Suchergebnisse

The paper discusses the role of the European Parliament in the inter-institutional quest for power on the ground of the effectiveness of its control over the supra- national institutions and bodies with the intelligence function as well as in the protection of the right to privacy. The starting assumption is that, despite the Lisbon reform, the powers and jurisdiction of the European Parliament are still quite limited with a view to oversight of the EU policy implementation and the performance of the EU institutions, respectively. The author examines the following cases: the recently revealed practice of massive electronic surveillance of the EU citizens' communication, the unselective processing of personal data, and the semi-secretive set up of a supranational intelligence function out of the MEPs' reach. The analyzed cases show that the European Parliament's control powers are weak when it comes to the issues that demand a narrow technical expertise, but still can endanger civil rights. The author concludes that the protection of the right to privacy can indicate the real power of the Parliament in future dynamics of the supranational institutional framework.

The paper analyses the problems that have been undermining the US recruitment policy for the last two decades - which is aimed at providing soldiers for imperial disciplining wars waged on the planetary periphery - as a case study to test the validity of theoretical assumptions about the transition to the age of post-heroic warfare. The departing hypothesis is based on stance that the United States, being the only remained superpower, experience a gradual and less visible process of losing popular support for military conscription, which the author employs here as an ideal of national vitality and a pillar of modern citizenship, as well as a feature of masculinity and the realm for self-realisation. The analysis takes place primarily in the field of anthropology and sociology and employs theoretical positions of social constructivism to complement narrow theoretical and methodological approaches of political science which are typically applied in the study of international relations. The analysis focuses on the "cracks" and deformations in the construction of ideals of warfare and heroism, which emerge as a result of the interaction of man - both as an individual and a member of the political community - the public, and the US foreign policy decisions designed to meet the needs and requirements of successful disciplinary imperial warfare. The author concludes that theoretical assumptions about entering the age of post-heroic warfare are valid due to the recruitment crisis in the US military, the unpopularity of the military profession, the commodification of warfare and death, the transformation of war into an industrial process, and misleading media portrayals of dead and wounded soldiers.

The article analyses how robotisation as the latest advance in military technology can depersonalise the methods of killing in the 21st century by turning enemy soldiers and civilians into mere objects devoid of moral value. The departing assumption is that robotisation of warfare transforms military operations into automated industrial processes with the aim of removing empathy as a redundant 'cost'. The development of autonomous weapons systems raises a number of sharp ethical controversies related to the projected moral insensitivity of robots regarding the treatment of enemies and civilian population. The futurist vision of war as a foreign policy instrument entirely 'purified' of the risk of morally wrong actions is in opposition with the negative effects of the use of drones. The author concludes that the use of lethal robots in combat would eventually remove enemy soldiers and civilians from the realm of ethical reasoning and deprive them of human dignity. Decision to kill in military operations ought to be based on human conscience as the only proper framework of making decisions by reasoning whether an action is right or wrong. ; U članku se analizira kako robotizacija kao poslednji napredak u vojnoj tehnologiji može da depersonalizuje metode ubijanja u 21. veku pretvaranjem neprijateljskih vojnika i civila u puke objekte lišene moralne vrednosti. Polazna pretpostavka je da robotizacija ratovanja pretvara vojne operacije u automatizovane industrijske procese sa ciljem uklanjanja empatije kao suvišne "cene". Razvoj autonomnih oružanih sistema potiče brojne oštre etičke kontroverze vezane za projektovanu moralnu neosetljivost robota u pogledu postupanja sa neprijateljima i civilnim stanovništvom. Futuristička vizija rata kao instrumenta spoljne politike potpuno "pročišćenog" od rizika moralno pogrešnih akcijama u suprotnosti je sa negativnim efektima korišćenja dronova. Autor zaključuje da bi upotreba smrtonosnih robota u borbi najzad uklonila neprijateljske vojnike i civile iz područja etičkog razmišljanja i lišila ih ljudskog dostojanstva. Odluka o ubistvu u vojnim operacijama trebalo bi da se temelji na ljudskoj savesti kao jedinom pravilnom okviru donošenja odluka promišljanjem da li je jedna akcija dobra ili loša.

The paper examines the relationship between military interventions and democratisation processes which took place in targeted states. While many researchers try to identify relationship between the regime type and countries' war proneness, the authors of this paper put these two variables in a reversed order. To test this so-called "inversed democratic peace" thesis based on an argument that an ongoing war is likely to lead to democratisation, we focus our analysis on the US interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and FR Yugoslavia (Kosovo). We deploy three variables: 1) Foreign policy similarity, to determine whether the intervening actor (USA) had similar or different foreign policy goals at the beginning of interventions; 2) Political regime similarity, to indicate whether there were any deviations in the quality of political regime between the intervening state and the target country, as indicated by the democratic peace postulates; 3) military interventions (independent variable). Foreign policy score includes S score dataset developed by Curtis S. Signorino and Jeffrey M. Ritter (1999), while for the political regime quality, the authors deploy Polity IV data. Statistical analysis including Pearson's correlation, logistic regression and descriptive statistics, will be presented for specific dyad level in three specifically designated models. The authors conclude that it is more likely that military interventions affect further democratisation of the targeted post-conflict societies, if observed in a short term rather than in longitudinal domain, while the foreign policy similarity (with the United States) positively correlates in cases with more successful democratisation process.