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The increasing privatization of military and stability operations has received considerable scholarly attention. Existing scholarship, however, has largely focused on the privatization of state foreign policy, overlooking the empirical analysis of international organizations' use of commercial actors in the conduct of crisis management operations. The present study fills this gap by investigating the role of commercial contractors in supporting European Common Security and Defence civilian and military missions. By doing so, the article intends to advance the empirical knowledge of the privatization of foreign policy activities and the scope, determinants and future prospects of EU reliance on commercial actors for CSDP crisis management operations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article investigates the performance of Poland and the Czech Republic in the US-led regime change wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The article indicates a significant gap between the Czech and Polish discourses and practices related to the two countries' contributions. In the two crises, discourses revolved around the notion of universal values and support for legal and legitimate peace support operations mandated by the UN. But the practices did not match those discourses and were actually driven by the beliefs that form the Atlanticist ideology. The article analyses the successful internalization of US discourses and threat perception in Poland and the Czech Republic through the use of ‘cascade argumentation’. The practical results of this internalization are then examined. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following more than a decade of NATO's intervention in Afghanistan, it is often argued that the UN, alongside its international partners and the Afghan government, has failed to facilitate good governance and a stable democratic political order. In charting the evolving UN role in ‘democratizing’ Afghanistan, this article analyses why this is so. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), facing considerable historical and institutional constraints, has had neither the will nor the capacity to implement its ambitious democratization mandate. Instead of aiming for a system of governance along ‘Western’ lines, it should focus primarily on promoting an appropriate, institutionalized, workable political order, regional consensus, and national reconciliation as the necessary foundations for bringing peace and stability to the country. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]