Fragile State in Iraq and Women Security

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-253
Author(s):  
Elaheh Koolaee ◽  
Ziba Akbari
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Human Security ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Fragile States ◽  
Weak States ◽  
Fragile State ◽  
External Threats ◽  
Building Process ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Cold War

After the Cold War and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the term “fragile states” has gained increasing prominence in security debates and the international community turned its attention to how to deal with such countries. These security concerns originate from several factors: emphasis on building peace and security, spread of this idea that development and security are related, and the principle that the stability of state plays an influential role in its development. The term “fragile state” refers to weak states that are vulnerable to internal and external threats and have a poor government that is incapable of managing internal affairs and external policy. In this regard, Iraq was considered as a fragile state after 2003, and its stability has been evaluated poor since ever. The present study employed indices of fragile state and human security in order to investigate the effect of Iraq’s fragile state on development of threats to women security. Violation of human security in Iraq after 2003 was caused by failure in nation state-building process and weakness of Iraqi government in maintaining societal order and unity. Therefore, the main question that the present study aims to address is: “How has women security been threatened by Iraq’s crisis and its fragile state?”

India and Pakistan's Unstable Peace: Why Nuclear South Asia Is Not Like Cold War Europe

2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Paul Kapur
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Significant Risk ◽  
Indian Territory ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Nuclear Level ◽  
International Attention ◽  
Low Probability ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Cold War

Scholars attribute conventional violence in a nuclear South Asia to a phenomenon known as the “stability/instability paradox.” According to this paradox, the risk of nuclear war makes it unlikely that conventional confict will escalate to the nuclear level, thereby making conventional confict more likely. Although this phenomenon encouraged U.S.-Soviet violence during the Cold War, it does not explain the dynamics of the ongoing confict between India and Pakistan. Recent violence has seen Pakistan or its proxies launching limited attacks on Indian territory, and India refusing to retaliate in kind. The stability/instability paradox would not predict such behavior. A low probability of conventional war escalating to the nuclear level would reduce the ability of Pakistan's nuclear weapons to deter an Indian conventional attack. Because Pakistan is conventionally weaker than India, this would discourage Pakistani aggression and encourage robust Indian conventional retaliation against Pakistani provocations. Pakistani boldness and Indian restraint have actually resulted from instability in the strategic environment. A full-scale Indo-Pakistani conventional confict would create a significant risk of nuclear escalation. This danger enables Pakistan to launch limited attacks on India while deterring allout Indian conventional retaliation and attracting international attention to the two countries' dispute over Kashmir. Unlike in Cold War Europe, in contemporary South Asia nuclear danger facilitates, rather than impedes, conventional confict.

Human (In)Security

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Human Security ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Significant Challenge ◽  
Humanitarian Crises ◽  
Privileged Status ◽  
Heated Debate ◽  
The Cold War

The 1990s was host to a range of conflicts emerging from weak or failed states. These conflicts typically involved significant humanitarian crises and widespread human rights abuses. Within this changing global environment, new security thinking started to engage “people” as the referent of security, moving away from the previous privileged status granted to the state as the only referent of security. The end of the Cold War enabled the human security paradigm to provide a significant challenge to the primacy of the state in security thinking. On the other hand, human security has been subject to much criticism and there has been heated debate over its applicability within the security agenda. This chapter argues that despite earlier concerns over its efficacy, human security has made inroads into security thinking and is mutually reinforcing to national security.

Between the Shadow of History and the ‘Union of People’

2019 ◽  
pp. 98-129
Author(s):  
Antonia Witt
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Human Security ◽  
Organizational Environment ◽  
African Union ◽  
African Unity ◽  
Global Institutions ◽  
African People ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Peace And Development

With the end of the Cold War, we observe two major changes in the way the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the African Union (AU) sought to legitimate themselves. First, the focus shifted from merely facilitating cooperation to demonstrating that the work of the OAU and later the AU actually made a difference ‘on the ground’; that it led to peace and development, to integration, and to a stronger representation of African interests in global institutions. Second, the AU sought to build its legitimacy on the notion of working not only for and with African states, but also for and with the African people. Legitimation thus increasingly focused on the principles of ‘democracy’, ‘human security’, or ‘human development’. As the chapter reveals, various dynamics in the organizational environment facilitated these changes, but norm entrepreneurship by the OAU/AU bureaucracy was central.

scholarly journals The Rise of Far-Right Civilizationism

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 1207-1220
Author(s):  
Blake Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
World Order ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Transnational Organizations ◽  
Governance Model ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Western Hegemony

In recent years the rise of far-right politics in North America and Europe has called into question the stability and cohesion of the so-called liberal international order. Scholars and commentators have argued that this swelling configuration of reactionary social forces threatens the future of western hegemony within a 21st century global capitalism. This essay reflects on the role of transnational organizations, organic intellectuals and elite actors in shaping the modern far-right movement. This essay will discuss the rise of a transnational ideology of the contemporary far-right which I call ‘far-right civilizationism’. This far-right ‘hegemonic project’ seeks to challenge the centrist global governance model of ‘neoliberal cosmopolitanism’, which has been dominant in the West since the end of the Cold War. The reactionary worldview of far-right civilizationism represents an alternative elite grand strategy for world order, purposed to refurbish elite hegemony during a period of profound structural crisis.

War and strong states, peace and weak states?

1996 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Desch
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Security ◽  
International Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Weak States ◽  
The Cold War

For most of the twentieth century, international politics were dominated by World Wars I and II and by the cold war. This period of intense international security competition clearly strengthened states, increasing their scope and cohesion. However, the end of the cold war may represent a “threat trough”—a period of significantly reduced international security competition. If so, the scope and cohesion of many states may likewise change. Although this change will not be so great as to end the state or the states system, the state as we know it surely will change. Some states will disintegrate, many will cease growing in scope and may even shrink a little, and few will remain unaffected.

The United Nations and International Security in the New Millennium

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-541
Author(s):  
W. Andy Knight
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
International Security ◽  
Human Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractThe end of the Cold War opened a window of opportunity for the United Nations to play a greater role in international security than it was allowed to play in the midst of the ideological conflict between the United States and the former Soviet Union. However, the expected "peace dividend" never materialized in the post-Cold War period. Instead, a number of civil conflicts erupted and new threats to security, particularly to human security, emerged. This chapter critically examines the evolution of the UN's role in addressing international security problems since 1945, including global terrorism. It also outlines recent attempts by the world body, through extension of its reach beyond the territorial constraints of sovereignty, to build sustained peace through preventive measures and protect human security globally.

The Economics of Violent Conflict and War in Africa

2014 ◽  
pp. 704-723
Author(s):  
Anke Hoeffler
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Specific Model ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Weak States ◽  
Global Models ◽  
The Past ◽  
African Experience ◽  
Global Trend ◽  
The Cold War

During the past 50 years Africa has experienced high levels of violent conflict. Historically, African wars have not led to state formation but have been destructive in character. Resulting weak states have found it difficult to deter rebellions. Since the end of the Cold War the number of conflicts has declined worldwide but Africa has not followed the global trend. Predictions suggest that African conflict levels will remain high. This chapter examines the commonly cited causes of violent conflict, such as historical, geographic, demographic and economic factors. One conclusion is that there is no evidence for an African exceptionalism: the global models explain the African experience; there is no need for an Africa-specific model.

scholarly journals Institutional Assets and Adaptability: NATO After the Cold War

2000 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 705-735 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celeste A. Wallander
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Test Case ◽  
External Threats ◽  
The Cold War

The puzzle of NATO's persistence is best addressed as part of a larger inquiry into institutional change. Institutions persist because they are costly to create and less costly to maintain, but this institutionalist argument is incomplete. Whether institutions adapt to change depends on whether their norms, rules, and procedures are specific or general assets and on whether the asset mix matches the kinds of security problems faced by their members. Assets specific to coping with external threats will not be useful for coping with problems of instability and mistrust, so alliances with only the former will disappear when threats disappear. Alliances that have specific institutional assets for dealing with instability and mistrust and general institutional assets will be adaptable to environments that lack threats. I assess these hypotheses in a test case of NATO's institutional assets during and after the Cold War.

scholarly journals THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN SECURITY BEFORE THE 1994 HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT. INQUIRY INTO ITS EVOLUTION DURING THE COLD WAR

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-36
Author(s):  
Alexandru LUCINESCU
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Human Security ◽  
Development Programme ◽  
Niels Bohr ◽  
Open Letter ◽  
Human Development Report ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Nations Development ◽  
Made In

It is usually considered that the concept of human security was introduced by the United Nations Development Programme with the publication in 1994 of the Human Development Report. Such a perspective on the emergence of this concept denies its existence during the Cold War and places its point of origin in the aftermath of that confrontation. However, there is also the opinion that human security was a term used during the Cold War, but that the meaning then attached to it lacks any relevancy for the meaning it has in the 1994 Human Development Report. This article contributes to the assessment of the viability of these different opinions by first exploring the use of the concept of human security by Niels Bohr in an open letter from 1950, and by Sithu U Thant, in a statement made in 1971, and secondly by comparing the meaning they gave to it with its meaning from the 1994 Human Development Report. It is concluded that both Bohr and U Thant operated with a concept of human security narrower in scope than the concept of human security which is to be found in the 1994 Human Development Report and, based on this finding, that the evolution of this concept started long before 1994.

scholarly journals COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN THE CONTEXT OF HUMAN SECURITY

2021 ◽  
pp. 102-117
Author(s):  
Ahmet Nazmi ÜSTE, ◽  
Ahmet ODABAŞ
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Rapid Evolution ◽  
Human Security ◽  
The West ◽  
Evolution Of Viruses ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Restrictive Measures ◽  
Near Future

The phenomenon of human security aims to combine security with human rights and freedoms as a product of the changing security perception of the West after the Cold War. The concept of human security has transformed security from the perception of “only the absence of threat” to a perception in which elements such as “fears and needs” are also taken into account. However, the new circumstance affected by COVID-19 and the measures taken to combat the pandemic have enforced us to experience a period in which human security is eroded, anxiety becomes the dominant emotion, dif􀏐iculties arise in meeting the existing needs as well as the new needs that are dif􀏐icult to meet. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the concept of human security has been abandoned and the classical protective-restrictive security approach has been adopted due to the wideness of the concept and its dif􀏐icult nature to de􀏐ine, which has criticised many times. In this process, sources such as the hierarchy of rights, the sociality of responsibility and the limit of freedom have constituted the legitimacy of the restrictive measures that had been taken. These extraordinary conditions, which are deemed appropriate for the limitation of rights and freedoms, are listed as a legitimate reason for the limitation of freedom in many legal texts. Another point that provides the legitimacy of struggle in extraordinary situations such as epidemic is the rarity of such cases. However, the world is faced with a problem that will destroy this source of legitimacy. While the world is changing rapidly, viruses that cause epidemics are not at a 􀏐ixed point. The rapid evolution of viruses and the spread of epidemics indicate the possibility of similar the outbreaks like the COVID-19 pandemic in the near future. For this reason, it will not be suf􀏐icient for concepts such as human security to be damaged in such extraordinary situations and to be amended again in the subsequent normalization processes. This study aims to analyze the human security phenomenon, the erosion that it has experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, its underlying sources of legitimacy and the possible problems to be encountered.

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