Insulating Peace: Managerial Coordination in Durable Security Complexes

Author(s):  
Konstantinos Travlos

Abstract I argue that insulation via managerial coordination is a key element in any explanation about the formation of political regions among states. The key role it plays is as a tool for the maintenance of intra-regional pacific relations in the face of diffusion and contagion processes, resulting from continued security linkages with excluded extra-regional states. In order to explore these dynamics, I propose a new reconceptualization of the concept of managerial coordination based on the basic framework concept mapping tool. This leads to clarity about what managerial coordination does as a dimension of insulation. It also necessitates a revamp of the scale of interstate managerial coordination as a measuring instrument of the intensity of collective intentionality toward insulation among the members of a region. I then map the region concept of durable security complex (DSC) as the scope for the enactment of managerial coordination, based on a review of existing region concepts in the new regionalist literature. I then conduct an ideographic proof-of-concept exercise on three DSCs in the presence or absence of managerial coordination. These are the Scandinavian states, the South Asian regional security complex, and the South American Norther Tier local hierarchy. The exercise provides indicators for a number of theoretical propositions worthy of future evaluation.

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jawad Kadir

By using an interdisciplinary approach, this article seeks to examine Pakistan–India partition and their on-going rivalry which is a permanent threat to the South Asian regional security. This article analyses the Pakistan–India conflict through a fresh psycho-cultural framework to explain both states’ endless competitive urge to outpace each other. I will describe the attributes of the indigenous ‘culture of conflict’ in both countries and use them as an ‘analogy’. This article develops a conflict theory to explain the rationale behind such an emotion-laden rivalry between the two nations. The conflict theory presented in this article (which can be termed as Sharike-Bazi [Culture of Conflict]) explains that peoples’ conflict behaviours in Pakistan and India are rooted in their earliest socialisation within primary kinship institutions. In Pakistan and India, the indigenous ‘culture of conflict’ emanates from the segmentation of the most pervasive and influential institutions, the kinship institutions. The moralities of conflict behaviour learned within these institutions are extrapolated to every other institution in the outside world. Therefore, psychologically, the indigenous ‘culture of conflict’ creates certain moral views affecting the conflict behaviour of people as well as policymakers. It provides them with cultural moralities to pursue this zero-sum interstate conflict.


China Report ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khanindra Ch. Das

China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative has attracted worldwide attention, and a solid foundation for the initiative has been laid at home and in the neighbouring regions of Southeast Asia. While many countries may not have imagined the possibility of reviving the Silk Route, China has not only coined the term OBOR but also taken steps to bring it close to reality. Despite the various challenges posed by the initiative to their national strategies and to the regional security order, developing countries along the OBOR have an opportunity to improve connectivity and transform their economic conditions by exploring complementarities through trade, investment and greater people-to-people exchanges. From the South Asian point of view, OBOR presents multiple opportunities as well as dilemmas. The puzzles need to be addressed to shape the connectivity agenda of the region and to harness the benefits of integration, which may require joint development and sharing of responsibility among economically stronger countries. Greater cooperation among South Asian countries will be critical in shaping the connectivity agenda, through OBOR or otherwise, in the South Asian region.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-103
Author(s):  
Tamires Aparecida Ferreira Souza

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.


2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Ron Geaves

The article will argue that the normative definition referring to Sunni Muslims, “Ahl as-Sunna wa Jamaat” has become highly contested since used as a strategy for legitimization by South Asian Sufi tariqas. Critiquing arguments that link scripturalist reform movements within Islam to urbanization, the author demonstrates that contemporary Sufi resistance to the reformers in Britain has welded together both rural ‘folk’ practice and ‘high’ Sufism into a potentially politically mobilized union. Rather than a separation of ulama and saints as proposed by Gellner, the South Asian Muslims met the Reform critique with a powerful and erudite opposition consisting of both pirs and maulvis which defended their cultic beliefs and practices as normative. The article concludes that the British experience demonstrates not so much the demise of traditional Sufism in the face of Wahhabi or Salafi scripturalism, but rather that the former are learning the lessons of the revivalists and creating innovative ways that authenticate tradition in the new urban environments of the West.


According to the regional security complex theory, Afghanistan had been among the insulated countries by September 11th, but afterwards, Afghanistan couldnot have been categorized under insulated countries. It has entered South Asian Security Scenarios, and some researchers believe that it is part of this regional security complex. This research is focused on what impacts the non-security dynamics have had on Afghanistan exit from insulation status and joining the South Asian Regional Security Complex. In addition to security interdependence, existence of amity and enmity patterns, geographical proximity, presence of at least two powerful and effective actors, and the cultural and racial correlations are characteristics of every regional security complex. Some of these cases refer back to non-security dynamics, which have been discussed in this research. Issues such as cultural, ethnicity and sectarian contradictions, and a set of economic cooperations, and also Afghanistan membership in SAARC Organization can be considered as security dynamics in the region.


Pathogens ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 990
Author(s):  
Zoltán Papp ◽  
Andrew M. Borman ◽  
Lajos Forgács ◽  
Renátó Kovács ◽  
Zoltán Tóth ◽  
...  

Candida auris is an emerging multiresistant yeast against which amphotericin B (AMB) is still the first therapeutic choice in certain clinical situations (i.e., meningitis, endophthalmitis, and urinary tract infections). As data about the in vitro killing activity of AMB against C. auris clades are lacking, we determined MICs, minimum fungicidal concentrations (MFCs), and killing activity of AMB against 22 isolates representing the 4 major C. auris clades (South Asian n = 6; East Asian n = 4; South African n = 6, and South American n = 6). MIC values were ≤1 mg/L regardless of clades; MFC ranges were, 1–4 mg/L, 2–4 mg/L, 2 mg/L, and 2–8 mg/L for South Asian, East Asian, South African, and South American clades, respectively. AMB showed concentration-, clade-, and isolate-dependent killing activity. AMB was fungicidal at 1 mg/L against two of six, two of four, three of six, and one of six isolates from the South Asian, East Asian, South African, and South American clades, respectively. Widefield fluorescence microscopy showed cell number decreases at 1 mg/L AMB in cases of the South Asian, East Asian, and South African clades. These data draw attention to the weak killing activity of AMB against C. auris regardless of clades, even when MICs are low (≤1 mg/L). Thus, AMB efficacy is unpredictable in treatment of invasive C. auris infections.


Author(s):  
Asifa Jahangir ◽  
Furqan Khan

The Indo-US strategic bonding is shifting the security dynamics of the South Asian balance-of-power in Indian favour. From the signing of 123 US-India Nuclear Deal to the facilitation in becoming a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the US has clearly designated India as an instrumental element in the American grand strategy of devising a ‘new world order’. As a result, India has grabbed the opportunity of alleviating its status as a credible regional and global power. In this regard, the US tilt towards India is significantly paving grounds for a strategic imbalance in the South Asian region, thus creating challenges for Pakistan. Therefore, this paper argues that the growing bonhomie between the US and India is a destabilizing factor in the region which reinforces Pakistan’s fast falling into the Chinese orbit; thereby cementing the old friendship into a new strategic partnership. This dynamic certainly gives China and Pakistan an incentive to work together so as to keep the value of Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence alive. In an effort to expand the horizon on the subject, the paper is dedicated to critically examine the existing cooperation between India and the US while equally foreseeing the possible implications for the region in the face of such destabilizing cooperation. More importantly, based on qualitative data, this paper explores how Indo-US strategic partnership is directly impacting Pakistan and its strategic partnership with China; thereby explaining how the growing relationship between the US and India has undermined the traditional balance-of-power in the South Asian region?


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 863
Author(s):  
Renátó Kovács ◽  
Zoltán Tóth ◽  
Jeffrey B. Locke ◽  
Lajos Forgács ◽  
Gábor Kardos ◽  
...  

Candida auris is an emerging and frequently multidrug-resistant pathogen against which the echinocandins are the preferred therapeutic option. We compared killing activities of anidulafungin, caspofungin, micafungin, and rezafungin against 13 isolates representing four C. auris clades (South Asian n = 3; East Asian n = 3; South African n = 3; South American n = 4, of which two were of environmental origin). Minimum inhibitory concentration MICs and killing kinetics in RPMI-1640 and RPMI-1640 plus 50% serum (50% serum) were determined. The four echinocandins were never fungicidal and induced large aggregates in RPMI-1640 and, less markedly, in 50% serum. Colony forming unit CFU decreases were found more consistently in 50% serum than in RPMI-1640. Isolates from the East Asian clade were killed at ≥1–≥ 4 mg/L with all echinocandins regardless of media. Anidulafungin and micafungin produced killing at peak drug serum concentration (8 mg/L) against environmental but not clinical isolates from the South American and the South African clades. Micafungin at ≥8 mg/L but not anidulafungin produced CFU decreases against the South Asian clade as well. In 50% serum, rezafungin at ≥1–≥ 8 mg/L produced killing against all four clades. The next generation echinocandin, rezafungin, showed the same or better activity at clinically attainable trough concentration regardless of media, compared with anidulafungin, caspofungin, and micafungin against all four tested C. auris clades.


Author(s):  
Gisela Da Silva Guevara

<p><strong>[Visiones geoestratégicas del Atlántico Sur: Brasil y Colombia, un enfoque comparativo]</strong></p><p><strong>ABSTRACT</strong></p><p>This article seeks to analyze the different approaches that Brazil and Colombia have had to date on the geostrategic importance of the South Atlantic, emphasizing the differences that the ocean has had for their respective conceptions of nation and their insertion in the South American region. It argues and concludes that while Brazil seeks leadership in South America by emphasizing its role as promoter of an integral autonomizing2 conception that articulates development, defense and regional security, Colombia prioritizes its role as a reference in the fight against transnational crime, positioning itself as a Middle Oceanic Power.</p><p><strong>RESUMEN</strong></p><p>Este artículo busca analizar los diferentes enfoques que Brasil y Colombia han tenido hasta la fecha sobre la importancia geoestratégica del Atlántico Sur, destacando las diferencias que ha tenido el océano para su respectiva concepción del país y su inserción en la región de América del Sur. Se argumenta y concluye que mientras Brasil busca el liderazgo en esta zona a través de un énfasis en su papel como promotor de una concepción autónoma integral para el Atlántico Sur que articula el desarrollo, la defensa y la seguridad regional, Colombia a su vez prioriza su papel en la región como referencia en la lucha contra la delincuencia transnacional, posicionándose como una potencia oceánica media.</p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 673-689 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar Medeiros Filho

Abstract This article discusses the process of building a South American defence architecture over the past two decades, culminating in the formation of the South American Defence Council (Consejo de Defensa Suramericano, or CDS). It discusses the main proposals for a regional security mechanism, primarily made by Brazil and Venezuela, analyses the debates around them, and characterises them as different models of regionalism, namely a pluralistic and amalgamated model. I argue that the differences between these models, and the different agendas underpinning them, constitute obstacles to the progress of regional co-operation and integration in the military field. Other obstacles include the overlap of regional defence initiatives, the different options for operationalising ‘extra-regional deterrence’, the relationship between regional countries and extra-regional actors, the inclusion of security issues in the CDS agenda, and the idea of demilitarising borders.


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