Vladislav B. Sotirovic: Special Features of the Region of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

The Middle East was the home of the earliest civilizations in the world’s history. The first urbanizations and literacy started there. The region of the Middle East usually covers the territories from the eastern littoral of the Mediterranean Sea up to India in the East. In a broader sense, geographically, the region encompasses territories of the East Mediterranean and Central Asia but many Americans followed by other Western academicians, politicians, and journalists regard as a single region the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

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A Basic Academic Approach about International Systems of States and Security

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic

We have to keep in mind that a term and notion of security usually implies a kind of sense of protection and safety from different possible harms coming from „outside“. Therefore, it can be generally acceptable and understandable that the states want to protect their own territories by expanding great resources in making their territorial safe. Security topics are of very different kinds, ranging from the causes of conflict between states to deterioration in the global climate or women’s rights in global politics.

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The 1823 Monroe Doctrine and its First Consequences for Global Politics: The Making the U.S. to be a Global Empire

Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic

The Doctrine (1823)

The doctrine was presented by the 5-th U.S. President James Monroe (1817−1825) in 1823 as an official warning to (West) European powers that any European policy of imperialistic expansionism on the ground of the Americas (North, Central, and South or Anglo-Francophone and Latin, i.e., Spanish & Portuguese) was going to be taken into account by Washington as a threat to the U.S. national interests. In fact, the doctrine proclaimed the Americas as the sole business of the U.S. without any involvement or/and interruption from the outside world. In other words, James Monroe proclaimed the exclusive U.S. economic, financial, and geopolitical rights to deal (exploit) with the Americas (including Canada as well). The doctrine was later extended with practical consequences by both 26-th U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt (1901−1909) and 28-th U. S. President Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1913−1921) who used it to formally justify American imperialistic policies in several countries from Latin America from Mexico to Colombia. 

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Владислав Сотировић: Конфликт око Нагорно-Карабаха између Азербејџана и Јерменије (1988.−1995. г.) – Други део

Пише: др Владислав Сотировић

Зашто и када дипломатско посредовање? Теоријски приступ и практична искуства

Из теорија дипломатије и решавања сукоба познато је да су сукобљене стране у принципу спремне да почну да решавају своје несугласице када су спремне да се одрекну једностраних средстава за постизање решења које је повољно само за њих, а то доказује и случај Нагорно-Карабаха. Интервенција дипломатског посредовања мора бити благовремено темпирана из разлога да би се главне стране сукоба довеле за преговарачки сто, чиме би се политичким лидерима омогућило да пређу са конфронтације на сарадњу како би пребродили своје политичке, националне, стратешке или било које друге разлике и различита гледишта. Теоретски, може се применити тзв. “концепт зрелости” како би се открило зашто се неки споразуми покажу могућим, а други не. Ове одговарајуће тренутке за решавање сукоба могу одредити саме сукобљене стране или их могу утврдити треће стране. Обе врсте мотивације за мирно решење биле су на дневном реду у случају јерменско-азербејџанског сукоба око Нагорно-Карабаха.

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Vladislav Sotirovic: On Ukraine’s Statehood and Borders

The German occupation forces were those who have been the first to create and recognize a short-lived state’s independence of Ukraine in January 1918 during the time of their own inspired and supported anti-Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917−1921. As reoccupied by the Bolshevik Red Army, the eastern and southern parts of the present-day territory of (a Greater) Ukraine joined in 1922 the USSR as a separate Soviet Socialist Republic (without Crimea). According to the 1926 Soviet census of Crimea, the majority of its population was the Russians (382.645). The second-largest ethnic group was the Tartars (179.094). Therefore, a Jew V. I. Lenin has to be considered as the real historical father of the Ukrainian statehood but also as of the contemporary nationhood. Ukraine was the most fertile agricultural Soviet republic but particularly catastrophically affected by (Georgian) Stalin’s economic policy in the 1930s which neglected agricultural production in favor of the speed industrialization of the country. The result was a great famine (Holodomor) with around seven million people dead but the majority of them were of ethnic Russian origin.

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