Search

Begin New Search Topic Security

7161. Change in the Offing: The Shifting Political Scene in Croatia

Publication Date:
12-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
The Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) has dominated Croatian political life since multi-party elections in April 1990 brought an end to communist rule. The HDZ has been a broad movement rather than a modern political party, representing a wide range of political views and interests, united behind its leader, President Franjo Tudjman, in the aim of achieving Croatian sovereignty and independence. In 1990-91, large areas of the country were taken over by rebellious Croatian Serbs, with support from Belgrade. Thus for most of the period of HDZ rule in Croatia, large chunks of the country remained outside Zagreb's control, and the overriding priority was to restore Croatia's territorial integrity, a goal which was finally achieved in January 1998. Croatia also became enmeshed in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia) as, supported by Croatia, the Bosnian Croats fought their erstwhile Bosniac allies in 1993-94. The obsession of Tudjman and the hard-line Herzegovina lobby in the HDZ with the dream of eventually detaching chunks of Bosnian territory and joining them with Croatia has been a persistent cause of international pressure on Croatia, as well as of division within Croatian politics.
Topic:
Security, Politics, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
Bosnia, Herzegovina, Eastern Europe, and Croatia

7162. Third Party Arms Transfers: Requirements for the 21st Century

Author:
John D. Macomber and Charles McC. Mathias
Publication Date:
10-1998
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
Can the United States collaborate with foreign nations in armaments development and production without jeopardizing US national security? This question - in light of America's global security obligations - demands a satisfactory answer. The economic and political advantages of greater international cooperation are significant. Benefits from cooperation include improved interoperability of weapons and equipment used by US allies and partners in operations with the United States, reduction in production costs, and preservation of a defense industrial base among US allies. Yet, considerations of national security are equally cogent.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, and Economics
Political Geography:
United States and America

7163. Disposing of Weapons-Grade Plutonium

Author:
Robert E. Ebel and John Taylor
Publication Date:
03-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Abstract:
This panel report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies considers an issue of critical importance to U.S. national security interests: Is the United States now pursuing a well-conceived and effective program of working with Russia to dispose of the vast amounts of separated plutonium that have become excess to the nuclear weapons needs of the two countries?
Topic:
Security, Energy Policy, Nuclear Weapons, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Russia and United States

7164. The Role of Ideology in Terrorists' Target Selection

Author:
C.J.M Drake
Publication Date:
06-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, St. Andrews University, Scotland
Abstract:
Ideology plays a crucial role in terrorist's target selection; it supplies terrorists with an initial motive for action and provides a prism through which they view events and the actions of other people. Those people and institutions whom they deem guilty of having transgressed the tenets of the terrorists' ideologically-based moral framework are considered to be legitimate targets which the terrorists feel justified in attacking. As an extension of this, ideology also allows terrorists to justify their violence by displacing the responsibility onto either their victims or other actors, whom in ideological terms they hold responsible for the state of affairs which the terrorists claim led them to adopt violence. While it is not the only factor which determines whether a potential target is attacked, ideology provides an initial range of legitimate targets and a means by which terrorists seek to justify attacks, both to the outside world and to themselves.
Topic:
Security, Government, Peace Studies, and Terrorism

7165. How Will the European Union Meet the 21st Century

Author:
Pal Dunay
Publication Date:
08-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The story of post-World War 2 European integration had started before integration theory gained popularity. One has to bear in mind, however, that the idea of European integration was launched with modest objectives in the 1950s. Except for some visionary statesmen, like Jean Monnet and some others, both the subject matters to be covered by integration and the geographical scope was limited. Six countries aimed at establishing a free trade zone and not much else was on their "plate" when they signed the Rome Treaty on 25 March 1957.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Europe

7166. Muddling Through? A Strategic Checklist for the United States in the Post-Cold War World

Author:
John Lewis Gaddis
Publication Date:
08-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The single most striking feature of the post-Cold War environment is the diffusion, not the disappearance, of threats. The half-century extending from 1941 to 1991 was, for the United States, one in which threats were both focused and obvious. From the time of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor until the final collapse of the Soviet Union exactly fifty years later, we knew who our enemies were, or at least might be. As a consequence, we abandoned the isolationism that had characterized most of our history in favor of an unaccustomed but - as it turned out - highly effective internationalism.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Europe

7167. Prospects for Europe and the Atlantic Alliance at Century's End

Author:
William I. Hitchcock
Publication Date:
08-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
Ever since the end of the Cold War, analysts have engaged in long discussions about what sort of international order would replace it. Though these discussions have ranged widely in their assessments, they usually took as their starting point a common assumption: that the Cold War order and the basic structure of international relations it represented, was over and done for. From 1989 until about 1995, this assessment seemed accurate: the alliance was falling apart, war broke out in Europe, the western economies were in a tailspin, and the delicate architecture that bound Germany to the states of Western Europe seemed to be in jeopardy, overburdened by the arrival of a united, powerful Germany. Whatever order we had, it didn't seem like anything we had seen before.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Europe

7168. Security Issues for Russia in the New International Context

Author:
Yuri Nazarkin
Publication Date:
08-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The starting point for this paper is the National Security Blueprint of the Russian Federation approved by Presidential Decree No. 1300 dated 17 December 1997. As the Blueprint itself clarifies, it is "a political document reflecting the aggregate of officially accepted views regarding goals and state strategy in the sphere of ensuring the security of the individual, society and the state from external and internal threats of a political, economic, social, military, man-made (technogennyy), ecological, information or other nature, in the light of existing resources and potential." It is a conceptual document of a general nature which is intended to be the basis for the elaboration of specific programmes and organisational documents in the sphere of ensuring the national security of the Russian Federation.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Europe

7169. Conflict Management and European Security: The Problem of Collective Solidarity

Author:
Fred Tanner
Publication Date:
08-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The dynamics of European security has become considerably more difficult to comprehend in recent years. This is due primarily to two sets of developments. First an "amorphous threat-free post-Cold War security setting" has replaced the distinct Alliance-wide threat from the Soviet Union. Second, new risks and threats have increasingly affected European security from regions immediately adjoining Western Europe. Conflicts and notorious instability loom in the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Balkans and the Mediterranean region, including North Africa and the Middle East. As a consequence, security cooperation in Europe currently struggles to cope with these risks of non-military nature and ambiguous threat scenarios from the "out-of-area".
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Europe

7170. New Security Challenge or Old? Russia's Catch—22

Author:
William C. Wohlforth
Publication Date:
08-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The most important security threat Russia faces, and the main threat it poses to the rest of the world, is its own implosion. If traditional security has to do with the manipulation and managment of the use of military force by states, then Russia's major contemporary problems must be understood under the "new security" rubric. Because the world has never before had to deal with the breakdown of a nuclear superpower, the security challenges Russia presents are certainly novel. But if "new security" is supposed to encompass problems that are transnational in nature and challenge state-centric analysis, then it too does not capture today's Russian question. For at the root of Russia's security problems is the absence of an effective government. To be sure, all of these problems are made more complicated by globalization. Many of them would continue to pester world politics even if Moscow had a capable government. But the root of these problems and the reason they present such great potential dangers is the absence of a capable state in Russia.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Europe