A importância da revisão estratégia europeia de segurança : desafios pós-2008

O processo de construção de uma comunidade europeia de segurança iniciou-se em 1953. Apenas em 2003 foi adotada uma Estratégia Europeia de Segurança e só em 2010, com a entrada em vigor do Tratado de Lisboa, se criou uma política comum de segurança e defesa. Desde 2003, nestes 10 anos de PESD/PCSD, foram lançadas cerca de 30 missões em regiões diferentes como os Balcãs, a África Subsahariana, o Sahel e o espaço da ex-União Soviética, tocando áreas tão vastas como a reforma do setor da segurança, a formação e controlo alfandegário, o combate à pirataria ou a formação militar. Portugal participou em 11 dessas missões. O elenco de riscos e ameaças constantes da Estratégia Europeia de Segurança, revisto e atualizado em 2008, é exaustivo e mantém-se ajustado à presente situação internacional. As dificuldades da UE, no domínio da PCSD, prendem-se sobretudo com um conjunto de défices, em particular de vontade política e de recursos materiais e finanaceiros e não com a revisão da EES. Uma abordagem pragmática, que passe pela melhor definição de prioridaddes, de estratégias regionais, do reforço das capacidades e das industriais de defesa, seria a melhor orientação que o Conselho EUropeu de Dezembro de 2013 poderia dar às Instituições Europeias e aos Estados membros, no sentido de um esforço conjunto com vista a manter e a reforçar o papel da União Europeia enquanto fornecedor de segurança no sistema internacional.

A União Europeia, actor da segurança humana

O presente ensaio pretende situar o conceito de Segurança Humana no seio de uma vasta reflexão académica que entronca nas questões de segurança e reflectir sobre se a Segurança Humana, enquanto abordagem académica aparentemenete demasiado ampla e indefinida, é operacionável pela União Europeia enquanto actor de gestão de crises internacionais. Terminamos com a lembrança da atribuição do Prémio Nobel da Paz à União Europeia, questionando o impacto desta distinção no projecto normativo dos pequenos passos e da solidariedade partilhada que os seus pais fundadores preconizaram.

Sri Lanka and the responsibility to protect : politics, ethnicity and genocide

This book provides a study of the war by Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to create a separate state in Sri Lanka. It examines the ways in which this war should, in principle, have invoked ‘Responsibility to Protect’ principles, as well as the political, legal and practical problems involved and, ultimately, why the international community failed to act.

Over the years there have been several events, including those in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Timor-Leste, Darfur, and Kosovo, that have led the international community to accept a responsibility to protect. However, despite its overwhelming preliminary endorsement, the principles of this concept are still not universally sanctioned and there are some strong international opponents, including some countries that were initial signatories of the convention.

By considering the example of Sri Lanka, the text focuses on what conditions could satisfy or demand the application of responsibility to protect. It further presents a case as to why this conflict was, and may still be, the normative responsibility of the international community.

Sri Lanka and the Responsibility to Protect will be of great interest to students of South-East Asian politics, human rights, international law, ethnic conflict, security studies and IR in general.

Foreign correspondents and international newsgathering: the role of fixers

This book reveals that ‘fixers’—local experts on whom foreign correspondents rely—play a much more significant role in international television newsgathering than has been documented or understood. Murrell explores the frames though which international reporting has traditionally been analysed and then shows that fixers, who have largely been dismissed by scholars as "logistical aides", are in fact central to the day-to-day decision-making that takes place on-the-road. Murrell looks at why and how fixers are selected and what their significance is to foreign correspondence. She asks if fixers help introduce a local perspective into the international news agenda, or if fixers are simply ‘People Like Us’ (PLU). Also included are excerpts from interviews with TV correspondents and fixers and in-depth case studies of correspondents in Iraq and Indonesia.

Humanitarian responsibilities and interventionist claims in international society

This article calls for a widening of the debate about humanitarian intervention to incorporate insights from constructivism, 'Welsh School' Critical Security Studies, and critical approaches to Third World International Relations. After identifying a series of problems with the contemporary debate, which is dominated by the English School, it calls for a broadening of the concept of intervention and suggests a need to rethink the meaning of humanitarianism and terms such as the 'supreme humanitarian emergency'.

Civil-Military Relations in Croatia: Politicisation and Politics of Reform.

This article argues that since 2000 successive Croatian governments have shown themselves increasingly dedicated to reforming civil-military relations. However, their efforts have been hampered by four key obstacles. First, the need to implement defence reforms in the context of an unwieldy set of civil-military relationships, political and institutional rivalries, a lack of civil and military defence expertise and a continuing legacy of politicisation. Second, the need to cut defence spending as a proportion of the overall budget whilst taking on new military roles and improving the capability of the armed forces. Third, the need to balance the demands of the NATO accession process while implementing a balanced and fundamental reform of the armed forces as a whole. Finally, the need to implement root and branch personnel reforms and downsizing in the OSRH while simultaneously recruiting and retaining quality personnel and addressing the wider social issue of unemployment.

War crimes, conditionality and EU integration in the Western Balkans

The baleful legacy of the wars of the 1990s continues to dog the states and societies of the former Yugoslavia and has overshadowed the disappointingly slow and hesitant trajectory of the region towards the EU. At the start of the new millennium, with the removal of key wartime leaders from the political scene in both Croatia and Serbia, it was widely hoped that the region would prove able to ‘leave the past behind’ and rapidly move on to the hopeful new agenda of EU integration. The EU’s Copenhagen criteria, which in 1993 first explicitly set out the basic political conditions expected of aspirant EU Member States, proved effective in the case of the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe in supporting the entrenchment of democratic norms and practices, and stimulating reconciliation and good neighbourly relations among countries with turbulent histories. Building on this experience, the Stabilisation and Association Process, launched for the countries of the Western Balkans in 1999, included both full cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and regional reconciliation among the political conditions set for advancing these countries on the path to EU integration. EU political conditionality was intended to support the efforts of new political leaders to redefine national goals away from the nationalist enmities of the past and focus firmly on forging a path to a better future. This Chaillot Paper examines the extent to which this strategy has worked, especially in the light of the difficulties it has encountered in the face of strong resistance to cooperation among sections of the former Yugoslav population, many of whom have not yet fully acknowledged the crimes committed during the 1990s. Key chapters in the volume raise the vital questions of leadership and political will. EU political conditionality does not work unless the EU has a partner ready and willing to ‘play the game’, which presupposes that EU integration has become the overriding priority on the national political agenda.

Lions and roses: An interpretive history of Israeli-Iranian relations

This multi-disciplinary research project explores the religious and cultural foundations within the "master commemorative narratives" that frame Israeli and Iranian political discourse. In articulating their grievances against one another, Israeli and Iranian leaders express the tensions between religion, nationalism, and modernity in their own societies. The theoretical and methodological approach of this dissertation is constructivist-interpretivist. The concept of "master commemorative narratives" is adapted from Yael Zerubavel's study of ritualized remembrance in Israeli political culture, and applied to both Israeli and Iranian foreign policy. Israel’s master commemorative narrative draws heavily upon the language of the Hebrew Bible, situating foreign policy discourse within a paradigm of covenantal patrimony, exile, and return, despite the unrelenting hostility of eternal enemies and "the nations." Iran’s master commemorative narrative expresses Iranian suspicion of foreign encroachment and interference, and of the internal corruption that they engender, sacralizing resistance to the forces of evil in the figurative language and myths of pre-Islamic tradition and of Shi'a Islam. Using a constructivist-interpretive methodological approach, this research offers a unique interpretive analysis of the parallels between these narratives, where they intersect, and where they come into conflict. It highlights both the broad appeal and the diverse challenges to the components of these "master" narratives within Israeli and Iranian politics and society. The conclusion of this study explains the ways in which the recognition of religious and cultural conflicts through the optic of master commemorative narratives can complement the perspectives of other theoretical approaches and challenge the conventions of Security Studies. It also suggests some of the potential practical applications of this research in devising more effective international diplomacy.

Different Wars Require Different Strategies: Separating the “War on Drugs” from the “War on Drug [Traffickers]”

Using the securitization framework to highlight the arguments that facilitated the “War on Drugs”, this paper highlights a separate war against drug traffickers. Facilitated by ideology through the rhetoric promoted by the “War on Drugs,” the fear of communist expansion and democratic contraction, the “War on Drug Traffickers” was implemented, requiring its own strategy separate from the “War on Drugs.” This is an important distinction because the play on words changes the perception of the issue from one of drug addiction to one of weak institutions and insurgent/terrorist threat to those institutions. Furthermore, one cannot propose strategy to win, lose, or retreat in a war that one has been unable to identify properly. And while the all-encompassing “War on Drugs” has motivated tremendous discourse on its failure and possible solutions to remedy its failure, the generalizations made as a result of the inability to distinguish between the policies behind drug addiction and the militarized policies behind drug trafficking have discounted the effect of violence perpetrated by the state, the rationale for the state perpetrating that violence, and the dependence that the state has on foreign actors to perpetrate such violence. This makes it impossible to not only propose effective strategy but also to persuade states that participate in the “War on Drug Traffickers” to adopt the proposed strategy.

Lions and Roses: An Interpretive History of Israeli-Iranian Relations

This multi-disciplinary research project explores the religious and cultural foundations within the “master commemorative narratives” that frame Israeli and Iranian political discourse. In articulating their grievances against one another, Israeli and Iranian leaders express the tensions between religion, nationalism, and modernity in their own societies. The theoretical and methodological approach of this dissertation is constructivist-interpretivist. The concept of “master commemorative narratives” is adapted from Yael Zerubavel’s study of ritualized remembrance in Israeli political culture, and applied to both Israeli and Iranian foreign policy. Israel’s master commemorative narrative draws heavily upon the language of the Hebrew Bible, situating foreign policy discourse within a paradigm of covenantal patrimony, exile, and return, despite the unrelenting hostility of eternal enemies and “the nations.” Iran’s master commemorative narrative expresses Iranian suspicion of foreign encroachment and interference, and of the internal corruption that they engender, sacralizing resistance to the forces of evil in the figurative language and myths of pre-Islamic tradition and of Shi‘a Islam. Using a constructivist-interpretive methodological approach, this research offers a unique interpretive analysis of the parallels between these narratives, where they intersect, and where they come into conflict. It highlights both the broad appeal and the diverse challenges to the components of these “master” narratives within Israeli and Iranian politics and society. The conclusion of this study explains the ways in which the recognition of religious and cultural conflicts through the optic of master commemorative narratives can complement the perspectives of other theoretical approaches and challenge the conventions of Security Studies. It also suggests some of the potential practical applications of this research in devising more effective international diplomacy.