Radka Havlova

The OSCE has until now been the only security organization which directly participated in the effort to de-escalate the war in Eastern Ukraine. As cultural approaches to strategic studies can be also applied to international organizations, this study argues that the OSCE was involved in the attempt to stabilize and resolve the situation partly due to its specific strategic culture. We identify the specific features of the strategic culture of the OSCE as an example of regional security governance between ‘non-allies’ based on the discoursive analysis of OSCE documents and demonstrate how these identified features were reflected in the activities of the OSCE in the conflict in Ukraine.

Ruth Gavison edited a book which was brought together as a result of the founding conference of the Metzilah Center. The reviewed book brilliantly analyses various aspects of the UN Partition Resolution of Mandatory Palestine. The book is divided in two parts and provides a valuable key to understanding the historical context of the UN partition resolution including the history of Zionism, struggle of Jews for their homeland and Palestinian position towards the partition. Both parts of the book are well connected; analyses in the first part directly refer to documents and speeches which compose the second part of the book, and thus facilitate understanding of the topics related to the partition of Mandate Palestine.

This article analyses the EU’s response to the Syrian refugee crisis, both inside the EU and in the Syria’s neighboring countries. It first focuses on the background of the common asylum policy of the EU and major challenges posed by the refugee crisis to the common EU refugee policy. The article then focuses on an analysis of the impact of the refugee crisis on the EU, the failures of the EU to adopt a common approach towards the refugees from Syria, and the EU initiatives. As the Syrian refugees/asylum applicants constitute a large part of the asylum applicants/refugees in the EU and because the core documents do not differentiate among the refugees based on their nationality, we will simplify the EU position towards the refugees by assuming that it holds true for the Syrian refugees specifically. Should there be a special condition applied to Syrian refugees only, this will be explicitly mentioned.