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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism > Armed conflict
This book examines the evolution of the relationship between climate change and conflict, and attempts to visualize future trends. Owing to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, current trends in climate change will not appreciably alter over the next half century even if drastic action is taken now. Changes in climate will produce unique types and modes of conflict, redefine the value of important resources, and create new challenges to maintaining social order and stability. This book examines the consequences of climate change and argues that it has and will produce two types of different types of conflict: 'cold wars' and 'hot wars'. Cold wars will occur in northern and southern latitudes as warming draws countries into possible conflict due to expanding interests in exploiting new resources and territories (inter-state conflict). Hot wars will break out around the equator as warming expands and intensifies dry areas, increasing competition for scarce resources (intra-state conflict). Conflict is not inevitable, but it will also be a consequence of how states, international institutions and people react to changes in climate. Climate change and conflict have always shaped human experiences. This book lays out the parameters of the relationship, shows its history, and forecasts its trends, offering future conditions and opportunities for changing the historical path we are on. This book will be of great interest for students of climate change and environmental security, peace and conflict studies, and IR/security studies in general. James R. Lee is a Professor in the School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC and Associate Director of American University's Center for Teaching Excellence. He is author of several books on international relations, including, most recently, Exploring the Gaps: Vital Links Between Trade, Environment and Culture (2000).
This updated and revised second edition examines the conceptualisation and evolution of peace in International Relations (IR) theory. The book examines the concept of peace and its usage in the main theoretical debates in IR, including realism, liberalism, constructivism, critical theory, and post-structuralism, as well as in the more direct debates on peace and conflict studies. It explores themes relating to culture, development, agency, and structure, not just in terms of representations of IR, and of peace, but in terms of the discipline of IR itself. The work also specifically explores the recent mantras associated with liberal and neoliberal versions of peace, which appear to have become foundational for much of the mainstream literature and for doctrines for peace and development in the policy world. Analysing war has often led to the dominance - and mitigation - of violence as a basic assumption in, and response to, the problems of IR. This study aims to redress this negative balance by arguing that the discipline offers a rich basis for the study of peace, which has advanced significantly over the last century or so. It also proposes innovative theoretical dimensions of the study of peace, with new chapters discussing post-colonial and digital developments. This book will be of great interest to students of peace and conflict studies, politics, and IR.
While the occupation of Iraq and its aftermath has received media and political attention, we know very little about the everyday lives of Iraqis. Iraqi men, women, and children are not merely passive victims of violence, vulnerable recipients of repressive regimes, or bystanders of their country's destruction. In the face of danger and trauma, Iraqis continue to cope, preparing food, sending their children to school, socializing, telling jokes, and dreaming of a better future. Within the realm of imagination and creative expression, the editors find that many Iraqi artists have not only survived but have also sought healing. In We Are Iraqis, Al-Ali and Al-Najjar showcase written and visual contributions by Iraqi artists, writers, poets, filmmakers, photographers, and activists. Contributors explore the way Iraqis retain, subvert, and produce art and activism as ways of coping with despair and resisting chaos and destruction. The first anthology of its kind, We Are Iraqis brings into focus the multitude of ethnicities, religions, and experiences that are all part of Iraq.
The Palestine-Israel conflict is the most notorious and ingrained conflict in living memory. Yet the way it is reported in the media is often confusing, leading many to falsely assume the hostilities stretch continuously back to an ancient period. The Palestine-Israel Conflict provides a balanced, accessible, and annotated introduction that covers the full history of the region, from Biblical times until today. Perfect for the general reader, as well as students, it offers a comprehensive yet lucid rendering of the conflict, setting it in its proper historical context. This fourth edition brings us up to date, and includes recent events such as Israel's Operation Protective Edge, developments between Fatah and Hamas, ongoing Palestinian resistance, and the entirety of the Obama years. This book cuts though the layers of confused and contradictory information on the subject, and will help clarify the ongoing conflict for its readers.
Analysing US foreign policy towards Angola during the Ford administration, this book provides an intriguing insight into one of the most avoidable and unfortunate episodes in Cold War history and explores the impact on Henry Kissinger's much vaunted reputation for being guided by realist principles. Kissinger has dominated political discourse and scholarship on US foreign policy since the 1970s, but although his legacy continues to generate controversy, little attention has been paid to the influence of Vietnam's collapse on the US decision to covertly intervene in the Angolan civil war. This book argues that Kissinger's concern for personal reputation and US credibility following the collapse of Vietnam led to a harmful and unrealistic policy toward Angola. Exposure of US covert intervention exacerbated domestic and international political tensions and the subsequent showdown between the excutive and legislative branches ironically resulted in Kissinger proclaiming a new departure in US-African relations. Thus, it is argued that Kissinger was an 'unintentional realist' rather than an intellectual proponent of realpolitik. Enhancing our understanding of Kissinger, his relationship with his subordinates and with Congress, and his approach to foreign policy, this book will be of interest to scholars of Cold War history, US foreign policy and all those fascinated by the personality of Henry Kissinger.
The threat posed by the recent rise of transnational non-state armed groups does not fit easily within either of the two basic paradigms for state responses to violence. The civilian paradigm focuses on the interception of demonstrable immediate threats to the safety of others. The military paradigm focuses on threats posed by collective actors who pose a danger to the state's ability to maintain basic social order and, at times, the very existence of the state. While the United States has responded to the threat posed by non-state armed groups by using tools from both paradigms, it has placed substantially more emphasis on the military paradigm than have other states. While several reasons may contribute to this approach, one may be the assumption that a state must use each set of tools strictly according in accordance with the principles that underlie each paradigm. Implicit in this assumption may be the sense that the only alternative to the civilian paradigm is the unqualified military one. The chapters in this book suggest, however that we need not see the options as confined to this binary choice. It may be profitable to consider borrowing elements from each paradigm on some occasions to act more expansively than the conventional civilian paradigm allows, but less expansively than the conventional military paradigm would permit. At the same time, the mixing of the categories comes with its own ethical and legal risks that should be scrutinized.
This textbook examines non-traditional forms of security and expands the notion of security to include non-state actors and non-human actors. Proposing an expansive view of non-traditional forms of security that go beyond traditionally recognized issues of threats to state and national territory, this new textbook rests on the following premises: traditional state-centered threats, such as nuclear proliferation and espionage, remain a concern; old and new threats combine and create interlocking puzzles-a feature of wicked problems and wicked messes; because of the global erosion of borders, new developments of unconventional insecurity interact in ways that frustrate traditional conceptual definitions, conceptual maps, and national policies; unconventional security challenges which have traditionally been seen as "low politics" or "soft" issues are now being recognized as "hard security" challenges in the twenty-first century; many of the so-called "new" threats detailed here are in fact very old: diseases, gender violence, food insecurity, under-development, and crime are all traditional security threats, but deeply modified today by globalization. The chapters offer local and global examples and engage with various theoretical approaches to help readers see the bigger picture. Solutions are also suggested to these problems. Each chapter contains discussion questions to help readers understand the key points and facilitate class discussion. This book will be of great interest to students of international security studies, human security, global politics, and international relations.
In 2004, the UN's Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan called Darfur the world's worst humanitarian crisis. A comprehensive food aid programme soon followed, at the time the largest in the world. Yet by 2014, while the crisis continued, international agencies found they had limited access to much of the population, with the Sudanese regime effectively controlling who received aid. As a result, acute malnutrition remains persistently high. Food Aid in Sudan argues that the situation in Sudan is emblematic of a far wider problem. Analysing the history of food aid in the country over fifty years, Jaspars shows that such aid often serves to enrich local regimes and the private sector while leaving war-torn populations in a state of permanent emergency. Drawing on her decades of experience as an aid worker and researcher in the region, and extensive interviews with workers in the food aid process, Jaspars brings together two key topics of our time: the failure of the humanitarian system to respond to today's crises, and the crisis in the global food system. Essential reading for students and researchers across the social sciences studying the nature and effectiveness of contemporary humanitarianism, development and international aid.
Seven years after the Arab uprisings, the social situation has deteriorated across the Middle East and North Africa. Political, economic and personal insecurities have expanded while income from oil declined and tourist revenues have collapsed due to political instability. Against a backdrop of escalating armed conflicts and disintegrating state structures, many have been forced from their homes, creating millions of internally displaced persons and refugees. Young people are often the ones hit hardest by the turmoil. How do they cope with these ongoing uncertainties, and what drives them to pursue their own dreams in spite of these hardships? In this landmark volume, an international interdisciplinary team of researchers assess a survey of 9,000 sixteen- to thirty-year-olds from Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen, resulting in the most comprehensive, in-depth study of young people in the MENA region to date. Given how rapidly events have moved in the Middle East and North Africa, the findings are in many regards unexpected.
This volume examines geopolitics by looking at the interaction between geography, strategy and history. This book addresses three interrelated questions: why does the geographical scope of political objectives and subsequent strategy of states change? How do these changes occur? Over what period of time do these changes occur? The theories of Sir Halford Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman are examined in order to provide an analytical narrative for five case studies, four historical and one contemporary. Taken together they offer the prospect of converting descriptions of historical change into analytic explanations, thereby highlighting the importance of a number of commonly overlooked variables. In addition, the case studies will illuminate the challenges that states face when attempting to change the scope of their foreign policy and geo-strategy in response to shifts in the geopolitical reality. This book breaks new ground in seeking to provide a way to understand why and how the geographical scope of political objectives and subsequent strategy both expands and contracts. This book will be of much interest to students of geopolitics, strategic studies, military history, and international relations.
Animals are the unknown victims of armed conflicts. Wildlife populations usually decline during warfare, with disastrous repercussions on the food chain, on fragile ecosystems and precarious habitats. Belligerents take advantage of the chaos of war for poaching and trafficking of animal products. Livestock, companion, and zoo animals, highly dependent on human care, are direct victims of hostilities. The book is the first legal analysis of these issues. It maps the framework of international humanitarian law, examining which and how the concepts, principles, and rationales can be applied and adapted for a better protection of animals. The contributions inter alia discuss precautions for animal civilians, problems of animal combatants and prisoners, a specific status for veterinarian personnel, the recognition of biodiversity hotspots as specially protected zones, and the potential of enforcement mechanisms. The concluding chapter draws together novel interpretations and reform proposals.
This book analyses the multi-faceted impact armed conflict has on investment treaties. Refuting the common association of the outbreak of hostilities with the termination or suspension of treaties, it not only makes a case for the continuity of investment treaties. The book argues that the impact of armed conflict on such agreements goes far beyond these questions: Changed factual circumstances and public interests as well as international humanitarian law heavily influence the application and interpretation of investment protection standards. The book argues that investment treaties can and must channel these effects to remain effective during armed conflict and strike a fair balance between investor and public interests. It shows ways in which contextual and systemic interpretation, respect for reasonable state action, and careful treaty design can ensure that investment treaties continue to fulfil their purpose of strengthening compliance with legal rules also in times of armed conflict.
Never before has such damning evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity been revealed in the midst of a conflict. As civil war raged in Syria, we owe the disclosure of this evidence to one man. He goes under the codename of Caesar. This military police photographer was required to document the murder and torture of thousands of Syrian civilians in the custody of the Assad regime. Over the course of two years he used a police computer to copy the photos, and in 2013 he risked his life to smuggle out 53,000 photos and documents that show prisoners tortured, starved and burned to death. In January 2015, in the American magazine Foreign Affairs, President Bashar al-Assad claimed that this military photographer didn't exist. "Who took the pictures? Who is he? Nobody knows. There is no verification of any of this evidence, so it's all allegations without evidence." Caesar exists. The author of this book has spent dozens of hours with him. His testimony is extraordinary, his photos shocking. The uncovering of the workings of the Syrian death machine that underpins his account is a descent into the unspeakable. In 2014 Caesar testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and his testimony provided crucial evidence for a bipartisan bill, the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, that was presented to Congress in 2016. Caesar's photos have also been shown in the United Nations Headquarters in New York and at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. For the first time, this book tells Caesar's story.
Proportionality is intimately linked to the overarching concepts of self-defense, lawful force, and the controlled application of violence. It is one of the most visible facets of humanitarian law designed to reduce unnecessary human suffering and avoid excessive damage to property, and the natural environment. However, its application has come under renewed scrutiny and sustained controversy as a result of wars against non-state actors and from the extensive use of drones, human shields, cyber war techniques, and counterinsurgency tactics. Proportionality in International Law critically assesses the law of proportionality in normative terms combining abstract philosophical and legal analysis with highly emotive contemporary combat cases. The principle of proportionality permits actions that are logically linked to the intended goal, and thus defines the permissible boundaries for the initiation and conduct of modern wars. The case studies discussed in this book are predominantly from the perspective of those who make decisions in the midst of armed conflict, bringing analytic rigor to the debates as well as sensitivity to facts on the ground. The authors analyze modern usages of proportionality across a wide range of contexts enabling a more complete comprehension of the values that it preserves. This book contrasts the applications of proportionality in both jus ad bellum (the law and morality of resort to force) and within jus in bello (the doctrines applicable for using force in the midst of conflicts). Proportionality in International Law provides the reader with a unique interdisciplinary approach, offering practitioners and policymakers alike greater clarity over how proportionality should be understood in theory and in practice.
Across a rich terrain of empirical and theoretical trajectories, the concept of military masculinity (now understood in its plural as military masculinities) has been a significant conceptual tool in both feminist international relations (IR) and in critical men and masculinities studies scholarship. The concept has helped us to unpack the relationships between gender, war, and militarism, including how military standards function in the production of wider normative, hegemonic manliness. As such, military masculinities has been a rewarding tool for many scholars who take a critical approach to the study of war and the military. This edited volume advances an emerging curiosity within accounts of military masculinities. This curiosity concerns the silences within, and disruptions to, our well-established and perhaps-too-comfortable understandings of, and empirical focal points for, military masculinities, gender, and war. The contributors to this volume trouble the ease with which we might be tempted to synonymize militaries, war, and a neat, 'hegemonic' masculinity. Taking the disruptions, the asides, and the silences seriously challenges the common wisdoms of military masculinities, gender, and war in productive and necessary ways. Doing so necessitates a reorientation of where, to whom, and for what we look to understand the operation of gendered military power. The chapters were originally published in a special issue of Critical Military Studies.
discusses various methodological approaches for studying non-state actors in international security presents selected methods and discusses practical applications as well as comparing them to other approaches first book to examine methods of studying non-state actors in international security will be of much interest to students of private military and security companies, research methods, security studies and IR
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.
By adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the legality of the use of autonomous weapons systems under international law. It examines different arguments presented by States, roboticists and scholars to demonstrate the challenges such systems will create for the laws of war. This study examines how technology of warfare seeks to increase the dissociation of risk and communication between weapons and their human operators. Furthermore, it explains how algorithms might give rise to 'errors' on the battlefield that cannot be directly attributed to human operators. Against this backdrop, Dr Seixas-Nunes examines three distinct legal frameworks: the distinction between the legality of weapons and the laws of targeting; different mechanisms of individual accountability and the importance of recovering the category of 'dolus eventualis' for programmers and technicians and, finally, State responsibility for violations of the laws of war caused by weapons' software errors.
Aerial Propaganda and the Wartime Occupation of France, 1914-1918 explores the combined role played by the French and British Governments and Armies in creating and distributing millions of aerial newspapers and leaflets aimed at the French population trapped behind German lines. Drawing on extensive research and French, German and British primary sources, the book highlights a previously unknown aspect of psychological warfare that challenges the established interpretation that the occupied populations lived in a state of total isolation and that the Allied governments had no desire to provide them with morale support. Instead a very different picture emerges from this study, which demonstrates that aerial propaganda not only played a fundamental role in raising morale in the occupied territories but also fuelled resistance and clandestine publications. This book demonstrates that the existing historiographical portrayal of the occupied civilian as an uninformed victim must be replaced by a more nuanced interpretation.
The signing of the peace agreements between the FARC-EP and the Colombian Government in late November 2016 has generated new prospects for peace in Colombia, opening the possibility of redressing the harm inflicted on Colombians by Colombians. Talking about peace and transitional justice requires us to think about how to operationalize peace agreements to promote justice and coexistence for peace. This volume brings together reflections by Colombian academics and practitioners alongside pieces provided by researchers and practitioners in other countries where transitional justice initiatives have taken place (Bosnia and Herzegovina, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Peru). This volume has been written in the south, by the south, for the south. The book engages with the challenges ahead for the coming generations of Colombians. Rivers of ink have dealt with the end goals of transitional justice, but victims require us to take the quest for human rights beyond the normative realm of theorizing justice and into the practical realm of engaging how to implement justice initiatives. The tension between theory-the legislative frameworks guaranteeing human rights-and practice-the realization of these ideas-will frame Colombia's success (or failure) in consolidating the implementation of the peace agreements with the FARC-EP.
The international community is too often focused on responding to the latest cyber-attack instead of addressing the reality of pervasive and persistent cyber conflict. From ransomware against the city government of Baltimore to state-sponsored campaigns targeting electrical grids in Ukraine and the U.S., we seem to have relatively little bandwidth left over to ask what we can hope for in terms of 'peace' on the Internet, and how to get there. It's also important to identify the long-term implications for such pervasive cyber insecurity across the public and private sectors, and how they can be curtailed. This edited volume analyzes the history and evolution of cyber peace and reviews recent international efforts aimed at promoting it, providing recommendations for students, practitioners and policymakers seeking an understanding of the complexity of international law and international relations involved in cyber peace. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Drawing upon Robbie Sabel's first-hand involvement with many legal negotiations in the Arab-Israeli conflict, International Law and the Arab-Israeli Conflict examines international law in relation to the conflict by analysing its major events and agreements, both historical and contemporary. Outlining the role of international law from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire until the present day, it considers the legal elements of the various peace treaties that Israel has signed with its neighbouring Arab States. Using his expertise as a professor, practitioner and ambassador, Sabel endeavours to represent both sides of the conflict, offering a wealth of counter-arguments and adding his own legal interpretations. With this valuable resource, students and researchers working within a range of disciplines can fully appreciate the role of international law in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In this volume, scholars from different disciplines join together to examine the overlapping domains of conflict and collaboration studies. It examines the relationships between ideas and practices in the fields of conflict resolution and collaboration from multiple disciplinary perspectives. The central theme is that conflict and collaboration can be good, bad, or even benign, depending on a number of factors. These include the role of power, design of the process itself, skill level and intent of the actors, social contexts, and world views. The book demonstrates that various blends of conflict and collaboration can be more or less constructively effective. It discusses specific cases, analytical methods, and interventions, and emphasizes both developing propositions and reflecting on specific cases and contexts. The book concludes with specific policy recommendations for many sets of actors-those in peacebuilding, social movements, governments, and communities-plus students of conflict studies. This book will be of much interest to students, scholars, and practitioners of peace and conflict studies, public administration, sociology, and political science.
This volume offers a critical historical assessment of the negotiation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and of the origins of the nonproliferation regime. The NPT has been signed by 190 states and was indefinitely extended in 1995, rendering it the most successful arms control treaty in history. Nevertheless, little is known about the motivations and strategic calculi of the various middle and small powers in regard to their ultimate decision to join the treaty despite its discriminatory nature. While the NPT continues to be central to current nonproliferation efforts, its underlying mechanisms remain under-researched. Based on newly declassified archival sources and using previously inaccessible evidence, the contributions in this volume examine the underlying rationales of the specific positions taken by various states during the NPT negotiations. Starting from a critical appraisal of our current knowledge of the genesis of the nonproliferation regime, contributors from diverse national and disciplinary backgrounds focus on both European and non-European states in order to enrich our understanding of how the global nuclear order came into being. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, Cold War history, security studies and IR.
Despite having devoted considerable energy and resources to its national security over the last 65 years, Pakistan remains a hotbed of international terrorism, religious extremism, and nuclear proliferation: the world's most dangerous powder keg. In The Warrior State, noted international relations and South Asia scholar T.V. Paul poses a fascinating puzzle. In many states across the developing world, military-led regimes have experienced impressive and stable economic growth and over time have evolved into at least partially democratic states. Yet Pakistan, a state in which the military has outsized power, has been a conspicuous failure. Its economy is a shambles, heavily dependent on international aid agencies. Its political system, while containing some democratic features, is notoriously corrupt and unresponsive. And despite the regime's heavy emphasis on security, the country is beset by internecine violence and terrorism. As Paul explains, this is a historical anomaly. War-making and state-building have typically gone hand in hand. After all, the inexorable rise of the European nation-state is largely due the rise of powerful militaries under the control of centralized administrations. What explains Pakistan's unique inability to progress? While there are many factors, the "geostrategic curse" looms large. Since its founding, the country has been at the center of a series of major geopolitical struggles - US-Soviet rivalry, the India-Pakistan struggle, and - most recently - the post 9/11 wars. No matter how ineffective the regime is, it always ends up being the recipient of massive amounts of aid. Moreover, given the constant state of geopolitical crisis, the state always prioritizes the military at the expense of political and economic development. Incorporating a rich theoretical explanation into a swift narrative, drawing insights from history, international relations, sociology, religious studies, political science, and comparative development, The Warrior State presents a deep, multidimensional, and readable account of how such an acutely troubled and unstable country became the way it is, as well as the forces that keep it mired in instability. |
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