North Atlantic Treaty Organization towards the war in Syria 2011-2015

The conflict in Syria that started in 2011 has quickly evolved from a local uprising inspired by the events of the so-called “Arab Spring” into a multidimensional and complicated conflict of a civil war character, with many diverse participants and a very significant religious factor apart from political and socioeconomic reasons. Furthermore, the conflict has become internationalized: more and more external parties have gotten involved in it with a view to furthering or safeguarding their own interests. A vast majority of these actors were states (as far as legal entities are concerned). In the context of their activity, operations of non-state entities, such as international organizations, were rather limited and focused on social and humanitarian issues. This also pertains to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Evolving from a typical defensive alliance towards a security organization and, since the end of the Cold War, consistently operating outside the area covered by the Treaty (understood as the territories of member states), NATO as an autonomous entity has not taken any consistent, coordinated, or decisive actions during the first years of the Syrian conflict. This is due to both the specific features of this international organization and the determinants of the international environment with their dynamics.

Turkey’s dealing with the Syrian Kurds (Part I)

This wide-ranging survey of the Kurds in Syria will evaluate the mid-term fall-out of the suddenly announced US withdrawal on October 7, 2019. It concludes that 1. The US dishonorably deserted its Syrian Kurdish ally, 2. Alienated future allies who would no longer trust it, 3. Allowed some of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) prisoners incarcerated by YPG guards to escape and potentially revive the genocidal jihadist organization, 4. Rewarded Turkish aggression, 5. Handed the murderous, but badly taxed Assad regime new life, 6. Facilitated Iran’s drive to the Mediterranean and potential threat to Israel, and, maybe most of all, 7. Empowered Russia as the ultimate arbitrator of the Syrian imbroglio to the detriment of the United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The benefits of being a multi-capital: The economic impact of the international and European institutions and interest groups

Brussels is known worldwide for hosting (most of) the European institutions as well as several other international organisations like North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Besides the symbolic political value, their presence has an economic impact because of their administrative activities and staff remunerations. Estimating the economic impact poses two main challenges. First, the supranational nature of these organisations makes it challenging to quantify the size of these institutions and related bodies because country-based statistical systems hardly account for transnational organisations. Second, as these institutions and organisations mainly rely on taxpayers’ funding, policymakers need transparent estimates to assess the implications of their decisions as well as for a matter of accountability. For these purposes, a meticulous data collection is carried out, and transparent assumptions are used to estimate the local economic multiplier effect of these activities accounting for operational expenditures, employees’ consumption as well as (Belgian) taxes and saving. The results show that the economic impact for the Brussels-Capital Region lies between 23% and 26% of regional turnover and 19% and 20% of employment, while interregional spillovers are estimated being around 1.5% to 1.7% of regional turnover and 0.6% to 0.7% of employment for both Flemish and Walloon regions.

‘No Ideas but in Things’: The Responsibility to Protect as Assemblage

This article establishes the need to engage with the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as an assemblage in order to reckon with how material influences shape its politics. Through an analysis of the 2011 United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization intervention in Libya, the paper illustrates how particular tools and techniques influence R2P. The example shows how the original impetus of the intervention was mediated and translated by the particular collection of elements brought together to realise the intervention in Libya. Rather than argue this illustrates how R2P is defined by specific techniques, the article situates and then builds upon the extant literature by labelling R2P as an assemblage. In this way the article highlights how material influences and the importance of mediation are missed in the extant literature. Further, it concludes by arguing for a more productive research agenda that foregrounds empirical engagements with specific practices in order to develop the current literature.

Promoting the archives of the Alliance: a case study of outreach at the NATO Archives*

Following the institutionalization of the Policy on the Public Disclosure of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Information in 2008, the NATO Archives tasked itself to regularly exhibit publicly disclosed NATO documents, video, audio, photos, publications and artifacts to promote the increasing accessibility of its collection. The success of these exhibitions, which were all initially displayed at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, led not only to a boost in the visibility of the NATO Archives within the organization, but also resulted in their expansion as part of the promotional activities of the Alliance itself, leading up to its 70th anniversary celebrations in 2019. This paper presents an overview of the outreach activities of the NATO Archives, discussing its origins and evolution in an institutional context, highlighting its role in communicating the mission of the NATO Archives and, by extension, of NATO itself. While this case study illuminates a specific experience that is heavily determined by the political and security demands of its particular environment, the resulting narrative is intended to be broadly applicable and perhaps even inspirational for archivists who recognize similar challenges at their respective international organizations.

1. Evolution of diplomacy

‘The evolution of dimplomacy’ looks briefly at the evolution of modern diplomacy, focusing on diplomats and what they do, paying attention to the art of treaty-making. A case can be made that treaties of international peace and cooperation comprise nothing less than the diplomatic landscape of human history, from the benchmark European treaties of the Congress of Vienna (1815), Brest-Litovsk (1918), and Versailles (1919) to the milestone events such as the Covenant of the League of Nations (1919), the United Nations Charter (1948), and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1949).

Trading Global Catastrophes: NATO’s Science Diplomacy and Nuclear Winter

This essay explores the reception of ‘nuclear winter’ at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This response is paradigmatic of how scientific predictions can work as stimuli for science diplomacy activities, and either inflate or deflate these forecasts’ public resonance. Those who elaborated the theory in the early 1980s predicted that the environmental consequences of a future nuclear conflict would have been catastrophic; possibly rendering the earth uninhabitable and leading to the extinction of humankind. This prospect was particularly problematic for the Western defence alliance, since it was difficult to reconcile with the tenets of its nuclear posture, especially after the 1979 Dual Track decision, engendering concerns about the environmental catastrophe that the scientists predicted. Thus, NATO officials refrained from commenting on nuclear winter and its implications for the alliance’s deterrence doctrine for some time in an effort to minimize public criticism. Meanwhile, they progressively removed research on nuclear winter from the set of studies and scientific debates sponsored by NATO in the context of its science initiatives. In essence, NATO officials ‘traded’ the promotion of these problematic studies with that of others more amenable to the alliance’s diplomacy ambitions.

Spiritual Rearmament

This chapter documents evangelical Protestant efforts to “spiritually rearm” Germany and Europe in an era of Cold War militarization. These spiritual efforts complemented a vast increase in American military capabilities during the early 1950s, as well as West Germany’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The evangelical pursuit of Europe’s “spiritual rearmament” signaled the rising prominence of Protestant evangelicals in American politics and diplomacy. Vying for spiritual leadership of their nation, Protestant evangelicals prepared to spread across the globe a gospel of faith, freedom, and free enterprise. In response to Cold War rearmament campaigns, a growing number of American ecumenists began to adopt Europe’s “third way” theology.