Many different social scientists have been challenged by the origins of wars, their immediate causes and the mechanisms leading to the breakdown of peaceful relations. Many have speculated whether conflicts were avoidable and whether alternative policies might have prevented conflict. The Ashgate Research Companion to War provides contributions from a number of theorists and historians with a focus on long term, systemic conflicts. The problematique is introduced by the Editors highlighting the need for interdisciplinary approaches to the study of war as a global phenomenon. The following 29 essays provide a comprehensive study guide in four sections: Part I explicates differing theories as to the origins of war under the general concept of 'polemology'. Part II analyzes significant conflicts from the Peloponnesian wars to World War II. Part III examines the ramifications of Cold War and post-Cold War conflict. Part IV looks at long cycles of systemic conflict, and speculates, in part, whether another global war is theoretically possible, and if so, whether it can be averted. This comprehensive volume brings us a much needed analysis of wars throughout the ages, their origins, their consequences, and their relationship to the present. A valuable understanding that is ideal for social scientists from a variety of backgrounds.

Divided societies, tormented pasts, and unrepentant perpetrators. Why are some countries more intent on vanquishing uncomfortable pasts than others? How do public and often unsightly attempts at memorialisation both fail the victims and valorize their oppressors? This book offers fresh and original perspectives on dictatorship, fascism and victimization from the bloodiest decades in Europe's, Australia's and Central America's colonial and modern history. Chapters include analyses of Francoist memorials in Spain, assessments of the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, the forgetting of frontier colonial violence in Tasmania, Romania's treatment of its Roma populations in the midst of Holocaust memorialization in Bucharest's urban development, and whether or not the Holocaust continues to serve as an instructional model or impossible aspiration for cross-cultural genocide memorialization strategies. In an era of ongoing political, ethnic and religious conflict, and unrepentant insurgent activity around the world, this collection reminds readers that genocidal actions, wherever and whenever they occurred, must be held to account by more than rhetoric and concrete memory. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research.

This book examines the circumstances under which aid can contribute to the management and transformation of intra-state conflicts. How and when do insurgents govern? How does the presence of aid and social services influence how insurgents govern? Under what circumstances can aid contribute to the management and transformation of civil wars? The established literature in this area argues that aid exacerbates civil wars where resources are scarce as greedy rebels steal resources for themselves. This book, however, argues that under certain conditions such greed can be good. Drawing on primary research from three very different conflicts - Northern Ireland (1969-1998), southern Sudan (1983-2005) and Tajikistan (1992-1997) - and more than 10 years' experience working in and researching humanitarian crises, this study breaks new ground through its wide-ranging comparison of conflicts. The book argues that insurgent efforts to reap rewards from aid and social services have in turn facilitated organizational changes and that these changes, while they may have had conflict-enhancing effects in the short term, have also contributed to conflict transformation over the long term. This book will be of much interest to students of insurgencies, civil wars, comparative politics, conflict management, humanitarian emergencies, public health and IR/Security Studies in general.

Over the fifty years between 1940 and 1990, the countries of eastern Africa were embroiled in a range of debilitating and destructive conflicts, starting with the wars of independence, but then incorporating rebellion, secession and local insurrection as the Cold War replaced colonialism. The articles gathered here illustrate how significant, widespread, and dramatic this violence was. In these years, violence was used as a principal instrument in the creation and consolidation of the authority of the state; and it was also regularly and readily utilised by those who wished to challenge state authority through insurrection and secession. Why was it that eastern Africa should have experienced such extensive and intensive violence in the fifty years before 1990? Was this resort to violence a consequence of imperial rule, the legacy of oppressive colonial domination under a coercive and non-representative state system? Did essential contingencies such as the Cold War provoke and promote the use of violence? Or, was it a choice made by Africans themselves and their leaders, a product of their own agency? This book focuses on these turbulent decades, exploring the principal conflicts in six key countries - Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Tanzania. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Eastern African Studies.

This book explores contemporary military innovation, with a particular focus on the balance between anticipation and adaption. The volume examines contemporary military thought and the doctrine that evolved around the thesis of a transformation in the character of war. Known as the Information-Technology Revolution in Military Affairs (IT-RMA), this innovation served as an intellectual foundation for the US defence transformation from the 1990s onwards. Since the mid-1990s, professional ideas generated within the American defence milieu have been further disseminated to military communities across the globe, with huge impact on the conduct of warfare. With chapters written by leading scholars in this field, this work sheds light on RMAs in general and the IT-RMA in the US, in particular. The authors analyse how military practice and doctrines were developed on the basis of the IT-RMA ideas, how they were disseminated, and the implications of them in several countries and conflicts around the world. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, defence studies, war and technology, and security studies in general.

This volume presents the research analysis of a range of scholars and experts on post conflict peacebuilding and international law from a variety of perspectives and missions. The selected essays show that peacebuilding, like the concept of peacekeeping, is not specifically provided for in the UN Charter. They also demonstrate that the record of peacebuilding, like that of peacekeeping, is varied and while both concepts are intrinsically linked, neither lends itself to precise definition. The essays consider the historical approaches to peacebuilding such as the role played by the UN in the Congo in the early 1960s and the work of the United States and its allies in rebuilding Germany and Japan in the aftermath of World War II. Finally, essays consider the major challenge for contemporary peacebuilding operations to make international administrations accountable and to ensure the involvement of the international community in helping rebuild communities and prevent the resurgence of violence.

The articles and essays in this volume consider the problem of international terrorism from an international legal perspective. The articles address a range of issues starting with the dilemma of how to reach agreement on what constitutes terrorism and how to encapsulate this in a legitimate definition. The essays move on to examine the varied responses to terrorism by states and international organisations. These responses range from the suppression conventions of the Cold War, which were directed at criminalising and punishing various manifestations of terrorism, to more coercive, executive-led responses. Finally, the articles consider the role of the Security Council in developing legal regimes to combat terrorism, for example by the use of targeted sanctions, or by general legislative measures. An evaluation of the contribution of the sum of these measures to the goals of peace and security as embodied in the UN Charter is central to this collection.

Fourth in the annual series, this volume reviews the transformative changes which have emerged in the armed conflicts in South Asia in 2010, several of these with long and convoluted histories, including the conflicts in Jammu & Kashmir, northeast India and the Naxalite movement in central India; as also issues of autonomy in Balochistan, the FATA region in Pakistan, the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh, and the Terai foothills in Nepal. The book examines whether armed conflicts have transformed since their inception; or only metamorphosed into the sullen acceptance that could usher future violence. While conflicts in South Asia have been interspersed with peace efforts, the book looks at the complex trajectories that such attempts have taken. Specifically, it identifies three regions where most significant transformative trends were witnessed in South Asia in 2010: conflict-ridden Sri Lanka, Af-Pak and the Naxalite regions of India.

Since the use of poison gas during the First World War and the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan at the end of the Second World War, nuclear, biological or chemical (NBC) weapons have registered high on the fears of governments and individuals alike. Recognising both the particular horror of these weapons, and their potential for inflicting mass death and destruction, much effort has been expended in finding ways to eliminate such weapons on a multi-lateral level. Based on extensive official archives, this book looks at how successive British governments approached the subject of control and disarmament between 1956 and 1975. This period reflects the UK's landmark decision in 1956 to abandon its offensive chemical weapons programme (a decision that was reversed in 1963, but never fully implemented), and ends with the internal travails over the possible use of CR (tear gas) in Northern Ireland. Whilst the issue of nuclear arms control has been much debated, the integration of biological and chemical weapons into the wider disarmament picture is much less well understood, there being no clear statement by the UK authorities for much of the period under review in this book as to whether the country even possessed such weapons or had an active research and development programme. Through a thorough exploration of government records the book addresses fundamental questions relating to the history of NBC weapons programmes, including the military, economic and political pressures that influenced policy; the degree to which the UK was a reluctant or enthusiastic player on the international arms control stage; and the effect of international agreements on Britain's weapons programmes. In exploring these issues, the study provides the first attempt to assess UK NBC arms control policy and practice during the Cold War.

The perspectives of academics and practitioners are brought together in this insightful work, which examines the war on terrorism, the Iraq war and the roles of NATO and the EU. The book analyzes the new threats posed by terrorist strikes and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction despite the total failure of Cold War conceptions of deterrence. It also delineates the key issues and problems that have arisen from the NATO and EU double enlargement and from the new NATO-Russian relationship. Casting light on the global and regional ramifications of the crisis, as well as the tensions in the transatlantic relationship caused by the war with Iraq, NATO and the European Union addresses the key policy questions that concern the maintenance of global peace and security.

The decline in central financing for Russia's nuclear complex and the known interest of terrorist groups in acquiring fissile material and technologies, has made the state of Russia's far-flung nuclear enterprises a pressing international issue. In this important volume, a group of leading US and Russian policy experts - drawing on extensive interviews with officials, facility personnel, and analysts in Russia's regions - explores the intersecting problems of Russian nuclear insecurity and decentralization, including the growing influence of regional, political and economic forces. The work presents insights into both nuclear safety issues and post-Soviet intra-agency governance, as well as detailed case studies of critical nuclear regions: the Far East, the Urals, Siberia, and the Volga area. The volume also offers major new findings on the interface linking Russia's evolving center-periphery relations, its ailing nuclear facilities, and the role played by foreign assistance providers.

This volume critically engages with the phenomenon of civil militias in Africa, especially the nature of threats and challenges they pose to national and human security. It questions why the African political scene is increasingly inundated with the activities of civil militias, examines the socio-political and economic conditions that trigger and/or encourage and sustain the operations of civil militias, and investigates the dominant motivations of African civil militias. In the face of this complex security emergency, the volume conceptualizes and theorizes the phenomenon of civil militias; focuses the academic debate and policy on the links between civil militias and the growing cycle of state failure, instability, collapse and fragmentation in Africa; broadly and critically explores and expounds the short-term security consequences of the operations of civil militias; and articulates a corpus of policy-relevant knowledge. The book is ideally suited to courses on African studies, security and peace studies and military studies but would also be of interest to practitioners.

This work explains and critically examines the main theoretical aspects of operational warfare at sea. It utilizes diverse examples from naval history, ranging from the ancient era to the present day, to offer a comprehensive description and analysis of the key components of operational warfare at sea today. Specifically, it explains the military/naval objectives, levels of war, types of major naval/joint operations and maritime campaigns, and their main elements. In contrast to many works, this book focuses on the role of the naval operational commanders in command and control and decision-making. It also describes in great detail the main elements of naval operational leadership and operational thinking, which are illustrated by examples of successful warfighting admirals. This new edition has been completely revised and updated, with three new chapters, and analyses in even more detail the planning and execution of major naval/joint operations and maritime campaigns. This book is intended to serve as a primer of how to plan, prepare, and execute major naval/joint operations and maritime campaigns for naval operational commanders and their staffs, but will also be of great interest to students of naval power, strategic studies, and military history in general.

The book is the first to discuss in detail the extensive external involvement in the Liberian civil war, a war that claimed up to 200,000 lives, created a massive refuge crisis and brought West Africa to the tribunal of international attention. The book is conceived against the background that the international response to the conflict has features that are unprecedented in the management of civil conflicts in the post-cold war era. For example, the regional peacekeeping mission was the first after the end of the cold war, while the dispatch of UN Observer mission was the first ever joint peacekeeping mission between the UN and a regional organisation. The extensive involvement of international organisations in the conflict has not been witnessed in the region since the Biafran war of 1967-1970.

This book examines the logic behind the shifts and paradigm changes within the scholarship on peacebuilding. In particular, the book is concerned with examining if, and how, these shifts have significantly altered how we think about peacebuilding beyond the 'liberal peacebuilding' paradigm. To do so, the book engages with the logic of critique that has led to the emergence of different theoretical approaches to peacebuilding, from hands-on institutionalisation, to the 'local turn'. It uses the case of Kosovo to understand how a lessons-learnt approach facilitated the shift towards more invasive and intrusive forms of peacebuilding first. However, it is also crucial to understanding the recent local turn, as the rise of local ownership discourses in Kosovo is fundamentally tied to the critiques of extensive international missions, and the associated resistance and marginalisation of local agency. The book examines the implications of the framing of 'everyday' agency in order to assess the extent to which these bottom-up approaches have been able to by-pass the problems attributed to the liberal peace approach. It argues that despite its critical and radical intentions, the local turn retains certain foundational modernist and positivist qualities that have so far characterised the very mainstream approaches these critiques claim to transcend. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, statebuilding, peace and conflict studies, security studies and International Relations in general.

This book explores US foreign policy, specifically the history of America's entry into the War of 1812, the First World War, the Korean War and the First Gulf War. Using a historical case study approach, it demonstrates how the Wilsonian Framework can give us a unique understanding of why the United States chose to go to war in those four conflicts. Cox argues that the Wilsonian Framework is an important concern for decision makers in the US and that democracy promotion and the concept of international law are driving factors in each of these decisions to go to war. The realist and economic explanations of these conflicts are not sufficient and we must draw on Wilsonianism to gain a clear understanding of these conflicts. Drawing on the history of American liberalism and the work of Walter Russel Mead and Tony Smith, the book presents a definition of Wilsonianism that represents a broad span of the history of The Republic, in order to show consistency across time. It also establishes why the realist and economic explanations fail to provide sufficient explanatory power and how the Wilsonian Framework can give important insights into these conflicts. This book will be of interest to international historians and international relations scholars at both postgraduate and scholar level. It will also be of use to those wishing to conduct future research into the motivations that drive the foreign and security policies of the United States.

This book provides an interdisciplinary analysis of the future of US warfare, including its military practices and the domestic and global challenges it faces. The need to undertake a comprehensive analysis about the future of warfare for the US is more pressing today than ever before. New technologies and adversaries, both old and new, have the potential to revolutionize how wars are fought, and it is imperative that policy makers, military planners, and scholars engage with the latest analyses regarding these new threats and weapon systems. The primary aim of this book is to provide a clear and comprehensive depiction of the types of conflict that the United States is likely to become involved with in the future, as well as the methods of warfare that it may employ within these struggles. While a number of scholarly books have previously considered some of the potential features of US warfare in the future, many of these writings are either outdated or have limited their focus to just one or two of the main types of warfare that may occur and omitted consideration of the others. This book intends to remedy this deficiency in the literature. The volume consists of thematic chapters which address the key issues relevant to the future of US warfare, including cyber warfare, asymmetric conflicts, drone warfare, and nuclear strategy. Through the provision of a series of analyses by leading international academics, the volume provides an important interdisciplinary examination of the different areas of warfare that the United States is expected to use or encounter in the future. This book will be of great interest to students of US foreign policy, military studies, strategic studies and International Relations in general.

This book examines how neo-institutional statebuilding undercuts international policy agency. Post-Cold War interventions are marked by a peculiar paradox. From peace and statebuilding projects in war-shattered societies to World Bank development programmes in Africa, the scope of external regulation has grown consistently while international policymakers are finding it increasingly difficult to formulate a political project regarding the Global South. This book seeks to make sense of a contradictory situation in which international policymakers are doing more statebuilding than ever while knowing less about it. The study argues that the crisis of international agency is driven by the demise of reductionist liberal-universal knowledge. It critically explores neo-institutionalism as a dominant policy framework, bringing out how the failure of intervention paves the way for more comprehensive, context-sensitive and bottom-up engagement. As a precondition and side-effect of this expansive process, reductionist liberal-universal knowledge is deconstructed. Paradoxically, the more policymakers learn within a neo-institutional frame of reference, the less they positively know. Without this epistemic foundation, it becomes difficult to act purposively in the world and formulate instrumental policy. The study illustrates these conceptual insights with reference to the Merida Initiative, a U.S.-Mexican security agreement signed in 2007. Rethinking Neo-Institutional Statebuilding will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, international intervention, peace and conflict studies, Latin American politics and IR in general.

Over the last five centuries, plantation crops have represented the best and worst of industrialized agriculture - "best" through their agronomic productivity and global commercial success, and "worst" as examples of exploitative colonialism, conflict and ill-treatment of workers. This book traces the social, political and evolutionary history of seven major plantation crops - sugarcane, banana, cotton, tea, tobacco, coffee and rubber. It describes how all of these were domesticated in antiquity and grown by small landowners for thousands of years before European traders and colonists sought to make a profit out of them. The author relates how their development and spread were closely associated with government expansionist policies. They stimulated the exploration of far off lands, were the focus of major conflicts and led to the enslavement of both native and displaced peoples. From the southern United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, to Asia and Africa, plantation crops turned social structures upside down leading to revolution and government change. The economies of whole countries became tied to the profits of these plantations, leading to internal power struggles to control the burgeoning wealth. Open warfare routinely broke out between the more powerful countries and factions for trade dominance. This book shows that from the early 1500s to today, at least one of the plantation crops was always at the center of world politics, and that this still continues today, for example with the development of oil palm plantations in Southeast Asia. Written in an accessible style, it is fascinating supplementary reading for students of agricultural, environmental and colonial history.

Over the last five centuries, plantation crops have represented the best and worst of industrialized agriculture - "best" through their agronomic productivity and global commercial success, and "worst" as examples of exploitative colonialism, conflict and ill-treatment of workers. This book traces the social, political and evolutionary history of seven major plantation crops - sugarcane, banana, cotton, tea, tobacco, coffee and rubber. It describes how all of these were domesticated in antiquity and grown by small landowners for thousands of years before European traders and colonists sought to make a profit out of them. The author relates how their development and spread were closely associated with government expansionist policies. They stimulated the exploration of far off lands, were the focus of major conflicts and led to the enslavement of both native and displaced peoples. From the southern United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, to Asia and Africa, plantation crops turned social structures upside down leading to revolution and government change. The economies of whole countries became tied to the profits of these plantations, leading to internal power struggles to control the burgeoning wealth. Open warfare routinely broke out between the more powerful countries and factions for trade dominance. This book shows that from the early 1500s to today, at least one of the plantation crops was always at the center of world politics, and that this still continues today, for example with the development of oil palm plantations in Southeast Asia. Written in an accessible style, it is fascinating supplementary reading for students of agricultural, environmental and colonial history.

This book analyses how certain types of social systems generate violent conflict and discusses how these systems can be transformed in order to create the conditions for positive peace. Resolving Structural Conflicts addresses a key issue in the field of conflict studies: what to do about violent conflicts that are not the results of misunderstanding, prejudice, or malice, but the products of a social system that generates violent conflict as part of its normal operations. This question poses enormous challenges to those interested in conflict resolution, since the solution to this problem involves restructuring social, political, and cultural systems rather than just calling in a mediator to help people arrive at an agreement. This study breaks new ground in showing how local conflicts involving crime, police, and prisons; transnational conflicts involving religious terrorism by groups like ISIS; and international conflicts involving Great Power clashes are all produced in large part by elite-driven, exploitative or oppressive social structures. It also presents new ideas about the implications of this 'structural turn' for the practice of conflict resolution, emphasizing the need for conflict resolvers to embrace a new politics and to broaden their methods far beyond traditional forms of facilitation. Written by a leading scholar, this book will be of much interest to students of conflict resolution, peace studies, war and conflict studies, sociology, political science and international relations in general.

This book offers a novel approach to understanding violence and violent conflict using complexity and network theories, borrowed from the natural sciences, together with social network analysis. Because violence is both a universal and central component of human communication and identity formation, it has a fundamental function in shaping social behavior. Using Manuel Castells' work on the programming of social networks, this book explores the Lebanese Civil War and the ongoing war in Afghanistan under the perspective of violence within networks. The approach presents a unique and compelling argument that counters the long-held assumption that war is caused by specific events, or is the unavoidable culmination of existing conditions or grievances. Rather, this book argues that violence emerges when the structure of social networks becomes too rigid and hierarchic to adapt to stresses and challenges that materialize on a constant basis from both within and without the network. This is important not only for the study of war, but as a method of improving the success of contemporary peace building efforts.

This book explores the challenges of transforming the violent conflict between the State of Israel and the Palestinians into just peace. There are many challenges involved in the bottom-up transformation of the violent structures that sustain the State of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory. This book examines these structures as it assesses the actors and strategies that are contributing to the termination of cycles of violence and oppression. Consisting of contributions from both peace practitioners and academics who have conducted research within Israel and the occupied territory, the volume utilises a multidisciplinary perspective to examine promising strategies for conflict transformation in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory. Moreover, it spells out the types of nonviolent strategy that are being used to expose and undermine occupation structures, and surveys the manner in which a variety of key actors are working towards the transformation of the ongoing conflict. As a whole, the volume presents a proposal for the transformation of the conflict between Palestinians and the State of Israel that embraces the constructive potential of conflict, engages with power asymmetry, and pushes for justice and accountability. This book will be of much interest to students of conflict resolution, peace studies, Middle Eastern studies, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and IR in general.

As a cultural centre for Islamic interests across the world and as a focus point for increasing levels of economic and security interdependence, the Middle East remains a stage on which international politics will be played for the foreseeable future. This comprehensive study looks at the important international and regional actors and their interaction with, and reaction to, US foreign policy toward the region. The volume elucidates the trends in great power interest and interaction in the Middle East and studies the impact of the United States as the region's foremost military power. It highlights the changing nature of actors' relationships with the US and each other as their interests and policies evolve in response to changes in the region. Scholars, graduate and undergraduate students and the interested public will find this volume a useful guide and an ideal companion work for courses on the Middle East, US foreign policy and international security issues.

The attacks of September 11, 2001, the US response and the international community's approval of the subsequent military action represent a new paradigm in the international law relating to the use of force. Previously, acts of terrorism were seen as criminal acts carried out by private, non-governmental entities. In contrast, the September 11 attacks were regarded as an act of war which marked a turning point in international relations and law. This exceptional and timely volume examines the use of force in the war against terror. The work is based on the central theme that the use of force is visibly enrolled in a process of change and it evaluates this within the framework of the uncertainty and indeterminacy of the UN Charter regime. The status of pre-emptive self-defence in international law and how it applies to US policy towards rogue states is examined along with the use of military force, including regime change, as an acceptable trend in the fight against state-sponsored terrorism.