The International Spectator, Vol. 58, No. 1, March 2023

Editorial
Leo Goretti and Daniela Huber
Read this article online

The EU towards 2030: International and Domestic Challenges

Decarbonisation and Critical Materials in the Context of Fraught Geopolitics: Europe’s Distinctive Approach to a Net Zero Future
Sophia Kalantzakos, Indra Overland and Roman Vakulchuk
The race to rapidly decarbonise and digitalise the global economy by 2030 to avoid temperatures rising above 1.5C has been subsumed by geopolitics that remains anchored in realist power struggles, now revolving around Sino-American hyper-competition. The Russian invasion of Ukraine further undermined interdependence and prompted unprecedented levels of economic statecraft. Access to indispensable minerals for a net zero future has thus become more securitised. The European Union (EU) has pushed back against bipolar geopolitics by utilising its normative, economic and regulatory power and strong networks of global institutional relations to maintain a competitive but working relationship with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Such an approach may help broker broader global institutional collaboration to ensure that decarbonisation is for all, not just for the few.
Keywords: interdependence; critical materials; global liberalism; IRENA; EU Green Deal
Read this article online

Time for a New Atlanticism: The EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment and the International Order
Arlo Poletti, Lorenzo Zambernardi and Dirk De Bièvre
There has been no shortage of critiques of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) signed on 30 December 2020. Many have perceived the CAI as a snub in the face of the Biden administration, which has the potential to jeopardise one of the most important strategic goals of the transatlantic alliance: setting aside four years of Trump’s populist economic policy and working in close coordination with a view to developing a united front to contain China. While the CAI does indeed indicate that the EU considers itself a fully autonomous international economic player, however, such a display of autonomy need not be incompatible with a stronger transatlantic alliance. In fact, the CAI may be an opportunity for the transatlantic alliance to evolve into a partnership among equals that is necessary to successfully navigate the uncharted waters of the coming global (dis)order.
Keywords: European Union; China; United States; investments; global governance
Buy this article online

Sustainable Development: A Common Denominator for the EU’s Policy Towards the Eastern Partnership?
Maryna Rabinovych and Anne Pintsch
The heterogeneity of the Eastern Partnership countries’ cultures, political regimes and foreign policy aspirations has been a challenge to the EU’s formulation of a coherent umbrella policy towards the region since the 2004 enlargement. Document analysis with a focus on region-level documents and the cases of Ukraine and Azerbaijan demonstrates the EU’s tendency to shift from an emphasis on European integration and common values to the sustainable development concept in order to address this challenge. By also taking into account the context of this tendency, this analysis highlights the need to balance sustainable development, integration efforts and democratisation in the Eastern Partnership amidst increasing differentiation between target countries and geopolitical pressures.
Keywords: Eastern Partnership; sustainable development; common values; European integration; Ukraine; Azerbaijan
Buy this article online

The Postmodernity of the European Union: A Discourse Analysis of State of the Union Addresses
Anna Molnár and Éva Jakusné Harnos
While the debate about further integration is ongoing, the European Union (EU) already shows signs of functioning like a state. The dynamics of the European integration process are defined by the duality of inter-governmentalism and supranationalism. This contradiction encouraged the development of the EU as a new hybrid political organisation. A software-assisted discourse analysis of the European State of the Union Addresses highlights that Presidents of the EU Commission have indeed conceptualised the Union both as a state-like entity and an intergovernmental institution because of its unique process of evolution, as evidenced by parallelism with the US event, the co-occurrence of conventional metaphors of statehood and EU-related metaphors as well as the merging of the concepts of “Europe” and “European Union” in the Addresses. Overall, the Addresses have contributed to creating a context of statehood for the EU on the one hand, and to reinforcing the position of the Presidents of the European Commission of the EU Parliament as leaders of the EU on the other.
Keywords: State of the Union Address; European integration; statehood; European identity; political discourse analysis
Buy this article online

Articles

Amidst an Ambition-Reality Gap: The UN’s Women, Peace and Security Agenda
Armenuhi Ananyan and Kerry Longhurst
Since 2000, the United Nations’ Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda has addressed the causes and consequences of sexual violence towards women in conflict scenarios. After two decades of effort, an ambition-reality gap persists. Uneven commitments from UN member states, ongoing instances of conflict-related sexual violence around the globe and the lack of a critical mass of female participants in peace negotiations, security policy and politics in general, suggest that WPS has had limited effects. Despite its under-achievements, WPS objectives remain relevant, especially considering the amplifying effects that the Covid-19 pandemic and its fallout have had for gender inequality and conflict.
Keywords: WPS; UNSCR 1325; conflict-related sexual violence; gender
Buy this article online

Trump’s Legacy and the Liberal International Order: Why Trump Failed to Institutionalise an Anti-global Agenda
Andrea Locatelli and Andrea Carati
Donald Trump was expected to repeal the internationalist approach that had dominated US foreign policy since the end of the Second World War, but his impact was narrower than is commonly supposed. On the one hand, the problems of the liberal international order predate Trump and probably will outlive his presidency. He was more a symptom than the cause of those difficulties, thus his responsibilities should not be overstated. On the other hand, despite several renegotiations and accusations against its partners, the US involvement in multilateral organisations remains solid and its engagement overseas remarkable. Overall, Trump’s performance in shifting US foreign policy toward an anti-globalist stance was quite poor. Contrary to mainstream accounts of Trump’s foreign policy, the president’s revisionism has arguably been thwarted less by the internationalist approach within the foreign policy establishment than by his own personality and his policy-making attitudes.
Keywords: Donald Trump; US foreign policy; liberal international order; leadership traits; populist dilemma
Buy this article online

Rwanda’s Military Deployments in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Neoclassical Realist Account
Brendon J. Cannon and Federico Donelli
The Rwanda Defence Force recently staged military operations against insurgents in Mozambique and the Central African Republic. Both actions were performed outside regional or multinational efforts. This makes the contemporary actions of Rwanda outliers in the international relations of Sub-Saharan Africa and heralds shifts in conflict management on the continent. An explanation is found in the application of neoclassical realist theory to the case of Rwanda – a first – as the country’s leaders have taken advantage of a permissive strategic environment, high clarity, leaders’ beliefs and a strategic culture to produce the output of extra-regional military deployments.
Keywords: Rwanda; neoclassical realism; foreign policy; security provider; defence diplomacy
Read this article online

Navigating the Covid-19 Pandemic in Consociational Systems: The Cases of Lebanon and Iraq
Rosita Di Peri and Irene Costantini
Pizzorno’s distinction between ‘manifest’ and ‘hidden’ politics helps to explain the resilience of the consociational systems of Lebanon and Iraq in times of crises. Through the lens of ‘manifest’ politics, the Lebanese and Iraqi political systems are permanently on the brink of collapse. By contrast, through the lens of ‘hidden’ politics, the Lebanese and Iraqi political systems manifest their organised resilience. This comparative analysis of the responses to the Covid-19 pandemic in Iraq and Lebanon contributes to the debate over how consociational power-sharing works in practice as a fine-grained system to maintain the status quo.
Keywords: manifest and hidden politics; consociational power-sharing; resilience; Iraq; Lebanon
Buy this article online

Education, Media and Civil Society: The Building of an Islamic Cultural Hegemony in Turkey
Esen Kirdiş
The Turkish economy is in freefall with rising inflation, unemployment, poverty and income inequality. Yet, the incumbent Justice and Development Party (JDP) continues to get the support of roughly one-third of the voters according to the latest surveys. Although this is a long way from the peak of the party when it was getting half the overall votes a decade ago, it is nevertheless a significant proportion of the voter base. What explains such a vote? More generally, why do people vote against their own material interests? Looking at the JDP’s twenty-year incumbency, it can be argued that the JDP created party identification amongst a particular set of Turkish voters by utilising religious institutions, the education system, the media and civil society to construct its cultural hegemony.
Keywords: Turkey; Islamic political parties; competitive authoritarianism; democratisation; religion and politics
Buy this article online

Book Reviews

Turkey and the EU’s Foreign Policy Framework: New Directions from the Past?
Alessia Chiriatti
Review of: EU-Turkey relations : a new direction for EU foreign policy? / Elena Baracani. - Cheltenham ; Northampton : Edward Elgar, 2021. - x, 198 p. - ISBN 978-1-78811-367-0 ; 978-1-78811-368-7 (ebk)
Buy this article online

How Theory, History and Foreign Policy Can Explain Military Alliances
Manuel Herrera
Review of: Military alliances in the twenty-first century / Alexander Lanoszka. - Cambridge ; Medford : Polity Press, 2022. - viii, 254 p. : ill. - ISBN 978-1-5095-4556-8 ; 978-1-5095-4557-5 (pbk)
Buy this article online