Abstract ▼

Interdependence in a globalized world implies managing processes in many areas that are regulated at the international level – this is the role that International Governmental Organizations have adopted during the century of their existence. Their work and success are causally linked to the competencies and decision-making processes, as well as to the breadth and agility of member states. This is the reason why many International Organizations do not provide options for withdrawal or exclusion from membership. In that regard, European Union, as a supranational international organization, is proving its uniqueness in the international organizing. Considering that the Lisbon Treaty envisaged for the first time institute of withdrawal in Article 50, this possibility has been the subject of numerous theoretical debates, but it also become practice. The UK’s withdrawal agreement from the EU marked the beginning of new type of negotiations as well as the future relations between former Member State and the European Union. The paper analyzes three institutional aspects of the withdrawal process. Firstly, the procedure envisaged in Article 50 of the Treaty which is, in comparison to typical international organizations, more institutionalized. Secondly, the withdrawal negotiations concluded with the signing of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement that set standards for potential future withdrawals, and this paper examines its institutional aspects focusing on dispute resolution. Thirdly, the paper analyzes the institutional aspects of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which establishes a new form of association as a legal framework for the future relations between the withdrawing state and the European Union. The authors use a comparative method to determine the institutional peculiarities of the agreements.

Abstract ▼

The rising severity of the United States-China rivalry has become the primary element of contemporary international relations, posing the “million-dollar question” of whether there will be a war between the two world powers. American political scientist Graham T. Allison formulated and applied the concept of Thucydides’s trap— the structural stress caused by a “rising” power’s threat to displace a “ruling” one—to the US-China rivalry, which in most historical cases resulted in war. The author sees the fundamental weakness of Allison’s concept in the neorealist emphasis on the structural factor of the distribution of power among the actors at the expense of the process factor of their revisionist or status quo orientation, besides which Allison makes an unfounded presumption about “ruling” power’s status quo orientation. From the neoclassical realist viewpoint, the author corrects Thucydides’s trap concept, pointing to the revisionism of one or both rivals “caught” in it as the decisive factor in the outbreak of war while singling out hegemonism as a particularly dangerous form of revisionism. The author refers to the situation when the “ruling” power attempts to achieve hegemony as the reverse Thucydides trap. This paper’s principal thesis is that there is an inverse Thucydides’s trap between the contemporary United States and China due to the US’s endeavour to impose its hegemony on China and the rest of the international system. Through reinterpretation of Allison’s historical case studies based on neoclassical realism and the introduction of the concept of inverse Thucydides’s trap, the author formulates new recommendations for the prevention of the US-China conflict in the future.

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Since the beginning of Russia’s open military attack on Ukraine in February 2022, the European Union has introduced thirteen new packages of economic sanctions against Russia. Moreover, in addition to direct economic aid to Kyiv, Brussels and a number of member states have pursued a policy of sending military aid in various forms, mostly in accordance with their own assessments of security interests and available capabilities. The EU established a military assistance mission (EUMAM Ukraine) and began to use part of the existing programs, such as the European Peace Facility, for the purpose of equipping the Ukrainian army. In addition, the perception of Russia as a longterm threat is increasingly influencing new plans in the field of military industry and future armaments. In this paper, we want to analyse the cooperation of these steps taken by the EU and which member states take independently or (and) in cooperation through NATO as the dominant military alliance on European soil. Our argument is that the practice of this military crisis shows that member states to a negligible extent tend to use the Common Security and Defense Policy as a framework for their actions, to strengthen and build it in the long term, but tend to use either the bilateral ties - towards Ukraine and among each other, or the existing framework of NATO. This argumentation confirms the postulates of the new intergovernmentalism in the study of CSDP. In political practice, the intergovernmental principle remains dominant in the CSDP domain, and shows that the current practice is not effectively aimed at strengthening the CSDP nor does it provide a new synergistic effect, and that relatively, in the broader balance of power, the EU loses compared to the existing ties within the NATO pact and new flexible forms of bilateral and multilateral cooperation of its member states, outside the CSDP.

Abstract ▼

Continuous exploitation of natural resources within the national borders of a country, especially those intended for energy production (oil, gas, coal), inevitably raises a number of issues in the context of maintaining political, economic and social stability. Observed through the paradigm of the theoretical assumptions of political ecology, the benefits that are realized by the processing and distribution of natural resources are mostly connected with the efficiency of the entire state and social system and thus with security at the internal and external level. Therefore, the goal of this paper is a descriptive analysis of the role of natural resources in disrupting the relationship between Venezuela and Guyana, i.e. territorial dispute over the Essequibo region that has the potential to threaten regional security. Due to the complexity of the study of the historical process of “maturing” of these states and the achievement of mutually acceptable territorial delimitation on land and sea, the paper uses the technique of content analysis, historical-comparative analysis and the technique of narrative analysis. Based on the results of the research, it can be concluded that the current political and security tensions surrounding the solution of the future status of the Essequibo region, which is rich in natural resources, do not have the capacity to develop into more serious conflicts. The state of Venezuela’s national security has not been satisfactory for many years, including partial foreign policy isolation, while on the other hand, leading Western countries (USA, Great Britain) provide significant support to the territorial integrity of Guyana as well as neighboring countries, which reduces the potential for endangering regional security.

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Global cities are becoming increasingly influential actors in international relations in the 21st century. That is why this work uses a city as the primary unit of analysis, which, although traditionally considered a state actor, currently develops autonomous initiatives that go beyond internal borders and have a global reach. The goal is to examine the potential and resources of global cities for independent participation in international relations and thereby evaluate their role in foreign policy. To explain this process, the concept of actorness is used. Actorness as a character of the city was discussed in more detail in the example of Sao Paolo by applying Duran’s four-dimensional model, whose criteria are authority, opportunities, autonomy, and presence. This model was applied in search of an answer to the main research question: Can we talk about Sao Paolo as an actor in international relations? The analysis of the case study will be based on an extensive review of primary and secondary data sources, including official documents of the city municipality and the city office for external affairs, media reports, scientific publications, and works on the topic of the city’s international engagements. Based on the analysis of the mentioned data, each of these characteristics has been met in the international activity of Sao Paulo. The intention is to contribute to the existing literature by expanding the geographical scope of the study of international urban activism and shifting the academic focus away from the Eurocentric discourse. The paper adopts a multilingual approach in search of relevant information on the role of cities in international relations in Spanish and Portuguese in order to enrich the debate and fill the gaps found in the literature in English.