Usporedbom dviju geopolitičkih i geostrateških vizija o strateškim izazovima i ulozi NATO-a u suv... more Usporedbom dviju geopolitičkih i geostrateških vizija o strateškim izazovima i ulozi NATO-a u suvremenom svijetu i bliskoj budućnosti pokušava se ukazati na različitost izazova koji stoje pred NATO-om. Dvije vizije koje se obrađuju identificiraju izazove i predlažu odgovore na izazove. Različitost identificiranih izazova i predloženih odgovora na izazove pokazatelj je različitosti vizija. Identifikacija izazova i opasnosti razlikuje se ovisno o autorima vizija i ciljevima koje su isti željeli postići. Ključnim geopolitičkim i geostrateškim izazovima za NATO u budućnosti označuju se: sigurnosni izazovi iz šire regije Bliskog istoka, sve veće značenje kontrole nad izvorima energije, tj. nalazištima nafte i plina, ekonomsko, političko i vojno jačanje NR Kine, odnosi NATO-a u cjelini i pojedinih članica s Rusijom te unutarnji odnosi u NATO-u. Obrađuje se i problematika identificiranja strateških ciljeva kao rezultata trendova na koje NATO mora pronalaziti odgovore te definiranja buduće uloge NATO-a s obzirom na geografski prostor i djelovanje, tj. hoće li NATO ostati regionalna sigurnosna organizacija ili će postati de facto globalni sigurnosni čimbenik koji zastupa i štiti interese članica na globalnoj razini. Ključne riječi: NATO, geopolitički i geostrateški izazovi, geopolitičke vizije, strateški ciljevi, ekonomska kriza. Uvod U razdoblju koje se proteže otprilike od polovine 2008. godine najvažniji trenutak koji obilježuje Sjevernu Ameriku (kad je NATO u pitanju, ovaj pojam poistovjećuje se s Angloamerikom, tj. SAD-om i Kanadom) i Europu jest ekonomska kriza koja je 2009., pa i 2010. godine, za mnoge države s ova dva kontinenta značila i recesiju. Članice NA-TO-a našle su se suočene s velikim problemima kad je u pitanju održavanje postignute
South East European Journal of Economics and Business
Migration of higher-educated individuals from Croatia is damaging the long-term perspective of th... more Migration of higher-educated individuals from Croatia is damaging the long-term perspective of the Croatian economy as lower levels of the participation rate in the Croatian economy may endanger the feasibility of the social, healthcare and pension systems. With Croatia’s accession to the EU, a wave of migration was facilitated as a result of easier access to foreign labour markets. The paper focuses on the causes of migration from Croatia given the relatively limited research devoted to this topic. While there is robust evidence of corruption being one of the main causes of migration globally, this paper questions this assertion specifically in the case of Croatia. The paper analyses information from a survey with a random sampling approach of 223 respondents from the Varaždin County. The data is analysed by implementing different logit regression models. The paper conceptualizes economic and political factors that may cause migration as different variables in order to conduct a ro...
The impact of remittance inflows on economic development is contested in the existing literature.... more The impact of remittance inflows on economic development is contested in the existing literature. This article applies a panel auto regressive distributed lag to examine the impact of remittance inflows on economic growth and self-employment percentage in a panel of seven Southeast European countries between 1996 and 2020. The countries included in the panel are characterized by higher remittance inflows and include Albania, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. The findings of the article indicate that there is no short-run relationship between remittance inflows and economic growth, but that remittance inflows are a significant contributor to economic growth in the long run. The article finds that in the short run, remittance inflows actually decrease the self-employment rate which can be attributed to the poverty alleviation impact of remittance flows, while there is no statistically significant relationship between remittance inflows and the self-employment rate in the long-run. This indicates that there are opportunities to utilize the significant remittance inflows in more meaningful ways to stimulate investment opportunities.
This paper considers the forms of vaccine nationalism specific to responses to SARS-CoV-2. First,... more This paper considers the forms of vaccine nationalism specific to responses to SARS-CoV-2. First, it considers the initial vaccine responses to SARS-CoV-2 and how the competition unfolded in a broader, global sense. The second part considers the way the European Union adopted its own type of nationalism, despite claiming to distinguish itself as more humanitarian and equitable in approaching COVID-19 vaccine production, supply, and distribution. The creation of the export control mechanism, and the threat of its use, was itself an expression of Euro-nationalism in action. The need to do so was largely a product of the EU’s own making, given its own contractual relationships with the pharmaceutical companies. Finally, this paper contends that the advocacy for vaccine passports, championed by the EU, served to cause parochial ruptures in the bloc for commercial reasons.
Economic and Social Development: 68th International Scientific Economic and Social Development Conference - book of proceedings, 2021
Health diplomacy, in times of any crisis, is an important component of the foreign policy of worl... more Health diplomacy, in times of any crisis, is an important component of the foreign policy of world powers with the aim of spreading its geopolitical influence around the world. Since the advent of the COVID-19 virus in late 2019, it has been shown that health systems, even developed countries, have not been prepared to respond adequately to the challenges posed by the coronavirus. We aim to determine whether the People's Republic of China (hereafter: the PR China), which was even publicly named by the then US President Trump as the source of the infection, calling the COVID-19 virus a "Chinese virus", seems to be exploiting the global health situation, activating its health diplomacy on a global level as the so-called "soft power" tool for spreading its influence around the world. The European Union (hereafter: the EU), but also the United States of America (hereafter: the USA), only a few months after the outbreak of the crisis, practically remained trapped in their own inertia. On the other hand, the PR China apparently has used every opportunity to expand and strengthen its geopolitical influence through health diplomacy. While the whole of Europe was in complete lock-down, there is no country in Europe that China did not supply with protective equipment, often donating certain quantities. The result of such a health approach, and in the context of the current situation, we can say the "vaccine diplomacy" is a delay in the delivery of vaccines, the only possible solution to the crisis, which again puts the EU in an unfavorable economic and geopolitical position. The focus of this paper is to analyze how the PR China, in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, uses its health diplomacy as a "soft power" diplomatic tool and what this means for China's future geopolitical positioning.
Usporedbom dviju geopolitičkih i geostrateških vizija o strateškim izazovima i ulozi NATO-a u suv... more Usporedbom dviju geopolitičkih i geostrateških vizija o strateškim izazovima i ulozi NATO-a u suvremenom svijetu i bliskoj budućnosti pokušava se ukazati na različitost izazova koji stoje pred NATO-om. Dvije vizije koje se obrađuju identificiraju izazove i predlažu odgovore na izazove. Različitost identificiranih izazova i predloženih odgovora na izazove pokazatelj je različitosti vizija. Identifikacija izazova i opasnosti razlikuje se ovisno o autorima vizija i ciljevima koje su isti željeli postići. Ključnim geopolitičkim i geostrateškim izazovima za NATO u budućnosti označuju se: sigurnosni izazovi iz šire regije Bliskog istoka, sve veće značenje kontrole nad izvorima energije, tj. nalazištima nafte i plina, ekonomsko, političko i vojno jačanje NR Kine, odnosi NATO-a u cjelini i pojedinih članica s Rusijom te unutarnji odnosi u NATO-u. Obrađuje se i problematika identificiranja strateških ciljeva kao rezultata trendova na koje NATO mora pronalaziti odgovore te definiranja buduće uloge NATO-a s obzirom na geografski prostor i djelovanje, tj. hoće li NATO ostati regionalna sigurnosna organizacija ili će postati de facto globalni sigurnosni čimbenik koji zastupa i štiti interese članica na globalnoj razini. Ključne riječi: NATO, geopolitički i geostrateški izazovi, geopolitičke vizije, strateški ciljevi, ekonomska kriza. Uvod U razdoblju koje se proteže otprilike od polovine 2008. godine najvažniji trenutak koji obilježuje Sjevernu Ameriku (kad je NATO u pitanju, ovaj pojam poistovjećuje se s Angloamerikom, tj. SAD-om i Kanadom) i Europu jest ekonomska kriza koja je 2009., pa i 2010. godine, za mnoge države s ova dva kontinenta značila i recesiju. Članice NA-TO-a našle su se suočene s velikim problemima kad je u pitanju održavanje postignute Pregledni znanstveni članak UDK: 355.356(100-622 NATO) Primljeno: 19. svibnja 2014.
The results of the 2016 US Presidential Election showed the inaccuracy of the polls and the unexp... more The results of the 2016 US Presidential Election showed the inaccuracy of the polls and the unexpected victories of the Republican candidate in Michig
The book by Radhika Desai titled Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empir... more The book by Radhika Desai titled Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire and part of The Future of World Capitalism book series, represents a profound introspection, as well as an overview of the most important politico-economic relations in the world, from the late-19thcentury until the current period. This book deconstructs common myths present in the mainstream literature devoted to international political and economic relations by using a scientific approach oriented towards processes and laws of political economy. Drawing mainly on the critique of the hegemony stability theory (HST), and using the theoretical perspective of scientific Marxism, the author overturns cosmopolitan visions of the world and describes the political and economic prerequisites crucial for the functioning of the capitalist economy. This is a book that rejects the possibility of a contemporary world hegemony, which according to the author could not be conducted by any state, not even the U.S.A. Maybe the most important contribution of this book, as this reviewer sees it, is the deconstruction of mainstream ideas about the functioning of the world economy, and of ideas that Desai calls cosmopolitan and that include hegemony, globalization and "global economy", which dominate the discipline of international relations (and to which Desai refers as "the bourgeois discipline"). Desai's main thesis, around which the whole book is organized and meticulously explained in the first, "theoretical" chapter, is that the processes of uneven and combined development (UCD) characterize international relations of the modern world. These processes evolve in a dialectic in which, on the one hand dominant states tend to preserve the existing uneven configurations of capitalist development which favours them, including through formal and informal imperialism. On the other hand, contender states accelerate the capitalist, and in some cases
Five years after it became an EU member state and despite the current positive macroeconomic indi... more Five years after it became an EU member state and despite the current positive macroeconomic indicators, Croatia is faced with severe social challenges, mainly expressed through the demographic exodus of younger and more educated population, as well as rising social inequalities and regional differences in the level of economic development. Aware of these developments, we have decided to perform an online survey about the different aspects of the perceived impact of the EU membership for Croatia, emphasizing possible perceived benefits, negative influences, missed opportunities, and potential risks. The survey was performed on two groups of responders. Hence we have shared our questionnaire on Facebook, one group of responders is randomly composed of our Facebook friends and friends of friends who chose to answer our questions. The second group is comprised of students of the University North, located in two cities near the Hungarian (Koprivnica, 30 000 inhabitants) as well as Hunga...
This book provides a complete overview of mainstream International Relations as a set of theories... more This book provides a complete overview of mainstream International Relations as a set of theories which translate Western supremacy into intellectual hegemony. (a quote from the book's cover) The book by Kees van der Pijl (Professor Emeritus at the University of Sussex) titled: The Discipline of Western Supremacy. Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy, Volume III represents a final chapter (after: Nomads, Empires, States. Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy, Volume I; The Foreign Encounter in Myth and Religion. Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy, Volume II) in the author's successful attempt to study foreign relations and the political economy of the late 19 th , the 20 th and the 21 st centuries. The book is organized into five chapters (Empire and Nationality in the Pax Britannica, The Crusade for Democracy and World Politics, Cold War Discipline in International Relations, The Pax Americana and National Liberation, and The Crisis of International Discipline), each covering a distinct period in history, providing the historical overview of the development of the international re-Book Reviews brought to
Fokus istraživanja ovoga rada leži na otporu materijalnim aspektima suvremene geopolitike tj. na ... more Fokus istraživanja ovoga rada leži na otporu materijalnim aspektima suvremene geopolitike tj. na suvremenoj hegemonskoj geopolitickoj praksi, koja se obicno naziva postmodernom. Otpor u „stvarnom“, materijalnom svijetu predstavlja otpor postmodernoj prostornoj geopolitickoj praksi. Otpor na intelektualnom polju prvenstveno se odnosi na proizvodnju suprotnih vizija ili teorijskih perspektiva koje odbacuju suvremenu, postmodernu geopoliticku imaginaciju izraženu kroz geopoliticke vizije i diskurse politicko-ekonomskih elita. Najbolji je primjer toga otpora hegemonskoj geopolitickoj imaginaciji antigeopolitika kao najozbiljniji izazov hegemonskim predstavljanjima geopolitickoga svijeta. Subjekti suvremenog otpora hegemonskoj geopolitickoj praksi prvenstveno su drustveni pokreti i mreže, koji se protive neoliberalnoj globalizaciji i geoekonomskoj logici, koje su glavni uzroci toga otpora. Globalizaciju i geoekonomsku logiku snažno zagovaraju i u djelo provode elite država, multinacional...
The most important EU member states may shift away from the US renewed containment strategy, orie... more The most important EU member states may shift away from the US renewed containment strategy, oriented on Russia. NATO allies had in earlier periods picked up geopolitical theories and theses from Mackinder and Spykman. More recently, these were used by political lobbies in the US administrations inside the White House and Pentagon to create the US Grand Strategy that was devoted to building up the US hegemony into the world by following the New World Order in the 21st century. The Containment policy toward Russia was created by the US financial, economic and military lobbies, to continue with the old fashioned Geopolitics. The EU member states may find out common military identity and authority to form a European Defence Union (EDU). The EU could open a new page into the (white) book to implement multilateral world order that shares geopolitical and geoeconomic interest in defence cooperation with China and Russia, and therefore continue with the development of its defence identity, more independent of NATO.
For the most of its history, the US public debt has neither been a factor that, aside from rare c... more For the most of its history, the US public debt has neither been a factor that, aside from rare crisis periods, acted as a factor of significant worry, nor was it a topic present in relevant policy debates. A key element often overlooked in the debate regarding the long-term sustainability of the public debt of developed economies is the legal framework that should prevent macroeconomic imbalances. The aim of this paper is to assess, through theoretical argumentation, the historical significance of the public debt in the USA. The paper concludes that the USA requires a more coherent and precise legal framework that will ensure the long-termstability of the American economy.
The multipolar world of present day, with one dominant state and a couple of contender states, is... more The multipolar world of present day, with one dominant state and a couple of contender states, is comprised of small, mid-size and large states. Small states comprise between half and two-thirds of the world's states depending on the criteria used for classification. However, their influence is diametrically opposite to their number. The contemporary transnational developments have changed the role and position of small states, giving them new opportunities for international action, albeit concurrently making them more vulnerable to external economic and environmental influences, such as overexposure to one economic activity and the consequences of the climate change. Small states, despite their relatively small importance for the transnational developments, deserve the attention of scholars and the general public, as well as the civil society. Large states could learn from successful small states and be more concerned for the fate of small states. The difficulties of small vuln...
This paper studies the relevance of political stability on foreign direct investment (FDI) and th... more This paper studies the relevance of political stability on foreign direct investment (FDI) and the relevance of FDI on economic growth, in three panels. The first panel contains 11 very small economies; the second contains five well-developed and politically stable economies with highly positive FDI net inflows, while the third is a panel with economies that are prone to political violence or targeted by the terrorist attacks. We employ a Granger causality test and implement a vector autoregressive (VAR) framework within the panel setting. In order to test the sensitivity of the results and avoid robust errors, we employ an ARDL model for each of the countries within every panel. Based upon our results, we conclude that there is a long-term relationship between political stability and FDI for the panel of small economies, while we find no empiric evidence of such a relationship for both panels of larger and more developed economies. Similarly to the original hypothesis of Lucas (1990), we find that FDI outflows tend to go towards politically less stable countries. On the other hand, the empiric methodology employed did not find such conclusive evidence in the panels of politically more developed countries or in the small economies that this paper observes.
After the breakup of the USSR, and the several rounds of Post-Cold War en- largements of the West... more After the breakup of the USSR, and the several rounds of Post-Cold War en- largements of the Western integrations, once large space of newly independ- ent and geopolitically uncontrolled European post-communist states, located between the EU, NATO and Russia, contracts geopolitically and “wanders” strategically. The three states, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova, located on Rus- sia’s western borders share about three thousand kilometers of borders with the EU and NATO, and about two thousand and five hundred kilometers with Russia, which implicates that they are prone to the geopolitical influences from their surroundings. This Interspace of the three states lies inside the stra- tegic triangle comprised of: 1) Russia – geopolitically and militarily power- ful state as well as a giant considering its energy reserves, which makes her relatively strong “hard” power as well as a significant “soft” power; 2) the EU – economic giant on the global level that is not unified enough; has domes- tic problems and is partially dependent on Russia when it comes to energy, a civilian power without “hard” power that in its foreign relations relies on policies based on financial assistance, assurance, and attractiveness; 3) NATO, led by the USA – the most powerful military-political-security “hard” power that exists today; it does not have the kind of influence on Europe and the Post-Soviet space that it had in the 90-ies. However, as a consequence of subordination of the Interspace that lasted for a couple of centuries, the com- mon characteristics intrinsic to this space occur: ambiguous identities; deficits in the democratic practices; complicated, prolonged and incomplete transi- tion; economic decline, demographic problems – all of which favor a strategic “adoption” of the Interspace by the Kremlin, a former imperial master. At the same time, a relative marginalization of the Interspace is evident regarding the processes of Euro-Atlantic integration. After the unsuccessful attempts of “pulling out” Kiev, Kishinev, and the South Caucasian Tbilisi from this Rus- sian sphere of influence, the states positioned in the Interspace, together with Russia, comprise a regional security complex, a stabilized geopolitical “Rus- sosphere” that is a key part of the Kremlin’s attempts for Eurasian reintegra- tion under Russia’s leadership. Keywords: Interspace, Geopolitical Region, Sphere of Influence, EU, Russia.
Usporedbom dviju geopolitičkih i geostrateških vizija o strateškim izazovima i ulozi NATO-a u suv... more Usporedbom dviju geopolitičkih i geostrateških vizija o strateškim izazovima i ulozi NATO-a u suvremenom svijetu i bliskoj budućnosti pokušava se ukazati na različitost izazova koji stoje pred NATO-om. Dvije vizije koje se obrađuju identificiraju izazove i predlažu odgovore na izazove. Različitost identificiranih izazova i predloženih odgovora na izazove pokazatelj je različitosti vizija. Identifikacija izazova i opasnosti razlikuje se ovisno o autorima vizija i ciljevima koje su isti željeli postići. Ključnim geopolitičkim i geostrateškim izazovima za NATO u budućnosti označuju se: sigurnosni izazovi iz šire regije Bliskog istoka, sve veće značenje kontrole nad izvorima energije, tj. nalazištima nafte i plina, ekonomsko, političko i vojno jačanje NR Kine, odnosi NATO-a u cjelini i pojedinih članica s Rusijom te unutarnji odnosi u NATO-u. Obrađuje se i problematika identificiranja strateških ciljeva kao rezultata trendova na koje NATO mora pronalaziti odgovore te definiranja buduće uloge NATO-a s obzirom na geografski prostor i djelovanje, tj. hoće li NATO ostati regionalna sigurnosna organizacija ili će postati de facto globalni sigurnosni čimbenik koji zastupa i štiti interese članica na globalnoj razini. Ključne riječi: NATO, geopolitički i geostrateški izazovi, geopolitičke vizije, strateški ciljevi, ekonomska kriza. Uvod U razdoblju koje se proteže otprilike od polovine 2008. godine najvažniji trenutak koji obilježuje Sjevernu Ameriku (kad je NATO u pitanju, ovaj pojam poistovjećuje se s Angloamerikom, tj. SAD-om i Kanadom) i Europu jest ekonomska kriza koja je 2009., pa i 2010. godine, za mnoge države s ova dva kontinenta značila i recesiju. Članice NA-TO-a našle su se suočene s velikim problemima kad je u pitanju održavanje postignute
South East European Journal of Economics and Business
Migration of higher-educated individuals from Croatia is damaging the long-term perspective of th... more Migration of higher-educated individuals from Croatia is damaging the long-term perspective of the Croatian economy as lower levels of the participation rate in the Croatian economy may endanger the feasibility of the social, healthcare and pension systems. With Croatia’s accession to the EU, a wave of migration was facilitated as a result of easier access to foreign labour markets. The paper focuses on the causes of migration from Croatia given the relatively limited research devoted to this topic. While there is robust evidence of corruption being one of the main causes of migration globally, this paper questions this assertion specifically in the case of Croatia. The paper analyses information from a survey with a random sampling approach of 223 respondents from the Varaždin County. The data is analysed by implementing different logit regression models. The paper conceptualizes economic and political factors that may cause migration as different variables in order to conduct a ro...
The impact of remittance inflows on economic development is contested in the existing literature.... more The impact of remittance inflows on economic development is contested in the existing literature. This article applies a panel auto regressive distributed lag to examine the impact of remittance inflows on economic growth and self-employment percentage in a panel of seven Southeast European countries between 1996 and 2020. The countries included in the panel are characterized by higher remittance inflows and include Albania, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. The findings of the article indicate that there is no short-run relationship between remittance inflows and economic growth, but that remittance inflows are a significant contributor to economic growth in the long run. The article finds that in the short run, remittance inflows actually decrease the self-employment rate which can be attributed to the poverty alleviation impact of remittance flows, while there is no statistically significant relationship between remittance inflows and the self-employment rate in the long-run. This indicates that there are opportunities to utilize the significant remittance inflows in more meaningful ways to stimulate investment opportunities.
This paper considers the forms of vaccine nationalism specific to responses to SARS-CoV-2. First,... more This paper considers the forms of vaccine nationalism specific to responses to SARS-CoV-2. First, it considers the initial vaccine responses to SARS-CoV-2 and how the competition unfolded in a broader, global sense. The second part considers the way the European Union adopted its own type of nationalism, despite claiming to distinguish itself as more humanitarian and equitable in approaching COVID-19 vaccine production, supply, and distribution. The creation of the export control mechanism, and the threat of its use, was itself an expression of Euro-nationalism in action. The need to do so was largely a product of the EU’s own making, given its own contractual relationships with the pharmaceutical companies. Finally, this paper contends that the advocacy for vaccine passports, championed by the EU, served to cause parochial ruptures in the bloc for commercial reasons.
Economic and Social Development: 68th International Scientific Economic and Social Development Conference - book of proceedings, 2021
Health diplomacy, in times of any crisis, is an important component of the foreign policy of worl... more Health diplomacy, in times of any crisis, is an important component of the foreign policy of world powers with the aim of spreading its geopolitical influence around the world. Since the advent of the COVID-19 virus in late 2019, it has been shown that health systems, even developed countries, have not been prepared to respond adequately to the challenges posed by the coronavirus. We aim to determine whether the People's Republic of China (hereafter: the PR China), which was even publicly named by the then US President Trump as the source of the infection, calling the COVID-19 virus a "Chinese virus", seems to be exploiting the global health situation, activating its health diplomacy on a global level as the so-called "soft power" tool for spreading its influence around the world. The European Union (hereafter: the EU), but also the United States of America (hereafter: the USA), only a few months after the outbreak of the crisis, practically remained trapped in their own inertia. On the other hand, the PR China apparently has used every opportunity to expand and strengthen its geopolitical influence through health diplomacy. While the whole of Europe was in complete lock-down, there is no country in Europe that China did not supply with protective equipment, often donating certain quantities. The result of such a health approach, and in the context of the current situation, we can say the "vaccine diplomacy" is a delay in the delivery of vaccines, the only possible solution to the crisis, which again puts the EU in an unfavorable economic and geopolitical position. The focus of this paper is to analyze how the PR China, in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, uses its health diplomacy as a "soft power" diplomatic tool and what this means for China's future geopolitical positioning.
Usporedbom dviju geopolitičkih i geostrateških vizija o strateškim izazovima i ulozi NATO-a u suv... more Usporedbom dviju geopolitičkih i geostrateških vizija o strateškim izazovima i ulozi NATO-a u suvremenom svijetu i bliskoj budućnosti pokušava se ukazati na različitost izazova koji stoje pred NATO-om. Dvije vizije koje se obrađuju identificiraju izazove i predlažu odgovore na izazove. Različitost identificiranih izazova i predloženih odgovora na izazove pokazatelj je različitosti vizija. Identifikacija izazova i opasnosti razlikuje se ovisno o autorima vizija i ciljevima koje su isti željeli postići. Ključnim geopolitičkim i geostrateškim izazovima za NATO u budućnosti označuju se: sigurnosni izazovi iz šire regije Bliskog istoka, sve veće značenje kontrole nad izvorima energije, tj. nalazištima nafte i plina, ekonomsko, političko i vojno jačanje NR Kine, odnosi NATO-a u cjelini i pojedinih članica s Rusijom te unutarnji odnosi u NATO-u. Obrađuje se i problematika identificiranja strateških ciljeva kao rezultata trendova na koje NATO mora pronalaziti odgovore te definiranja buduće uloge NATO-a s obzirom na geografski prostor i djelovanje, tj. hoće li NATO ostati regionalna sigurnosna organizacija ili će postati de facto globalni sigurnosni čimbenik koji zastupa i štiti interese članica na globalnoj razini. Ključne riječi: NATO, geopolitički i geostrateški izazovi, geopolitičke vizije, strateški ciljevi, ekonomska kriza. Uvod U razdoblju koje se proteže otprilike od polovine 2008. godine najvažniji trenutak koji obilježuje Sjevernu Ameriku (kad je NATO u pitanju, ovaj pojam poistovjećuje se s Angloamerikom, tj. SAD-om i Kanadom) i Europu jest ekonomska kriza koja je 2009., pa i 2010. godine, za mnoge države s ova dva kontinenta značila i recesiju. Članice NA-TO-a našle su se suočene s velikim problemima kad je u pitanju održavanje postignute Pregledni znanstveni članak UDK: 355.356(100-622 NATO) Primljeno: 19. svibnja 2014.
The results of the 2016 US Presidential Election showed the inaccuracy of the polls and the unexp... more The results of the 2016 US Presidential Election showed the inaccuracy of the polls and the unexpected victories of the Republican candidate in Michig
The book by Radhika Desai titled Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empir... more The book by Radhika Desai titled Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire and part of The Future of World Capitalism book series, represents a profound introspection, as well as an overview of the most important politico-economic relations in the world, from the late-19thcentury until the current period. This book deconstructs common myths present in the mainstream literature devoted to international political and economic relations by using a scientific approach oriented towards processes and laws of political economy. Drawing mainly on the critique of the hegemony stability theory (HST), and using the theoretical perspective of scientific Marxism, the author overturns cosmopolitan visions of the world and describes the political and economic prerequisites crucial for the functioning of the capitalist economy. This is a book that rejects the possibility of a contemporary world hegemony, which according to the author could not be conducted by any state, not even the U.S.A. Maybe the most important contribution of this book, as this reviewer sees it, is the deconstruction of mainstream ideas about the functioning of the world economy, and of ideas that Desai calls cosmopolitan and that include hegemony, globalization and "global economy", which dominate the discipline of international relations (and to which Desai refers as "the bourgeois discipline"). Desai's main thesis, around which the whole book is organized and meticulously explained in the first, "theoretical" chapter, is that the processes of uneven and combined development (UCD) characterize international relations of the modern world. These processes evolve in a dialectic in which, on the one hand dominant states tend to preserve the existing uneven configurations of capitalist development which favours them, including through formal and informal imperialism. On the other hand, contender states accelerate the capitalist, and in some cases
Five years after it became an EU member state and despite the current positive macroeconomic indi... more Five years after it became an EU member state and despite the current positive macroeconomic indicators, Croatia is faced with severe social challenges, mainly expressed through the demographic exodus of younger and more educated population, as well as rising social inequalities and regional differences in the level of economic development. Aware of these developments, we have decided to perform an online survey about the different aspects of the perceived impact of the EU membership for Croatia, emphasizing possible perceived benefits, negative influences, missed opportunities, and potential risks. The survey was performed on two groups of responders. Hence we have shared our questionnaire on Facebook, one group of responders is randomly composed of our Facebook friends and friends of friends who chose to answer our questions. The second group is comprised of students of the University North, located in two cities near the Hungarian (Koprivnica, 30 000 inhabitants) as well as Hunga...
This book provides a complete overview of mainstream International Relations as a set of theories... more This book provides a complete overview of mainstream International Relations as a set of theories which translate Western supremacy into intellectual hegemony. (a quote from the book's cover) The book by Kees van der Pijl (Professor Emeritus at the University of Sussex) titled: The Discipline of Western Supremacy. Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy, Volume III represents a final chapter (after: Nomads, Empires, States. Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy, Volume I; The Foreign Encounter in Myth and Religion. Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy, Volume II) in the author's successful attempt to study foreign relations and the political economy of the late 19 th , the 20 th and the 21 st centuries. The book is organized into five chapters (Empire and Nationality in the Pax Britannica, The Crusade for Democracy and World Politics, Cold War Discipline in International Relations, The Pax Americana and National Liberation, and The Crisis of International Discipline), each covering a distinct period in history, providing the historical overview of the development of the international re-Book Reviews brought to
Fokus istraživanja ovoga rada leži na otporu materijalnim aspektima suvremene geopolitike tj. na ... more Fokus istraživanja ovoga rada leži na otporu materijalnim aspektima suvremene geopolitike tj. na suvremenoj hegemonskoj geopolitickoj praksi, koja se obicno naziva postmodernom. Otpor u „stvarnom“, materijalnom svijetu predstavlja otpor postmodernoj prostornoj geopolitickoj praksi. Otpor na intelektualnom polju prvenstveno se odnosi na proizvodnju suprotnih vizija ili teorijskih perspektiva koje odbacuju suvremenu, postmodernu geopoliticku imaginaciju izraženu kroz geopoliticke vizije i diskurse politicko-ekonomskih elita. Najbolji je primjer toga otpora hegemonskoj geopolitickoj imaginaciji antigeopolitika kao najozbiljniji izazov hegemonskim predstavljanjima geopolitickoga svijeta. Subjekti suvremenog otpora hegemonskoj geopolitickoj praksi prvenstveno su drustveni pokreti i mreže, koji se protive neoliberalnoj globalizaciji i geoekonomskoj logici, koje su glavni uzroci toga otpora. Globalizaciju i geoekonomsku logiku snažno zagovaraju i u djelo provode elite država, multinacional...
The most important EU member states may shift away from the US renewed containment strategy, orie... more The most important EU member states may shift away from the US renewed containment strategy, oriented on Russia. NATO allies had in earlier periods picked up geopolitical theories and theses from Mackinder and Spykman. More recently, these were used by political lobbies in the US administrations inside the White House and Pentagon to create the US Grand Strategy that was devoted to building up the US hegemony into the world by following the New World Order in the 21st century. The Containment policy toward Russia was created by the US financial, economic and military lobbies, to continue with the old fashioned Geopolitics. The EU member states may find out common military identity and authority to form a European Defence Union (EDU). The EU could open a new page into the (white) book to implement multilateral world order that shares geopolitical and geoeconomic interest in defence cooperation with China and Russia, and therefore continue with the development of its defence identity, more independent of NATO.
For the most of its history, the US public debt has neither been a factor that, aside from rare c... more For the most of its history, the US public debt has neither been a factor that, aside from rare crisis periods, acted as a factor of significant worry, nor was it a topic present in relevant policy debates. A key element often overlooked in the debate regarding the long-term sustainability of the public debt of developed economies is the legal framework that should prevent macroeconomic imbalances. The aim of this paper is to assess, through theoretical argumentation, the historical significance of the public debt in the USA. The paper concludes that the USA requires a more coherent and precise legal framework that will ensure the long-termstability of the American economy.
The multipolar world of present day, with one dominant state and a couple of contender states, is... more The multipolar world of present day, with one dominant state and a couple of contender states, is comprised of small, mid-size and large states. Small states comprise between half and two-thirds of the world's states depending on the criteria used for classification. However, their influence is diametrically opposite to their number. The contemporary transnational developments have changed the role and position of small states, giving them new opportunities for international action, albeit concurrently making them more vulnerable to external economic and environmental influences, such as overexposure to one economic activity and the consequences of the climate change. Small states, despite their relatively small importance for the transnational developments, deserve the attention of scholars and the general public, as well as the civil society. Large states could learn from successful small states and be more concerned for the fate of small states. The difficulties of small vuln...
This paper studies the relevance of political stability on foreign direct investment (FDI) and th... more This paper studies the relevance of political stability on foreign direct investment (FDI) and the relevance of FDI on economic growth, in three panels. The first panel contains 11 very small economies; the second contains five well-developed and politically stable economies with highly positive FDI net inflows, while the third is a panel with economies that are prone to political violence or targeted by the terrorist attacks. We employ a Granger causality test and implement a vector autoregressive (VAR) framework within the panel setting. In order to test the sensitivity of the results and avoid robust errors, we employ an ARDL model for each of the countries within every panel. Based upon our results, we conclude that there is a long-term relationship between political stability and FDI for the panel of small economies, while we find no empiric evidence of such a relationship for both panels of larger and more developed economies. Similarly to the original hypothesis of Lucas (1990), we find that FDI outflows tend to go towards politically less stable countries. On the other hand, the empiric methodology employed did not find such conclusive evidence in the panels of politically more developed countries or in the small economies that this paper observes.
After the breakup of the USSR, and the several rounds of Post-Cold War en- largements of the West... more After the breakup of the USSR, and the several rounds of Post-Cold War en- largements of the Western integrations, once large space of newly independ- ent and geopolitically uncontrolled European post-communist states, located between the EU, NATO and Russia, contracts geopolitically and “wanders” strategically. The three states, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova, located on Rus- sia’s western borders share about three thousand kilometers of borders with the EU and NATO, and about two thousand and five hundred kilometers with Russia, which implicates that they are prone to the geopolitical influences from their surroundings. This Interspace of the three states lies inside the stra- tegic triangle comprised of: 1) Russia – geopolitically and militarily power- ful state as well as a giant considering its energy reserves, which makes her relatively strong “hard” power as well as a significant “soft” power; 2) the EU – economic giant on the global level that is not unified enough; has domes- tic problems and is partially dependent on Russia when it comes to energy, a civilian power without “hard” power that in its foreign relations relies on policies based on financial assistance, assurance, and attractiveness; 3) NATO, led by the USA – the most powerful military-political-security “hard” power that exists today; it does not have the kind of influence on Europe and the Post-Soviet space that it had in the 90-ies. However, as a consequence of subordination of the Interspace that lasted for a couple of centuries, the com- mon characteristics intrinsic to this space occur: ambiguous identities; deficits in the democratic practices; complicated, prolonged and incomplete transi- tion; economic decline, demographic problems – all of which favor a strategic “adoption” of the Interspace by the Kremlin, a former imperial master. At the same time, a relative marginalization of the Interspace is evident regarding the processes of Euro-Atlantic integration. After the unsuccessful attempts of “pulling out” Kiev, Kishinev, and the South Caucasian Tbilisi from this Rus- sian sphere of influence, the states positioned in the Interspace, together with Russia, comprise a regional security complex, a stabilized geopolitical “Rus- sosphere” that is a key part of the Kremlin’s attempts for Eurasian reintegra- tion under Russia’s leadership. Keywords: Interspace, Geopolitical Region, Sphere of Influence, EU, Russia.
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