Alyson J.K. Bailes

Alliance theory and alliance ‘Shelter’: the complexities of small state alliance behaviour

Abstract This study critiques traditional alliance theory because it fails to capture the nuanced alliance motivation and needs of small states. We argue that the concept of alliance “shelter” better explains small state alignment. The theory of alliance shelter has been developed to explain the alliance choices of Western small states, including Iceland, and serves as an important addition to alliance theory. Shelter is the diplomatic, economic, societal, and political alignment response of structurally weak states. Alliance shelter theory differs from traditional alliance theories for the following reasons. First, it regards small states as fundamentally different political, economic, and social units than large states. Second, their alliance shelter relationships are distinctly shaped by domestic as much as international factors. Third, small states benefit disproportionately from international cooperation, including institutional membership, compared with large states. Fourth, shelter theory claims that small states/entities need political, economic, and societal shelter (as well as strategic protection) in order to thrive. Fifth, the social and cultural relationships of the small states with the outside world are elements that have been neglected by alliance theory. Sixth, shelter may also come at a significant cost for the small state/entity. We conduct a plausibility probe of our argument against three contemporary non-Western cases: Armenia, Cuba, and Singapore. We find that the concept of alliance shelter explains their alliance behavior better than traditional alliance theory.

The eu Crossing Arctic Frontiers: The Barents Euro-Arctic Council, Northern Dimension, and eu-West Nordic Relations

When the Arctic Council’s Ministerial meeting of April 2015 decided to further defer a decision on the European Union’s (EU) application for observership,1 this represented at worst a symbolic and diplomatic setback. In reality, the EU was extending its footprint into the Arctic zone well before the current public excitement over the region began. By 1995 it had three members—Denmark, Finland and Sweden—who were also founders of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS), the leading platform for Arctic-wide inter-governmental cooperation on which the Arctic Council (AC) was founded in 1996.2 The fact that Denmark’s autonomous territories of the Faroe Islands and Greenland opted out of their motherland’s EU membership was balanced by the entry of Norway and Iceland into the European Economic Area (EEA) and Schengen Treaty system in the 1990s. The remaining State members of the AC— Canada, the Russian Federation and the United States—are all long-standing partners of the EU and have concluded many cooperation agreements that include their Far Northern regions. In these and other ways, including substantial business and trade links, and sectoral policies e.g. on shipping, fishing and climate change, the EU helps to shape both the network of political and economic relationships and the regulatory landscape characterizing the

WMD in the Greater Middle East: Any Lessons from NATO and European Arms Control and Disarmament Structures?

To discuss the question of confi dence and confi dence-building for the greater Middle East specifi cally in relation to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is not to imply that the application of these notions to conventional weapons is unimportant for this region, or anywhere else. The conventional arms relationships and frequent arms races between both neighbouring states and non-state actors (like Hezbollah) in the Middle East are not discussed and studied nearly as much as they should be, and the same Western states who plead most strongly for nuclear restraint could often well use some restraint themselves in their general arms sales policies towards both Israeli and Arab customers. However, confi dence-building in relation to nuclear weapons provides a good starting point for debate on comparative regional prospects because it has two meanings that are relatively well understood, and for which fairly well-developed models and instruments have been tried out at intergovernmental level both in Europe and elsewhere. The fi rst relevant type of confi dence is the confi dence that there are no nuclear weapons, and/or that none will be developed, in a given area; the second is confi dence about ways in which the possible use of existing weapons will be constrained and avoided. The strongest instrument in principle for establishing confi dence in the non-existence of weapons is a Nuclear Weapon or WMD Free Zone, since it constrains the actions of exterior nuclear power within the area, as well as of local states. In order to be confi dent that no weapons are being developed, however, several regions that are burdened by wider security tensions have found it necessary to invoke stronger, more intrusive and even coercive measures, and/or different forms of international political and legal agreements, to block the possible exploitation of civil nuclear programmes for weapon-making purposes. The prominent cases today are the still-to-be-solved ones of Iran and North Korea; but it is worth recalling that the neighbours of South Africa, Argentina, Brazil and Libya used to have good reasons for lack of confi dence about those states’ nuclear intentions, until three of them voluntarily ended their weapons development programmes and Libya let itself be bought out, in each case with some kind of external inspection and safeguards to verify the results. As for the second kind of confi dence (in the reduction of risks of nuclear use and especially of accidental fi rings) the classic instruments are emergency hotlines between the nuclear powers; measures to reduce the readiness of their weapons