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631. Hypotheses on the Implications of the Ukraine-Russia War

Author:
Barry R. Posen
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Defense Priorities
Abstract:
Structural realism is a useful tool to examine the implications of the war in Ukraine for global politics. Because structural realism emphasizes the anarchic nature of international relations, it suggests the war is unsurprising, a reminder that states still compete for security, sometimes violently, and the prudent will prepare for it with tools for self-preservation. The realist lens also sees lessons for nuclear deterrence: The prospect of mutual nuclear destruction constrains great power war and has limited U.S. and NATO support for Ukraine. Other states may take note and seek their own nuclear deterrents. The war demonstrates some limits of economic interdependence, which not only failed to pacify Russia, but also left Russia exposed to economic coercion, in a way both it and China may look to avoid in the future. Other important lessons for states from a realist perspective include the importance of military power—large, capable armies and the enduring advantages of defensive warfare, especially when infused with nationalism. The war leaves the “liberal international order,” a byproduct of the eroding post-Cold War U.S. power position, looking threadbare, but it is thus far reviving the U.S. Cold War coalition—a less liberal grouping—which could prove useful in dealing with China.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, NATO, Sanctions, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Eurasia, and Ukraine

632. Ukraine-Russia War Military Analysis

Author:
Daniel L. Davis
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Defense Priorities
Abstract:
In the opening phase of its invasion of Ukraine, Russian armed forces made major errors in both the operational and tactical realm, costing the lives of thousands of its troops. Ukraine, by contrast, performed well above expectations and brought the Russian offensive against Kyiv and Kharkiv to a halt. Russia subsequently redeployed a major portion of its combat power, away from Kyiv and Kharkiv, to reinforce its attack on Donbas. This shift plays to Russia’s strengths and exposes Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) to greater risk. Russian forces have made slow but methodical progress on the northern shoulder of the Battle of Donbas, putting 10,000 UAF at risk of encirclement in the Sievierodonetsk pocket, like the loss they suffered at Mariupol. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared Ukraine will not stop fighting until all Ukrainian territory has been liberated.1 To have a chance of accomplishing that objective, Ukraine would likely need to recruit and train an additional 100,000 troops, at least, a task that would take 12–18 months, and equip its forces with a comprehensive set of modern, heavy weaponry, provided by the West, numbering in the thousands of armored vehicles and associated weaponry. There is great risk for Ukraine in undertaking such an attempt. It is unclear whether NATO will provide sufficient modern weapons or whether Ukraine can successfully hold off Russia while also recruiting and training so many more troops. If Russia defeats Ukraine in the Battle of Donbas, Kyiv will face a difficult choice: (1) to dig in and continue fighting, even though much of its most effective forces will have been captured or killed, and risk steadily losing more territory or (2) negotiating with Russia to trade territory lost since 2014 for peace to stanch further losses of Ukrainian lives and land.
Topic:
Defense Policy, NATO, Armed Forces, Conflict, Military, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Eurasia, and Ukraine

633. Questions Concerning Finnish Membership in NATO

Author:
Mike Sweeney
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Defense Priorities
Abstract:
Admitting Finland into NATO constitutes a permanent defense commitment by the alliance. In the case of the United States, it also entails a further extension of its nuclear umbrella. Such moves warrant a fulsome public debate, not a rush to action. Consideration of the defensibility of Finland must take into account a revitalized, long-term Russian threat, not just the force currently mired in a grinding war in Ukraine. More thorough discussion is needed about Finland’s capacity to defend itself and the level of outside support it would require from NATO and, specifically, the U.S. military. Regardless of whether it admits Finland, NATO should support it in any future crises with Russia. But the nature of that support changes depending on whether Finland is an alliance member or not, with attendant implications for the level of risk NATO incurs. U.S. forces cannot be everywhere at once. New, permanent security commitments in northern Europe need to be examined relative to other U.S. global priorities.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, NATO, Alliance, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Europe, Ukraine, Finland, and Eastern Europe

634. The EU Green Deal. A new momentum for democratic governance in the MENA region?

Author:
Dina Fakoussa
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
IEMed/EuroMeSCo
Abstract:
Dysfunctional governance and repression lie at the heart of social, economic and political challenges and crises in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The nature of governance, whether autocratic, corrupt, crony capitalist, highly centralised, patriarchal and/or merely incompetent, led to alarming socioeconomic and political grievances. These grievances accumulated over decades sparking region- wide protests in 2010, 2011 and subsequent years. Without major improvements in the quality of democratic governance,1 further crises are inevitable, and sustainable stability will remain unattainable, with major negative repercussions for the European Union (EU) itself. Naturally, climate change is augmenting these challenges and increasing the pressure on government performance. The EU Green Deal addresses this uniquely urgent matter in need of assertiveness, namely climate change with its worldwide palpable repercussions and impact for all. The deal has serious implications for economies and hence societies in MENA countries. At the same time, it could and must serve as a vehicle for improved democratic governance in the region. This is also in the interests of the EU’s green ambitions, as lasting environmentally sound and socially just policies in countries beyond the EU will hardly materialise without improvements in the area of democratic governance. The two subject areas are mutually dependent; hence, the durable success of climate policies is unlikely without being buttressed by democratic components. This understanding needs to be mirrored in all EU policies and programmes targeting the region by interweaving climate policies with democratic governance.
Topic:
Climate Change, Governance, European Union, Democracy, Repression, and Green Transition
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Middle East, North Africa, and MENA

635. Youth unemployment in the South of the Mediterranean: A chronic challenge to development and stability

Author:
Hussein Suleiman
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
IEMed/EuroMeSCo
Abstract:
Unemployment among youth, aged 15 to 24 years old according to the International Labour Organization (ILO)’s definition, is the highest in the south of the Mediterranean, and in the larger Middle East and North Africa (MENA), compared to other regions in the world. This problem is exacerbated by very low labour force participation rates for this age group in the region, also compared to other regions. Furthermore, this issue of high youth unemployment is not a recent development but has been chronic in the region for at least the last three decades, as shown in detail further on. Youth unemployment south of the Mediterranean is a major challenge, and a symptom of deeply-rooted problems in the region’s labour markets. Unemployment is largely a youth unemployment issue. The problem is mainly one of new entrants’ transition from school age to work (Assaad & Krafft, 2016) but with consequences that could easily shape the entire life trajectories of individuals in the region and also have widespread impacts on their societies and even neighbouring countries. Such worrying and chronic challenges in the region’s labour markets have been largely shaped by structural deeply-rooted issues, reflected in the rise of work informality as a result of falling public employment, and a slow growth of formal private employment in the region throughout the last few decades, which will be discussed in detail in the paper. This paper aims to provide policy recommendations to address such chronic problems in the region, focusing mainly on Southern Mediterranean countries in North Africa, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, excluding Libya because of the exceptional impact of the civil war on its labour market during the last decade. The paper first explores some prominent implications of low employment among the youth, for their own lives and their societies. It then proceeds to examine the magnitude of the problem in the selected countries and its development across the last three decades, relying mostly on ILO estimates, which, unlike national estimates, have a few missing entries in that extended period, and also allow for disaggregation by age groups and gender that might not always be available for national estimates. Next, the paper highlights the now-established explanation of the youth employment problem in the region and how it developed, before finally moving to the recommended policy measures, both domestic and through regional cooperation, to address this chronic problem that has played a major role in the radical political and social shocks in the region in the last decade.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Employment, Youth, and Unemployment
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Middle East, and Mediterranean

636. Developing EU Trade Incentives: A Support Tool for Refugee Self-Reliance and Host Community Resilience in Turkey

Author:
Basak Kale
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
IEMed/EuroMeSCo
Abstract:
The European Union (EU) is developing innovative mechanisms to investigate the root causes of migration in order to offer better socioeconomic opportunities both to migrants and host communities. These mechanisms and actions require multi-country bilateral and regional assistance tools to support different partner countries. Innovative and out-of-the-box ideas include multiple countries and various stakeholders. They are developed to provide cooperation solutions in different regions to have a wider impact on the causes and implications of migration. Despite these efforts, political, social, economic and environmental causes continue to generate human mobility around and beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the EU. The Arab Spring and the civil war in Syria have been creating human mobility in the EU neighbourhood. The war made approximately 7 million Syrians flee to neighbouring countries. Turkey is hosting around 3.7 million Syrians and another half a million asylum seekers and refugees from other regions (DGMM, 2021; UNHCR, 2021). The presence of Syrians in Turkey, together with other refugees benefitting from international protection, has become protracted. The efforts to create durable solutions in the form of “voluntary return, resettlement or local integration” have not yet successfully provided sustainable solutions. Turkey does not pursue an official state integration policy to integrate asylum seekers, refugees and the Syrians under temporary protection (STP). However, STPs, asylum seekers and refugees are becoming increasingly integrated into their host communities through informal and local integration mechanisms (Kale & Erdoğan, 2019). The delay in the access to formal employment and challenges in receiving formal employment permits aggregate the difficulties in the inclusion of refugees into formal employment schemes. Summer 2015 has shown that when there is a lack of economic and employment opportunities for asylum seekers, refugees and persons under temporary protection the incentive to have onward movement to other countries persists and the possibilities of integration in host communities stay low. It is clear that resilience-building and livelihood support through formal work is essential for vulnerable populations to have dignified living conditions in host countries. The EU-Turkey Statement in 2016 triggered the development of changes in the legal framework of international protection and migration policy. The Statement paved the way for the preparation of regulations on work permits for persons under temporary and international protection (Official Gazette, 2016). Legal developments targeted the acceleration of the economic integration of refugees into the Turkish labour market through formal employment. However, the difficulties in getting formal work permits resulted in only 132,000 issued until 2019. This indicates that approximately 4% of the STP working population has formal employment (UN Turkey, 2020). This percentage more or less matches the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimations (ILO, 2020). As a result, the majority of the refugee population is working informally, underpaid (Balkan & Tümen, 2016), without formal social and health security mechanisms, in unskilled jobs that are not wanted by Turkish citizens (Sunata, 2017). Informal employment has been a key element contributing to the lack of durable solutions and a protracted process. In Turkey, informal employment is widespread even among the host community members. It is estimated that there is about 30% of labour in host community among all sectors working unregistered. Informal employment is higher in sectors such as agriculture but significantly lower in the industrial sector. The COVID- 19 pandemic has also aggravated the increasingly poor state of the Turkish economy (Akay Ertürk, 2020). Previously, there were continuous efforts through FRIT (Facility for Refugees in Turkey) and 3RP (Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan) projects with programmes focusing on improving the employability of refugees in the Turkish labour market as well as support for the entrepreneurship capacities of the refugees in accessing the formal labour market. However, under the current economic conditions these projects are failing to generate a significant long-term impact on employment for refugees (Özçürümez & İçduygu, 2020). These projects provide short-term trainings or restricted employment possibilities while including a very limited number of participants. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic conditions have shown that these livelihood support arrangements when they are not based on rights-based approaches overtime can transform back into humanitarian aid services (Kale & Yavçan, 2020). Long-term policy planning needs to include other incentive mechanisms that will cover multi-country and multi-region solutions. In the long run, if vulnerable populations in the host societies turn into the most vulnerable requiring humanitarian and emergency aid, the incentive for secondary movements to third countries can be high.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Regional Cooperation, European Union, and International Community
Political Geography:
Europe and Turkey

637. Could the EU’s New Agenda for the Mediterranean Turn Climate Change from a “Threat Multiplier” into an “Opportunities Multiplier”?

Author:
Desirée A.L Quagliarotti
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
IEMed/EuroMeSCo
Abstract:
The Mediterranean countries are char­acterised by evident gaps in terms of demographic growth, socioeconomic conditions and natural resources avail­ability, which undermine the process of Euro-Mediterranean cohesion and cre­ate a situation of structural weakness that makes them extremely vulnerable to destabilising events. In just over a dec­ade, the Mediterranean region has been affected by major changes that, at first glance, do not seem to be related to each other. The wave of pro-democracy pro­tests called the “Arab Spring” that has plagued the regimes of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) since 2010 has shown how climate-driven crop failures in major food exporting countries may contribute to driving up international food prices and to amplifying social and polit­ical destabilisation, especially in food-im­port dependent countries (Werrell & Femia, 2013). The “Arab unhappiness” that spurred the popular uprisings has not faded over the years, giving rise to what has been referred to as the “Arab Spring 2.0”. This new round of turmoil, in which protesters demand a better quality of life, has been exacerbated by 2020s COVID-19 pandemic, clearly demon­strating, once again, the close inter­connection between human well-being and planetary health.[1] In the same time frame, in the Northern Mediterranean Countries (NMCs), the migrant-refugee crisis, characterised by new migration waves triggered by traditional as well as unconventional push factors linked to the effects of climate and environmental changes, is becoming one of the most important and divisive issues in recent European politics, adding a new layer of instability to the already shaky European Union (EU) (Pawel & Roland, 2018).
Topic:
Climate Change, Regional Cooperation, European Union, and Green Transition
Political Geography:
Europe and Mediterranean

638. From a Fragmented Cooperation to an Integrated Approach – The Emergence of the Maghreb and Sahel Region and its Consequences for the European Union

Author:
Erzsébet N. Rózsa and Viktor Marsai
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
IEMed/EuroMeSCo
Abstract:
The history of the European Union (EU)’s foreign and security policy has been characterised by a continuous develop- ment and a process of adaptation to the realities on the ground and the experi- ences gained. This was manifest in the gradual change from bilateral relations to regional/multilateral structures, from trade through three-basket/three-pillar structured relations to the integrated ap- proach as introduced by the 2016 EU Global Strategy, and the institutionalisa- tion thereof. “Internal and external secu- rity are ever more intertwined: our secu- rity at home entails a parallel interest in peace in our neighbouring and surround- ing regions. It implies a broader interest in preventing conflict, promoting human security, addressing the root causes of instability and working towards a safer world” (EEAS, 2016). The present pa- per argues that, in order to be able to halt the increasingly complex threats fac- ing the EU and maintain its global actor status, the EU should introduce further – sectorial and regional – flexibility, in- cluding, among others, definitions of the widening geographical scope underlying its strategic vision. Therefore, this paper first asks how the EU and its member states should recon- sider their regional approach. How can the EU implement the existing frame- works and/or develop a more effective and adaptive strategy towards its south- ern neighbourhood fitting the new reali- ties on the ground better?
Topic:
Diplomacy, Regional Cooperation, and European Union
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, and Sahel

639. The EU as a Soft Power Superpower: Why a Green Marshall Plan for the Sahel Is Imperative

Author:
Friso Stevens and Dortih Kool
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EGMONT - The Royal Institute for International Relations
Abstract:
This research paper argues that the European Union should roll out a European Green Marshall Plan for ecosystem restoration and local governance in the Sahel region, located between the Sahara to the north and the Sudanian savanna to the south. Ecological degradation and related climate change put mounting pressure on the region. In combination with cyclical resource-related conflicts and the presence of terrorist and insurgent groups, this has created an increasingly volatile situation. European security and stability are indirectly at stake. The EU’s ‘Old War’ footing and support for illegitimate, corrupt, and autocratic governments to ‘mow the lawn’ of terrorists and insurgents fails to address and often undermines fundamental human security needs in the region. The authors propose a remodelling of EU foreign and security policy to shift focus from current securitization efforts towards facilitating a green, bottom-up transition that empowers local communities’ ecological stewardship by using their existing knowledge, skills, and dynamics, and Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR). Failure to make these changes toward a human security-centred approach means the EU’s current security and climate-related policies risk further undermining rather than contributing to regional security.
Topic:
Security, Diplomacy, International Cooperation, and European Union
Political Geography:
Europe

640. The Russian Soldiers’ Question Revisited

Author:
Joris Van Bladel
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EGMONT - The Royal Institute for International Relations
Abstract:
The Russian authorities apply an “algorithm of lies”, the Russian armed forces have become a sealed organization, and tactical information about Russia’s war in Ukraine is fragmented and unreliable. Hence, definite conclusions concerning the Russian soldier cannot be drawn.
Topic:
Security, War, Military Strategy, Conflict, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia and Europe