scholarly journals The military-political aspect of Polish-American relations in 2020

Author(s):  
Maria Pavlova

The article examines key aspects of political and military cooperation between Poland and the United States in 2020. The main attention is paid to on-going discussions about Poland's involvement in NATO nuclear programs and the development of the idea of creating a base for the permanent deployment of the US troops in Poland.

Author(s):  
N.U. KHANALIEV

An attempt is made in the article to identify and analyze some aspects of the US foreign strategy in Central Asia which, in the authors opinion, although in one form or another are touched upon in the domestic political science, can nevertheless be interpreted from a new angle, subjecting the existing interpretations to a certain re-evaluation and adjustment. Washingtons policy in the region is viewed in a broader context, Central Asia is considered an integral part of Eurasia. The main attention is focused on the justification of the thesis that in the 90s of the last century the United States claimed to be the main actor occupying the dominant position in Eurasia as a whole and Central Asia in particular, but due to a number of factors failed to reach that aim. After analyzing the activities of the US administration in using the territory of the five countries as a springboard for the military operations in Afghanistan, it is concluded that from the beginning of the war until recently, the possibilities of achieving goals sought by Washington in the region gradually narrowed. It is shown that the situation was determined both by Russias return to the region as a great military and political power and emergence of such a new powerful actor as China, as well as by the mistakes and miscalculations of the US leadership.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda J. Bilmes

AbstractThe United States has traditionally defined national security in the context of military threats and addressed them through military spending. This article considers whether the United States will rethink this mindset following the disruption of the Covid19 pandemic, during which a non-military actor has inflicted widespread harm. The author argues that the US will not redefine national security explicitly due to the importance of the military in the US economy and the bipartisan trend toward growing the military budget since 2001. However, the pandemic has opened the floodgates with respect to federal spending. This shift will enable the next administration to allocate greater resources to non-military threats such as climate change and emerging diseases, even as it continues to increase defense spending to address traditionally defined military threats such as hypersonics and cyberterrorism.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 12-47
Author(s):  
Yinan Li

The development of the PRC’s armed forces included three phases when their modernization was carried out through an active introduction of foreign weapons and technologies. The first and the last of these phases (from 1949 to 1961, and from 1992 till present) received wide attention in both Chinese and Western academic literature, whereas the second one — from 1978 to 1989 —when the PRC actively purchased weapons and technologies from the Western countries remains somewhat understudied. This paper is intended to partially fill this gap. The author examines the logic of the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States in the context of complex interactions within the United States — the USSR — China strategic triangle in the last years of the Cold War. The first section covers early contacts between the PRC and the United States in the security field — from the visit of R. Nixon to China till the inauguration of R. Reagan. The author shows that during this period Washington clearly subordinated the US-Chinese cooperation to the development of the US-Soviet relations out of fear to damage the fragile process of detente. The second section focuses on the evolution of the R. Reagan administration’s approaches regarding arms sales to China in the context of a new round of the Cold War. The Soviet factor significantly influenced the development of the US-Chinese military-technical cooperation during that period, which for both parties acquired not only practical, but, most importantly, political importance. It was their mutual desire to undermine strategic positions of the USSR that allowed these two countries to overcome successfully tensions over the US arms sales to Taiwan. However, this dependence of the US-China military-technical cooperation on the Soviet factor had its downside. As the third section shows, with the Soviet threat fading away, the main incentives for the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States also disappeared. As a result, after the Tiananmen Square protests, this cooperation completely ceased. Thus, the author concludes that the US arms sales to China from the very beginning were conditioned by the dynamics of the Soviet-American relations and Beijing’s willingness to play an active role in the policy of containment. In that regard, the very fact of the US arms sales to China was more important than its practical effect, i.e. this cooperation was of political nature, rather than military one.


2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Nir Gazit ◽  

The murder of George Floyd by a police officer in the United States in May 2020 and the subsequent turmoil, as well as the violence against migrants on the US-Mexican border, have drawn major public and media attention to the phenomenon of police brutality (see, e.g., Levin 2020; Misra 2018; Taub 2020), which is often labeled as ‘militarization of police’. At the same time, in recent years military forces have been increasingly involved in policing missions in civilian environments, both domestically (see, e.g., Kanno-Youngs 2020; Schrader 2020; Shinkman 2020) and abroad. The convergence of military conduct and policing raises intriguing questions regarding the impact of these tendencies on the military and the police, as well as on their legitimacy.


The Drone Age ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 96-130
Author(s):  
Michael J. Boyle

Chapter 4 argues that drones accelerate the trend toward information-rich warfare and place enormous pressure on the military to learn ever more about the battlefields that it faces. Today, for the United States, war is increasingly a contest for information about any future battlespace. This has had an organizational effect as the ability for the United States to know more through drone imagery has turned into a necessity to know more. The US military is becoming so enamored of its ability to know more through drone surveillance that it is overlooking the operational and organizational costs of “collecting the whole haystack.” Using drones for a vast surveillance apparatus, as the United States and now other countries have been doing, has underappreciated implications for the workload, organizational structures, and culture of the military itself.


Author(s):  
Le Thi Nhuong

President M. Richard Nixon took office in the context that the United States was being crisis and deeply divided by the Vietnam war. Ending the war became the new administration's top priority. The top priority of the new government was to get the American out of the war. But if the American got out of the war and the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) fell, the honor and and prestige of the U.S will be effected. Nixon government wanted to conclude American involvement honorably. It means that the U.S forces could be returned to the U.S, but still maintaining the RVN government in South Vietnam. To accomplish this goal, Nixon government implemented linkage diplomacy, negotiated with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in Paris and implemented "Vietnamization" strategy. The aim of the Vietnamization was to train and provide equipments for the RVN's military forces that gradually replace the U.S. troops, take responsibility in self-guarantee for their own security. By analyzing the military cooperation between the United States and the RVN in the implementation of "Vietnamization", the paper aims to clarify the nature of the "allied relationship" between the U.S and the RVN. It also proves that the goal of Nixon's Vietnamization was not to help the RVN "reach to a strong government with a wealthy economy, a powerful internal security and military forces", served the policy of withdrawing American troops from the war that the U.S could not win militarily, solving internal problems but still preserving the honor of the United States.


Author(s):  
Michael E. Donoghue

Since declaring independence from Spain in 1821, Panama struggled for nearly two centuries to forge a true sovereignty. Free from Madrid’s control, the province found itself subordinated first by Gran Colombia, later New Granada, and after gaining a measure of independence in a 1903 secessionist revolution, by the United States which built a canal and attached zone through which Washington dominated the nation. Domestically, Panama also wrestled with the complexities of a multiracial, class-divided society ruled by a European-descended elite and political infighting among populists and the military that impeded liberal democracy. Gradually, a nationalist movement that sought greater state formation and control over the canal coalesced around mid-century. But the importance of the waterway to Washington imposed constraints on this movement’s success until the 1978 ratification of the Carter-Torrijos treaties which ensured the transfer of the canal to Panama by century’s end. In 1989, concerns over political tyranny, drug trafficking, and the integrity of the upcoming canal transfer compelled the United States to invade Panama and end the military dictatorship (1968–1989) while restoring a form of elite-dominated democracy. After nearly a hundred years of resistance and diplomacy, Panama finally won full independence on December 31, 1999, taking possession of the canal and the remnants of the US-run enclave. Problems of how to reorganize the republic’s economy and political structure, as well as persistent corruption and poverty, complicated the post-US era. Still, with its unique geostrategic position in the world economy, opportunities as well as obstacles confront Panama today finally freed from a century of neocolonialism.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanislav Mikhailovich Ivanov

The article analyzes the military operation of the United States and its NATO allies in Afghanistan, which lasted for 20 years, and the prospects for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from this country. The author states that the new US President D. Biden does not abandon the foreign policy course pursued by his predecessors earlier to reduce the US military presence in Afghanistan. Moreover, the new president reaffirmed his commitment to the peace agreement between the United States and the opposition Taliban, reached in the Qatari capital of Doha in February 2020, which provides for the withdrawal of US troops and their NATO allies from the country. However, the author comes to the conclusion that due to a number of objective and subjective factors, the timing of the final withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan may be postponed indefinitely, and even the deadline recently declared by the White House on September 11, 2021, may be far from final and may be repeatedly subjected to revisions. The main obstacle to the implementation of this important clause of the bilateral agreement is the lack of progress in negotiations between the Taliban representatives and the central government, as well as the lack of security guarantees for the withdrawn contingent of the US Armed Forces, NATO and the remaining staff of Western foreign missions in Afghanistan. Not only the radical Taliban wing, but also a number of current ministers in Kabul are trying to sabotage the conclusion of a second peace agreement and the subsequent integration of the Taliban into power. Without a lasting agreement between the Taliban and the central authorities in Kabul and the formation of a new coalition government, the likelihood of a resumption of civil war in the country will remain. New terrorist attacks and outbursts of violence on the part of the radical wing of the Taliban movement against the central government and foreign troops are not excluded. The penetration of Islamic State gangs into Afghanistan, which can undermine the stability of the military-political situation from within and provoke new armed conflicts, also carries certain risks. Much will also depend on the position of one of the main external players in Afghan affairs — Islamabad. Time will show whether Pakistan will be ready to take on part of the functions of a peaceful settlement within the Afghan conflict. The US administration would like more participation in stabilizing the further situation in Afghanistan from other regional forces (China, Russia, India, Iran, Turkey, Uzbekistan).


Author(s):  
William E. Rapp

Despite the high regard for the US military by the American public, a number of tensions continue to grow in civil-military relations in the United States. These are exacerbated by a lack of clarity, and thus productive debate, in the various relationships inherent in civil and military interaction. By trisecting civil military relations into the relations between the people and the military, the military and the government, and the people and the government on military issues, this chapter examines the potential for crisis in coming years. Doing so allows for greater theoretical and popular understanding and thus action in addressing the tensions, for there is cause for concern and action in each of the legs of this interconnected triangle.


Author(s):  
Marinko Bobić

This chapter traces the military confrontation between Iraq under Saddam Hussein and the United States backed by the international community, known as the Gulf War. To understand Saddam's decision to militarily engage the US, one must go back to his rise in power, his beliefs, and consequences of the Iraq-Iran war, as well as the invasion of Kuwait. The simplified explanation is that Saddam found himself in a difficult domestic situation. He had to maintain an extensive system of control, partially dependent on coercion, and partially dependent on incentives and rewards. This system was shaken by the Iraq-Iran war. While such domestic crisis alone might not have induced Saddam to fight a losing war, his anomalous beliefs ensured that he thought he could win by seeing the US as unable to stomach another war. In a way, such a belief could be interpreted as a wrongly-perceived window of opportunity. The counter-factual assessment provides additional evidence that a change in these conditions would likely have led to a different outcome.


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