9,414 research outputs found
Romania: Euro-Atlantic Integration and Economic Reform
The importance of President Clinton\u27s visit to Bucharest goes far beyond the symbolism represented by the first visit of an American president to a free and democratic Romania. Euro-Atlantic integration does not start when a country states its commitment to being a candidate for North Atlantic Treaty Organization (\u27NATO\u27) or European Union (\u27EU\u27) membership and does not end with the moment of accession. Among Central European nations, accession to NATO has enjoyed the greatest public support in Romania. Romania\u27s integration into the European Union is the other foreign policy goal that, together with accession to NATO, is considered indispensable to Romania\u27s development as a stable and prosperous free market democracy. Romania took advantage of the instruments set up by the EU which are meant to assist Central European associated countries in their preparation for accession. Economic integration does not take place overnight; negotiations for accession to the EU of Finland, Sweden and Austria -- prosperous European nations and former European Free Trade Agreement ( EFTA ) members -- lasted for four years. The prospect of EU membership has been a main factor that has enabled Romania to become a member of Central European Free Trade Area ( CEFTA )
PREPARED STATEMENT by Dr. Simon Serfaty Before The International Relations Committee Subcommittee on Europe Hearing The U.S.-European Relationship: Opportunities and Challenges House of Representatives, 25 April 2001
NATO\u27s Second Post-Cold War Enlargement
Novi ciklus širenja NATO-a odvija se u fazi kad sjevernoatlantska organizacija t raži mogućnosti za svoje vlastito održanje, transformaciju i daljnje postojanje kao glavni temelj euroatlantskih odnosa. Iako se nakon 11. rujna očekivalo da će ulazak novih članova biti prilično restriktivan, čini se da je prevladalo mišljenje da se u NATO pozove sedam od deset država iz MAP-a. To novo veliko širenje, najveće u povijesti NATO-a, vodi računa o političkim , geostrategijskim i vojnim kriterijima kao i o raspoloženju javnog mišljenja. Svi ti elementi različiti su u sedam zemalja, no očita je želja da se preko Slovenije i Slovačke poveže krug zemalja Srednje Europe, da se ulaskom tri baltičke države isprave stanovite povijesne nepravde i da se ulaskom Bugarske i Rumunjske osigura glavna crta NATO-a za 21. stoljeće u odnosu na istočni Mediteran, Bliski istok, Gulf, a i šire. lako su novi kandidati bolje pripremljeni od onih iz prvog kruga širenja, očito je kako je u Washingtonu i Bruxellesu odlučena da se prednost da političko-diplomatskom djelovanju NATO-a i da se s većim brojem novih članica zaokruži prostor euroatlantske zajednice kao sigurne cjeline koja stoji u savezništvu sa SAD.New round of NATO enlargement is taking place in a period when the North Atlantic organization seeks after possibilities of its own survival, transformation and future existence as a principal basis of Euro-Atlantic relations. Even though it was expected that after September 11 accession of new members would be quite restricted, it seems that an attitude prevailed which supported the accession of seven out of the ten MAP members. This new major enlargement, the largest so far in the history of NATO, takes into consideration political, geostrategic and military criteria as well as public opinion. All these elements differentiate in these seven countries. However, there is a prominent effort to link the countries of Central Europe through Slovenia and Slovakia, to redress certain historical wrongs by allowing accession to the three Baltic countries, and to secure by Bulgarian and Rumanian membership the main axis of NATO for the21st century with regard to the East Mediterranean, the Middle East, the Gulf and further afield. Although the new candidates are by far better prepared than those in the first round of enlargement, it is obvious that Washington and Brussels have decided to give priority to political and diplomatic activities of NATO and to integrate the area of Euro-Atlantic community with a greater number of countries, so that it forms a sound community which is in alliance with the USA
Political economy of \u201cfrozen conflicts\u201d in ex-Soviet states: challenges and prospects for the U.S. and Russia
Sharing the Burden of Collective Security in the European Union. Research Note
This article compares European Union (EU) burden-sharing in security governance distinguishing between assurance, prevention, protection, and compellence policies. We employ joint-product models and examine the variation in the level of publicness, the asymmetry of the distribution of costs and benefits, and aggregation technologies in each policy domain. Joint-product models predict equal burden sharing for protection and assurance because of their respective weakest-link and summation aggregation technologies with symmetric costs. Prevention is also characterized by the technology of summation, but asymmetry of costs implies uneven burden-sharing. Uneven burden-sharing is predicted for compellence because it has the largest asymmetry of costs and a best-shot aggregation technology. Evaluating burden-sharing relative to a country?s ability to contribute, Kendall tau-tests examine the rank-correlation between security burden and the capacity of EU member states. These tests show that the smaller EU members disproportionately shoulder the costs of assurance and protection; wealthier EU members carry a somewhat disproportionate burden in the provision of prevention, and larger EU members in the provision of compellence. When analyzing contributions relative to expected benefits, asymmetric marginal costs can largely explain uneven burden-sharing. The main conclusion is that the aggregated burden of collective security governance in the EU is shared quite evenly
The ISCIP Analyst, Volume II, Issue 3
This repository item contains a single issue of The ISCIP Analyst, an analytical review journal published from 1996 to 2010 by the Boston University Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and Policy
NATO: the view from the East
Relations between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus and NATO have placed more emphasis on cooperation than confrontation since the Cold War, and Ukraine has begun to move towards membership. At the popular level, on the evidence of national surveys in 2004 and 2005, NATO continues to be perceived as a significant threat, but in Russia and
Ukraine it comes behind the United States (in Belarus the numbers are similar). There are few socioeconomic predictors of support for NATO membership that are significant across all three countries, but there are wide differences by region, and by attitudinal variables
such as support for a market economy and for EU membership. The relationship between popular attitudes and foreign policy is normally a distant one; but in Ukraine NATO
membership will require public support in a referendum, and in all three cases public attitudes on foreign policy issues can influence foreign policy in other ways, including the composition of parliamentary committees. In newly independent states whose international allegiances are still evolving, the associations between public opinion and foreign and security policy may often be closer than in the established democracies
- …