Turning Foe to Friend? US Objectives in Including Russia in Post-Cold War Euro-Atlantic Security Co-operation

This article scrutinises four moments in the post-Cold War era where the United States engaged to include Russia in Euro-Atlantic security forums: the establishment of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council; Partnership for Peace; Permanent Joint Council; and the NATO-Russia Council. The overall puzzle is: why did consecutive US administrations aim to formalise co-operation between NATO and Russia? Current tensions highlight the issue's significance, yet in the literature, there is no study looking specifically at these episodes of US efforts to integrate Moscow. Building on a broad set of primary sources, this article determines what we can now know of US objectives concerning the role of Russia in Euro-Atlantic co-operation. It concludes that US objectives moved from seeking new and stable relations between former adversaries, to facilitating US objectives in the Euro-Atlantic context with NATO enlargement, to expressing more global interests in confronting emerging crises and challenges, amongst others in the war on terror. Co-operation was limited to where interests were overlapping. Russia would not be placed in a position to influence NATO as an alliance. US officials remained hopeful that co-operation with Russia was possible, and would benefit all. At the same time, decisions would serve US interests should relations sour.     

The Price for Austria's Security: Part I — Joseph II,the Russian Alliance,and the Ottoman War, 1787–1789

This article examines Lyndon Johnson's handling of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) nuclear-sharing issue and specifically plans for a NATO Multilateral Force during the first three years of his presidency. The article argues that although Johnson did not confront the nuclear sharing/Multilateral Force issue directly for the first year of his presidency, he subsequently made sensible policy decisions in the face of a number of challenges. These included pressure for a speedy resolution of the nuclear-sharing issue from within his own State Department and from the government of the Federal Republic of Germany on the one side, and opposition to the Multilateral Force from the British and French governments on the other. The nuclear-sharing issue is discussed in the context of challenges to NATO, most notably French President Charles de Gaulle's rejection of US leadership and his withdrawal of French forces from NATO's integrated military structure in 1966 and broader debates about nuclear consultation within the alliance. The article concludes that by using the advisory process well and through some deft diplomacy, particularly refusing to demand a quick resolution to the nuclear-sharing problem, the Johnson administration had effectively resolved the nuclear-sharing issue by late 1966.     

Nixon's Coup: Establishing the NATO Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society, 1969–70

In early 1969 the new US President, Richard Nixon, suggested the expansion of allied political consultation, as well as the setting up of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) committee which would deal with environmental problems. The Americans stressed that their proposal did not involve merely the technical aspects of environmental protection, but also the need for modern governance to evolve in order to safeguard the ‘quality of life’, a prime aspect affecting the legitimisation of the political and social systems. The US proposal was not received enthusiastically by the allies, who had little desire for radical changes, and did not regard this as a proper subject for the alliance; some even feared that a NATO role in environmental questions might mask a US disengagement from European security, especially during an era of détente. However, after making sure that the new committee would be fully under the control of the Council (in accordance with NATO's inter-governmental character), the allies finally agreed to its creation. The NATO discussions on the Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society (CCMS) point to the emergence of a new, more complex international agenda, and raise interesting questions regarding transatlantic relations during an era of wider transitions.     

INTIMATE (Integration of Ice-core,Marine and Terrestrial Records) 20 Years on: Retrospect and Prospect

The INTIMATE (Integration of ice-core, marine and terrestrial records) project, the successor to the North Atlantic Seaboard Programme of International Geological Correlation Programme (IGCP-253) ‘Termination of the Pleistocene’, began in 1995 with the aim of integrating proxy climate records from around the North Atlantic during the Last Termination (18–8?ka BP). The INTIMATE remit has since expanded geographically to include the entire Atlantic basin and Australasia, while an extended temporal framework now covers the early Holocene and the Last Glacial cycle. This short paper outlines the principal achievements of the INTIMATE research community, which include the development of an event stratigraphy for the North Atlantic region; the establishment of protocols for ice–land–ocean correlation; important contributions to geochronology, most notably to tephrochronology, and to palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic reconstructions; and the designation of the Greenland ice-core record as the global stratotype for the Pleistocene–Holocene boundary. Future directions of the INTIMATE programme are also briefly considered.     

Rhetoric versus reality in the rise of policing in UN peace operations: ‘More blue,less green’?

ABSTRACT

United Nations police (UNPOL) have become increasingly important to operational effectiveness of peace operations. For some time, their contribution to re-establishing the rule of law in conflict-affected states has been seen as a cornerstone for building sustainable peace and enabling mission exit strategies. In a departure from traditional peacekeeping and post-conflict assistance, recent years have seen UN peace operations directed to stabilise countries and protect civilians in the context of on-going violent conflict. As a result, UNPOL have had to undertake a range of expanded tasks, exacerbating long-standing challenges and producing new impediments to their operational effectiveness. At the same time, a ‘pragmatic turn’ is generating increased interest in more police-centric concepts of peacekeeping as a possible alternative to today’s expensive and military-focused peace operations. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in multiple peace operations and at UN headquarters, this article examines the changing roles of UNPOL in a new breed of UN peace operations, identifies the major associated challenges and proposes a series of recommendations for overcoming them. It argues that if police are to respond to unfolding challenges while becoming more central to peacekeeping outcomes, then significant reforms and further research into their impacts will be required.     

Nexus thinking and the geographies of children,youth and families: towards an integrated research agenda

ABSTRACT

This paper argues for and demonstrates the value of integrating nexus thinking - a conceptual and policy framework for the multiple interdependencies between resources, most commonly food, water and energy – into the Geographies of Children, Youth and Families (GCYF). Through discussion of the two areas’ current limitations, a review of existing GCYF work on food, water, energy and materiality, and secondary auto-analysis of data generated on families’ situated environmental concerns in India and the UK, the paper identifies three key contributions of an integrated nexus thinking-GCYF research agenda. Firstly, nexus thinking can advance understandings of how children and young people negotiate multi-scalar social, political, economic and ecological processes; secondly, an integrated agenda can ‘embody’ nexus thinking by situating children and families in the nexus of interconnections; thirdly, nexus thinking offers a policy-relevant frame through which GCYF can engage questions of intergenerational justice with questions of resource sustainability.     

Embodied negotiations: identity,space and livelihood after trade zones in the Dominican Republic

In this article, I analyze socio-spatial processes of subject-making at the center of the restructuring of export industries. To do so, I develop the concept of ‘embodied negotiations’ to explain the spatial and corporeal experience of trade zone workers reproduced as migrants with the collapse of garment exports in the Dominican Republic. Drawing on ethnographic research, I examine ‘rural return’ as both a livelihood strategy and a discourse shaped by inter-related gender and racial ideologies of labor as well as the uneven transnationalization of rural and urban localities. I show how the negotiation of social position by subjects marked by race, gender and class is always also a negotiation of spatial position in and between localities structured through raced, gendered and class relations. Men's efforts to remain in urban areas as a form of social ‘whitening’ are compared to women's resistance to rural return as an attempt to stay in circulation as paid labor. Overall, I argue that feminist research on global production should be ‘spatialized’ by attending to livelihoods and practices of subject-making that emerge in parallel to export restructuring.