Connections

 

Volume II, Number 3, September 2003

 

• The State of Transatlantic Relations after the Second Gulf War by Sean S. Costigan (PDF, 4 pages, 110 KB)

  The transatlantic relationship is in flux. While some analysts argue that the transatlantic alliance has pulled through more difficult circumstances before, others state that the alliance has collapsed. None, however, would disagree that the long-standing partnership is in disarray. The diplomatic—and at turns wholly undiplomatic—struggle over Iraq may be just the most recent flare-up in a series of major disagreements between the United States and the governments of the European Union. It may be more. If something fundamental to the constancy of the alliance has changed, what is it?

• Tales of the Transatlantic by Anders Stephanson (PDF, 4 pages, 63 KB)

  Countless conferences and op-ed pieces have been devoted over the years to the 'Atlantic relationship' and its ups and downs, providing ample room for pundits and policy experts to declare what was to be done to secure this supposedly crucial aspect of international politics. It has been a very dependable worry.

• Transforming the Alliance: The Bush Administration's Vision of NATO by Edward Rhodes (PDF, 14 pages, 190 KB)

  For political scientists and for policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic, the end of the Cold War raised profound questions about the future of the North Atlantic alliance—whether it would continue to exist, whether it would continue to play a significant role, and, if it survived and continued to play a significant role, what that role would be and what capabilities would be needed to perform it. Since June 2001, the administration of President George W. Bush has weighed in on these questions. What has emerged has been an extraordinarily coherent if not entirely unproblematic set of propositions about the nature of NATO, about the role it needs to play in the world, and about how the alliance and its capabilities will have to evolve.

• Labors of the New American Hercules: Transatlantic Relations in the Wake of the War with Iraq by Hall Gardner (PDF, 8 pages, 130 KB)

  Time will tell whether preclusive military intervention in Iraq has truly helped to stimulate efforts to “resolve,” or even significantly change for the better, the complex crises emanating from the Persian Gulf, Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and the Korean peninsula, let alone help to institute a semblance of “communal” democracy in Iraq that can help unify its divergent ethnic and religious factions. From today’s standpoint, however, US relations with both major and regional powers appear much more fractious.

• Mind the Three Transatlantic Power Gaps by Stanley R. Sloan and Heiko Borchert (PDF, 11 pages, 183 KB)

  The end of the brief "hot" war in Iraq and the accompanying transatlantic diplomatic conflict set the stage for a new and challenging period of US-European relations. The United States, its European allies and the international community more generally face complex and multifaceted rebuilding challenges: Iraq needs to be rebuilt after the war which removed Saddam Hussein's tyrannical regime from power; the transatlantic rift must be repaired; the United Nations needs to be rebuilt, and with it the core of international law regulating the use of force. Finally, the bond of trust between Washington and the rest of the world needs to be rebuilt with a special focus on the kind of role that the United States is going to play in the international system.

• Transatlantic Relations after the War in Iraq by Thérèse Delpech (PDF, 4 pages, 89 KB)

  After the war in Iraq, there is a troubling difference between the internal and the external assessment of the transatlantic relations. To most Americans and Europeans, the transatlantic bond has been badly damaged. Cooperation in some shape or form still appears possible on a number of issues, but months after the end of hostilities, the stubborn willingness of the different actors to find their position on the war vindicated by events, continues to spoil the atmosphere. Worse, dangerous questions for the Alliance have now surfaced concerning the indivisibility of European and American security.

• CFSP Reform and Transatlantic Relations by Ettore Greco (PDF, 5 pages, 103 KB)

  The Iraqi crisis exposed once again the structural deficiencies of the European Union’s foreign policy. In the 1990s the Union’s member states had already proven unable to cope effectively with major international crises. But their inability to take common positions and actions during the Iraq crisis was also compounded by unprecedented tensions between a few of them, notably France and Germany, and the United States, something which cast a dark shadow over the future of the transatlantic security partnership.

• Knowledge Based, Network Centric Approach in Strengthening Transatlantic Link with the New NATO Members in SEE by Dr. Velizar Shalamanov (PDF, 9 pages, 133 KB)

  The current diversity of new risks and threats, as well as new opportunities and responsibilities for projection and protection of our common values and interests, are considered by some to be risks in and of themselves for the further development of Euro-Atlantic solidarity and cooperation. There is a real challenge to build common assessments and strengthen perceptions about the security agenda, to define a common set of instruments, especially when it comes to military operations, needed expeditionary forces, their basing, modernization, training and most of all modalities of use, combined command and control, and support "out of area" as well as long term sustainability.

• Between 'Venus' and 'Mars': Canada and the TransAtlantic 'Gap' by Joel J. Sokolsky (PDF, 11 pages, 103 KB)

  In his now celebrated book, Of Paradise and Power, Robert Kagan looks at the "gap" between the United States and Europe and declares that "Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus." The refusal of several major allies to support the United States in the Second Gulf War only has reinforced this view. Canada too, pointedly opposed the war. But for most commentators on either side of the Atlantic, Canada is not even in the universe, much less in the solar system. One American commentator observed that "For everyday, non-political Americans, Europe is simply not a preoccupation one way or the other. It is Canada with castles . . . a nice place, but hardly the furnace where our future will be forged.

• International Law and the Use of Force: The Jus Ad Bellum by Michael N. Schmitt (PDF, 9 pages, 172.4 KB)

  Until the twentieth century, no express prohibition against the use of force existed in international law. However, the legitimacy of armed conflict has been an issue of concern since ancient times. Most significantly, the just war doctrine, which was influenced heavily by the writings of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, characterized armed conflict in terms of right and wrong, morality and immorality. For Augustine, writing in the fifth century A.D., just wars were those that “avenge[d] injuries, when the nation or city against which warlike action is to be directed has neglected either to punish wrongs committed by its own citizens or to restore what has been unjustly taken by it.”1 850 years later, Aquinas refined this standard by suggesting three criteria with which to assess the use of force. To be just, the use of armed force had to be authorized by the sovereign, be for a just cause (i.e., the other side must have committed a wrong), and the belligerent nation or city had to posses the “right intention,” specifically, “the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil.”

• The EAPC/PfP as an Instrument to Combat Global Terrorism by Michael Hess (PDF, 10 pages, 150.7 KB)

  There is no multilateral security framework whose mandate has not been reexamined – and, in many cases, fundamentally redefined – in the aftermath of 11 September 2001 The search for an effective response at a multilateral level to global terrorist networks and the organized crime structures supporting these networks mirrored the extensive national measures and bilateral efforts undertaken to enhance homeland security. While it has been fashionable in academic circles to refer to the blurring of the distinction between national and international security, the magnitude and the nature of the terrorist attacks delivered the most convincing argument in favor of merging and intensifying the coordination between domestic intelligence, foreign policy, and defense policy.

• Innere Fuhrung – Leadership and Civic Education in the German Armed Forces by Martin Kutz (PDF, 16 pages, 184.7 KB)

  The German concept of Innere Führung is perhaps very difficult to translate but it is of great potential significance to European and other states wrestling with the future of the relationship between the nation and the military. Innere Führung, sometimes translated rather too briefly as ‘leadership and civic education’, is a particularity of the German Armed Forces, the Bundeswehr; it both shapes and derives from Germany’s postwar experience. It is better understood as ‘military leadership and conduct within a society where military forces, under civilian control, are democratically accountable to society as a whole’. It manifests itself in various institutional forms. There are directives on Innere Führung and in the legal provisions governing the military, we find many principles which directly or indirectly refer to Innere Führung. The German Parliament, for example, determines through its civilian Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces whether the principles of Innere Führung are adequately implemented within the Armed Forces. In any case where the principles of Innere Führung are not properly applied, individual soldiers in the Bundeswehr have the right to complain directly to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces – without following the military chain of command. Thus, Innere Führung plays a central role in the Bundeswehr and, in its specific, German form, it is unique in the whole of Europe.

• The Defense Forces and the NGOs: A Cultural Collision or a Meeting of Minds? by Michael P. Dolan (PDF, 29 pages, 234.2 KB)

  Numerous conflicts since the end of the Cold War, in many parts of the world, have seen military and civilian assets deployed side by side as part of an overall UN–mandated solution. Though great cultural differences exist between the military and NGOs, a level of compromise has been demonstrated in an effort to provide solutions. The skills required to operate in alignment with the changing role of UN operations present a challenge to professional defense forces. The military officer must recognize this challenge, particularly in the area of humanitarian assistance operations, and move to meet it. To do this effectively, he/she must study the other players on stage. Ireland has international credibility, hard–won over the last fifty years of peacekeeping operations, but the Irish Defense Forces, accepting that peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance missions have changed, must also be cognizant of the dilemmas that confront both the military and NGOs in their uneasy alliance on shared turf.