*** ROBIN ALLERS, CARLO MASALA, ROLF TAMNES (Eds.): Common or Divided Security? German and Norwegian Perspectives on Euro-Atlantic Security. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, P. O. Box 350, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - Email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). 2014, 322 pp, €56.95. ISBN 978-3-631-64627-4.
This book describes the Euro-Atlantic security challenges some twenty-five years after the end of the Cold War. In a geopolitical context marked by huge upheavals, the European Union is facing periods of growing instability at its borders and a large-scale financial and economic crisis. It is against this sensitive backdrop that the European Union's member states and their American allies have to re-think common security questions.
At the end of the1990s, the European increasingly positioned itself on international issues. Its security and defence ambitions were boosted with the launch in 1999 of the European Security and Defence Policy, and then the Common Security and Defence Policy a decade later. While Washington initially welcomed these European efforts and ambitions, the dangers were rapidly highlighted - duplication of structures and the risk of separation in the Alliance, etc. The authors of this book, professors, researchers or ministerial advisers, look at developments since the end of the Cold War. The first phase of post-Cold War transformation was characterised by wars and regional instability. The second phase basically amounts to threats and asymetrical international risks and started with terrorism in the aftermath of the attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001. New threats, such as cybercrime, have since developed. Then tensions and issues such as the US intervention in Iraq in 2003 gave rise to transatlantic crises and divided the European camp.
This book, written in a period in which the contours of a third phase of Euro-Atlantic security and defence phase are emerging, examines the current transformations in international relations with the arrival of emerging powers such as China, India and Russia. The annexation of Crimea by the Russians in March 2014 stands out as a reminder that Vladimir Putin will oppose any new Western enlargement and will challenge both NATO and the European Union in various domains. Euro-transatlantic cooperation on security issues has always been complex, influenced by differing interests and perceptions. The book interprets important security issues and the importance of both the EU and NATO as peace and security-keeping tools. Ineffectiveness of these tools would risk leading to fragmentation, to a return of the spectre of divided security in an ever more sensitive context. Both the European Union and NATO have the potential to adapt and make the necessary reforms. Some options for the future development of Euro-Atlantic security are discussed in the final chapter. On the one hand, there is a trend towards greater flexibility in cooperation on security and defence issues, giving rise to bilateral and minilateral initiatives. On the other hand, this pragmatic trend is not of a type that would challenge the multilateral framework, which is slow to adjust, whose main pillars at NATO and the European Union's common security and defence policy.
Most studies of the Euro-Atlantic security system basically focus on relations between the United Kingdom, France and Germany and the United States, but this book highlights the key challenges for Western security from the viewpoint of two European allies in particular - Germany, a European and international power, and Norway, often seen as a lesser power or these days as a medium-sized power in the light of its wealth and more important position in NATO. These two Northern European countries have both differences and similarities in their approaches and perception of threats and major security challenges. The similarities are explained by their attachment to the United States, the particular relations they have with Russia and by their responsibility when it comes to the security and stability of Northern Europe.
Stéphanie Heng
*** KLAUS BACHMANN, IGOR LYUBASHENKO (Eds.): The Maidan Uprising, Separatism and Foreign Intervention. Ukraine's complex transition. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, Postfach 350, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - Email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Studies in Political Transition", No. 4. 2014, 523 pp, €64.95. ISBN 978-3-631-65456-9.
For the common mortal in Europe, even journalists, the events in Ukraine in recent months remain surrounded in a thick cloud or even a heavy fog of mystery. And rightly so, if one goes by the authors of this book. They say that this part of Europe, along with the conflicts that it generates, suffers from elements of understanding that focus on ideologically biased information and the use of historical stereotypes, all cleverly fed by intersecting propaganda. They say that German intelligentsia and media, for example, have by and large succumbed to Moscow's propaganda that Ukraine was suffering from recurrent fascist impulses and Crimea had “always belonged to Russia.” They say that the propaganda implemented by Kiev found it far more difficult to take root in people's minds. Why? Political scientists Klaus Bachmann and Igor Lyubashenko (University of Social Sciences and Humanities of Warsaw) explain that “the crisis in Ukraine confronted policy advisers, media workers, intellectuals and academics in Western Europe with a huge asymmetry between a swiftly available and overwhelmingly broad knowledge about Russia and a scarce, scattered knowledge about Ukraine.”
Whence the desire of the authors brought together in this book to provide readers with solid material that they can use to forge a more secure and better-supported opinion. Although it is not certain that analysts who mainly hail from Poland are the best placed to give the most reliable data about Russia and therefore Ukraine, one has to note that the getting on for twenty contributions shed very useful light on this complex subject. They are divided into four sections, the first looking at the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the independence of Ukraine in 1991. They devote much attention to the shortcomings visible in Ukraine in the light of the unfolding of the Orange Revolution, the hyper-presidentialism, the role played by the oligarchs, the absence of democratic roots in the population and, finally, the dynamics operating during the Maidan events. In the second section, the authors take a deeper look at the special nature of Ukrainian political life, which they then compare with the “Russian factor” before finally putting forward explanations of some of the ways the West has reacted to the crisis, with Prof. Spasimir Domaradzki (Lazarski University in Warsaw) weighing up the allegations that the European Union and NATO failed to take enough account of Russia's interests.
(MT)
*** VIKTOR STEPANENKO, YAROSLAV PYLYNSKYI (Eds.): Ukraine after the Euromaidan. Challenges and Hopes. Peter Lang (see above). "Interdisciplinary Studies on Central and Eastern Europe" series, No. 13. 2015, 271 pp, €71.60. ISBN 978-3-0343-1626-2.
Who better than Ukrainian scientists to talk about Ukraine in these troubled times? Very few indeed, when even those who express themselves in this book - after participating in a multidisciplinary research project interspersed with a seminar in June last year - do not hide their pro-European Ukrainian (and therefore not very Russian-friendly) side. In the introductory chapter, the book's editors stress how the popular uprising centred on Maidan Square was but a further stage in the continual onward march, for centuries now, of Ukrainians in the direction of the part of Europe that has become the European Union, and through the EU towards democracy. They say the majority of Ukrainians accepted the fall in living standards in Yanukovich's time, counting on the signing of an Association Agreement with the European Union to force the Kiev authorities to reform the state, taking account of EU standards. A promise that President Yanokovich only dangled in order to gain advantages from Russia, for which Ukraine is an open wound that generates emotional or irrational reactions. In this way, all the kindling was gathered for the explosion and its consequences. The twenty-five experts writing in this book update and analyse the various reasons that led to the explosion and then the partition of the country, along the separatist lines backed by Moscow, in the aim above all of highlighting the complex social and political transformation that is going on in the country. The book is divided into four sections. The first looks at the political and social foundations of the democratic revolution that is ongoing in Ukraine, with authors explaining that the dividing line among Ukrainians has far more to do with opposing values than geography, with the one side being post-Soviet, paternalistic and authoritarian, and the other side liberal, democratic and resolutely pro-Western. In the second section, it is the geopolitical background that is considered in the light of the possible survival of the international relations system set up in the wake of the Cold War. Other authors then look at the reasons why the reforms required since independence have collapsed. In the fourth section, the regional and ethno-cultural dimensions of the transformations are examined, with the idea of a 'divided nation' being seen as an unfounded cliché. Viktor Stepanenko and Yaroslav Pylynskyi even go as far as to state that Russian Crimea has no more substance that a Russian Finland or a Russian Baltic, and is as absurd as a British India or a French Africa. The final section of the book looks at the current process of transformation from the viewpoint of language, the media and culture.
(MT)
*** Rivista di studi politici internazionali. Edizioni Studium (25 via Crescenzio, I-00193 Rome. Tel: (39-06) 6865846 - Fax: 6875456 - Email: amministrazione@edizionistudium.it - Internet: http://www.edizionistudium.it ). October-December 2014, No. 324, 160 pp, €19. Subscription: €70 (Italy), €90 (elsewhere).
This issue of this prestigious Italian review takes a lengthy look at the European Union against the background of Russia's aims in the context of the Ukrainian crisis. The EU is advised to update its Security Strategy, with Alexey Gromyko regretting that the Ukrainian crisis is paving the way for a Euro-Atlantic consolidation. Russia's foreign aims are also discussed, as are Poland's relations with Ukraine.
(MT)
*** JAN-PETER WIEPERT: Rechtsschutz gegen Individualsanktionen der Vereinten Nationen und der Europäischen Union. Peter Lang (see above). "Europäische Hochschulschriften - Rechtswissenschaft" series. 2014, 219 pp, €54.95. ISBN 978-3-631-65415-6.
This research into to legal protection against individual sanctions issued by the United Nations and the European Union has become more topical in recent decades as the international sanctions system has increasingly moved in the direction of individual sanctions against specific individuals. In the framework of a legal system worthy of the name, however, the procedures taken against the individuals in question, along with the control mechanisms, need to meet very clear requirements and this is the question discussed by the author in this book in the light of the defence options available at international, European and national level for accused individuals. The author concludes that the protection measures against EU individual sanctions are broadly sufficient and appropriate, but this is not the case for sanctions issued by the UN. In order to fill the shortcomings in the UN system, Jan-Peter Wiepert suggests setting up an independent control body at the level of the UN to which accused individuals would be able to appeal.
(GLe)
*** Südosteuropa Mitteilungen. Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft (49 Widenmayerstrasse, D-80538 Munich. Tel: (49-89) 212154-0 - Fax: 2289469 - Email: info@sogde.org - Internet: http://www.sodge.org ). 2014, 120 pp, €12. Subscription €60.
In this issue of the Südosteuropa review, Saso Ordanoski casts a highly critical eye over the situation and political class in Macedonia in an article on the Macedonian elections of April 2014. Thomas Brey defends a comparable position vis-à-vis the situation after the May 2014 elections in Serbia, whose political system, he says, has a number of shortcomings when it comes to democracy and where the political class is lacking in economic skills. Heinz-Jürgen Axt devotes his analysis to far-right parties in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, attempting to find elements to explain the success of some of them using criteria such as the general economic situation, poverty and exclusion, how people in the countries in question relate to foreigners, multiculturalism, intolerance and the like. Despite the use of sometimes rather debatable concepts, this article takes an original and exhaustive approach to the question. Ludwig Schulz analyses the AKP's victory in provincial and regional elections in Turkey in 2014 and Andreas Ernst provides an analysis of Max Frisch's Reisefeuilleton of his travels across Central Europe and the Balkans in 1933. The analyst seems to have a higher opinion of Max Frisch's writing than of the information he provided about the countries he visited.
(GLe)