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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > International institutions > General
Modern warfare is almost always multilateral to one degree or another, requiring countries to cooperate as allies or coalition partners. Yet as the war in Afghanistan has made abundantly clear, multilateral cooperation is neither straightforward nor guaranteed. Countries differ significantly in what they are willing to do and how and where they are willing to do it. Some refuse to participate in dangerous or offensive missions. Others change tactical objectives with each new commander. Some countries defer to their commanders while others hold them to strict account. NATO in Afghanistan explores how government structures and party politics in NATO countries shape how battles are waged in the field. Drawing on more than 250 interviews with senior officials from around the world, David Auerswald and Stephen Saideman find that domestic constraints in presidential and single-party parliamentary systems--in countries such as the United States and Britain respectively--differ from those in countries with coalition governments, such as Germany and the Netherlands. As a result, different countries craft different guidelines for their forces overseas, most notably in the form of military caveats, the often-controversial limits placed on deployed troops. Providing critical insights into the realities of alliance and coalition warfare, NATO in Afghanistan also looks at non-NATO partners such as Australia, and assesses NATO's performance in the 2011 Libyan campaign to show how these domestic political dynamics are by no means unique to Afghanistan.
Since the end of the Cold War, international institutions have had to rise to challenges of instability and insecurity in Europe. Fergus Carr and Theresa Callan examine the changing nature of European security, cooperation and conflict. A key theme is the development of the new European security architecture and the roles of NATO, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the European Union and the United Nations as security providers in contemporary Europe.
This book provides an in-depth description and analysis of monetary policy in Europe and the United States. Focusing specifically on the European Central Bank, it offers one of the first comprehensive guides to understanding the targets, strategy, and instruments of the ECB.
The Great Power coalition of the early 19th century succeeded in keeping the peace among the major states of England, France, Prussia, Russia, and Austria. For the last century and a half, however, no truly encompassing coalition has emerged, and in its absence the 20th century was plagued by world wars and peripheral conflicts. Only now, at the outset of the 21st century, is a new Great Power coalition possible. This book examines the prospect of a Great Power coalition that would be sustained by the development of 'overlapping international clubs.' The new set of Great Powers the United States, Japan, the European Union, China, and Russia can be increasingly bound together through a combination of status and economic incentives, international norms and regimes, and the emulation of national and regional 'best practices.' The construction of such a coalition presents special problems and opportunities for the United States. In the years ahead, America will need to adjust its policies to bring China and Russia into membership of such a group or see them progressively adopt recalcitrant and antagonistic attitudes toward world affairs.
As one of the most pioneering development economists, Hans Singer has stimulated many of the ideas that have engaged the attention of the world community for several decades. Not only has he helped to form an understanding of the problems of developing countries, but he has also shown what might be done to solve them. This collection brings together for the first time key essays on the issues underlying food aid and the development of the UN. These are grouped into five areas: postwar development experience; reform of the United Nations; debt and debt servicing; structural adjustment and stabilization; and food aid.
The United Nations has rarely been given a fair hearing with regard to its work in Cyprus. Despite competing demands for its limited resources being challenged by the local parties and at the mercy of contradictory political directions at the international level, the UN has actually achieved more than is generally realized. This is the first volume to critically appraise all the major areas of the UN's peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peace building activities in Cyprus.
Sharing Security is a unique and comprehensive study of a key yet often neglected feature of modern international society. It begins by assessing how political theory can contribute to an understanding of international burdensharing. It then analyses in turn why some Western states contribute more than others to common defences, the European Union budget and overseas development aid. It highlights the particular burdensharing problems involved in global regimes, focusing on the UN's continuing financial crisis and the costs of combating global warming. It argues that today's burdensharing disparities continue to be shaped by the particular character of the international settlement at the end of the Second World War.
This volume brings together leading scholars in the field who examine the complex and growing debate on citizenship. The contributors systematically address the ambiguities of citizenship and confront the growing marketization of citizenship.
The United Nations and Human Security highlights and analyzes the changing peace and security challenges faced by the United Nations in an evolving international environment that is no longer solely characterized by states and inter-state security. The authors, who comprise both scholars and UN practitioners, cover a wide range of pressing current issues - including refugees, international tribunals, the promotion of democracy, ethics, regional organizations, humanitarian intervention, conflict prevention and peacekeeping - that form a cutting-edge and controversial security agenda.
During the 13th ASEAN Summit in November 2007, ASEAN Leaders endorsed the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Blueprint, which laid the foundation of creating a ""single market and production base"" among the ten Southeast Asian economies. Soon after that, ASEAN faced great uncertainties in the light of the 2008 global financial crisis and continues to remain cautious in the face of the ongoing global economic weakness. Despite this, the region is forging ahead with its commitment to carry out economic liberalisation and cooperation as stipulated in the AEC Blueprint. The official AEC scorecard, published in March 2012, stated that ASEAN had achieved 68.2 per cent of its targets for the 2008-11 period. The official AEC scorecard is expected to track the implementation of measures and the achievement of milestones committed in the AEC Strategic Schedule. However, the scorecard, in its current form, is too brief and general to be useful for the ASEAN citizens. This book attempts to fill this gap and evaluates the current status of and the progress towards the milestones of the AEC Blueprint. The overall message of the book is that even though ASEAN may miss some of its integration goals by 31 December 2015, it will certainly deliver some of the key initiatives - tariff elimination, establishing the ASEAN Single Window, laying the foundation of the regional investment initiative, advancing tourism services, moving ahead with ASEAN connectivity and the realisation of ASEAN 1 free trade agreements. AEC's goal of forming an equitable and competitive regional economy will continue to be a work in progress. AEC 2015 is going to be a historic milestone that will raise ASEAN's profile and will help the region to maintain its centrality in the international community.
The Kosovo war has concentrated new attention on the transatlantic relationship and its principal institution, NATO. Europeans argue over the future of their Union, suggesting a struggle over control of Europe's future. The threat of a transatlantic trade war shows the struggle overflowing to affect the Atlantic relationship that has secured Europe's peace for fifty years. Distinguished experts consider the arguments over NATO and the EU in order to assess the state of the vital Atlantic relationship and its future.
The United Nations is at a critical juncture. It is faced with two distinct choices: to remain a 'decision frozen in time' or to develop a long-term adaptation agenda (and strategy) that would allow it to be a relevant institution of global governance for the twenty-first century. Reform and reflexive institutional adjustments have failed to address underlying problems facing this organization. After fifty-five years of existence it is still considered an inefficient and ineffective world body. Worse yet, its relevance is being questioned. This study offers a critique of existing UN change processes and then shifts focus to considerations of institutional learning strategies that would allow the UN to maintain relevance amidst the evolution of global governance arrangements.
The international community can creatively and aggressively address deadly conflict through mediation, arbitration, and the development of international institutions to promote reconciliation. The editors of this book designed a systematic framework with which contributors compare third party intervention in twelve conflicts of the post Cold War period. They examine the role of international organizations the United Nations, international development banks, and international law institutions and they analyze the tools and forms of leverage in successful and unsuccessful mediations. Based on the case studies, the editors identify the most effective institutions, make recommendations for improving interventions, and elucidate several important insights into the mediation process and the role of the international community in dispute resolution.
The United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) is the only UN organization that is self-financing through fees earned on project management/provision of services in all development and humanitarian fields. Following a disruptive merger process its future looked in doubt. Combining perspectives from the disciplines of international relations, business and public administration, this book describes and analyses the ensuing reform, its problems and successes, as well as its relevance to other UN organizations and New Public Management theory.
The book traces the end of hostilities and the often acrimonious, sometimes naive, but always laboured negotiations towards peace and elections in Mozambique. There is careful examination of the many international factors involved from the covert intervention of South Africa, the reaction of one African state, the role of the United Nations and that of humanitarian and religious groups. The lessons for conflict resolution and peacekeeping for Africa and beyond are discussed.
In this volume twenty-two international consultants examine their work as part of a United Nations Development Program project aimed at strengthening China's legislative drafting capacity. They describe the project's legislative theory and methodology, and examine their own work with Chinese teams. By drawing on other countries' experiences with similar legislation, the teams worked together to draft twenty-two bills on the national budget, legislative procedures, environmental protection and education which were suited to China's unique circumstances.
Set against the backdrop of the collapsing Cold War world, this monograph draws on entirely new documentary evidence to chronicle almost two years worth of UN-led peace talks to end the civil war in El Salvador. Presented in 'moment-to-moment' fashion, hitherto private notes and interviews with the chief UN, American and Salvadoran negotiators demonstrate that the key to enduring peace was to restructure relations between the country's powerful entrepreneurs and the armed forces.
This study of the United Nations in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific evaluates the organization's role and performance in Cambodia and over refugees; regarding human rights, development, environment and the needs of women; within regional cooperation; and as an instrument of state policy. These cases illustrate how multilateral conduct through the United nations provides a barometer indicating the intensity with which policy initiatives and values are sustained by relevant governmental interests alike. In the regional settings considered, conduct towards and within the UN has amplified unresolved value differences regarding relations with major powers, sustainability, and national identity.
Shemlan, a small, once unknown village in the hills overlooking Beirut, became notorious throughout the Middle East when Bertram Thomas chose it as the location for the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies (MECAS) in 1947. The knowledge that a western government was taking pains to teach its citizens Arabic and inform them of Arab history, society and religion made the Arabs suspicious. The success of MECAS in producing specialists who were the envy of other governments produced doubt and anxiety. The power of MECAS to attract British but also foreign diplomats and businessmen should have made it a profitable enterprise; instead there was constant penny-pinching and reluctance to invest. In retrospect it looks like an excellent idea developed by improvisation through its early troubles which was then allowed to die in its prime. Was it yet another example of a British invention unexploited?
The fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the United Nations was commemorated in 1995 with a number of conferences and publications which assessed the history and contemporary role of this paramount international organisation. This book is the result of a meeting of scholars and specialists who wished to further understanding of the challenges faced by the United Nations in its efforts to intervene in post-cold war conflict. In particular the experiences in Bosnia, Somalia and in Rwanda, where UN peacekeepers seemed powerless to act in the face of acts of genocide, gross violations of human rights and the widespread suffering caused by war, makes such an analysis timely and important.
When is a war not a war? Under what circumstances is humanitarian intervention by the international community justified? In what circumstances can a state legitimately put at risk the lives of members of its armed forces? These are some of the questions raised through the essays contained in Some Corner of a Foreign Field . The authors consider the main ethical and political arguments surrounding the subject of intervention, and, between them, cover a wide range of areas, coming to focus on international institutions and international law, domestic and political viewpoints, humanitarian considerations, the applicability of the just war theory, and the role of public opinion and the media. The result is a book that throws open new doors and extends the range of discussion within the ongoing debate on defence and disarmament.
This timely book reviews key management areas of United Nations organizations now under attack: the political selection of executive heads, the role of inspection bodies, the financial crisis, charges of corruption and fraud, the 'overpaid' staff, sex discrimination in the secretariats, the impact of the Administrative Tribunals' judgements. Reform proposals are reviewed and assessed. While executive heads are accountable for their agency's performance, Member States have the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that reform is actually carried out. Do they really want UN organizations to be more effective?
This study presents the case for an international banking standard (IBS) to deal with the rash of banking crises in developing countries. Over the past 15 years, almost three-fourths of the IMF's member countries have experienced at least one serious bout of banking problems; there have been at least a dozen developing country episodes where the costs of these crises amounted to 10 percent or more of the country's GDP; and the total public sector resolution costs of developing-country banking crises have been estimated to be $250 billion. Not only are these banking crises extremely costly to developing countries, they also pose increased risk to industrial countries. Morris Goldstein demonstrates that existing international agreements do not address the main sources of these crises, and the adoption of a voluntary IBS offers a more attractive route to banking reform than the relevant alternatives. The study recommends minimum standards in eight key areas of banking supervision and addresses the operational issues associated with the design and implementation of an IBS.
The articles of this volume address changes of international organizations that were in different ways directly linked to the East-West conflict.
Following the Second World war, South Africa claimed that the League of Nations mandate to administer Namibia had lapsed with the dissolution of that organization, and that it was within its power to annex it. It rejected UN efforts to have the territory placed under its trusteeship. This marked the beginning of the intractable dispute over the international status and independence of Namibia. This book analyses the role of the international community through the UN and other organizations in the search for a settlement. It gives attention to the efforts of the Western Contact Group and the people of Namibia themselves, and shows how conditions for a settlement ultimately emerged. Finally, it outlines Namibia's major post-independence challenges. |
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