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Map of Europe |
Volume 3, Number 1, March 2004
Some Economic Considerations in the U.S. War on Terrorism by David Gold (PDF, 14 pages, 156.9 KB)
Certainly since September 11, 2001, if not earlier, the “war” against international terrorism has become the central organizing principle of United States foreign and military policy. Like most wars, the war against international terrorism is largely defined in terms of military and political objectives, yet other considerations are also of importance. Terrorism is a complex phenomenon that is difficult to pin down. As the terrorism expert Jessica Stern has reminded us, “The student of terrorism is confronted with hundreds of definitions in the literature.” Many analyses of terrorism, along with the prescriptions for dealing with it, emphasize its political, social, ideological, and economic aspects, although these factors are usually given less emphasis than security factors in policy formation.
At Least in Fighting Terrorism, Transatlantic Cooperation Is Working by Philippe Coessens (PDF, 3 pages, 121.9 KB)
While disagreements between the United States and the European Union on a range of global issues have recently attracted attention, cooperation between the two sides of the Atlantic on counter–terrorism has been relatively successful. There can be no doubt that this is an area in which the European Union and the United States share common goals.
Terrorism Transformed: The “New Terrorism,” Impact Scalability, and the Dynamic of Reciprocal Threat Perception by Doron Zimmermann (PDF, 21 pages, 318.0 KB)
How new is the “New Terrorism,” and does this paradigm accurately portray the effective threat of contemporaneous terrorism and the next wave of the near future? Moreover, do we need to fundamentally revise our conception of the terrorism paradigm in the light of a considerable number of analyses of contemporary terrorism that argue that “different motives, different actors, different sponsors, …and demonstrably greater lethality” exemplify this supposed new breed of political violence?
Emotions, Poverty, or Politics? Misconceptions about Islamist Movements by Anne Marie Baylouny (PDF, 7 pages, 138.7 KB)
In recent years violent movements in the name of Islam have been catapulted to center stage in U.S. foreign policy concerns. However, before concrete strategies can be formulated to deal with this phenomenon, the nature and dynamics of Islamist mobilization itself must be understood. What motivates an individual to join an Islamist group and possibly engage in violence? Under what conditions will these groups moderate their stances, and when will they radicalize?
Future Trends in Worldwide Maritime Terrorism by Joshua Sinai (PDF, 18 pages, 202.1 KB)
Today, all the warning signs indicate the highest states of alert for terrorist attacks against the maritime sector worldwide. Al–Qaeda and its allies are thought to pose the greatest danger to the maritime sector, whether against military or commercial ships of varying sizes navigating the world’s waterways, or against ports and related facilities. Ports, in fact, are threatened either as actual targets for attack or as entry points for smuggled weapons, including weapons of mass destruction (WMD). A second potential component of maritime terrorism is for terrorist groups to lease ships and boats to transport weapons from a multiplicity of suppliers to their intended recipients. Finally, there is great concern that a terrorist group, such as Al–Qaeda—which has a global reach, including its own fleet of vessels—possesses the motivation and capability to launch a waterborne WMD operation against American or other ports by detonating a nuclear or radiological dispersal device, thereby threatening the life and economic livelihood of that region.
The Education Of (Military) Leadership Personnel In A Postmodern World by Edwin R. Micewski (PDF, 7 pages, 167.1 KB)
The concepts of education and postmodernism are, most often, neither clearly explored nor unequivocally defined. The two terms are fairly intricate and most controversially debated. They both allow for several different interpretations, tolerating contrasting ways in which to intellectually approach the subject. This essay intends to stimulate reflection and will present some ideas and personal suggestions as to how the military should deal with and join the postmodernist debate.
Civilized Warriors? Professional Disciplines, Ethos, and European Armed Forces by Patrick Mileham (PDF, 20 pages, 171.6 KB)
“Let us be very clear,” declared NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson in March 2001. “There is, and will be, no single European Army. There will be no standing European Force.” He reassured the audience, “National armed forces will remain just that; national forces under the command of national governments.”
While he was articulating a NATO position on the development of European armed forces, Robertson might have been distancing NATO, deliberately or subconsciously, from the European Union’s (EU) concept of the development of many of those same national armed forces, which could lead to a single EU Army, Navy and Air Force, in perhaps ten or twenty years’ time. Indeed, the EU generally, and particularly the “Old European” national leaders, are zealously driving forward the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) and—whatever it means—a European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI). Are the decision–makers merely ideologists, whose successors in office will preside over bemused, bewildered, and less than competent warriors, or are they truly finding a way towards comprehensible, comprehensive, and effective security arrangements for the greater peace and stability of the world?
Central Asia: Mackinder Revisited? by Michel Hess (PDF, 11 pages, 146.0 KB)
When Alfred Thayer Mahan, an American naval officer, noted the seeming correlation between the rise of Pax Britannica in the nineteenth century and the development of the British Navy, he argued convincingly that naval capabilities were the sine qua non to national power. With the waning of British supremacy, however, this paradigm was challenged by technological advances in land transportation. The advent of railroads and the internal combustion engine meant that land power would assume the dominant position in the twentieth century. It was Halford Mackinder, a British geographer, who noted that, while only a quarter of the world’s surface was land, the three contiguous continents of Asia, Europe, and Africa constituted two–thirds of the planet’s solid surface. Mackinder referred to this landmass as the “World Island.”
Cyprus in Europe: Solving the Cyprus Problem by Europeanizing it? by Peter A. Zervakis (PDF, 26 pages, 228.2 KB)
At the time of the Treaties of Rome in 1957 creating the European Economic Community (EEC), and the Agreements of Zurich and London in 1959 founding the Republic of Cyprus, both of the new “postmodern polities” emerged despite the lack of any historical precedent. Based on international treaties rather than domestic constitutions, they were constructed to open the traditional sovereign nation–states and their borders to trans–national modes of European governance. Because they were not typical state actors, they did not fit into the political landscape of the era. Given the complicated but carefully balanced institutional and power sharing arrangements between the member nations of the EEC and the supranational institutions in one case, and the divergent Greek and Turkish ethnicities of the Republic of Cyprus forcing compromises in collective decision–making in the other, these resembled neither classical sovereign nation–states nor post–war modern international organizations like the United Nations (UN), which were grounded mainly on diplomatic interactions between governmental representatives.