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European Security at the Beginning of the Twenty First Century: At the Crossroads of the US and Russian Foreign Policies
Jović, Damjan ; Aslan, Emil (advisor) ; Střítecký, Vít (referee)
Bibliographic record JOVIC, Damjan. European Security at the Beginning o f the Tw'enty First Century: At the Crossroads of the US and Russian Foreign Policies. Prague: Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of International Studies, 2009. 69 p. Supervisor Doc. PhDr. Jiri Vykoukal, CS. Annotation The aim of this paper is to provide a clear view of the current conflict of the United States' and Russia's geopolitical and geostrategic interests in Europe. Furthermore, the author will try - by addressing the most relevant problems - to identify alternative scenarios that may result from this conflict in the near future. At the same time the author is advocating the point that tensions in relations between the US and Russia will not improve any time soon because of fundamentally confronted interests as well as because of the influence of realist logic that dominates the political spectrum on both sides. The author argues that the basis of the new security arrangement in Europe can emerge from the tightening of Russia-Germany relations (especially in the sphere of energy security) and more independent EU policies in the sphere of military affairs. This paper does not aim to address so called "new" and "asymmetrical" threats to national and international security (e.g. terrorism, immigration,...
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Russia-OSCE relations: a Balance between National Interests and Security Commitments
Villegas Cara, Francisco Manuel ; Svoboda, Karel (advisor) ; Aslan, Emil (referee)
The dissertation deals with the state of the relations between the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Russian Federation. The main questions to be addressed are: "Has the Russian attitude towards the OSCE changed? How has Russia dealt with the OSCE in the last years? Do the OSCE security commitments play any role in the formation of the Russian foreign policy?" To answer these questions different approaches from international relations theories have been used, but especially, those that better reflect the importance of national constrains in foreign affairs. The formation of national interests is therefore, a key element to understand and assess the evolution of the Russian foreign policy and, subsequently, the evolution of the OSCE- Russia relations. A case of study is included to show better how Russian policies upon the OSCE have evolved from a positive engagement towards scepticism about the future of Russia within the Organisation. 1
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Caspian Gas Supplies: An Oportunity of EU Energy Diversification?
Temirbulatova, Diana ; Aslan, Emil (advisor) ; Ditrych, Ondřej (referee)
Today, energy security is a thorny issue for the European Union: levels of energy consumption are growing rapidly, while indigenous reserves are diminishing. The European Union seeks to diversify its energy suppliers, because overdependence on single supplier can undermine its energy security. Russia, the major supplier of gas to the EU, has demonstrated itself as unreliable energy supplier as a result of 2006 and 2009 disruptions. The Caspian region is seen as one of the options of gas supply diversification, and therefore the EU is making efforts to create pipeline route to supply Caspian gas bypassing Russia. Some European politicians agree that creation of such pipeline route could help Europe to lower dependence its dependence on gas supplies from Russia, and enhence European energy security. According to plan, the route should consist of three pipelines: TCGP, South Caucasus pipeline and Nabucco. The present research aims to define, whether the idea of Caspian gas supplies to the EU could contribute to European energy security and EU energy diversification. Given the confusion between those who predict that successful implementation of TCGP and Nabucco projects would guarantee better energy security for Europe and those who has doubts that construction of an energy bridge over the Caspian Sea can ever...
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The Geopolitics of Gas Transportation of Contemporary Russia (Case Studies of Nord Stream and South Stream Pipeline Projects)
Sorokina, Veronika ; Aslan, Emil (advisor) ; Žídková, Markéta (referee)
Energy issues are of growing interest in the modern world. Ever since the Industrial Revolution and until the present century, energy and the need to secure its supply have been fundamental to any position of power in the world. At the same time, despite the rising role of energy in influencing state's national security, regime development, domestic and international politics, it is a fact that the professional journals in political science and international relations have not paid the sufficient attention to publishing research on these topics; themes, which have been examined in this respect, have been mostly devoted to research to the impact of oil. In contrast, this thesis focuses on the analysis of the relationship between international politics and natural gas originated from the Russian Federation as the country, which is widely recognized to be as one of the most influential actors on the energy source markets. This research project is based on a wide review of relevant literature supplemented by the data analyzing method, method of comparative analysis and the case study method. The latter is founded upon the examination of the new projects promoted by Russia, namely: the Nord Stream and South Stream pipeline projects. The findings underline that realist and neorealist categories have shaped...
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The depiction of Others in Armenian sources of the 16th-18th centuries
Kohoutková, Petra ; Šatava, Leoš (advisor) ; Šmíd, Tomáš (referee) ; Aslan, Emil (referee)
The dissertation titled The Depiction of Others in Armenian Sources of the 16th - 18th Centuries is conceived as scholarly research at the boundary between two disciplines - ethnology and history. The introductory chapters devoted to the formation of the stereotypical images of Others and to the fundamental attributes of the Armenian identity served as a sort of springboard for my analysis of Armenian historical texts. Secondarily, they permitted me to tackle the question of the traditional "Us against Them" dichotomy, taking as an example the local Armenian communities and their chief "enemies" - Muslims, heretics and converts. My effort has been to capture the relations between the Armenians and their Muslim neighbors before ethnic stereotypes had been codified during the period of growing nationalism. The main part of the dissertation, titled We and They: Categories of Others in the Eyes of Armenian Chroniclers from the Frontiers, is based mainly on the study of primary sources - period Armenian chronicles and colophons. It is a probe into regional history; a microhistory of the Lake Van region in the 17th and 18th centuries. Reflected in its example is the history of all of the Ottoman Empire and its gradual decline, the deterioration of the standing of the dhimmi and the growing tensions between...
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Nagorno-Karabakh: Ethnopolitics and Geopolitics of Conflict
Ditrych, Ondřej ; Aslan, Emil (advisor) ; Romancov, Michael (referee)
This diploma thesis focuses on the relationship between ethnopolitics (defined by a raised demand of political autonomy for a community delimited along ethnical lines) and geopolitics (spatial definition and pursuing of national interests, determined by power) in what is one of most serious conflicts in post-Soviet space - Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Structure of the thesis is dialectical. Firstly, it defines terms such as conflict, conflict resolution or security, which will be used in the rest of the paper. Then, the conflict is placed into a spatial context, be it in its physical/material or spiritual/historical dimension. An effort is made to contextually embed Nagorno- Karabakh into the region of South Caucasus - whose politics has for centuries been shaped by conflicting interests of great powers - and to present a detailed projection of the disputed territory; not merely that of Nagorno-Karabakh itself, but also that of adjacent raions, whose total area is almost double in comparison. The main argument of this section is that the value of Nagorno-Karabakh rests not in the material realm - a dispute over "scarce resources" - but rather in the spiritual one, for is is perceived by the parties to the conflict as a "territorialization of national memory", or a constitutive element...
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