Suchergebnisse

Middle power states, such as Canada or Denmark, are often thought of as "followers" of great powers rather than significant actors in global security. Challenging this view, this book highlights how middle powers have in fact showed great leadership by developing a "human security" agenda that focuses on countering threats to human beings rather than to nation-states. The work examines how coalitions of middle powers have performed through five case studies: the formation of the Multinational Standby High Readiness Brigade for United Nations Operations (SHIRBRIG), the realization of the Ottawa

The concept of 'middlepowermanship,' or middle power diplomacy, was first used by John W. Holmes and Paul Painchaud in separate papers presented at a 1965 conference on global development. While middlepowermanship has been analyzed by scholars interested in the foreign policies of middle powers, the concept has unfortunately not received the attention or respect from the broader academic community that it deserves due to the predominance of the realist paradigm for analyzing international relations. Realists tend to focus their attention on the great military powers of our world. Other states are often dismissed as 'lesser' followers of great power leadership. Adapted from the source document.

This study illustrates how middle power states — such as Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway — have exercised leadership on the human security agenda, and thus challenges the realist view of middle powers as mere followers of great power leadership on global security issues. The hegemonic United States (US) is likely to counter any initiative that threatens its core national interest: the security of the American territory, institutions, and citizenry. Therefore, it is hypothesized that the US is more likely to oppose a middle power-led human security initiative if the initiative challenges the rights of American citizens protected under the US Constitution. A qualitative analysis of four human security initiatives provides support for the hypothesis. The US acquiesced to the formation of the Stand-by High Readiness Brigade for United Nations Operations (SHIRBRIG) and the ban on antipersonnel landmines (APLs), which did not pose threats to any constitutional rights. But Washington opposed the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the adoption of stricter regulations on the legal trade in small arms and light weapons (SALW), because these initiatives challenged specific constitutional rights of American citizens. The study examines a second hypothesis: that a middle power-led human security initiative is more likely to be successful if the middle powers engage in fast-track diplomacy rather than consensus-based diplomacy. The case studies demonstrate that the middle powers succeeded when they used fast-track diplomacy on the SHIRBRIG, APL, and ICC initiatives, but failed when they relied on consensus-based diplomacy on the SALW initiative.