Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines similarities and differences between Cold war and post-Cold war periods in the U.S. human rights policy to North Korea. In the paper, I focus on American policy on human rights since September 11, 2001. The Bush administration follows the American tradition of integrating human rights and calls for democracy into a broader foreign policy that continues to place a primacy on American security interests. My study deals with the impacts of current American human rights foreign policy to North Korea.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This research paper aims to explain the causal factors behind the changes in the behavior of radical Islamist groups towards hegemonic powers during and after the Cold War era. This should be achieved by comparing and analyzing the responses of the radical Islamist trend (the Salafi-Jihadi Current) in the Middle East to the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan (1979-1989) during the Cold War and to the US military presence in the Arabian Peninsula (1991-Present) in the Post-Cold war era. The research question in this paper is: : In their declared “war” against foreign military presence in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia as well as on the ruling regimes of the two states, why did radical Islamists internationalize their operations against the Post-Cold War hegemon and its allies as opposed to confining their operations to the local theatre during the Cold-War era? In other words, why were Washington and New York City targeted in the Post-Cold War period during the American presence in the Arabian Peninsula, but neither Moscow nor Dushanbe (Capital Tajikistan soviet socialist republic—close to the Afghan borders) were targeted during the Cold War?
To answer that question, I shall focus on three independent variables. The first is the international political context and how the changes within it affected the radical Islamists’ behavior and strategies. The second is the changing regional contexts, which involves the changes in the policies of Middle Eastern and South Asian regimes towards the ex-combatants of the Afghan conflict as well as the impacts of the Second Gulf War on the Middle East region. The third variable is the ideological one pertaining to an evolution in the Jihadi ideology leading to its radicalization and internationalization. The expected findings of the research will relate the post-Cold War regional and international changes to some of the causes of the conflicts between hegemons and radical Islamists.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The Cold War era security discourse: it did not die with the Cold WarHelle Palu (helle.palu@uta.fi)Tampere Peace Research Institute, University of TamperePaper proposalInternational system has changed dramatically since World War II. Cold War bipolar system moved to system with a single superpower. During Cold War the issue of security was an im-portant topic in International Relations. It is important research issue also in the post-September 11th world.International Relations scholars in United States have not been blind to these changes in in-ternational system. New security issues, national and transnational, have risen to research agenda of United States scholars too. Though, are there changes also how American scholars understand and perceive security? Is the conception of security still mainly characterized by Cold War era security paradigms?The argument is that the knowledge of security grows from and ties into the web of previous knowledge of security, being at the same time influenced by changes in policy-making world. The network of previous knowledge forms a security discourse specific to this particular era. Knowledge of security in the research at hand with its connections to previous forms security discourse too.It can be thus hypothesized that the way security is perceived by scholars in the post-September 11th world is strongly influenced by security paradigm from the era of Cold War. Using library research, I have traced security conceptions from scholarly research at Vietnam War times to the research in post-September 11th world.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines the trends of security regionalization since the end of the cold war, suggesting that the argument linking regionalization to superpower disengagement, while not wrong, misses an important insight by ignoring the more active and positive role of the global hegemon in promoting this process. My interest is three-fold: to examine the motivation and ability of the hegemon to aid the development of regional tools to manage regional security, the motivation of regional states to develop such tools, and the interaction between these different motivations. Many scholars now argue that this trend toward regionalization has come to an abrupt end following the 911 events, which have pushed the United States back to global engagement. My argument examines the incentives of the hegemon to encourage regional security cooperation, and the incentives of regional states to organize themselves on a regional basis. The argument then suggests that this is not likely to be the case: on the one hand, in the long-run the United States will have even more to gain from encouraging regional cooperation. On the other, regional states will have increased incentives to organize regionally in order to better face the aggresively active hegemon, with its unilateral tendencies.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: What I seek to do in the paper, is to juxtapose the way in which the Brandt-, Palme- and Brundtland-Commission (published in 1980, 1982 and 1987, respectively) conceptualised ‘security’ and in how far the normative positions therein differed from the secu