Strategic Studies Quarterly

Abstract The IRI Foreign policy usually assumed as an apparent and coherent concept. This paper will show that IRI foreign policy is a floating signifier and always there have been serious discursive conflicts about its signification. By focusing on signification of "security" in opponent discourses in IRI foreign policy, present article will show that during IRI, there have been a fundamental contradict between two main discourses, i.e. cooperative and counter-hegemonic discourses. In fact, their articulations of security are absolutely different from each other, especially in relation to international order. The first one that was embodied in fifth and sixth states after Iran-Iraq war (then in seventh and eighth and after an interruption, in eleventh states, in updated versions) regarded international economic and political cooperation as a main way to security. In contrast, the opposite discourse that is mainly embodied in ninth and tenth states, under the presidency of Dr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, considered resistance against international order, the real way to security. Precisely Speaking, these two opposite significations of security can't be reconciled in one signifier at the same time. So, the signifier took opposite meanings periodically.
 
 

Abstract Conceptualization and the prism of the relationship between security and development have a great role in foreign policy making and its achievements or failures.  The paper argues that with the security agenda development and superiority of the positive security approach rather than negative approach, security and development has got a total positive sum and lack of one can pose a risk to the other. Therefore, foreign policy distance from a security basis on one hand, and to develop it on the basis of the two on the other hand is undeniable.
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Abstract The paper discusses the Turkish leadership, especially of president Erdogan, perception about the new developments in the Middle East and its influence on the country's foreign policy.
The main argument of the paper is that the founding factor in Turkey's foreign policy and behavior is not merely the concrete developments in its strategic environment but is its leadership and especially Erdogan's perception from those developments.
 
 

Abstract  Given the modern achievements, analysis of new developments in the international arena require putting aside the traditional understanding and enjoying instead a knowledge of influential forces that are effective on dynamism, trends and results as well as introduction of new concepts.  In this way, the current paper reviews developments of the US foreign policy in the last two decades and the related theories about allocation of capabilities that are effective in shaping the poles of an international system; it also argues that, like in the past, in order to better understand the developments, it would be better to get to know the structure of poles in the international system; however, this is not enough and to achieve better understanding, one needs to know all influential new forces that affect dynamism, trends and results. To do so, the paper offers the idea of trans-pole concept according to which power is not bound to the old inter-governmental, limited and inflexible situation but enjoys some new aspects.