Rik Coolsaet

Rik Coolsaet is a Belgian academic. He is professor of International Relations at Ghent University, Belgium. He chairs the Ghent Institute for International Studies (GIIS) at Ghent University, and is Senior Associate Fellow at Egmont Institute (Royal Institute for International Relations), Brussels.

Coolsaet was invited to join the original European Commission Expert Group on Violent Radicalisation (established 2006) and the subsequent European Network of Experts on Radicalisation (ENER).

Official positions

He has held several high-ranking official positions, such as deputy chief of the Cabinet of the Belgian Minister of Defence Guy Coeme and deputy chief of the Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Willy Claes, who was involved in the Agusta bribery scandal (1988–1992) and deputy chief of the Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Willy Claes (1992–1995) where he was in charge for the contacts with the USA regarding the Rwandan genocide.^[1] From 2002 until 2009 he served as Director of the "Security & Global Governance" program at the Egmont Institute in Brussels.

Coolsaet was later active in the Cabinets of other socialist ministres such as Frank Vandenbroucke and Erik Derycke (1992–1995).

Research interests

Publications

In 1998, he published a study on the history of Belgian foreign policy ("Belgium and its foreign policy 1830–1990", in Dutch and partly in French). The latest revised edition, released in September 2014, pursues this history until 2014 (published only in Dutch). Two other studies on Belgian foreign policy deal with Dutch-Belgian bilateral relations since 1945 (Nederland-België. De Belgisch-Nederlandse betrekkingen vanaf 1940, Boom, 2011, with Duco Hellema and Bart Stol) and with the history of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Les Affaires étrangères au service de l’Etat belge, de 1830 à nos jours (Mardaga, 2014) and, in Dutch, Buitenlandse Zaken in België. Geschiedenis van een ministerie, zijn diplomaten en zijn consuls van 1830 tot vandaag (Lannoo, 2014), with Vincent Dujardin and Claude Roosens.

He has been coordinating research on terrorism and radicalisation, which has resulted in several publications. Jihadi Terrorism and the Radicalisation Challenge. European and American Experiences^[2] was published by Ashgate in 2011. This volume was included in the 2012 "Top 150 Books on Terrorism and Counterterrorism", established by the academic journal Perspectives on Terrorism.^[3] His analysis on the impact of 9/11 on Europe was published in 2013 in a volume edited by Mohammed Ayoob and Etga Ugur of Michigan State University ("Europe: Reinforcing Existing Trends", in: Assessing the War on Terror. Lynne Rienner, 2013, pp. 137–159). In March 2015 (updated in June 2015), the Egmont Institute published his assessment of the root causes motivating young Belgians (and Europeans) to voyage to Syria and join IS.^[4]

Coolsaet has also written extensively on international relations, mostly in Dutch. His Macht en Waarden in de Wereldpolitiek ("Power and Values in World Politics", Academia Press) provides for a yearly overview of major trends in global politics. A 2008 publication, De geschiedenis van de wereld van morgen ("A History of Tomorrow’s World", Van Halewyck), analyzed long-term change patterns in international relations. Upon publication in February 2008, this book appeared on the Belgian bookshops' bestseller list for several months.

Bibliography

Rik Coolsaet et al. (Rik Coolsaet, Paul R. Pillar, Olivier Roy, Hugh Roberts, Teun van de Voorde, Martha Crenshaw, Leena Malkki, Jocelyne Cesari, Marc Sageman, Edwin Bakker, Rudolph Peters, John Horgan, Max Taylor, Clark McCauley, Tarik Fraihi, Robert Lambert, Lorenzo Vidino) (2010). Rik Coolsaet, ed. Jihadi Terrorism and the Radicalisation Challenge: European and American Experiences (2nd ed.). Ashgate. ISBN 978-1-4094-2568-7. This collective work compares radicalisation in both continents and the strategies aimed at de-radicalisation. But it also assesses if the concept merits its reputation as the holy grail of terrorism studies. The volume is aimed at an audience of decision makers, law enforcement officials, academia and think tanks, by its combination of novel thinking, practical experience and a theoretical approach. CS1 maint: display-authors (link)
Rik Coolsaet, Sven Biscop (10 July 2014). "Belgian Foreign Policy: in search of a new course". Egmont Institute Commentary (in English, French, and Dutch) (Egmont Institute). The last major review of Belgian foreign policy dates back to the 1990s. Enough has changed at the global, European and Belgian level to warrant a new critical reflection. On the eve of the publication of his updated reference work «België en zijn buitenlandse politiek 1830-2015» (September 2014, Van Halewyck), Rik Coolsaet, with Sven Biscop, offers some guidelines for a policy review.

References

↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20120113172139/http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/162591.pdf
↑ Nyagudi, Nyagudi Musandu (2012). "Book Review: Jihadi Terrorism and the Radicalisation Challenge – European and American Experiences edited by Rik Coolsaet. Ashgate: Farnham UK, 2011 ISBN 978-1-4094-2569-4" (PDF). Australian Defence Force Journal (188(2012)): 133–135. Retrieved 10 September 2015.
↑ Sinai, Joshua. "Terrorism Bookshelf: Top 150 Books on Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism". Perspectives on Terrorism 6 (2). ISSN 2334-3745.
↑ "What drives Europeans to Syria, and to IS? Insights from the Belgian case". www.egmontinstitute.be. Retrieved 2015-08-28.

External links

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