Sascha Werthes

Pirates, Fishermen and Peacebuilding: Options for Counter-Piracy Strategy in Somalia

The dominant approach to counter-piracy strategy off Somalia is astonishingly narrow-minded. Deterrence, surveillance and military operations do not provide sustainable or efficient solutions; better strategic alternatives must draw on the lessons of 21st-century peace operations. This perspective leads to an understanding of counterpiracy as a problem of peacebuilding. This allows restructuring and reframing of the problem to permit a much wider repertoire of policy solutions than is currently conceived. This repertoire may include development and security assistance programmes as well as state-building programmes. The approach also permits integration of lessons learned in the frame of international peacebuilding operations, including avoiding technocratic solutions, focusing on power constellations, integrating local knowledge and incrementalism. If the international community wishes to take piracy seriously and respond to its complexities, it would be well advised to adopt a policy in which such alternatives are considered.

Horizontal and Vertical Extension of International Security: A Human Security Approach

When the Human Development Report 1994 (UNDP 1994) was published, nobody expected that its ‘human security’ concept would attract so much attention. This is quite astonishing as the concept has provoked much criticism ever since due to its analytical ambiguity and its disputed political appropriateness. Extending the analytical and contextual focus of security was not totally unknown in the political and academic sphere (77.2). Different security concepts such as ‘common’, ‘extended’, and ‘comprehensive security’ had already broadened the scope. Therefore, the description of security as a ‘contested concept’ has been and is a very common one in student text books (e.g. Baylis/Smith 2005: 302). What was new was shifting the reference object from the state to the individual, and to integrate elements of foreign and development policy (77.3). We suppose it is fair to say that this shift again encouraged and hardened the already existing ‘contestation’ of security as a concept. Although many authors agree that security implies freedom from threats to core values (for both individuals and groups), there is a mayor disagreement about the main focus of enquiry, illustrated by the “proliferation of descriptors added to the basic concept itself” (Liotta 2002: 475; see also Baylis/Smith 2005: 300). Despite having said that one can argue that while in the political field the human security approach is adaptable and has found different supporters (77.4). Nevertheless the practical adaptability in the academic field is still contested and doubted. It remains to be shown if a threshold-based definition of human security (77.5) or the work to develop human security indicators might be a first step to prove its practicability for academic purposes (77.6).1 Human security and its new emphases were a response to the perceived interrelatedness of the complex foreign, developmental and security relevant challenges in the late 20th and early 21st century. The perforation of state sovereignty – resulting from the multifaceted globalization processes and the incapability of states to respond to growing non-military security threats – produced a pressure for practical solutions and strategic responses. Moreover, in the postCold War and post-September 11th world ‘state failure’, ‘failing states’ and ‘defected democracies’ challenged the international community. Or as Carl Bildt points out when emphasizing an other aspect of the changing international order, while “the principle of state sovereignty was previously seen as sacrosanct, the combination of the NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999 and the non-intervention by the international community in Rwanda in 1995 has led to an intense discussion about the right or duty to intervene in sovereign states in order to prevent massive violations of human rights” (Bildt 2004: 31). Throughout the 1990’s various international actors were looking for integrative policy strategies. Foreign, development, and security policies lost their clear-cut differentiation. For many politicians and academics ‘complex emergencies’ and the root causes of many perceived threats and problems challenged classical policy approaches. Thus, practical politics had to find new concepts and strategies for new realities, or for the changed perception of reality. Academic and political experts alike had to find alternative ways to analyse and conceptualize these complex challenges in their field of study or region.2 This is not to say that

Politische Sanktionen im Lichte rechtserhaltender Gewalt

In jungerer Zeit haben die multinationalen Sanktionen gegen Russland im Zusammenhang mit der Annexion der Krim und der Ukrainekrise sowie die unilateralen Sanktionsbemuhungen der Trump-Regierung im Zusammenhang mit dem Ausstieg aus dem Iran-Atomdeal viel mediale Aufmerksamkeit in Deutschland erhalten. Wahrend die jungsten UN-Sanktionen gegen Mali weitestgehend unter dem medialen Aufmerksamkeitsradar verhangt wurden, blieben die Verscharfungen der UN-Sanktionen gegen Nordkorea wiederum nicht unbeobachtet.

Exploring local potentials for peace: strategies to sustain peace in times of war

ABSTRACT This paper explores the neglected field of study of local potentials for peace. It focuses on local communities worldwide that successfully avoid participating in violent conflicts that surround them. So-called nonwar communities opt out of war and refuse to be absorbed by one or other of the warring parties. In so doing, they develop imaginative and innovative strategies that can provide valuable insights on innovative approaches to conflict prevention. Local potentials for peace challenge ordinary images of war and peace and call key assumptions of hitherto, predominantly external crisis prevention strategies into question. Perceiving local (civil) actors as recipients of (inter)national policies for peace and not as independent protagonists of peace initiatives neglects their autonomous potential for peace. This paper reviews current research findings on the puzzling phenomenon of local potentials for peace with a focus on nonwar communities and identifies four innovative implications for conflict prevention.

Massenmedien zwischen (Kriegs-)Propaganda und Infotainment?

In den vergangenen Jahren hat sich das Angebot im Informationsbereich erheblich vergrosert und verandert. Die neuen Parameter internationaler Berichterstattung: Aktualitat, Schnelligkeit und verstarkter „Livecharakter“ (vgl. Meckel 1996: 188) werden begleitet, unterstutzt und forciert durch den Okonomisierungsdruck.