FOREIGN RELATIONS
Year:2015 | Volume:7 | Issue:1 (25)|Papers Count:8

With the breaking out of Ukraine crisis, a new chapter opened in relations between the West and Russia. The annexation of the Crimean Peninsula to the Russian Federation prompted severe reactions by Western countries, so that for the first time after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the EU imposed heavy sanctions on this country. This article aims at exploring the impact of sanctions regime on the EU and its effectiveness in regard to the Russian Federation. The main question is about the impact and effectiveness of sanction. In answering these questions, the hypothesis advanced is that sanctions regime has many consequerces for implementing countries and also for the target country. To study these consequences, the impact and effectiveness of sanctions should be distinguished from each other. As for the implementing countries, the impact of sanctions should be addressed, but for the target countries, the important point is the effectiveness of sanctions. Regarding the EU imposed sanctions on Russia, it should be noted that the costs of this policy would be high for both sides and especially for the EU.

International sanctions as an international phenomenon have an evolutionary history. UN sanctions after the Cold War have become a well-organized endeavor. Non-polarized international system after the Cold War, the capacity of the United Nations Charter and other international laws provided for international sanctions and the international system have accelerated laying out of norms, principles, rules and procedures aiming at the institutionalization of international sanctions in the form of an international regime. Therefore, the question is that: how international sanctions after the Cold War can be explained as an international regime? To answer this question, international sanctions after the Cold War were studied by using the theory of international regimes in general and Young theory in particular. Different components of international regime of sanctions related to the post-Cold War era including those related to substance, procedures, implementation – monitoring and effectiveness evaluation are examined. Among substantive matters we address, increase in Security Council interventionism, normativization of international relations, introduction of responsibility in to protect concept; the decision-making component includes Interlaken, Bonn – Berlin and Stockholm; processes the executive – regulatory component includes sanctions committees, focal point and Panel of Experts and eventually measurement of effectiveness component examines the feedback of sanctions in light of the objectives of coercion.

Globalization is a prevalent concept in the field of international relations which has taken on a more salient aspect since 1990. The concept of “globalization” which first emerged to explain developments occurred in economic activities is mostly abstract. With the passage of time, it gained much more importance and entered into other branches of international relations like national security. In fact, the importance of this concept and its relation to security led to different attitudes to this phenomenon adopted by actors and units in the international system.The Islamic Republic of Iran is no exception to this rule. The question posed by this article is that how relationship between globalization and security is defined and what is the impact of globalization on the security dilemma of the Islamic Republic of Iran? The hypothesis advanced in this article is that globalization despite creating necessary conditions and opportunities for establishing relations with other units in the international system, may face the security dilemma of the Islamic Republic of Iran with challenges such as blurring borders, undermining national sovereignty and media vulnerabilities

This article studies the change in the foreign policy of the 11th cabinet headed by Dr. Hassan Rouhani based on four ontological and epistemological approaches to the analysis of foreign policy including explanatory individualism, interpretative individualism, explanatory collectivism and interpretative collectivism. The main question of this research is that how change in the foreign policy of the 11th cabinet can be analyzed based on each approach? To answer this question, the main hypothesis of this article is that to fully understand the change in the foreign policy of the 11th cabinet, all four analytical approaches should be simultaneously considered which could be called "ground level of analysis". Therefore, this article concludes that on the basis of the above four analytical levels for explaining foreign policy, fully understanding the foreign policy of an actor in the international system and its changes requires using this level of analysis as a combined level of analysis. It includes all material and non-material dimensions at the micro and macro levels.

After the U.S invasion of Iraq, Iran, Suadi Arabia and Turkey have attempted to expand their geopolitical influence in the Middle East. These actors have adopted different and various policies to achieve their goals. The present article explores the policies and strategies of Saudi Arabia and Turkey in new Iraq. The findings of this article illustrate that these regional actors have attempted to restrain Iran’s political influence in Iraq by taking advantage of social cleavages and the lack of national identity in this country. For doing so, the authors address the policies and reactions of regional powers in Iraq and they apply a three level model to explore the developments in new Iraq. At the national level, the lack of national identity, social cleavages and nation building in Iraq have been examined. At the regional level, the competition between regional powers and at the international level, the approaches and strategies of the United Stated have been analyzed.

Shaping and institutionalizing federalism as the most famous local-regional democratic governance requires extension of civic and democratic political culture, overcoming identity crisis, etc. Federalism was one of the mechanisms of international coalition under the leadership of America for stablishing peace and democracy in Iraq, but it was fulfilled only in Kurdistan and not in central and southern regions. The aim of this article is the analysis of the impact of identity crisis and entrenched undemocratic political culture on nonfulfillment of federalism in Iraq by using a political- sociological approach. The main question is that why federalism didn’t fulfill in Iraq? In this article, the hypothesis is that: historical and entrenched identity crisis in Iraq in the past century and the supremacy of subjective and religious-ethnic political culture over civic - democratic ones, have led to a failure in implementing federalism in this country. This article concludes that, the identity crisis due to imposed nation-state building in the recent decade, ethnic-religious violence and divergent political culture in post-Saddam Iraq led to the un-fulfillment of federalism.

ISIS is one of the emerging Islamic fundamentalist groups with distinctive features compared to other fundamentalist groups. ISIS unique feature is its unprecedented violence towards other groups and individuals. The problem addressed in this article is to examine the root causes of the formation of this group, followed by the level of violence exerted by it. It seems that international system, discriminatory political systems of the West and Middle East dictatorships, and media coverage have been effective in the formation of this group. The crisis of identity and sense of deprivation in the people created by above factors, have had a major role in this process. Particularly, the sense of deprivation has led to such a high level of violence among members of the ISIS. The formation of radical groups such as ISIS is a response to the need for revenge and independence of many around the world, and due to this emotions ISIS advertisements were highly successful around the world.