scholarly journals Russian Discourse on Borders and Territorial Questions – Crimea as a Watershed?

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuomas Forsberg ◽  
Sirke Mäkinen

This article addresses the question of how the Crimean case relates to Russia’s general understanding of territorial questions and border regimes. We examine the historical evolution of Russian discourse on borders and territorial questions and investigate to what extent they can explain Russia’s decision to annex Crimea. We will look into the principles of inviolability of borders and territorial integrity that sustain the status quo, and how this has been challenged by three partly interlinked doctrines: national self-determination, geopolitics, and historical rights. We argue that the discourse on territorial integrity and the status quo has predominated in Russia since the Cold War, and that this has not changed fundamentally, either before or after the annexation of Crimea. Russia does not seem to want to abolish the existing norms altogether or to advocate any clearly articulated reformist agenda. Rather, it picks and chooses arguments on an ad hoc basis, imitating Western positions in some other cases when departing from the basic norm of the status quo. Hence, we claim that Russia’s territorial revisionism is reactive, self-serving, and constrained by the desire to avoid changing the status quo doctrine to any great extent.

Author(s):  
Jenny Andersson

Alvin Toffler’s writings encapsulated many of the tensions of futurism: the way that futurology and futures studies oscillated between forms of utopianism and technocracy with global ambitions, and between new forms of activism, on the one hand, and emerging forms of consultancy and paid advice on the other. Paradoxically, in their desire to create new images of the future capable of providing exits from the status quo of the Cold War world, futurists reinvented the technologies of prediction that they had initially rejected, and put them at the basis of a new activity of futures advice. Consultancy was central to the field of futures studies from its inception. For futurists, consultancy was a form of militancy—a potentially world altering expertise that could bypass politics and also escaped the boring halls of academia.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenfei Liu

Abstract This paper departs from the definition of Slavistics and reviews the history of international Slavic studies, from its prehistory to its formal establishment as an independent discipline in the mid-18th century, and from the Pan-Slavic movement in the mid-19th century to the confrontation of Slavistics between the East and the West in the mid-20th century during the Cold War. The paper highlights the status quo of international Slavic studies and envisions the future development of Slavic studies in China.


2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 318-341
Author(s):  
Ned Richardson-Little

In the mid-1980s, the Eastern Bloc faced increased pressure on the issue of human rights from western governments, ngos, and indigenous dissident. Although the Socialist Bloc had claimed to represent the ideals of human rights throughout the Cold War, by 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev called on the leaders of the Eastern Bloc to work together on a coordinated response to this threat and in response East Germany proposed the creation of an international declaration based on the principles of socialist—rather than bourgeois—human rights. Within a few years, however, the project collapsed in ignominious failure as it provided a vehicle for reformers to challenge the status quo in the name of human rights by demanding greater democratization. Although the project was originally devised to refute the human rights claims of the West, it instead acted to spur on the intellectual collapse of the Eastern Bloc’s ideological unity at its time of greatest crisis.


2016 ◽  
pp. 7-38
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Gil

Following the end of the cold war, the incidence of statebuilding interventions has visibly increased in the case of dysfunctional (failed) states. Today, such interventionism in a good faith promotes liberal values and is believed to be in line with international legal regimes that makes it distinctive from neo-imperial politics. Even if state-building does not generally refer to regular warfare, it often takes analogous forms to occupation, which was codified in jus in bello at the beginning of the XXth century. While the occupation law requires occupants to maintain status quo on the occupying territory (article 43 of Hague Regulations), armed state-building is transformative by definition that seems to undermine conservative provisions of the former. The article presents traditional criteria for occupation in the Hague and Geneva conventions as well as prospects and limitations of its refinement (jus post bellum). In theory, such a redefinition could launch the formulation of the statebuilding regime, which aims to reduce deficits or double-standards in international state-building by focusing on the interests of local stakeholders of transformative projects. Hence, the Author addresses three interlocking issues: occupation within state-building, the occupation law and state-building, and transformative occupation as state-building.


foresight ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 362-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.E.A. Ashu ◽  
Dewald Van Niekerk

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the status quo of disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy and legislation in Cameroon. Design/methodology/approach Using a qualitative method, this paper examines historical data from sectoral administrative reports, plans, declarations, commitments and speeches, texts and peer-reviewed journals on disaster and risk management in Cameroon for the period 1967-2017. Empirical data from ten selected government sectors were used to analyze the status quo, together with quantitative data collected by using four instruments (i.e. HFA Priority 1 & 4, USAID Toolkit, GOAL Resilience Score and the Checklist on Law and DRR). Findings Findings show that Cameroon largely still practices disaster response through the Department of Civil Protection. Transparency and accountability are the sine qua non of the state, but the lack thereof causes improper implementation of DRR within development institutions. DRR is seen as an ad hoc activity, with the result that there is not effective institutional capacity for implementation. The need to develop a new national DRR framework is evident. Originality/value Analyzing the status quo of DRR in Cameroon could assist with the review and reevaluation of a new DRR framework within the Cameroonian territory.


2009 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrik Johansson

AbstractUnder Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, the Security Council has the unique authority to make decisions that are binding on member states. However, the lack of a standard definition of what makes a Security Council resolution "a Chapter VII resolution" has caused disagreement regarding the status of several resolutions. This is unfortunate as the international community should never have to doubt whether a Security Council resolution is in fact adopted under Chapter VII or not. It is also unnecessary. This article addresses this problem by proposing a definition of Chapter VII resolutions, based on two criteria referred to as "Article 39 determinations" and "Chapter VII decisions". On the basis of the proposed definition, the article describes and analyses a dramatic increase in the use of Chapter VII during the post-Cold War era. It concludes that as Chapter VII has come to constitute the majority of Security Council resolutions in recent years, the resort to Chapter VII no longer signifies exceptional determination and resolve, which it did during the Cold War; instead Chapter VII today implies business as usual. An appendix lists all Chapter VII resolutions from 1946–2008.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Peacock

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the relationship between childhood, consumption and the Cold War in 1950s America and the Soviet Union. The author argues that Soviet and American leaders, businessmen, and politicians worked hard to convince parents that buying things for their children offered the easiest way to raise good American and Soviet kids and to do their part in waging the economic battles of the Cold War. The author explores how consumption became a Cold War battleground in the late 1950s and suggests that the history of childhood and Cold War consumption alters the way we understand the conflict itself. Design/Methodology/Approach – Archival research in the USA and the Russian Federation along with close readings of Soviet and American advertisements offer sources for understanding the global discourse of consumption in the 1950s and 1960s. Findings – Leaders, advertisers, and propagandists in the Soviet Union and the USA used the same images in the same ways to sell the ethos of consumption to their populations. They did this to sell the Cold War, to bolster the status quo, and to make profits. Originality/Value – This paper offers a previously unexplored, transnational perspective on the role that consumption and the image of the child played in shaping the Cold War both domestically and abroad.


2003 ◽  
Vol 48 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 241-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Thomson-Wohlgemuth

Abstract This paper describes the status of translation and publication of East German children’s literature during the period of the Cold War. It briefly gives an indication of the high value placed on translation and translators in the socialist regime. Finally it focuses on the main criteria influencing the translation and publication of children’s books with the economic and ideological factors being the most significant and gives brief examples from the East German censorship files.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Manjari Chatterjee Miller

What is known of rising powers is both sparse and contentious. This chapter discusses the assumptions of rising powers and puts forward an alternate way of understanding them. It shows that all rising powers are not the same, even if their military and economic power is increasing relative to the status quo, and argues that narratives about becoming a great power are an additional element that needs to be considered. It also discusses what great power meant in the late 19th century, during the Cold War, and in post–Cold War eras, and lays out the map of the book. Topics covered in this chapter include the power transition and rising power literature, the role of ideas in foreign policy, and an overview of the perceptions of great power.


2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 7-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Mearsheimer

The liberal international order, erected after the Cold War, was crumbling by 2019. It was flawed from the start and thus destined to fail. The spread of liberal democracy around the globe—essential for building that order—faced strong resistance because of nationalism, which emphasizes self-determination. Some targeted states also resisted U.S. efforts to promote liberal democracy for security-related reasons. Additionally, problems arose because a liberal order calls for states to delegate substantial decisionmaking authority to international institutions and to allow refugees and immigrants to move easily across borders. Modern nation-states privilege sovereignty and national identity, however, which guarantees trouble when institutions become powerful and borders porous. Furthermore, the hyperglobalization that is integral to the liberal order creates economic problems among the lower and middle classes within the liberal democracies, fueling a backlash against that order. Finally, the liberal order accelerated China's rise, which helped transform the system from unipolar to multipolar. A liberal international order is possible only in unipolarity. The new multipolar world will feature three realist orders: a thin international order that facilitates cooperation, and two bounded orders—one dominated by China, the other by the United States—poised for waging security competition between them.


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