La industria española de defensa ante los nuevos conflictos: capacidades a aportar

Conflicts such as Nagorno-Karabakh, the Donbas, Libya, Syria and Yemen have shown that even in such different scenarios, the diffusion of the key advances that were at the heart of the Revolution in Military Affairs is a fact. Moreover, most of these advances are so well established that they are now in daily use not only by many states, but also by their proxies and even by transnational terrorist and criminal groups. This phenomenon is intimately associated with the erosion of US military superiority, a country that is seeing how the People's Republic of China or the Russian Federation, but also North Korea or Iran, are capable of challenging the former superpower. In this scenario, aware of the need to compensate for the advances made by the other players, the US has launched a series of initiatives, such as the Third Offset Strategy, aimed at achieving new technological and arms developments that could lead to a new Revolution in Military Affairs or, perhaps, a full-fledged Military Revolution. In this complex context, in which conflicts fought with inherited means will converge with new weapons, systems and platforms and with the entry into service of developments that we cannot yet imagine, the Spanish defence industry will have to struggle to survive, knowing that its main customer - the Spanish Ministry of Defence - is in a very delicate situation in terms of facing this new stage.

Una aproximación geopolítica a las causas de la guerra

This paper discusses different geopolitical approaches to the causes of war. It starts by setting forth the historical relationship between geopolitics and warfare through different authors’ contributions to introduce the main explanations of this matter. In this way, we analyze the role of geography in warfare and its impact on conflicts. That leads us to the organicist perspective, which considers the expansion of the State a natural phenomenon that engenders war. Besides, physical geography also influences war outbreak. The second approach is the disposition of emerged land, which argues that specific places are prone to warfare due to their strategic location. The third approach is the accidental view. Its authors contend that war depends on the geographical distance between countries and border conflicts. Finally, we develop a new perspective based on geopolitical fragmentation to explain the war in modern Europe. This view explores the importance of fragmentation in the formation of the modern State and the shaping of an anarchical environment with the birth of the State’s system. Warfare became a trait of the international system because the modern State was born to wage war, and it became the dominant institution. Therefore, geopolitical fragmentation is the root cause behind violence between States in modern Europe.

El Tribunal Especial para el Líbano y la sentencia Hariri. ¿Justicia selectiva?

The article analyses the complex relation between politics and justice in the international arena that is reflected in the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. The subject matters developed are its problematic establishment by means of Security Council resolution 1757 (2007) and its selective nature, as well as the legal-doctrinal dispute laid out in the Ayyash et al. case, also known as the Hariri case. It is stressed the importance of circumstantial factors, especially those triggered since 2004, with the aim to explain the internal division —with international protagonists— of the country into two blocks whose confrontation would serve as a pretext for starting-up a unique tribunal that would meet the interests of an international community captivated by the possibility of achieving a judicial terrorism sentence against Hizballah —and/or Syria— who was gathering momentum. The 2011 interlocutory decision of the Appeals Chamber seemed to reveal itself as a good omen in said direction when it stated the necessity to interpret the crime of terrorism established in article 314 of the Lebanese Criminal Code in accordance with an international crime of terrorism of customary nature. The revolutionary decision —together with the process that led to its publication— disclosed nevertheless, a certain hasty and opportunistic character, which the 2020 judgment finally rejected for being unnecessary and untrue. The article upholds that all the above has contributed to undermine the credibility of the Tribunal, which is a model of selective justice, and has demonstrated little deference towards the sovereignty of the Lebanese State.

Opciones estratégicas de Rusia desde la óptica del neorrealismo ofensivo

Neorealism gives us clues to how States -the main actor in international relations- interact with each other, and being their main mission their own survival, develops specific strategies to ensure it, the reasons for choosing between them, and the actions that they ensure the end goal. It will be within this theoretical framework that an attempt will be made to revisit the special relationship between Russia and China. Once ideological partners, other adversaries as heads of the two largest power structures under the umbrella of socialism, and today, it seems that powers are increasingly close in their common aversion to American power. And yet ... This work tries to identify Russia's strategic options, framed in the paradigm of the realist school.

La industria de defensa en el mundo: hechos estilizados y tendencias

As in other areas, technological transformations, along with their high speed, have been incorporated into weapons systems throughout the global defense industry. However, it is not possible to know to what extent the new technological leaderships are undermining the foundations of those that existed until now. Along with this, changes in the geo-political and geo-economics spheres are generating a reality in which aspects such as the international arms trade, the emergence of SMEs in the sector or, as far as the EU is concerned, the promotion of defense policy, transform the morphology and relationships between the agents that intervene in this market. What can be the future trends considering the main stylized facts that are observed today?

Redes sociales, desinformación, cibersoberanía y vigilancia digital: una visión desde la ciberseguridad

After a development of more than fifty years, today the Internet has established itself as the key element of cyberspace. Network users exceed half of the world's population, while its impact reaches all sides of contemporary societies. Today, free access to the Internet is inserted in the field of human rights; however, at the same time, concerns about the credibility of information stored on the network are increasing. This article will focus, from the point of view of cybersecurity, on three main topics related to the respect of individual rights and guarantees: Internet accessibility and digital surveillance; social networks and the privacy of personal data; and the use of those social networks in the execution of disinformation operations that include fake news and post-truth narratives.

Política europea de seguridad y defensa y sus efectos en la industria de defensa

Defence has traditionally not been a priority within Community policies. However, in recent years it had become aware of the need to promote it, with special attention to the development of the industrial base. The most significant milestone for change comes in December 2013 when the Council discusses the future of security and defence. Until then, the Council took precedence over national optics and the Commission acted in the face of industry as a regulator to promote the implementation of single market rules in the defence market. The Libyan crisis of 2011 highlighted the need for strategic autonomy. This abstract concept implies the capability to act. It highlights the need for greater autonomy in industrial matters to support military capabilities without external dependencies. The crisis also occurs at a time of widespread decline in defence budgets that makes it difficult for nations to tackle large programs individually. The need for a competitive industrial base to support autonomous operations is of value. It is in this context that the EU Global Strategy in 2016 is enacted, resulting in the implementation in defence of the CFSP initiative aimed at streamlining demand, and the European Defence Plan, which includes the creation of a specific fund, the EDF, aimed at incentivising industrial cooperation to act on the supply side. The initiatives launched over the past four years to promote security and defence cooperation, with particular attention to the industrial component, are underway and will be difficult to go back even if European countries are in the dilemma between protectionism and cooperation. The COVID 19 crisis has diverted that attention. The future presents a scenario of greater strategic instability, which is faced with different national perspectives, greater competition between great powers in which Europe does not present a single voice, and a European society that seems far from its defence. Under these conditions, Europe faces the need to decide between having military and industrial capabilities appropriate to its political objectives or maintaining formulas for cooperation with third parties following current models. If the strategic objective is to have sufficient autonomy to address actions independently, the development of an industrial defence policy will be a basic element and will be conditioned by member states' visions, budgetary effort, and level of coordination of operational demand and industrial supply.

El problema del coste de la defensa

This article addresses the cost associated to defence, i.e., the resources that societies shall allocate to provide security to their members. It examines the methods and ways for setting and distributing these resources to obtain enough military capabilities for sustaining the perception of security of the citizens. The choice of an allocation that optimises social welfare is rather old and of constant concern. The main novelty of this article is exploring this problem from the bounded rationality of the human being, the imperfect information available, the choices unsupported by economic rationality and the constrained effectiveness of institutions and norms. These issues may drive to allocations that do not necessarily achieve the largest welfare.

El comercio internacional de armamento y las ventajas comparativas

In this paper we try to explain how well trading models in general can be used for international arms trading. We will study the evolution of the main models throughout history in order to see in what ways they may be adequate to explain the security and defence material trading, mainly we will focus in the Heckscher-Ohlin model. In order to understand military equipment trading, we are going to analyze the industry’s composition, studying the cases of the main exporters and importers, and what motivates them to go one step further from the mere production of Goods, towards international trading, while taking into consideration the main ways of exporting a product and the regulations it may face.

Rethinking the Regional Security Complex Theory: A South American view between 2008-2016

With this article, we propose to reformulate the Regional Security Complex Theory, by Buzan and Waever, through a South American vision, with the time frame 2008-2016. To this end, we will analyse South America through Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, and their forms of intra and extra-regional interaction, highlighting the Colombia-United States relations, and the South American Defence Council, of the Union of South American Nations. This article is divided into a first section marked by an understanding of the Regional Complex Theory, in which we present and discuss its theoretical elements and weaknesses, and propose theoretical changes that will guide our analysis. The second section contains information about the South American Complex in the academic view, focusing on the arguments of Buzan and Waever. In the third section, we present the South American Regional Security Complex restructured, as well as the analysis of its dynamics. The central argument of the article is the need to reformulate the Theory in question for a better understanding of the complexities and unique characteristics of South America.