9 Conflict management in the Caucasus via development of regional identity Olga Vassilieva Introduction the preconditions for and possibilities of Caucasian integration as a way of conflict management in the region. The 1990s has revealed that a common Caucasian identity might be used for ‘constructing’ a regional security community. To testify to this thesis, a significant part of the chapter addresses the question of how different identities have influenced the development of nationalism and cooperation, conflict escalation and conflict
This is a start-of-the-art consideration of the European Union’s crisis response mechanisms. It brings together scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds to examine how and why the EU responds to crises on its borders and further afield. The work is based on extensive fieldwork in among another places, Afghanistan, Libya, Mali and Iraq.
The book considers the construction of crises and how some issues are deemed crises and others not. A major finding from this comparative study is that EU crisis response interventions have been placing increasing emphasis on security and stabilisation and less emphasis on human rights and democratisation. This changes – quite fundamentally – the EU’s stance as an international actor and leads to questions about the nature of the EU and how it perceives itself and is perceived by others.
The volume is able to bring together scholars from EU Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies. The result showcases concept and theory-building alongside case study research.
and Conflict, the work was particularly interested in the extent to which a commonly accepted framework for understanding responses to conflict could be applied to how the EU responds to crises. The conflict response framework stretches from conflict management to conflict resolution and to conflict transformation, with conflict management the most conservative and conflict transformation the most
practices short-term conflict management efforts. What this suggests is an EU that in its external crisis response operations is not necessarily as norm-oriented as much of the EU literature suggests, but has increasingly moved towards a more realist and securitised approach to conflict management (see Bøås and Rieker, 2019 ). What is happening on the ground is therefore more an attempt of conflict
shift from conflict transformation to conflict management in international interventions. The third section draws on critical peacebuilding literature outlining how the mandate and the design of the mission were undermining its conflict transformation objectives. In the fourth section, we show how these transformation ambitions of the mission were fundamentally eroded in practice through de
emerged in that it had little viable capacity for crisis management. As this book will reveal, there has been considerable tension between the notion and practice of conflict management as a stand-alone and often technical intervention, and arguments in favour of more expansive interventions that take into account human rights, democracy, development, trade and a vibrant civil society. Either approach, and all
for dealing with security issues within the BSEC framework. The BSEC was initiated at a time when the region was already facing serious conflicts and the prospect of new tensions emerging was high. How do the statutory and other documents of the organisation refer to the security situation and the conflict management in the region? Although the BSEC was established ‘to ensure that the Black Sea becomes a sea of peace, stability and prosperity, striving to promote friendly and goodneighbourly relations’,6 the founding declaration, adopted on 25 June 1992, did not
of the extent to which an established framework of interpreting responses to conflicts (to categorise as conflict management, conflict resolution or conflict transformation) could be mapped onto crisis management, crisis resolution and crisis transformation. This part of the chapter starts from concrete experiences in the conflict settings, thus addressing potential intention–implementation gaps, and
This book focuses on the paradoxical character of law and specifically concerns the structural violence of law as the political imposition of normative order onto a "lawless" condition. The paradox of law which grounds and motivates Christoph Menke's intervention is that law is both the opposite of violence and, at the same time, a form of violence. The book develops its engagement with the paradox of law in two stages. The first shows why, and in what precise sense, the law is irreducibly characterized by structural violence. The second explores the possibility of law becoming self-reflectively aware of its own violence and, hence, of the form of a self-critique of law in view of its own violence. The Book's philosophical claims are developed through analyses of works of drama: two classical tragedies in the first part and two modern dramas in the second part. It attempts to illuminate the paradoxical nature of law by way of a philosophical interpretation of literature. There are at least two normative orders within the European ethical horizon that should be called "legal orders" even though they forego the use of coercion and are thus potentially nonviolent. These are international law and Jewish law. Understanding the relationship between law and violence is one of the most urgent challenges a postmodern critical legal theory faces today. Self-reflection, the philosophical concept that plays a key role in the essay, stands opposed to all forms of spontaneity.
contribution to the avoidance of violence in a number of potentially dangerous situations in the OSCE region, and that other conflicts have been moderated or prevented from escalating is further due to the rapid, but often unseen, work of these OSCE officials. Within the Eurasian region only the OSCE – in particular the Conflict Prevention Centre (CPC), with its missions and field activities, as well as the High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) – has a clear mandate, organisational structure, and significant acquired experience in the field of conflict management