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.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO’s middle powers have been pressured into shouldering an increasing share of the costs of the transatlantic alliance. In Sharing the Burden? Benjamin Zyla rejects the claim that countries like Canada have shirked their responsibilities within NATO.Using a range of measures that go beyond troop numbers and defense budgets to include peacekeeping commitments, foreign economic assistance, and contributions to NATO’s rapid reaction forces and infrastructure, Zyla argues that, proportionally, Canada’s NATO commitments in the 1990s rivaled those of the alliance’s major powers. At the same time, he demonstrates that Canadian policy was driven by strong normative principles to assist failed and failing states rather than a desire to ride the coattails of the United States, as is often presumed.An important challenge to realist theories, Sharing the Burden? is a significant contribution to the debate on the nature of alliances in international relations.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO’s middle powers have been pressured into shouldering an increasing share of the costs of the transatlantic alliance. In Sharing the Burden? Benjamin Zyla rejects the claim that countries like Canada have shirked their responsibilities within NATO.Using a range of measures that go beyond troop numbers and defense budgets to include peacekeeping commitments, foreign economic assistance, and contributions to NATO’s rapid reaction forces and infrastructure, Zyla argues that, proportionally, Canada’s NATO commitments in the 1990s rivaled those of the alliance’s major powers. At the same time, he demonstrates that Canadian policy was driven by strong normative principles to assist failed and failing states rather than a desire to ride the coattails of the United States, as is often presumed.An important challenge to realist theories, Sharing the Burden? is a significant contribution to the debate on the nature of alliances in international relations.

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).