What role does France play in European security? What are the most important security threats the country faces? What security related decisions will President Hollande have to take over the next few months? These are the questions we asked François Heisbourg, a renowned French foreign policy and security expert. Professor Heisbourg, who is chairman of both the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) and the Geneva Center for Security Policy (GCSP), visited ETH Zurich in June 2012. He lectured on “France in European security” as part of the Master in Advanced Studies in Security Policy and Crisis Management (MAS SPCM) course.
Week: Our Perspectives
Posts from the ISN, CSS and guest writers
It goes without saying that Egypt has seen a revolutionary political change. Its new president is a leader of an organization that a little more than a year ago was still banned and feared. Since February 2011 Egyptians have voted four times. Yet, people-oriented policies are nowhere to be found and ordinary Egyptians feel little change for better in their everyday lives. Few dare to say this out loud: big part of the problem is the Egyptian society itself. It is still authoritarian: at work, at home and in the Arab street.
The notion of an authoritarian Arab society is not new. Brian Whitaker, a British columnist at the Guardian, in his book “What’s really wrong with the Middle East” (Saqi, 2009) talks to an Egyptian journalist who explains that not the single Mubarak is the problem but the fact that “Egypt has a million Mubaraks”.
Since the very beginning of the movement, Occupy has had a tense, and very often adversarial, relationship with the mainstream media. This should not come as any surprise—corporate media outlets are considered by Occupiers to be the mouthpiece of the One Percent’s policy preferences, and could therefore be expected to attempt to stifle the movement’s message, whether through a lack of coverage or through aggressively biased stories.
However, this did not change the standing fact that an act of civil disobedience needs some kind of publicity in order to be effective; otherwise, the act is simply a criminal one.
Earlier this week we provided an overview of the 2012 British Society of Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) conference. This post takes some of the highlights of the conference and provides a more in-depth look at some of the topics discussed.
The new grand bargain went into its next round. On 14 June 2012 the Heart of Asia group gathered in Kabul to push forward the Istanbul Process on Regional Security and Cooperation for a Secure and Stable Afghanistan. The real potential for regional security and cooperation, however, remains a contentious issue. Some observers disregarded the gathering as yet another useless meeting which failed to take concrete steps towards a regional security architecture. Others like UN-Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon praised it as “real progress on the path to security and broad-based development”.