Suchergebnisse

Argues that European integration may be the best way for ethnic groups to assert their national ambitions; focuses on Hungary's efforts to virtually integrate ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries into the EU, even if the state where they live does not join the union, and how Hungary has established institutional links with Hungarians abroad.

As the world moves away from the familiar bipolar cold war era, many international relations theorists have renewed an old debate about which is more stable: a world with two great powers or a world with many great powers. Based on the chief assumptions of structural realism—namely, that the international system is characterized by anarchy and that states are unitary actors seeking to survive in this anarchic system—some security analysts are predicting that a world of several great powers will lead to a return to the shifting alliances and instabilities of the multipolar era that existed prior to World War II. For instance, John Mearsheimer argues that "prediction[s] of peace in a multipolar Europe [are] flawed." Thomas Christensen and Jack Snyder argue that states in a multipolar world can follow either the pre-World War I or the pre-World War II alliance pattern, thus implying that a third course is improbable. They further assert that "the fundamental, invariant structural feature, international anarchy, generally selects and socializes states to form balancing alignments in order to survive in the face of threats from aggressive competitors." The realist argument predicts that great powers in a self-help international system will balance one another through arms races and alliance formations.

Russia's reactions toward the US plan for deploying a national missile defense system & strategy for renegotiating the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty are studied. An overview of the former USSR's ballistic missile defense research & technology & implementation of such a system around Moscow is presented. It is claimed that Russia's diminished status as a global superpower has severely decreased its capacity to maintain the ABM Treaty in its current state. A review of Russia-US arms control summits during the late 1990s illustrates both nations' concerns with other countries' creation of long-range ballistic missiles. It is stated that renegotiating the ABM treaty provides the best-case scenario for present-day Russia & that allowing the US to withdraw from the agreement would damage future possibilities for Russia-US cooperation. In addition, it is speculated that renegotiation could lead to both nations' collaboration in creating a joint missile defense system. It is concluded that Putin's overt acknowledgment of ballistic missile threats has probably compromised Russia's ability to preserve the original stipulations of the ABM Treaty. J. W. Parker