THE BASQUE CONFLICTS AND E.T.A. TERRORISM TODAY

Author(s): Raluca Coșea / Language(s): English Issue: 9/2014

Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA) translated as Basque Homeland and Freedom, was founded in 1959 by a group of men from Bilbao, Spain. This organization had an extreme impact on Spanish politics and society in Europe and one of the most important factors of ETA’s radical nationalism were women members. Basque women were active in all areas of ETA, including the military wing, political party’s trades unions, etc. After Scotland’s vote against its independence from Britain, it is possible that other separatist movements across the globe, from Europe to Asia, to the Middle East, to Africa will start sending signals for breaking all borders. The political fights all over the world, Scotland, China, fighting with the Uighurs in Xinjiang and Tibet, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran, started a fire in people’s hearts. Catalonia and the Basque Country in Spain and Flanders in Belgium, are considered the most influential regions and similar with the political and socioeconomic conditions of Scotland. In October 2011, the Basque separatist group ETA announced the cessation of its armed activities, but no one will assure that terrorist actions will not happen again.

MAREA NEAGRĂ ȘI RESUSCITAREA UNUI UNIVERS STRATEGIC COMPLICAT

Author(s): Sebastian Popescu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 30/2017

La Mer Noir ne se trouve pas – on n‘y en a été jamais – à la lisière d’une géopolitique désuète et dans la rémanence d’un horizon impérial oublié par le monde. La Mer Noir a été, depuis toujours, une région de grande intérêt géopolitique et géostratégique, et les temps d’aujourd’hui n’ont pas changé ni l’auréole, ni la vocation et ni la destination de celle-ci. Elle a été et a resté toujours un endroit géométrique situe quelque parte entre la condition de pilier géostratégique entre les mondes et civilisations et celle de faille géopolitique immanente, qu’on n’a jamais pu le fermer, mais seulement le chiffonner parfois, dans l’effet rémanent des guerres dévastatrices, l’endormir souvent et, notamment, toujours la ressusciter et la repose tranchant sur la panoplie du Zeus Mars. Aujourd’hui, on arrive exactement la même chose.

World Economic Conflicts. The New American Paradigm: Intermarium vs. Russia’s Destabilization Strategy

Author(s): Angela Mihaela Ene / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

The approach of the topic on a new concept launched in Croatia, in 2016, but with older roots in Poland, is a notion which began to take shape with its validation, through the presence of the American President in Warsaw and, as such, is worth being analyzed in the context of a future evolution on the world stage. The three seas initiative (the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Adriatic Sea) essentially aims to provide energy and security assurance towards Russia, as well as a new liquefied gas market for USA, which turned from an importer into a an important exporter on this market.

EU and Russia: Kosovo-Serbia Negotiations

Author(s): Veton Surroi / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2019

Disunity between the EU member states (with five member states not recognizing the independence of Kosovo) has weakened the position of the EU’s foreign policy regarding Kosovo-Serbia relations. This disunity has opened further space for Russia to successfully disrupt an attempt by the West to establish consolidated liberal democracies in the territory of former Yugoslavia. The policy of disruption was undertaken by supporting the Serbian positionof obstructing state-building in Kosovo. It was also carried out through a successful disregard of the International Court of Justice’s opinion in July 2010 recognizing that Kosovo’s declaration of independence did not contravene international law. The EU was given a mandate by the UN General Assembly to normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia. Its External Action Service had undertaken a long and rather unsuccessful attempt to reach something resembling “normalization”. But it got bogged down in micromanaging details while not establishing viable principles of negotiation. The logical consequence of such an approach is an anti-European idea of swaping land and people, entertained throughout 2018 by the Presidents Vučić and Thaçi of Serbia and Kosovo, respectively. With the failure of such an approach, there is now an opportunity to return to European values defining bilateral relations between Kosovo and Serbia.

Southeast Europe in Russia’s Current Foreign Policy

Author(s): Ekaterina Entina / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2019

The region of Southeast Europe is currently in a turbulent phase of its history. It is trying to finally put an end to the problems that arose after the collapse of communism almost 30 years ago. For a long time, the international community and the Balkan states themselves gave integration into the European Union top priority in the hope of achieving stability and prosperity in this part of the continent. Today, with the increasing influence of various international actors in the region – China, Turkey, Russia, and Arab countries – and problems within the EU itself, internal problems have also arisen within the region. The twin issue of internal security and external challenges became acute again. There is a trend to overestimate the Russian foreign interest and its presence in the region from the Western side. The article is devoted to the analysis and description of how Russia can be understood as an external actor in the Western Balkans. It equally focuses on the question what the most constructive ways are to stabilize the Balkan region and solve its current problems.

Gdzie leży Polska? Konstrukcja położenia geopolitycznego państwa w Europie Środkowej

Author(s): Beata Ociepka / Language(s): English,Polish Issue: 02/2019

The aim of this article, entitled “Where is Poland? Constructing the State’s Geopolitical Position in Central Europe”, is to introduce the concept of country location, understood as governmental policy, redefining the geopolitical position of the country and its role in international relations, as framed by the processes of European integration. The author starts the analysis with the presumption that public diplomacy and nation branding are the basic tools of countries’ location. The hypothesis of the study says that although the very idea of location is deeply rooted in constructivism as a theory of international relations, it is not at odds with the realist approaches. To verify this hypothesis, the author confronts a country’s location with the concept of the “spatial turn” in social sciences. She elaborates on the cases of Poland and the Baltic states. The author presumes that centrally located Poland as a middle rank country is a case that is suitable for location. The author implements discourse analysis, indicating these narratives in discourse on politics in Poland after 2004, which consisted of orientational metaphors, shifting Poland from the east to the west, and then to the north. Eventually, the author coins the idea of a swinging location, illustrating it with Poland’s going back to Central Europe, “between the seas”.

Szanghajska Organizacja Współpracy w kształtowaniu procesów regionalnych i globalnych

Author(s): Gracjan Cimek / Language(s): English,Polish Issue: 02/2019

Qualitative changes have appeared in the international system. Since 2010, the corrosion of the previous order has been accompanied by the formation of a multi-polar world. Like any qualitative change, also the present one means intense rivalry and contradictions. The essence of contemporary geopolitical rivalry can be described by applying the division into the Euroatlantic and Eurasian worlds. The center of the Euroatlantic geopolitics is currently the G-7 with the hegemonic role of the USA; while the economic center of the Eurasian space is located in East Asia, China (PRC), and militarily Russia lying in the socalled heartland; India also has an important position. International organizations are very important in this game. The aim of the article is to show the functioning of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in the situation that both India and Pakistan became simultaneously new members. The main research problem is: what significance does this fact have for the shape of the international order? In the article, I verify the hypothesis that SCO fits in with the aspirations of actors functioning in the Eurasian space to create a multi-polar world. In order to verify the main hypothesis, I verify the detailed hypotheses: the first recognizes that the cooperation between China and Russia in the SCO has linked the regional and global aspect from the beginning; the second assumes that the admission of new members and the aspirations of others change the function and increase the global significance of the institution. The last one accepts that the emerging tangle of new interests and contradictions between the Member States and external powers reveals the formation of a multi-polar world. In the article, I accept the perspective of the geopolitics of critical realism, in which I focus on the functioning of centers of strength, interactions between them and the effects of global, regional and local space. The considerations are conducted from the point of view of the development of the profit-in-international relations. The following research methods have been used: historical, comparative, decision-making method, system method.

Pakt z diabłem, czyli rzecz o „Operacji Kondor”

Author(s): Alicja Fijałkowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 774/2019

A náci lágereket megjárt Kornis Ottó újságíró sorsa

Author(s): Zoltán Tibori Szabó / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 4/2019

To the lawyer and journalist from Cluj Ottó Kornis we owe the fi rst volume about Auschwitz and a number of other Nazicamps, a volume he wrote immediately after returning to his hometown and which was published by the Minerva Institute forLiterature and Typography in Cluj in November 1945. The book went unnoticed, and its author was forgotten. The present studyseeks a reconstitution of his life and activity at the commemoration of the tragedy of the Holocaust in Northern Transylvaniaafter 75 years.

PROBLEMS OF THE FORMATION OF POST-SOVIET STATES IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBALIZATION PROCESSES (USING THE EXAMPLE OF UKRAINE)

Author(s): Alexey Zaporozchenko / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

The article provides a socio-philosophical overview of the phenomenon of globalization as a process of modern world history and considers the place and role of Ukraine in the context of European integration; which is regarded as one of the main aspects of globalization. The author describes researchers’ different views on the phenomenon of globalization and also shows the complexity and ambiguity of this process in the economic; political and sociocultural aspects. The article considers factors that negatively affect the effectiveness of European integration and the development of a strong; independent; competitive state. The author describes the difficulties faced by Ukraine in the process of European integration. It is concluded that Ukraine is situated in the zone of peculiar geopolitical and temporal fronts; where the Euro-Asian and Euro-Atlantic paradigms are confronted.

الرؤية االستراتيجية اإليرانية للشرق األوسط

Author(s): Hazim Hamad Mousa Aljanabi / Language(s): Arabic Issue: 2/2019

The Iranian strategic vision has double standards; this is obvious from its plans,intentions and strategic movements. That the double standards role makes itas a center of attraction and antagonism in the same time. The Iranian behaviorbuilds on unstable base, because of choosing between the two roles of dominanceand friendship or enmity and good neighborly in order to make the Iranian-Middleeast relationships seems foggy and vagueness. The more adopting of the Iranianstrategic vision on the three-dimensional pillar (power-wealth-revolution), the moreincreasing of strategic imbalance in the Middle East, and achieving the Iraniandream.

Chiny i ład światowy w dobie rywalizacji z USA

Author(s): Michał Cholewa / Language(s): Polish Issue: 777/2020

This time is different. The globalization of uncertainty

Author(s): Paul Dobrescu,Mălina Ciocea / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

“Some warn that the disease will be remembered not only as a human catastrophe, but also as a geopolitical turning-point away from the West. Are they right?” (Minton Beddoes, 2020). Irrespective of the answer, this question raises the unsettling issue of the viability of the current international order. This is not a singular voice. For instance, Henry Kissinger unequivocally asserts that “The coronavirus pandemic will forever alter the world order” (Kissinger, 2020). Analyses focusing on the geopolitical impact of the current pandemic often employ apocalyptical imagery.

SYMBOLIC IMPORTANCE OF DIPLOMATIC PROTOCOL: COMMON HERITAGE AND ORDER OF PRECEDENCE OF SEVEN COUNTRIES OF FORMER YUGOSLAVIA

Author(s): Jana Arbeiter / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

The order of precedence, as a constituent element of diplomacy, is a framework that different actors obey and enforce in their relations. It guarantees equality among sovereign states, and at the same time establishes power relations between different actors. Therefore, analysing it can help understand, firstly, the symbolic power of a particular post or institution according to its position in the order of precedence, and secondly, how a common historical legacy is translated into the diplomatic practice of a country. The aim of this paper is to analyse whether there are any similarities between the seven countries of former Yugoslavia, and to show how the theoretical concept of habitus is transferred into practice. The seven countries of former Yugoslavia, with their common geographical, historical, cultural, anthropological and socio-political elements, are examined using historical analysis in combination with analysis of the diplomatic structure in order to show the similarities in their orders of precedence. Cross-country comparison offers a thorough analysis of common features and divergences among countries, which is important when focusing on a particular region with a common historical and socio-political legacy.

Reunificarea României. Elemente de infrastructură geopolitică

Author(s): Radu Baltasiu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 03+04/2018

How should we take into account the issue of the reintegration of Bessarabia, the geopolitical and geo-economic opportunities of the Trimarium and the Black Sea Belt? On the one hand, idealized, as part of the national ideal, and pragmatic, from the perspective of de-velopment opportunities to strengthen relations with close and distant neighbours, perhaps even to strengthen the national and regional security. But, more than anything, let us think of strengthening relations with the Romanians around the borders, which must be part of the geopolitical function of the Romanian state in Europe. However, in order to make such a thing happen, the ethnopolitical component must be reintroduced into the administrative reflex and in the social circuit. In this logic, the reunification with Bessarabia, can be seen as a natural endeavour to exercise its Ponto-Baltic function, in relation to which Trimarium, for example, becomes an opportunity. Starting from the thesis of Simion Mehedinți’s ponto-baltic isthmus, and from Golopenția’s theory of the function of the infrastructure, we will address some ele-ments that we consider important in the reunification process. We will also use recent research on reunification costs. This sketch is a starting point and not a wider approach to the issue.

Northern Kosovo, Historiography and Geostrategic Overview During The 20th Century

Author(s): Mustafë Haziri / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

Historical and economic importance in northern Kosovo and its geographical position is so large and valuable that it is impossible in this scientific paper to be included in a comprehensive manner that all that should say, but we will try that chronological order to present a scientific look at the character of historiography, economic, and social Albanian historiography which unintentionally has lacked a special scientific treatment. Making a historigraphy overview will present some aspects which retrospective of our history has had an important role in the overall flow of vital events that have characterized the political and social developments in subsequent general. In the end I believe that through this survey historiography will reach conclusions that the events that have determined economic, political and social developments, have been closely linked to overall developments in our country. So if at some extent, will arrive here this goal in the treatment of important events for me would be a moral satisfaction.

Military Operations of the Romanian Fleet in Danube Delta and The Blak Sea in the Summer of 1944

Author(s): Stefan Gheorghe / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

The differences between the Romanian and Soviet naval commandments would appear soon, even in the issue of the military collaboration with the aim of ensuring the seacoast against the danger represented by the German ships. The imperative requests for the admission of the war and auxiliary fleets would be received by the Romanian Commandment of the Romanian Naval Forces, namely by the Rear Admiral Horia Măcelariu, on August 29th, at a time when “the Romanian forces had already begun fighting against the German forces” (Dutu, 2000, p. 241).

Solving the Crisis in Ukraine from the Perspective of The European Union’s Geopolitical and Economic Interests

Author(s): Angela-Mihaela Ene / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

Eastern Europe has represented and still represents a vast space for the coexistence of European civilizations, but also an area with extremely interesting and attractive economic potential for economically developed states or entities. From these perspectives, not infrequently, the geopolitical crises or the geostrategic interests of the great forces in this space have led to the appearance or even the deliberate triggering of actions designed to create social, political and economic destabilization.Our approach, in this article, intends to underline and define essential aspects of the Ukrainian crisis which, at this moment, seems to have identified its solution by implementing a negotiation format, namely the Steinmeier format. Even though this path bears this name, as it was proposed by the President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the solution finds its origins in the Normandy negotiation format, which was the basis for the conclusion of the Minsk Peace Agreement of 2015.Actually, what we will define further in this paper is that the interests of Germany and France, at this time, are congruent with the interests of Russia and not with NATO's strategic partner, the United States of America. This congruence derives from purely economic reasons to which Germany clearly acquiesces, the main point of interest being the Nord Stream II gas pipeline and France wishing only to strengthen its role of geostrategic power in relation to Germany.

Role of Assumptions in Security Environment Analysis

Author(s): Mircea Mocanu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

In the Information Age, the information overload transfers the burden of information business from obtaining data and information to its selection and processing, in the effort to produce studies or intelligence useful for international relations management. The criterion for selecting information is its relevance for a specific analytical task. By information relevance one can understand the degree of association between certain information and the issue of interest, or the measure that information matches the requirements for clearing the analytical problem. How can this be established? Of course, not directly, because there is no map of connections within information,although a key-word list or an index of terms might be available.

Why Russia is involved in the Syrian Civil War: One Issue, Many Views

Author(s): Clement Ndidi Oligie / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

The paper analyzes Russia’s role in Syria’s civil war, and indicates that while Russia’s military intervened in the civil war to prevent the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad-led Syrian government, it has remained difficult to really understand the ends Russia seeks to achieve from the war. This necessitated inquiry into the question of why Russia’s military intervention in Syria’s civil war is aimed at keeping President Bashar al-Assad in power. Consequently, the paper discovered sixdifferent scholarly explanations of this question, which include that: Russia’s military activity in Syria aims to protect its geopolitical and geostrategic interests and sphere of influence in the Middle Eastfrom western encroachment, to advance the conservative orientation of Russia’s ruling elite, to defend the United Nations laws on non-intervention and State sovereignty and prevent the institutionalization of a wrong interventionist precedent the West will readily exploit in the future, to crush Islamist fundamentalism and Jihadist ideology, to pursue realist ambitions, and to implement self-help measures that will guarantee its survival. The paper concludes that, of these six explanations, the realist explanation offers the most compelling answer to Russia’s goal in Syria’s civil war because it forms the basis other explanations are built upon.