Suchergebnisse

The Nordic countries have long been renowned for their contribution to international peace and security. This contribution – occasionally viewed by both Nordic and non-Nordic policy-makers and academics as a particular model for facilitating peace and development in international affairs – is based on a combination of active contributions to peaceful conflict resolution, a high level of development aid and a continuous commitment to strengthening international society. However, recently Scandinavians have been making headlines for reasons that seem to contrast with their well-established brand as humane internationalist peacemakers. This article identifies the characteristics of the Nordic model for international peace and security and discusses how and why it has changed.

Russia's strategy in the Arctic is dominated by two overriding discourses – and foreign policy directions – which at first glance may look like opposites. On the one hand, an IR realism/geopolitical discourse that often has a clear patriotic character, dealing with "capturing", "winning" or "conquering" the Arctic and putting power, including military power, behind the national interests in the area – which is why we, in recent years, have seen an increasing military build-up, also in the Russian Arctic. Opposed to this is an IR liberalism, international law-inspired and modernization-focused discourse, which is characterized by words such as "negotiation", "cooperation" and "joint ventures" and which has as an axiom that the companies and countries operating in the Arctic all benefit the most if they collaborate in peace and friendliness. So far, the IR liberalism discourse has set the trend of the Russian policy carried out in relation to the Arctic. Thus, it has primarily been the Russian Foreign Ministry and, above all, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that have drawn the overall lines of the Arctic policy, well aided by the Transport Ministry and the Energy Ministry. On the other side are the Russian national Security Council led by Nikolai Patrushev and the Russian Defence Ministry headed by Sergey Shoygu, which both have embedded their visions of Russia and the Arctic in the IR realism/geopolitical discourse. Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, does the same. Nevertheless, he has primarily chosen to let the Foreign Ministry set the line for the Arctic policy carried out, presumably out of a pragmatic acknowledgement of the means that have, so far, served the Russian interests best. Moreover, it is worth noting that both wings, even though they can disagree about the means, in fact are more or less in agreement about the goal of Russia's Arctic policy: namely, to utilize the expected wealth of oil and natural gas resources in the underground to ensure the continuation of the restoration of Russia's position as a Great Power when the capacity of the energy fields in Siberia slowly diminishes – which the Russian Energy Ministry expects to happen sometime between 2015 and 2030. In addition to that, Russia sees – as the polar ice slowly melts – great potential for opening an ice-free northern sea route between Europe and Asia across the Russian Arctic, with the hope that the international shipping industry can see the common sense of saving up to nearly 4,000 nautical miles on a voyage from Ulsan, Korea, to Rotterdam, Holland, so Russia can earn money by servicing the ships and issuing permissions for passage through what Russia regards as Russian territorial water. The question is whether Russia will be able to realize its ambitious goals. First, the Russian state energy companies Gazprom and Rosneft lack the technology, know-how and experience to extract oil and gas under the exceedingly difficult environment in the Arctic, where the most significant deposits are believed to be in very deep water in areas that are very difficult to access due to bad weather conditions. The Western sanctions mean that the Russian energy companies cannot, as planned, obtain this technology and know-how via the already entered-into partnerships with Western energy companies. The sanctions limit loan opportunities in Western banks, which hit the profitability of the most cost-heavy projects in the Arctic. However, what hits hardest are the low oil prices – at present 50 dollars per barrel (Brent). According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the fields in the Arctic are not profitable as long as the oil price is under 120 dollars per barrel. Whether Russia chooses to suspend the projects until the energy prices rise again – and until it has again entered into partnerships that can deliver the desired technology and know-how – or whether the Russian state will continuously pump money into the projects is uncertain. The hard-pressed Russian economy, with the prospects of recession, increasing inflation, increasing flight of capital, rising interest rates and a continuously low oil price, provides a market economic incentive for suspending the projects until further notice. Whether the Kremlin will think in a market economic way or a long-term strategic way is uncertain – but, historically, there has been a penchant for the latter. One of the Kremlin's hopes is that Chinese-Russian cooperation can take over where the Western-Russian cooperation has shut down. Russia has long wanted to diversify its energy markets to reduce its dependence on sales to Europe. At the same time, those in the Kremlin have had a deeply-rooted fear of ending up as a "resource appendix" to the onrushing Chinese economy, which so far has been a strong contributing reason for keeping the Russian-Chinese overtures in check. The question now is whether the Western sanctions can be the catalyst that can make Russia overcome this fear and thus, in the long term, support the efforts to enter into a real, strategic partnership with China. ; Russia's strategy in the Arctic is dominated by two overriding discourses – and foreign policy directions – which at first glance may look like opposites. On the one hand, Russia have an IR realism/geopolitical discourse that often has a clear patriotic character, dealing with "exploring", "winning" or "conquering" the Arctic and putting power, including military power, behind the national interests in the area – which is why we, in recent years, have seen an increasing military build-up, also in the Russian Arctic. Opposed to this is an IR liberalism, international law-inspired and modernization- focused discourse, which is characterized by words such as "negotiation", "cooperation" and "joint ventures" and which has as an axiom that the companies and countries operating in the Arctic all benefit the most if they cooperate peacefully.

On April 25, 2013, UN's Security Council established a 12,600-strong peacekeeping force for Mali. The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSMA) is to take over and continue the security and stabilization task that the French-led military operation in cooperation with UN's African-led International Support Mission to Mali, AFISMA, initiated in January 2013. The aim of this report is to present a number of long- and short-term perspectives for the recently initiated peace- and state-building process in Mali by focusing on the historical, structural and political causes of the crisis in Mali. Understanding these causes and handling their derived conflict potentials provide a minimum of prerequisites for establishing long-term peace. The report is structured according to four intertwined conflict potentials: Mali's fragile state, the status and background of the Tuareg rebellion, the organized crime and the regional cooperation. .

The regional powerhouse, South Africa, has since the introduction of the nonracial democratic dispensation in 1994, played a central and important role in the formation of both the regional and continental security architecture. With the establishment of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in 1992, one of the central areas of collaboration for the community was envisioned to be security, understood within a broadened human security framework. Security was therefore from the outset one of the cornerstones of integration in the SADC. It was believed that the formation of a security community would help dismantle the enmities that had plagued regional relations during the apartheid era. For some parties, institutionalisation of relations pointed to a means of stabilising and disseminating a particular order. Such institutions depict the power relations prevailing at the time of their establishment, which, however, can change over time (Cox 1981:136). The integration ambition surrounding security correlated with the ambitions of South Africa, the new democratic government in the regional powerhouse. South Africa and its overall foreign policy ambitions desired the pursuit of peace, democracy and stability for economic growth and development in the region and within South Africa itself. Since South Africa's acceptance into the SADC in 1994, the organisation has attempted to set up the required institutional framework to enable co-operation on security, both in terms of narrow military co-operation and regarding designated 2 softer security issues, such as migration and cross-border crime. The military cooperation moved forward in the early years after 1994 with the 1996 decision of creating an Organ for Politics, Defence and Security Co-operation (OPDSC)1 and later the signing of the Mutual Defence Pact (MDP) in 2003, and eventually the creation of the Strategic Indicative Plan for the Organ (SIPO) in 2004, which operationalised the OPDSC (SADC 2004). However, the actual military cooperation, e.g. military exercises, came close to a standstill. Several developments obstructed military co-operation of which the evolving crisis in Zimbabwe and the subsequent withdrawal of donor support to, for instance, the Regional Peacekeeping Training Centre (RPTC) in Harare are but two examples. The RPTC constituted the backbone of the co-operation, but political differences between member states illustrated during the Zimbabwean crisis and following the mandate of the interventions in especially the DR Congo and partly Lesotho in 1998 all contributed to regional tensions.2 Despite the crisis, SADC members, and in particular South Africa, declared that the organisation would be able to form a regional stand-by brigade for the use of the African Union (AU) as part of its wider security architecture. On 17 August 2007, the SADC declared its stand-by-force operational at a large parade in Lusaka, Zambia and at the same occasion signed a memorandum of understanding on the SADCBRIG (SADC 2007). According to the timeline provided by the AU, the brigade should be fully operational by June 2010. Former South African deputy foreign minister Aziz Pahad stated after the launch that this was an important step, but that now there was much to be done securing joint levels and types of training, interoperability, etc. (Pahad 2007). The question that continues to linger is to what extent this brigade is operational and for what purpose. Is this new regional military formation in its present form just a paper tiger, or is it "real progress" and an example of "successful" regional cooperation and integration? This article scrutinises the security co-operation and integration in SADC and asks whether an apparent lack of common values between SADC member states are blocking the security integration process, the creation of a security community, and thereby the establishment of an effective stand-by brigade, the so-called SADCBRIG. The article furthermore attempts to scrutinise the role played by South Africa in establishing the SADCBRIG.