Common security, non-provocative defence, and the future of Western Europe

1987 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 265-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Buzan

Over the last few years the termcommon securityhas come into widespread use in debates about military policy. To date, however, this potentially important concept has not acquired any clear or generally accepted meaning. It is used by a variety of writers with quite different purposes in mind, and is therefore in danger of degenerating into an empty phrase. This article tries to bring common security into sharper focus. It starts by examining the general meaning of common security in terms of its core insight that the security of states in the contemporary international system is fundamentally interdependent. It goes on to test this meaning against the contents of four recent books all of which specifically address the idea. The discussion centres on the possible linkages between common security as an overall policy objective on the one hand, and a variety of specific policies for implementing it—including disarmament, arms control, minimum deterrence, and non-provocative defence–on the other. The next section makes the argument that a combination of minimum deterrence and non-provocative defence provides the most logically convincing implementation strategy for common security.

Author(s):  
Detlef Pollack ◽  
Gergely Rosta

The most important conclusions of this summarizing chapter are the following: The religious landscape of Eastern Europe is more diverse than that of Western Europe. The cases of Poland and the GDR confirm the hypothesis that there is a link between the diffusion of functions and the growth in the importance of religion. The strong processes of biographical individualization that occurred in the post-communist states did not necessarily intensify individual religiosity. The economic market model cannot be confirmed for Eastern Europe. There is in Eastern and Central Europe a demonstrable link between economic prosperity and the loosening of religious and church ties. What can act as a bulwark against the eroding effects of modernization is church activity on the one hand, and the everyday proximity, visibility, and concreteness of religious practices and rituals, symbols, images, and objects on the other.


2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 310-338
Author(s):  
Victor Lieberman

AbstractInsisting on a radical divide between post-1750 ideologies in Europe and earlier political thought in both Europe and Asia, modernist scholars of nationalism have called attention, quite justifiably, to European nationalisms’ unique focus on popular sovereignty, legal equality, territorial fixity, and the primacy of secular over universal religious loyalties. Yet this essay argues that nationalism also shared basic developmental and expressive features with political thought in pre-1750 Europe as well as in rimland—that is to say outlying—sectors of Asia. Polities in Western Europe and rimland Asia were all protected against Inner Asian occupation, all enjoyed relatively cohesive local geographies, and all experienced economic and social pressures to integration that were not only sustained but surprisingly synchronized throughout the second millennium. In Western Europe and rimland Asia each major state came to identify with a named ethnicity, specific artifacts became badges of inclusion, and central ethnicity expanded and grew more standardized. Using Myanmar and pre-1750 England/Britain as case studies, this essay reconstructs these centuries-long similarities in process and form between “political ethnicity,” on the one hand, and modern nationalism, on the other. Finally, however, this essay explores cultural and material answers to the obvious question: if political ethnicities in Myanmar and pre-1750 England/Britain were indeed comparable, why did the latter realm alone generate recognizable expressions of nationalism? As such, this essay both strengthens and weakens claims for European exceptionalism.


Human Affairs ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mishel Pavlovski

AbstractBy questioning the ways in which a supra-national European identity can be created in an environment of globalization, this article starts with the thesis that this concept faces problems which must be resolved first and foremost at the national level. By problematizing multiculturalism as a “utopian theory” which does not solve any problems at the practical level, and by viewing interculturalism as a potential danger to “smaller” cultures, this article identifies what it is that hinders the possible acceptance of the idea of a Europe without borders by analyzing plays by Goran Stefanovski. In four of his plays, Euralien, Hotel Europa, Ex-Yu, and Goce, Stefanovski criticizes Western Europe, on the one hand, for constructing a problematic Other, imposing a visa regime, and contributing to its marginalization, and the Balkans on the other, for mythologizing its nationally-romanticized narrative. The paper sheds light on the fact that the acceptance of a common (shared) European identity, a necessity which propagates itself amidst conditions of globalization, is dependent on the ways in which Europe will resolve its problems, such as the marginalization of the Other, way of thinking in binary oppositions, like old/new Europe, rich/poor Europe, and especially (talking about Balkan countries) the phrase South-East Balkan.


The Second World War marked the apex of industrial war and was nothing short of the most costly and destructive conflict ever experienced. It was total in its conduct and global in its scale—a true World War. The scale of the conflict may be explained by virtue of the fact that it was the product of numerous regional conflicts and theaters of operation that increasingly became woven into a contiguous war. In Western Europe the conflict began as a rerun of the Great War. In Eastern Europe it evolved into an ideological war of extermination between the polar opposites of fascism and communism. Parts of Africa and the Middle East became battlegrounds where European colonial ambitions clashed while other parts provided men and material. Maintaining access to resources more generally was indispensable for all belligerents in order to sustain their war efforts, thus attempting to stem the flow of their opponents’ resources was a central facet of most wartime strategies. Farther east, Japanese imperial ambitions clashed with the dynamics of a civil war in China in the attempt to create a new “Asian” international system free of American and European encroachments. In this respect, the war in the Asia-Pacific region that broke out in December 1941 should be separated from the one conducted in China up until that point. Japanese operations in China and on the Mongolian border before 1941 certainly had an impact on, but were different from, the vast new front that opened up in the Pacific following the Japanese attacks on Anglo-American positions from Pearl Harbor to Singapore. It was the events of December 1941 that brought these disparate strands formally together and linked them to events in Europe, Africa, and elsewhere. The result was a single war with very few areas formally out of bounds to armed conflict....


1921 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 297-304
Author(s):  
J. H. Minnick ◽  
_ _

Education is a complex process involving a variety of experiences gained through both school and out-of-school activities. Each subject of the curriculum should make its definite contribution to this experience, but we must be sure that the result is a unit. An investigation of conditions in most of our high schools will show that a child is under the instruction of perhaps four or five teachers, all of whom are working independently of each other. Very seldom docs one teacher know what the others are trying to do. In order to avoid such conditions and to insure a unified education for each individual, it is necessary that the aim of each subject shall be determined in the light of the general definition of education. Only by this means can the subject matter of each course be so selected and presented that there is neither useless overlapping on the one hand nor the omission of important elements on the other hand. Hence, in discussing the aim of mathematical education, we shonld consider the general meaning of education and then determine what contribution mathematics can make most effectively. For this purpose we shall accept Ruediger’s definition, namely, “… to educate a person means to adjust him to those elements of his environment that are of concern in modern life, and to develop, organize, and train his powers so that he may make efficient and proper use of them.”1 This definition consists of two parts. One of these is concerned with the adjustment of the individual to his environment; this is the objective side. The other is concerned with the development of the powers of the individual; this is the subjective side of education. However, one’s powers are developed only by contact with and adjustment to his environment, and he is adjusted to his environment only through his powers and abilities. Thus, a child’s power to think correctly is developed most effectively when he is brought face to face with a real situation the solution of which is vital to his welfare; but he can successfully master the situation only by the use of his reasoning power or such other abilities as may be involved. Hence, the two parts of this definition are not independent and we need not consider them separately; when one is satisfied in the most effective way the other will be. At present we shall confine our attention to the objective phase of education.


1911 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 105-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Hamilton Wylie

If anyone were to ask where he ought to look for the Roll of Agincourt he would probably be told that he would find it in the ‘History of the Battle,’ published by Sir Harris Nicolas in 1827, in which there are seventy-two pages of printed matter containing ‘the names of the Dukes, Earls, Barons, Knights, Esquires, Servitours and others that wer withe the Excellent Prince King Henry the Fifte at the Battell of Agincourt’; and if he wanted to know (as which of us would not?) whether one of his ancestors took part in the fight he would look through that list and if he found the name he would probably say, ‘It's all right, he was there!’ but if he didn't he might say, ‘Rubbish! You mustn't expect me to be convinced by such a mass of confusion as that!’ Such a man's difficulty is the one that I want this learned society to look into this afternoon, and in venturing to set before you the dry bones of the skeleton of what is really a very complicated question I need not say that I am here to-day with the very greatest diffidence, for I expect that there are many experts present who will say of the contents of my paper that ‘that which is true is not new and—’ you know the other half of the epigram. I speak, therefore, under a natural feeling of stage fright such as seized upon Henry Buckle when he first faced a Royal Institution audience and felt inclined at the beginning to run away there and then, though I cannot venture to hope for the success he achieved before he sat down at the end. At the risk, however, of wandering among platitudes, I will, if you please, assume conventionally that some at least in this audience may be as ignorant of the main features of my problem as I was myself when I attempted to look into it several years ago. I was then seeking for such first-hand evidence as might still exist for the details of the campaign that ended with the great battle of St. Crispin's Day and whether there was any hope of getting on to firm ground in dealing with the conflicting statements as to the numbers and composition of the force with which Henry V set sail from Southampton in August 1415 and ten weeks later fought the wonderful fight that had such far-reaching effects on the course of the history, not only of our own country and of France, but on that of the whole of Western Europe.


2006 ◽  
pp. 145-153
Author(s):  
Liudmyla M. Shuhayeva

In the first decades of the XIX century. the territory of the Russian Empire from Western Europe is beginning to penetrate chiliastic ideas. The term "chiliism" refers to the well-known doctrine of the millennial kingdom of Icyca Christ on earth, dating to the first centuries of Christianity. The ideas of chilias became especially popular during the reign of Alexander I, who himself was sympathetic to the mystical-chiliatic teachings. Chilias in the Russian Empire spread in two ways. On the one hand, chiliastic ideas penetrated with the works of German mystics of the late eighteenth - early twentieth centuries. On the other hand, in anticipation of the fast approaching of the millennial kingdom of Christ, the German cultists of the Hiliists moved large parties across southern Russia to the Caucasus, thereby facilitating the spread of their ideas. The religious formations of the Orthodox sectarianism of the chiliastic-eschatological orientation are represented by the Jehovah-Hlinists ("Right Brotherhood"), the Ioannites, and the Malavans.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 68-85
Author(s):  
Karl Loxbo

In light of Sweden’s exceptionally high levels of generalised trust, a widely argued view is that this country is well equipped to counterbalance contemporary challenges of xenophobia and build trust between diverse groups. However, while trust remains at high levels in Sweden, the same, somewhat paradoxically, goes for xenophobic attitudes. Therefore, the main question addressed in this article is why many Swedes report that they trust ‘most people in general’ while simultaneously displaying high levels of xenophobia. Drawing on unique survey-data, the article presents three main answers. First, the article shows that Swedish respondents place much more trust in their cultural in-group – which they tend to equate with ‘most people’ – than in their cultural out-group. Second, when relating these different measures of trust to respondents’ degree of xenophobia, on the one hand, and their party preferences, on the other hand, the article shows that an overwhelming majority of the electorate report that they trust people from Western Europe, while only a minority report that they tolerate and trust non-Europeans. Third, and most crucially, the article finds that high trust in the cultural out-group is associated with tolerance, whereas high trust in the in-group instead appears to breed xenophobia.   


2018 ◽  
pp. 90-111
Author(s):  
Şevket Pamuk

This chapter discusses the Ottoman reforms as well as the efforts to finance them. The Ottoman government, faced with the challenges from provincial notables and independence movements that were gaining momentum in the Balkans, on the one hand, and the growing military and economic power of Western Europe, on the other, began to implement a series of reforms in the early decades of the nineteenth century. These reforms and the opening of the economy began to transform the political and economic institutions very rapidly. The chapter shows the social and economic roots of modern Turkey thus need to be sought, first and foremost, in the changes that took place during the nineteenth century.


1939 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 432-443
Author(s):  
Christopher Hollis

WESTERN Europe—what we may call the Roman world—is an wessential unit. The nations that go to make it up share a common culture. They have no cause either to despise or to quarrel with other nations. Yet their first business is to preserve unity among themselves and to show a common front to the rest of the world. In unity lies their security, whereas, if they quarrel among themselves, the true victory goes neither to the one group nor to the other of quarrelling Europeans but to the tertius gaudens outside Europe who profits from their divisions.


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