scholarly journals Some Remarks on the Dynamics of Strong Actor / Weak Actor Interaction

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-117
Author(s):  
Zoltan Jobbagy ◽  
Goran Boros ◽  
Levente Sandor Kovats
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Significant Challenge ◽  
Low Intensity ◽  
Long Period ◽  
The Many ◽  
Globalized World

Abstract The emergence of weak actors on global scale is one among the many undesired consequences of the post Cold War period. In a globalized world, weak actors increasingly possess the capability and will to challenge the existing status quo set earlier by strong actors. The complexity of the international theatre provides weak actors with an abundance of opportunities to become successful over a long period. From a military point of view strong actor / weak actor interaction becomes manifest when the latter prosecutes a special type of war. This war is asymmetric, irregular and of low intensity. It poses a significant challenge to the strong actor and can bog him down into confusing and ambiguous military actions. In these actions the strong actor often finds himself in messy situations he can mostly master by improvisation. To better understand the strong actor / weak actor interaction and the resulting special type of war the authors suggest to reject the classical theorizing of war and advocate a different sort of thinking instead.

The dynamics of autocratic coercion after the Cold War

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucan A. Way ◽  
Steven Levitsky
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
High Intensity ◽  
The State ◽  
Intensity Measures ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Low Intensity ◽  
Regime Stability ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Face

This article examines coercive capacity and its impact on autocratic regime stability in the context of post-Soviet Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, and Ukraine. In the post-Cold War era, different types of coercive acts require different types of state power. First, high intensity and risky measures – such as firing on large crowds or stealing elections – necessitate high degrees of cohesion or compliance within the state apparatus. Second, effective low intensity measures – including the surveillance and infiltration of opposition, and various forms of less visible police harassment – require extensive state scope or a well-trained state apparatus that penetrates large parts of society. Coercive state capacity, rooted in cohesion and scope, has often been more important than opposition strength in determining whether autocrats fall or remain in power. Thus, the regime in Armenia that was backed by a highly cohesive state with extensive scope was able to maintain power in the face of highly mobilized opposition challenges. By contrast, regimes in Georgia where the state lacked cohesion and scope fell in the face of even weakly mobilized opposition. Relatively high scope but only moderate cohesion in Belarus and Ukraine has made autocratic regimes in these countries generally more effective at low intensity coercion to prevent the emergence of opposition than at high intensity coercion necessary to face down serious opposition challenges.

scholarly journals Islam, Modernism and the West

1999 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 132-136
Author(s):  
Francis Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Clash Of Civilizations ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Concern ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Many

The relations between Muslim peoples and the West, and between Muslimpeoples and forms of modernity, have become increasingly pressing issues ofscholarly and political concern over the past twenty-five years. In part, this isdue to the growing power of Islamism in the lives and politics of many Muslimsocieties and, in part, to the fact that some fonns of Islamism can appear to beprofoundly hostile to all that the West represents. The growing presence ofMuslim peoples in Western societies and the many assumptions which thatpresence calls into question has also caused scholars and politicians to focus onthese relations. Add to this the fact that some leading members of the Westernpolicy establishment, most notably the US political scientist S. P. Huntington, have come to talk in the post-cold war era of a “clash of civilizations” in whichthe clash between Islam and the West is the most profound and the most dangerousfor world p e .This book, which contains sixteen essays by Muslim and non-Muslim scholars,mainly from institutions in Europe and the Arab world, sets out to addresskey issues in the relations between Muslims, modernity, and the West. It is theoutcome of a symposium held in Toledo, Spain, in April 1996, which wasprompted by the Eleni Nakou Foundation for the promotion of cultural contactand understanding among European peoples, and held under the auspices of theJose Ortega y Gasset Foundation. &ma Martin Muiioz, professor of Sociologyof the Arab and Islamic World at the Autonoma University of Madrid was theintellectual “playmaker” of the occasion. Due to its Islamic past and the fundamentalrole it played in transmitting Islamic learning and culture for thedevelopment of Christian Europe, Spain was a goad choice of location for theaonference ...

The foreign policy options of a small unrecognised state: the case of Abkhazia

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Thomas Frear
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
Policy Options ◽  
Universal Principle ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Significant Challenge ◽  
The World ◽  
Systemic Understanding

The study of international relations has historically focused on the activities of large, powerful states, dismissing the smaller entities of the international system as unimportant or merely objects of policy for the larger entities. This truism extends especially to those entities that exist in an unrecognised or partially recognised limbo, neither a full part of the international system nor an ungoverned space. Yet in the post-Cold War world, following the dissolution of large multi-national states such as the USSR, these entities have begun to proliferate. This proliferation provides a significant challenge to an international system in which the primary participants are states, and to the institutions created to oversee their interaction. Unrecognised entities, existing outside of this framework, represent a threat to the universal principle of sovereignty, that one true institutionalised aspect of international relations. As such the study of these entities and their interaction with the world outside their borders is a study important for a systemic understanding of contemporary international relations. This article aims to address the foreign policy of one such entity, Abkhazia.

scholarly journals The Dominion model of transitional constitutionalism

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 1283-1300
Author(s):  
Mara Malagodi ◽  
Luke McDonagh ◽  
Thomas Poole
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
British Empire ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
Political Transitions ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Design And Practice ◽  
Transitional Constitutionalism

Abstract This symposium has explored New Dominion constitutionalism inductively and contextually, placing the phenomenon within a historically nested set of ideas and practices from the Old (Settler) Dominions, through the “Bridge Dominion” of Ireland, before giving detailed attention to the South Asian New Dominions of India, Pakistan, and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The articles collectively form a basis from which to analyze the legal configuration of New Dominion status and its legacy by exploring links between New Dominion constitutional framing and post-independence design and practice. Building on the case studies, the principal contention of this summative contribution is that New Dominion constitutionalism should be understood as the first constitutional model of note designed to manage political transitions on a global scale. A product of the twilight of the British Empire, New Dominion constitutionalism represents a model for decolonizing nations and an important antecedent to later post-Cold War transitions. Both transitional and transnational, New Dominion status offered an interim frame of government for political transitions, the fuzzy center of which derived from Westminster-style conventions of political constitutionalism, as well as a template establishing the legal basis for constituting the fully independent state.

scholarly journals Structural Constraints and Human Agency in Global Summitry and the Liberal Order

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan S Alexandroff ◽  
Arthur A Stein
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International System ◽  
International Order ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Many ◽  
Power And Agency

Abstract Confusion surrounds how best to describe today the architecture of the liberal international order, its challenges, and prospects. The Liberal Order’s various and changing configurations its distributions of power, as well as the variety of major actors, portend consequences for the operation of the international system. Although structural approaches remain dominant in international relations analysis, it is evident that there is an interaction of structure, the distribution, and redistribution of power, and agency—the diplomatic actions, norms, and rules of international politics. Historical and existing institutions, ongoing debates, and political efforts all point to the role of agency in global governance. The ongoing search for order was the basis for the Peace of Westphalia, the Concert of Europe, the effort to construct collective security following World War I, the Western liberal order of the Cold War, and global governance constructions of the post-Cold War era. The continuing existence and direction of the liberal international order are proving difficult to determine. There are rising powers and growing geopolitical rivalry. There are many new nonstate actors affecting international politics. And, there is current U.S. policy that puts in question its collaborative role and its continuing leadership. The many architectures of global governance, even competing ones, underline that structure alone is not determinative. In addition, debates over what course to take imply that the force of circumstance does not make one and only choice possible and inevitable, and that the search for order is ongoing and omnipresent.

scholarly journals Developing Sino- Israeli Relations in the Post-Cold War Era: Analyzing Desecuritization Scenarios for Iran

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-224
Author(s):  
A. P. Fariborz ◽  
J. S. Seyed ◽  
A. Hossein
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Regional Security ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
The Status ◽  
Regional Position ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Impact

An important feature of Israel's foreign policy in the post-Cold War era has been development of relations with emerging powers, including China. The importance of the economic component in the foreign policy of both countries, China's efforts to achieve the status of a great power, and Israel's strategies to improve its global image and regional position have brought the two countries' relations into a form of comprehensive cooperation in the post-Cold War era. Describing the relations between the two countries in the political, military and economic spheres and acknowledging the impact of China and Israel's behavior patterns on national and regional security of Iran the article seeks to answer the following questions : What are the indicators of the development of China-Israel relations in the post-Cold War era? What are the consequences of these relations for Iran? From this article's point of view, the development of China-Israel relations in all areas has been on an upward trajectory and hence have substantial implications at the national (threatening China-Iran relations in the field of energy and weakening Iran-China military relations and enfeebling Iran's position in the Silk Road project), regional (changing the balance to the detriment of Iran, Iran's containment and normalization of Arab-Israeli relations) and international levels (China's accompanying pressures on Iran, Israel's use of China's capacity in international institutions and efforts to legitimizing and reinforcing the notion of Iran's threat and continuing Iranophobia) for Iran's security.

scholarly journals The Odd Couple: Ending The Jordanian-Syrian “Cold War”

2006 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Curtis R. Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Regime Changes ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Arab States ◽  
The Many

Of all the bilateral relationships between Arab states, the Jordanian-Syrian relationship has been among the most tumultuous. Jordanian-Syrian relations have, more often than not, been marked by varying degrees of mutual hostility and even violence. These periods of animosity have been so frequent that they amounted to a local “Cold War” even in the midst of the many other conflicts in the region. But with regime changes in both Amman and Damascus, a marked thaw has emerged in Jordanian-Syrian relations, seemingly ending another long period of acrimony. But this type of event has happened once before: in the late 1970s when Jordan and Syria shifted from antagonism to alliance. This article examines both the historic and current attempts to end the Jordanian-Syrian Cold War, so that the earlier episode may shed some light on the present and future of Jordanian-Syrian relations.

scholarly journals An examination of the international system stability after the Cold War in terms of the theory of hegemonic stability

2018 ◽  
pp. 147-174
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Stability Theory ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
System Stability ◽  
General Process ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Hegemonic Stability

It seems that by suing the theories of international politics, especially the onre of hegemonic stability in the form of the neo-realism of Robert Gilpin, it is possible to define the structure of the post-Cold War as a hegemonic structure, so that in the next step by using it, the behavior of the main units of the system, particularly the superior power of hegemony (America), could be explained. This research, by using the hegemonic stability theory answers the question of how the stability of the post-Cold War international system is, from the point of view of the hegemonic stability theory; Therefore, the hypothesis of this study cites it seems that the order and stability of the post-Cold War international system, from the point of view of the hegemonic stability theory, can be explained on thae basis of the central role of the United States and its desire to intervene in the general process of maintaining order in the global system(hegemonic order), because in this order the United States, while enjoying a superior economic position and the dominant material and non-material resources of power, pursues its own security, economic, and ideological interests, and strives to put forth its hegemonic goals in the form of some ideas and then to implement them with regard to their positive and negative feedbacks to stabilize the international system.

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