Taking Stock of EU Military Conflict Management
Over the last decade, the EU has established itself as a player in the international field of conflict management. Both its civilian missions and military operations have played a significant part in this development. This article takes a closer look at the EU’s military endeavours in conflict management. It presents a theoretically grounded definition and a corresponding set of criteria for success in military conflict management and evaluates the operations accordingly. The article provides a comprehensive review of all the EU military conflict management operations to date. The analysis is structured and focused around the criteria for success, which provides a more nuanced picture of the Union’s operational achievements throughout its first decade in military conflict management.
Nipping an Insurgency in the Bud—Part I: Theory and Practice of Non-military Coercion in FYR Macedonia
This article is the first part of a study exploring the success and limits of external non-military coercion in intrastate conflict. This part seeks to understand the conditions and methods that made non-military coercion a useful conflict management strategy in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The study aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of non-military coercion as a reasonable alternative to military forms of intervention. Empirical data were drawn from a series of elite interviews and documentary accounts collected in three subsequent field trips. The analysis separates the conflict into three distinct phases, emergence, escalation and settlement, to illustrate the influence of coercion on the decision-making calculus of conflict participants, and outlines the coordinated use of positive inducements and pressures to portray the positive influence of non-military coercion on the de-escalation of interethnic violence.
Atmospheric drag effects on the KOMPSAT-1 satellite during geomagnetic superstorms
We examine the atmospheric drag on the low earth-orbiting satellite, KOMPSAT-1 in a sun-synchronous orbit at ~685-km altitude starting in 1999, during a 3-month (October-December) period in 2003. This 3-month interval includes the October 29-30 and November 20 magnetic superstorms and weak to moderate storms. We observed that the daily KOMPSAT-1 drag acceleration transiently responses to transient storm-time disturbances. That is, there is an one-to-one correspondence between the KOMPSAT-1 drag accelerations and the storm events. We find that the drag acceleration correlates strongly with the level of geomagnetic disturbance. This indicates that the trajectory of KOMPSAT-1 is significantly perturbed during extremely disturbed intervals because of atmospheric density increase. The main contributor to the density increase is Joule heating associated with the geomagnetic activity rather than the solar EUV radiation, as reported by previous studies. We suggest that understanding how the upper atmosphere responses to the geomagnetic-associated heating is important to predict space weather impacts on low earth-orbiting satellites.