Preventing the Vacuum: Determinants of the Namibia Settlement
This paper examines the political, military and economic factors behind the diplomatic agreements which led to the withdrawal of South Africa's colonial occupation of Namibia in 1989–90, and it identifies some of the major constraints which Pretoria placed upon the independence of the new Namibian state. The view that the South African government withdrew from Namibia — but not Walvis Bay — because of military defeats in Angola during 1988 is rejected. It is argued that explanations for the settlement given by US diplomats, Chester Crocker and Charles Freeman, do not take into account key variables such as the underlying economic imperatives, South Africa's state and party building strategy in Namibia, and the political actions of the Namibian people themselves. Such determinants have also been ignored or obscured by most of the radical literature on South Africa's destabilisation of the sub‐region. It is argued here that Pretoria's attempts to consolidate stable conditions for a semi‐colonial state on it...
Strategic Territory and Territorial Strategy: The Geopolitics of Walvis Bay's Reintegration Into Namibia
Abstract This paper commences with a discussion of the focus and concerns of critical geopolitical analysis, which it then seeks to extend both geographically and methodologically with reference to the contested enclave of Walvis Bay. Enclave geopolitics generally have been remarkably under-researched, and this case study has far wider relevance in view of the unresolved status of several other examples worldwide. Moreover, the eventual reintegration of Walvis Bay into Namibia in 1994 represents the final episode in a long and bitter liberation struggle waged by Namibians against South African occupation. Namibia's independence itself, in 1990, had great significance as the first post-Cold-War act of decolonization in the Third World. All these processes and events are intricately bound up with one another as well as with specific regional dynamics. The paper charts the history of Walvis Bay's colonization and the conflicting claims of sovereignty before analysing the way in which the enclave was successively de- and then reterritorialized as part of South Africa's geopolitical strategy. The principal focus, however, is the process of bilateral negotiation and changes to Walvis Bay's status following Namibian independence, highlighting the contextuality of statecraft and the articulation of geopolitical strategies.
Analysis: The Agenda 2007 Proposals: Evolution or Revolution?
On 10 February 2004 the Commission published its proposal for the financial perspective 2007-2013. A week later it adopted the third report on economic and social cohesion. These two documents form the basis of the so-called ‘Agenda 2007 reforms’. They will be the greatest challenge for the enlarged EU after the intergovernmental conference, since they will determine the financial basis for EU policy-making until the middle of the next decade. The Agenda 2007 proposals certainly hint at courageous reforms, because they place a previously unheard-of emphasis on performance and quality. Under the proposals, structural operations should generate value for money, and the funds should focus on projects which generate added value at a European level. Overall the Commission’s proposals point in the right direction, because they balance, on the one hand, solidarity for the new Member States and weak regions in the old Member States with, on the other hand, investments in future tasks. Moreover, they constitute a paradigm shift. For the first time, the Common Agricultural Policy will not be the dominant expenditure category. Now it is up to the Member States to examine the proposals politically and find a compromise between sometimes very divergent interests. It is to be hoped that, during the debate over expenditure limits and division of funds, national interests do not outweigh European interests.