Benjamin Zyla – författare

Canada''s statebuilding efforts in Afghanistan are not well documented. After fourteen years of significant investments in humanitarian causes, there are still questions about the impact of these projects and whether they delivered as promised or fell short.In Canada as Statebuilder? Laura Grant and Benjamin Zyla analyze over one hundred and thirty Canadian-led development projects in Afghanistan to illustrate that Canada has a limited capacity to effectively run humanitarian efforts in unstable, insecure, or inaccessible environments. Canadian or Canadian-sponsored development projects were ambitious and highly productive in terms of outputs in the short term, especially in the areas of security, women and gender, health, and education. However, when their outcomes and overall impact are assessed, the authors argue, Canada''s record is less impressive. Their analysis contributes to evidence-based discussions of one of Canada''s most important foreign policy activities in recent years.Reflecting on Canada''s engagement in Afghanistan, Canada as Statebuilder? asks whether Canadian peacekeeping efforts in the region were ultimately worth the economic and human resources invested.

With the Lisbon Treaty in place and the European Union increasingly involved in international crisis management and stabilization operations in places near and far, this volume revisits the trajectory of a European strategic culture. Specifically, it studies the usefulness of its application in a variety of circumstances, including the EU’s operations in Africa and the Balkans as well as joint operations with NATO and the United Nations.

The contributors find that strategic culture is a useful tool to explain and understand the EU''s civilian and military operations, not in the sense of a ‘cause’, but as a European normative framework of preferences and constraints. Accordingly, classical notions of strategic culture in the field of international security must be adapted to highlight the specific character of Europe''s strategic culture, especially by taking the interaction with the United Nations and NATO into account. Though at variance over the extent to which security and defence missions have demonstrated or promoted a shared strategic culture in Europe, the authors reveal a growing sense that a cohesive strategic culture is critical in the EU’s ambition of being a global actor. Should Europe fail to nurture a shared strategic culture, its actions will be based much more on flexibility than on cohesion.

This book was published as a special issue of Contemporary Security Policy.

With the Lisbon Treaty in place and the European Union increasingly involved in international crisis management and stabilization operations in places near and far, this volume revisits the trajectory of a European strategic culture. Specifically, it studies the usefulness of its application in a variety of circumstances, including the EU’s operations in Africa and the Balkans as well as joint operations with NATO and the United Nations.

The contributors find that strategic culture is a useful tool to explain and understand the EU''s civilian and military operations, not in the sense of a ‘cause’, but as a European normative framework of preferences and constraints. Accordingly, classical notions of strategic culture in the field of international security must be adapted to highlight the specific character of Europe''s strategic culture, especially by taking the interaction with the United Nations and NATO into account. Though at variance over the extent to which security and defence missions have demonstrated or promoted a shared strategic culture in Europe, the authors reveal a growing sense that a cohesive strategic culture is critical in the EU’s ambition of being a global actor. Should Europe fail to nurture a shared strategic culture, its actions will be based much more on flexibility than on cohesion.

This book was published as a special issue of Contemporary Security Policy.

This book discusses Brexit’s implications for the two most important security institutions in Europe, the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). While Brexit is still unfolding, this book asks what it would mean for the future embedding of the UK into CFSP and NATO, as well as how it will most likely affect the inner mechanics of the transatlantic alliance (NATO) and CFSP in particular, in the years to come. The book is divided into two parts. Part I provides a historical overview of the evolution of the relationships between the UK and NATO and the EU, respectively. Part II discusses the geopolitical contexts and potential impacts of Brexit, focusing on the contemporary security environment, as well as the options that the EU has, in the event an agreement is concluded. Using both predictive and normative arguments, this book provides likely scenarios for an event that continues to be a source of much uncertainty forthe global community.

Making an important contribution to one of the most important policy debates in international security affairs today, this book is of interest to students and researchers of international security affairs, European politics, and global governance as well as policymakers and practitioners working on the Brexit file.

This book offers an analysis of a prospective transitional justice process in Syria. As the Syrian conflict enters into its tenth year, this book asks how the sustained human rights violations and war crimes could possibly be addressed in a post-conflict setting, particularly in the context of the widespread displacement crisis. Despite a recent movement in scholarship toward bottom-up peacebuilding approaches and participatory transitional justice models, the transitional justice and local peacebuilding nexus remains under-theorized, particularly as it relates to the engagement of displaced populations. This book seeks to address this gap through the conceptualization of a locally driven transitional justice process for Syria that is founded on the integration of refugees and displaced populations. Through offering a series of policy recommendations on how to implement such a process, it aims to make a contribution to building a bridge of exchange between the policy/practitioner world and the academy in this area of study.