eContribution

Ľubomír Zvada 

Israel's Nation-State Bill: A symptom or disease of Israeli democracy?

The Israeli parliament, Knesset, overnight (from 18 July to 19 July) passed the very controversial Nation-State Bill (NSB), which proclaims Israel as the national home of the Jewish people. Moreover, the Arabic language lost the status of an official language of Israel and was demoted merely to ‘special status’. In addition, NSB also proclaimed Jerusalem as a complete and united capital city of Israel and accepted the Israeli settlement policy as a core national value. The five-member…

 Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System

Book Review

Alexander BETTS, COLLIER, Paul

 Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System

It is often said that you cannot approve nor criticize meat you have not eaten. From a first view, the meat might seem to contain all the ingredients to make it taste best. But after the first bite, you think something is missing to make the meat tasty and delicious. The same could be said of Alexander Betts and Paul Collier book entitled REFUGE Transforming a Broken Refugee System. From the hard cover, a visible boat carrying refugees on the high seas, probably with Syrian or African refugees…

A New Generation Draws the Line: Humanitarian Intervention and the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ Today

Book Review

Noam CHOMSKY

A New Generation Draws the Line: Humanitarian Intervention and the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ Today

Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is a prolific and prodigious writer famous throughout the world for his studies of linguistics and politics. This book is an expanded edition compiled from Noam Chomsky’s articles, lectures, and the book The New Military Humanism. Chomsky’s provocative book examines the nature of Humanitarian Interventionism after the Cold War. For Chomsky, ‘the new era’ in international relations was opened by NATO’s bombing…

Countering Terrorism

Book Review

Martha CRENSHAW and Gary LAFREE. Countering Terrorism.  

Countering Terrorism

In Countering Terrorism, Martha Crenshaw and Gary Lafree provide a very detailed account on global acts of terrorism. What makes the subject so challenging? Why is it so hard for governments to formulate an effective counter-terrorism policy? What are the obstacles that experts face and in what ways can terrorism best be defined, classified, studied and understood in order to design the best possible policies to counter terrorism? These are some of the questions answered in this book, which is…

Editor's Desk

Mitchell Belfer

The Road to Tehran Runs Through Europe

Three months since withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and the United States has begun to reimpose heavy sanctions on Iran. To the dismay of many in Europe, especially in Brussels, France, Germany and the UK, President Trump announced that it will be impossible for companies, and countries, to maintain economic relations with both the US and Iran—they have to choose. Armies of lawyers have sprung into action. They are exploring legal loopholes, waivers, constructing…

Issue 12:3

Anzhelika Solovyeva, Nik Hynek

Going Beyond the «Killer Robots» Debate: Six Dilemmas Autonomous Weapon Systems Raise

The debate on and around “killer robots” has been firmly established at the crossroads of ethical, legal, political, strategic, and scientific discourses. Flourishing at the two opposite poles, with a few contributors caught in the middle, the polemic still falls short of a detailed, balanced, and systematic analysis. It is for these reasons that we focus on the nitty-gritties, multiple pros and cons, and implications of autonomous weapon systems (AWS) for the prospects of the international…

Issue 12:3

Kenneth Thomas Stiller

For the World, for Me or for Us? The European Development Aid Regime

Whereas poverty eradication is the primary official purpose of development aid disbursed by the EU, an analysis of official development assistance (ODA) flows between 1995 and 2014 suggests that recipients’ needs are even less salient for aid by the EU than for the bilateral aid dispersed by its member states. Employing a dataset with pooled member state ODA disbursements, development aid disbursed by the EU is found to rather serve common European foreign policy goals, e.g. preparation for…

Issue 12:3

Lukáš Tichý

The IS and Attacks on the Oil and Gas Sector in Iraq

Attacks on energy sectors are an important part of the strategy of Islamist militant and terrorist organisations such as Al Qaeda and its offshoots or the Taliban. In connection with this, this article focuses on the attitude of the global Islamist terrorist group the Islamic State (IS) with regard to terrorism, specifically targeting oil and gas sectors as a political instrument of its strategy in the Middle East and North Africa. The main aim of this paper is to describe and analyse the forms…

Issue 12:3

Tetiana Sydoruk, Dmytro Tyshchenko

Central Europe on Russia-Ukraine Conflict: Positions and Responses

The article analyses the positions of the Visegrad Group and the Baltic countries on the Russia-Ukraine conflict that erupted in 2014. The public discourse about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is affected by the following main factors in these countries: historical heritage, concern for their own safety, the current political situation, economic and financial interests of transatlantic relations. The authors prove that Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia are united by the perception that the…

Issue 12:3

Guillem Colom-Piella, José Antonio Peña-Ramos, Evelana Zhykharava-Salodkaya

Identifying the Continuity Patterns in the Contemporary U.S. Defence Planning

The article is aimed at analysing the U.S. contemporary defence and military planning from the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), developed in the 1990s and consolidated during the War on Terror, to the Third Offset Strategy that will guide the Pentagon’s efforts until 2030. It will be argued that this process of military innovation based on the legacy of the RMA and aimed at keeping the American military-technological edge while countering the Anti-Access/Area-Denial threats may inspire a…

Issue 12:3

Blendi Lami

Recalibration of Turkish Foreign Policy During AKP Era

Since the Justice and Development Party came to power, Turkey has taken another direction in the international scene, based primarily on the ideas of Ahmet Davutoglu, architect of Turkish foreign policy. Different from Turkey's conduct during the Cold War, Davutoglu developed a new foreign policy with specific principles, with their implementation still open to debates. After Davutoglu's exit, it should be noted that Turkey found itself in another political context, and began recalibrating its…

Issue 12:3

Markéta Votoupalová

Schengen in Crisis? Why Subjective Critique Matters

Recently, predictions about the potential end of Schengen cooperation have multiplied. The extraordinary number of refugees coming into the EU is generally understood as the root of the problems within Schengen because the external borders were not prepared to manage such a strain. At the same time, reimpositions of internal border controls seem to be blamed for the crisis of the Schengen project. However, the reasons why the controls were reimposed and their impact on Schengen have not been…

2019 - Volume 13 Issue 3

Hydro-Politics and the Dynamics of the Shifting Ethio-Egyptian…

The foremost intent of this article is to investigate the major dynamics that are changing in Ethio-Egyptian hydropolitical relations. To attain this objective the researcher employed case study design, primary and secondary sources of data, and purposive sampling techniques. Despite the fact that…

Russia, the Arctic and Northeast Asia: The Strategic Importance…

Historically, the Arctic has been much more important to Russia than to other Arctic countries. In Soviet times, the development of the Arctic was of paramount importance and it was used by the Soviet government to legitimise its great power status to domestic and international audiences. It is…