Suchergebnisse

Angesichts der neuen geopolitischen Rahmenbedingungen und strategischen Herausforderungen des 21. Jahrhunderts wird die Haltung der neuen US-Regierung unter Barack Obama gegenüber der NATO untersucht. Dabei geht es sowohl um die Grundorientierungen des neuen Präsidenten, die im Wesentlichen in einer längerfristigen Tradition amerikanischer Außenpolitik stehen und sich in einem instrumentellen Multilateralismus äußern, als auch um Ideen zur Erneuerung der NATO. Da aus amerikanischer Perspektive die transatlantische Allianz gefordert ist, neue Bedrohungen zu erkennen und ihnen mit politischer Entschlossenheit effektiv und kosteneffizient und in Kooperation mit Gleichgesinnten zu begegnen, ist das Ziel eine neue Bedrohungswahrnehmung, eine neue Raison d'Etre, mehr Fähigkeiten und Ressourcen sowie eine verbesserte Kooperation mit der EU, Russland und Staaten außerhalb des NATO-Gebiets. In einem abschließenden Ausblick wird die Legitimierung der bislang vorherrschenden US-Strategie des instrumentellen bzw. selektiven Multilateralismus kritisch beleuchtet und die im Zuge des innen- und fiskalpolitischen Drucks durch die Wirtschaftskrise in den USA zu erwartende transatlantische Lastenverteilungsdebatte angesprochen. (ICH)

For a long time now discussions on European identity have been deeply embedded in political discourses of the old continent. It has often been said that Europe has always been the idea present in the minds of the enlightened Europeans (not to mention rulers of holy empires), and that the present process of integration is only a natural realisation of a spiritual condition called European culture. Leaving alone the question whether it makes sense to speak of European culture in the times when the classical model of education has largely gone out of use, we nevertheless have to have a closer look at the origin of our contemporary situation and ask ourselves the uneasy question whether the Europe we are talking about here, the Europe of the last fifty years, the post-war Europe of market economy and post-colonial nostalgia has been, in fact, European at all. [fragm. tekstu]

Western Australia, like Tasmania, can slip too easily off the map, a periphery on the periphery, its significance occluded by the hegemony of the eastern states of Australia. Yet Western Australia is core to Australia's economy, not least through mining, and through its proximity to Asia. The West is itself connected more closely to region, in both the local and transnational senses. Its tradition of secessionist thinking indicates a kind of exceptionalist culture. This is a difference which begs for explanation. This essay introduces some motifs and themes of this special issue of Thesis Eleven, entitled 'Way Out West: Mapping Western Australia'. It locates the West in some recent historical, geographical and narrative context. It gestures toward the biography of its editors, Jon Stratton and Peter Beilharz, and their locations spread across the west and east of the continent. It calls for further scrutiny of these, and other antipodes.

Western Visions, Western Futures: Perspectives on the West in Canada,
2nd ed., Roger Gibbins and Loleen Berdahl, Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2003, pp. viii, 226Which is real—the past, or interpretations of the past? When it
comes to discussing western Canada's place in the national scheme of things, history hangs heavy; which may be why even works of political
science intone Creighton and Careless, Lower and W.L. Morton. The authors
of the book under review, Roger Gibbins, CEO and president of the Canada
West Foundation and Loleen Berdahl, its Director of Research, cite at one
point Quebec's motto je me souviens, but their own study,
despite its title, looks back as much as it does ahead.