*** GAËLLE PELLON, MICHEL LIEGEOIS (Editors): Les organisations régionales européennes et la gestion des conflits. Vers une régionalisation de la sécurité ? Presses Interuniversitaires européennes / Peter Lang (1 av. Maurice, B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - fax: 3761727 - Email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Géopolitique et résolution des conflits" series, No.9. 2010, 353 pp. ISBN 978-90-5201-663-4.
This book is the result of a collective effort by fourteen researchers in international relations, philosophy and law, most of whom have academic links with the Catholic University of Leuven. The book explores the international political order and its ability to tackle conflict at the beginning of this new millennium in an environment that is witnessing the continuing rise in strength of regional organisations in the field of conflict within Greater Europe. The bipolar world that prevailed from the beginning of the Cold War until recently has now given way to a world that is overtly more complex. Therefore, although the US is the only obvious superpower, it is in danger of losing its way by confusing leadership with domination. As Professor de Wilde points out in his preface, the US had to admit that it, “needed major regional powers in order to make action undertaken on behalf of the international community, effective and legitimate”. This is the reason why, “we have… entered into a uni-multipolar or inter-polar world”, where international stability is now predicated by interaction between the world's superpower and major regional powers such as Russia, China, India, Brazil, Japan and the, “atypical actor represented by the European Union”, which de Wilde explains has been dominated by France, the United Kingdom and Germany. In the past, the United Nations was the only organ authorised to take part in peace operations but now has to cooperate with other organisations such as NATO, the Community of Independent States and the European Union which, with 12 military and civil missions operating in 2009, does not cease, as explained by Gaëlle Pellon in his introduction, to confirm, “its status of international conflict manager”. Professor Michel Liégeois also explains that in 2009 the European Union had, “ almost forty out of forty-six ongoing peace operations that included some sort of inter-institutional partnership”, with several different organisations attempting to keep themselves on the playing field …
The growing involvement of European regional organisations in the field of peacekeeping prompted the authors of this book to re-examine the scope and limitations of their action in conflict management, in an attempt to outline the new role that these organisations intended to play. Fifteen major bodies are therefore “sounded out” in this book - the Union, NATO, OSCE, Community of Independent States - and those often left out from this category, such as the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Democracy and Development, Black Sea Economic Cooperation and even the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property. The geographical framework covered was deliberately “restricted” to Greater Europe, which extends from Dublin to Tashkent and the countries in the Caucasus, a zone in 2009 that recorded no less than 66 conflicts, most of which were described as “low intensity”.
The book is divided into three parts. The first focuses on the analysis of conflict prevention instruments. In addition to the direct conflict prevention instruments (early warning systems), international organisations also have a range of instruments that can be used upstream in a structured way and which include cooperation or association agreements, in addition to partnership and economic agreements. The three contributions in this section analyse the use of such instruments. Professor Ait-Chalaal therefore provides a very critical assessment of the impact of co-operation programmes with states in the Mediterranean rim. In this connection, he considers that the EU 27 approach has advocated in the European Neighbourhood Policy and the Union for the Mediterranean, “appear harmful to other dynamics, such as a real structured dialogue with regional organisations such as the League of Arab States”. The researcher, George Dura, similarly examines the ambiguity and too limited impact of the Eastern Neighbourhood Policy, whilst his colleague Nissé Nzereka Mughendi seeks to identify the extent of European integration's impact on promoting peace. He is disappointed to point out that democracy within the European Union remains, “ disarmed by when attempting to tackle intra-state wars or conflicts over identity-related questions” (but who has ever claimed otherwise?), whilst also underlining that what succeeds in Europe does not necessarily succeed elsewhere. This assertion is certainly appropriate when related to the observation made on Iraq by Professor Tanguy de Wilde d'Estmael, who claims that it is conceited to seek to establish by force, “a democracy on a socio-cultural terrain, which initially does not appear ready for one”. It is equally true that in West Germany and Japan after 1945 it had been possible to introduce democracy due to the scale of the disaster and the atrocities committed by the defeated regimes.
In the second part of the book, the authors examine how the different organisations seek to prevent conflict, whether this is in Transnistria, the former Soviet Union or in the framework of the expanded Black Sea area and when the actors involved are either Russia, the Community of Independent States, the Union or NATO. The final part of the book explores evaluations made of the role played by regional organisations in preventing conflicts continually breaking out and examines the deep-rooted causes of such conflicts. Professor Françoise Massart-Piérard underlines the role played by culture in conflict management, whilst other contributions look at the importance of aid programmes involving human rights, the rule of law and elections, as well as the too often ignored issues of justice and remembrance. Michel Theys
*** SABINE BIENK-KOOLMAN: Die Befugnis des Sicherheitsrates der Vereinten Nationen zur Einsetzung von ad hoc-Strafgerichtshöfen. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, Postfach 350, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - fax: 3761727 - Email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Schriften zum Staats- und Völkerrecht" series, No. 136. 2009, 480 pp, €76.40. ISBN 978-3-631-59518-3.
The creation of the International Criminal Court has on many occasions been criticised by people who contest this institution's legality, particularly within the context of the trials against leaders of the former Yugoslavia. In addition to the setting up of this Court, there is also the question of the legality of the United Nations Charter and, obviously, the powers that this exerts. This book focuses on the underlying legal questions relating to the creation of the International Criminal Court for the Former Yugoslavia and analyses and explains these questions in seven different chapters. The first chapter is the only one that does not tackle legal questions but rather, history and political science. The author of this article attempts to provide different key elements required to understand why this organ was set up. The rest of the book provides a very detailed legal analysis and begins with the Court's Statutes. Similar analyses follow of Article 39 and 41 of the United Nations Charter, with the latter focusing on the resources the UN has for pursuing its mission. The book also contains the author's conclusions. (JD)
*** NICOLE GNESOTTO: L'Europe a-t-elle un avenir stratégique ? Armand Colin (21 rue de Montparnasse, F-75283 Paris cedex 06. Fax: (33-1) 40464993 - e-mail: info@armand-colin.fr - Internet: http://www.armand-colin.com ). "Eléments de réponse" series. 2011, 224 pp, €18.50. ISBN 978-2-200-24961-8.
In this 200-page book, which is accessible to specialists and non-specialists alike, Nicole Gnesotto provides more than the “elements of response” (this is the title of the series) to a crucial question that Europe must answer. As senior lecturer on the European Union at the Conservatoire national des Arts et Métiers (CNAM), Nicole Gnesotto is more widely known to our readers for being the first director of the European Union's Institute of Security Studies 2001-2007. Whilst in this post, he was in the best place to observe the Union's rising strategic importance in a period where civil and military operations were increasing at a rapid pace and when the European Defence Agency and the other politico-military structures we now know today were being set up. It was before the tide began to ebb, the conjugated pressure of nationalist inward looking tendencies, the return of France into the integrated structures of NATO and the European institutions' growing role, which denied the Union its real leadership because in order to have a strategic future, what is needed first of all is being able to think of one.
Nicole Gnesotto points out that, “the temptation to withdraw into oneself, the myth of decline and the surrender of any collective ambition are the prevailing sentiments dominating current European debates”. Nevertheless, he also indicates that all the ingredients are in place in the context of globalisation to feed into and consolidate certainties that are intrinsically opposed to the pessimistic tableaux painted above: the relative weakness of nation states, the extraordinary political modernity of the European project, the pertinence of Europe as a pole of major influence in a globalised world. We could also add to this equation, the appropriateness of European funding to military capability (at the time when national budgets are melting like snow in the sun and that they already damage and fragment interoperability) and the necessity of an industrial and technological foundation for a genuinely European defence system in order to compete with the increasing technological power of emerging countries (particularly the BRIC countries).
In this book, Nicole Gnesotto also illustrates the novel character of the 2003 Security strategy, the first of its kind to propose the concept of integrated security and which has now been taken up by NATO. This includes the innovations included in the Lisbon Treaty but which unfortunately still require implementation. How can we explain to citizens that although ten years were devoted to adopting a treaty, it is still ultimately not being applied? What is this, “permanent impotence of the Union” caused by? The answer to these two questions is quite simple. The Union suffers from two structural handicaps: the cult of national sovereignty and unanimity. As Nicole Gnesotto explains, “the shrinkage of real power exerted by the states results in a parallel state of tension when it comes to the legal principle of their absolute sovereignty”.
Nonetheless, “in this time of globalisation, the European power will be… global or it will no longer be”. Europeans have no other choice but to submit to the specific interests of their respective states and which the author calls, “the national European interest… in the security and defence field, wisdom demands a twofold strategy. In the negative environment currently prevailing in Europe, it is vital to keep prospects for deepening European defence open and alive. Although globalisation makes military capability more relative, it does not in any way repudiate its necessity”, explains Nicole Gnesotto. The author subsequently calls for an autonomous military high command to be set up to command large-scale operations and to increase the budget for the European Defence Agency. This does not appear something that will be immediately accepted and yet, “all that would be needed would be a little political will and a lot of common sense for hoisting the Union up to its appropriate level and to help adapt it to model, together with its other major partners, the developments going on in the world rather than to simply being subjected to them”.
*** ALVARO DE VASCONCELOS (Editors): The Arab democratic wave. How the EU can seize the moment. European Union Institute for Security Studies (43 av. du Président Wilson, F-75775 Paris cedex 16. Tel: (33-1) 56891930 - fax: 56891931 - Internet: http://www.iss.europa.eu ). 2011, 68 pp.
In this ninth report published last March, the European Union's Institute of Security Studies requested a contribution from a group of experts (Amr Elshobaki, George Joffé, Sami Kamil, Erwan Lannon, Azzam Mahjoub, Luis Martinez, Mohammed Al-Masri, Gema Martin Muñoz, Mouin Rabbani, Abdallah Saaf and Paul Salem). These individuals have an intimate knowledge of North African and Middle Eastern society, which is currently undergoing a protest movement of an unprecedented scale. Their individual contributions result in an insight that proves useful to the cartography for charting and differentiating these different countries. The report is headed by Alvaro de Vasconcelos, who also produces number of recommendations to the Union: - prioritise the socio-economic situation and organise a donors' conference for Tunisia and Egypt; - create a new generation of association agreements; - launch a new partnership for creating a Euro-Mediterranean community of democratic states; - provide technical assistance for the consolidation of the democratic process (political parties, unions, media, reform of the security sector); - accept the role of political Islam in the democratic process and apply sanctions every time a regime violates human rights (on the model used for Belarus).
*** SABINE VON SCHORLEMER: Kindersoldaten und bewaffneter Konflikt. Peter Lang (see address attached). "Dresdner Schriften zu Recht und Politik der Vereinten Nationen / Dresden Papers on Law and Policy of the United Nations" series, No.9. 2009, 426 pp, €55.90. ISBN 978-3-631-58798-0.
Since the 1990s, a significant part of international law has been focusing on children's rights. Particularly in areas of conflict, there is no doubt that this is far from being respected. The use of children in armed conflict remains widespread and is the source of other kinds of abuse committed against children, particularly sexual abuse. A major difficulty results from the legal system, which is often grossly underrepresented in countries where the abuse takes place. In addition to children's rights, this book also tackles the related international agreements, mainly the Geneva Convention and which is why the United Nations is mentioned in almost every chapter of this book. The United Nations consists of seven distinct parts. The first section analysed is the body of the international rules in the domain of humanitarian public law, together with the Geneva Convention and the relative protocols, such as the protection of victims in conflicts. The author then tackles the different international legal provisions on the protection of child soldiers but does not include any reference to the provisions granted by the United Nations and which are covered in a specific chapter exclusively covering this issue. This chapter examines the history of protecting child soldiers up until the 1990s and particularly focuses on Article 38. A significant section of the book analyses implementation of international law, as well as European action in this field. The author concludes with a raft of suggestions for introducing reforms and outlines a number of perspectives. (JD)