مطالب

Foreign policy cooperation and coordination among the European Community member states and presenting Europe with a single voice, has long been an important challenge within the European Community/European :union:, especially since early 1970s. In the early 1990s, following the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, there was a general speculation in Europe that the EC may be able to play a new role in international system and fill the vacuum created by the the Soviet :union:. The Kuwait crisis, in the wake of Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, was the first test for the European ambitions in the post-cold war era. Many European leaders saw it as an opportunity to present a European initiative and play an effective role towards the crisis. Then, the first reactions of the EC, unprecedentedly, were quick and unanimous. This unanimity continued during the first phase of the crisis, when the counter-measures to the crisis were mainly economic and to a lesser extent political. But with the appearance of the military dimension of the crisis, the EC was no longer able to maintain unanimous standand the member states were divided into two camps: Atlanticists and Europeanists. Britain, occasionally supported by Denmark and Netherlands, sided with the US which pursued a military solution to the crisis. While the Franco-German axe, followed by the rest of member states, preferred a diplomatic solution to the crisis in a longer span. As far as the military operation seemed imminent, the division became deeper. In practice, when military operation began, the Europeans have no choice except to follow the American lead. These developments were influential on formation of the common foreign and security policy (CFSP) as the second pillar of the EU in Maastricht in 1992.

There is little question anymore about the reality of Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD) as a disorder. For some, this disorder progressively worsens over time and appears to affect nearly all aspects of life, including work, interpersonal relationships, physical health, and view of self. The severity of PTSD may lead to repeated hospitalizations over the years and may require ongoing outpatient treatment. Moreover, a resurfacing of previously controlled symptoms may appear with old age, as former victims become physically incapacitated, suffer losses, and lose social support systems. So far as, no comprehensive effort has been made to determine the joint effects of a range of factors (e.g. combat exposure, locus of control and social support) on post-traumatic stress and somatic symptoms in a single study comprising of non-clinical samples of Iranian War veterans/combatants who had war exposure during Iran-Iraq conflict. The results of the current study demonstrate that combat stress has potential long-lasting effects that leave soldiers emotionally vulnerable, resulting in post-traumatic stress disorder. The study also reveals the effect of combat stress on somatic complaints. The result regarding social support were in accordance with earlier findings about the positive effects of social support on psychological adjustment. The findings also revealed the importance of locus of control in the development of post-traumatic stress disorder. Participants with external locus of control, scored higher on PTSD and somatic complaints than participants with internal locus of control, interestingly, the hypotheses of an interaction between social support and locus of control were not confirmed. Number of methodological and conceptual problems imposed certain limitations on these conclusions.