Summary of themes from online discussion as of 19 May, 10:00 am.

A. Geopolitical, Economic and Technological Factors / Changes:

1. Democracy

  1. The spread of democracy: democracies do not fight each other
  2. Desire to spread democracy and its effect on internal political stability of many nations
  3. If democratic norms weaken, we could experience the proliferation of non-democratic practice

2. Interaction between the West and the Rest

  1. Interdependence of the Euro-Atlantic and Euro-Asian areas
  2. Expectations upon western leadership vs. the Western capacity to deliver

3. Europe

  1. The future of the Russian Federation
  2. Possibility of economic collapse
  3. Effect of revolutions in Central Asia
  4. Reemergence of nationalism
  5. Re-concentration and centralization of power in the executive
  6. Balkans’ stability
  1. Internal cultural contradictions between cultures of new immigrants with non-European backgrounds and original residents

4. Asia

  1. Stability of East Asia (ie, Taiwan, Japan, Koreas, PRC)?
  2. China as a global player will increasingly preoccupy the US
  3. North Korea’s nuclear ambitions

5. US

  1. Budget / Economics – ability to sustain its international commitments
  2. Moral leadership – “soft power”
  3. Effect of the success or failure of the Iraq mission

6. Middle East:

  1. Struggle for and against modernization
  2. Success or failure of Iraq

7. Economic developments

  1. “Hooverite” economic policies
  2. Scarcity of oil
  3. Risk of collapse of financial markets
  1. Technology
  2. Evolution in military technology may spark a new arms race

B. Changes in the nature of threats / strategic approaches

  1. Nature of strategic threats (this basically follows the structure outlined in the UN Report of the High-Level Commission)
  2. Inter-state conflict: traditional military conflicts
  3. Economic and Social Threats (Poverty, infectious disease and environmentaldegradation, natural disasters)
  4. Terrorism
  5. Internal conflict: political and otherwise, proliferation in number of shadow, failing, failed or otherwise dysfunctional states in international system
  6. Growth in organized crime
  7. Weapons of mass destruction: nuclear proliferation, particularly with regards to Iran
  8. Relationship between all of these factors
  1. Changes in strategic approaches:
  2. Relative shift from external threats to internal threats and external threats
  3. Rise in importance of non-state actors
  4. Conflict between the implications of a macro-sociological vs. military-administrative approach to key strategic challenges
  5. The necessity to prioritize state security at the expense of human security?
  6. The misuse of cultural arguments in the strategic arena, such as to underline the differences between the EU and the United States, or arguments of culture as a just cause for acts of invasion and counter terrorist acts
  7. Need to think domestically, transnationally and globally about how various security sector jurisdictions need to work together
  8. Difference in security approaches between the core of the E/A area and the fringes: core shares a common value-base
  1. Europe
  2. Rising vulnerability of European targets to attacks by non-state actors as the US and North America continue to fortify their protection
  3. Need to rethink certain traditional European policy paradigms and the challenge posed by created new ones
  1. United States
  2. The failure of the “America can do it alone” paradigm
  3. US FP may be weakening the advancement of democracy as a norm

C. International Cooperation (evolutions in alliances, multilateral institutions)

  1. How will NATO evolve?
  1. To reflect the division in threat perceptions among some traditional and new NATO allies in this second post-Cold War decade
  2. To integrate actors outside the Euro-Atlantic area into the big democracies’ security regime
  3. To address the expanding radius of out-of–area challenges for the EU and NATO, and the lag in terms of capacity and political will
  4. Will NATO develop a more specific policy role in assisting development and democracy?
  1. Need to solidly re-imbed the US in multilateral fora
  1. Evolution of the EU project
  2. Drive for an independent EU security identity, ambiguous in the sense that there is no intra-EU consensus on the extent to which this identity should be conceptually distinct from or only operationally detachable from NATO as circumstances might demand
  3. Possible rejection of the EU constitution and its effect on the transformation possibilities
  4. IfEurope cannot speak with a common voice, this will encourage US unilateralism
  1. Relationship between the expansion of Western values and the effective reach of Western institutions?
  2. Some speculate about the need for a co-leader with the US. Could Europe fill this role?
  3. Performance of international organizations
  4. Cooperation between international civil society groups (NGO’s, etc.)
  5. Effective multilateral coordination of state behavior
  6. UN: repesentativity, oversight and efficiency
  7. OSCE – chronically weakening?