Transatlantic Academy

Despite its alleged inconsistency, the foreign policy of the European Union was successful with the enlargements of 2004 and 2007. The enlargements resulted in an increased number of EU members with important votes in qualified majority voting (QMV) and crucial influence over the unanimous decision-making. Meanwhile, the Lisbon Treaty is meant to foster greater cooperation among the member-states and make the EU speak with one voice in terms of foreign policy. This article analyses the political and institutional dynamics in the EU foreign policy decision-making process after the enlargements and in the wake of the Lisbon Treaty. Focusing on the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), the article tracks the dynamics in the CFSP evolution and identifies the potential impact the Lisbon Treaty may have on the consistency and coherence of EU foreign policy. The findings show that contrary to predictions the enlargements did not have negative effects on the institutional or political dynamics of the CFSP. However, the Lisbon Treaty, by introducing new institutions and responsibilities as part of creating more efficient institutional framework, has instead created confusion and institutional competition.

Encouraged by its success with the enlargements of 2004 and 2007, the EU has developed its European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). This paper aims to analyze in the case of Armenia the potential effectiveness of the ENP in democracy promotion in post-communist states and to further test the applicability of the international socialization framework to democracy promotion studies. The paper classifies the strategies of the ENP by analysing ENP documentation. To identify and classify the domestic conditions, this paper traces the domestic political and economic situation at the time of ENP enforcement and examines international reports for balanced assessment of the country’s political situation. The findings indicate that the strategies of the ENP in Armenia do not correspond to the domestic conditions and are insufficient for successful democracy promotion. The paper shows that the theoretical framework can be applied to democracy promotion studies increasing their predictive value and opportunities for generalization.

The EU has failed to use either the European Neighbourhood Policy or the Eastern Partnership to leverage reform in Armenia. Armenia saw its inclusion in the Eastern Partnership as a path to gaining EU membership and a way of resolving ongoing problems with its neighbours. However the EU is neither actively involved in conflict resolution nor strongly committed to closer political integration with its Eastern partners. The EU needs to upgrade its political engagement with Armenia in order to head off probable instability. Armenians look to the EU for a role in promoting democratic progress, conflict resolution and support for civil society.

Countries included in the European Neighbourhood Policy, like the three republics of the South Caucasus and Moldova, are unlikely to join the EU any time soon. Still, according to different rankings, their performance is not so different from that of current candidate countries Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (fYROM) at the time those countries were granted candidate status (2004-2005)

After the Cold War, three powers have emerged in international politics. While the United States has already established itself as a key international leader, though is attempting to limit an imperialist label, the EU and Russia struggled throughout the 1990s over their somewhat fuzzy and multiple identities. However, around 2000 the latter two began to have more distinct international images. While Putin made a concerted effort to reacquire Russian influence, EU Commission president Barroso compared the EU to the organisation of empire. The purpose of this article is to analyse the extent such imperialist claims correspond to the adopted ideal type of an empire and whether they are supported by adequate foreign policies. This article also aims to categorise the specifics of foreign policies of each of the aforementioned actors, because a coherent foreign policy is a relevant indicator of actorness. This article tracks developments from 2000, which marked the elections of Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush and the enforcement of the EU Amsterdam Treaty, which supposedly shaped more coherent foreign policy by introducing the position of the High Representative.

While voicing its EU aspirations, Armenia has not been as outspoken as other EU Eastern neighbours, largely due to its security dependence on Russia. Nevertheless, Armenia’s interest in the EU has grown since the launch of the Eastern Partnership. The country’s government expects that cooperation with the EU will bring material benefits such as aid, trade and investment, while the opposition and civil society hope that the EU will contribute to strengthening democratic institutions in the country.

What is the content of Europeanization? Which causal relationships should be explained? Which theory should be used? In answering these questions, the article forwards a conceptualization of Europeanization based on Historical Sociology and Social Constructivism, which implies a departure from the practice in the current Europeanization literature to concentrate on the contemporary with a narrow focus (EU-ization) at the expense of the historical with a broad focus (Europeanization). It is suggested that the causal relationships to be explained are the transfer of European ideas across time and space using a ‘present-as-reality’ definition of the European idea set. In doing so, it becomes apparent that Europeanization cannot be accepted as either static or something that is solely connected to the EU, and that Europeanization has been characterized by diffusion patterns going both into and out of Europe and sociological processes involving subtle shifts in process, structure, agents and conceptions of ‘Other’ and ‘Significant We’.

WASHINGTON (May 5, 2014) – A group of scholars from the United States and Europe argue in a new report that the transatlantic partners should:
•engage China’s military to provide cooperative security in the Mediterranean region via NATO;
•be willing to modify the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) to regain consensus on the norm among emerging powers post-Libya; and
•acknowledge a geographic division of labor within NATO, in which Europe takes greater responsibility for crises in its neighborhood while the United States is more engaged in Asia.

Since Russia’s incursion into Crimea and Ukraine, the importance of collective defence as the prime concern of the Atlantic Alliance has been a recurrent theme. Many argue that the dramatic deterioration in the relationship with Russia calls for NATO to ‘go back to basics’ by concentrating on collective defence, whilst downgrading NATO’s other core tasks; cooperative security and crisis management.

In the policy brief I argue that the problem with the ‘going back to basics’ narrative is that it emphasises just one aspect of the changing security environment, but neglects other important changes. What is actually needed is a new transatlantic bargain that reflects the new strategic environment.

The Policy Brief argues that NATO cannot simply go back to basics because despite the appearance of the emergence of ‘old Cold War-like problems’ the strategic environment that is currently unfolding is very different from the strategic environment of the Cold War. To be sure implementing the decisions taken at last year’s Wales Summit to reassure Eastern and Southern allies and to enhance NATO’s readiness and ability to live up to its Article Five commitments are important and must be implemented.

However, in the new security environment participation in, crisis management operations is not an optional extra but is the foundation of a new implicit transatlantic bargain in which the ‘price’ for the continued relevance of the American security guarantee is an active contribution to order-making in the vicinity of Europe whilst the United States pursues an increasingly difficult global role. The alternative would be a retrenching America both in Europe and globally.

This report is about how NATO might adapt to a shifting strategic environment. The strategic environment that is currently unfolding seems likely to be characterized by
complexity and increased diversity in both power and principle. The report focuses on how the Alliance needs to respond to the on-going changes by moving forward at the upcoming Warsaw Summit from the decisions taken at the September 2014 summit in Wales. The report starts from the premise that, although the decisions taken in Wales were important and long overdue, they are not sufficient to facilitate NATO’s continued adaptation to a fundamentally changed strategic environment. The challenge for NATO in the future will be to find a way to contribute to European and global security in a strategic environment in which the Alliance and ‘the West’ have a
diminished role among new and (re)-emerging actors and in which liberal values and Western principles for order-making can no longer be assumed to be universal. The report suggests that NATO should assume the development of a future strategic
environment that can best be described as a ‘multi-order world’. NATO should prepare for such a multi-order world by collective defence initiatives from the Wales Summit and by revitalizing NATO’s partnership policy. The report suggests that ‘going back to basics’ by concentrating on collective defense would be an inappropriate response, as the new strategic environment requires the Alliance to undertake change in all of its three core tasks if it is to remain relevant in a ‘multi-order world’.

The article addresses the question of what kind of global order is in the making. It identifies three current narratives about the future global order; a multipolar narrative; a multi--partner narrative and a multi--culture narrative. The article demonstrates that although each narrative point to a plausible future, neither presents a complete understanding of what lies ahead. By using English School concepts such as order, international society, international system and primary and secondary institutions, the article presents an alternative conception of the coming global order by focusing on order--making at the international system level and at the international society level and the emerging relationship between them. It suggests that what seems to be emerging is several different 'orders' (or international societies) nested within an overall international system. In the coming 'multi--order world', the liberal international order will continue to exist, and should even be strengthened in preparation of the coming multi--order world. However, its global reach will be a thing of the past. Therefore policies that prescribe the universalization of liberal values and that emerging powers be co--opted into the existing liberal order engage in wishful thinking, whilst policies prescribing a return to a balance of power politics base their analysis on an incomplete understanding of order-making institutions. The article suggests that the challenge in a multi--order world will be to forge new relationships with the understanding that inter-action will increasingly be between composite and diverse actors in addition to the already complex relationships between states. Policy--makers should take note that the coming multi--order world is a radically different international system, which will require new thinking and the acceptance of diversity in both power and principle.

The League of Nations Assembly passed a resolution in September, 1931 to consult the press about the “spread of false information which may threaten to disturb the peace or the good understanding between nations”. By September 1932, 16 nations and two international associations of journalists had replied with suggestions for the Third Conference of  Press Experts in Madrid in 1933. This article uses these proposals from journalists as a springboard to discuss how we can use comparative and transnational history to understand the press’s role during the interwar period. After analyzing the current methodological debates on comparative and transnational history, I address the uses of both for histories of the press. How can comparative or transnational history help us to investigate the press? How can scholars think about journalists’ associations and conceptualize their role within the interwar diplomatic framework? More specifically, how did the press fit into League of Nations’ efforts towards disarmament? Ultimately, an investigation of  the two methodologies shows that we cannot class the press neatly into national boxes, but rather have to recognize the messy networks that overlapped, crisscrossed, and intersected to create those apparently national press systems.

This article examines the early years of Transocean, a news agency owned and run by the German government, and its use of wireless telegraphy from 1914 to 1922. This investigation of the infancy of wireless technology demonstrates that technology plays a constitutive role in defining news. The German government used the new possibilities innate in the medium of wireless to carve out their own sphere of operation in the seas and on continents where German telegraph news had never played a major role, in particular East Asia. Wireless telegraphy enabled the German government to circumvent the British communications blockade in World War I. Afterwards, Transocean’s wireless transmissions to East Asia and ships en route caused an uproar in Britain disproportionate to its circulation. It was the Germans’ innovative use of wireless telegraphy that other nations, particularly the British, found most disturbing, rather than the content of the reports themselves.

This article explores the changes in news agency mechanisms that accompanied the restructuring of Europe after World War I. During the interwar period, a new form of negotiation replaced the pre-World War I conception of English, French and German spheres of influence with a more cooperative vision of the collection and dissemination of news. I argue that the private and business-oriented nature of news agency cooperation enabled it to outlast better-known political attempts at multilateralism. Indeed, it often produced more concrete results by offering different incentives for cooperation to all involved from large global agencies, such as Reuters, down to the small agencies of new Central and Eastern European nation-states. Overall, the agencies' cooperation until the outbreak of World War II suggests alternative periodizations of the interwar period than the division into a fairly internationalist 1920s followed by the increasing bilateralism of the 1930s.