A ‘transparent gold’ rush?

Abstract

The signing of a new treaty on the equitable sharing of the Nile waters – signed last May in Kampala by Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania – has the potential of derailing relations with Sudan and Egypt. According to the latter countries, this new agreement replaces the 1959 Nile agreement – that awarded them with 90 per cent control over the Nile water – giving other Nile Basin countries the possibility to implement water-related projects in agriculture and energy. This new development, according to Egypt and Sudan, places their water level security in jeopardy. Furthermore, the use of land grabs and water consumption for food security by wealthy foreign countries contributes to the sensitive situation the nine Nile Basin countries are now facing. Water is a red line when it comes to Egypt and Sudan and the future of the whole region depends on whether this line will be crossed.     

Open source intelligence (OSINT) for conflict monitoring in contemporary South Africa: Challenges and opportunities in a big data context

This article argues that aspirations of maintaining a dominant influence over sub-Saharan security issues has spurred the French and British leadership of European Union (EU) foreign and security policy integration, just as it has informed military capability expansions by the armed forces of the main EU powers. While Europe's initial African focus was on stabilising a continent marred by state failure, civil wars and genocides, changes in the global security context, especially the shift towards multipolarity manifest in China's growing engagement, has prompted a complementary focus on deterring other powers from making military inroads into the subcontinent. Hence Europe's sub-Saharan security focus is shifting from stabilisation towards deterrence. This helps explain recent military procurements which, in spite of the extremely challenging fiscal position of most EU member states, feature large-scale investments in long-range deterrence capabilities.     

Saudi Arabia's defence offset programmes: Progress,policy and performance

This paper discusses the performance of Saudi Arabia's defence offset programmes. The Kingdom is involved in some of the World's biggest defence offset agreements and a review of the problems it has faced and the policies it has introduced provides a useful insight into that part of the international defence market where trade and development meet.

The paper reviews the origins and development of Saudi Arabia's major defence offset programmes. Saudi policies towards defence offsets are outlined before assessing the practical impact of the programmes themselves. The author concludes that Saudi Arabia's offset projects have had only a minor impact on the Kingdom's economy to date and makes a number of policy recommendations which are designed to enhance the utility of the programmes in the Kingdom's drive to enhance and diversify the technological base of its economy.     

Business and peace in the Niger Delta: what we know and what we need to know

The global restructuring of state–society relationships driven by neoliberal logic has not only allowed for the taming of the ‘state’, which has paradoxically accentuated its inadequacies, but has also facilitated, for better or for worse, the emergence of business – especially transnational corporations – as a major political force in global governance. Consequently, while the issues of peace and conflict have traditionally been the concern of governments, businesses are now increasingly being expected to make peace and conflict their concern. However, despite claims and counterclaims that businesses can be moneymakers and peacemakers, analyses of the relationship between business and peace remain largely embryonic. This paper seeks to contribute to this emerging business and peace debate by drawing on insights from the Niger Delta conflict to ascertain what we know and what we need to know if businesses are to become peacemakers in conflict zones in Africa.     

Country survey XVIII: The two Koreas' defence economy

In this paper we change the structure of the basic conflict model. This makes it possible to found an economic theory of war and peace. Apart from few exceptions there exist no peace equilibria in the related literature of conflict theory. The aim of the paper is to fill this gap, because most parts of the world live in peace. Further we show that negotiations are possible to avoid a war. The main result is that war breaks out only if the distribution of resources and/or the effectiveness of weapons is sufficiently unequal.     

RAISING THE COST OF REBELLION: THE ROLE OF THIRD‐PARTY INTERVENTION IN INTRASTATE CONFLICT

This paper presents a simple model to characterize explicitly the role that an intervening third party plays in raising the cost of rebellion in an intrastate conflict. Extending the Gershenson‐Grossman (2000 Gershenson, D. and Grossman, H.I. 2000. Civil conflict: ended or never ending?. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 44(6): 807–821.  [Google Scholar]) framework of conflict in a two‐stage game to the case involving outside intervention in a three‐stage game as in Chang et al. (2007b Chang, Y.‐M., Potter, J. and Sanders, S. 2007b. War and peace: third‐party intervention in conflict. European Journal of Political Economy, 23(4): 954–974.  [Google Scholar]), we examine the conditions under which an outside party optimally intervenes such that (i) the strength of the rebel group is diminished or (ii) the rebellion is deterred altogether. We also find conditions in which a third party optimally intervenes but at a level insufficient to deter rebellion. Such behavior, which improves the incumbent government’s potential to succeed in conflict, is overlooked in some conflict studies evaluating the effectiveness of intervention. One policy implication of the model is that an increase in the strength of inter‐governmental trade partnerships increases the likelihood that third‐party intervention deters rebellion.     

The State of UN Peacekeeping: Lessons from Congo

The article considers the state of UN peacekeeping through the prism of its long-running operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Focusing in particular on the challenges raised by use of force and the protection of civilians in conditions of ongoing armed conflict, it argues that UN field operations must be aligned much more closely than they have been over the past 15 years to political and diplomatic efforts aimed at securing viable political settlements to internal conflict. The issues raised by the history of the UN’s troubled mission in the DRC are deeply relevant to the wider discussion of the organisation’s role in the field of peace and security.     

Revisiting Egyptian Foreign Policy towards Israel under Mubarak: From Cold Peace to Strategic Peace

This article is the first academic study of Egyptian foreign policy towards Israel under Hosni Mubarak (1981–2011). It challenges a deeply entrenched conventional wisdom that Egypt pursued a cold-peace foreign policy towards Israel throughout this period. We demonstrate that Egyptian foreign policy towards Israel was dynamic – comprising cold peace (1981–91), a hybrid foreign policy of cold peace and strategic peace (1991–2003), and a pure strategic peace posture (2003–11). We also use the case of Egyptian foreign policy towards Israel as a heuristic to develop a conception of a new type of peace, strategic peace, as an intermediary analytical category between cold and stable peace.     

Worldwide military spending, 1990–95

The decline in military spending that began in the mid‐1980s continued through 1995, and this decline was widespread both geographically and by level of development. Cuts in military spending appear to have potentially important implications for non‐military spending and fiscal adjustment. In contrast to findings for previous periods, military spending has declined more than proportionately in those countries that have reduced total spending. Countries with Fund programs have reduced military spending more sharply than other developing countries, largely reflecting outcomes in the transition economies. Further, military spending appears to have been less resilient in program countries than other developing countries.