This volume seeks to uncover and discuss the links between genocide, geopolitics and transnational networks. By studying the destruction of the Union Patrotica (UP) in Colombia - a process usually regarded as one of the extreme by-products of the Colombian armed conflict- through the lens of genocide studies, Gomez-Suarez challenges mainstream international relations, genocide and Colombian armed conflict studies. Moving beyond the analysis of the Colombian case, the book offers a broader interdisciplinary theoretical framework that also attends to transnational relations of perpetrators and resisters and the political economy of affective-dispositions for mapping genocidal conjuncture. Methodologically, the text aims to present a re-interpretation of what constitutes genocide beyond its legal definition and turn towards its political and ethical dimensions to create a conceptual framework in which genocide appears to turn ever more into a decentralized network of various actors that contributed to a genocidal mentality, which, ultimately, enable the destruction of the civil society networks. This work will be an important contribution to both the debates on genocide and international relations and the study of global connectivities.

This book offers a renewed defense of traditional just war theory and considers its application to certain contemporary cases, particularly in the Middle East. The first part of the book addresses and responds to the central theoretical criticisms levelled at traditional just war theory. It offers a detailed defense of civilian immunity, the moral equality of soldiers and the related dichotomy between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, and argues that these principles taken together amount to a morally coherent ethics of war. In this sense this project is traditional (or "orthodox"). In another sense, however, it is highly relevant to the modern world. While the first part of the book defends the just war tradition against its revisionist critics, the second part applies it to an array of timely issues: civil war, economic warfare, excessive harm to civilians, pre-emptive military strikes, and state-sponsored assassination, which require applying just war theory in practice. This book sets out to reaffirm the basic tenets of the traditional ethics of war and to lend them further moral support, subsequently applying them to a variety of practical issues. This book will be of great interest to students of just war theory, ethics, security studies, war and conflict studies, and IR in general.

This book analyses the role of war and violence (in both its physical and symbolic forms) for social work in a time of neoliberal globalisation from a social justice perspective. It argues that the consequences of wars, in both their old and new forms, and the exercise of symbolic violence for the practices of social work at national and global levels have been ignored. This work explores the relationship between recent neoliberal and global transformations and their consequences for intensifying 'new wars' and conflicts in non-Western countries on the one hand, and the increasing symbolic violence against marginalised people with immigrant and non-Western background in many Western countries, on the other. The analytical approach of the book, based on the theories of multiple modernities and symbolic violence, is unique since no other work has applied such theoretical perspectives for analysing inequalities in relation to the condition of lives of non-Western people living in Western and non-Western countries. This is a necessary contribution for social work education and research since the discipline needs new theoretical perspectives to be able to meet the new challenges raised by recent global transformations and neoliberal globalisation.

This book critically examines the possible dilution of the neutrality principle of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in internal armed conflicts. It begins with the proposition that the intervention of ICRC in internal armed conflicts led to compromises in neutrality, and questioned the autonomy and independence of the organization. The book also argues that the field operations of the international humanitarian organizations during internal armed conflicts are dependent on the authority exercised by the state in whose territory the conflict persists. The ICRC's involvement in Sri Lanka and Sudan provides empirical support to validate these propositions and arguments. The cases also show that for the ICRC, it is hard to be neutral and impartial in situations of internal armed conflicts and such conflicts present formidable challenges to maintain its organization autonomy as well. The larger purpose of the book is to contribute to the policy re/formulation of the international humanitarian organizations in internal armed conflict, the most significant challenge in the field at present.

This book revisits post-Cold War Disarmament Disintegration and Reintegration (DDR) programmes in the light of previous experiences of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration. In the history of North America and Europe, in particular, such programmes had a major impact on state-building, contributing to the development of the welfare state, shaping political settlements and directing government policy to maintain social peace. The authors in this important book ask what is left of these state-building dimensions in contemporary DDR programmes and whether the constraints imposed by international organisations on DDR programmes have more negative effects than positive ones. The role of political leadership in DDR processes is highlighted: can bureaucratically-driven processes deliver success? Only if political elites take full control and manage DDR programmes can there be a lasting impact on state-building. Even then, most political elites avoid deep changes in their relationship with the veterans. Is there a chance of reshaping international intervention in such a way as to favour the development of a 'social contract' between political elites and veterans? In taking a historical perspective, this book is unique in the existing literature on DDR and will be essential reading for policy makers, students and scholars of conflict studies, and those working in NGOs, particularly donor agencies. This volume was produced with the contribution of the Crisis States Research Centre (LSE).

With an increasing number of Australian military personnel being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, this collection of insightful essays examines the unseen wounds sustained by our combat and peacekeeping forces. They show there are no easy answers or simple solutions, and suggest where existing approaches are misguided, and how a multi-disciplinary approach is needed to gain a better sense of moral injury.

The Routledge Handbook of Arctic Security offers a comprehensive examination of security in the region, encompassing both state-based and militarized notions of security, as well as broader security perspectives reflecting debates about changes in climate, environment, economies, and societies. Since the turn of the century, the Arctic has increasingly been in the global spotlight, resulting in the often invoked idea of "Arctic exceptionalism" being questioned. At the same time, the unconventional political power which the Arctic's Indigenous peoples hold calls into question conventional ideas about geopolitics and security. This handbook examines security in this region, revealing contestations and complementarities between narrower, state-based and/or militarized notions of security and broader security perspectives reflecting concerns and debates about changes in climate, environment, economies, and societies. The volume is split into five thematic parts: * Theorizing Arctic Security * The Arctic Powers * Security in the Arctic through Governance * Non-Arctic States, Regional and International Organizations * People, States, and Security. This book will be of great interest to students of Arctic politics, global governance, geography, security studies, and International Relations.

This book examines the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute from a foreign policy perspective, focusing on three key stakeholders: China, Japan and the United States. The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute is a prominent territorial dispute between China and Japan. This book critically assesses that dispute in a pragmatic, policy-oriented manner. The central question of the work focuses on the various military (direct invasion, coercion) and non-military (bilateral negotiations, binding and non-binding third-party options and delaying) foreign policy avenues available to China to pursue its key interests over the disputed islands. To compare and contrast these different options, the book employs a qualitative rational-choice framework. This allows for a critical analysis on the merits and demerits of various options and to anticipate China's potential course of action based on the principle that China is expected to act in a rational manner. This research offers two main contributions. First, it adopts a security-focused approach to complement the economic-focused works on the subject. Second, it critically examines the various foreign policy options as opposed to offering an avenue based on purely theoretical assumptions. While the work concludes that a delaying/status quo approach is rational for all parties involved, it highlights alternative policy avenues that can build on the conclusion of the rational-choice analysis. Through this it seeks to address the possibility of escalation and de-escalation on the East China Sea and highlights the critical role pro-active foreign policy making plays in averting a negative outcome of the dispute. This book will be of much interest to students of Chinese Foreign Policy, Asian Politics, Security Studies and International Relations.

In recent years, the term sectarianism has been widely used to explain contemporary affairs across the Middle East and North Africa. A range of assumptions about the nature of sectarianism have become prevalent amongst scholars and policy makers who engage with these areas, in part driven by the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran (the two dominant Sunni and Shi'a states) and the emergence of ISIS. Despite its prevalence, few scholars have engaged critically with the meaning of the term and its application across the Middle East. Whilst many associate sectarianism with Islam, Sectarianism in the Contemporary Middle East interrogates the political, economic and security factors surrounding the term within both Islam and Judaism, leading to a better understanding of the contemporary politics of the Middle East. This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Discourse.

Neutrality is a legal relationship between a belligerent State and a State not participating in a war, namely a neutral State. The law of neutrality is a body of rules and principles that regulates the legal relations of neutrality. The law of neutrality obliges neutral States to treat all belligerent States impartially and to abstain from providing military and other assistance to belligerents. The law of neutrality is a branch of international law that developed in the nineteenth century, when international law allowed unlimited freedom of sovereign States to resort to war. Thus, there has been much debate as to whether such a branch of law remains valid in modern international law, which generally prohibits war and the use of force by States. While there has been much debate regarding the current status of neutrality in modern international law, there is a general agreement among scholars as to the basic features of the traditional law of neutrality. Wani challenges the conventional understanding of the traditional neutrality by re-examining the historical development of the law of neutrality from the sixteenth century to 1945. The modification of the conventional understanding will provide a fundamentally new framework for discussing the current status of neutrality in modern international law.

This book explores the role played by civilians in shaping the outcomes of military combat across time and place. This volume explores the contributions civilians have made to warfare in case studies that range from ancient Europe to contemporary Africa and Latin America. Building on philosophical and legal scholarship, it explores the blurred boundary between combatant and civilian in different historical contexts and examines how the absence of clear demarcations shapes civilian strategic positioning and impacts civilian vulnerability to military targeting and massacre. The book argues that engagement with the blurred boundaries between combatant and non-combatant both advance the key analytical questions that underpin the historical literature on civilians and underline the centrality of civilians to a full understanding of warfare. The volume provides new insight into why civilian death and suffering has been so common, despite widespread beliefs embedded in legal and military codes across time and place that killing civilians is wrong. Ultimately, the case studies in the book show that civilians, while always victims of war, were nevertheless often able to become empowered agents in defending their own lives, and impacting the outcomes of wars. By highlighting civilian military agency and broadening the sense of which actors affect strategic outcomes, the book also contributes to a richer understanding of war itself. This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, international history, international relations and war and conflict studies.

This book employs the concept of human security to show what the term means from the perspective of women in Afghanistan. It engages with a well-established debate in academic and policy-making contexts regarding the utility of human security as a framework for understanding and redressing conflict. The book argues that this concept allows the possibility of articulating the substantive experiences of violence and marginalisation experienced by people in local settings as well as their own struggles towards a secure and happy life. In this regard, it goes a long way to making sense of the complex dynamics of conflict which have confounded Western policy-makers in their ongoing state-building mission in Afghanistan. However, despite this inherent potential, the idea of human security still needs refinement. Crucially, it has benefitted from critical feminist and critical social theories which provide the conceptual and methodological depth necessary to apprehend what a progressive ethical program of security looks like and how it can be furthered. Using this framework, the work provides a critical reconstruction of the effect of the US-led Western Intervention on women's experiences of (in)security in the three provincial contexts of Nangarhar, Bamiyan and Kabul. This reconstruction is drawn from a wealth of historical and contemporary sociological research alongside original fieldwork undertaken in Delhi, India, during 2011 with women and men from the country's different communities. This book will be of much interest to students of human security, state-building, gender politics, war and conflict studies and IR in general.

Israel borders four states - Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, and two entities - the Palestinian authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza stip. In recent years, despite incidents on the border with Syria and Egypt, the basic strategic status quo with these countries has not changed, and the overall balance of power between Israel and the Arabs has been maintained. Due to its military might, none of Israel's Arab neighbours are able to defeat it. Israel, however, for political, economic and military reasons, avoids enforcing its will and interfering in internal Arab matters and has successfully managed to stay out of the Arab turmoil. Israel, the Arabs and Iran gives a detailed overview of the various national security challenges that Israel has faced since 2011. It explains the key considerations and constraints Israel has had to deal with on several fronts, from its northern border with Lebanon to its southern border with Egypt. The book provides the reader with a deep understanding of why and how Israel has struggled to keep the status quo, whilst a large part of the Middle East remains in turmoil. The book is aimed at anyone studying Israel, its Foreign Policy, Middle Eastern Politics and International Relations. It will also appeal to government officials, military officers and anyone working or interested in national security issues concerning the Middle East and particularly Israel.

Civilians in Gaza and Israel are caught up in complex, violent situations that have overstepped conventional battle lines. Both sides of the conflict have found ways to legitimate the use of violence, and continually swap accusations of violations of domestic and international humanitarian laws. Israel's Military Operations in Gaza provides an ideological critique of the legal, military, and social media texts that have been used to legitimate historical incursions into the Gaza, with special focus on Operation Protective Edge. It argues that both the Palestinians and the Israelis have deployed various forms of 'telegenic' warfare. They have each used argumentative rhetorics based on competing interpretations of events, and are locked in a battle to convince international audiences and domestic constituencies of the righteousness of their causes. This critical genealogical study analyses a range of texts and images, from selfies circulated near the Gaza border to judicial opinions produced by the High Court of Israel. With its multidisciplinary approach and original analysis of the Israel/Gaza situation, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Middle East studies and the Arab-Israeli conflict, as well as security studies and communication studies.

America's war on terror is widely defined by the Afghanistan and Iraq fronts. Yet, as this book demonstrates, both the international campaign and the new ways of fighting that grew out of it played out across multiple fronts beyond the Middle East. Maria Ryan explores how secondary fronts in the Philippines, sub-Saharan Africa, Georgia, and the Caspian Sea Basin became key test sites for developing what the Department of Defense called "full spectrum dominance": mastery across the entire range of possible conflict, from conventional through irregular warfare. Full Spectrum Dominance is the first sustained historical examination of the secondary fronts in the war on terror. It explores whether irregular warfare has been effective in creating global stability or if new terrorist groups have emerged in response to the intervention. As the U.S. military, Department of Defense, White House, and State Department have increasingly turned to irregular capabilities and objectives, understanding the underlying causes as well as the effects of the quest for full spectrum dominance become ever more important. The development of irregular strategies has left a deeply ambiguous and concerning global legacy.

This Companion examines contemporary challenges in Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS) and offers practical solutions to these problems. Bringing together chapters from new and established global scholars, the volume explores and critiques the foundations of Peace and Conflict Studies in an effort to advance the discipline in light of contemporary local and global actors. The book examines the following eight specific components of Peace and Conflict Studies: Peace and conflict studies praxis Structure-agency tension as it relates to social justice, nonviolence, and relationship building Gender, masculinity, and sexuality The role of partnerships and allies in racial, ethnic, and religious peacebuilding Culture and identity Critical and emancipatory peacebuilding International conflict transformation and peacebuilding Global responses to conflict. It argues that new critical and emancipatory peacebuilding and conflict transformation strategies are needed to address the complex cultural, economic, political, and social conflicts of the 21st century. This book will be of much interest to students of peace and conflict studies, peace studies, conflict resolution, transitional justice, reconciliation studies, social justice studies, and international relations.

Artisanal mining is commonly associated with violent conflict, rampant corruption and desperate poverty. Yet millions of people across Sub Sahara Africa depend on it. Many of them are living in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), home to important mineral reserves, but also to a plethora of armed groups and massive human rights violations. African Artisanal Mining from the Inside Out provides a rich and in-depth analysis of the Congolese gold sector. Instead of portraying miners and traders as passive victims of economic forces, regional conflicts or disheartening national policies, it focuses on how they gain access to and benefit from gold. It shows a professional artisanal mining sector governed by a set of specific norms, offering ample opportunities for flexible employment and local livelihood support and being well-connected to the local economy and society. It argues for the viability of artisanal gold mining in the context of weak African states and in the transition towards a post-conflict and more industrialized economy. This book will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduates studying natural resources and development as well as those in development studies, African studies, sociology, political economy, political ecology, legal pluralism, and history.

The trend for international engagement in post-conflict reconstruction has produced a host of best-practice postulates on topics such as local involvement in decision-making, accountability for past atrocities, sensitivity to context, and the construction of democratic institutions of governance. International law has potential relevance for many of these themes, yet the question of how the implementation of best-practice policy recommendations might be affected by international law remains under-examined. This book offers a fuller understanding of the role of international law in the practice of post-conflict reconstruction. It explores how international legal issues that arise in the post-conflict period relate to a number of strands of the policy debate, including government creation, constitution-making, gender policy, provision of security, justice for past atrocities, rule of law development, economic recovery, returning displaced persons, and responsibilities of international actors. The chapters of the book work to reveal the extent to which international law figures in the policy of internationally enabled post-conflict reconstruction across a range of sectors. They also highlight the scope for international law to be harnessed in a more effective manner from the perspective of the transition to peace and stability. The book lays out a basis for future policy making on post-conflict reconstruction; one that is informed about the international legal parameters, and more aware of how international law can be utilized to promote key objectives.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.

In April 1994, the Rwandan government called upon everyone in the Hutu majority to kill each member of the Tutsi minority, and over the next three months 800,000 Tutsis perished in the most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler's war against the Jews. Philip Gourevitch's haunting work is an anatomy of the war in Rwanda, a vivid history of the tragedy's background, and an unforgettable account of its aftermath. One of the most acclaimed books of the year, this account will endure as a chilling document of our time.

The book examines how ex-combatants in post-war and peacebuilding settings engage in politics, as seen in the case of Liberia. The political mobilization of former combatants after war is often perceived as a threat, ultimately undermining the security and stability of the state. This book questions this simplified view and argues that understanding the political voice of former combatants is imperative. Their post-war role is not black and white; they are not just bad or good citizens, but rather engage in multiple political roles: spoilers, victims, disengaged, beneficiaries, as well as motivated and active citizens. By looking at the political attitudes and values of former combatants, and their understanding of how politics functions, the book sheds new light on the political reintegration of ex-combatants. It argues that political reintegration needs to be given serious attention at the micro-level, but also needs to be scrutinized in two ways: first, through the level of political involvement, which reflects the extent and width of the ex-combatants' voice. Second, in order to make sense of political reintegration, we also need to uncover what values and norms inform their political involvement. The content of their political voice is captured through a comparison with democratic ideals. Based on interviews with over 100 Liberian ex-combatants, the book highlights that their relationship with politics overall should be characterized as an expression of a 'politics of affection'. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, African politics, democratization, political sociology, conflict resolution and IR/Security Studies in general.

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.

This book examines the dynamics of security provision in international interventions in post-conflict states. It focuses on how international security interventions - such as Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programmes, Security Sector Reform (SSR) and Armed Violence Reduction (AVR) - play out in the post-civil war context in which they are implemented. The underlying assumptions of such interventions are that the state is the best placed to organise violence, that the ideal state has to function as an organisation with the legitimate monopoly on the use of violence, and that the primary task of the state is the provision of security. Post-civil war contexts, however, are characterised by hybridity, in which various authority structures are overlapping, cooperating and competing. The interactions between different security actors (both state and non-state) create struggles in society about whose security interests are promoted, which actions to provide security are considered legitimate, and about who is considered a legitimate security actor. This book investigates the interactions between international actors organising and supporting security interventions and the local security dynamics created by the interactions between both state and non-state actors involved in security. It draws on extensive field research in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and South Sudan. This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, peacebuilding, peace and conflict studies, security studies and IR.

This book examines whether differences in the organizational structure of armed groups shape patterns of human rights violations in civil wars. Since the end of World War II, civil wars have been characterized by extremely high numbers of civilian casualties. However, the exact extent of civilian suffering varies across time, conflict, and geographic region. Recently, a new strand of research has emerged, primarily focused on studying the dynamics underlying the variation in civilian abuse by examining the characteristics of the armed groups and how these characteristics influence the armed groups' behaviour towards the civilian population. With reference to principal-agent theory and data on the organizational structure of more than 70 armed groups active worldwide from 1989 onwards, the author's analysis functions both on the level of the armed group and on the level of the individual via personal interviews with combatants. Offering a unique insight into how factors such as recruitment methods, hierarchy and organizational commitment may affect the likelihood of civilian abuse by combatants, this book will be of much interest to students of political violence, civil wars, war and conflict studies, security studies and IR in general.

This volume examines the various aspects of territorial separatism, focusing on how and why separatist movements arise. Featuring essays by leading scholars from different disciplinary perspectives, the book aims to situate the question of separatism within the broader socio-political context of the international system, arguing that a set of historical events as well as local, regional, and global dynamics have converged to provide the catalysts that often trigger separatist conflicts. In addition, the book marks progress towards a new conceptual framework for the study of territorial separatism, by linking the survival of communities in international politics with the effective control of territory and the consequent creation of new polities. Separatist conflicts challenge conventional wisdom concerning conflict resolution within the context of international relations by unpacking a number of questions with regard to conflict transformation. Through the use of case studies, including Cyprus, the Rakhine state in Myanmar, the Shia separatism in Iraq, the Uighurs in China and the case of East Timor, the volume addresses key issues including the role of democracy, international law, intervention, post-conflict peacebuilding and the creation of new political entities. The book will be of much interest to students of Intra-StateConflict, Conflict Resolution, International Law, Security Studies and International Relations.

This volume comprises key essays by Ted Robert Gurr on the causes and consequences of organized political protest and rebellion, its outcomes and strategies for conflict management. From the Castro-inspired revolutionary movements of Latin America in the 1960s to Yugoslavia's dissolution in ethnonational wars of the 1990s, and the popular revolts of the Arab Spring, millions of people have risked their lives by participating in protests and rebellions. Based on half a century of theorizing and social science research, this book brings together Gurr's extensive knowledge and addresses the key questions surrounding this subject: - What grievances, hopes and hatreds motivated the protesters and rebels? - What did they gain that might have offset myriad deaths and devastation? - How effective are protest movements as alternatives to rebellions and terrorism? -What public and international responses lead away from violence and toward reforms? The essays in the volume are updated and are organized around the evolving themes of the author's research, including theoretical arguments, interpretations and references to the evidence developed in his empirical research and case studies. The concluding essays bring theory and evidence to bear on the past and future of political violence in Africa. This book will be of much interest to student of rebellion, political violence, conflict studies, security studies and IR.