What drives Europeans to Syria, and to IS? Insights from the Belgian case. Egmont Paper No. 75, March 2015

‘A bizarre phenomenon,’ Der Spiegel concluded, after trying to figure out why youngsters left Germany to become foreign fighters in Syria. The magazine painted a portrait of two thirty-somethings with similar background and the same hobby – martial arts. One became director of a martial arts school in Hamburg, the other became a terrorist poster boy in Syria.1

Syria: A Roadmap for a Sustainable Political Settlement. Egmont Security Policy Brief No. 52, January 2014

On the eve of the Geneva II conference and amid continued fighting on the ground, this short paper seeks to draw up a roadmap, indicating the different stages and steps on the way to a sustainable political settlement of the conflict in Syria. A longer term perspective is put forward, adopting a broad-based and inclusive approach, focused on a Syrian-led transition process under international supervision with the assistance of key third countries, thus preparing the way for a multi-party democratic post-Baath future.

The Mirage of the State: Why the West has failed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali and Central African Republic? Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Vol. 14 No. 15, July 2014

The state still matters. However, the members of the Euro-Atlantic community may be misinterpreting this crucial baseline prior launching their military interventions since 2001. The latest violence and collapse of the state of Iraq after the invasion of Northern Iraq by a radical Sunni Muslim terrorist group, so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), demonstrate once again the centrality and requirement of a functioning state in order to maintain violent forces to disrupt domestic and regional stability. Since 2001, the US and its European allies have waged wars against failed-states in order to increase this security and national interests, and then have been involved in some type of state-building.1 This has been the case in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali, and Central African Republic (CAR). France went into Mali (2012) and CAR (2013), which preceded two European Union military and civilian Common Security and Defense Policy missions (CSDP), in order to avoid the collapse of these two states. The threat of the collapse of both states was a concern for the members of the Euro-Atlantic community as it could have spread to the region and causing even greater instabilities. In Mali, the country was under radical Islamic pressures coming from the North after the collapse of Libya ensuing the 2011 Western intervention, while in CAR it was mainly an ethno-religious crisis. Failed states are a real concern, as they can rapidly become training grounds for radical groups and permitting all types of smuggling and trafficking.2 In Mali, France wanted to protect its large French population and avoid the fall of Mali in the hands of radical Islamic groups directly or indirectly linked to Al-Qaeda. A fallen Mali could have destabilized the region of the Sahel and ultimately affected the stability of Southern European borders. France wanted to avoid the development of a safe haven across the Sahel where movements of people and goods are uncontrolled and illegal.3 Since the end of the Cold War, Western powers have been involved in stabilizing neighborhoods and regions, like the Balkans, Africa, and Middle East, which at the exceptions of the Balkans, have led to failed policies. 9/11 changes everything. The US, under President George W. Bush, started to wage war against terrorism and all states link to it. This started a period of continuous Western interventions in this post-9/11 era in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali and CAR. If history has demonstrated one thing, the members of the Euro-Atlantic community are struggling and will continue to struggle to stabilize Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali and Central African Republic (CAR) for one simple reason: no clear endgame. Is it the creation of a state à la Westphalian in order to permit these states to operate as the sole guarantor of security? Or is the reestablishment of status quo in these countries permitting to exit and end Western operations? This article seeks to analyze Western interventions in these five countries in order to reflect on the concept of the state and the erroneous starting point for each intervention.4 In the first part, the political status of each country is analyzed in order to understand the internal and regional crisis. In a second time, the concept of the state, framed into the Buzanian trinity, is discussed and applied to the cases. In the last part the European and American civilian-military doctrines are examined in accordance with their latest military interventions and in their broader spectrum.

Hybrid Hysteria. Security Policy Brief No. 64, June 2015

Is “hybrid” about to replace “comprehensive” as the favourite container notion of the Brussels foreign policy community? They might not be so different, in fact. Both a hybrid and a comprehensive approach mean the integrated use of a broad range of instruments of external action towards the achievement of a foreign policy objective. It’s just that the hybrid approach put into practice by Russia today seeks to achieve rather less friendly aims than the EU’s own comprehensive approach. The hybrid approach is the comprehensive approach gone over to the dark side of the force.

Flashlight Europe N°2–February 2015. “Europe must now get involved in a very big way”

More than three years after al-Gaddafi was overthrown, Libya has still not returned to some semblance of normality. In many places, the Libyan state exists only on paper. No less than two governments and dozens of rival tribes, all with their own militias and armed to the teeth, are trying to come to power. In the midst of this chaos “IS,” the terrorist organization, has now entered the fray. Evidence of this is provided by the brutal murder of 21 Egyptian Copts, which could trigger off a civil war that will pose a threat to the entire region and to Europe. Mirco Keilberth, an expert on Libya, explains what is going on.

A Differentiated, Balanced and Patient Approach? The EU’s Involvement with Georgia’s Secessionist Conflicts beyond the August 2008 War. EU Diplomacy Paper 06/2015.

The August war in 2008 between Russia and Georgia caught the world by surprise but nevertheless brought the European Union (EU) to the forefront of the international efforts to end the hostilities, and the EU became the leading international actor involved with the conflict resolution process. However, in the years following the armed conflict, the conflict resolution process lost pace, and the impact of the EU beyond the immediate aftermath of the August 2008 war has been put into question. By undertaking a qualitative case study, this paper aims to explore to what extent the EU has impacted on the conflict resolution process of Georgia’s secessionist conflicts in 2008-2015. It will argue that the EU’s policies have only to a limited extent impacted on this conflict resolution process, which can be related to the objectives, priorities and time perspectives of the EU’s conflict resolution policies. The EU’s efforts have significantly contributed to the objective of conflict prevention, but the profile of the EU in the field of international conflict management weakened its position in the area of conflict transformation, where the lack of progress in turn limited the EU’s impact in the areas of international conflict management and conflict settlement. The main conclusion put forward is that in order to have a true impact, the EU needs to undertake a differentiated, balanced and patient approach to conflict resolution.

Russia in the Balkans: How should the EU respond? EPC Policy Brief, 12 October 2015

On 3 September 2015, Russia's 7th Guards Airborne-Assault (Mountain) Division kicked off an exercise near the Black Sea city of Novorossiysk, some 150 km southeast of the annexed Crimean peninsula. The timing was chosen carefully. 'Swift Response', a large-scale drill run by NATO alongside the coastline of Romania and Bulgaria, along with other European locations, had concluded several days earlier. Codenamed 'Slavic Brotherhood', the war games at Novorossiysk involved Belarusian Special Forces and, strikingly, paratroopers from Serbia. Here was a country negotiating its accession to the EU and a recent signatory of a cooperation deal with NATO that was siding with the self-declared competitor of the West.

Arab views on democratic citizenship – and on EU support. Arab Citizenship Review No. 11

Arab views on democratic citizenship – and on EU support Much has been said about the EU’s general response to the Arab spring. And much has been written about regimes’ resistance to the far-reaching reform demanded by protestors across the Arab world. We have been engaged in a project (www.euspring.com) exploring one very specific dimension of these political trends and social debates: the question of how citizens in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) understand the concept of democratic citizenship. Within our project, our local affiliated research organizations ran throughout 2014 a series of focus groups in Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia with a range of civic stakeholders. The aim of these meetings was to explore how citizens in the three countries understand democratic citizenship and how they view EU efforts to support political reform.

Nagorno-Karabakh and the arc of crises on Europe's borders. EPC Policy Brief, 3 February 2016

For more than two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a stalemate over the Nagorno-Karabakh. The protracted conflict remains the biggest impediment to security, stability and prosperity in the South Caucasus. The EU has put itself on the sidelines of the conflict resolution process, allowing the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group (MG), of which Russia, France and the US are co-chairs, to take centre stage. In this Policy Brief, Amanda Paul and Dennis Sammut argue that the EU should play a more active role in the conflict resolution process, taking the lead with innovative initiatives and using its soft power skills and experience. A recent review of the European Neighbourhood Policy recognises that protracted conflicts continue to hamper development in the region. This new approach now needs to be given substance, before the conflict further escalates and becomes another crisis on Europe’s border the already burdened Union cannot cope with.

EU Mission in Kosovo (EULEX): Constructing Ambiguity or Constructive Disunity? Transatlantic Security Paper No. 3, June 2011

In which skies should auspices about the future of EU foreign policy be looked for, Libya’s or Kosovo’s? Many commentators have been prompt in digging the grave for EU Security and Defense Policy after Member States’ discordance over taking military action against the Qaddafi regime1. However, as this paper will emphasize through the case of Kosovo, unanimity is not always an indispensable prerequisite – and should not be regarded as the sole criteria – to EU action in regional security. Overly focusing on the ‘speak with one voice’ mantra sometimes leads to stop short of assessing actual outcomes.

Illinois state water plan : status of implementation /

"January 1990."

Oregon wilderness : environmental impact statement : draft /

Includes index.

Training operations in small departments : student manual /

Designed to provide the student [i.e. the training officer] with the essential tools and skills to lead and manage a training program in a small department.

Policy-Oriented Learning Among National Forest Stakeholders in the Pacific Northwest: Changes in Policy Beliefs Since Adoption of the Northwest Forest Plan

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Alternatives to peace keeping in Korea: the role of non-state actors and face-to-face encounters

Korea is one of the world's most volatile areas, not least because traditional UN mediation and peacekeeping missions are impossible. Having intervened in the Korean War on behalf of the southern side, the UN is a party to the conflict, rather than a neutral arbiter. The situation is particularly problematic because political interactions are characterized by a high degree of state-control over security policy. In both parts of the peninsula the state has, at least until recently, exercised the exclusive right to deal with the opponent on the other side of the hermetically divided peninsula. Given these domestic and international constrains, alternative approaches to conflict resolution are urgently needed. The recently proliferating literature on human security offers possible solutions, for it urges policy makers to view security beyond the conventional military-based defence of the state and its territory. Using such a conceptual framework, the essay assesses the potential significance non-state interactions between North and South, particularly those that promote communication, information exchange and face-to-face encounters. Even though these interactions remain limited, they are of crucial importance, for they provide an opportunity to reduce the stereotypical threat images that continue to fuel conflict on the peninsula.