International Security - Science topic

Yes my book Pilitics of War and Peace has many timeless questions not raised recently but relevant

The most current is something related to this and future pandemics within the international security.

After American economic sanctioned on Iran, there is huge opportunity for china to sympathize Iran. No doubt, Iran- China relation will be more strengthen after American action. Israel, Saudi Arab and America have thrown Iran into China's court and China will never miss this golden chance to cash.

Also, if you are still interested, take a look at the work being done by Dr. Carl Jensen at the Citadel and his Intelligence Department.

Great question, as pointed out by the earlier respondents there is a difference and much has to do with the initial intent and ultimate freedom of those trafficked.

Artur, I suppose you know what terrorism is - act of violence. And counter-terrorism is a fight against it, realized by institutions, countries, coalitions, etc.

But to the original question - I don´t think so, as members of NATO fight against terrorist only "on the eye", regardless it seems.

Dear Anurag Gangal,

It is a pity I have seen your question just now. In the "Handbook of India's International Relations" edited by David Scott (Routledge 2011) it is underscored that in 2002 the Bharatiya Janata Party took into consideration a foreign policy based on three concentric circles - immediate region, extended neighborhood and global issues - (p. xix). Under the Modi administration, India is targeting more and more the third circle, as the concept of India as a global power is not any more an illusion.

Best wishes,

Monica

There are several factors that should be considered. The most important of them are:

1- Iran is the country leading the Shia community within the Muslim community and Saudi Arabia is the country leading the Sunni community within the same community. These two main branches of the Islam have a strong religious confrontation a very long time ago, and the confrontation still exists today.

2- As the leader of these two different Muslim communities, Iran and Saudi Arabia wishes to be the dominant forces in the Middle East, and this is the reason for the strong confrontation between these two countries.

3- Saudi Arabia is one of the most relevant allied of the USA in the Middle East, and Iran is the strongest enemy of the USA in the same region.

4- The position of both countries against Israel is different.  Iran has a strong opposition to the existence of Israel in the region, while Saudi Arabia has a more tolerant position against the existence of this country.

The only way that these two countries could contribute to the stability in the Middle East is if both countries find a solution to their differences and stop supporting other countries with the same position. Taking into account the current situation in the region this is not going to happen any time soon.

Dear Anisa,

The answer to your question probably depends on your reseach perspective.  In principle you could look at your question from three different perspectives by asking the following questions:

(1) To what extent is the regional and cross-regional distribution of power influencing a nation's naval defense posture and maritime security approach?

(2) If and to what extent are regional institutions influencing a nation's naval defense posture and maritime security approach?

(3) What is the threat perception of national decision-makers with regard to naval and maritime security challenges and to what extent do threat perceptions influence their choice of policy options?

In answering these questions, you could say that neo-realism might the theory of choice for the first question; neo-liberalism and institutionalism will help you answer the second question; and constructivist theory would be most useful to answer the third question. In sum, I would invite you to consider a combination of these three bodies of literature, because in the end you might need all of them to explain what you are interested in.

In addition, you might also turn to two additional schools of thought: Comparative politics might be most useful if you are interested in why policy outcomes in one region differ from other regions thereby paying attention, for example, to differences in political systems of the nations involved in the respective maritime or naval challenge. Furthermore, scholars dealing with orgnaizational theory and bureaucratic politics might be useful to explain why one group of stakeholders is more important (or more successful) in driving certain policy issues than others. This body of literature looks, inter alia, at the division of power within and between different branches of governments and thus helps explain the "inner mechanics" of governmental decision-making.

Good luck!

Go to my RG publications, and you ill find articles related to NGOs /civil society in Pakistan    

This article may be useful:

Bier, V. and Hausken, K. (2011), “Endogenizing the Sticks and Carrots: Modeling Possible Perverse Effects of Counterterrorism Measures,” Annals of Operations Research 186, 1, 39-59.

write letter to USA embassy in Georgia, also, you can find many sources at Georgian university libraries. 

Here, we should take in our consideration that is the UK will take this decision since it felt there are a lot of requirements can not fulfil them, some of these requirements defence policy, security agenda and the most crucial is the economy situation, for instance, it will not accept to associate its economy with weary Greece economy. So in my simple opinion, I think the UK will not stay more in the EU and the poll is just a propaganda. 

I have forwarded a link to something I wrote in 2011 on the global commons.  http://www.iai.it/en/pubblicazioni/managing-change  Hope you find it useful.

I would not separate political cost and benefit from economic, these 2 are interrelated. The political cost (say, losing elections in a democracy or having a coup in an authoritarian state) comes hand-in-hand with economic cost - to the ruling elites, but also to the nation at large. Generally speaking, political cost is about losing power or weakening your power position, and political benefit is about increasing or solidifying power.  However, wrong political decisions typically result in large economic costs for the country: cf. Ukraine's decision to turn its back on Russia.

http://bfy.tw/5nd9 ?

My recollection (from the New York Times coverage) was that the US played a critical role but not a leading role.  The US provided on the ground and airborne intelligence to facilitate bombing by NATO.  Additionally, I recall that France and Great Britain quickly exhausted their bombs and had to borrow from US stockpiles.

 What is your original study ?

The point is English School is ecletic and does not offer an alternative to this dilema. The consequence is that concepts which are incompatible with each other can not be operated in terms of strategies of empirical investigation. This is exactly what ecletism means: everything, even incompatible concepts, become part of the same problem or issue or theory.

Build counter-terrorism outfits with latest intelligence,and cyber-security capabilities. If required take support  from developed military or intelligence agencies. Awareness of people at large is another strategy. Local press and religious leaders can greatly contribute. Legislate , it not done already, on counter- transfer of money both inflow and outflow. Strengthen the capacities of the state reserve and other banks. Keep a special watch on suspected NGOs. Keep a tag also on the donation money. 

You really should read Waltz's Theory of International Politics.  If I recall properly, Waltz talks about how major power war is the most effective agent in recalibrating the system, adding or subtracting the number of major powers.  If you are interested in how the system of sovereign states in an anarchic realm was formed, my favorite is Ruggie (1993) IO.

First option would be http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/ 

They have quite a lot of available news on various aspects and a huge archive, with the mention that the news are targeted for exogenous audiences, thus sometimes different than what they have for domestic public.

If you are working at some article you can always find some co-author via Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. http://casseng.cssn.cn

They have some resources at http://english.cssn.cn. 

I used both for a manuscript on Romania, I'm not sure if they have the same amount of data on Egypt. But might be a bridgehead. Good luck!

demilitarization refers to security regimes and peacekeeping operations. in the first case it is an objective more than a tool where in the second case it is a tool more than objection, although in both cases it is a tool and objective as well, but the priorities are different.

i suggest you begining with peacekeeping operations and the DPKO web might be a good begining.

good luck

There are number of sources of data offlate , http://www.netresec.com/?page=PcapFiles

It depends ofcourse how the attribution is done whether it is state sponsored. For example , search the pcap data from above locations to find where and whom the public ip addresses belong to.

Dear Maria:

According to the Institute of Environmental Law, United Nations Environment Programme, McGill University, the construction of Environmental peace integrates the management of natural resources in conflict prevention, mitigation, resolution and recovery to build resilience in communities affected by conflict. This is because the majority of armed conflicts occur in developing countries, where people depend substantially on natural resources for subsistence agriculture and livelihoods.

Natural resources are often intertwined with the narrative of conflict, with complaints about natural resources and their revenues that contribute to the emergence of conflicts, revenues from natural resources to fund conflict and combatants targeting natural resources and the environment. And the peace after conflicts related to the resources is fragile: countries with conflicts over the last resources are more likely to relapse, and to do it twice as fast.

Natural resources are one of the most important resources of a country to peace building. Land, forests, minerals, oil, water and other resources are the basis for the reconstruction of livelihoods and national economies.

My reading suggestions are: Harari, Nicole and Roseman, Jesse, Environmental Peacebuilding Theory and Practice: a case study of the Good Water Neighbors project and in depth analysis of the Wadi Fukin / Tzur Hadassah communities. (Amman, Bethlehem and Tel Aviv, 2008  http://foeme.org/uploads/publications_publ93_1.pdf )

Hope this helps.

Andréa

Obs.: 

The diagram below shows a conceptual view of the elements of environmental peacebuilding.

Not a specialist on nuclear armament and missile technology but I have some clue on the competing hegemonic policies of present powers. What Russia, China, Iran and North Korea do is not happening in a void and it is not just dependent on their attitude.  Since the supposed end of the Cold War there are some countries, the United States for example, that could not live without creating a different "global threat" every three or four years, to keep their war-drugged economy ongoing and justify an unbelievable amount of public money spending on military and "un-" security policies. Obviously,  other countries rightly see that level of spending as an announce of what they can perceive (and in fact is) as a future balance of power "according to the US". More aggressive tones, more sanctions, more attempts to "isolate" the "enemy" and more likely a worrying (and warring) answer and temptation to form even unlikely coalitions. All specialists of the Cold War will tell you that the tactics has been used by the hawks inside Moscow and Washington leadership whenever some window of peaceful relationship was in sight. 

Jorge Morales Pedraza. I think we are almost saying the same thing. I accept fact that Iran has breached some of the safeguard of NPT, but my point is as far as the report of IAEA is concern there is no substantial evidence that Iran possess the capacity or is willing to create a bomb. All the allegation so far is based on suspicion.

he Israeli assumption is that once it attacks Iran the US will back it. I am not sure that this working assumption is detached from reality and even it is, there is always a good chance for misperceptions of the Israeli leadership regarding this assumption. On the other hand I think that the Israeli leadership still prefers increasing the sanctions in order to reach a better deal with Iran.

Hi Muhammad,

Negotiation with terrorist groups has both cultural and political impacts.

For instance Hessam Vaez-Zadeh in an article evaluated European approaches towards conflict settlement with terrorist groups. He indicated violence, negotiation, and peace accordingly.

However, in the Middle East, terrorism is indicated with a "total war". 

As part of a project for The Center for International Scientific Studies and Collaboration I am evaluating the "Political culture of finding resolution with terrorist acts: A comparative study of EU and ME".

Hence, I can say that Pakistani government negotiation with terrorists in Pakistan, without understanding its cultural and political paradigm, is useless.

I'm not entirely sure that the insecurity of the eastern and southern European members of the alliance is fully appreciated.  In conversations I've had with eastern Europeans (mostly from Poland and the Baltics) they are profoundly disappointed with the Alliance for the simple reason that the 'West' doesn't take their concerns about Russia seriously enough.  The annexation of Crimea has probably changed that, but there is an unbridgeable divid:  they want the permanent stationing of NATO (read US) troops on their territory and many in the alliance are firmly against doing so (notably Germany).

This is a really important topic. In Central America, for example, Nicaragua is the only country with a rate of crime and violence lower than its neighbors. While a community oriented police and large percentage of women in the security forces have been credited for the difference, the key factor for greater security in Nicaragua is that it spends a considerable amount of its GDP in private security. There are approximately 100,000 people engaged in private security in a country of only 6 million people and 140 companies providing services to citizens and private sector. I would suggest that you look more into this topic.

And by the way, this is a moot point, but do you really believe that if the world stopped buying Middle Eastern oil, the rivalries between all the countries there would suddenly disappear? In fact, the decay of oil-based economies as oil exports slumped would be more likely to increase instability than decrease it. Sure, they'd have less money to buy weapons (a key impact of oil exports so far), but to see what happens when poor states harbor deeply ingrained hostility towards one another, one only has to look towards Africa... Or is that more desirable because we could then just ignore the Middle East the same way we ignore Africans killing each other?

It also provides a sense of legitimacy to the operations otherwise the West is accused of Imperialism. They still get hit with this anyway, but to a much lesser extent if boots aren't on the ground.

Hello,

It seems to me that already the first US military intervention against the Barbary pirates lacked Congressional approval but only had Jefferson's declaration of war. The latest military intervention in Libya seemed to lack full Congress support as described in below article.

Best,

Alex Tomic

Iran's moves in the region should be viewed in context with its rivalry with the KSA. when the Saudis and Pakistani Salafis arm Extremist groups like the Taliban and other Sunni Groups in countries like Iraq, Syria, Tajikistan...... this encourages Iran to do the same, as with Hezbollah and other Shi'ite groups in Iraq. in regards with destroying Israel, that was a miss-interpretation of what Ahmadinejad meant(i don't like the guy either) but anyways, Mike Wallace censored the part that AHJD explained what he meant, its available on you-tube, and this Pro-War act by Wallace recieved a Grammy!

i want to mention again that i think what shouldn't be ignored is Westerners Double standards when coming to the ME. the U.S is going around the world talking of Democracy, whilst its number one allies in the Region are the best examples of Undemocratic and Totalitarian Regimes A.K.A Bahrain, KSA, Kuwait, Qatar and.....the Minor Sunni group are leading the Major Shi'ite group and killing them everyday, but we dont see a media hokum like the one on Syria

anyways, its a pleasure to read your responses here:)