The West has spent significant amounts of money for the reconstruction of the Balkans. Overall assistance to southeastern Europe was significant, ranging between €6-6.5 billion per annum from 1995-2006. Aid peaked twice, as a response to post-conflict reconstruction: first in 1995-1997 due to the significant assistance given to Bosnia and Herzegovina (following the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords) and secondly in 2001-2002 due to the considerable amounts of aid given to Kosovo after the NATO bombings. Bosnia received massive amounts of humanitarian and reconstruction assistance. On average the country received about $730 million per year from 1996-2002. At $1,400 per head, assistance in the first two post-war years in Bosnia was higher than any other international state-building project since the Second World War. Kosovo also received massive amounts of financial aid in the 1999-2004 period: about $3.1 billion of international aid targeted mostly humanitarian priorities and helped rebuild most of the 120,000 houses destroyed in the violence. Significant assistance was also provided to Serbia after the end of the Milosevic era: from 2000-2005, Serbia received more the $3.5 billion. In total, throughout the last twenty years the European Union (European Commission and the member-states) provided about 66% of the assistance for the reconstruction of western Balkans and the United States about 15%. With regard to the relevant burden of the European Community and its member states, and with few exceptions (like Yugoslavia and Romania from 1991-1999), Community contributions were higher to much higher than all EU member states bilateral efforts taken together.

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In 2009 the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) celebrates its tenth anniversary. Throughout this decade, ESDP has been defined in relation to the existing system of collective security, NATO. As an expression of the quality of transatlantic relations in general, the relationship of ESDP and NATO has always been shaped by the following two contradictions. The first contradiction is the fact that the U.S. is demanding a more actively engaged Europe that is willing and able to bear a greater share of the burden of upholding the international order. At the same time, U.S. governments have been very reluctant in agreeing to a stronger and more independent political and military role for Europe. Europe is supposed to take more responsibility without gaining more say in political decisions. This is complemented by the European contradiction: Europeans demand exactly such a stronger political role for themselves while they remain unwilling to expand their (military) capabilities accordingly. They call for a responsibility they are not able to shoulder.

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When the EU was established and many decades after, one of its most remarkable characteristics was that it was an internationally recognized civilian power, a player on the international level that was able to maintain its status and recognition without the promotion or use of military power. However, the development of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) has raised widespread concerns over the EU’s identity as a civilian power and the gradual replacement of civilian power policy by military force. The Europeanization in the field of security and defence thus threatens to lead to a loss of control in executive decision-making on the use of military force by national parliaments which neither the European Parliament nor the former WEU have been able to compensate.

Many describe this process as the second strand of the ‘double democratic deficit’ that has been residing in the European Union. The first strand is the familiar notion of a general democratic deficit in the European Union, which has been a topic of debate ever since European Integration went beyond the establishment of a Free Trade Area. However, it is true that there are several grave distinctions that need to be made between the democratic deficit in the first and the one in the second pillar. Read the rest of this entry »

An agreement was tentatively reached on 21 October in Vienna between Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), France, Russia and the US. Details of the deal are still not public and the deal is not sealed yet (the Iranian delegation needs clearance from Tehran). Still, the general elements of the deal are known and they raise important questions and leave some critical matters of Iran’s nuclear dossier essentially unresolved. Iran has agreed to ship a significant share of its Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) stockpile to Russia for further enrichment. The fuel will then be processed into fuel rods and returned to Iran for use in its Tehran Research Reactor, under IAEA safeguards. Pending clarification of what additional elements the deal addresses and includes, here are five questions that presumably remain unanswered.

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The release of a much anticipated EU-commissioned  report  into the causes of the Russian-Georgian war of August 2008 predictably spread the blame for the conflict around. Georgia got its share of the blame, but the text of the report is devastating to Russia’s narrative of the conflict. The Report faulted Georgia for its attack on Tskhinvali; but summarily and bluntly dismisses the entire Russian justification for its subsequent invasion, as well as its recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Importantly, the report also warns against the dangers of the accepting rhetoric of ‘spheres of influence’. Whether this will result in any tangible implications remains more doubtful.

BACKGROUND: Assisted by a small army of experts, Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini has spent close to a year investigating the origins and course of the Russian-Georgian war.  Tagliavini’s report itself is moderate in size, consisting of 40 pages, but it is supplemented by a 450-page addendum of historical, humanitarian, legal and political analyses by members of her group, as well as a further 600 pages of appendices (mainly documents provided by the conflicting parties). Given its size and the subject matter, the report will undoubtedly be the subject of great debate and controversy.

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To be clear, EPA is not called Economic Partnership Agreement for nothing. It is a not a Development Aid package but rather a trade agreement, one of many, such as its predecessor the Cotonou Agreement signed in 2000. EPA seeks to realign the business/trade relationships which were granted to ACP countries under a preferential agreement, reached at time of the signing of the entry of the UK to the European Union in 1972. In time, there has been a gradual change of these preferential trade relations between the Caribbean, African and Pacific regions and the EU. This is evident, amongst others, from the downturn in the regions’ sugar and banana industries.

The concerns voiced by the academics is typical of a “reactive approach” taken by peoples of our region. The academics claimed that representatives have made the deal of EPA with their eyes wide shut. The truth is, it is not for the representatives to make deals. They are channels of information. It is for the elected Caribbean leaders to make sensible decisions on our behalf. At this point, leaders are aware, or at least should have been aware, of the consequences of the UK’s membership of the EU. There was time enough, more than 30 years, in which our leaders should have created a strategic plan in which Jamaica, after almost 46 years of independence, would have been able to step up to the challenges of playing ball on an unlevel international field.

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