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After a long war on terror, two military campaigns and within the context of strategic transition, with the rise of new regional powers and a profound financial crisis, the United States is refiguring its global strategy and security policy in order to maintain its political hegemony and military supremacy. This article analyzes the changes that Washington is driving forward in terms of defense to adapt to its current situation.. Tras una larga guerra contra el terror, dos campañas bélicas y en un contexto de transición estratégica, auge de nuevas potencias regionales y una profunda crisis financiera, Estados Unidos está reconfigurando su estrategia global y su política de seguridad y defensa para mantener su hegemonía política, conservar la supremacía militar y combatir conflictos futuros. Este artículo analiza los cambios que Washington está adelantando en materia de defensa para adaptarse a la situación actual. Após uma longa guerra ao terror, duas campanhas bélicas e num contexto de transição estratégica, auge de novas potências regionais e uma profunda crise financeira, os Estados Unidos da América está reconfigurando sua estratégia global e sua política de segurança para manter sua hegemonia política e supremacia militar. Este artigo analisa as mudanças que Washington está realizando no tema da defesa para adaptar-se à situação atual.

Offers an insider's analysis of developments on the Korean peninsula and how North Korea was able to develop nuclear weapons. Provides a first-hand account of how the Six-Party Talks were initiated, with a step-by-step review of each round of negotiations, detailing the national interests of the key players.

This paper first assesses the salience of academic theories in the realm of security and defense policy, from the fields of both International Relations and European Studies. Theory is of relatively little assistance in understanding the phenomenon of a strictly—or even autonomously—European Union foreign and defence policy—in part precisely because of what I call negative differentiation. The second part homes in on the empirical reality of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). In this particular policy area, differentiation has always been the norm, or the negative starting point—rather than a developing trend or a potential solution. The third part evaluates the current (post-2016) “re-launch” of CSDP and the widely discussed dynamic behind the EU’s quest for “strategic autonomy”. This section analyses the depth and sustainability behind what is widely seen as a new attempt either to break away from or to positively embrace differentiation and to engineer an unprecedented marshalling of the collective security and defense resources of the European Union.

The study of maritime operations has generally been neglected in a European Security and Defense Policy debate that often focuses on political will, bureaucratic incoherence, and military interoperability. Nonetheless, maritime operations have played an increasingly important role in the last decade and deserve deeper analysis. First, they provide a valuable optic for identifying a dynamic change in policy priorities over time. Second, they suggest the conditions under which the EU can and cannot fulfill the Brussels leadership’s avowed role as a “global player.” Finally, they also illustrate the EU’s presiding tensions when it comes to external challenges: between rhetoric and behavior, institutionally with NATO, and of the shifting political priorities among national governments. In this article, we compare the EU’s two major maritime operations. The first, Atalanta, is a counter-piracy multilateral operation in cooperation with NATO and non-EU states off the Somali coast. The second, Sophia, has evolved from search and rescue to thwarting migrant flows in the Mediterranean. Among several conclusions, we suggest that the evolution of maritime operations demonstrates an increasing gap—between the EU’s rhetoric of having a global strategy and its regional operational security focus.

This monograph examines the legal dimension of European defence integration from the Second World War to the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe. It covers the evolution of European defence and security law in its legal,historical, and political context. The notion of defence law describes the entire field of rules created to regulate the defence of a nation or alliance. The analysis leads from the earliest mutual defence treaties to the failure of the European Defence Community and the eventual separation of defence from the mainstream of European integration in the 1950s, further to the re-vitalisation of a European security policy in the Treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam, and Nice. In the context of this evolutionary process, the book examines the function of Community Law as an instrument of European defence integration. Community law affects the economic and social aspects of the defence within the limits of the security exemptions of the EC Treaty. It has an impact on the composition of the armed forces, the procurement of armaments, or the regulation of the defence industries. The book concludes with an analysis of the Common Security and Defence Policy of the Constitutional Treaty agreed by the European Council in 2004. The discussion shows that European defence integration is characterised by fragmentation in an area where coherence is particularly important. First, defence and security are addressed in several organisations: the EU, the Western European Union, NATO, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the Organisation for Joint Armaments Cooperation. Second, defence and security are addressed in both the supranational Community Pillar and the intergovernmental Second Pillar of the Treaty on European Union. The new Constitutional Treaty aims to overcome the three-Pillar structure of the Union. Nevertheless, it leaves the intergovernmental character of the security and defence policy intact and introduces flexible frameworks for its mutual defence, crisis management, and armaments components. However, the Union needs a coherent defence policy to ensure her security and to speak with one voice on the international scene.

Looking beyond the headlines to address the enduring grand strategic questions facing the United States today American foreign policy is in a state of upheaval. The rise of Donald Trump and his \"America First\" platform have created more uncertainty about America's role in the world than at any time in recent decades. From the South China Sea, to the Middle East, to the Baltics and Eastern Europe, the geopolitical challenges to U.S. power and influence seem increasingly severe-and America's responses to those challenges seem increasingly unsure. Questions that once had widely accepted answers are now up for debate. What role should the United States play in the world? Can, and should, America continue to pursue an engaged an assertive strategy in global affairs? In this book, a leading scholar of grand strategy helps to make sense of the headlines and the upheaval by providing sharp yet nuanced assessments of the most critical issues in American grand strategy today. Hal Brands asks, and answers, such questions as: Has America really blundered aimlessly in the world since the end of the Cold War, or has its grand strategy actually been mostly sensible and effective? Is America in terminal decline, or can it maintain its edge in a harsher and more competitive environment? Did the Obama administration pursue a policy of disastrous retrenchment, or did it execute a shrewd grand strategy focused on maximizing U.S. power for the long term? Does Donald Trump's presidency mean that American internationalism is dead? What type of grand strategy might America pursue in the age of Trump and after? What would happen if the United States radically pulled back from the world, as many leading academics-and, at certain moments, the current president-have advocated? How much military power does America need in the current international environment? Grappling with these kinds of issues is essential to understanding the state of America's foreign relations today and what path the country might take in the years ahead. At a time when American grand strategy often seems consumed by crisis, this collection of essays provides an invaluable guide to thinking about both the recent past and the future of America's role in the world.

Ever since the Maastricht Treaty, the EU has been increasingly engaged in the military domain. More recently, many initiatives on intergovernmental EU cooperation have emerged in the area of Common Security and Defence Policy, such as those initiatives in the context of permanent structured cooperation (PESCO). At the same time, the Commission initiated policies and legislation on military industries based on the supranational regime of the internal market, such as the Defence Procurement Directive (DPD) which was adopted by the European Parliament and the Council in 2009. The EU Treaties, however, include a clear exception for military equipment and recognise national security as the sole responsibility of the Member States. The DPD aims to liberalise European armaments industries by imposing public procurement obligations on Member States for their military procurement. Such obligations, however, may conflict with the national security strategies of the Member States aimed at the survival of domestic industry. Consequently, Member States often still rely on the Treaty-based exception. This Article aims to provide a new legal approach to this conflict by, first, looking at the historic and legal context in which policies and legislation came about, secondly, determining the function of military procurement based on international relations theories and, thirdly, evaluating the internal market policies and legislation within this context. Finally, the author sets out a theoretical basis for legal interpretation of EU military procurement law. To overcome the conflict, the author argues for reconsideration of the internal market legal base of the military procurement regime and regulation of the legally controversial offset agreements.

The events currently taking place in Africa and the Middle East have effects not only in the region but also reflect on Europe. Given that the refugee problem has grown, the European Union seems to be overwhelmed, and in the absence of a common security policy at EU level, Member States have adopted their own measures, both in terms of securing and defending their borders and for helping migrants, many of which are contested by human rights organizations and refugee protection. All this led to the need for a common defense policy within the European Union, which Romania will have to take, replacing its national defense policy with the common one.

Civilian crisis management has long been considered the EU's forte. Recent research however has questioned the EU's claim to this specialization. I will interrogate how the EU has fared in building civilian capabilities for CSDP through a case study of the impact of the Europeanization of CCM norms in one of the newer EU member states - Poland. I investigate the domestic reverberations of an EU-level CCM governance - conceptualized as a vertical diffusion of norms - and a horizontal diffusion in the realms of policy setting, institutional adaptation, as well as in recruitment and training. I hypothesize that the European cognitive constructions and policy designs are the more likely to impact upon Polish security policy the more they resonate with the ideas embedded in the national security identity. Another intervening variable affecting the 'translation' of EU policy into the domestic context is state capacity. Due to weaknesses in the supply side of CCM and the refracting impact of national security identity and state capacity, I find that Europeanization has had a limited impact on the civilian response capability-building in Poland. Europeanization has been shallow, featuring adjustments on the margins rather than the core of the security policy. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

The aim of this article is to highlight the essence, the meaning and the role of EU civilian missions and military operations conducted under the umbrella of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The first two parts constitute an introduction which presents the institutional framework, scope and mandate of EU missions/operations as well as their nature. The subsequent parts constitute an attempt to answer the question of what distinguishes EU missions/operations and what their specificity is. In this context, the CSDP crisis management model is presented along with the significance of operations in building the EU's international identity and in strengthening the political dimension of European integration, especially in relation to security and defence policy. The main weaknesses and shortcomings of CSDP missions/operations have also been characterized. Thusly, eleven such weaknesses have been identified which, to a large extent, determine the shape, scope and nature of CSDP missions and operations carried out by the European Union.