André Barrinha

The Ambitious Insulator: Revisiting Turkey's Position in Regional Security Complex Theory

According to the Copenhagen Schools Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT), Turkey is an insulator state as it sits at the intersection of different security complexes without truly being part of any of them. This understanding of Turkeys position in the international security realm has offered a welcome contribution to the eternal debate about the countrys security alignment between East and West. Turkey has, in recent years, become more active on the international stage, diversifying its relations and taking a more assertive stance regarding international security issues. This shift in its foreign and security policy is related to the countrys ambition to become a great power in the near future. However, according to RSCT, it is quite improbable for there to be an insulator state that is also a great power. This article elaborates on the tension between this theory and Turkeys ambitions in an attempt to understand whether and how RSCT remains a useful theoretical framework for the understanding of Turkeys foreign and security relations.

Dealing with risk: precision strikes and interventionism in the Obama administration

This book explores whether the new capabilities made possible by precision-strike technologies are reshaping approaches to international intervention. Since the end of the Cold War, US technological superiority has led to a more proactive and, some would argue, high risk approach to international military intervention. New technologies including the capacity to mount precision military strikes from high-level bombing campaigns and, more recently, the selective targeting of individuals from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have facilitated air campaigns, supported by Special Forces, without the commitment of large numbers of troops on the ground. Such campaigns include, for example, NATO’s high-level aerial bombardment of Milosevic’s forces in Kosovo in 1999 and of Gaddafi’s in Libya in 2011, and the US operation involving Special Forces against Osama Bin Laden. The development of UAVs and electronic data intercept technologies has further expanded the potential scope of interventions, for example against Islamic militants in the tribal areas of Pakistan. This volume examines three key and interrelated dimensions of these new precision-strike capabilities: (1) the strategic and foreign policy drivers and consequences; (2) the legal and moral implications of the new capabilities; and (3), the implications for decision-making at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. This book will be of much interest to students of war and technology, air power, international intervention, security studies and IR.

Translating Europe's security culture

Recent studies have placed the focus on the so-called ideational construction of a multi-level European security apparatus, in which both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) play significant roles as the two main security organizations in Europe. In particular, many authors have attempted to explain how NATO and the EU can complement or want to complement each other within the European security framework, forming what is known as a European security culture. This article intends to make three contributions to this debate. First, it aims to conceptualize and operationalize security culture as a translation process. Second, it attempts to consolidate the European security culture debate within a reflexivist, discursive approach to the study of security. Finally, it highlights the importance of (smaller) member states in the consolidation (and understanding) of this security culture by focusing on the Portuguese example.

Moving towards a European Defence Industry? The Political Discourse on a Changing Reality and its Implications for the Future of the European Union

Since the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 the European Union has been an increasingly important actor in the field of security and defence. However, the defence industries sector has largely been kept away from Brussels. This has usually been justified by the role that national defence industries have traditionally played as fundamental pillars for the survival of the European nation-states, thus making them reluctant to share this “sovereign tool” with the European Union. Nonetheless, recent steps in both the economic (large number of mergers and acquisitions within the European defence industry sector) and the political (security and defence integration measures within the European Union) arenas have contributed to changes in the political discourse on defence industries within the European space. This article aims to explore how the national discourse on defence industries has become interrelated with a European discourse on the topic—a European discourse that mixes some of the old national arguments with particular aspects related to the constant evolution of the European Union towards an ever more coherent regional polity and international actorness. Also analysed is the extent to which this political move puts at risk the European Unions ambitions to promote a better world, based on an alternative understanding of international politics.

The EU as a coherent (cyber)security actor

The last three decades have seen the development of the European Union (EU) as a security actor. The transnational character of the security threats and the challenges identified by the EU have led to progressive integration between internal and external security concerns. These concerns have often led to calls for greater coherence within EU security policies. The literature, however, indicates that this need for coherence has, so far, not been systematically operationalized, leading to a fragmented security field. This article has two main aims: To devise a framework for the analysis of the EUs coherence as a security actor, and to apply it to the cybersecurity field. By focusing on EU cybersecurity policy, this article will explore whether the EU can be considered a coherent actor in this field or whether this policy is being implemented according to different and unco-ordinated rationales.

Progressive realism and the EU’s international actorness:Towards a grand strategy?

Abstract The EU lacks a coherent strategy to guide its international actions. This is a problem that has been amply discussed in both academic and policy-making circles, but that remains to be fully addressed. The December 2013 European Council recognised the issue, and the EU High Representative Federica Mogherini is in charge of a strategic review that will lead to a global strategy by June 2016. Most arguments in favour of a grand strategy rely on utilitarian arguments that highlight the EU’s potential for a more efficient foreign policy. By linking a progressive realist approach to the importance of an EU grand strategy, this article intends to demonstrate the normative need for such a guiding document. As it will be argued, a grand strategy is a necessary step in the consolidation of the EU as a pluralist post-national polity that has in the fulfilment of its citizens’ interests its raison d’être.

Drones and the uninsurable security subjects

Abstract This paper engages with the security dynamics underlying the use of drones and their impact on security subjects – individuals and groups that are the ultimate recipients of specific security policies, regardless of whether these have beneficial effects on them. Using Mark Duffield’s distinction between the insured Global North and the non-insured Global South, this paper discusses how drones generate a radical dissociation between the intervener and the intervened that ultimately produces new security environments at the margins of the international system. These new security environments are defined by the articulation between space, technologies and bodies: bodies of invisible subjects; bodies that are uninsurable.

Cybersecurity in the European Union. Resilience and adaptability in governance policy

Recensao critica de: Cybersecurity in the European Union. Resilience and adaptability in governance policy, by George Christou, London, Palgrave, 2015, xiii + 222 pp., £68 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-137-40051-2

Cyber-diplomacy: the making of an international society in the digital age

ABSTRACT Cyberspace has become a major locus and focus of international relations. Most global powers have now streamlined cyber issues into their foreign policies, adopting cyber strategies and appointing designated diplomats to pursue these strategic objectives. This article proposes to explore the concept of cyber-diplomacy, by analysing its evolution and linking it to the broader discussions of diplomacy as a fundamental institution of international society, as defined by the English School of International Relations. It argues that cyber-diplomacy is an emerging international practice that is attempting to construct a cyber-international society, bridging the national interests of states with world society dynamics – the predominant realm in which cyberspace has evolved in the last four decades.

Out of Will or out of Necessity? Turkey and the Middle East

The political turmoil that affected the Middle East and North Africa since late 2010 caught many by surprise, including Turkey’s political leadership. It came at a time when Ankara was investing in the region, both economically and politically, in line with the new foreign policy principles progressively set in place by Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).1 These principles were based on Ahmet Davutoglu’s concept of Strategic Depth, and they posit Turkey as a leading regional and international actor, responsible for promoting peace and development, in particular, within its immediate neighbourhood. Ankara’s foreign policy activism had, until the eruption of popular unrest across the region, been focused on the importance of political stability, presupposing that even authoritarian regimes such as those in Syria or Libya were solid and stable (Onis, 2012) and could, therefore, be seen as perfectly legitimate partners for Turkey on the international stage. The sudden change in the regional context forced Turkey to revisit its strategy, with significant consequences, both internally and internationally: the Kurdish issue has jumped to the top of the political agenda, the millions of refugees in the country are generating social and political instability in Turkey and, internationally, Turkey is seen as having an erratic policy for the region, particularly in how it deals with the Islamic State (IS) threat.