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241. The Long Cycle of Global Politics and the Nation-State

Author:
George Modelski
Publication Date:
09-2005
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
In modern times a succession of world powers shaped the global system. The active focus for global organization has always been a world power and that the identity, values and resources of that power have shaped modern world experience. We observe that, since 1500 four states have in turn played a dominant role in the management of global interdependence and therefore fit the description of a world power: Portugal, the Netherlands, Britain and the US. In a fairly regular pattern each world power has been succeeded by another in a process that recalls, though it is not to be confused with the long-term succession of political regimes in a political system lacking regularized elections. One long cycle corresponds to each global power, except in the case of Britain, who has experienced two such cycles.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
Britain, United States, and Netherlands

242. Strategic Adaptation or Identity Change? An analysis of Britain's Approach to the ESDP 1998-2004

Author:
Kristin Marie Haugevik
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
In this working paper, Kristin Marie Haugevik seeks to analyse the nature of the changes in Britain's approach to the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) after 1998. Ever since the beginning of the European integration process in 1951, Britain's approach to European security and defence cooperation has been characterized by anti-federalism and transatlanticism. Hence, it was unexpected when Tony Blair, together with Jacques Chirac, took the initiative to frame a common security and defence policy for the EU in Saint Malo in 1998. This paper discusses to what extent Britain's new approach to the ESDP after 1998 can be explained as the result of a strategic adaptation, and to what extent it can be seen as a result of more profound changes in the British identity and security interests. These two accounts are tested by analysing Britain's approach to some of the most important ESDP documents since 1998: the Saint Malo declaration, the Laeken declaration, the Nice Treaty, the European Security Strategy, and the Constitution Treaty.
Topic:
Security and Defense Policy
Political Geography:
Britain, United Kingdom, and Europe

243. How Many Third Ways? Comparing the British, French and German Left in Government

Author:
Eckhard Schröter
Publication Date:
02-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies (IES), UC Berkeley
Abstract:
In the late 1990s, the European Left seemed to be once more in the ascendancy with Social Democratic-led governments in power in the majority of EU countries, including the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. At the same time, the debate about the socalled 'Third Way' — as an icon of the apparent electoral revitalization of European Social Democracy — rose to become the most important reform discourse in the European party landscape.
Topic:
International Relations and Government
Political Geography:
Britain, United Kingdom, Europe, France, and Germany

244. Clarifying and Strengthening the Iran-European Nuclear Accord

Author:
Patrick Clawson
Publication Date:
11-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
On November 25, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors will meet to consider Iran's nuclear program, in light of the November 14 Paris Accords between Iran and Britain, France, and Germany (the E3). If the Paris Accords are going to work as a stepping-stone toward ending Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions -- rather than as a stalling tactic while Iran makes progress on that program -- several steps will be necessary to clarify and build on the Paris Accords.
Topic:
Security and Religion
Political Geography:
Britain, Europe, Iran, Middle East, Paris, France, Germany, and Arab Countries

245. Narrating Oneself Through Another: Medieval Christians and Their Images of the Saracen

Author:
Paul T. Levin
Publication Date:
11-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
It was Turkish membership in the European Union that the Viennese social worker quoted in the Guardian was against. As the Commission of the European Union has recently delivered a report that suggests the opening up of EU accession negotiations with Turkey, old fears seem to be awakening on the continent; “Turcophobia”, as the Guardian calls it. The liberal Viennese news weekly Profil the same week described the prospect of Turkish membership as “not so much a risk as a danger” in an editorial titled “The Turks at the Gates of Vienna.” But not only Turks are experiencing a resurrection of animosities that many thought were long since buried. In the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, anti-Arab sentiments surged along with verbal and physical attacks on Muslims in both Europe and the U.S. Perhaps the secretly held view of too many in Europe and the “West” is that of Britain's Robert Kilroy-Silk. According to his column in the Sunday Express on September 25 of this year, Arabs are no more than "suicide bombers, limb-amputators, women repressors". This essay digs deep to find the historical roots of today's images of Turks, Arabs, and Muslims.
Topic:
International Relations, International Organization, Regional Cooperation, and Religion
Political Geography:
Britain, United States, Europe, Turkey, and Arabia

246. The Hinge to Europe: Don't Make Britain Choose Between the U.S. and the E.U.

Author:
Anatol Lieven
Publication Date:
08-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The vital U.S. relationship with Britain is much more fragile than many Americans think. Thanks to the Bush administration policy on a range of issues, hostility to the United States among the British public is higher than it has been since the Vietnam War. Only the personal commitment and moral courage of Tony Blair made British participation in the Iraq War possible—and the result has been seriously to endanger his leadership at home. Above all, Americans must understand that the strategy of this British government, and of the British foreign policy establishment in general, is to avoid having to make a definitive choice between Britain's alliance with the United States and its place in the European Union. If Washington forces Britain to choose between the two, it may not choose the United States, and a collapse of the relationship with Britain would leave the United States without a single major Western ally. The consequences for U.S. power and influence in the world would be nothing short of disastrous.
Topic:
International Cooperation and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
Britain, United States, United Kingdom, America, Europe, and Vietnam

247. Dealing with Iran's Nuclear Program

Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
The announcement on 21 October 2003 of an agreement between Iran on the one hand and Britain, France and Germany on the other, is an important and welcome step in resolving the controversy surrounding Tehran's nuclear program. But it would be wrong to assume that it ends it. The challenge now is to use the breathing space provided by the agreement to tackle the questions – about its implementation, the future of Iran's uranium enrichment activities and Iran's own security concerns – that, for the time being, it has deferred.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Government, Nuclear Weapons, and Politics
Political Geography:
Britain, Iran, France, Arabia, and Germany

248. EU Accession and the Euro: Close Together or Far Apart?

Author:
Peter B. Kenen and Ellen E. Meade
Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
Abstract:
In May 2004, ten countries are due to join the European Union. They are therefore obliged to join the European Monetary Union (EMU) and adopt the euro as their national currency. Most of them, moreover, have been eager to do that. None of them sought an opt-out of the sort that Britain and Denmark obtained in 1991, when the Maastricht Treaty was drafted. Membership in EMU is not automatic, however, because the accession countries must first satisfy the preconditions contained in the Maastricht Treaty. Although those preconditions are rigorous, and some of the accession countries are still far from meeting them, most of those countries have indicated that they want to enter EMU at the earliest possible date.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Britain, Europe, and Denmark

249. Telos or Brick Wall? British Nuclear Posture and European Defence Integration

Author:
Toby Archer
Publication Date:
01-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA)
Abstract:
Somewhere, at this very moment under one of the world's oceans, there is a Royal Navy 'Vanguard' class nuclear powered and armed submarine (SSBN) on patrol. Before it returns to port, another one of the four Vanguard class boats will head out into the deep ocean, meaning that no matter what occurs, Britain will always have an unreachable nuclear counter-strike facility. That one submarine, always out at sea and submerged, is now Britain's whole nuclear deterrent; all other nuclear weapons that Britain held during the Cold War, both land based and air-launched, have been decommissioned and dismantled over the last decade. The UK has the smallest nuclear arsenal of all the five nuclear-armed permanent members of the UN Security Council (it is even believed that Israel – undeclared as a nuclear power – now actually possesses more warheads than the UK does). The number of warheads quoted by the Ministry of Defence is now “fewer than 200”, and estimated by independent sources as likely to be around 160.
Topic:
Defense Policy and Nuclear Weapons
Political Geography:
Britain, United States, United Kingdom, and Europe

250. Crime, Terror and the Central Asia Drug Trade

Author:
Tamara Makarenko
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, St. Andrews University, Scotland
Abstract:
Over the last decade, opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has been rising incrementally, culminating in a bumper crop in 1999 that produced approximately 80 percent of the global supply of illicit opium. Despite this predicament, the dynamics of the illicit drugs trade in Afghanistan has received little attention. Most media reports and government statements over-simplify the situation, making it appear as though the Taliban controlled the planting, cultivation, production and trafficking of all opiates. For example, The Times, in an article published in January 2000, reported “The Taliban rulers of Afghanistan have become the world's biggest producers and smugglers of hard drugs, overtaking rings in Colombia and Burma. They are now responsible for 95 per cent of all the heroin entering Britain.” Following the September 11 attacks, this responsibility was shared with Usama bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda network. British Prime Minister Tony Blair thus stated that the “arms the Taliban are buying today are paid for with the lives of young British people buying their drugs on British streets”, and subsequently added that the Taliban and Usama bin Laden “jointly exploited the drugs trade.” This view has also been propagated in the United States by leading news agencies. CNN, for example, explicitly reported that the Taliban both taxed and trafficked in narcotics, which were directly used to finance their military operations.
Topic:
Crime, Economics, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Britain, Afghanistan, Central Asia, Taliban, Colombia, and Burma