'The Loud Dissenter and its Cautious Partner' - Russia, China, global governance and humanitarian intervention

The global issue of humanitarian intervention has become more pronounced and complicated in recent years due to increasingly diverging views on addressing security crises between the West on one side and Russia and China on the other. Despite their support for the principles of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P), both Russia and China are wary of Western intervention in internal conflicts after the Cold War and have become increasingly critical of Western-led armed intervention in humanitarian conflicts. Unease in Beijing and Moscow over the multilateral intervention in the 2011 Libyan conflict and their ongoing opposition to Western policies in the Syrian Civil War since 2011 would seem to point to ever more coincidence in their negative views of American and Western intervention policies. A conventional wisdom has thus emerged that there is something akin to a Sino–Russian ‘bloc’, with near-identical policies of discouraging armed intervention within state borders under the aegis of humanitarian intervention or the R2P doctrine, signed in 2005 (2005 World Summit). However, closer examination of Russian and Chinese positions on the Libyan and Syrian conflicts, drawing on normative and identity perspectives, reveals significant differences in how both states address intervention in civil conflicts involving human rights emergencies. Indeed, the Libyan and Syrian cases suggest that the distance between the two states on ‘acceptable’ policies toward international intervention in civil conflicts may actually be increasing. While Russia has assumed the role of the ‘loud dissenter’ in global dialogs on humanitarian intervention, China has opted for the position of a ‘cautious partner’

China\u27s hegemonic intentions and trajectory: Will it opt for benevolent, coercive, or Dutch‐style hegemony?

China\u27s unprecedented economic growth led some scholars to conclude that it will replace the United States as the future global hegemon. However, China\u27s intentions in exercising future global leadership are yet unknown and difficult to extrapolate from its often contradictory behaviour. A preliminary overview of China\u27s island building in the South China Sea reveals its potentially coercive intentions. This inference is consistent with the analysis of those who prognosticate China\u27s violent rise. Conversely and simultaneously, China\u27s participation in peacekeeping operations and its global investments evince its benevolent hegemonic intentions, which are congruent with the argument of those who predict China\u27s peaceful hegemonic ascent. Confronted with these divergent tendencies in China\u27s recent international relations, and assuming its continued rise, it is, thus, essential to examine China\u27s strategic intentions and how these may ultimately project its violent or peaceful hegemonic rise. This article argues that the “Third Way” or “Dutch‐style” hegemony is highly instructive in this context and, thus, should be examined and added to the existing debate on China\u27s rise as either a benevolent or coercive hegemon. We argue that Dutch‐style hegemony may be the most viable way for China to proceed in its global hegemonic ascendancy

Energy security and shifting modes of governance

The concept of energy security fits uneasily into contemporary security debates. It is neither a clearly traditional nor a fully ‘non-traditional’ security issue. There are also limits to the social constructedness of the concept. This article argues that, while it is important to identify the differing securitizations of energy, these must be contextualized within the material realities and the differing historical modes of governance of the political economy of resources. This is essential for understanding the differing meanings accorded to energy security, the shifting modes through which energy is governed, and the extent to which energy security concerns drive international politics. In this context, contemporary concerns over energy security have both material and ideological dimensions: anxiety over the dual shift of power from West to East and from resource-importing to resource-exporting countries; and concern over the normative weakening of the neo-liberal mode of energy governance

An update of the Worldwide Integrated Assessment (WIA) on systemic insecticides. Part 2: impacts on organisms and ecosystems

New information on the lethal and sublethal effects of neonicotinoids and fipronil on organisms is presented in this review, complementing the previous WIA in 2015. The high toxicity of these systemic insecticides to invertebrates has been confirmed and expanded to include more species and compounds. Most of the recent research has focused on bees and the sublethal and ecological impacts these insecticides have on pollinators. Toxic effects on other invertebrate taxa also covered predatory and parasitoid natural enemies and aquatic arthropods. Little, while not much new information has been gathered on soil organisms. The impact on marine coastal ecosystems is still largely uncharted. The chronic lethality of neonicotinoids to insects and crustaceans, and the strengthened evidence that these chemicals also impair the immune system and reproduction, highlights the dangers of this particular insecticidal classneonicotinoids and fipronil. , withContinued large scale – mostly prophylactic – use of these persistent organochlorine pesticides has the potential to greatly decreasecompletely eliminate populations of arthropods in both terrestrial and aquatic environments. Sublethal effects on fish, reptiles, frogs, birds and mammals are also reported, showing a better understanding of the mechanisms of toxicity of these insecticides in vertebrates, and their deleterious impacts on growth, reproduction and neurobehaviour of most of the species tested. This review concludes with a summary of impacts on the ecosystem services and functioning, particularly on pollination, soil biota and aquatic invertebrate communities, thus reinforcing the previous WIA conclusions (van der Sluijs et al. 2015)

Marian Roberts, Developing the Craft of Mediation: Reflections on Theory and Practice

In Developing the Craft of Mediation, Marian Roberts proposes that mediation is akin to a craft with its focus on learning from experience and from others working in the field to develop and master knowledge and skills