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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism > Armed conflict
This book explores the historical relationship between China and Japan, and how this has exacerbated their dispute over the Senkaku/ Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. There are three paradoxes in the bilateral relationship - complex interdependence does not preclude the possibility of open conflict; cool-headed assessments are quickly being overtaken by nationalism and a proclivity for irrational behaviour and lastly, both countries have invested so much resources in claiming the islands, such that they have neglected the costs of conflict. These paradoxes in turn stem from two fundamental issues - differing interpretations of historical issues and the intractability of China and Japan's positions on the island dispute. It is argued that a festering dispute over the islands - and even conflict - would undermine security in the Asia Pacific and disrupt trade in the world's most economically vibrant market. Therefore, it behoves China and Japan to work out mutually-acceptable arrangements, not necessarily to make things better, but at the least to keep relations from getting any worse. It would be proposed, for example, that Japan accept the objective reality that there is a dispute over the islands. Together with other measures, such as a reduction of maritime activities around the islands, would build the foundation for a long-term rapprochement.
This book aims at a deeper understanding of social processes, dynamics and institutions shaping collective violence. It argues that violence is a social practice that adheres to social logics and, in its collective form, appears as recurrent patterns. In search of characteristics, mechanisms and logics of violence, contributions deliver ethnographic descriptions of different forms of collective violence and contextualize these phenomena within broader spatial and temporal structures. The studies show that collective violence, at least if it is sustained over a certain period of time, aims at organization and therefore develops constitutive and integrative mechanisms. Practices of social mobilization of people and economic resources, their integration in functional structures, and the justification or legitimization of these structures sooner or later lead to the establishment of new forms of (violent) orders, be it at the margins of or beyond the state. Cases discussed include riots in Gujarat, India, mass violence in Somalia, social orders of violence and non-violence in Colombia, humanitarian camps in Uganda, trophy-taking in North America, and violent livestock raiding in Kenya. This book was originally published as a special issue of Civil Wars.
Photography has visualized international relations and conflicts from the midnineteenth century onwards and continues to be an important medium in framing the worlds of distant, suffering others. Although photojournalism has been challenged in recent decades, claims that it is dead are premature. The Violence of the Image examines the roles of image producers and the functions of photographic imagery in the documentation of wars, violent conflicts and human rights issues; tackling controversial ideas such as 'witnessing', the making of appeals based on displays of human suffering and the much-cited concept of 'compassion fatigue'. In the twenty-first century, the advent of digital photography, camera phones and socialmedia platforms has altered the relationship between photographers, the medium and the audience- as well as contributing to an ongoing blurring of the boundaries between news and entertainment and professional and amateur journalism. The Violence of the Image explores how new vernacular and artistic modes of photographic production articulate international friction.This innovative, timely book makes a major contribution to discussions about the power of the image in conflict.
This book examines contemporary militarism in international politics, employing a variety of different theoretical viewpoints and international case studies. Militarism - understood as the social and international relations of the preparation for, and conduct of, organized political violence - is an abiding and defining characteristic of world politics. Yet despite the ongoing social, political and economic reach of military institutions, practices and values, the concept and subject of militarism has not received significant attention within recent debates in International Relations. This book intends to fill the gap in the current body of literature. It has two key overarching aims: to make the case for a renewed research agenda for IR centred on the concept of militarism; and to provide a series of empirically focused and theoretically informed case studies of contemporary militarism in practice. Containing a wide-ranging selection of chapters, the volume presents a diverse and eclectic body of research on militarism, designed to act as a stimulus to further research and debate. This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, war and conflict studies, international political economy and IR/security studies in general.
Since 1989, when the movement for Kashmiri independence took the form of an armed insurgency, it has been one of the most highly militarized regions in the world. This book is based on the idea that preserving memory is central to the struggle for justice and to someday rebuild a society shattered by two decades of armed conflict.
This book presents new theoretical and conceptual perspectives on the problematique of building just and durable peace. Linking peace and justice has sparked lively debates about the dilemmas and trade-offs in several contemporary peace processes. Despite the fact that justice and peace are commonly referred to there is surprisingly little research and few conceptualizations of the interplay between the two. This edited volume is the result of three years of collaborative research and draws upon insights from such disciplines as peace and conflict, international law, political science and international relations. It contains policy-relevant knowledge about effective peacebuilding strategies, as well as an in-depth analysis of the contemporary peace processes in the Middle East and the Western Balkans. Using a variety of theoretical perspectives and empirical approaches, the work makes an original contribution to the growing literature on peacebuilding. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, peace and conflict studies, Middle Eastern Politics, European Politics and IR/Security Studies.
This book examines the continuing devastation in the Darfur region of Sudan, from the perspective of a multiplicity of conflicts of distinct types. The crisis reached its peak in 2003-2004, when certain Arab militias joined forces with the Sudan armed forces in a campaign against insurgent resistance movements. Engulfed in the tumult, Darfurians experienced systematic slaughter, sexual violence, and internal displacement on a massive scale. Although the violence has waned in recent years, the fighting continues to this day. The authors cast this crisis as a complex web of four distinct, yet interlacing, conflict types: long-standing disputes between farmers and herders and between different herder communities political struggles between the local elite leaders of the resistance movements, and those between traditional leaders (elders) and younger aspiring leaders long-standing grievances of marginalized groups against those at the national centre of power cross-border conflicts, primarily the proxy war waged between Chad and Sudan The crisis in South Sudan is also examined through the lens of conflict complementarity. This book will be of interest to students of African politics, genocide, political violence, ethnic conflict, war and conflict studies, peacebuilding and IR.
This book examines the United States military's use of concepts from non-linear science, such as chaos and complexity theory, in its efforts to theorise information-age warfare. Over the past three decades, the US defence community has shown an increasing interest in learning lessons from the non-linear sciences. Theories, strategies, and doctrines of warfare that have guided the conduct of US forces in recent conflicts have been substantially influenced by ideas borrowed from non-linear science, including manoeuvre warfare, network-centric warfare, and counterinsurgency. This book accounts for the uses that the US military has made of non-linear science by examining the long-standing historical relationship between the natural sciences and Western militaries. It identifies concepts and metaphors borrowed from natural science as a key formative factor behind the development of military theory, strategy, and doctrine. In doing so, Nonlinear Science and Warfare not only improves our understanding of the relationship between military professional identity, professional military education, and changes in technology, but also provides important insights into the evolving nature of conflict in the Information Age. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, military science, US foreign policy, technology and war, and security studies.
Licence To Loot is a fast-paced, hard-hitting investigation into parastatal looting, written by journalist Stephan Hofstatter. At the centre of the story is Eskom, the largest power utility in Africa, which could determine the success or failure of South Africa’s economy. Hofstatter’s story begins in 2016, with the Guptas’ controversial purchase of Optimum coal mine and Eskom chief executive Brian Molefe’s key role in the deal. From there it takes the reader on a journey from secret meetings in London hotel rooms to a clandestinely purchased bolthole on a Dubai golf estate, uncovering the corrupt acquisition of a private jet along the way. From the diary entries of a Saxonwold security guard to first-hand accounts of backroom dealmaking, it traces the origins of a shadowy network between the Guptas and Eskom that ultimately allowed the family to extract billions of rands from the parastatal. Licence To Loot reveals the complicated deals and machinations underpinning state capture and the subsequent ministerial and board appointments that ceded the control of the country’s parastatals, including Eskom, Transnet, SAA and Denel, to Gupta-linked moneymen. The book is particularly relevant in the current political climate as it focuses on the impact of state capture, not just its origins, and takes the story beyond the Zuma presidency.
This book discusses the evolving principle of transitional justice in public international law and international relations from the female perspective at a time when the concept is increasingly recognised by the international community as an effective framework in which to negotiate and manage a community's post-conflict transition to peace and stability. The book adopts a gender lens with a particular focus on women's direct experiences and perceptions either as intended beneficiaries of transitional justice (TJ), protagonists in that process or as practitioners, in order to present a unique view in relation to the development of TJ. The range of experiences and knowledge in this collection provides a fresh and unique perspective through its blend of theory and practice. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of law, political science and gender studies.
Embracing the theory and practice of strategic foresight and illuminating how different schools of thought regard its role in policy making, Tuomo Kuosa describes how something not traditionally considered an independent discipline, is steadily becoming one. In The Evolution of Strategic Foresight he explains how the practice of strategic foresight has long been closely associated with the military and politics. Linking strategic thinking more broadly to futurology, however, it is quite new. Since strategic foresight refers to the practice of generating analyses of alternative futures and strategies, based on available intelligence and foreknowledge, the practice can and should be applied to companies, business sectors, national and trans-national agencies of all descriptions, and to all aspects of public policy making. The author explains its practice in terms of structure, process, and knowledge domains, and examines its methodologies and systems, along with how strategic foresight can be used to produce better knowledge and be more effectively linked to policy making. Using examples from 30 different countries and with access to interviews and workshops involving key experts, The Evolution of Strategic Foresight will be valuable to scholars, educators, students engaged in strategy and future studies, long-range, public policy and urban planners, analysts; risk assessment experts, and consultants, managers and decision makers in many organisations, public and private.
This book offers both a conceptual and an empirical analysis of how violence is normalized. In its conceptual analysis, Irm Haleem offers a framework of explanation that she argues is universal in its narratives, which she submits is premised on moralizing, legalizing, and popularizing violence. Haleem engages Stathis Kalyvas's notion of the two stages of violence (process and outcome), and proposes the notion of "metaphysical" violence as distinct from physical violence. Through drawing upon works of scholars such as Hannah Arendt, Noam Chomsky, W.J.T. Mitchell, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, George Kateb, and others, she illustrates why these distinctions (of stages and types of violence) are critical in understanding how violence is normalized. In its empirical analysis, Naoko Kumada argues that the contemporary changes in narratives and educational curriculum in Japan are intended to moralize the historic glory days of imperial Japan, which, she argues, may subsequently normalize militarism. Stefanie Kam focuses on how China has normalized violence in Xinjiang through narratives of the imperatives of security, thereby both legalizing and moralizing violence. Jennifer Dhanaraj argues how the denial of citizenship to the Rohingya community in Myanmar has provided both the moral and legal justifications for Buddhist extremists and the military to wage a brutal and unbridled war against the Rohingyas. Finally, Abdul Basit examines how the ex-communication of the Ahmadi sectarian minority in Pakistan has criminalized the minority, thus paving the way for unbridled violence against them from extremist mobs that have justified their violence in moral and legal terms. In all the cases in this book, we see how violence is popularized as being either a matter of the will of the people, or as being for the greater good of the people.
A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via www.tandfebooks.com as well as the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license and is part of the OAPEN-UK research project. This book examines the current debate on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, notably the international non-proliferation regime and how to implement its disarmament provisions. Discussing the requirements of a new international consensus on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, this book builds on the three pillars of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT): non-proliferation, disarmament and peaceful uses of nuclear energy. It reviews the impact of Cold War and post-Cold War policies on current disarmament initiatives and analyses contemporary proliferation problems: how to deal with the states that never joined the NPT (India, Pakistan and Israel); how states that have been moving toward nuclear weapons have been brought back to non-nuclear-weapon status; and, in particular, how to deal with Iran and North Korea. The analysis centres on the relationship between disarmament and non-proliferation in an increasingly multi-centric world involving China and India as well as the US, the European powers and Russia. It concludes with a description and discussion of three different worlds without nuclear weapons and their implications for nuclear disarmament policies. This book will be of great interest to all students of arms control, strategic studies, war and conflict studies, and IR/security studies in general Sverre Lodgaard is a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Oslo
This volume features a selection of the best scholarship on international law as it is relevant to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The essays consider the nonproliferation legal regime as a normative system and offer a more discrete consideration of international law in each weapons of mass destruction technology area: nuclear weapons proliferation; chemical and biological weapons proliferation; and delivery systems proliferation. In addition, the essays consider the closely related questions of the role, authority and track record of the UN Security Council in monitoring, implementing and enforcing compliance with these primary sources of nonproliferation law.
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.
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.
This volume of essays examines the development of political and legal thinking regarding the use of force in international relations. It provides an analysis of the rules on the use of force in the political, normative and factual contexts within which they apply and assesses their content and relevance in the light of new challenges such as terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and cyber-attacks. The volume begins with an overview of the ancient and medieval concepts of war and the use of force and then concentrates on the contemporary legal framework regulating the use of force as moulded by the United Nations Charter and state practice. In this regard it discusses specific issues such as the use of force by way of self-defence, armed reprisals, forcible reactions to terrorism, the use of force in the cyberspace, humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect. This collection of previously published classic research articles is of interest to scholars and students of international law and international relations as well as practitioners in international law.
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.
This book rigorously documents and explains the genocide perpetrated by the Guatemalan state against indigenous Maya populations within the context of its counterinsurgency campaign against leftist guerrillas between 1981 and 1983. In doing so it brings to light a genocide that has remained largely invisible within both academic disciplines and the practitioner sphere. In May 2013, former de facto president of Guatemala, General Efrain Rios Montt, was for ten days indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity within Guatemala's domestic courts. Based upon over a decade of ethnographic research, including in survivors' communities in Guatemala, this book documents the historical processes shaping the genocide by analysing the evolution of both counterinsurgent and insurgent violence and strategy, focusing above all on its impact upon the civilian population. The research clearly evidences the impact of political violence upon non-combatants; how military and insurgent strategies gradually implicate civilians in conflict and the strategies civilians may adopt in order to survive them. Convincingly framed within key theoretical scholarship from genocide studies and comparative politics it speaks to a broad audience beyond Latin Americanists.
This book explores how and why police reform became an international phenomenon in the era of statebuilding that followed the end of the Cold War. Police reform has become an indispensible element in the spread of liberal democracy. Policing is distinguished by its ability to combine reasonable and forcible methods to preserve and spread liberal values. The book examines the reason police reform was introduced as a method of building consensus in Latin America and the Balkans and documents the development of its use in Africa, the Middle East and the Caucasus region. It illustrates how police power binds the liberal value of freedom to the security needs of post-conflict regions and discusses its force as a strategy to bring law and order to a global security domain. Drawing on a multi-disciplinary approach to the subject, the book delves deeply into policing as a method to bring coherence to global security. It traces the presence of coherent police strategies in contemporary international relations through studies of the United Nations, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. By contrasting police reform with security sector reform, the book explores how liberal peace is imagined by the international NGO sector, state aid agencies and international organizations. This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, post-conflict reconstruction, critical security studies, development studies and IR in general.
Indonesia is currently affected by many serious conflicts which have arisen as a result of a variety of ethnic, religious and regional tensions. Presenting important new thinking on violent conflict in the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, this book examines a selection of conflicts in detail and discusses the nature of violence and the reasons behind violent outbreaks. Chapters include analysis of conflicts in Aceh, East Timor, Maluku, Java, West Kalimantan, West Papua and elsewhere. The contributors provide analysis of political, ethnic and nationalistic killings, with a concentration on the post-Suharto era. The book goes on to examine vital questions concerning the way in which violence in Indonesia is represented in the media, and explores ways in which violent conflicts could be resolved or prevented. The last section turns the focus onto victims of violence and forms of justice and retribution.
Following careers in the military and in industry, Robert Grattan has devoted himself to the subject of strategy and its related theory through his research into the strategy implementation employed by business, governments and the military. Strategy process is widely studied and taught but, argues Robert Grattan, comprehensive prescriptive theories have yet to be developed. This book is based on analysis of the strategic defence review (SDR) conducted by the UK Ministry of Defence, the methodology for which has been employed in other countries. The study focuses on how the review was managed through the twin lenses of strategic business management theory and the 'Essence of Decision' theory of governmental decision-making closely associated with the John F. Kennedy School of Government in the USA. The author has been fortunate in being granted interviews with the leading figures in Government, the Civil Service and the Military who participated in the SDR process and in having gained access to information in Ministry of Defence files under Freedom of Information legislation. The result is Strategic Review, a book that provides vivid insights into what happened in a large complex organisation during a major strategic review and highlights the problems likely to be encountered during the process of formulating strategy in business, in government, in sport and any other human endeavour. It will appeal to many in business intrigued by the similarities between the issues facing business and military strategists; to those involved in public policy-making; to the defence community; and to academics and higher level students with an interest in this rich field of study.
Emboldened by economic strength and growing military power,
China is emerging as a challenger to US dominance in the Pacific.
But its promised peaceful rise has done little to convince regional
powers that it will not use force to press longstanding territorial
claims or attempt sea-denial operations in Asia's lucrative trade
routes. Uncertainty about Beijing's intentions could thus beget a
new, unpredictable arms race as states scramble to protect their
interests. For the short term, however, governments are weighing up
the question of how far their interests may be served by
cooperating with China and trying to usher it into the role of a
responsible global power, while hedging their bets with traditional
alliances and military modernisation.
Under Attack makes a new contribution to the field of international relations in general and the study of international law and armed conflict in particular, in two core ways. First, it links information from varying disciplines, most notably international relations and international law, to form a comprehensive picture of state practice and the challenges it poses to the legal rules for the use of force. Secondly, it organises the information in such a way to identify two core groups of contemporary justifications used by states: humanitarian reasons and self-defence, both with their sub-categories. At the core of this book is the question of how state practice since 1990 has challenged the long-established legal regime on the international use of force. Are we merely witnessing a temporary and insignificant challenge to international law or are the rules genuinely under attack?
This research collection provides a comprehensive study of important strategic, cultural, ethical and philosophical aspects of modern warfare. It offers a refreshing analysis of key issues in modern warfare, not only in terms of the conduct of war and the wider complexities and ramifications of modern conflict, but also concepts of war, the crucial shifts in the structure of warfare, and the morality and legality of the use of force in a post-9/11 age. |
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