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2. DIGITAL SOFT POWER DIPLOMACY: THE CASES OF GERMANY, ITALY, AND SPAIN IN THE COUNTRIES OF EASTERN PARTNERSHIP AND CENTRAL ASIA
- Author:
- Borna Zguric and Lidija Kos-Stanisic
- Publication Date:
- 07-2023
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Liberty and International Affairs
- Institution:
- Institute for Research and European Studies (IRES)
- Abstract:
- The main objective of this article was to examine how Germany, Italy and Spain practice digital public diplomacy in Eastern Partnership and Central Asia countries in 2022, i.e., how they promote their countries through their embassies’ Facebook profiles. Three research questions posed by the authors were: 1) Which social networks and applications have embassies of Germany, Italy, and Spain used in the countries of Eastern Partnership and Central Asia to inform and communicate with different audiences?; 2) Which soft power tools were dominantly communicated by the German, Italian, and Spanish embassies on Facebook profiles in countries of Eastern Partnership and Central Asia during 2022 to promote their own countries?; and 3) Are digital diplomacy tools of Germany, Italy, and Spain, that they utilize to promote their own countries and communicate with the public of Eastern Partnership and Central Asia, following their foreign policy focus? The authors have used quantitative content and thematic analysis to answer these questions. The results were presented with the use of descriptive statistics. The authors’ findings indicated that digital diplomacy 2.0 is standard practice for Germany and Italy in Eastern Partnership and Central Asia. Less information was available regarding Spain’s digital diplomacy efforts. The research’s findings further demonstrated that Germany and Italy exhibit greater interest in the Eastern Partnership and Central Asian countries compared to Spain, which was concordant with their foreign policy focuses.
- Topic:
- Soft Power, Public Diplomacy, Digital Diplomacy, and Eastern Partnership
- Political Geography:
- Central Asia, Germany, Spain, and Italy
3. Public and cultural diplomacy in European cities and states’ branding
- Author:
- Szymon Ostrowski
- Publication Date:
- 03-2022
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Nowa Polityka Wschodnia
- Institution:
- Faculty of Political Science and International Studies, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń
- Abstract:
- Article “Public and cultural diplomacy in cities’ branding” is a try to set ideas of city diplomacy and idea of branding into theory of international relations. Also, analysis of two West-European and two East-European cities is a chance to analyze chances and threats that both states and cities can encounter during a process of brand building. The main questions that article is answering are “Can cities use their resources and connections to make public and cultural diplomacy?” and “What influence on that process has factor of being a city in post-soviet country or former Soviet Satellite state?” It can be said that cities are able to brand and rebrand itself and they are more flexible than states that cannot run away from some aspects of its identity. In case of difference between western and post-soviet states, the difference is none. In research, numerous rankings, articles and analyses were used as a primary sources in order to characterize how different are images of Italy, Germany, Hungary and Ukraine. Also, paper tries to determine, what is relation between states brand and branding of its cities.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Diplomacy, Culture, Soft Power, State, Cities, and Branding
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Ukraine, Germany, Hungary, and Italy
4. The German Military Response to National Disasters and Emergencies: A Case Study of the Flooding in the Summer of 2021
- Author:
- Dominik Juling
- Publication Date:
- 03-2022
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Advanced Military Studies
- Institution:
- Marine Corps University Press, National Defense University
- Abstract:
- In the summer of 2021, a flood of unprecedented intensity occurred in Western Europe. This article describes the German crisis response mechanism to natural disasters with a focus on the deployment and tasks of the German Armed Forces and analyzes challenges and controversies connected with the internal use of the military in Germany after the flood.
- Topic:
- Natural Disasters, Crisis Management, and Flood
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Germany
5. Immigrant Players in the National Football Team of Germany and the Question of National Identity
- Author:
- Ahmet Görgen
- Publication Date:
- 01-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Liberty and International Affairs
- Institution:
- Institute for Research and European Studies (IRES)
- Abstract:
- This paper is based on the research related to the immigrant players in the national football team and the formation of national identity in Germany. Recent analyses reveal that the success of an immigrant player in the national sports team has been regarded as a useful factor to attract public attention to the contribution of immigrants to the progress of the country. During the matches, discourses coming from the fans depending on the result of the game. They target immigrant players as a scapegoat in the situation of loss. Indeed, this is visible in parallel with the increasing strong critics in the media against these immigrant players. In this paper, the case of Mesut Özil in the German National Football Team is analyzed. The case study offers evidence of whether the success of immigrant players has been an important factor for their inclusion in the national identity in Germany.
- Topic:
- Nationalism, Immigration, Sports, and Identity
- Political Geography:
- Germany
6. Spring 2021 edition of Strategic Visions
- Author:
- Alan McPherson
- Publication Date:
- 04-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Strategic Visions
- Institution:
- Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy, Temple University
- Abstract:
- Contents News from the Director Colloquium………………………..2 CENFAD sponsored lectures……...3 Prizes………………………………4 CENFAD Workshop………………4 Thanks to the Davis Fellow……….5 News from the CENFAD Community…6 Note from the Davis Fellow……………9 Book Reviews A Wall of Our Own: An American History of the Berlin Wall Review by Brandon Kinney…..11 Civil Aviation and the Globalization of the Cold War Review by Michael Fischer…..13 Imperial Metropolis: Los Angeles, Mexico, and the Borderlands of American Empire, 1865–1941 Review by Amanda Summers..15 Educating the Empire: American Teachers and Contested Colonization in the Philippines Review by Madison Ingram…17 Fantasy Island: Colonialism, Exploitation, and the Betrayal of Puerto Rico Review by Graydon Dennison..19 Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Latin America Review by Michael Onufrak….21
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Cold War, Military Affairs, Empire, Diplomatic History, and Statecraft
- Political Geography:
- United States, Philippines, Germany, Latin America, Global Focus, and Puerto Rico
7. June 2021 Issue
- Author:
- Florian Flade, Jason Warner, Alex Newhouse, and Peter Kirechu
- Publication Date:
- 06-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- CTC Sentinel
- Institution:
- The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
- Abstract:
- “A series of extreme far-right cases among members of Germany’s military and police highlight the threat of the enemy within: radicalized extremists within security services, with access to weapons, training, and confidential information,” Florian Flade writes in this month’s feature article. According to Flade, “The specter of armed underground cells being trained by former or current members of the security services has been a wake-up call for authorities. New measures have already been implemented within Germany’s domestic and military intelligence agencies to more effectively root out enemies of the state wearing uniforms. Nevertheless, the threat will most likely persist in the coming years.” He adds that “with the United States and other countries also grappling with this problem set, it is vital to share lessons learned and best practices at the international level.” This month’s interview is with Idriss Mounir Lallali, the Deputy Director and Acting (Interim) Director of the African Centre for the Study and Research on Terrorism (ACSRT), a structure of the African Union Commission (the secretariat of the African Union). Alex Newhouse examines “the multi-node structure” of a global network of violent neo-fascist accelerationists seeking system collapse. He writes that “evidence from Atomwaffen’s development and collapse reveals that it was not the apex of a hierarchy of groups, but rather one node in a larger network of violent accelerationists. This network is built on membership fluidity, frequent communications, and a shared goal of social destruction. This framework is vital to understanding how and why action against individual groups is not sufficient, and why the threat from Atomwaffen has not faded in spite of its reported ‘collapse.’ The lesson to be drawn from the history of the Atomwaffen Division is that the current threat of neo-fascist accelerationism exists more in the evolution of the network as a whole, rather than in any one individual group.” Peter Kirechu examines “Iran’s Currency Laundromats in the Emirates.” He writes that “Since 2014, the United States has sanctioned dozens of Iranian nationals and commercial entities for the illicit acquisition of U.S. and other foreign currencies. A close review of these designations reveals the organized character of Iran’s illicit currency laundering operations and the role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in their orchestration. It also shows that Iran relies on a diverse network of illicit commercial entrepreneurs to covertly access foreign currencies abroad. These actors operate under the cover of legitimate commerce and exploit the vulnerabilities of regional economic centers—such as the United Arab Emirates—to provide covert financial resources to the Revolutionary Guards.”
- Topic:
- Military Affairs, Counter-terrorism, Fascism, Far Right, and Police
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Iran, Germany, and United Arab Emirates
8. January 2021 Issue
- Author:
- Bruce Hoffman, Jacob Ware, Stephen Hummel, Paul Cruickshank, Don Rassler, Jonathan Schroden, and Nodirbek Soliev
- Publication Date:
- 01-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- CTC Sentinel
- Institution:
- The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
- Abstract:
- The violent storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, has heightened concerns about the threat posed by far-right extremism in the United States. In examining the wide range of terrorism and counterterrorism challenges facing the incoming Biden administration in this month’s feature commentary, Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware write that “the January 6 events at the U.S. Capitol offered a stark, frightening picture of the powerful forces fueling a conspiratorial mindset eschewing both the country’s foundational democratic values and the rule of law” and “serves as a salutary and timely reminder of the danger of potential violence to come.” Given the continued threat posed by “a stubbornly resilient Islamic State and an implacably determined al-Qa`ida,” they write that “it may be that as the United States and its allies enter the third decade of war against international salafi-jihadi terrorism, we need to recalibrate our immediate expectations away from ‘winning’ and ‘losing,’ toward ‘accepting’ and ‘managing’ this conflict. Such an admission would not be popular, but it would be a fairer reflection of the current state of the fight against terrorism, and a more honest prediction of what to expect over the next four, or more, years.” Our interview is with David Lasseter, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction. He notes that “advances in synthetic biology and other related biotechnologies hold the potential for both promise and peril in their application. And so we’ve got to be cognizant of how such technological shifts can alter the threat landscape [and] impose new defense and security challenges. We’ve heard it said that biological weapons are ‘a poor man’s nuke,’ given the potentially enormous impact of their usage. I think COVID-19 has further accelerated this mindset. The U.S. has had a watchful eye on bio threats and has elevated bio threats as a core national security priority over the past several years.” In an assessment that has far-reaching implications for the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan, Jonathan Schroden finds that if the United States were to withdraw the remainder of its troops from the country, the Taliban would have “a slight military advantage” over Afghanistan’s security forces, “which would then likely grow in a compounding fashion.” Nodirbek Soliev examines the Tajik connection in an Islamic State plot against U.S. and NATO air bases in Germany thwarted in April 2020.
- Topic:
- NATO, Taliban, Counter-terrorism, Islamic State, Joe Biden, and January 6
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, Europe, Tajikistan, Germany, and United States of America
9. The Franco-German Rivarly in the Post-Brexit Europe
- Author:
- Cagatay Ozdemir
- Publication Date:
- 10-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Uluslararasi Iliskiler
- Institution:
- International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
- Abstract:
- A significant foundation of European stability after World War II has been the balance of power between the United Kingdom (UK), France, and Germany. The UK’s accession to the European Communities (EC) in 1973 had carried that ‘balance’ into the EC’s institutional framework. In this regard, the UK’s withdrawal from EU structures may lead to an important political and financial vacuum at the center of the Union. In the wake of Brexit, indications of anxiety and concerns about power imbalances have emerged around the question of which country or counties will steer the Union. There exit fresh post-Brexit assessments that indicate that the UK’s departure from the EU may catalyze the differences between Germany and France. This paper will discuss three essential scenarios for the EU’s political and economic future direction, namely, French leadership, German leadership, and a Franco-German partnership, for the post-Brexit period.
- Topic:
- Regional Cooperation, Hegemony, European Union, Political stability, Brexit, and Strategic Stability
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom, Europe, France, and Germany
10. December 2021 Issue
- Author:
- Matthew Kriner, Jon Lewis, Seth Loertscher, Connor Ingleson, and James Garrison
- Publication Date:
- 12-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- CTC Sentinel
- Institution:
- The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
- Abstract:
- It has been almost a year since the events of January 6 shook the United States. In this month’s feature article, Matthew Kriner and Jon Lewis profile the Oath Keepers, an extreme far-right, anti-government group that allegedly played a key role in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. They write: “Since its inception in 2009, the group has used a warped sense of patriotism, loose enforcement of laws surrounding paramilitary activity, and America’s founding revolutionary spirit to justify anti-government mobilization. It consistently walked the edge of political violence before taking part in the January 6 insurrection. While the group claims to be ‘guardians of the republic,’ its principal target is the government itself—particularly entities representing perceived federal government overreach and vectors for tyrannical forces to suppress Americans’ natural rights.” With concern still high over the threat posed by the violent far-right in the United States and other parts of the world, H.E. Upchurch outlines the evolution of the “skull mask” neo-fascist network. Upchurch writes: “The backbone of the ‘skull mask’ transnational neo-fascist accelerationist network—whose nodes include terror groups such as Atomwaffen, the Base, and Feuerkrieg Division—is a group of organizations that grew out of Iron March, a neo-fascist web forum that was active from 2011 to 2017. The history of the Iron March network shows that violent extremist movements can develop from online communities even in the absence of a territorial base and without regular in-person contact between members.” This month’s interview is with Brigadier Rob Stephenson, deputy commander of NATO Special Operations Headquarters. Finally, Sofia Koller and Alexander Schiele examine the criminal justice approach to prosecuting women who left Germany during the last 10 years to join terrorist organizations in Syria and Iraq, including the Islamic State, and returned. They write: “Germany is one of the only countries that has successfully utilized aspects of international law to legally prove membership in a terrorist organization, especially in the case of returned women. It might provide a useful model for other countries in developing more effective prosecution of returnee cases in their respective legal systems.”
- Topic:
- NATO, Violent Extremism, Counter-terrorism, Women, Islamic State, Fascism, Far Right, January 6, and Oath Keepers
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Germany, North America, and United States of America
11. Tariffs and Monetary Policy: A Toxic Mix
- Author:
- Michael D Bordo and Mickey D. Levy
- Publication Date:
- 01-2020
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- The ratcheting up of tariffs and the Fed’s discretionary conduct of monetary policy are a toxic mix for economic performance. Escalating tariffs and President Trump’s erratic and unpredictable trade policy and threats are harming global economic performance, distorting monetary policy, and undermining the Fed’s credibility and independence. President Trump’s objectives to force China to open access to its markets for international trade, reduce capital controls, modify unfair treatment of intellectual property, and address cybersecurity issues and other U.S. national security issues are laudable goals with sizable benefits. However, the costs of escalating tariffs are mounting, and the tactic of relying exclusively on barriers to trade and protectionism is misguided and potentially dangerous. The economic costs to the United States so far have been relatively modest, dampening exports, industrial production, and business investment. However, the tariffs and policy uncertainties have had a significantly larger impact on China, accentuating its structural economic slowdown, and are disrupting and distorting global supply chains. This is harming other nations that have significant exposure to international trade and investment overseas, particularly Japan, South Korea, and Germany. As a result, global trade volumes and industrial production are falling. Weaker global growth is reflected in a combination of a reduction in aggregate demand and constraints on aggregate supply.
- Topic:
- International Trade and Finance, Monetary Policy, Economic Growth, Tariffs, and Industry
- Political Geography:
- Japan, China, Europe, Asia, South Korea, Germany, North America, and United States of America
12. An Economic Analysis Of The Fall Of France In June 1940 Based On The Theory Of New Institutional Economics
- Author:
- Ioannis Salavrakos
- Publication Date:
- 08-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- he paper challenges the view that the fall of France in June 1940 is attributed to military errors of the French High Command and with the brilliant German offense in the Ardennes. The paper highlights that the French security strategy after the end of World War I failed because the country lacked the economic basis to implement its strategy. Thus the paper argues that the French endorsed an internal and external balancing strategy against Germany. The internal balancing strategy was associated with the ability of France to sustain powerful armed forces and obviously this was associated with high defense spending and a strong economy. The second part was associated with external balancing which was associated with the creation of alliances in Eastern Europe in order to block any German expansion. Again this was associated with strong economic relations between France and these states. This strategy was implemented during the 1919-1929 period however after the global economic crisis erupted the deterioration of the French economy made the continuation of this strategy impossible. Thus France was forced to follow a defensive strategy at the military level and the privileged bilateral economic relations with Eastern European countries were abolished and Germany replaced France as the major economic and trading partner of these states.
- Topic:
- Economics, Regional Cooperation, Military Strategy, and World War II
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom, Europe, France, and Germany
13. A New Cold War: Personal Reflections Regarding Russia’s Missed Opportunities with NATO, Ukraine and Its Western Neighbors
- Author:
- Keith C. Smith
- Publication Date:
- 02-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- American Diplomacy
- Institution:
- American Diplomacy
- Abstract:
- President Boris Yeltsin’s imperial views on the “near abroad,” and President Vladimir Putin’s regarding Russia’s alleged “sphere of influence” has left Russia considerably weaker than it would have been otherwise, and the world much more endangered.
- Topic:
- Arms Control and Proliferation, Cold War, Diplomacy, Economics, Politics, Armed Forces, Reform, and Gas
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, Ukraine, Soviet Union, Germany, Estonia, Latvia, United States of America, and Baltic States
14. Can the European Union Save Multilateralism?
- Author:
- Mikael Barfod
- Publication Date:
- 05-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- American Diplomacy
- Institution:
- American Diplomacy
- Abstract:
- Controversies have abounded, including Palestine and Israel within the UN's Human Rights Council, lack of US support for the International Law of the Sea (since 1994), and the International Criminal Court (since 2002). Collectively, the European Union and its Member States remain by far the largest financial contributor to the UN, providing 30% of all contributions to the budget and 31% of peace-keeping activities in addition to substantial contributions towards project-based funding. 4. Some may object that the European Union has been hampered by the lack of a common position among EU Member States on the future of the UN Security Council (UNSC), where two member-states, UK and France, currently have permanent seats and one, Germany, is desperate to get one.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Cold War, Human Rights, European Union, and Multilateralism
- Political Geography:
- Africa, China, United Kingdom, Europe, Iran, Israel, Asia, France, Germany, and United States of America
15. President George H.W. Bush: the Man and the Statesman
- Author:
- Thomas E. McNamara
- Publication Date:
- 02-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- American Diplomacy
- Institution:
- American Diplomacy
- Abstract:
- President George H.W. Bush entered the office with more extensive foreign affairs experience than any other president except John Quincy Adams. After serving as ambassador to the United Nations, chief of the Liaison Office in Beijing, and eight years as vice president, Bush had exceptional understanding of foreign policy and diplomatic practice, and personal relationships with the most important world leaders. In his international accomplishments, Bush was, arguably, the most successful and consequential one-term president, and surpassed most two-term presidents.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Cold War, Diplomacy, National Security, History, and Gulf War
- Political Geography:
- Soviet Union, Germany, El Salvador, and United States of America
16. Good Grief! An Embarrassing Career-Endangering Episode
- Author:
- Hans Tuch
- Publication Date:
- 02-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- American Diplomacy
- Institution:
- American Diplomacy
- Abstract:
- When I was Public Affairs Counselor in Bonn, we received frequent visits from administration officials. Our routine preparations included preparing briefing materials for the officials and press packets for the accompanying traveling journalists. Although we were pretty skilled at these activities, there was always room for error, as we discovered in December 1982 during the first visit to Bonn of the newly appointed Secretary of State George Shultz.
- Topic:
- Cold War, Diplomacy, and Memoir
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Germany, and United States of America
17. Bonn Voyage, Twenty Years After
- Author:
- Richard Gilbert
- Publication Date:
- 05-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- American Diplomacy
- Institution:
- American Diplomacy
- Abstract:
- Moving vans pulling away from the sprawling former embassy of the United States in Bonn, Germany, in the summer of 1999 carried more heavy freight than just office furniture and the paraphernalia of a large embassy in transition. The trucks were laden as much with symbolism as with the residue of files, desks and chairs. As the vans crossed the John F. Kennedy Bridge over the Rhine and pointed north and east toward Berlin, a half century of American diplomacy in Bonn was coming to an end.
- Topic:
- Cold War, Diplomacy, European Union, and Memoir
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Germany, North America, and United States of America
18. THE EFFECTS OF THE SYRIAN REFUGEE CRISIS ON THE EU THROUGH THE LENS OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM: THE CASES OF GERMANY AND HUNGARY
- Author:
- Derya BÜYÜKTANIR Karacan
- Publication Date:
- 02-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Alternative Politics
- Institution:
- Department of International Relations, Abant Izzet Baysal University, Turkey
- Abstract:
- This paper focuses on the Syrian refugee crisis, which incurred a variety of negative social and economic impacts upon many countries in the Middle East, as well as in Europe. The aim of this study is to analyze the divergent attitudes of Germany and Hungary in the face of Syrian refugee crisis and the diversity of measures that these countries have adopted to tackle the refugee problem. The cases are analyzed through social constructivism, which focuses mainly on how the agents and structures mutually construct each other and on identities, norms, and interests without wandering away completely from the rational standpoint. The main conclusions of this study show that the refugees are perceived differently in Germany and Hungary. Conclusions also demonstrate that the Europeans and the refugees resulted in a new and an unexpected learning experience, and enabled changes for both sides. The findings also reveal that the gap between the attitudes of the leaders of different European countries for the refugees remained significant. The change due to incorporation of the refugees into European societies and the differing attitudes of their leaders affected both domestic and international politics in Europe among countries that accepted different numbers of Syrian refugees.
- Topic:
- Migration, Immigration, Refugee Crisis, Europe Union, and Political outlook
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Germany, Hungary, Berlin, Central Europe, and Budapest
19. The 1948 German Currency and Economic Reform: Lessons for European Monetary Policy
- Author:
- Gunther Schnabl
- Publication Date:
- 10-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- Twenty years after the introduction of the euro, the European Monetary Union (EMU) is at its crossroads. Following the outbreak of the European financial and debt crisis in 2008, the European Central Bank (ECB) took comprehensive measures to stabilize the common currency. Interest rates were cut to and below zero and several asset purchase programs have inflated the ECB balance sheet (Riet 2018). Within the European System of Central Banks, large imbalances have emerged via the TARGET2 payments system, which can be seen as quasi-unconditional credit in favor of the southern euro area countries (Sinn 2018). While the ECB terminated its asset purchase program at the end of 2018 and is expected to increase interest rates in late 2019, financial instability is reemerging. Growing uncertainty about the fiscal discipline of the Italian government has triggered a significant increase in risk premiums on Italian government bonds. In particular, in Italy and Greece, but also in Germany, bad loans and assets remain stuck in the banking systems. In the face of the upcoming downswing, European banks do not seem ready for new financial turmoil. In this fragile environment, the future path of the EMU is uncertain. To enhance the stability of the EMU, a group of German and French economists has called for a common euro area budget, for a strengthening of the European Stability Mechanism as lender of last resort for euro area countries and banks, as well as for a common European deposit insurance scheme (Bénassy-Quéré et al. 2018). In response, 154 German economists have warned against transforming the EMU into what they call a “liablity union,” which systematically undermines market principles and wealth (Mayer et al. 2018). In 2018, a French-German initative to introduce a common euro area budget faced strong opposition from a group of northern European countries as well as from Italy, symbolizing the political deadlock concerning reforms of the EMU. This article explains the different views on the institutional setting of monetary policymaking in Europe from a historical perspective. It begins with a description of the economic and monetary order in postwar Germany. It then discusses the positive implications for the European integration process and the economic consequences of the transformation of postwar German monetary order. The final section offers some economic policy recommendations.
- Topic:
- Economics, History, Monetary Policy, Reform, European Union, Banks, and Currency
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Germany
20. December 2019 Issue
- Author:
- Graham Macklin, Don Rassler, Daniel Koehler, and Tore Hamming
- Publication Date:
- 12-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- CTC Sentinel
- Institution:
- The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
- Abstract:
- The final two years of this decade witnessed a wave of far-right terror attacks around the world, including the October 2018 synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; the March 2019 gun attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand; the April 2019 Poway, California, synagogue shooting; the August 2019 attack targeting the Hispanic community at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas; and the October 2019 Halle, Germany, shootings, in which a synagogue was targeted. In our feature article, Graham Macklin examines the El Paso attack, which he assesses was “part of a chain reaction fomented within the violent sub-cultural online milieus of right-wing extremism.” He writes: “This digital ecosystem is fueling a cumulative momentum, which serves to lower ‘thresholds’ to violence for those engaged in this space, both in the United States and elsewhere, as one attack encourages and inspires another.” The Halle shootings appear to have also been part of this chain reaction. In a case study, Daniel Koehler writes that the far-right extremist who carried out the shootings in the eastern German town “appears to be mainly a copycat attacker inspired by previous incidents” such as the shootings in Christchurch, Poway, and El Paso. Koehler writes: “The Halle attack reflects and evidences several trends, including the internationalization of right-wing terrorism and lone-actor terrorists fashioning their own weapons. The attack stood out because it was the first time a terrorist appears to have used homemade firearms.” Our interview is with Lieutenant General John “Jack” Shanahan, the director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center at the U.S. Department of Defense. In that role, he is responsible for accelerating the delivery of artificial intelligence-enabled capabilities, scaling the department-wide impact of AI and synchronizing AI activities to expand joint force advantages. Tore Hamming draws on court documents from a recently completed trial to examine the 2016 Copenhagen ‘Matchstick’ terror plot. The failed conspiracy saw an Islamic State ‘virtual planner’ based in Syria connect and direct two Syrian refugees living in Sweden and Germany. The case provides insights on the evolving jihadi terror threat in the West and its transnational dimension. Hamming writes: “The plot presented obvious challenges for Western security institutions. Central to its planning and execution were the virtual planner and the availability of instructions on how to construct explosives.”
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, Terrorism, Violent Extremism, Counter-terrorism, Far Right, and Artificial Intelligence
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Germany, North America, and United States of America
21. The Use of Predictive Analysis Programs in Police Intelligence: A European Comparison / El uso de programas de análisis predictivo en la inteligencia policial: una comparativa europea
- Author:
- Virginia Cinelli and Alberto Manrique Gan
- Publication Date:
- 12-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal on International Security Studies (RESI)
- Institution:
- International Security Studies Group (GESI) at the University of Granada
- Abstract:
- Nowadays, two main limitations persist in intelligence analysis: the intrinsic existence of a certain degree of uncertainty and the large volume of information available. In order to face these problems, since the end of the 90s, technology and statistics have been used in the field of security to tackle the analytical limitations of human beings, improving their performances. As a result, professionals in the crime prevention areas started using technology in investigation to calculate the probability that a (criminal) event might occur in the future. Such a phenomenon is also called predictive analysis. Today, Europe stands out both for the number and the type of predictive programs implemented in different national contexts. The main objective of this article is to analyze the phenomenon of predictive policing in the European context through a comparative analysis of 6 cases study in 5 different countries (Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) to, firstly, assess the implications in the improvement of the security context of the European Union, and secondly, to detect the innovative cases within this framework.
- Topic:
- Crime, Intelligence, Science and Technology, and European Union
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom, Europe, France, Germany, Italy, and Netherlands
22. The Demographic Transition Theory of War: Why Young Societies Are Conflict Prone and Old Societies Are the Most Peaceful
- Author:
- Deborah Jordan Brooks, Stephen G. Brooks, Brian D. Greenhill, and Mark L. Haas
- Publication Date:
- 02-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Security
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- The world is experiencing a period of unprecedented demographic change. For the first time in human history, marked disparities in age structures exist across the globe. Around 40 percent of the world's population lives in countries with significant numbers of elderly citizens. In contrast, the majority of the world's people live in developing countries with very large numbers of young people as a proportion of the total population. Yet, demographically, most of the world's states with young populations are aging, and many are doing so quickly. This first-of-its kind systematic theoretical and empirical examination of how these demographic transitions influence the likelihood of interstate conflict shows that countries with a large number of young people as a proportion of the total population are the most prone to international conflict, whereas states with the oldest populations are the most peaceful. Although societal aging is likely to serve as a force for enhanced stability in most, and perhaps all, regions of the world over the long term, the road to a “demographic peace” is likely to be bumpy in many parts of the world in the short to medium term.
- Topic:
- Demographics, War, International Security, Democracy, and International Relations Theory
- Political Geography:
- Russia, United States, Japan, China, Germany, and Global Focus
23. Why China Has Not Caught Up Yet: Military-Technological Superiority and the Limits of Imitation, Reverse Engineering, and Cyber Espionage
- Author:
- Andrea Gilli and Mauro Gilli
- Publication Date:
- 02-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Security
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Can countries easily imitate the United States' advanced weapon systems and thus erode its military-technological superiority? Scholarship in international relations theory generally assumes that rising states benefit from the “advantage of backwardness.” That is, by free riding on the research and technology of the most advanced countries, less developed states can allegedly close the military-technological gap with their rivals relatively easily and quickly. More recent works maintain that globalization, the emergence of dual-use components, and advances in communications have facilitated this process. This literature is built on shaky theoretical foundations, however, and its claims lack empirical support. In particular, it largely ignores one of the most important changes to have occurred in the realm of weapons development since the second industrial revolution: the exponential increase in the complexity of military technology. This increase in complexity has promoted a change in the system of production that has made the imitation and replication of the performance of state-of-the-art weapon systems harder—so much so as to offset the diffusing effects of globalization and advances in communications. An examination of the British-German naval rivalry (1890–1915) and China's efforts to imitate U.S. stealth fighters supports these findings.
- Topic:
- Science and Technology, Military Affairs, Cybersecurity, and Information Age
- Political Geography:
- Britain, United States, China, and Germany
24. May 2018 Issue
- Author:
- Brian Glyn Williams, Robert Troy Souza, Bryan Price, Mikki Franklin, Daniel Milton, Brian Dodwell, Bennett Clifford, and Christian Jokinen
- Publication Date:
- 05-2018
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- CTC Sentinel
- Institution:
- The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
- Abstract:
- On June 14, 2018, the FIFA World Cup kicks off in Moscow with host Russia facing Saudi Arabia in the opening match. Brian Williams and Robert Souza warn in our cover article that the massive global media spotlight on Russia during the month-long tournament may incentivize jihadi terrorists to carry out attacks on Russian soil to retaliate for the country’s ongoing military intervention against Sunni rebel and jihadi fighters in Syria. Recent years have seen a string of jihadi terrorist attacks and plots in Russia, including the St. Petersburg metro bombing last year, as well as Islamic State plots and attacks targeting soccer venues in Europe. In recent months, propaganda outlets supportive of the Islamic State have released a torrent of threat messages against the tournament. According to Williams and Souza, potential threats include ‘self-starters’ inspired by Islamic State propaganda, foreign fighters returning from Syria and Iraq, and jihadis operating in the northern Caucasus and Tatarstan. Our interview is with New York Times foreign correspondent Rukmini Callimachi, whose ongoing podcast series Caliphate documents the evolution and crimes of the Islamic State. Daniel Milton and Brian Dodwell examine a female guesthouse registry obtained from Islamic State territory. The records on about 1,100 women who transited through the facility shed new light on the women who traveled from overseas to join the group, as well as challenge the dominant narrative in many media reports on the subject. Bennett Clifford explores pro-Islamic State instructional material on the messaging and file-sharing platform Telegram, arguing that the dissemination of know-how on operational and cyber security may be equally as dangerous as instructional material related to carrying out attacks. Christian Jokinen draws on court records to outline the experiences of German foreign fighters who traveled to join al-Shabaab in Somalia earlier this decade. For most of them, the terrorist group turned out to be an unwelcoming host organization.
- Topic:
- Sports, Islamic State, Journalism, Jihad, and Foreign Fighters
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Europe, Middle East, Germany, and Somalia
25. The Formation of Local Self-government During the System Transformation Period in Poland and the Former GDR
- Author:
- Adam Jarosz
- Publication Date:
- 01-2018
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Polish Political Science Yearbook
- Institution:
- Polish Political Science Association (PPSA)
- Abstract:
- This paper presents changes that have occurred at the local level in Poland and new German federal states during the process of the post-communist system transforma- tion. The stages of rebuilding the local self-government and its structures are analyzed. The experiences of Poland and Eastern Germany – two states where the system transformation took different courses – were compared. At the same time, both countries have different constitutional orders of the unitary state and federal state, and this context are interesting fields for a comparative analysis. This paper also confronts the two methods of institution building – the importing of well-established institutions and developing them in the evolu- tionary way, where in both cases path a dependency can be well observed. In Germany this is considered a special case (Sonderfall) of institutional transformation, in which the key role was played by the transference of institutions, personnel and financial means. This was also done much quicker and in a more structured and comprehensive way than in Poland. In the case of Poland, the creation of local self-government structures or shaping the political actors was a grassroots and evolutionary process. This article points out the most important factors that had a crucial significance in the course and results of the transformation and explains different ways of developing the system of democratic local self-government.
- Topic:
- Governance, Local, Federalism, and Transition
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Poland, and Germany
26. Journal of Advanced Military Studies: Training and Education in the Military
- Author:
- Scott Hamm, Rebecca Johnson, Brian S. Christmas, Bruce I. Gudmundsson, Rebecca Hannagan, Iain Farquharson, Tobias Roeder, William A. Taylor, Craig Stone, Timothy McCranor, David Todd, Paolo Tripodi, Lesley McBain, and Gregg Curley
- Publication Date:
- 01-2018
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Advanced Military Studies
- Institution:
- Marine Corps University Press, National Defense University
- Abstract:
- The current issue of Marine Corps University Journal devotes much of its content to the myriad aspects of educating and training military personnel in articles emphasizing institutional, pedagogical, and historical perspectives. The PME Round Table section looks principally at the efforts of select components within Marine Corps Training and Education Command to enhance the development of Marines through the employment of innovative instructional and career-management techniques. As Sergeant Major Scott Hamm notes in his leadoff essay, the modern battlefield is one typified by dispersed military formations; decision making within this milieu tends not to be performed by officers of high rank—as had been the case in the contests of centuries past—but rather by enlisted leaders. With this reality firmly in mind, MCU’s Enlisted Professional Military Education program seeks to place creative-thinking and critical-reasoning skills within the capable and ready hands of enlisted Marines, promoting such methods as historical case studies and cultural awareness training in conjunction with MCU’s Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning. Following Hamm, Rebecca Johnson discusses the Marine Corps War College curriculum, emphasizing its strategic field study initiatives, national policy wargames, and a rigorous student assessment program requiredto carry out its mission to cultivate the nation’s future senior military leaders. And Colonel Brian S. Christmas, in his round table contribution, focuses on Marine Corps Training Command’s Transformation Enhancement Program, a comprehensive effort performed across 90 schools that seeks to shape Marines through the career-long promotion of five core competencies, extending from values training and resiliency programs to introducing the young Marine to the tenets of maneuver warfare.
- Topic:
- Cold War, Education, History, Armed Forces, and Military Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Britain, Germany, and United States of America
27. The Return of Cultural Genocide?
- Author:
- Leora Bilsky and Rachel Klagsbrun
- Publication Date:
- 04-2018
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- Cultural genocide, despite contemporary thinking, is not a new problem in need of normative solution, rather it is as old as the concept of genocide itself. The lens of law and history allows us to see that the original conceptualization of the crime of genocide – as presented by Raphael Lemkin – gave cultural genocide centre stage. As Nazi crime was a methodical attempt to destroy a group and as what makes up a group’s identity is its culture, for Lemkin, the essence of genocide was cultural. Yet the final text of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) does not prohibit cultural genocide as such, and it is limited to its physical and biological aspects. What led to this exclusion? In this article, we examine the various junctures of law, politics and history in which the concept was shaped: the original conceptualization by Lemkin; litigation in national and international criminal courts and the drafting process of the Genocide Convention. In the last part, we return to the mostly forgotten struggle for cultural restitution (books, archives and works of art) fought by Jewish organizations after the Holocaust as a countermeasure to cultural genocide. Read together, these various struggles uncover a robust understanding of cultural genocide, which was once repressed by international law and now returns to haunt us by the demands of groups for recognition and protection.
- Topic:
- Genocide, International Law, History, Culture, Courts, and Holocaust
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Germany
28. The “Right to Remain Here” as an Evolving Component of Global Refugee Protection: Current Initiatives and Critical Questions
- Author:
- Daniel Kanstroom
- Publication Date:
- 01-2017
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal on Migration and Human Security
- Institution:
- Center for Migration Studies of New York
- Abstract:
- This article considers the relationship between two human rights discourses (and two specific legal regimes): refugee and asylum protection and the evolving body of international law that regulates expulsions and deportations. Legal protections for refugees and asylum seekers are, of course, venerable, well-known, and in many respects still cherished, if challenged and perhaps a bit frail. Anti-deportation discourse is much newer, multifaceted, and evolving. It is in many respects a young work in progress. It has arisen in response to a rising tide of deportations, and the worrisome development of massive, harsh deportation machinery in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Mexico, Australia, and South Africa, among others. This article’s main goal is to consider how these two discourses do and might relate to each other. More specifically, it suggests that the development of procedural and substantive rights against removal — as well as rights during and after removal — aids our understanding of the current state and possible future of the refugee protection regime. The article’s basic thesis is this: The global refugee regime, though challenged both theoretically and in practice, must be maintained and strengthened. Its historical focus on developing criteria for admission into safe states, on protections against expulsion (i.e., non-refoulement), and on regimes of temporary protection all remain critically important. However, a focus on other protections for all noncitizens facing deportation is equally important. Deportation has become a major international system that transcends the power of any single nation-state. Its methods have migrated from one regime to another; its size and scope are substantial and expanding; its costs are enormous; and its effects frequently constitute major human rights violations against millions who do not qualify as refugees. In recent years there has been increasing reliance by states on generally applicable deportation systems, led in large measure by the United States’ radical 25 year-plus experiment with large-scale deportation. Europe has also witnessed a rising tide of deportation, some of which has developed in reaction to European asylum practices. Deportation has been facilitated globally (e.g., in Australia) by well-funded, efficient (but relatively little known) intergovernmental idea sharing, training, and cooperation. This global expansion, standardization, and increasing intergovernmental cooperation on deportation has been met by powerful — if in some respects still nascent — human rights responses by activists, courts, some political actors, and scholars. It might seem counterintuitive to think that emerging ideas about deportation protections could help refugees and asylum seekers, as those people by definition often have greater rights protections both in admission and expulsion. However, the emerging anti-deportation discourses should be systematically studied by those interested in the global refugee regime for three basic reasons. First, what Matthew Gibney has described as “the deportation turn” has historically been deeply connected to anxiety about asylum seekers. Although we lack exact figures of the number of asylum seekers who have been subsequently expelled worldwide, there seems little doubt that it has been a significant phenomenon and will be an increasingly important challenge in the future. The two phenomena of refugee/asylum protections and deportation, in short, are now and have long been linked. What has sometimes been gained through the front door, so to speak, may be lost through the back door. Second, current deportation human rights discourses embody creative framing models that might aid constructive critique and reform of the existing refugee protection regime. They tend to be more functionally oriented, less definitional in terms of who warrants protection, and more fluid and transnational. Third, these discourses offer important specific rights protections that could strengthen the refugee and asylum regime, even as we continue to see weakening state support for the basic 1951/1967 protection regime. This is especially true in regard to the extraterritorial scope of the (deporting) state’s obligations post-deportation. This article particularly examines two initiatives in this emerging field: The International Law Commission’s Draft Articles on the Expulsion of Aliens and the draft Declaration on the Rights of Expelled and Deported Persons developed through the Boston College Post-Deportation Human Rights Project (of which the author is a co-director). It compares their provisions to the existing corpus of substantive and procedural protections for refugees relating to expulsion and removal. It concludes with consideration of how these discourses may strengthen protections for refugees while also helping to develop more capacious and protective systems in the future.
- Topic:
- Human Rights, International Cooperation, Border Control, Refugees, and Humanitarian Crisis
- Political Geography:
- Africa, United States, Europe, France, South Africa, Germany, Australia, Mexico, and Global Focus
29. The Extent and Effects of German-Boer Collaboration During the First World War: A Comprehensive and Chronological Analysis
- Author:
- Christian De Jager
- Publication Date:
- 09-2017
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- The Boer Rebellion of 1914 provides a fascinating example of how ethno-linguistic bonds can directly influence the development and formation of pragmatic military and political alliances. What had begun in the late nineteenth century as reciprocal perceptions of shared ethnic heritage had, by the fall of 1914, developed into an official military and political alliance between the German Empire and the Boers of South Africa. Contributing to scholarship in colonial military and cultural history, this essay offers an original interpretation of the often misrepresented and under-studied extent and effects of German-Boer collaboration during the First World War. The author makes use of sources in English, Afrikaans and German to provide a comprehensive account of the events, concluding that German-Boer collaboration was remarkably extensive and ultimately decisive for the course of the South-West Africa campaign and demonstrating the important link between military decision-making and cultural and political structures.
- Topic:
- Diplomacy, Military Strategy, Alliance, and Cultural Diplomacy
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Europe, South Africa, and Germany
30. February 2017 Issue
- Author:
- Georg Heil, Brian Dodwell, Don Rassler, Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, Robin Simcox, Shashi Jayakumar, and Andrew McGregor
- Publication Date:
- 02-2017
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- CTC Sentinel
- Institution:
- The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
- Abstract:
- In an extensive interview, General John W. Nicholson, commander of Resolute Support and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, stresses the importance of preventing the country from again becoming a platform for international terrorism, noting counterterrorism operations have almost halved the fighting strength of the Islamic State’s local affiliate. He also outlines the ongoing effort to empower Afghan efforts against the Taliban, saying: “They’re at a bit of a stalemate. The government holds about two-thirds of the population. The enemy holds a solid 8 to 10 percent. … We think [if] we get to about 80 percent or more, we start to reach a tipping point where the insurgency becomes more irrelevant.” Our cover story by Georg Heil focuses on the deadly truck attack this past December in Berlin by Anis Amri, a Tunisian extremist suspected of links to Islamic State operatives in Libya. Investigations have made clear the danger posed by the radical network he belonged to in northwestern Germany led by an Iraqi preacher named Abu Walaa. It is believed to have recruited dozens to travel to join the Islamic State, communicated extensively with Islamic State operatives in Syria and Iraq, and encouraged attacks on German soil. Heil argues the high level of interconnectedness between these radicals in Germany and the Islamic State has potentially grave implications for European security. Aymenn al-Tamimi looks at the implications of the recent realignment of rebel and jihadi groups in Syria, which created two potentially conflicting power centers revolving around an enlarged Ahrar al-Sham and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, a new al-Qa`ida-aligned umbrella grouping. Robin Simcox finds Islamic State plots by pre-teens and teens are increasing in the West, with plotters in contact with the group in a majority of such cases. Shashi Jayakumar examines the growing Islamic State threat to Southeast Asia, arguing the group may pose as big a threat in the future in the East as in the West. Andrew McGregor warns growing clashes between Fulani Muslim herders and settled Christian communities in Nigeria could be exploited by terrorist groups and potentially destabilize the entire Sahel-West Africa region.
- Topic:
- Terrorism, Counter-terrorism, Islamic State, Youth, Syrian War, and Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, Europe, South Asia, Middle East, Germany, Syria, Southeast Asia, and Sahel
31. March 2017 Issue
- Author:
- Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, Seamus Hughes, Andrew Zammit, Ahmet S. Yayla, Matthew Dupee, and Daniel H. Heinke
- Publication Date:
- 03-2017
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- CTC Sentinel
- Institution:
- The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
- Abstract:
- In our feature article, Seamus Hughes and Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens focus on the threat to the United States from the Islamic State’s “virtual entrepreneurs” who have been using social media and encryption applications to recruit and correspond with sympathizers in the West, encouraging and directing them to engage in terrorist activity. They find that since 2014, contact with a virtual entrepreneur has been a feature of eight terrorist plots in the United States, involving 13 individuals. In our other cover article, Ahmet Yayla, the former police counterterrorism chief in the Turkish city of Sanliurfa near the Syrian border, outlines how investigations into the New Year’s Eve Reina nightclub attack in Istanbul have made clear the “immense scale of the Islamic State threat to Turkey.” While the attack, remotely steered by Islamic State operatives in Raqqa, was the work of a single gunman, a 50-strong network in Istanbul with access to at least half a million dollars provided logistical support. With the Islamic State declaring all-out war on Turkey, Turkish counterterrorism capacity severely weakened by recent purges, as many as 2,000 Islamic State fighters already on Turkish soil, and the possibility that Islamic State fighters will flood into Turkey as the caliphate crumbles, Yayla warns of severe implications for international security. Daniel Heinke, the director of the state bureau of investigation (LKA) in Bremen, outlines the key findings of an official German study of almost 800 German foreign fighters—the largest such study by a Western government—and the takeaways for smarter counterterrorism. He notes that while the number of Germans traveling to join the Islamic State has slowed to a trickle, there has been a surge in violent Islamist extremism inside the country, creating concern that returning foreign fighters will add “lethal capabilities to an already highly adrenalized Islamist community.” Andrew Zammit outlines how the jihadi threat in Australia has transformed since the Islamic State called for attacks in Western countries. While there has been an increase in attacks and plots in Australia, they have also become less sophisticated and ambitious. Finally, Matthew DuPée examines the growing financial windfall the Afghan Taliban and other jihadi groups are extracting from illegal mining in Afghanistan, which is now providing the Taliban with as much as $300 million in revenue per year.
- Topic:
- Science and Technology, Terrorism, Taliban, Counter-terrorism, Islamic State, Mining, Jihad, and Foreign Fighters
- Political Geography:
- Iraq, Turkey, Middle East, Germany, Australia, Syria, North America, and United States of America
32. Perspectives for Researching British Appeasement of Nazi Germany in the Inter-War Years Using the Digitized Newspaper Collections of the British Library
- Author:
- Andrei Vasiliu
- Publication Date:
- 01-2017
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Hiperboreea
- Institution:
- Balkan History Association
- Abstract:
- This paper aims to verify that the methods for researching the British appeasement policy towards Germany in the inter-war years can include the new method of studying the digitized collections of newspapers of the British Library. The policy of appeasement led by Great Britain during the inter-war years still represents a very attractive subject of research. The challenge lies not only in the new data harvested from primary sources such as documents and newspapers but also in the new methods of researching that may be applied, and that may increase the interest of scholars. Today, researching the digitized collections of archives are not even a futuristic resource, but a growing necessity. Accessing the British Library's digitized collections through the British Newspaper Archive website is often easier and more efficient than going to the archives. The site has more than 40 million digitized newspapers, mainly local periodicals, which can be accessed by searching for keywords, establishing filters and saving results to retrieve them later. The electronic resources of the digitized collections provide valuable help in my doctoral research on the Anglo-French appeasement reflected in the newspapers, which proves to be a great challenge, given the fact that the subject was widely covered in many of the central newspapers. But, of course, this method immediately poses multiple questions: is this method of research as rigorous as the traditional research conducted in the archives? Does this method provide the intercoder reliability framework required for such works? These are the research questions that remain at the center of this article. Previous research on the subject of digitized collections and also the analysis of the resources of the British Newspaper Archive in comparison with the traditional British Library resources can provide an answer.
- Topic:
- History, World War I, and World War II
- Political Geography:
- Britain, Europe, and Germany
33. Cultural Policing: Police and Minorities in Berlin | Le policier et le culturel. Police et minorités à Berlin
- Author:
- Jérémie Gauthier
- Publication Date:
- 09-2017
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Cultures & Conflits
- Institution:
- Cultures & Conflits
- Abstract:
- Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Berlin police precincts, this article focuses on the so-called “intercultural prevention” policy implemented in Berlin since the early 2000s. The author analyzes how police work is informed by a culturalist framework, particularly regarding Muslim communities. The article shows how the link between prevention strategies and the culturalist approach to the treatment of minorities has broadened the police mandate, making police work closer to social work. Yet, this culturalist framework has ambivalent effects: on the one hand, it limits the effects of individual stereotyping during police interventions; on the other hand, it produces forms of reification of groups labeled as “cultural minorities.”
- Topic:
- Sociology, Minorities, Ethnography, and Police
- Political Geography:
- Europe, France, and Germany
34. Networked security between “restraint” and “responsibility”? Germany’s security policy towards Africa
- Author:
- Ulf Engel
- Publication Date:
- 10-2016
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- Ulf Engel assesses the recent evolution of German security policy towards and engagement in Africa which should serve as a useful comparative model for Canada. Notably, in 2014 the German government adopted a comprehensive and networked approach through its Africa Policy Guidelines which is something completely lacking in Canada.
- Topic:
- Security, International Cooperation, and Foreign Aid
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Europe, Canada, Germany, and North America
35. The Rise of Intelligence Studies: A Model for Germany? Download
- Author:
- Alessandro Corvaja, Brigita Jeraj, and Uwe M. Borghoff
- Publication Date:
- 01-2016
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Connections
- Institution:
- Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
- Abstract:
- Intelligence Studies have established themselves as a common subject in higher education in the Anglosphere. Germany so far offers no dedicated program in the field. A postgraduate program that promotes an understanding of the role and context of intelligence, strengthens analytical skills and deepens subject-matter expertise would combine the best features of various educational models, and provide a real contribution to building a cadre of highly qualified intelligence professionals. In this research report, the authors succinctly document the state of the discipline, present examples of some twelve degree programs, and, finally, develop initial proposals for an intelligence curriculum for German universities.
- Topic:
- Education, Intelligence, and Higher Education
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Germany, and Central Europe
36. Shackled Liberties, or: How Security Came to Trump Everything Else
- Author:
- Jan-Peter Hartung
- Publication Date:
- 12-2016
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Review of Human Rights
- Institution:
- Society of Social Science Academics (SSSA)
- Abstract:
- In this paper, the origins of the “security narrative” in contemporary German political discourse is traced back to the early modern conception of “natural law,” first emphasized by Thomas Hobbes. Underlying this conception is that individuals would – by acknowledgment of their inborn “natural law” – sacrifice their individual liberties for the sake of public security. It is shown that a conception of state based on such a metaphysical premise discounts the existence of any discontent as valid within a society, and allows for top-down coercive measures against anyone who does not buy into this narrative. Those measures, exemplified by political rhetoric in Germany and beyond in the wake of recent mass migration and “terrorist threat,” do quite often impair with even fundamental human rights and appear at odds with the simultaneous claim to represent a liberaldemocratic constitution.
- Topic:
- Security, Donald Trump, and Civil Liberties
- Political Geography:
- Germany and United States of America
37. Germany and the Challenge of Mass Immigration
- Author:
- Zoltán Eperjesi
- Publication Date:
- 01-2016
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Hiperboreea
- Institution:
- Balkan History Association
- Abstract:
- This article gives an insight into the problematic origins of the term multiculturalism, a brief summary of integration of foreigners in Germany by presenting certain debates about incorporation, assimilation and dominant culture in order to ultimately see the critique of the model of multiculturalism.
- Topic:
- Immigration, Multiculturalism, Democracy, Immigrants, and Pluralism
- Political Geography:
- Germany
38. A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War, Isabel V. Hull
- Author:
- Tanisha M. Fazal
- Publication Date:
- 01-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Political Science Quarterly
- Institution:
- Academy of Political Science
- Abstract:
- Isabel Hull's analysis of international law during World War I is a welcome and valuable contribution to an emerging body of scholarship on the laws of war. This is not to undercut its place in the historiography of World War I. Hull rightly points out that most histories of the war have tended to gloss over or even dismiss the role of international law in the war. Hull corrects this bias by delving into British, French, and particularly German archives to show that international law was very much on the minds of all parties to the conflict. Indeed, she argues that preserving the existing structure of international law was a major reason for the outbreak of war. - See more at: http://www.psqonline.org/article.cfm?IDArticle=19345#sthash.HizIRkHF.dpuf
- Topic:
- International Law and War
- Political Geography:
- France and Germany
39. A Tran-Atlantic Condominium of Democratic Power: the grand design for a post-war order at the heart of French policy at the Paris Peace Conference
- Author:
- Peter Jackson
- Publication Date:
- 07-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- France’s policy at the Paris Peace Conference has long been characterised as a bid to destroy German power and to secure a dominant position in the post-1918 European political order. The strategy and tactics of French premier Georges Clemenceau are nearly always contrasted with those of American president Woodrow Wilson. Clemenceau is represented as an arch cynic and committed practitioner of Realpolitik while Wilson is depicted as an idealist proponent of a new approach to international politics. The earliest, and one of the most extreme, articulation of this view was advanced by John Maynard Keynes in his Economic Consequences of the Peace. In what remains the most influential book ever written about the peace conference, Keynes characterised Clemenceau as a French Bismarck and the chief advocate of a ‘Carthaginian peace’.1 This judgement has reverberated through the historiography of the European international politics ever since.2 This general picture misses important dimensions to French planning and thus to the possibilities for peace in 1919. The evidence reveals that the peace programme of the Clemenceau government was much more open-ended and innovative than is generally recognised. French negotiators did propose a highly traditional project to overthrow the European balance of power by detaching the Left Bank of the Rhine from Germany and placing this region under permanent occupation. But there were other currents in French planning and policy that have been neglected. The French peace programme, as it emerged in February-March 1919, was a complex combination of power political calculation and an ideological commitment to a democratic peace based on new principles of international politics. Alongside the aim of territorial adjustment and a weakening of German power was a thoroughly trans-Atlantic conception of a democratic post-war order that allowed for the possibility of political and economic co- operation with a reformed and democratic Germany. The flexible and fundamentally multilateral character of this ‘larger strategic design’ overlapped with prevailing internationalist visions of peace and security in ways that have been missed by most scholars. French policy was much more ambiguous than Clemenceau was later willing to admit. Along with his chief lieutenant André Tardieu, he would spend much of the 1920s denouncing the failure of successive governments to impose the letter of the Versailles Treaty.4 But this post-war posturing has done much to obscure the complex character of his government’s peace programme.
- Topic:
- Diplomacy, International Cooperation, World War I, and Transatlantic Relations
- Political Geography:
- United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany
40. Full Issue: Emerging Domains of Security
- Author:
- Meg Guliford, Thomas McCarthy, Alison Russell, Michael M. Tsai, Po-Chang Huang, Feng-tai Hwang, Ian Easton, Matthew Testerman, Nikolas Ott, Anthony Gilgis, Todd Diamond, Michael Wackenreuter, Sebastian Bruns, Andrew Mark Spencer, Wendy A. Wayman, and Charles Cleveland
- Publication Date:
- 09-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Fletcher Security Review
- Institution:
- The Fletcher School, Tufts University
- Abstract:
- The theme of this special edition is “Emerging Domains of Security.” Coupled with previously unpublished work developed under a prior “Winning Without War” theme, the articles therein honor Professor Martel’s diverse, yet forward-leaning, research interests. This edition maintains the journal’s four traditional sections of policy, history, interviews, and current affairs. Our authors include established academics and practitioners as well as two Fletcher students, Nikolas Ott and Michael Wackenreuter. Each of the articles analyzes critical issues in the study and practice of international security, and our authors make salient arguments about an array of security-related issues. The articles are borne out of countless hours of work by FSR’s dedicated editorial staff. I deeply appreciate the time and effort they devoted to the publication of this volume. They are full-time graduate students who masterfully balanced a host of responsibilities.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, Intelligence, International Cooperation, International Law, History, Military Affairs, Counter-terrorism, Cybersecurity, Navy, Conflict, Space, Interview, Army, Baath Party, and Norms
- Political Geography:
- China, Iraq, Europe, Middle East, Taiwan, Germany, Asia-Pacific, Global Focus, and United States of America
41. Moving East and South: U.S. Navy and German Navy Strategy in the Eurasian Theater 1991- 2014, A View from Germany
- Author:
- Sebastian Bruns
- Publication Date:
- 09-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Fletcher Security Review
- Institution:
- The Fletcher School, Tufts University
- Abstract:
- The Cold War ended rather suddenly in 1991. With it went the model on which the United States’ maritime strategy of the 1980s had rested. Driven by individuals like John Lehman, President Ronald Reagan’s long-time Secretary of the Navy, that series of strategic documents promulgated a forward, offensive, counter-force approach and the famous ‘600-ship Navy’ force structure. With the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991, the sole challenger to U.S. naval power vanished practically overnight. Red Fleet warships were rusting away in port or dismantled altogether. In the United States, the military lost significant human capital through a number of force reduction rounds, which reflected how the U.S. Navy could and would take on the post-Cold War world intellectually. In the wake of this strategic recalibration, allied militaries and their navies—such as the Federal German Navy, soon to be renamed German Navy—also underwent substantial transformations. These were often guided by the shifting geopolitical landscape as well as the popular desire to reduce the inflated defense budgets of Cold War days in order to obtain a peace dividend. This analysis will focus on the Eurasian theater—very broadly speaking, the waters that surround the European and Southwest Asian landmasses[1]—in U.S. and German naval strategy between 1991 and 2014. The maritime sphere has become increasingly important as a domain of emerging security since the end of the Cold War, yet comparatively little time and resources are being devoted to research on naval strategy and relationships between allies at sea. As a result, the use of naval force for political and diplomatic ends and the dynamics of maritime geopolitics have suffered. This essay seeks to underline the challenges that have confronted the U.S. Navy in the past generation and analyze their long-term effects. While the U.S. Navy’s geographic focus and operational interests have increasingly shifted from Europe to the Middle East and Asia, and from control of the “blue water” high seas to the littorals, these key interests should not be overlooked. In the view of the author, the fall of the Soviet Union and the implication that allies like Germany would do more to patrol their own maritime neighborhood provided the U.S. Navy with a convenient reason to de-emphasize their previously highly valued naval hub in the Mediterranean Sea. In rebalancing from the Sixth Fleet area of responsibility (AOR) to other regions of the world, the U.S. Navy accepted the consequences for fleet design and ship numbers, perhaps willingly using it as a bargaining chip for force reduction rounds in Washington, D.C. Implicitly, European allies and the U.S. Air Force[2] were expected to fill the gap left behind in terms of naval presence and crisis response, in particular after the successful campaigns in the Adriatic Sea in responding to unrest and war in the Balkans. European allies, however, were largely uninterested in stepping up to the plate; they considered their near abroad safe enough. Most importantly, they were somewhat wary of delivering a combined ‘pocket Sixth Fleet’ of their own. Finally, they were preoccupied with managing German unification, enlargement of the European Union, and establishing a common market and currency, among other things. Accordingly, this paper sheds a light on some key German strategic documents for a time when the reunited country sought its new place in the security environment of the post-Cold War world. By taking a unique view from Germany, one of the U.S. Navy’s premier NATO allies, this analysis also considers the transformation of the Bundesmarine from an escort navy to an expeditionary navy.[3] It seeks to conceptually explain how Germany’s security policy addressed the maritime challenges of the new era. The German Navy was principally drawn south- and eastward geographically after 1991, usually in close cooperation with other allied and friendly navies (and mandated by NATO, the EU, or the UN).[4] It was increasingly asked to address maritime security challenges to which the U.S. Navy no longer, or only in a supporting role, responded. The German Navy went into the breach with what were essentially Cold War assets and a mindset fundamentally dominated by the inability to think strategically. This paper is split into two sections. The first section discusses the 1991-2001 timeframe and the second section covers the period from 2001-2014. 2001 marked the inauguration of President George W. Bush in January and the terrorist attacks on September 11 eight months later. Each section looks at the strategic developments of the U.S. Navy and the German Navy, their major naval operations, and some areas of cooperation between the two navies in Eurasia...
- Topic:
- Security, Cold War, History, Military Strategy, Navy, and Maritime
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Germany, North America, and United States of America
42. The Bundeswehr and Female Soldiers: The Integration of Women into the Armed Forces (2000–2015)
- Author:
- Gerhard Kümmel
- Publication Date:
- 06-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Connections
- Institution:
- Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
- Abstract:
- The turn of the new millennium represented a caesura for the Bundeswehr (German armed forces), because the composition of its personnel was to change quite dramatically following a decision by the European Court of Justice in January 2000, which demanded considerably more employment opportunities for women in the military as soldiers rather than solely in medical services as practiced before. In the years that followed, the number of female soldiers in the Bundeswehr increased from about 2 % to about 10 % by spring 2015. The present article firstly outlines the history of women’s participation in the German armed forces up through today. Secondly, it summarizes the findings of the various empirical studies that the in-house research institute of the German Ministry of Defense (formerly the Bundeswehr Institute of Social Research (Sozialwissenschaftliches Institut der Bundeswehr, SOWI)) and the Center of Military History and Social Sciences of the Bundeswehr (Zentrum der Bundeswehr für Militärgeschichte und Sozialwissenschaften, ZMSBw) have undertaken in this context. Lastly, these empirical findings are put into a theoretical context.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Military Affairs, Women, and Feminism
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Germany, and Central Europe
43. The German Moment in a Fragile World
- Author:
- Thomas Bagger
- Publication Date:
- 03-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Washington Quarterly
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Abstract:
- “Germany is Weltmeister ” or world champion, wrote Roger Cohen in his July 2014 New York Times column—and he meant much more than just the immediate euphoria following Germany's first soccer world championship since the summer of unification in 1990. Fifteen years earlier, in the summer of 1999, the Economist magazine's title story depicted Germany as the “Sick Man of the Euro”. Analysis after analysis piled onto the pessimism: supposedly sclerotic, its machines were of high quality but too expensive to sell in a world of multiplying competitors and low-wage manufacturing. Germany seemed a hopeless case, a country stuck in the 20th century with a blocked society that had not adapted to the new world of the 21st century, or worse, a society that was not even adaptable.
- Political Geography:
- Germany
44. In The Shadow Of Empire: Reflecting On The Political-Strategic Position Of The Small States In Europe And The Caribbean Basin During The Cold War
- Author:
- Mitchell Belfer
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- AUSTRAL: Brazilian Journal of Strategy International Relations
- Institution:
- Postgraduate Program in International Strategic Studies, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
- Abstract:
- Any evaluation of 20 th century international political and socio - economic engagements inevitably draws heavily on the literature depicting the relations between and within the Cold War blocs. Such cognitive benchmarking has become so extensive that even the earth - shattering World Wars, which preceded US - Soviet brinkmanship, have been sewn together to the Cold War so as to produce a meta - narrative as a means of understanding the dynamics of international relations themselves. For instance, WWI has not merely entered the history books for what it produced; it has also come to be seen as producing the right conditions for Russia's communist revolution and the US's rise to inherit the position of Western leadership — two necessary prequels to the half century of Cold War. But not before these two ideologically opposed blocs join forces to rid the world of fascism and the German pivot in European affairs. WWII has come to represent three chapters in the story of civilisation: the story of genocide (re: Nazi Germany's quest to exterminate world Jewry), the story of non - nationalistic secular ideological struggles and the story of power beyond the pale of power (re: the nuclearisation of power). In other words, WWII has also, largely, been included as a necessary chapter to the Cold War. And certainly it was. Without WWII it is difficult to imagine how, or if, the USSR would have driven west and occupied Central Europe, whether the West European states would not have deployed East, if the US would have deepened its engagements to Europe or any number of dynamics would have unfolded. It is clear that the Cold War is a defining period of international relations history.
- Political Geography:
- Russia, United States, Europe, Soviet Union, Germany, and Caribbean
45. The Higher the Better? A Comparative Analysis of Sociodemographic Characteristics and Human Capital of German Federal Government Members
- Author:
- Katrin Scharfenkamp and Alexander Dilger
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- German Politics and Society
- Institution:
- German Politics and Society Journal
- Abstract:
- Are the highest politicians better qualified than their peers? In this article, we analyze differences between chancellors, vice chancellors, and ministers of the inner or residual cabinets of the German federal governments between 1949 and 2009 with respect to their social backgrounds and educational, economic, as well as political human capital. Different statistical methods reveal no clear primacy of chancellors or vice chancellors over other members of government. Interestingly, inner cabinets have higher qualifications than residual cabinets, as well as partly chancellors and vice chancellors.
- Political Geography:
- Germany
46. Losing Literature: The Reduction of the GDR to History
- Author:
- Elizabeth Priester Steding
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- German Politics and Society
- Institution:
- German Politics and Society Journal
- Abstract:
- Federal and state curricula not only determine much of what is taught in school, they also reveal what is important to political and cultural leaders and ultimately help shape a country's narrative. This article examines how the GDR currently is addressed in history and literature curricula for the Oberstufe. While state history curricula consistently require coverage of the GDR, literature curricula vary widely, with a few states clearly including GDR literature and many states completely omitting it. If GDR literature is ignored in state curricula, it risks being ignored in the classroom, limiting student understanding of the GDR to historical facts and depriving them of an opportunity to better understand both past and current German society.
- Political Geography:
- Germany
47. Eastern German Cooperative Farming: On the Cusp of a New Generation
- Author:
- Dylan Bennett
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- German Politics and Society
- Institution:
- German Politics and Society Journal
- Abstract:
- The decline and dissolution of eastern Germany's agricultural production cooperatives (APC s) has been anticipated by formal economic theory since reunification on the grounds of inefficiency. 1 Yet, more recent scholarship on the varieties of capitalism tells us that efficiency does not lead to simple convergence of market forms, but rather that different institutional solutions and social systems of production can achieve desired ends—including efficiency—with varied designs. 2 Today, the cooperative farm sector, under- pinned by conservative, democratic governance, persists without naiveté and little nostalgia on the cusp of a new postcommunist generation and still accounts for the largest share of agricultural production in eastern Germany. Even if the cooperative farming sector follows a slow decline, the firms will convert or persist depending less on their ability to achieve efficiency as on their ability to maintain productive land holdings, and to promote a new generation of management and enthusiastic members committed not to nostalgia but toward the future of their own lives, their firms, and their local communities. Some of the cooperatives are likely to persist for a long time. In this article, in an effort to understand the environment in which cooperatives face the future, I provide an eyewitness account of the internal politics between workers and bosses, highlight survival strategies, consider the institutional constraints and supports facing cooperatives, and sketch portraits of the farmers who face the task of carrying the cooperative tradition forward.
- Political Geography:
- Germany
48. The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels
- Author:
- Alex Epstein
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Objective Standard
- Institution:
- The Objective Standard
- Abstract:
- Who would argue that producing and using fossil fuels is not only not shameful, but also positively virtuous? Alex Epstein would. And he has done so eloquently and thoroughly in his book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.
- Topic:
- Government
- Political Geography:
- Germany
49. Book Reviews
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- German Politics and Society
- Institution:
- German Politics and Society Journal
- Abstract:
- Until German reunification in 1990, western social sciences had never been particularly interested in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as an object of research. The fact that western scholars refrained, for various political reasons, from researching GDR society, as well as its successful seclusion from external analysis, contributed to the marginalization of social research within West German academia on its eastern neighbor. With the collapse of the socialist German state in 1989, however, the situation changed completely. All of a sudden, there was an enormous demand for expert knowledge as the remains of an entire political system and the subjects that it left behind needed to be mapped, measured, and categorized.
- Political Geography:
- Germany
50. Negotiating Modernity and Europeanness in the Germany-Turkey Transnational Social Field
- Author:
- Susan Beth Rottmann
- Publication Date:
- 05-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Insight Turkey
- Institution:
- SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
- Abstract:
- In conversation with recent work on transnational social fields, this article explores how Germany and Turkey are linked through a “set of multiple, interlocking, networks of social relationships” . The article examines how the social field affects migrants returning from Germany to Turkey. Specifically, it describes how the transnational social field emerges through a concrete set of economic, political and cultural exchanges. It also illustrates that the social field is a space of imaginations of Germany and Turkey, reflecting and producing citizens' uncertainties about the “Europeanness”. For German-Turkish return migrants, the transnational social field exacerbates conflicts with non-migrants and fosters anxieties about migrants' “Germanization” and loss of “Turkishness.” Ultimately, this research shows that Turkish citizens remain deeply concerned about the meaning of modernity, Muslim citizenship in Germany, and Turkey's current and future position in Europe.
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Turkey, and Germany
51. Reut Yael Paz. A Gateway between a Distant God and a Cruel World: The Contribution of Jewish German-Speaking Scholars to International Law.
- Author:
- Robert Howse
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- This rich and erudite work provides a valuable scholarly apparatus for understanding the writing and teaching of four important figures in international law and international relations. Three of them, Hans Kelsen, Hans Morgenthau and Hersch Lauterpacht, are well known; the fourth, Erich Kaufmann, much less so. The general thesis of the book is that to understand fully the personal and intellectual trajectories of all of these figures, one needs to appreciate the specific German–Jewish experience, from emancipation through the Shoah, the particular situation of the Jews in the legal profession and the academy in Germany, and the responses of these thinkers to experiences of persecution, discrimination and exile due to their Jewish family backgrounds as well as to the establishment of the State of Israel.
- Topic:
- International Relations, International Law, Judaism, History, Intellectual History, and Zionism
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Germany, and Israel
52. How Should States Own? Heinisch v. Germany and the Emergence of Human Rights-Sensitive State Ownership Function
- Author:
- Mikko Rajavuori
- Publication Date:
- 07-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- State ownership is thriving. Emerging economies are extending their growing economic power outward through sovereign wealth funds. State-owned multinationals have become top sources of foreign direct investment. Bailouts have recreated powerful state ownership structures in regions where private ownership has traditionally prevailed. The state is back – in shareholder capacity. Approaching the rise of state ownership from a human rights perspective, this article submits that a new conceptualization of state ownership function is emerging. State ownership provides a strong link connecting corporate actions with the international human rights system. Yet the conventional methods used to integrate state ownership in human rights treaty bodies’ discretion seem unable to grasp the changing economic role of governments in the global economy. The article suggests that the notion of the ‘public shareholder’, introduced by the European Court of Human Rights in Heinisch v. Germany (2011), provides a useful lens for interrogating how states should govern the human rights performance of corporations through ownership. When exposed to the recent practice of a range of United Nations treaty bodies, internationalizing state ownership activity becomes framed in human rights terms. In this vision, the whole ownership function becomes a site for turning companies in the state’s portfolio into responsible corporate citizens who take the impact of human rights seriously. Specifically, treaty bodies should advise states to seek human rights governance through private mechanisms in the capacity of the shareholder. In the process, human rights’ checks and balances should constitute a counterweight for market-based initiatives that regulate state activity in the capacity of the shareholder.
- Topic:
- Human Rights, International Law, Treaties and Agreements, Foreign Direct Investment, Economies, and Courts
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Norway, and Germany
53. Isabelle Ley. Opposition im Völkerrecht: Ein Beitrag zur Legitimation internationaler Rechtserzeugung [Opposition in International Law: A Contribution to the Legitimation of International Law-Making]
- Author:
- Jan Klabbers
- Publication Date:
- 07-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- Isabelle Ley, in her exemplary dissertation defended at Humboldt University, takes the emergence of regulatory international law as her starting point and aims to investigate how its democratic legitimacy could be enhanced. For her, democracy is not just a matter of particular institutions or practices but, rather, of open and possibly oppositional politics. Building on the work of Claude Lefort and, in particular, Hannah Arendt, she develops a framework for discussing democracy in international law conceptualized as the possibility for opposition. A democratic polity is one where every participant has the possibility of helping to take care of the common world, as Arendt might have put it, and presupposes open politics. This politics is, so to speak, politics for the sake of politics or politics in the Olympic spirit: what matters is not so much winning but taking part; what matters is not so much which policies will be adopted but the political process itself. Following Aristotle, taking part in public affairs is viewed as the most salient manifestation of human excellence: man being a political animal, he can do no better than take part in the political process – this is where individual happiness is achieved and, therewith, the ultimate justification of democracy.
- Topic:
- International Law, International Organization, Political Theory, and Democracy
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Germany
54. Alliance Coercion and Nuclear Restraint: How the United States Thwarted West Germany's Nuclear Ambitions
- Author:
- Gene Gerzhoy
- Publication Date:
- 03-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Security
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- When does a nuclear-armed state's provision of security guarantees to a militarily threatened ally inhibit the ally's nuclear weapons ambitions? Although the established security model of nuclear proliferation posits that clients will prefer to depend on a patron's extended nuclear deterrent, this proposition overlooks how military threats and doubts about the patron's intentions encourage clients to seek nuclear weapons of their own. To resolve this indeterminacy in the security model's explanation of nuclear restraint, it is necessary to account for the patron's use of alliance coercion, a strategy consisting of conditional threats of military abandonment to obtain compliance with the patron's demands. This strategy succeeds when the client is militarily dependent on the patron and when the patron provides assurances that threats of abandonment are conditional on the client's nuclear choices. Historical evidence from West Germany's nuclear decisionmaking provides a test of this logic. Contrary to the common belief among nonproliferation scholars, German leaders persistently doubted the credibility and durability of U.S. security guarantees and sought to acquire an independent nuclear deterrent. Rather than preferring to renounce nuclear armament, Germany was compelled to do so by U.S. threats of military abandonment, contradicting the established logic of the security model and affirming the logic of alliance coercion.
- Topic:
- Arms Control and Proliferation and Nuclear Weapons
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, Germany, and West Germany
55. Strategies of Inhibition: U.S. Grand Strategy, the Nuclear Revolution, and Nonproliferation
- Author:
- Francis Gavin
- Publication Date:
- 08-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Security
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- The United States has gone to extraordinary lengths since the beginning of the nuclear age to inhibit—that is, to slow, halt, and reverse—the spread of nuclear weapons and, when unsuccessful, to mitigate the consequences. To accomplish this end, the United States has developed and implemented a wide range of tools, applied in a variety of combinations. These “strategies of inhibition” employ different policies rarely seen as connected to one another, from treaties and norms to alliances and security guarantees, to sanctions and preventive military action. The United States has applied these measures to friend and foe alike, often regardless of political orientation, economic system, or alliance status, to secure protection from nuclear attack and maintain freedom of action. Collectively, these linked strategies of inhibition have been an independent and driving feature of U.S. national security policy for more than seven decades, to an extent rarely documented or fully understood. The strategies of inhibition make sense of puzzles that neither containment nor openness strategies can explain, while providing critical insights into post–World War II history, theory, the causes of nuclear proliferation, and debates over the past, present, and future trajectory of U.S. grand strategy.
- Topic:
- National Security, Nuclear Weapons, and Grand Strategy
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, Soviet Union, and Germany
56. Counter Terrorist Trends and Analysis: Volume 6, Issue 2
- Author:
- Douglas R. Woodall
- Publication Date:
- 03-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Counter Terrorist Trends and Analysis
- Institution:
- Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
- Abstract:
- Going beyond the mainstream thinking, the negative images of Americans living abroad, alternative social spaces fostering radicalization and using the wrong targeting approach against a terrorist network could be considered important catalysts leading to radicalization and terrorist violence.
- Topic:
- Bilateral Relations
- Political Geography:
- Germany
57. Theorising the use of private military and security companies: a synthetic perspective
- Author:
- Andreas Kruck
- Publication Date:
- 01-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of International Relations and Development
- Institution:
- Central and East European International Studies Association
- Abstract:
- This article seeks to systematise and advance the theoretical debate on the causes and conditions for the privatisation of security. Drawing on previous research on private military and security companies (PMSCs) and theories from International Relations and Comparative Politics, it reconstructs functionalist, political-instrumentalist and ideationist explanations for why and under what conditions even 'strong' and democratic Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development states (extensively) use PMSCs. An analysis of inter-temporal and cross-national (United States, British, German and French) patterns of security privatisation indicates that all the three theoretical models point out causes and conditions that are relevant for a comprehensive explanation, but none is sufficient alone. Therefore, the article uses both the models and the empirical evidence to propose a synthetic perspective, which treats different explanatory conditions and logics as complementary, rather than rival. Going beyond the atheoretical conclusion that a multitude of disconnected factors are in some way relevant for a comprehensive explanation of security privatisation, I develop a thin and a thick synthesis that rely on a domain-of-application approach and sequencing, respectively. The thin synthesis spells out how different explanatory factors operate in specific domains, whereas the thick synthesis elaborates how different conditions and mechanisms apply to different phases of security privatisation and how they interrelate.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Security, Economics, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- United States and Germany
58. Review: Neil MacGregor's German lesson
- Author:
- Alan Philps
- Publication Date:
- 10-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Chatham House
- Abstract:
- From the window in Neil MacGregor's office you can see the swirling crowds of visitors in the courtyard of the British Museum. Seven million people a year squeeze through the Museum's narrow door–almost double the number in 2000.
- Political Geography:
- Britain and Germany
59. Review: Bauhaus and a spirit of subtle resistance
- Author:
- Alan Philps
- Publication Date:
- 10-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Chatham House
- Abstract:
- Two items from the exhibition tell revealing stories about life in Germany in the 20th Century. Both have a link to the Weimar School of Architecture and Design, called the Bauhaus, which pioneered modern design in the 1920s. Because of its socialist and internationalist outlook, the Nazis set out to destroy it.
- Political Geography:
- Germany
60. Germany in a Changing World
- Author:
- Armin Staigis
- Publication Date:
- 09-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- World Policy Journal
- Institution:
- World Policy Institute
- Abstract:
- BERLIN —At the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, the President of Germany, Joachim Gauck asked the following key questions: "Has Germany already adequately recognized the new threats and the changing structure of the international order? "Has Germany shown enough initiative to ensure the future viability of the networks of norms, friends, and alliances, which after all brought us peace in freedom and democracy in prosperity?" A moment later he took it upon himself to provide the answers: "Germany should make a more substantial contribution, and it should make it earlier and more decisively if it is to be a good partner."
- Political Geography:
- Germany
61. Acting White? Rethinking Race in Post-Racial America
- Author:
- Jennifer L. Hochschild
- Publication Date:
- 07-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Political Science Quarterly
- Institution:
- Academy of Political Science
- Abstract:
- The number of publications arguing that the United States is not post-racial despite twice electing Barack Obama to the presidency is many orders of magnitude greater than the number of publications claiming that the United States is post-racial. In fact, it is difficult to find anyone asserting post-raciality beyond one New York Times Magazine article and a few Fox News commentators around the 2008 election. Nevertheless, attacks on the purportedly common assumption continue.
- Political Geography:
- United States, America, and Germany
62. Prospects for Fundamental Monetary Reform
- Author:
- Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr.
- Publication Date:
- 07-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- The intellectual climate has never been more open to a critical analysis of existing monetary institutions both here and abroad. When the Germans agreed to a monetary union, they were promised that they would keep the Bundesbank; only the name would be changed to the European Central Bank. Instead, Germans with whom I have spoken now think they got the Banca d'Italia. In the United States, before the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve was held in high regard by the public. Now, at least in some circles, "the Fed" has become a term of opprobrium, not unlike "the IRS."
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, and Germany
63. Defense at the Forward Edge of the Battle or rather in the Depth? Different approaches to implement NATO's operation plans by the alliance partners, 1955-1988
- Author:
- Helmut R. Hammerich
- Publication Date:
- 06-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- Military historians love studying battles. For this purpose, they evaluate operation plans and analyze how these plans were executed on the battlefield. The battle history of the Cold War focuses first and foremost on the planning for the nuclear clash between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Although between 1945 and 1989-90 the world saw countless hot wars on the periphery of the Cold War, the "Cold World War," as the German historian Jost Dülffer termed it, is best examined through the operational plans of the military alliances for what would have been World War Three. To conduct such an analysis we must consider Total War under nuclear conditions.
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Germany
64. Preparing for the War of the Future in the Wake of Defeat: The Evolution of German Strategic Thought, 1919-1935
- Author:
- Mark Shannon
- Publication Date:
- 06-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- Germany's defeat in the First World War came as a profound shock. While the nation was stunned by the peace settlement that followed, the military was faced with the inescapable reality that their approach to fighting a prolonged industrialized conflict was flawed. The years following Germany's defeat found the army in search of reasons for its failure. The officer corps sought to analyze its experience with "total war" and to draw the correct lessons from it. In this way, the army could prepare for the war of the future, secure in the knowledge that any repetition of the First World War could be avoided. In short, the German armed forces began the detailed process of distilling relevant military lessons from the conflict and applying them to their perception of a future war. While many of the lessons learned and studied had to do with tactics and technology, it is the purpose of this analysis to examine the strategic debate that ensued. Regardless of how strategy would be formulated in the coming years, it maintained at its heart one simple objective that is best summarized in a conversation between General Walther Reinhardt and Colonel Albrecht von Thaer in January 1919. Thaer expressed his pessimism for the coming years but Reinhardt, a liberal officer who was about to assume command of the War Ministry disagreed. He openly stated that "the goal is and remains a free Germany, hopefully restored to its former borders, with [the] strongest, most modern army with [the] newest weapons. One must not let this goal recede from view for even one moment." Rearmament and conscription would return, he declared, but when Thaer suggested this might be possible in the distant future, Reinhardt assured him that "We must and will be in position to do so in 15 years." Clearly, planning for the next war began at the moment defeat in the First World War was realized.
- Political Geography:
- Canada and Germany
65. Irene R. Makaryk and Marissa McHugh, ed. Shakespeare and the Second World War: Memory, Culture, Identity. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2012.
- Author:
- Deji A. Oguntoyinbo
- Publication Date:
- 06-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- All through the ages, Shakespeare's literary oeuvre has occupied a canonical status in world literature, primarily because of its universal relevance in terms of thematic preoccupation, characterization, and setting amongst several literary components. Though widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre- eminent dramatist, Shakespeare has been translated into every major living language and is performed more often than any other playwright. His dramatic works have been repeatedly adapted and rediscovered by new movements or perspectives in scholarship and performance. Even now, his plays remain highly popular and are constantly studied, performed and reinterpreted in various social, cultural and political contexts throughout the globe. One of these contexts is the Second World War. Regarded as the longest, bloodiest and deadliest conflict in history, World War II was fought predominantly in Europe and across the Pacific and Eastern Asia, pitting the Axis powers of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and Japan against the Allied nations of Great Britain, France, China, United States and the Soviet Union. It is the most widespread war in history with more than one hundred million people serving in military units from over thirty different countries, and death tolls estimated to be between fifty and eighty-five million fatalities. Despite the fact that theatre stands as a “simulacrum of the cultural and historical process itself, seeking to depict the full range of human actions within their physical context, has always provided society with the most tangible records of its attempts to understand its own records” (3), the role of Shakespeare during the Second World War had not yet been given sustained, critical and detailed scholastic documentation. Herein lies the relevance and necessity of Shakespeare and the Second World War – as a writers' quota to fill the scholastic lacuna. Most of the war's belligerents showed affinity with Shakespearean works as a depiction of their society's self-image. Divided into fifteen illuminating, diverse, and yet coherent essays by seasoned and erudite academics, Shakespeare and the Second World War is a small sampling of reviewed and extended essays from “Wartime Shakespeare in a Global Context/Shakespeare au temps de la guerre” – an international bilingual conference that took place at the University of Ottawa in 2009. Within the spatial and temporal context of the war, Shakespeare's oeuvre is recycled, reviewed and reinterpreted in the chapters. In a Manichean manner, these essays cannot be collectively pigeonholed as either pro or anti–war. In fact, there is a sort of ambivalence with vacillating opinions by the writers.
- Political Geography:
- Britain, United States, Japan, China, France, Soviet Union, Germany, and Italy
66. Jonathan Boff. Winning and Losing on the Western Front: The British Third Army and the Defeat of Germany in 1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
- Author:
- Paul M. Ramsey
- Publication Date:
- 06-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- For understandable reasons, historians have consistently tried to clear the waters by reducing the complexities of the First World War. This process has been vital in understanding the origins of the war, its conduct, victory and conclusion, and in shaping the historiography. Moving beyond earlier fixed interpretations, for the last twenty years the idea of a 'learning curve' has played a major role in explaining British success in the autumn of 1918. Yet, its explanative power is limited in three significant ways. Firstly, war and strategy is reciprocal; the battlefield is an interactive play of forces, and not simply the play of one side. Secondly, friction resulting from this and multiple other interactions means war is complicated and winning is difficult. Thirdly, learning is often uneven within large institutions and dynamic problems cannot be solved with single solutions. With this in view, Jonathan Boff's book addresses these fundamental issues and reanimates the complexities of the First World War, challenging many assumptions about victory and defeat on the Western Front in 1918. Boff expertly navigates these muddy waters and demonstrates how explaining complexity trumps earlier monocausal explanations; showing as Clausewitz made clear that everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult, especially winning.
- Political Geography:
- Germany
67. Dynamics of Energy Governance in Europe and Russia
- Author:
- Sreemati Ganguli
- Publication Date:
- 04-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Insight Turkey
- Institution:
- SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
- Abstract:
- Dynamics of Energy Governance in Europe and Russia Relations between Europe and Russia in the post-Cold War era constitute a fascinating area of study, as it involves many interlinked socioeconomic and political issues. Significantly, the events that shaped the political landscape of contemporary Europe, i.e., the reunification of Germany and collapse of the Soviet domination of East Europe, were precursors to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The book under discussion focuses on the issue of energy governance in Europe and Russia, which is significant as both Russia and Europe share a flourishing codependent energy trade relation and the issue touches on many areas of common bilateral concern- political, economic, technological, environmental, bureaucratic and legal. The book has twelve chapters, divided in three thematic sections, apart from Introduction, Conclusion and Afterword. It represents a culmination of debates exchanged through the Political Economy of Energy in Europe and Russia (PEEER) network and approaches the entire issue through the theoretical approach of International Political Economy. Essentially, the book aims to focus on multiple actors and institutions that shape the policy processes of energy governance in Europe and Russia, in the context of an interlinked and interdependent global, regional and local scenario. In the first section on “Transnational Dynamics” the focus is on legal issues. Tatiana Romanova discusses EU-Russian energy relations in the context of legal approximation (Article 55 of the EU-Russian Partnership and Cooperation Agreement), noting two particular focal points – the improvement of the energy trade scenario and the clean energy agenda. Daniel Behn and Vitally Pogoretskyy analyze the system of dual gas pricing in Russia and its impact on EU imports. They raise an important debate between the Statist and Liberal approaches by questioning the consistency of this system with WTO regulations. For Anatole Boute, the export of European foreign energy efficiency rules to non-EU countries, especially Russia, has the potential to become the cornerstone of the EU's new energy diplomacy, to meet the challenges of a secure energy supply from Russia, and to mitigate bilateral climate concerns. M. F. Keating, on the other hand, deals with the connection between and possible harmonization of global best practices (to systemically use competition, regulation and privatization to reform the energy sector) and the EU's energy security agenda.
- Topic:
- Cold War and Governance
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, and Germany
68. Ask the Experts: Higher Education
- Author:
- Arturo Cherbowski Lask, Francisco Suarez Hernandez, Amgad Shehata, and Salvador Alva Gómez Salvador
- Publication Date:
- 03-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Americas Quarterly
- Institution:
- Council of the Americas
- Abstract:
- It's important to keep in mind that a region consists of different countries, each with its own needs and strengths, and bound to its particular culture and history—although tied firmly to a common, shared history and culture. In this mosaic, universities try to respond to their regional, national and local demands. Thus, the fields of knowledge and particular disciplines that each university develops answer to specific needs.
- Topic:
- Culture
- Political Geography:
- Germany
69. From Station Z To Jerusalem
- Author:
- Barry Rubin and Wolfgang G. Schwanitz
- Publication Date:
- 08-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Middle East Review of International Affairs
- Institution:
- Global Research in International Affairs Center, Interdisciplinary Center
- Abstract:
- It began as another normal summer day in June 1942 at the Sachsenhaus en concentration camp near Berlin, the place where SS trainees were taken to see how the Master Race's captive enemies should be treated. Three barracks in a separate section housed Jewish prisoners, mainly Polish citizens or men deported from Berlin. On that particular day, a squad of shouting guards ordered the Jewish prisoners of Barrack 38 to line up for four special visitors participating in an SS tour.
- Political Geography:
- Germany
70. Geneva Action Plan: Its Nature and Implications
- Author:
- Nasser Saghafi-Ameri and Pirooz Izadi
- Publication Date:
- 12-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic Research (CSR)
- Abstract:
- The adoption of the Geneva Accord between Iran and the P5+1 (the US, UK, France, Russia, China plus Germany) to resolve issues related to Iran's nuclear program on November 24, 2013, brought about a series of debates in political circles. In many ways, it could be considered a historic event with international and regional implications and also ushered in a new chapter in Iran-U.S. relations. At the international level, it could have a great impact on the ways in which world affairs are managed. In fact, it was a victory for diplomacy, multilateralism and a thrust towards a multi-polar international system after more than a decade of unilateralism and military interventionist policies with all its catastrophic consequences. At the regional level, by fostering new alignments, it may have a positive impact on current problems; be it elimination of weapons of mass destruction or countering terrorism and extremism that is now expanding beyond the region. The Accord in Geneva also fosters hope for solid and productive relations between Iran and the U.S. after more than three decades of estrangement. Considering that a new geostrategic situation is unfolding in the region, this article tries to answer the questions related to its international and regional implications, as well as its impact on the very delicate issue of Iran-U.S. relations. At the end, some of the major challenges that lay ahead in the implementation of the Accord are examined.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Politics, Terrorism, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
- Political Geography:
- Geneva, Russia, United States, China, United Kingdom, Iran, East Asia, France, and Germany
71. "Domestic Coalitions, Internationalization, and War: Then and Now"
- Author:
- Etel Solingen
- Publication Date:
- 04-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Security
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- The sources of World War I are numerous and widely studied. Some scholars have argued that they are underdetermining individually but overdetermining collectively. The purpose of this article is not to fuel the battle among theories claiming complete explanatory power, but rather to examine some lessons for contemporary international relations. Much of the recent commentary on the war's centenary evokes similarities between Germany in 1914 and China in 2014, and between globalization then and now. There are crucial differences on both accounts, however.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Security, and War
- Political Geography:
- China and Germany
72. Evilization in liberal discourse: From Kant's 'unjust enemy' to today's 'rogue state'
- Author:
- Harald Muller
- Publication Date:
- 07-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Politics
- Institution:
- Palgrave Macmillan
- Abstract:
- Liberal discourse should have a hard time looking for 'evil' in international relations. Standing on the pillar of rationalism and humanitarianism, there seems to be little space for the morally and emotionally charged notion of evil to enter considerations. Yet, the liberal belief in the freedom of will implies that humans are capable of turning against the advice of reason and opt for evil behavior and underlying principles. This possibility is epitomized by Kant's construction of the 'evil enemy'. Since 'evil' appears sporadically in international relations, with Hitler's Germany as prototype, its existence in the real world of international relations cannot be ruled out a priori. Designating an 'other' as evil is thus a discursive possibility. The practice to turn this possibility into reality is conceptualized here as 'evilization' in analogy to 'securitization'. There is strong variance among liberal democracies in applying this practice, ranging from 'pacifism' to 'militancy', which often leads to dire consequences. Deriving the principles of fallibility and prudence from liberal reasoning, this article concludes with the proposition that 'liberal pacifism' is the preferable option in most conceivable circumstances, but that the possibility of confronting political evil is rare, but existing.
- Topic:
- International Relations and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Germany and Cameroon
73. Crafting the Nuclear Regime Complex (1950–1975): Dynamics of Harmonization of Opaque Treaty Rules
- Author:
- Gregoire Mallard
- Publication Date:
- 05-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- In recent years, international lawyers have increasingly debated the normative consequences of the 'fragmentation' of international law. More rarely have they studied empirically how tensions between overlapping systems of rules emerge, how conflicts are harmonized, and with what effects. This article explains such dynamics in the case of the nuclear non-proliferation regime (NPR) complex. Based on original archival fieldwork conducted in the private papers of American and European diplomats in the early Cold War, it shows how Western states solved the tensions that existed between contradictory commitments contracted in the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) Treaty and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1968 (NPT). To lessen the tensions between regional and global orders, the Euratom control rules were used as a source of inspiration for the new rules used to monitor compliance with the NPT at the global level. In retrospect, this outcome was puzzling, as the Euratom Treaty was not originally concerned with non-proliferation issues. That the knowledge of the original intentions behind Euratom was lost to the policymakers who negotiated the NPT thus had grave consequences in the future. This case shows the importance of studying the concrete knowledge of international legal rules that gets transmitted across generations of policymakers in order to understand how regime complexity evolves.
- Topic:
- Cold War
- Political Geography:
- Germany
74. Ad Fontes: The Question of Rebellion and Moral Tradition on the Use of Force
- Author:
- James Turner Johnson
- Publication Date:
- 02-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- "Stab, smite, slay!" These are not the words of Bashar al- Assad telling his forces how they should deal with the Syrian rebel movement, or indeed those of any other contemporary political leader, but rather the words of Martin Luther exhorting the German nobility to a harsh response to the peasants' rebellion of 1524–1525. His writings show that he sympathized with many of the peasants' grievances so long as these did not issue in rebellion, but when they turned to force of arms, he responded sternly. This was not a peculiarity of Luther. Consider the following from an English courtier, Thomas Churchyard, writing admiringly of the treatment of Irish rebels in 1579 by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, commander of the English army sent to put down the rebellion: "He further tooke this order infringeable, that when soever he made any ostyng [military campaign], or inrode, into the enemies Countrey, he killed manne, woman, and child, and spoiled, wasted, and burned, by the grounde all that he might, leavyng nothing of the enemies in saffetie, whiche he could possiblie waste, or consume."
- Political Geography:
- Germany and Syria
75. 1914 and 2014: should we be worried?
- Author:
- Margaret MacMillan
- Publication Date:
- 02-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Chatham House
- Abstract:
- A century ago this autumn the first battle of the Marne ended Germany's attempt to crush France and its ally Britain quickly. In that one battle alone the French lost 80,000 dead and the Germans approximately the same. By comparison, 47,000 Americans died in the whole of the Vietnam War and 4,800 coalition troops in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In August and September 1914 Europe, the most powerful and prosperous part of the world, had begun the process of destroying itself. A minor crisis in its troubled backyard of the Balkans had escalated with terrifying speed to create an all-out war between the powers. 1 'Again and ever I thank God for the Atlantic Ocean,' wrote Walter Page, the American ambassador in London; and in Washington his president, Woodrow Wilson, agreed.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Britain, Iraq, America, Europe, Washington, France, London, Vietnam, Germany, Balkans, and Atlantic Ocean
76. Germany after the Elections: Prospects for Europe?
- Author:
- Ulrike Guerot
- Publication Date:
- 02-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The International Spectator
- Institution:
- Istituto Affari Internazionali
- Abstract:
- As long as Angela Merkel remains chancellor, most Germans seem to be in no rush to find a coalition. This is why the coalition negotiations have been going on for weeks (and may only conclude when this journal goes to print). Nevertheless, the elections have shaken up the German political landscape: the Liberals (FDP) are out of the Bundestag for the first time since 1949 and the euro-sceptical Alternative for Germany (AfD) is in. With the Left Party still outside of the 'consensus spectrum', the Conservatives (CDU), Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens are the only parties eligible for government in either a grand coalition (CDU/SPD) or a Black-Green coalition (CDU/ Greens). But the SPD's reluctance to enter into a grand coalition a second time, after the disastrous results for the party in 2005-09, led many to hope for an innovative progressive-conservative U-turn in Germany, meaning a Black-Green coalition. Indeed, for a moment it seemed like the CDU and the Greens would dare the impossible after what had been called a "fruitful and harmonious exploration". But in the end, it is going to be a grand coalition again, with the likely effect for Europe that austerity will be softened a bit - but in essence, German European policy will remain as it is, slow and reluctant.
- Topic:
- Government
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Germany
77. The Undeserving Rich: American Beliefs about Inequality, Opportunity, and Redistribution.
- Author:
- Robert Y. Shapiro
- Publication Date:
- 02-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Political Science Quarterly
- Institution:
- Academy of Political Science
- Abstract:
- Income inequality was a major issue in the 2012 presidential election. While the Occupy Wall Street movement may fade into history, the substantial media coverage it received drew national attention to the unequal distribution of income between the top 1 percent versus the bottom 99 percent of Americans after years of increasing inequality. This and the Republican nomination of Mitt Romney, the poster child for the top 1 percent (even before the videotape of him claiming that 47 percent of Barack Obama\'s base of support were people who paid no taxes and believed that the government should take care of them), enabled Obama to use inequality—and redistribution—as a major campaign issue. He used it along with an array of other domestic issues that divided the parties in an election in which the Democrats focused on mobilizing their ideological partisan base, abandoning a centrist campaign. In the context of existing public opinion and other research, the resonance of the income inequality issue was in fact surprising—a puzzle. Although completed and drawing on data well before the 2012 election, The Undeserving Rich—and with its title—provides an explanation.
- Political Geography:
- Germany
78. The Quest for Resources - the Case of Greenland
- Author:
- Bent Ole Gram Mortensen
- Publication Date:
- 03-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- The importance of resources for any country does not require much introduction. History is filled with exhaustively described examples of where the need for access to various kinds of resources – drinking water, agricultural land, various minerals – has been geopolitically important and has even led to war. War strategies themselves can be affected by the need for access to resources. Germany's and Japan's needs for oil and World War II are prime examples.
- Political Geography:
- Japan and Germany
79. Power Shift
- Author:
- Michael Levi and Jason Bordoff
- Publication Date:
- 04-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Americas Quarterly
- Institution:
- Council of the Americas
- Abstract:
- The energy landscape in the Americas has shifted dramatically in just a few years. Only a decade ago, experts expected most of the world's new oil supplies to come from the former Soviet Union and the Middle East. Now the odds are that most of the growth in global oil supplies will come from North America and Brazil. Just five years ago, conventional wisdom held that North America would become a big importer of natural gas—with some supplies coming from its neighbors to the south. Now, a boom in natural gas production raises the prospect that the U.S. will become a gas exporter. This is occurring at a time when developing countries in Asia are driving the growth in world oil demand. The collision of these trends is radically reshaping the global energy map—reducing oil imports to Europe and North America while increasing shipments from producers in the Middle East, Africa and Russia to the Pacific Rim.
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Middle East, Canada, Germany, and North America
80. Affirmative Action in the Americas
- Author:
- Tanya K. Hernandez
- Publication Date:
- 04-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Americas Quarterly
- Institution:
- Council of the Americas
- Abstract:
- The Americas present many contrasting approaches to affirmative action. In the United States, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its constitutionality, while at the same time narrowing the ability to use race in the Fisher v. Texas case. In contrast, several Latin American countries are beginning to explore more dynamic affirmative action policies. While many of these policies are recent and still developing, the new Latin American interest in affirmative action programs indicates how useful such programs can be in pursuing racial justice. In fact, Latin America has in some ways gone much further in broadly embracing affirmative action as a human right-a key, perhaps, to the growing support for the concept.
- Topic:
- Human Rights
- Political Geography:
- United States, Germany, and Latin America
81. Will the Darién Gap Stop the Region's Electrical Integration?
- Author:
- Diana Villiers Negroponte
- Publication Date:
- 04-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Americas Quarterly
- Institution:
- Council of the Americas
- Abstract:
- In April last year, the Colombian government announced its intention to pursue the creation of an interconnected electrical grid from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego. Naming the project "Connecting the Americas 2022" ("Connect 2022" ), the Colombians had picked up the idea from Washington and included it in last year's agenda at the Summit of the Americas. The goal, as defined by the hemispheric governments that attended the summit, is to create an integrated electrical grid that can provide universal access to electricity through enhanced energy interconnections, power sector investments, renewable energy development, and cooperation. Should it succeed, the project will bring together regional electricity grids, including the Central American electrical grid, known by its Spanish acronym, SIEPAC (see Jeremy Martin's article on the difficulty of completing SIPAC on page 102 of this issue), with South American networks. Completing it, though, requires passing through the Darién Gap.
- Political Geography:
- Colombia, South America, Germany, and Mexico
82. Celebrating Germany in Brazil — Dominica hosts the World Creole Festival — Tackling Mexico City's traffic jams —10 Things to Do in Antigua
- Publication Date:
- 04-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Americas Quarterly
- Institution:
- Council of the Americas
- Abstract:
- Prost, Brazil! Grab a stein-full of caipirinha and stroll down to Ipanema beach in your lederhosen—it's Germany-Brazil Year in Brazil. The yearlong festival, aimed at deepening German-Brazilian relations, kicked off in May with the opening of the German-Brazilian Economic Forum in São Paulo. “Brazil is one of the most successful new centers of power in the world,” says Guido Westerwelle, Germany's foreign minister. “We want to intensify cooperation with Brazil, not only economically but also culturally.” It's no surprise that Brazil, the sixth-largest economy in the world, has caught the attention of Europe's financial powerhouse. Brazil is Germany's most important trading partner in Latin America, accounting for $14.2 billion in imports in 2012. With some 1,600 German companies in Brazil providing 250,000 jobs and 17 percent of industrial GDP, it's an economic relationship that clearly has mutual benefits.
- Topic:
- Security, Economics, and Environment
- Political Geography:
- United States, New York, Europe, Brazil, Germany, and Mexico
83. The Politics and Ethics of Identity: In Search of Ourselves by Richard Ned Lebow
- Author:
- Alan Wolfe
- Publication Date:
- 04-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- The Politics and Ethics of Identity: In Search of Ourselves, Richard Ned Lebow (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 431 pp., $103 cloth, $34.99 paper. The Politics and Ethics of Identity dazzles the reader with its ambition and erudition. Its theme is grand: nearly all the claims made by social theorists emphasizing the importance of identity are wrong because human beings and the associations they create, including nation-states, can do without it. Its breadth is startling, and includes brilliant textual analyses of, among other things, Greek epic poetry, the operas of Mozart, Germany's search for a classical past, the contemporary conservative Christian book series Left Behind, and science fiction. If all this is not enough, it also contains important theoretical discussions of the nature of narrative and the question of whether modernity implies a sharp break with the past.
- Topic:
- Politics
- Political Geography:
- Germany and Cuba
84. Thanks for the Buggy Ride: Memoirs of an Ottoman Jew
- Author:
- Michael McGaha
- Publication Date:
- 02-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Insight Turkey
- Institution:
- SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
- Abstract:
- This little memoir, first published in Italian in 1987, is an account of a life well lived. A proud Sephardi Jew, Victor Eskenazi (1906-1987) was fortunate to have been born and raised in Istanbul at a time when that city was still home to an extraordinarily diverse mix of ethnic and religious groups. In the book's introduction, Eskenazi's son John defines his father as Ottoman “because of his inbred cosmopolitanism, his wide vision of the world, his insatiable intellectual curiosity, his instinctive understanding and respect of other peoples, cultures, and behaviours, and when required also a determination and assertiveness that is so prevalent in the Ottoman personality and in the history of the Empire” (pp. 10-11). Although Eskenazi's formal education ended with high school, just growing up in such a city was in itself a liberal education. By the time he finished high school, he was fluent and literate in Greek, Ladino, French, Ottoman Turkish, German, and English. A bright and sensitive child, Victor clearly reveled in the rich variety of sights, sounds, and smells his native city offered him in such profusion.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Germany, Italy, and Vienna
85. Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American
- Author:
- H.W. Brands
- Publication Date:
- 04-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Political Science Quarterly
- Institution:
- Academy of Political Science
- Abstract:
- Having elsewhere assessed the structural forces that shaped America's rise to global power, Joseph Nye now turns to the personal elements. What role, he asks, did individuals, in particular presidents, play in the twentieth-century emergence of the United States as the arbiter of world affairs? Nye finds wanting the existing literature on presidential leadership as overemphasizing "transformational" presidents and blurring the line between presidential ethics and presidential efficacy.
- Political Geography:
- United States and Germany
86. Throwing Down the Gauntlet
- Author:
- Carol Bellamy
- Publication Date:
- 03-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- World Policy Journal
- Institution:
- World Policy Institute
- Abstract:
- President Barack Obama has thrown down the gauntlet with his call for "a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity." It's a bold move for a mainstream politician. Across the world, and particularly in rich countries that are bobbing in the wake of the global financial crisis, politicians are running scared on immigration. Catcalls about immigrants sound especially tuneless here in the United States, where some 40 percent have at least one ancestor who arrived at Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954. Indeed, the wealth of this country has been built by risk-takers who had the courage to launch themselves into the unknown.
- Topic:
- Financial Crisis
- Political Geography:
- United States, America, Germany, and Island
87. Governmentality's (missing) international dimension and the promiscuity of German neoliberalism
- Author:
- Hans-Martin Jaeger
- Publication Date:
- 01-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of International Relations and Development
- Institution:
- Central and East European International Studies Association
- Abstract:
- An important insight from the recent publication of Foucault's governmentality lectures for International Relations (IR) is that international manifestations of governmentalities such as police and liberalism, rather than constituting mere domestic analogies, have inherently international dimensions. Police and liberalism are both constituted by and constitutive of the international contexts in which they emerge: historically, the European balance of power and a 'globalisation' of markets, respectively. However, Foucault's account of German and American neoliberalism in the twentieth century omits references to the international context. This article first reconstructs the 'domestic-international nexus' in Foucault's account of police and liberalism, and then recovers aspects of the missing international dimension of his analysis of German neoliberalism with recourse to Wilhelm Röpke's writing on IR. The upshot of this recovery effort is threefold. First, the international remains pivotal to (mid-) twentieth-century neoliberal governmentality. Second, (German) neoliberalism's association with multiple 'international' governmentalities, including liberal and non-liberal ones, exposes neoliberalism as a 'promiscuous' mode of governance. Third, German neoliberalism's promiscuity is underwritten by (though not reducible to) a conservative ethos of moderation. More broadly, this article contributes to efforts to theorise the relationship between domestic and international politics, and to understand neoliberalism as a 'variegated' phenomenon.
- Political Geography:
- America and Germany
88. The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate
- Publication Date:
- 02-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- "Suddenly," observes Robert D. Kaplan, "we were in a world in which the dismantling of a man-made boundary in Germany had led to the assumption that all human divisions were surmountable". Following the triumph of the West in the cold war, many, including Kaplan, believed that human agency and its various constructs - including human rights, free markets, democracy, science and technology, and even humanitarian intervention - would emerge as the single most important force in shaping world events and would lead to freedom and prosperity across the globe. But the years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Kaplan says, have revealed a much darker reality: while many societies have indeed become more democratic and prosperous, this often occurred on the heels of bloody civil wars and periods of mass murder, among other atrocities. The horror of the Rwandan genocide offers a case in point. Where did our understanding go wrong?
- Political Geography:
- Germany
89. Economic and Industrial Cooperation Between France and Germany: Assessment and Future Prospects
- Author:
- Jean-Marc Trouille
- Publication Date:
- 04-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- German Politics and Society
- Institution:
- German Politics and Society Journal
- Abstract:
- Economy and industry have traditionally been major stakes within the Franco-German relationship. This article examines French and German economic and industrial relations, and their importance for these countries' joint leadership in Europe. It investigates the level of economic interdependence and of macroeconomic convergence between the two largest Eurozone economies, industrial cooperation between French and German companies, discrepancies in their trade relations and investment flows, divergences in their respective economic and industrial policies, and the dichotomy between partnership and rivalry in their long-standing relationship. Finally, this article assesses the risk of increasing fiscal and industrial imbalance between the two economies and draws conclusions on its implications for the Franco-German entente in Europe.
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- Europe, France, and Germany
90. Leadership in Hard Times: Germany, France, and the Management of the Eurozone Crisis
- Author:
- Joachim Schild
- Publication Date:
- 04-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- German Politics and Society
- Institution:
- German Politics and Society Journal
- Abstract:
- France and Germany played a highly visible leadership role during the management of the Euro crisis and the efforts to design a reform governance framework for the Euro area. This article provides a conceptualization of this bilateral leadership, which is then applied to trace the process of Franco-German leadership during the ongoing crisis of the Euro area. Franco-German leadership grew ever more important as the crisis deepened. After the French presidential election of 2012, however, the divergences between the two core states of the Euro area deepened and made the exercise of joint leadership more difficult to achieve. I consider this leadership role to be based on a compromise by proxy logic in which France and Germany, starting from divergent positions, strike bilateral compromises acceptable to other member states that feel their own interests are represented by either France or Germany. Their common capacity to find suitable remedies to cope with crisis, however, is not beyond doubt. The Franco-German approach followed an additive logic, combining the temporary and permanent financial support schemes-a French preference-with a concomitant strengthening of fiscal rules advocated by Germany. In the end, the two governments did not develop a common comprehensive strategy based on a shared conceptual framework.
- Political Geography:
- France and Germany
91. The Élysée Treaty and European Integration Theory
- Author:
- Yannis Karagiannis
- Publication Date:
- 04-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- German Politics and Society
- Institution:
- German Politics and Society Journal
- Abstract:
- According to neoliberal institutionalism, states create international institutions to limit information asymmetries, monitor compliance, and ensure the credibility of commitments to agreed-upon policies-in short, to minimize transaction costs. Although this view can help explain the delegation of powers to supranational bodies such as the European Commission, it cannot account for the signature of the Élysée Treaty between France and Germany in January 1963, which reversed the logic of supranational delegation. Understanding the causes and the consequences of this apparently anomalous event is therefore a major challenge facing scholars of international organizations, European integration, and German foreign policy alike. To start addressing the issue, this article develops an explanation based on incomplete contracts theory. In a nutshell, I argue that the Élysée Treaty aimed at securing the equal treatment of French and German interests in the process of European integration, thereby allowing the deepening of European integration.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy
- Political Geography:
- Europe, France, and Germany
92. The Élysée Treaty in the Context of Franco-German Socio-cultural Relations
- Author:
- Corine Defrance
- Publication Date:
- 04-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- German Politics and Society
- Institution:
- German Politics and Society Journal
- Abstract:
- Even though the terms “culture“ and “reconciliation“ are absent in the Élysée Treaty, this article looks at forms of cooperation that the Treaty nevertheless generated in the fields of education and youth, as well as foreign affairs and defense. In fact, the Treaty was quite important for the development of cultural and socio-cultural relations between France and Germany and the interactions between states and civil societies. Yet, contrary to the political rhetoric often heard, the Élysée Treaty was not the “year zero“ of Franco-German rapprochement. The Treaty also has to be evaluated in terms of the new impetus it provided for societal initiatives, as well as its limits in the cultural field. The article also assesses recent debates among intellectuals in the two countries: Do the two nations still have something to share at the cultural level or have they distanced themselves from each other? Has the Élysée Treaty really exhausted its integrative capacities regarding socio-cultural matters? In sum, the Treaty has become an important framework for Franco-German socio-cultural cooperation, even if “culture“ was not its main aim, and governments are far from having been the main actors in this field. But, thanks to the joint process of consultation and institutionalization, experiments with bilateral forms of exchanges and cooperation often occurred before being re-applied to a larger framework.
- Political Geography:
- France and Germany
93. Sarkozy and Merkel: The Undeniable Relevance of the Franco-German Bilateral Relationship in Europe
- Author:
- Francesca Vassallo
- Publication Date:
- 04-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- German Politics and Society
- Institution:
- German Politics and Society Journal
- Abstract:
- In 2013 France and Germany will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Élysée Treaty, signed by the two countries to create a close collaboration in the interest of peace and prosperity. Over the course of five decades, different couples of French Presidents and German Chancellors have dealt with the Paris-Berlin relationship in slightly different ways, some with more success than others. Despite the many changes in the European context and to the balance in the alliance between France and Germany, the initial motivation and meaning of the treaty remains astonishingly valid today, especially in light of its positive contribution to European integration. Even with many possible factors weakening the two countries' core relations, the Franco-German duo retains its historically dominant influence in successful European governance, as the recent Merkozy situation showed.
- Political Geography:
- Europe, France, Germany, and Berlin
94. Changing Partners at Fifty? French Security Policy after Libya in Light of the Élysée Treaty
- Author:
- Colette Mazzucelli
- Publication Date:
- 04-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- German Politics and Society
- Institution:
- German Politics and Society Journal
- Abstract:
- The 2011 Libya campaign highlighted the divergence of interests between France and Germany within the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in matters of Middle East and global security. This divergence calls for a reassessment of the meaning of their bilateral cooperation, as defined in the Treaty of Friendship between France and Germany, otherwise known as the Élysée Treaty, signed on 22 January 1963 by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and President Charles de Gaulle. This article focuses on France, which engaged militarily in Libya cooperating with the United Kingdom as its principal European partner. Germany, for reasons explained by its history, political culture, and the nature of its federal system, chose to abstain in the United Nations vote to authorize the campaign. These differences between France and Germany suggest a contrast in their respective security and, particularly defense, policy objectives on the fiftieth anniversary of the Élysée Treaty.
- Topic:
- Security
- Political Geography:
- France, Libya, and Germany
95. Germany's Energiewende: The Prospects of a Grand-Scale Project
- Author:
- Rainer Baake
- Publication Date:
- 03-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
- Institution:
- Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
- Abstract:
- Imagine a mid-sized country. Its population, area, and energy consumption make it a flyweight compared to the emerging giants of China and India. Unlike Russia or Brazil, it possesses virtually no fossil fuels of its own – apart from disastrously dirty lignite and some expensive-to-extract hard coal. Furthermore, this country is located in Europe, a continent that has become synonymous with economic crisis and sluggish growth. Why do the energy policies of such a country – namely Germany – matter? The reason is in its dedication to systematically transform its energy system. It is the first major industrial country to seriously consider the challenge of overcoming the entire range of problems associated with fossil and nuclear fuels – from emissions to cost, from nuclear proliferation to nuclear waste, from environmental devastation to health impacts. If Germany, despite medium irradiation levels, limited land to grow biomass, and average wind and water resources, succeeds in transforming the energy system to renewable sources while maintaining system reliability and keeping an eye on cost, then every other country in the world will be able to follow on that track, too. And the challenges entailed for these countries will be significantly lower.
- Political Geography:
- Russia, China, India, Brazil, and Germany
96. Muslim Organisations and Intergenerational Change in Germany
- Author:
- Dirk Halm
- Publication Date:
- 04-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The International Spectator
- Institution:
- Istituto Affari Internazionali
- Abstract:
- The process of social integration of the people associated with immigrant organisations, and the social (and potentially religious) change that comes with it, present the organisations with the difficult challenge of justifying their legitimacy to various societal actors. This is certainly true of Muslim organisations in Western immigration societies. In Germany, this process is quite clearly reflected within the community of established organisations, which play a part in creating intergenerational change. This is not to say, however, that they will be the only relevant – or even the predominant – actors involved in establishing Islam in Germany in the future, despite their roots in their countries of origin, nor that they will automatically become redundant over time.
- Political Geography:
- Germany
97. Challenges for the German Welfare State before and after the Global Financial Crisis
- Author:
- Mark Hallerberg
- Publication Date:
- 04-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- Germany has a northern European welfare state. This means that social benefits are extensive compared not only to the American standards but compared to other European countries, such as Italy or Spain. In the early 2000s, both foreign observers and Germans themselves considered the country the “sick man of Europe.” Its firms seemed increasingly uncompetitive, due especially to its costly labor. Economic growth in this period was stagnant. This “exporting giant” even had a slight current account deficit.
- Topic:
- Financial Crisis
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Germany, Spain, and Italy
98. After the Welfare State, edited by Tom G. Palmer
- Author:
- Ari Armstrong
- Publication Date:
- 06-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Objective Standard
- Institution:
- The Objective Standard
- Abstract:
- The modern welfare state began to take shape in the 1880s in Otto von Bismarck's Germany, and it took off in the United States in the 1930s under Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal." Now that the welfare state is thoroughly entrenched throughout most of the world, is there any reason to question its existence or any way to eliminate it? There is a reason and a way, and these are the subjects of the essays in After the Welfare State.
- Political Geography:
- United States and Germany
99. International Peace: One Hundred Years On
- Author:
- David C. Hendrickson
- Publication Date:
- 06-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- The bequest for the Church Peace Union-the predecessor of today's Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (and the publisher of this journal)-was given by Andrew Carnegie in February 1914. The Church Peace Union subsequently sponsored the first worldwide gathering of religious leaders, which was held in Constance, Germany, on August 2, 1914. Convened under the shadow of an impending war, not all delegates made it to the gathering. Six months previously, Carnegie had stipulated that the Church Peace Union devote its funds to the deserving poor "after the arbitration of international disputes is established and war abolished, as it certainly will be some day." This could happen, he noted, "sooner than expected, probably by the Teutonic nations, Germany, Britain, and the United States first deciding to act in unison, the others joining later." The outbreak of war was a catastrophic blow to such hopes, as the very nations expected to be at the core of this civilized project descended into an orgy of destruction the likes of which the world had never seen.
- Political Geography:
- Britain, United States, and Germany
100. Peace as a Transnational Theme
- Author:
- Akira Iriye
- Publication Date:
- 06-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- Peace is normally understood as the absence of war among nations. But that definition presupposes the overarching importance of nations as the key units of human association. There are, however, many other non-national entities, such as races, ethnic communities, religions, cultures, and civilizations. These entities, too, engage in conflict from time to time, as exemplified by the interracial violence and religious antagonisms in various parts of the world today and, of course, that which took place in the past. Yet why do we preserve the terms "war" and "peace" only for interstate relations? This is a very limited perspective, inasmuch as wars are a phenomenon whose appearance long preceded the formation of nations in the modern centuries; and besides, a presumed state of peace among countries can conceal serious hostilities between races or religions within and across national boundaries. Nazi Germany was technically at peace with all countries till 1939, and yet violent acts were committed there against groups of people domestically who were not considered racially acceptable. In today's world, there are no large-scale international wars, but domestic tensions and physical assaults occur daily within many countries. Terrorists wage war against states and their citizens alike, but they are not nations. To counter their threat, war preparedness in the traditional sense may be useful, perhaps, but it is much less effective than the coming together of individuals and groups to create a condition of interdependence and mutual trust. World peace must fundamentally be founded on a sense of shared humanity, regardless of which country people happen to live in. To consider war and peace purely in the context of international relations, therefore, is insufficient, even anachronistic. What we need is less an international than a transnational idea of peace.
- Political Geography:
- Germany
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