The post-Cold War regional security context: the role of the balance of power factor within the ARF

2003 ◽  
pp. 123-140
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Power Factor ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Regional Security ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Security Context

scholarly journals Conceptualizing Soft Balancing Beyond Cold War. What’s Changed, What Remains the Same?

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 65-91
Author(s):  
Mila Larionova
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Empirical Potential ◽  
Soft Balancing

This article is a systematic inquiry into the nature and role of soft balancing in the contemporary theory and practice of international relations. By wading into the contentious debate concerning the place and legitimacy of soft balancing, the article explores the theoretical prominence of the concept and adds methodological content to the study. Thus, the research produces a quantitative corpus-based and thematic analysis of the existing soft balancing literature to demarcate the boundary of the concept. This approach enables the author to enhance conventional theorization and not only identify the main gaps within the existing studies but go beyond the popular post-Cold War era discussion. Additionally, this article addresses the question of how soft balancing is distinguished from other concepts in the balance of power theory. Ultimately, the study reveals that despite its theoretical and empirical potential, the soft balancing research agenda remains underdeveloped, largely due to the limitation in the empirical content. Precisely, the empirical studies are limited to balance of power rhetoric akin to hard vs. soft and its implications for the United States’ hegemonic power.

Part V Global and Regional Security Mechanisms, Ch.59 The Role of the United Nations in Shaping Global Security Law

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Day Adam ◽  
Malone David M
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Regional Security ◽  
Global Security ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Agenda Setter ◽  
Willingness To Intervene ◽  
The United Nations

This chapter argues that the United Nations (UN) has contributed to the international law of global security in three related ways: (1) as a lawmaker, or something very much like it, with the UN Security Council (UNSC) empowered through the Charter to adopt decisions binding on all Member States; (2) as an interpreter of international law, with significant impact on the law of global security; and (3) as an agenda-setter, establishing norms and shaping international responses to new security challenges. In all of these, the role of the UNSC has predominated, particularly in the post-Cold War period when the pace of its engagement and its willingness to intervene in a wide range of settings increased dramatically. This does not mean that the UN is always the best, or even the appropriate, actor when it comes to making, shaping, and enforcing international law. The chapter then considers the political limitations of the UN as an actor shaping global law, and the attendant risks this contested role poses to effective management of international peace and security. Just as it adapted in the post-Cold War period to new conflict dynamics and power constellations, the UN is likely to remain a key player in the global legal order in some respects and will need to calibrate its decisions accordingly, which it has not always done in the past.

Rethinking Intersections of Crime and Terrorism: Insights from Political Economies of Violence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariya Y Omelicheva ◽  
Lawrence P Markowitz
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
State Participation ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Political Economies

Abstract The post–Cold War environment has ushered in an era of threats from terrorism, organized crime, and their intersections giving rise to the growing literature on the so-called crime–terror nexus. This article takes stock of this literature, assesses its accomplishments and limitations, and considers ways to deepen it conceptually, theoretically, and empirically. To challenge assumptions informing the crime–terror studies and suggest avenues for future research, the article draws on ideas from the scholarship on political economies of violence. These insights are used to probe the (1) non-state actors that form the crime–terror nexus, (2) conditions under which the nexus is likely to emerge, and (3) varied effects of criminal–terrorist intersections. The article emphasizes the ties of criminal and terrorist groups to local politics, society, and economy, and relationships of competition, rather than cooperation, which often characterize these ties. The conditions under which these groups operate cannot be understood without considering the role of the state in criminal–terrorist constellations. The structure of resource economies influences both the preferences of terrorist groups for crime and the consequences of terrorist–criminal convergence, which are also mediated by state participation in crime.

The Role of Local Actors in Peacekeeping: The Cases of Liberia and Sierra Leone

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Sempijja ◽  
Ekeminiabasi Eyita-Okon
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Strategic Role ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Policy Work

With the advent of multidimensional peacekeeping, in considering the changing nature of conflicts in the post–Cold War period, the role of local actors has become crucial to the execution of the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mandate. Just as peacekeeping does not have space in the UN charter, local actors do not have a clearly defined space in the UN-led conflict resolution process. However, they have gained recognition, especially in policy work, and slowly in the academic discourse, as academics and practitioners have begun to find ways of making peacekeeping and peacebuilding more effective in the 21st century. Therefore the construction and perception of local actors by international arbitrators play an important and strategic role in creating and shaping space for the former to actively establish peace where violent conflict is imminent. Local actors have independently occupied spaces during and after the conflict, and although they bring a comparative advantage, especially as gatekeepers to local communities, they have largely been kept on the periphery.

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