional powers have not merely experienced an extension of their influence within their respective areas, but also scope for enhanced engagement between them. After years of mutual exclusion, India and Turkey, the two ambitious regional middle powers have, for instance, made remarkable headway in their efforts to forge close ties founded on shared values like democracy and secularism. Nowhere has it been more glaring than in the recent spurt in economic interaction, raising Indo-Turkish relationship to a qualitatively new level. In explaining variety of factors that account for the upswing in their bilateral relations in the past decade, this article argues that interests of the two countries in a common extended neighbourhood do not clash but overlap. In addition, the long-standing historical ties and the unprecedented growth in trade and investment underline the possibility of an enduring friendship notwithstanding Turkey's special relations with India's hostile neighbour, Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International security is a complex and contested concept, heavily laden with values and judgments. For centuries, however, it was linked to the study of war, military strategy and alternatives to the use of force as an instrument of policy. While few would be likely to dispute these examples as issues of security, many would now extend its meaning to other values and interests. They would apply the term to environmental damage, hunger, and protection of human rights. But where do we draw the line in studying international security? What should be included or excluded? Has international security changed in such a way that we now need to re-define the concept? This article argues that in today's post-Cold War world, we seem to have included so much in our definition of security that that we have posed the problem in ways that impede our quest for knowledge. Furthermore, international security, traditionally defined, has suffered few changes since the collapse of the Cold War; thus, there seems to have been more continuity than global change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the composition of United States post-Cold War foreign policy rhetoric under President Bill Clinton. We contend that Bill Clinton offered a coherent and comprehensive foreign policy narrative for the direction of U.S. foreign policy discourse in the post-Cold War world. Specifically, we analyze the “new partnership” narrative that Clinton articulated in his 1998 trip to Africa as a representative anecdote for the larger body of his foreign policy discourse. This “new partnership” narrative was structured by three narrative themes: (1) America’s role as world leader; (2) reconstituting the threat environment; (3) democracy promotion as the strategy for American foreign policy. These three themes can be found throughout Clinton’s foreign policy rhetoric and serve as the basis for a foreign policy narrative used by Clinton, and perhaps, future administrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the practical, normative, and theoretical import of large-scale organizational change in public organizations, scant research exists on this topic by political science, public administration, or public management scholars. Moreover, scholars have classified the broader literature on this topic as rife with complexities, competing theoretical pressures, and inconclusiveness. This article returns to basics by using a grounded theory approach to develop and illustrate an empirically informed and theoretically integrated "polity-centered" framework for studying large-scale organizational change in public organizations. Informing the framework are the patterns of politics driving, and driven by, efforts in the post-Cold War era to "green" the U.S. military by incorporating environmental and natural resource protection values into the services' core missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the idea of brands to debates about Nordic models and identity. Understanding brands to be more strategic and stable than identities, the article shows how a Nordic brand was marketed during the Cold War, but has since been challenged and undermined by a number of pressures. Central to the Nordic brand have been ideas of Nordic 'exceptionalism' — of the Nordics as being different from or better than the norm — and of the Nordic experience, norms and values as a model to be copied by others. In the post-Cold War period, key aspects of the Nordic brand have been challenged. On the one hand, elements of the Nordic elite appear to have forsaken the brand. On the other, broader recognition of a distinct Nordic brand is being undermined with the melding of Nordic with European practices and processes. The article concludes by asking whether the decline of the Nordic brand matters and further explores the link between Nordicity as a brand and as an identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although state failure has assumed considerable importance in the post-cold-war world, attempts to predict its occurrence statistically have not been very successful. Such attempts rely on off-the-shelf data collected for other purposes. To predict state failure, we need data more specific to the problem. A better body of theory is required to identify causal patterns, and case studies are a promising way to proceed. Case studies of paradigmatic state failures in Somalia and Afghanistan suggest a pattern: rulers attack the state apparatus in order to prevent opposition by the bureaucracy and military, precipitating the collapse of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents new data on the direct and deliberate killings of civilians, called one-sided violence, in intrastate armed conflicts, 1989-2004. These data contribute to the present state of quantitative research on violence against civilians in three important respects: the data provide actual estimates of civilians killed, the data are collected annually and the data are provided for both governments and rebel groups. Using these data, general trends and patterns are presented, showing that the post-Cold War era is characterized by periods of fairly low-scale violence punctuated by occasional sharp increases in violence against civilians. Furthermore, rebels tend to be more violent on the whole, while governments commit relatively little violence except in those few years which see mass killings. The article then examines some factors that have been found to predict genocide and evaluates how they correlate with one-sided violence as conceptualized here. A U-shaped correlation between regime type and one-sided violence is identified: while autocratic governments undertake higher levels of one-sided violence than other regime types, rebels are more violent in democratic countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Latin America, post–Cold War ideas about defence and security broke down geopolitical logics that had been historically accepted by Latin American armed forces. These ideas also provoked a partial downfall of one component of their traditional strategic representations: This geopolitical determinism explained post-colonial conflicts as being due to historical influences and to disputes about power and territory. Paradoxically, national frontiers are emerging and are threatened by destabilisation. The new conception of ‘the border’ and its revalorisation at the strategic level must be related not only to the character of post–Cold War threats but also to the new security vision prevailing in the international system. This vision cannot be separated from US strategic representations, which emphasise the “global” character of risks and security mechanisms. Thus, it appears that the transnational dimension of the strategic representations promoted by the United States does not correspond to the traditional concept of national territory. This concept, which is the basis of the reshuffling of military architecture in Latin America after the Cold War, is rooted in a representation of the region that has been present since the 1940s but was systematised under the Democratic Clinton Administration in the 1990s and further developed under the presidency of Republican George W. Bush in the early twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UN has been accused of hypocrisy — failing to act in accordance with the ideals it espouses — in post-Cold War peacekeeping missions. This article argues that such inconsistency can arise from ‘organized hypocrisy’, a phenomenon identified by organization theorists in which organizations respond to conflicting pressures in external environments through contradictory actions and statements. Organized hypocrisy may have both positive and negative effects on peacekeeping. On the one hand, it may produce or exacerbate gaps between commitments and resources, undermine reforms if they are decoupled from practice, and impede efforts to mitigate harmful peacekeeping externalities. On the other hand, organized hypocrisy may enable the UN, or regional organizations, to manage irreconcilable pressures that might otherwise render the organization incapable of effective action and threaten its survival. This article explains and develops the concept of organized hypocrisy, and apples it to post-Cold War peace operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the failed military coups in Ecuador (2000) and Venezuela (2002) with the successful 1999 military putsch in Pakistan in order to identify what factors affect coup outcomes in third-wave democracies. The unity of the armed forces in support of the Pakistani coup, and its division in the two Latin American cases, are critical in explaining the divergent outcomes. In turn, the degree of cohesion within the military in each case was affected by perceptions of domestic support and international reaction to military rule. In Ecuador and Venezuela there was greater public antipathy for military rule and stronger international opposition. This increased the armed forces' perceptions of the costs of governing, fostering divisions within the officer corps that ultimately scuttled the coups. In contrast, the successful coup in Pakistan was largely attributable to the unified military, which was a product of greater domestic and international tolerance of military rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explain the post-Cold War transformation of peacekeeping, I employ a "garbage can model" of agenda-setting to explain how peacekeeping came to be considered, in the context of the UN Security Council's agenda, an appropriate solution to problems for which it had previously been regarded as inappropriate. The UN fits the defining criteria of an organized anarchy, to which the garbage can model can be expected to apply: unclear preferences, opaque organizational processes, and fluid participation. Drawing on John Kingdon's adaptation of the garbage can model, I explain changes in peacekeeping as the result of policy entrepreneurs' linking of a solution (peacekeeping) to a problem (intrastate conflicts) in the context of a policy window created by the ending of the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent terrorist events in the UK, such as the security alerts at British airports in August 2006 and the London bombings of July 2005 gained extensive media and academic analysis. This study contends, however, that much of the commentary demonstrated a wide degree of failure among government agencies, academic and analytic experts and the wider media, about the nature of the threat and continues to distort comprehension of the extant danger. The principal failure, this argument maintains, was, and continues to be, one of an asymmetry of comprehension that mistakes the still relatively limited means of violent jihadist radicals with limited political ends. The misapprehension often stems from the language that surrounds the idea of ‘terrorism’, which increasingly restricts debate to an intellectually redundant search for the ‘root causes’ that give rise to the politics of com placency. In recent times this outlook has consistently underestimated the level of the threat to the security of the UK. This article argues that a more realistic appreciation of the current security condition requires abandoning the prevailing view that the domestic threat is best prosecuted as a criminal conspiracy. It demands instead a total strategy to deal with a totalizing threat. The empirical evidence demonstrates the existence of a physical threat, not merely the political fear of threat. The implementation of a coherent set of social policies for confronting the threat at home recognizes that securing state borders and maintaining internal stability are the fi rst tasks of government. Fundamentally, this requires a return to an understanding of the Hobbesian conditions for sovereignty, which, despite the delusions of post-Cold War cosmopolitan multiculturalism, never went away. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-cold war rule of law agenda in sub-Saharan Africa has not translated into reforms that enhance gender equality. The focus of reform efforts has reflected a post-cold war emphasis on creating a suitable legal and institutional environment for the market. In this climate any gains for gender equality have been limited and hard won. The main shortcomings are: gains in constitutional rights have had limited practical reach; official discussion of gender inequality in property remains disconnected from relevant broader processes such as restructuring of financial institutions; the reform agenda has not engaged with informal institutions, yet these have significant impact on gender relations; there has been relative under-investment in non-commercial judicial reform; and changes to labour regulation have been effected through sub-legislative and non-transparent processes and have not been interrogated for their failure to benefit workers in general, and in sectors dominated by women in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1990s, despite a change of administrations, U.S. policy towards the Balkans remained consistent. Post-Gulf War, the United States urged Europe to take the lead, but ultimately humanitarian considerations forced the United States to take an active, military role. Within the U.S. government, a struggle between ``incrementalism'' and a longer-term ``visionary approach'' characterized internal debate. Incrementalism ultimately prevailed. The framework for U.S. policy decisions, especially in the early 1990s, led the United States to active involvement, including a lack of consensus in the United Nations on the use of force. Events, culminating in the ``Washington Agreement'', led Croatia to seeing that its interests coincided with those of Bosnian Croats and Muslims. Only later did Croatian and U.S. interests diverge. Since Dayton, U.S. focus in Croatia has been on democratization, human rights, and the implementation of the accords. As U.S. Balkan policy evolved, seeing a stable European future for the region became a fundamental security interest of the United States. The Balkan Wars contributed significantly to changing perceptions of the transatlantic relationship and of the U.S. global role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of constructivist and English school scholars have investigated the extent to which humanitarian intervention is allowed and legitimized by international society. In other words, they have examined the nature and strength of a norm permitting humanitarian intervention. It is the contention of this article that another norm of humanitarian intervention—parallel but discrete—has been neglected. It is argued that ideas and beliefs shared by some members of international society not only permit intervention but prescribe it in certain circumstances and this has been largely ignored in the literature. By focusing on questions of when, where and why humanitarian action is permitted, scholars have neglected to develop theoretical explanations for the significant inconsistencies in humanitarian action that can be observed in the world. States do not intervene to prevent human rights violations simply because they are allowed to. By considering when and where humanitarian action is prescribed, and the interplay of this prescription with the self-interests of states, we can begin to understand why states respond to some grave violations of human rights and not others. The article concludes with an analysis of the power of the prescriptive norm to explain the increased instances of humanitarian intervention since the end of the Cold War and an assessment of the present state of the norm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]