In Euromissile
s, Susan Colbourn tells the story of the height of nuclear
crisis and the remarkable waning of the fear that gripped the
globe. In the Cold War conflict that pitted nuclear
superpowers ...against one another, Europe was the principal
battleground. Washington and Moscow had troops on the ground and
missiles in the fields of their respective allies, the NATO nations
and the states of the Warsaw Pact. Euromissiles-intermediate-range
nuclear weapons to be used exclusively in the regional theater of
war-highlighted how the peoples of Europe were dangerously placed
between hammer and anvil. That made European leaders uncomfortable
and pushed fearful masses into the streets demanding peace in their
time. At the center of the story is NATO. Colbourn highlights the
weakness of the alliance seen by many as the most effective bulwark
against Soviet aggression. Divided among themselves and uncertain
about the depth of US support, the member states were riven by the
missile issue. This strategic crisis was, as much as any summit
meeting between US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet general
secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, the hinge on which the Cold War
turned. Euromissiles is a history of diplomacy and
alliances, social movements and strategy, nuclear weapons and
nagging fears, and politics. To tell that history, Colbourn takes a
long view of the strategic crisis-from the emerging dilemmas of
allied defense in the early 1950s through the aftermath of the INF
Treaty thirty-five years later. The result is a dramatic and
sweeping tale that changes the way we think about the Cold War and
its culmination.
Why did Western European states agree to the enlargement of the EU and NATO? Frank Schimmelfennig analyzes the history of the enlargement process and develops a theoretical approach of 'rhetorical ...action' to explain why it occurred. While rationalist theory explains the willingness of East European states to join the NATO and EU, it does not explain why member states decided to admit them. Using original data, Schimmelfennig shows that expansion to the East can be understood in terms of liberal democratic community building. Drawing on the works of Jon Elster and Erving Goffman, he demonstrates that the decision to expand was the result of rhetorical action. Candidates and their supporters used arguments based on collective identity, norms and values of the Western community to shame opponents into acquiescing to enlargement. This landmark book makes an enormous contribution to theory in international relations and to the study of European politics.
This paper is an analysis of the Ukraine crisis in 2014 evolving to 2022 as the prelude to the Russia-Ukraine fullfledged war that started in February 2022. The escalating conflict between Russia and ...Ukraine has reverberated beyond their borders, with the active involvement of key international actors such as the European Union (EU), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the United States (US) in the conflict zone. Notably, the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, visited the Kherson and Luhansk regions, further exacerbating tensions in the area. Preceding these events, Russia organized a referendum on 20 September in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, wherein enthusiasm for joining the Russian Federation was expressed. These developments are perceived as manifestations of Russia’s dissatisfaction with Ukraine’s political decisions. The conflict’s initiation in 2022 can be attributed to Ukraine’s aspirations to align itself with NATO and the EU, which sparked Russia’s aggressive actions. Despite Ukraine’s efforts to regain control of Crimea and restore its sovereignty, exemplified by the formation of the Crimea Platform at its first Summit in 2021 with the backing of the EU and NATO, the situation has escalated into a full-scale war. By examining the sequence of events and the underlying geopolitical dynamics, this paper aims to shed light on the complexities of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and its shift into a catastrophic war. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the interplay between political decisions, regional ambitions, and the global ramifications of military aggression in contemporary international conflicts.
Even though Turkey was a member of NATO during the Cold War years, its geostrategic importance was far behind its size and the number of its military. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Turkey's ...foreign policy and strategic doctrine gradually opened up, the country became an increasingly active participant in international armed conflicts, and after a while it aspired to a distinctly regional leadership role. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan treats the transatlantic alliance more and more only as a security guarantee, and based on this he targets his personal and national ambitions. The purpose of the article called Re-Visiting Turkish National Security Strategy After the Cold War is to provide a qualitative analysis of this process with the help of international literature.
This scholarly article examines the continued existence of NATO after the end of the Cold War. Despite the disappearance of its primary adversary, the Soviet Union, NATO has continued to exist. The ...conventional neorealist explanation for the alliance’s longevity, which states that NATO was established as a counterbalance to the Soviet Union and thus should have been dissolved upon its collapse, is challenged by the constructivist perspective. Constructivism argues that NATO persists as a result of the desire of liberal democracies to cooperate for the sake of peace and the influence of member states’ collective identities. However, this constructivist explanation is criticized for being predicated on a specific understanding of NATO and for neglecting the crucial role of the United States in sustaining the alliance. This study contends that offensive neorealism, which takes into account the role of the United States in a value-neutral way, offers the most comprehensive explanation for NATO’s persistence after 1991.
This article highlights three key areas of Western adaptation to Russia’s war against Ukraine with advice for how to optimize them going forward. First is the immediate strengthening of NATO’s ...conventional defense against Russia, whose sustainability will depend on European contributions, as the US increasingly will focus on Asia. Second is the preservation of joint resilience against both Russia and China, in which NATO should stick to the narrow military areas and the EU to the broader civilian areas. Third is the question of Ukraine as part of the West, where the former’s poor reform record and the latter’s unwillingness to intervene militarily on its behalf draw the realistic scenario of the country’s continued association.
Denne artikel fremhæver tre nøgleaspekter af den vestlige tilpasning til Ruslands krig mod Ukraine og giver bud på, hvordan de fælles politikker kan optimeres fremover. Det første er den forestående ...styrkelse af NATOs konventionelle forsvar mod Rusland, hvis bæredygtighed imidlertid vil afhænge af europæiske bidrag, efterhånden som USA fokuserer mere på Asien. Det andet er bevarelsen af den fælles robusthed over for både Rusland og Kina, hvor NATO bør holde sig til det snævre militære aspekt, og EU til det bredere civile aspekt. Det tredje er spørgsmålet om Ukraine som en del af Vesten, hvor førstnævntes ringe reformfremskridt og sidstnævntes manglende vilje til at intervenere militært tegner det realistiske scenarie af landets fortsatte associering med Vesten.
The role of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its influence on the peace and conflict dynamic in the Middle East has always been a discussed and controversial issue. While the United States ...and the countries of the NATO Southern flank are active in the discussions on NATO engagement in the region, the perspectives of NATO Eastern flank countries is often forgotten. This work contributes to the discussion with a comparative analysis of four NATO member states from Central and Eastern Europe: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Romania and Poland. Their position is analysed based on their strategic interests and level of engagement in the Middle East, which leads to categorizing them within a created typology.
