Fear of a Usurper's Stigma
The greatest challenge for the rulers of today’s Russia is legitimising their power in the eyes of the public.
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The greatest challenge for the rulers of today’s Russia is legitimising their power in the eyes of the public.
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Relations between the United Kingdom and Russia remain cordial with growing economic ties. A look underneath the surface, however, reveals an intricate game of spying and tit-for-tat diplomacy.
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Promoted by the slogan “Question More”, Russia Today is the greatest Russian media project since 1991, and was designed to be competition to BBC World and CNN International.
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On March 17th 2012, the world learned of the execution of two young men convicted in the April 2011 bombing of a Minsk metro station. The investigations, arrests and hearings were swift. Yet many doubted the guilt of the accused. Since their execution, public support for the death penalty in Belarus has dropped from almost 80 to 40 per cent.
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Belarus needs a new approach. EU policy towards Belarus should be working out the power system around Lukashenko and getting through to people who are most interested in change.
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Despite co-hosting the EURO 2012 football championship, the most prestigious sports event in Europe, Ukraine remains an outsider in terms of political values. Informal networking is the most prominent governmental standard, with the president traditionally at the top of the pyramid.
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Crowd-surfing through cheering party members with a bottle of Coca-Cola in his hand and a smile on his face, Robert Fico rejoiced the results of Slovakia’s general election. Fico’s Smer-SD (Direction-Social Democracy) won a majority of seats and ushered in the first one-party government since 1989.
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The First World War, in addition to producing an extraordinary boom in technology, also saw a proliferation in film production. New media, which had existed for less than two decades when the war broke out, were generally regarded as vulgar forms of entertainment. The war years radically changed the assessment of film, which in many countries was elevated to the status of a national art, able to rouse the population to battle and reveal the “true face” of the enemy. The First World War was unquestionably a period during which cinema rose to supremacy. Its dominant position among the other arts led both policy-makers and film producers to realise that the specificity of the new medium was its ability to create, not just record reality, and that the “truth of time” and “the truth of the screen” were two distinct things that were often impossible to reconcile. In the decades following the war, a canonised cinematic discourse arose that continues to influence the aesthetics and ethics of storytelling about war. Around 1930, the means used to construct film narratives took the shape that today in a virtually unchanged form is still considered de rigueur, and is transferred from one armed conflict to another. To understand contemporary film visions of conflicts, threats and dehumanization, it is necessary to reach back to the films produced during and after the war.
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The theory of hybrid warfare has changed profoundly the American debate about future conflicts, priorities of forces planning, military doctrines, organisation and training within the U.S. Armed Forces. It had originally been proposed in the context of a debate on the nature of future military conflicts and warfare, but the concept was initially misunderstood. Following a lengthy evolution, the current theory of hybrid conflict is much more mature and advanced, even if areas for further research still remain. It took the Pentagon a full decade to recognise this theory and accept the new terminology in strategic documents. At last, the National Military Strategy of the U.S. (July 2015) uses the term hybrid conflicts, reiterating the need to adapt to those and learn to cope with such warfare.
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The academic discussion on the specificity of the hybrid warfare concept and its unique methods has been going on for almost a decade now and has been dominated by military strategists. The question whether a hybrid war is a new phenomenon or just another fashionable label to denominate the complexity of modern warfare has not been resolved, but the concept is particularly useful in examining the recent Russian-Ukrainian conflict. This article aims to analyse the conflict from a very narrow angle of the key characteristics of modern hybrid warfare, attempting in particular to explain what hybrid warfare actually is in the Ukrainian context and to assess the potential for Russia’s extension of the new hybrid methods to other states, first of all the post-Soviet neighbouring countries.
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For many Central Europeans hybrid warfare is only available to strong states wishing to mask their involvement in conventional warfare, not to weak non-state actors. The article tests this hypothesis and looks at the organisations on the Foreign Terrorist Organisations list in an attempt to establish whether or not they meet the requirements of a hybrid threat. Such an analysis helps establish if non-state actors could and would go “where eagles dare,” reaching for solutions such as those adopted by the Russian Federation in Ukraine. If so, and indeed this will be shown to be the case, this offers valuable takeaway points also for the exposed NATO eastern flank, which borders on the hybrid-prone Russia.
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The objective of this article is to analyse cyberspace as a warfare environment. The text presents specific forms of action and measures that may be used in cyberspace and become components of modern warfare. As such, they might have a significant impact on warfare and a potential to change its nature, contributing to its hybridisation, although they will not be able to replace conventional means of warfare entirely. Their role will be of utmost importance if they complement conventional measures, and only then will they play a role in determining the balance of power in international relations in the long term.
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The Transatlantic Partnership on Trade and Investment (TTIP) will in all likelihood generate gains first and foremost for large multinational corporations engaged in investment and trade between the United States and the European Union. The agreement brings numerous threats to the countries of the European Union and might significantly weaken the competence of EU and national authorities in formulating policies in such areas as consumer protection or the environment. It will boost competition on both the EU and U.S. markets, undermining workers’ rights and resulting in a further delocalisation of production to countries with lower labor costs. If the ISDS mechanism is included in the TTIP, it will strengthen the position of corporations in disputes with governments.
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Over the past 50 years the United States and European Union states have developed high but divergent consumers protection standards. A free trade agreement based on unifications of standards is unrealistic, so functional equivalents and/or mutual recognition of standards might be a recipe. The EU single market is based on mutual recognition of national standards whenever there is no common EU standard, and an ideological approach to the protection of consumers could undermine the extent of benefits from TTIP.
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M. Pietrasiak, D. Mierzejewski, K. Żakowski (red.), Narzędzia polityki zagranicznej Chińskiej Republiki Ludowej(Justyna Szczudlik-Tatar)
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In the Russian version of the creation myth, the Earth is held up by three whales submerged in the ocean. The Russian system of power is based on many “whales”: the principal being Vladimir Putin. However, for these “whales”, the political waters are becoming increasingly turbulent.
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As a member of the Council of Europe, Russia agrees to abide by judgements made by the European Court of Human Rights. Yet, Russian accomplishments in the execution of these judgements remain very limited.
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The post-Soviet world, so painfully built, is now collapsing. Along with its collapse, the fate of Ukraine lies in the balance. President Yanukovych is not a politician suited for his times and will himself soon realise that his authoritarian tendencies are a decade too late.
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A sense of resignation dominates in the European Union towards the perception of democratic and economic reforms in Eastern Europe; and disappointment with Ukraine is at the forefront.
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