Cooperative Security in Europe: New Wine, New Bottles

This is a report on the life, and reported near-death, of one of the most powerful concepts in recent European political history: cooperative security. Europe is where the concept originated, blossomed, and has experienced its greatest tests and successes. However, neither its intellectual parents nor the practitioners who found it so useful in their efforts to shape a new post-Cold War international order would concede that cooperative security is a concept restricted by geographic limits. As they see it, Europe is the first, but not the only, region where the principles of cooperative security can be applied. They would also reject the cultural bounds suggested by critics--that it is a concept reserved only for advanced/democratic societies, with enough prosperity and social harmony to allow for consensus and confidence. There are many different explanations and claims about how the Cold War ended and why Europe, long the cockpit of war and violence, has now been transformed into a harmonious political landscape. Realists and Reaganites find the major cause of the change in the collapse of the Soviet state, unable ultimately to reform its sinking economic system or to answer the great challenge of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Supporters of inevitable American primacy see the triumph of irresistible American values, of democracy and its commitment to cooperation and problem solving. Others, followers of integration theory, affirm Jean Monnet’s basic principles: that routine, continuous interaction, even amongst enemies, brings about the building of trust and the search for converging, if not common, interests. Most ardent perhaps are the advocates of civil society practices and human rights: they argue that change came slowly but surely from below, and in spite of, the state level, as populations in Eastern Europe sought and reacted to cross-border initiatives and ultimately designed their own revolutions. Whatever the claims, Europe is now almost completely whole and free. Armies no longer face off across the Central European plain. Few border disputes remain and few populations are now subject to repression, fear, hostility, or systematic mistreatment. It is the application of the principles of cooperative security that has led to a far different Europe than one could have dreamed about in 1989. There is more than enough praise and credit for this to go around--for personalities from Gorbachev and Yeltsin to Reagan and Bush and groups such as the opposition East Germans, the determined Hungarians under Gyula Horn, and even the ever-ambiguous Czechs. There are hot spots still on the periphery, but Europe is a zone of peace. This is not the result of striking a new balance of power; it is even less related to dreams of a European supranational entity based on integration or world government. Europe is a space inhabited by sovereign states with varying levels of trust in one another, which have chosen and continue to choose a different way of co-existence and mutual reassurance within a region that was so often the site of great violence and cruelty. The national actors in this space have done so--not always elegantly or proficiently but generally with non-violent resolution--in the face of continuing crisis flares on the periphery--in the Balkans, in the Caucasus, in the Baltic region, in Georgia, and in Ukraine. The argument here is that these European states have been able to coexist peacefully precisely because Europe and its transatlantic/Eurasian frameworks have developed new habits of transparency, mutual confidence, and a regard of violence as a last resort, undergirded by a persistent trend toward institutionalization and constant communication at all societal levels. This is not the result of the West’s victory. Europe has often been the site for experiments in cooperative security structures; when successful it has been a beacon for others to follow, though when results have been less impressive, others have also taken note. Two decades of experimentation and debate have produced few close parallels to any of the specific structures in Europe. But the technologies of transparency and verification are being honed there for all to see, with lessons to be drawn as others choose. But there is still more to do in Europe: • to help develop effective forums for another attempt at cooperation with a transformed Russia, even as it experiences internal political turmoil and doubts about the future course of the European experiment; • to smooth and offset recent US-EU turbulence as post-Lisbon Europe becomes a global foreign policy player and faces new fiscal and geopolitical challenges, including a debt crisis that threatens the future of European institutions; • to provide new tools for managing Europe's unstable periphery; • to overcome the long-neglected gaps in Eurasian resource tussles, in energy demand and supply, and in the inequitable balance of access and assured supply; and • to modernize, if not overhaul, arms control and confidence-building measures in Europe, to reduce the risks of conflict, military accident, and repression given the threats of the 21st century. This essay attempts a second interim assessment of the concept of cooperative security, its impact on the future of European security, and its potential generalization to issues beyond arms control and to other non-European areas, revisiting themes developed in my 1994-1995 work for the Brookings Institution. It will look first at the concept and how it has been critically assessed over the last twenty years. It will ask whether the model can be replicated, and demonstrate that there is much to suggest that such replication should be attempted. It will then examine three of the core elements in its development and in its evolution. There will also be a review of test cases in the present, particularly the challenges faced in a future wave of arms control negotiations, and in the construction of a missile defense system against rogue or terrorist attack on Europe. Moreover, there are new and difficult areas for global applications and for further broadening and deepening the reach and grasp within Europe, such as the battles against proliferation risks and against homegrown and external bases of terrorist activity. Finally, there are the new economic threats, exemplified by Europe’s search for energy security

Missile Defense in Europe: Progress Toward an Uncertain Outcome

Even before its announced completion date of 2018, the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) to regional missile defense in Europe can declare victory. So far it has been implemented close to schedule and below budget despite continuing problems related to cost, debates about financial burden sharing, and Russia’s warnings about its threat, real or imagined, to European security and stability. Russian aggression in Crimea and Ukraine and its intervention in Syria have helped to shore up broad political support for the project. The sharp tension trajectory of Russian-NATO relations and the need to reassure Eastern European allies does however mean that Russia and a few domestic critics will continue to see EPAA as a political lever to stoke the fires of uncertainty about U.S. commitment and to play on the fears in Eastern Europe of abandonment in their first hours of need should a Russian attack occur. Expansion of the EPAA’s capabilities beyond the current projected capability of the system by 2018 will be difficult given the costs and the competing demands for missile defense assets elsewhere around the globe. Barring any significant ratcheting up of Russian threats and other security risks in Europe, significant expansion of the EPAA is unlikely, but so is any reduction in commitment to the project as it stands now. However, there are many assumptions and challenges still to be discussed and confronted if EPAA is to fulfill all of the political and military expectations set first by the George W. Bush administration and the revised version under the Obama administration. This essay will examine each of these challenges in turn, and gauge the seriousness of the dangers and risks, both political and military, involved. There is little present evidence that the EPAA is at risk of drastic changes to its planned deployment, either in favor of increased capability or a decreased U.S. commitment to fulfilling the promises already made. This is as it should be. The EPAA, to quote Brad Roberts, is not a “fool’s errand.”i What remains to be seen is how the United States and NATO will address the challenges, old and new, that face the EPAA and indeed all aspects of reliance on missile defense to deter and defend against growing threats

The role of military assistance in the problem of arms control : the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa

"August 10, 1964.""1398. Rev. 9/15/64."--handwritten on coverIncludes bibliographical references"Prepared under contract with the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency."General considerations -- The regional role of military assistance: the Middle East -- The regional role of military assistance: Latin America -- The regional role of military assistance: Afric

Missile Defense, Extended Deterrence, and Nonproliferation in the 21st Century

The following papers were commissioned as part of the Missile Defense, Extended Deterrence, and Nonproliferation in the 21st Century project supported by the Project on Advanced Systems and Concepts for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (PASCC). The papers have two general purposes: 1) to create a body of work that provides an overview of the missile defense developments in major regions of the world; and 2) to provide emerging scholars the opportunity to conduct research, publish, and connect with each other. We believe we have succeeded on both counts. The papers written for this project will be valuable for academics and policymakers alike, and will be published and disseminated by the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland. This element of the project has also been successful in further bringing together a new cadre of experts in the field and developing the next generation of academics and public servants who will benefit from their participation in this project. These papers were completed in the Fall of 2016

A DevOps Capability - The IVI DevOps Effectiveness Assessment

The DevOps Effectiveness Assessment (DEA) is a new IVI assessment drawing on the IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF). The assessment provides a holistic analysis of an organization’s DevOps maturity, and identifies the key relevant IT-CMF Critical Capabilities (CCs) to aid improvement. DevOps refers to a set of technical, architectural, and cultural practices aimed at increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of delivering business needs into production, through improved communication and collaboration between business, development, and IT operations. The DEA is based on rigorous academic research and collaboration with experts from leading organizations. This paper outlines the key insights from this research, which have informed the development of the DEA