scholarly journals The West, Russia and European security: Still the long peace?

2021 ◽  
pp. 136914812110363
Author(s):  
Andrew Cottey
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Deterrent Effect ◽  
European Security ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Peace In Europe ◽  
Mutual Communication ◽  
East West

Against the background of increased tensions between the West and Russia, this article assesses the prospects for continued peace in Europe. The end of the East-West conflict upended the Cold War rules of the game in Europe’s east, creating an enduring source of conflict. Balanced against this, however, are a range of factors which act as powerful bulwarks against war: a European balance of power best characterised as modified bipolarity, the continued pacifying effect of nuclear weapons, energy interdependence between Russia and Europe, the deterrent effect of the likely consequences of any extended conventional war, and the continuing impact of the post-1945 satellite reconnaissance revolution. Post-Cold War Western and Russian crisis behaviour also suggests important elements of restraint and mutual communication. Despite the downturn in Russo-Western relations, one can be cautiously optimistic that the long peace in Europe will continue.

Sarajevo, February 1994: the first Russia-NATO crisis of the post-Cold War era

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Headley
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Market Place ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

This article analyses the Russian reaction to the Sarajevo crisis of February 1994 when NATO threatened air strikes in response to the market-place mortar explosion. I argue that Russia's shift to a realist great-power policy led to a crisis with the West as Russia sought to demonstrate its great power credentials, protect what it saw as specific Russian interests in the Balkans, and limit the role of NATO in conflict resolution, while Western leaders aimed to demonstrate NATO credibility and its new post-Cold War role as peace-keeper/peace-maker. This was the first major East-West crisis since the end of the Cold War, and Russian responses and actions foreshadowed its reactions to the Kosovo crisis.

Sociology in Place of Socialism: On West German Cultural Radio

2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-42
Author(s):  
Monika Boll
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Federal Republic ◽  
Free Space ◽  
The West ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Sociological Discourse ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
East West

This article delves into the relationship between cultural radio and the Cold War. After 1945, culural radio took on a central role in the intellectual self-understanding of the early Federal Republic. From the very beginning, there was much less censorship than with political editorial departments. Thus, it was possible for cultrual radio to offer an intellectual forum in which socialism was not simply dismissed due to the official anticommunist political doctrine. This article shows the ways in which the East-West conflict was present in the cultrual departments of radio broadcasters. It argues that socialism appeared less as an ideological restraint or taboo, but rather as a productive challenge, which in the end was part of the modernization of West Germany's intellectual self-understanding. Two prominent examples buttress this argument: the free space that cultrual radio conquered in a kind of leftist integration with the West, and the rapid advancement of sociological discourse.

Clashes in the Assembly

2000 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Voeten
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
The United States ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Substantive Content ◽  
Single Dimension ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

I apply nominate scaling to analyze a database of Cold War and post–Cold War roll call votes in the United Nations General Assembly. I investigate the dimensionality and stability of global conflict as well as the substantive content of the voting alignments that have replaced the Cold War East-West dimension. I find that post–Cold War conflict in the UN General Assembly is mostly one-dimensional. This single dimension positions countries on a continuum that runs from a group of Western countries at one extreme to a “counterhegemonic” bloc of countries that frequently clashes with the West, and the United States in particular. Levels of democracy and wealth are important independent determinants of the voting behavior of states. The positions of countries along the single dimension are remarkably stable across time, issue area, and issue importance. Except for the Eastern European countries switching sides, they are very similar to the positions on the Cold War East-West dimension. Contrary to expectations, post–Cold War conflict shows little resemblance to Cold War North-South conflict.

scholarly journals Visible and invisible walls: World trade patterns and the end of the Cold War

2015 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter A.G. van Bergeijk
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
The West ◽  
Trade Patterns ◽  
Resistance Factors ◽  
Empirical Trade ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

This paper revisits the empirical trade literature on East-West trade in the early 1990s and provides a replication of the traditional gravity findings of that period with the Baier-Bergstrand version of the model, providing thereby better estimates of the trade hindering impact of the Cold War by including multilateral and world resistance factors and simultaneously considering country fixed effects. Breaking down the Cold War Walls increased world trade by 2.7% of world GDP. The replication with the Baier-Bergstrand model also reveals that Cold War trade distortions also significantly impacted China’s trade with the West.

WOODROW WILSON AND THE ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR: A Hundred Years Later and Still Relevant

World Affairs ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 180 (4) ◽  
pp. 25-46
Author(s):  
Eugene P. Trani ◽  
Donald E. Davis
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
European Security ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Eu

American-Russian relations have been troubled from Lenin to Putin, from Wilson to Trump. Woodrow Wilson insisted that no one power should dominate Europe. This detailed analysis shows that Wilson was the first “Cold War Warrior,” and his “quarantine” policy toward Russia was the precursor of the policy the United States has generally followed toward Russia since the end of World War II. Wilson tried to avoid taking sides in the Bolshevik Revolution but finally was drawn into it from relentless Allied pressure. Yet he kept intervention minimal. Afterward, he quarantined communism until FDR recognized Russia and, later, allied with Stalin against Hitler. Truman and his successors renewed “quarantine,” calling it “containment.” With the USSR’s collapse, the shape and stability of Wilson’s Europe reappeared. The West has preserved that Europe through the EU, NATO, and sanctions against Putin’s restoring a Soviet sphere. America should now be clear, as Wilson once was, in supporting European security.

Britain and the new UN agenda: towards global riot control?

1991 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-105
Author(s):  
Giorgios Kostakos ◽  
A. J. R. Groom ◽  
Sally Morphet ◽  
Paul Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Security ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Significant Extent ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Riot Control ◽  
Peace And War ◽  
East West

The fading away of the Cold War has allegedly shifted the attention of the Western members of the United Nations, as demonstrated by General Assembly speeches, towards issues like the environment, drugs and terrorism. The new issues moving towards the top of the international security agenda are more elusive than the traditional Peace- and War-related ones; nobody has control of a ‘button’ regarding these issues. An overall assessment of the situation shows that there is a great variety of actors involved, both governmental and non-governmental. It is also increasingly recognized that the East has similar interests to the West. As a result, the East–West divide is being bridged to a significant extent, while the North–South divide is being defined in new ways.

scholarly journals Diskurse von Geopolitik und ‚Neuem Kaltem Krieg‘ – Zur Veränderung medialer Repräsentationen von Russland und ‚dem Osten‘

2021 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Christoph Creutziger ◽  
Paul Reuber
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
The West ◽  
Media Discourses ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Geopolitical Imaginations ◽  
East West ◽  
Western Media

Abstract. Thirty years after the Cold War, many aspects of the West's self-identification are still shaped by othering ‚the East‘. This geographical identity-building in Western media discourses is indicated by terms like geopolitics and the (New/Second) Cold War. The paper scrutinizes ‚grand‘ narratives behind the appearances of such concepts and observes their continuities, dislocations, and disruptions. Taking a critical geopolitical perspective informed by discourse theory and based on Foucault's conceptualization of the archive, the paper introduces aspects of the transformation of geopolitical imaginations of the East and the West: (1) it reconstructs phases of the rebirth of geopolitics after WW2 until today. (2) It focuses on the changes in the East-West relations after 1990 and shows how the imagination of the ‚cold war‘ disappears from media discourse. (3) Finally, it analyses the revival through rising geopolitical risk-narratives since the crises and wars in Georgia and Ukraine.

“Post” As Justification: International Law and Democracy-Building after Iraq

2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (7) ◽  
pp. 709-723 ◽  
Author(s):  
Outi Korhonen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Law ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Deterrent Effect ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Democracy Building

The “post”-phase of a conflict has become the justification for both the possible action and the inaction of the Western states. It is not so much any longer that we would be averse to war in any circumstances, as the non-use of force principle in its absolute sense would require. Again, after a good fifty years of the UN and its raison d'etre – the guardianship of peace – we seem to have arrived at an era where ideological contestation no more has the deterrent effect that it did during the Cold War and, consequently, there are cases of the use of force that are accepted and even regarded as just as long as they are quick. When looking back at the NATO bombings of FRY in 1999 as the response to atrocities in Kosovo many are able to accept that ‘though illegal they were legitimate’ in some sense. This is the conclusion irrespective of whether one, at the time, was for action or inaction. Such a ‘condoning condemnation’ has become the popular middle road as so many other paradoxes in world politics. Through the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq the paradox has gained in strength. Although there is quite strong and unequivocal opposition to the wars and a condemnation for their illegality, the political elite of the West seems to be quick in forgetting scruples and taking a keen interest in the “post”-management of the targets, i.e. the states that are about to be or already have been ‘bombed into the stone age’ or into shambles in any case. There is a general rush to the “post”-phase; both in the sense that the tacit requirement for the condoning condemnation is that the action be quick – the use of force should be very limited in time – and, secondly, in the sense that already before the bombs fall (or during) the major reconstruction plans and projects are dealt. This article outlines some points of critique that could be launched at the phase when the majority cannot be bothered to re-analyze the wrongs committed ex ante.

scholarly journals Russian Neo-Revisionism

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Sakwa
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Law ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
International System ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Politics Of Resistance ◽  
Consistent Application

A revisionist state would seek to challenge the existing balance of power in the system and threaten the foundations of the system itself. This does not apply to contemporary Russia. It seeks to enhance its status within the existing framework of international society. Russian neo-revisionism does not attempt to create new rules or to advance an alternative model of the international system but to ensure the universal and consistent application of existing norms. Russia’s neo-revisionism represents a critique of western practices in defense of the universal proclaimed principles. It is not the principles of international law and governance that Russia condemns but the practices that accompany their implementation. This reflected Russia’s broader perception in the post-Cold War era that it was locked into a strategic stalemate, and that the country was forced into a politics of resistance. This has taken many forms, including the creation of an anti-hegemonic alignment with China and others. For Moscow, it was the West that had become revisionist, not Russia. Although the implementation of applicable norms was patchy, Russia did not repudiate them. In its relations with the European Union, Russia’s neo-revisionist stance means that it was unable to become simply the passive recipient of eu norms, and instead tried to become a co-creator of Europe’s destiny. The struggle is not only over contested norms, but also over who has the prerogative to claim their norms as universal. However, it was precisely at the level of practices that there was least room for compromise, and thus Russian neo-revisionism became another form of the impasse, and only intensified tensions between Russia and the Atlantic system.

The European Security and Defence Policy: Defining the European Union as a Rational Actor in International Security

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan-Camilo Castillo
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Security ◽  
Close Relation ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Security ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Rational Actor ◽  
Defence Policy ◽  
The Cold War

The main objective of this article is to analyze how the European Union, through its Security and Defence Policy, has become a rational actor in international security matters since the end of the Cold War. It will analyze the close relation that exists between European integration and the notion of continental collective security. Also the new post-Cold War concerns that present a potential risk to the EU are going to be examined, and consequently how they affect the rationality of this institution as an actor. Finally the last section will explore the divergence between Europe and America in matters of security and the way this political drift may create a situation in which NATO can become irrelevant in regards of European defence.   Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v3i3.189

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