2014 October » Transworld-FP7.eu

A Cold Peace? West-Russia Relations in Light of the Ukraine Crisis

Oct 212014

Transatlantic Symposium 2014 The seventh edition of the Transatlantic Security Symposium took place on 20 October 2014 in Rome. The conference focused on “A Cold Peace? Western-Russian Relations in Light of the Ukraine Crisis” and was organized in cooperation with the Center on the US and Europe (CUSE) at the Brookings Institution of Washington, DC.

As West-Russia relations have dramatically deteriorated following the Ukraine crisis, the Symposium provided experts and officials with a platform to discuss ways by which Russia and the West can contain tensions, manage competition, and keep cooperating on issues of mutual concern.

Over forty senior experts from think tanks and other institutions from a number of EU member states (France, Germany, the UK, Italy, Poland and Bulgaria), the US, Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey and Russia took part.

The debate was well-informed, lively and frank. Participants exchanged their ideas about four main topics, namely the nature of Russia’s leadership, the West-Russia competition in Eastern Europe, NATO’s role and Russia’s worldviews and position in the wider international context.

Newsletter #8

Newsletters

Oct 142014

Transatlantic Relations and the future of Global Governance

Article 5 under stress?

Transworld Op-Ed

Anne-Marie Le Gloannec

When Russia’s creeping invasion and swift annexation of Crimea was followed by a Russian-propelled ‘hybrid’ war in eastern Ukraine, some in the Atlantic community thought that the Kremlin’s actions would reinvigorate NATO by refocusing it on the mutual defence commitment enshrined in article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. A few months into the Ukraine crisis, however, uncertainty surrounds the future of the Alliance: [...] Read more

October 2014

Issue 8

Publications

Redefining the Transatlantic Security Relationship, by Anne-Marie Le Gloannec and Manuel Muniz
The transatlantic security relationship is built on strong and enduring shared values. Americans and Europeans share, on the whole, similar perceptions about the nature of power, the norms that should guide relations among states, as well as a desire to promote democracy and basic human rights. …
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The Future of the Transatlantic Economic Relationship: Opportunities and Challenges towards the TTIP, by Davide Tentori and Myriam Zandonini
The evolution of the transatlantic economic relationship has to be considered within the framework of a changing global environment. The bilateral partnership between the United States and the European Union is still dominant both in terms of trade and investment, although it is becoming less relevant in terms of …
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So close, but yet so far: European and American democracy promotion, by Nelli Babayan and Thomas Risse
What is the direction of EU and US democracy promotion and can we talk about a transatlantic democracy promotion? This paper addresses these questions from the perspective of transatlantic security communities and argues that joint transatlantic democracy promotion is still embryonic. …
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Handing Over Leadership: Transatlantic Environmental Governance as a Functional Relationship, by Eugenio Cusumano
Global environmental governance has experienced a remarkable evolution over the last two decades, seeing the United States handing over its leadership role to the European Union. This paper analyses the transformation of transatlantic environmental governance through the lens of three scenarios, namely …
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Transatlantic Collective Identity in a Nutshell Debating Security Policy at the Munich Security Conference (2002-2014), by Tobias Bunde
Social constructivists have always thought of NATO as the institutionalization of the transatlantic security community, based on a collective identity of a community of liberal democracies. Unfortunately, most researchers have just postulated this collective identity without studying …
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News

12 June 2014, Rome
Conference on “The paradox of American primacy: explaining foreign policy failures since the end of the Cold War“, with Stephen Walt, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. More

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		Contacts:Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) Rome, Italy, iai(at)iai.it www.transworld-fp7.eu

Transatlantic Partners and the Rising Powers on Global Governance in Human Rights

Global governance, Working Papers

Oct 142014

Transworld Paper No. 43

by Meltem Müftüler-Baç and Damla Cihangir-Tetik

What kind of a future is there for human rights governance, especially if the transatlantic partners – the key actors behind its establishment – are in decline? Do emerging powers participate and contribute to the international liberal order regarding human rights issues and democratic governance? These are important questions that play critical roles in shaping the future of human rights governance. The emerging powers face serious domestic problems and have shortcomings in terms of human rights. The paper provides a brief introduction regarding the human rights and democracy promotion policies of transatlantic partners as a part of their foreign policy endeavours. The paper further investigates the role of the rising powers in shaping the future of the global governance in the field of human rights, specifically by looking at the extent to which they prioritize human rights and democracy in their foreign policies, in particular in comparison to the transatlantic partners. The analysis of the paper enables us to understand the failure of the West in establishing a binding, institutionalized human rights regime and the subsequent opportunity that the rising powers found to expand their foreign policy tools and develop alternative development models by prioritizing their national and economic interests instead of considering fundamental human rights and democracy.

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Transatlantic Relations and Security Governance

Global governance, Working Papers

Oct 142014

Transworld Paper No. 41

by Riccardo Alcaro and Ondrej Ditrych

Historically, the system designed to ensure international security has its roots in the evolution of the European-centred balance of power into the transatlantic-promoted liberal order. Because the liberal order is so dependent on Western (US) power, the emerging multipolarity undeniably poses a challenge to it. Yet, even the most restive among the non-Western powers such as China and Russia have a stake in its endurance, meaning that multipolarity is not intrinsically incompatible with the liberal order. If centrifugal dynamics prevail, the transatlantic ability to shape security governance will diminish, largely as a consequence of Europe’s modest hard power and lack of strategic cohesion. On the contrary, if centripetal dynamics prevail, the Europeans can make use not only of their individual assets to address functional threats such as terrorism and regional crises but also exploit the soft power potential of the EU, whereby US power gains greater outreach and impact. Because US power is still so strong and the US-European partnership still enduring, the capacity of transatlantic relations to shape security governance has not vanished. Multipolarity has made the use of that capacity a more complicated exercise, but not necessarily a less effective one.

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