Benelux Countries

Author(s):  
Wim Klinkert

The defence policy of the Netherlands and Belgium has changed substantially following the end of the cold war. Both countries suspended conscription early on and actively participated in many (UN) peacekeeping missions. Both countries also experienced traumatic events that influenced their defence policy: in Ruanda for the Belgians in 1994 and in Bosnia (Srebrenica) for the Dutch (1995). Drastic budget cuts and the integration of the new, but small, professional armies within new NATO and EU defence structures (CSDP and NRF) are also themes with which both countries struggled. Both countries embraced pooling and sharing and cultivated European defence cooperation, especially within Benelux but also with Germany, the UK, and increasingly with other partners. Simultaneously they also attached much value to their ties with the USA. The Dutch furthermore attach great importance to the development of the international legal order and the safeguarding of the flow of trade by sea.

Author(s):  
Ian Speller

This chapter explores the evolution of Irish defence policy from the end of the cold war through to 2017. It provides an analysis of national strategy, military doctrine, and force structures and reveals how these have evolved to meet new challenges and opportunities. The chapter explains how successive governments have sought to balance a reluctance to devote significant resources to defence and the desire to maintain the longs-tanding tradition of neutrality with a commitment to international engagement through the UN and active participation in a number of UN peacekeeping missions overseas. It also examines how the relationship with NATO and the EU has evolved. The chapter explores changes to the role and structure of the Defence Forces since the 1990s and concludes with an examination of existing policy and future challenges in the aftermath of the 2015 defence review.


2014 ◽  
Vol 108 (4) ◽  
pp. 737-753 ◽  
Author(s):  
LISA HULTMAN ◽  
JACOB KATHMAN ◽  
MEGAN SHANNON

While United Nations peacekeeping missions were created to keep peace and perform post-conflict activities, since the end of the Cold War peacekeepers are more often deployed to active conflicts. Yet, we know little about their ability to manage ongoing violence. This article provides the first broad empirical examination of UN peacekeeping effectiveness in reducing battlefield violence in civil wars. We analyze how the number of UN peacekeeping personnel deployed influences the amount of battlefield deaths in all civil wars in Africa from 1992 to 2011. The analyses show that increasing numbers of armed military troops are associated with reduced battlefield deaths, while police and observers are not. Considering that the UN is often criticized for ineffectiveness, these results have important implications: if appropriately composed, UN peacekeeping missions reduce violent conflict.


2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 361-384
Author(s):  
Ayodele Akenroye

The end of the Cold War witnessed the resurgence of ethnic conflicts in Africa, which necessitated the deployment of peacekeeping missions in many crisis contexts. The risk of HIV transmission increases in post-conflict environments where peacekeepers are at risk of contracting and spreading HIV/AIDS. In response, UN Security Council Resolution 1308 (2000) stressed the need for the UN to incorporate HIV/AIDS prevention awareness skills and advice in its training for peacekeepers. However, troops in peacekeeping missions remain under national command, thus limiting the UN prerogatives. This article discusses the risk of peacekeepers contracting or transmitting HIV/AIDS, as well as the role of peacekeeping missions in controlling the spread of the disease, and offers an account of the steps taken within UN peacekeeping missions and African regional peacekeeping initiatives to tackle the challenges of HIV/AIDS. While HIV/AIDS remains a scourge that could weaken peacekeeping in Africa, it seems that inertia has set in, making it even more difficult to tackle the complexity of this phenomenon.


Author(s):  
Uta A. Balbier

This chapter explores the Billy Graham revival campaigns in Washington, London, New York, and Berlin in the 1950s as expressions of a transnational religious revival that took place simultaneously in the USA, Germany, and the UK. During this short-lived revival, discourses around Christianity, anti-Communism, democracy, and the Free World blended, produced new forms of civil religious identities, and seemed to briefly challenge secularization processes. The chapter explores the mindset of political and religious leaders who supported the Billy Graham Crusades as well as the staging of events as important performances in the transnational culture of the Cold War. It argues that despite obvious differences in the religious landscapes on both sides of the Atlantic regarding church attendance and the role of religion in political discourse, there still existed significant similarities. These can only be explained when taking transnational phenomena such as Cold War culture or secularization processes into consideration.


2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Olmsted

This article examines the espionage and propaganda networks established by former professional spies and other anticommunist activists in the interwar period in the United States of America and the United Kingdom. In both countries, conservatives responded to the growing power of labor in politics by creating and funding private groups to coordinate spying operations on union activists and political radicals. These British and US spies drew upon the resources of the government while evading democratic controls. The anti-labor groups also spread anti-radical propaganda, but the counter-subversive texts in the UK tended to highlight the economic threats posed by radicalism, while those in the USA appealed to more visceral fears. The leaders of these anti-labur networks established a transnational alliance with their fellow anticommunists across the Atlantic decades before the beginning of the Cold War.


2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 249-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rashed Uz Zaman ◽  
Niloy Ranjan Biswas

United Nations (un) peacekeeping missions have become an important feature of world politics since the end of the Cold War. In recent times, the intensity of peacekeeping missions has increased and new challenges have also emerged. Under such circumstances, the un has often highlighted the importance of regional organizations getting more involved in undertaking and sustaining such missions. South Asian countries provide a large number of troops to un missions and yet, a regional collaboration has not been accorded much importance by countries of the region. This paper argues, given the emerging challenges, South Asian countries may have to resort to a regional approach with regard to peacekeeping missions.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 122
Author(s):  
Ruike Xu

There have been many “end of affair” comments on the Anglo-American special relationship (AASR) in the post-Cold War era. Notwithstanding this, the AASR has managed to persist without losing its vitality up to the present. This article seeks to explain the persistence of the AASR from the perspective of collective identity. It argues that a strong Anglo-American collective identity has been an indispensable positive contributor to the persistence of the AASR after the end of the Cold War. The strong Anglo-American collective identity facilitates Anglo-American common threat perceptions, solidifies embedded trust between the UK and the USA, and prescribes norms of appropriate behaviour for these two countries.


Author(s):  
Richard Gowan

European soldiers played a major part in United Nations peacekeeping during the cold war, and were heavily involved in missions in the Balkans and Africa in the early 1990s. The disasters of Rwanda and Srebrenica led most European states, with exceptions such as Ireland and Sweden, to limit their role in blue-helmet peacekeeping missions. European multinational forces and EU-flagged missions have, however, backed up UN missions in cases such as Sierra Leone, and Europeans returned to UN peacekeeping in cases including Lebanon and Mali. Officers used to NATO and EU standards remain wary of UN command and control, medical evacuation, and intelligence gathering. When Europeans deploy in UN missions, they often find their non-Western comrades ‘exotic’. Nonetheless, since the end of major operations in Afghanistan, a number of European countries have taken UN operations more seriously, especially as a tool to handle threats of terrorism and uncontrolled migration from Africa.


Author(s):  
Andrew M. Dorman

This chapter examines the post-cold-war evolution of the UK defence policy into a national security strategy, with an accompanying review of strategic defence and security. It considers how the United Kingdom’s defence posture has changed from a threat-based approach to that of a risk-based approach via a capabilities-based approach. The chapter is divided into four sections. The first considers the evolution of British defence and security policy up to the end of the cold war. The second then analyses how defence and security adapted to the end of the cold war and led to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The third section examines the post-Iraq and Afghanistan period up to the end of 2017 and how UK defence policy was affected by the 2008 financial crisis and the era of austerity that followed. Finally, it draws some conclusions about the drivers of UK defence and security policy and where this might head into the future.


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 122
Author(s):  
Ruike Xu

There have been many “end of affair” comments on the Anglo-American special relationship (AASR) in the post-Cold War era. Notwithstanding this, the AASR has managed to persist without losing its vitality up to the present. This article seeks to explain the persistence of the AASR from the perspective of collective identity. It argues that a strong Anglo-American collective identity has been an indispensable positive contributor to the persistence of the AASR after the end of the Cold War. The strong Anglo-American collective identity facilitates Anglo-American common threat perceptions, solidifies embedded trust between the UK and the USA, and prescribes norms of appropriate behaviour for these two countries.


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