working in a more difficult environment. If you look at management of major incidents and even terrorist attacks and so on, those people who had experience working in difficult emergencies overseas responded better; they understand how to deal with those crises. The NHS, and if you look at UK-Med specifically, has a cadre of people who are all trained in major-incident management, who are all trained in field exercises where they have to work as a team in difficult
Eurasian security governance has received increasing attention since 1989. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the institution that best served the security interests of the West in its competition with the Soviet Union, is now relatively ill-equipped resolve the threats emanating from Eurasia to the Atlantic system of security governance. This book investigates the important role played by identity politics in the shaping of the Eurasian security environment. It investigates both the state in post-Soviet Eurasia as the primary site of institutionalisation and the state's concerted international action in the sphere of security. This investigation requires a major caveat: state-centric approaches to security impose analytical costs by obscuring substate and transnational actors and processes. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon marked the maturation of what had been described as the 'new terrorism'. Jervis has argued that the western system of security governance produced a security community that was contingent upon five necessary and sufficient conditions. The United States has made an effort to integrate China, Russia into the Atlantic security system via the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. The Black Sea Economic Cooperation has become engaged in disseminating security concerns in fields such as environment, energy and economy. If the end of the Cold War left America triumphant, Russia's new geopolitical hand seemed a terrible demotion. Successfully rebalancing the West and building a collaborative system with Russia, China, Europe and America probably requires more wisdom and skill from the world's leaders.
2504Chap4 7/4/03 12:39 pm Page 69 4 Eurasia and the transnational terrorist threats to Atlantic security Phil Williams The terrorist attacks of September 11 on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not only the most audacious and successful terrorist attacks the world has yet seen, but also marked the maturation of what had been described as the ‘new terrorism’. It was a maturation in several senses. In the first place it revealed that trends identified by astute specialists such as Walter Laqueur, Bruce Hoffman and Ian Lesser were, in fact, well
Most Asian countries experienced a sharp economic slowdown beginning in the last quarter of 2000. The problems of a deteriorating external environment due in large part to the downturn in the US economy were exacerbated by the September 11 terrorist attacks. Countries that are closely linked to the global economy through trade and capital flows were more adversely affected than those where these linkages are weaker. In particular, Asian countries with heavier dependence on manufacturing, in particular the production and export of electronics, saw a larger decline in
, embedded in an EU and a NATO that, through their inclusive and non-aggressive character, do not permit the ‘alliance– counter-alliance’ structure of the Europe of the past. An intricate ‘European security architecture’ – provided by the two institutions mentioned plus others – may be confusing and overlapping, but may also preserve peace and co-operation via their multiple activities. Co-operation intensified following the terrorist attacks against the United States on 11 September 2001, leading to a broad anti-terrorism coalition spanning the Atlantic and beyond and
extraordinary high result can be attributed to the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC (the previous month produced an approval score of 42 per cent), since early 2000, Congress has been consistently receiving higher approval than disapproval ratings. 162 The United States Congress Opinion polls are a good snapshot of the public mood at one time, but as the results from November 2001 show, they can be influenced by a variety of factors. The problematic question of whether Congress ‘works’ is, though, an important one. This chapter will examine
-scale anti-terrorism operation to release hostages, peacekeeping operations, and disaster-relief and rescue missions.19 Consequently, the September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, only underscored the vital importance of the PfP exercise in Georgia and the Black Sea the preceding June, which tested the skills and procedures required to deal with real world crisis scenarios. From Poland to Georgia, Europe and Eurasia have experienced the evolution of a cooperative security process that provides the framework for former enemy states to train and
security governance complexities of balancing entangling external linkages with the preservation of unique domestic economic and political programmes and prerogatives. There has been an understandable post-Cold War tendency to discount Russia’s continuing regional capabilities and commitment to its Eurasian leadership position. Indeed, the dramatic September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States and consequent insertion of American military power in Central Asia further complicated Russia’s FSU leadership aspirations and may launch a new era in the Eurasian
Given the significant similarities and differences between the welfare states of Northern Europe and their reactions to the perceived 'refugee crisis' of 2015, the book focuses primarily on the three main cases of Denmark, Sweden and Germany. Placed in a wider Northern European context – and illustrated by those chapters that also discuss refugee experiences in Norway and the UK – the Danish, Swedish and German cases are the largest case studies of this edited volume. Thus, the book contributes to debates on the governance of non-citizens and the meaning of displacement, mobility and seeking asylum by providing interdisciplinary analyses of a largely overlooked region of the world, with two specific aims. First, we scrutinize the construction of the 2015 crisis as a response to the large influx of refugees, paying particular attention to the disciplinary discourses and bureaucratic structures that are associated with it. Second, we investigate refugees’ encounters with these bureaucratic structures and consider how these encounters shape hopes for building a new life after displacement. This allows us to show that the mobility of specific segments of the world’s population continues to be seen as a threat and a risk that has to be governed and controlled. Focusing on the Northern European context, our volume interrogates emerging policies and discourses as well as the lived experiences of bureaucratization from the perspective of individuals who find themselves the very objects of bureaucracies.
organisational elements, which enabled it to present itself once again as a credible party of government. Moreover, the renewal of Rodríguez Zapatero’s mandate at the March 2008 general election effectively neutralised charges that he was simply an ‘accidental’ prime minister, who owed office to the particular circumstances in which the 2004 general election took place, just days after Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on Madrid. The chapter adopts a chronological approach. First, the party’s transformation from near irrelevance into a party of government under Felipe González will