Tacit support for terrorism: The rapprochement between the USSR and Palestinian guerrilla organizations following the 1967 war

This article demonstrates the inconsistent and wavering Soviet attitude towards national liberation movements in general and the Palestinian organizations in particular. Until the late 1960s, the Soviets viewed these organizations with suspicion, hesitating to engage in political dialogue with them. However, in the 1970s, political and military events in the region, as well as modifications in the Kremlin's Cold War strategies, led to a general shift towards the Middle East in Soviet foreign policy. Soviet leaders showed increased willingness to provide certain Palestinian organizations with arms with which to conduct terrorist activities against Israeli, pro-Israeli, Jewish and Western targets. The article explores the complex relations between Palestinian organizations and the USSR in the field of international terror. The study also exposes and analyzes the nature and content of Soviet–Palestinian arms dialogues and transactions. It provides clear evidence that Soviet policymakers and other luminaries were fully informed of, and sometimes directly involved in, these transactions and dialogues at the highest levels.     

One Step Forward,Two Steps Back

This article explores the potential impact of U.S. disarmament leadership on the nuclear diplomacy of North Korea and Iran, the “defiant states.” The first part of the article introduces the concept of “interaction capacity,” which measures a state's integration into international society, based on its physical communication systems and its adoption of shared norms. The theory predicts that lower levels of interaction capacity will generate a greater propensity for nuclear defiance, as the affected states reject and try to resist integration pressures. In the second and third parts of the article, this conceptual framework is applied to the cases of North Korea and Iran. The analysis suggests that efforts to reassert U.S. disarmament leadership could increase the alienation of North Korea and Iran, leading to provocation and escalation of nuclear tensions. The final part of the paper explores the policy implications of this analysis for the potentially defunct six-party talks, for hopes of renewed negotiations with Iran, and for the 2010 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.     

Building the Somali National Army: Anatomy of a failure, 2008–2018

ABSTRACT

Over a decade of security force assistance (SFA) initiatives to build an effective Somali National Army (SNA) failed because of the interrelated effects of political, contextual and operational challenges. The key political challenges were interest asymmetry between international actors and Somali elites, insufficient focus on institution-building and a lack of donor coordination. The principal contextual challenges in Somalia were the legacies of two decades of state collapse and the negative effects of clan dynamics. The main operational challenges were building an army while simultaneously fighting a war, the complexities of military integration, and the severe capability gaps afflicting the SNA.     

AID,GLENEAGLES AND THE RUN-UP TO THE MILLENNIUM +5 SUMMIT

Africa has emerged as a strategic location for transcontinental narcotics trade. Particularly the West African subcontinent has turned into a cocaine warehousing and trans-shipment hub along the way to the European underground markets. At this juncture, African drug networks (ADNs) began to play a momentous role in global drug trade, and pose a considerable threat to international security, as they operate in more than 80 countries. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Interpol, and Europol perceive ADNs as one of the primary issues in international counter-narcotics policy. These agencies have launched several multilateral initiatives to contain the West African threat. None of these initiatives, however, retarded the expansion of the problem. Indeed, the containment efforts turned out to be quite embryonic. The ADNs eventually entered the Turkish market by the early 2000s. West African drug networks (WADNs) in particular have begun to operate within Turkey extensively, often supplying and distributing drugs. The gravity of the threat became ever more serious by 2012. The upsurge of the new threat has compelled the Turkish drug-law enforcement agencies to adopt new policies and counter-strategies. These policies have to be based upon proper strategic analysis of the threat. This paper seeks to address the need for a threat assessment of ADNs. It investigates the dimensions of the problem, profiles the members of WADNs, their modes of operation, and the factors that compelled them to exploit the illicit Turkish drug markets. The analyses are based upon the scrutiny of 227 narcotic interdictions files and statements from the African individuals in these case files. The paper concludes by presenting policy implications and recommendations for the Turkish security and foreign-policy institutions to cope with this impending threat.     

THE EUROPEAN UNION'S EVOLVING ENGAGEMENT WITH IRAN

In 2003, the “E3”—Germany, France, and the United Kingdom—engaged Iran in talks over Tehran's nuclear program and were joined in negotiations the next year by the European Union (EU). Given the dim prospects of success for these talks, why did the E3/EU pursue nuclear negotiations with Iran? This article's three-track analysis attempts to answer that question by examining the emergence of the EU nonproliferation policy prior to the E3/EU-Iran talks, analyzing the European-Iranian relationship as it pertains to cooperation and negotiations over nonproliferation and other issues, and considering contemporary influences on the E3/EU. The European Union was ultimately unsuccessful in its negotiations with Tehran, but its efforts were worthwhile. In the future, the organization can play a vital nonproliferation role; today, the circumstances that hampered previous European efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear standoff have improved and could be capitalized on by the European Union and the international community.     

SYMBIOTIC SPIES

Spying on the Nuclear Bear: Anglo-American Intelligence and the Soviet Bomb, by Michael S. Goodman. Stanford University Press, 2007. 295 pages, $50.     

EU security sector reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Reform or resist?

ABSTRACT

Attempts to explain the failure to reform the security sectors in post-conflict countries have often resorted to two sets of explanatory factors: international and local factors. This article seeks to move from that unhelpful dichotomy to an explanation linking both factors. Drawing on a Foucauldian approach and the concept of “counter-conduct,” it examines the rationality and practices of European Union (EU) governmentality and how governing technologies are resisted and reversed by local elites involved in security sector reform (SSR). Instead of understanding power and resistance as binary opposites, this article argues that counter-conduct can be conceived as implicated in the very relations of power that it seeks to resist. To tease out these relations, the article analyzes the EU's efforts in SSR in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it identifies four forms of counter-conduct: upholding European standards, using the local ownership trap, simulating reforms, and lowering the bar.     

Effective? Locally owned? Beyond the technocratic perspective on the European Union Police Mission for the Palestinian Territories

ABSTRACT

The European Union Police Mission for the Palestinian Territories (EUPOL COPPS) was established in 2006 to contribute to the establishment of effective policing in support of an independent and democratic Palestinian state. EUPOL COPPS is often commended for its contribution to the professionalization of the Palestinian security sector under local ownership. Drawing on 40 interviews, we argue that the mission can be considered effective and locally owned only from a narrow technocratic perspective, which denies the political reality of continued occupation and absence of democracy. A broader analysis, which includes the voices of ordinary Palestinians, reveals that EUPOL COPPS contributed to the professionalization of authoritarian policing under continued Israeli occupation. Our findings show the limits of technocratic approaches to peacebuilding interventions and call for a stronger engagement with the ultimate beneficiaries of peacebuilding missions.