Category Archives: Europe

Great Power Political Convergence and UN Reform: Solving the Democratic Deficit

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 4, April 2019

Anders Corr, Ph.D.
Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

The photograph depicts a statue of a gun tied at the end to prevent it from shooting.

A bronze sculpture titled “Non-Violence” by Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd stands to the north of the United Nations Building in New York. It depicts the knotted barrel of a Colt Python .357 Magnum. Reuterswärd designed the sculpture following the murder of songwriter John Lennon. Source: Allan Watt via Flickr.

The international system operates across military, economic, and diplomatic hierarchies of states situated in competing alliances and international organizations. The major powers assert the predominance of influence in these alliances and international organizations, leading to a severe and global democratic deficit. Huge numbers of people, most notably the approximately 18% of the world’s population living in China, and 2% of the population living in Russia, have no democratically-appointed representation at the United Nations or influence in the world’s most important alliance systems.

The global democratic deficit leads to critical inefficiencies and unfair policies. States use unequal access to military, wealth, and knowledge resources to influence international organizations and alliance systems for individual state gains that lead to global inefficiencies and trade-offs where individual major power goals contradict the public good, or the national interests of other states. Perhaps the most dangerous such inefficiency is the rising risk of nuclear war, as countries like the U.S. and China compete to impose their competing visions of the future on the world.

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How to bring Russia into INF compliance — without triggering a war

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 3, March 2019  

Anna J. Davidson
Scholar and Researcher

A photograph depicts an army vehicle from close-up. An urban landscape appears in the background.

Russian S-400 air defence missile systems roll at Red Square during the Victory Day military parade in Moscow. Source: Dmitriy Fomin via Flickr

ABSTRACT   For all intents and purposes, the prevailing wisdom in both East and West suggests that the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is lost. On 4 March, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree officially terminating his country’s participation in the INF “until the United States of America rectifies its violations of the said Treaty or until it expires.” This action mirrors that by the United States in early February that accused Russia of violating the Treaty and instigated the six-month withdrawal process. Both of these steps follow five years of continuous effort by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to compel Russia’s compliance with the stipulations of the INF to no avail. As the August deadline approaches, the United States and Russia face three options: reach a mutual agreement on one another’s compliance to preserve the INF, draft a new arms control agreement, or allow the INF to expire and risk a renewed arms race as both countries continue developing their defense capabilities. Despite the wide acceptance of the latter, a potential incentive for Russia to return to INF compliance, and thus preserve the Treaty, exists in the Kremlin’s relationship with Ankara. As a NATO member state, Turkey finds itself in a unique position with the United States as an ally and Russia as a strategic partner. Turkey’s desire to purchase both the American Patriot and the Russian S-400 missile defense systems presents an opportunity to increase the value of Turkey’s partnership with Russia and decrease the significance of Russia’s need to develop missiles noncompliant with the INF. Turkey insists that it will proceed with the purchase of Russia’s S-400 systems regardless of Washington’s willingness (or lack thereof) to offer the American Patriot systems, as the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act currently obstructs the purchase of Russian S-400s by Turkey. Yet, Turkey and Russia are proceeding with the exchange while simultaneously deepening cooperation in the Syria crisis, particularly Idlib. If the United States and NATO leverage Turkey’s request for the Patriot systems and take advantage of Russia’s urge to sell its S-400s to Turkey, the opportunity for a renegotiation and recommitment to the INF Treaty remains within reach.  Continue reading →

Japan Forgetting: A Syndrome Afflicting U.S. Foreign Policy

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 10, October 2018 

A naval ship, the JS Suzutsuki 117, is photographed at the Hanshin Base.

The JS Suzutsuki 117 at the Hanshin Base, 2015. Source: Hunini via Wikimedia Commons.

Arthur Waldron, Ph.D.

University of Pennsylvania

Hearing an analyst say recently that we must come to terms with China, led me to spit out my coffee and ask myself, more importantly, “What about Japan?”

Forgetting about Japan, or what might be called “Japan forgetting”, is a besetting failure of American foreign policy. It has been since the early years of the last century, most notably after 1922 when the Anglo-Japanese alliance, a source of stability comparable to the 1887 Reinsurance Treaty of Bismarck and Wilhelm I. In 1890 when Wilhelm II refused to renew the treaty, leading in part to World War I.

The end of the Anglo-Japanese alliance came with the Washington Conference of 1921-22. If you are serious about understanding China, read the “Conference on the Limitation of Armaments”, which was published by the U.S. Government, half in English and half in schoolboy French, so it is not as formidable as it appears. It is the indispensable starting point.

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Tackling the South China Sea Together: British and French Navies Chart a Course

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 6, June 2018 

Pictured are Royal Navy Marines taking part in a simulated beach landing using Landing Platform Dock ships. Two ships appear in the foreground, with a larger one in the background.

Pictured are Royal Navy Marines taking part in a simulated beach landing using Landing Platform Dock ships.
The Assault Ship HMS Bulwark is visable in the distance. The Marines were part of the NATO Exercise, Trident Juncture. The role of the Landing Platform Dock ships, HMS Bulwark and HMS Albion, is to deliver the punch of the Royal Marines ashore by air and by sea, with boats from the landing dock in the belly of the ship and by assault helicopter from the two-spot flight deck. LPDs can carry 256 troops, with their vehicles and combat supplies, and this can be swollen up to 405 troops. Source: Defence Imagery via Flickr.

Peter M. Solomon

Government and Regulatory Affairs Consultant

At a September 2015, joint press conference at the White House, China’s President Xi Jinping stood beside U.S. President Barack Obama and said, “China does not intend to pursue militarization” with respect to “construction activities that China are undertaking” on the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.[1] Since then, China has established several offensive capabilities in the region, including surface-to-air and anti-ship missile systems on three features in the Spratly Islands and the ability to deploy strategic bombers from the Paracel Islands.[2]  In comparison to the United States, which has been a consistent critic of China’s reclamation and militarization and has embarked on numerous freedom of maritime navigation exercises in the region, the European Union (EU) has historically been reserved in its comments regarding China’s activities in the South China Sea. Instead, the EU has limited itself to general comments about the importance of maintaining freedom of the seas and resolving disputes peacefully. While these statements are not without importance, the lack of a more critical, unified EU approach to China’s destabilizing activities has left missing a crucial voice. The tides could soon turn.

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Reason, Imagination and Invention in the South Pacific: The Laser Beam Kiwi

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 6, June 2018 

Three troops in uniform pose with the "Laser Kiwi" flag. A New Zealand flag is visible in the background.

Troops pose with the “Laser Kiwi” flag, submitted to the New Zealand Flag Consideration panel in 2015 by James Gray. Source: Reddit.

Bernard Cadogan, Ph.D.

Foreign Affairs and Diplomatic Advisor to King Tuheitia, the seventh King of the Maori Kiingitanga

Address to the U.K. Defence Academy, Shrivenham, 7th February 2018

New Zealand is proof that nature does not always abhor, a vacuum. The country is truly, “the last, the loneliest and the loveliest” as Rudyard Kipling declared Auckland to be in his “Song of the Cities”. Strategic systems never tolerate vacuums. They punish confusion and ambivalence. New Zealand is no redoubt, nor is it overlooked.

The intention of this address is to consider New Zealand’s sense of geopolitical reality. Are we proof that the Versailles Conference unassociated Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nation state has been outclassed in the 21st century Pacific? Are we a living fossil ?

Woodrow Wilson envisaged a world in which there would be no assemblages such as empires, nor alliance systems even. Sovereignty-pooling exercises such as the European Union and Mercosur or Caricom would have been anathema to Wilson. They are not an option for us.

When asked at the Versailles Conference, why we had made the effort we did in the Great War, our Prime Minister Bill Massey replied, “we did it for Civilisation”.

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