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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism > Armed conflict
In Exit Strategies and State Building, fifteen of the world's best scholars and practitioners of peace building focus on relevant historical and contemporary cases to provide a comprehensive overview of this issue. The book identifies four basic types of international operations where state-building has been a major objective-colonial administrations, peacekeeping operations, international administrations, and military occupations. Editor Richard Caplan and his contributors cover a variety of topics, from broad-ranging studies of exit in many types of state-building operations, to focused studies on specific historical cases, to thematic analyses under frameworks such as economics and global international relations. By examining the major challenges associated with the conclusion of international state-building operations and the requirements for the maintenance of peace in the period following exit, this book provides a unique perspective on the realities of military and political intervention. Given the twenty-first century trend toward international intervention the world over , Exit Strategies and State Building sheds more light on what is not merely an academic issue, but a pressing global policy concern.
***Winner of an English PEN Award 2021*** During the 1948 war more than 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were violently expelled from their homes by Zionist militias. The legacy of the Nakba - which translates to 'disaster' or 'catastrophe' - lays bare the violence of the ongoing Palestinian plight. Voices of the Nakba collects the stories of first-generation Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, documenting a watershed moment in the history of the modern Middle East through the voices of the people who lived through it. The interviews, with commentary from leading scholars of Palestine and the Middle East, offer a vivid journey into the history, politics and culture of Palestine, defining Palestinian popular memory on its own terms in all its plurality and complexity.
Proscribing peace offers a systematic examination of the impact of proscription on peace negotiations. By introducing the concept of 'linguistic ceasefire', Haspeslagh adds to our understanding of the timing and sequencing of peace processes in the context of proscription. With relevance for more than half of the conflicts around the world in which an armed group is listed as a terrorist organisation, 'linguistic ceasefire' helps to explain why certain conflicts remain stuck in the 'terrorist' framing, while others emerge from it. International proscription regimes criminalise both the actor and the act of terrorism. Proscribing peace calls for an end to the amalgamation between acts and actors. By focussing on the acts instead, Haspeslagh argues, international policy would be better able to consider the violent actions both of armed groups and those of the state. By separating the act and the actor, change - and thus peace - become possible. -- .
The US and international defense industrial sectors have faced many challenges over the last twenty years, including cycles of growth and shrinkage in defense budgets, shifts in strategic defense priorities, and macroeconomic volatility. In the current environment, the defense sector faces a combination of these challenges and must struggle with the need to maintain critical aspects of the defense industrial base as defense priorities change and as defense budgets reduce or plateau. Moreover, the defense sector in the US is interconnected both with defense sectors in other countries and with other industry sectors in the US and global economies. As a result, strategic decisions made in one defense sector impact the defense sectors of other countries, as well as other areas of the economy. Given her academic, corporate, and Department of Defense experience as a leading economist and policy-maker, Dr. Nayantara Hensel is perfectly positioned to examine the interrelationship between these forces both historically and in the current environment, and to assess the implications for the future global defense industrial base.
This book interrogates the concept of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as a normative construct and how the construction and promotion of this norm may have contributed to a stagnation in humanitarian action. This interrogation includes a particular focus on the impact of R2P on prevailing attitudes and discourses concerning humanitarian military intervention as well as the (under)provision of same. The study seeks to bridge the proverbial gap between theory and policy, specifically concerning our collective understanding of contemporary dynamics of humanitarian intervention and crisis. This objective is accomplished through the application and critical reformulation of the norm life cycle model and its three component stages (emergence, cascade, and internalization) relative to the presumed norm of R2P. The book advances the argument that R2P has only partially cascaded - stagnating rather than fully diffusing after reaching the ‘tipping point’, and in the process leaving the life cycle of the R2P norm in a state of dynamic equilibrium (e.g., a ‘steady state’). Consequently, the chief implication of the dynamic of stagnation within international society which the book seeks to advance and support is the non-attainment of norm internalization. Through close examination of the genesis and evolution of R2P, the work contends that R2P actually poses a significant if not fundamental challenge to the animating logic of the norm life cycle model. Having reached the requisite tipping point through formal endorsement by the UN over a decade ago, R2P has failed to manifest itself in humanitarian intervention behavior. The key to understanding why resides in deficiencies of the norm life cycle model itself. By failing to provide a sufficient account of the dynamics of norm pre-emergence (whereby ideas are transformed into proto-norms) or to acknowledge the possibility norm stagnation (whereby a norm fails to diffuse and become internalized), the norm life-cycle model provides an underspecified mechanism for understanding how and why an idea may in fact cross the threshold of the ‘tipping point’—attaining the status of a norm in international society in the process—but fail to penetrate and influence policy discourses and processes. The study seeks to bridge the proverbial gap between theory and policy, specifically concerning our collective understanding of contemporary dynamics of humanitarian intervention and crisis. This book will be of much interest to students of the Responsibility to Protect, human rights, conflict studies and international relations in general.
'War is a man's game,' or so goes the saying. Whether this is true or not, patriarchal capitalism is certainly one of the driving forces behind war in the modern era. So can we end war with feminism? This book argues that this is possible, and is in fact already happening. Each chapter provides a solution to war using innovative examples of how feminist and queer theory and practice inform pacifist treaties, movements and methods, from the international to the domestic spheres. The contributors propose a range of solutions that include arms abolition, centring Indigenous knowledge, economic restructuring, and transforming how we 'count' civilian deaths. Ending war requires challenging complex structures, but the solutions found in this edition have risen to this challenge. By thinking beyond the violence of the capitalist patriarchy, this book makes the powerful case that the possibility of life without war is real.
This book is a guide to international human rights law as it applies to situations of armed conflict, to counter-terrorism measures and to any other situation of actual or potential violence requiring security measures. These situations can lead to some of the most fundamental human rights being put in danger of being violated. These include the right to life, the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, enforced disappearance, all the rights relating to detention and due process of law, and the freedoms most commonly affected by armed conflict and counter-terrorism. The book begins with a presentation on the application of human rights to such situations and an explanation of the regime of limitations and derogations. After an overall description of the relationship between human rights law, on the one hand, and international humanitarian law and international counter-terrorism measures, on the other, the book concentrates on the rights themselves. Each chapter presents the relevant treaty provisions and explains the interpretation of the rights by reference to the case law and general comments of these treaty bodies. The book concludes with a section on how international human rights law protects certain vulnerable and disadvantaged populations in such situations.
This book explores the ethical implications of using armed contractors, taking a consequentialist approach to this multidisciplinary debate. While privatization is not a new concept for the US military, the public debate on military privatization is limited to legal, financial, and pragmatic concerns. A critical assessment of the ethical dimensions of military privatization in general is missing. More specifically, in light of the increased reliance upon armed contractors, it must be asked whether it is morally permissible for governments to employ them at all. To this end, this book explores four areas that highlight the ethical implications of using armed contractors: how armed contractors are distinct from soldiers and mercenaries; the commodification of force; the belligerent equality of combatants; and the impact of armed contractors on the professional military. While some take an absolutist position, wanting to bar the use of private military altogether, this book reveals how these absolutist arguments are problematic and highlights that there are circumstances where turning to private force may be the only option. Recognising that outsourcing force will continue, this book thus proposes some changes to account for the problems of commodification, belligerent equality, and the challenge to the military profession. This book will be of interest to students of private security, military studies, ethics, security studies, and IR in general.
While liberal-democratic states like America, Britain and Australia claim to value freedom of expression and the right to dissent, they have always actually criminalized dissent. This disposition has worsened since 9/11 and the 2008 Great Recession. This ground-breaking study shows that just as dissent involves far more than protest marches, so too liberal-democratic states have expanded the criminalization of dissent. Drawing on political and social theorists like Arendt, Bourdieu and Isin, the book offers a new way of thinking about politics, dissent and its criminalization relationally. Using case studies like the Occupy movement, selective refusal by Israeli soldiers, urban squatters, democratic education and violence by anti-Apartheid activists, the book highlights the many forms dissent takes along with the many ways liberal-democratic states criminalize it. The book highlights the mix of fear and delusion in play when states privilege security to protect an imagined 'political order' from difference and disagreement. The book makes a major contribution to political theory, legal studies and sociology. Linking legal, political and normative studies in new ways, Watts shows that ultimately liberal-democracies rely more on sovereignty and the capacity for coercion and declarations of legal 'states of exception' than on liberal-democratic principles. In a time marked by a deepening crisis of democracy, the book argues dissent is increasingly valuable.
Proliferation of WMD technologies is by no means a new concern for
the international community. Indeed, since the signing of the
Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1968, tremendous energies have
been expended upon diplomatic efforts to create a web of treaties
and international organizations regulating the production and
stockpiling of WMD sensitive materials within states, as well as
their spread through the increasingly globalized channels of
international trade to other states and non-state actors.
This work explains and critically examines the main theoretical aspects of operational warfare at sea. It utilizes diverse examples from naval history, ranging from the ancient era to the present day, to offer a comprehensive description and analysis of the key components of operational warfare at sea today. Specifically, it explains the military/naval objectives, levels of war, types of major naval/joint operations and maritime campaigns, and their main elements. In contrast to many works, this book focuses on the role of the naval operational commanders in command and control and decision-making. It also describes in great detail the main elements of naval operational leadership and operational thinking, which are illustrated by examples of successful warfighting admirals. This new edition has been completely revised and updated, with three new chapters, and analyses in even more detail the planning and execution of major naval/joint operations and maritime campaigns. This book is intended to serve as a primer of how to plan, prepare, and execute major naval/joint operations and maritime campaigns for naval operational commanders and their staffs, but will also be of great interest to students of naval power, strategic studies, and military history in general.
Fully revised and updated, this fifth edition of Understanding Global Security considers the variety of ways in which peoples’ lives are threatened and
'An intelligent, sensitive writer' - Financial Times Palestine has been under attack for three quarters of a century. The 'peace process' that has favoured the two-state solution for more than forty years has now been internationally exposed as masking the expansion of Israel's apartheid regime. 75 years ago, Ghada Karmi and her family in Jerusalem were among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were exiled during the Nakba. She has since become one of the most vocal proponents of the single democratic state in Palestine-Israel. In this book, Karmi powerfully argues that this is the best possible settlement for the Palestinians, including the refugees; imagining a single secular state in historic Palestine, all of whose inhabitants would enjoy the same rights. Uniting the land - from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan - and allowing the Palestinian right of return is the only way to end the exclusive and antidemocratic character of the Israeli state. Ghada Karmi's eloquent and moving writing shows that Palestinians refuse to meekly accept the fate created for them by others, and that they will never give up fighting for their home.
How did the British Government and Civil Service shape the Northern Ireland peace process? What kind of tensions and debates were being played out between the two governments and the various parties in Northern Ireland? Addressing texts, negotiations, dialogues, space, leverage, strategy, ambiguity, interpersonal relations and convergence, this is the first volume to examine how senior British officials and civil servants worked to bring about power-sharing in Northern Ireland. With a unique format featuring self-authored inside accounts and interview testimonies, it considers a spectrum of areas and issues that came into play during the dialogues and negotiations that led to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and political accommodation in Northern Ireland. This book provides a compelling insight into what actually happened inside the negotiating room and how the British tried to shape the course of negotiations.
Workers from the Syrian diaspora have maintained a presence in Lebanon for decades, building multimillion-dollar apartment complexes, toiling for backbreaking hours in grocery stores. From the mid-2000s, liberalising reforms saw accelerating levels of poverty among workers, often paid as low as $20 per day. Instead of 'opportunity', workers faced the prospect of indefinite economic exile, the unending drudgery of hard labour, and a constant struggle to make ends meet. But in 2011, revolution came to Syria. Rural towns and villages exploded in revolt, but even those workers who remained in Beirut found means to protest at a distance. Their movement, which this book identifies as 'rebel populism,' represents an early instance of an increasingly common global contentious political formation, a form of mass politics that emerges not via a charismatic orator or developed ideological convictions, but through the weaving together of grievances aimed at the ruling class. -- .
When asked in 2016 if he would step down as President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir replied 'my exit could spark genocide.' Kiir's words exemplify how fear and the threat of mass violence have become central to the politics of South Sudan. As South Sudanese analyst Daniel Akech Thiong shows, it is this politics that lies at the heart of the country's seemingly intractable civil war. In this book, Akech Thiong explores the origins of South Sudan's politics of fear. Weaving together social, economic and cultural factors into a comprehensive framework, he reveal how the country's elites have exploited ethnic divisions as a means of mobilising support and securing their grip on power, in the process triggering violent conflict. He also considers the ways in which this politics of fear takes root among the wider populace, exploring the role of corruption, social media, and state coercion in spreading hatred and fostering mass violence. As regimes across Africa and around the world become increasingly reliant on their own politics of fear, Akech Thiong's book offers novel insight into a growing phenomenon with implications far beyond South Sudan.
This book attempts to establish a more holistic approach to the rehabilitation of war-injured civilians, one that adjusts to the patients' long-term needs. Kovacic not only offers an insight into the daily realities of patients during and after rehabilitation, but seeks to develop a new way to perceive, respect and involve them in health care. Based on comprehensive interviews with patients and MSF staff, as well as extended field observations, Reconstructing lives follows Syrian and Iraqi war-injured civilians in their journey to recovery. From their improvised medical treatment in their home countries, to the MSF-run hospital in Amman Jordan, to their return home, Kovacic explores how individuals attempt to pick up the pieces of their previous lives, add new elements from their treatment and travel experiences, and finally establish a new reconstructed reality. The book explores how the interaction between MSF staff and their patients contributes to the immense task of healing that awaits victims of war. The reader visits the intimate medical and domestic spaces that usually remain closed to the outside observer, spaces rich with human contact, perceptions, emotions, conflicts and reconciliations. -- .
This book analyses the role power sharing, social movements, economic regeneration, urban space, memorialisation and symbols play in transforming divided societies into shared peaceful ones. It explains why some projects are counterproductive while others assist peace-building.
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL UNITED SERVICES INSTITUTE DUKE OF WESTMINSTER MEDAL FOR MILITARY LITERATURE** **SHORTLISTED FOR BRITISH ARMY BOOK OF THE YEAR** In the wars in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and in recent conflicts more generally, liberal powers have blurred the line between military and political activity. Operationally, such blurring is highly effective: it works on the ground. Conversely, in strategic terms, it erases the distinction between war and peace. This, Simpson contends, is undesirable: how can policy control armed force, if armed force is a direct extension of policy? As the information revolution reinforces the politicisation of combat, this is likely to be an irreversible trend. The question this book seeks to answer is not whether the West should engage in such practices, but how to manage, gain advantage from, and mitigate the associated risks. Liberal powers need to win conflicts on the ground, and yet preserve a healthy distinction between war and peace. Failure to preserve that distinction will result in those powers being caught in endless conflicts for which they are operationally ill-equipped. War From The Ground Up offers a distinctive perspective in its consideration of the concept of contemporary warfare. While most accounts of conflict survey the battlefield from an academic perspective, or across it as a personal combat narrative, Simpson looks up from the front line to consider the concepts that put him there, and how they played out.
This book challenges the conventional wisdom that civil war inevitably stymies economic development and that 'civil war represents development in reverse'. While some civil wars may have adverse economic effects, Civil War and Uncivil Development posits that not all conflicts have negative economic consequences and, under certain conditions, civil war violence can bolster processes of economic development. Using Colombia as a case study, this book provides evidence that violence perpetrated by key actors of the conflict - the public armed forces and paramilitaries - has facilitated economic growth and processes of economic globalisation in Colombia (namely, international trade and foreign direct investment), with profoundly negative consequences for large swathes of civilians. The analysis also discusses the 'development in reverse' logic in the context of other conflicts across the globe. This book will be an invaluable resource for scholars, practitioners and students in the fields of security and development, civil war studies, peace studies, the political economy of conflict and international relations.
Civil wars are the dominant form of violence in the contemporary international system, yet they are anything but local affairs. This book explores the border-crossing features of such wars by bringing together insights from international relations theory, sociology, and transnational politics with a rich comparative-quantitative literature. It highlights the causal mechanisms - framing, resource mobilization, socialization, among others - that link the international and transnational to the local, emphasizing the methods required to measure them. Contributors examine specific mechanisms leading to particular outcomes in civil conflicts ranging from Chechnya, to Afghanistan, to Sudan, to Turkey. Transnational Dynamics of Civil War thus provides a significant contribution to debates motivating the broader move to mechanism-based forms of explanation, and will engage students and researchers of international relations, comparative politics, and conflict processes.
This book draws lessons from the story of Sri Lanka's post-conflict development in the context of a struggle for socio-political reconciliation, a turbulent world economy, and difficult internal and external political challenges. Heightened volatility in the global economy and intensifying geopolitical rivalries pose complex policy challenges for small countries embarking on post-conflict daunting challenges. To sustain peace, development needed to be broad based and inclusive. It needed to rapidly reconstruct war-devastated regions, restore macroeconomic stability, while delivering a 'peace dividend'. The book contains contributions that highlight Sri Lanka's endeavours of coping with adverse shocks, while exploiting new opportunities. It showcases how the island country had to attract capital and assistance, and support of the international community, including that of the rising Asian giants - China and India. Addressing the post-conflict challenges of sourcing development finance in a new global financial and political landscape, the book would be of interest to researchers working on post-conflict development in the context of a volatile global economy and changing aid architecture, and would also act as an important resource for policy makers.
Recognition is often considered a means to de-escalate conflicts and promote peaceful social interactions. This volume explores the forms that social recognition and its withholding may take in asymmetric armed conflicts, examining the risks and opportunities that arise when local, state, and transnational actors recognise, misrecognise, or deny recognition of armed non-state actors. By studying key asymmetric conflicts through the prism of recognition, it offers an innovative perspective on the interactions between armed non-state actors and state actors. In what contexts does granting recognition to armed non-state actors foster conflict transformation? What happens when governments withhold recognition or label armed non-state actors in ways they perceive as misrecognition? The authors examine the ambivalence of recognition processes in violent conflicts and their sometimes-unintended consequences. The volume shows that, while non-recognition prevents conflict transformation, the recognition of armed non-state actors may produce counterproductive precedents and new modes of exclusion in intra-state and transnational politics. -- .
Proscribing peace offers a systematic examination of the impact of proscription on peace negotiations. With rare access to actors during the Colombian negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia People's Army (FARC), Sophie Haspeslagh shows how proscription makes negotiations harder and more prolonged. By introducing the concept of 'linguistic ceasefire', Haspeslagh adds to our understanding of the timing and sequencing of peace processes in the context of proscription. Linguistic ceasefire has three main components: first, recognise the conflict; second, discard the 'terrorist' label, and third, uncouple the act and the actor. These measures remove the symbolic impact of proscription, even where de-listing is not possible ahead of negotiations. With relevance for more than half of the conflicts around the world in which an armed group is listed as a terrorist organisation, 'linguistic ceasefire' helps to explain why certain conflicts remain stuck in the 'terrorist' framing, while others emerge from it. International proscription regimes criminalise both the actor and the act of terrorism. Proscribing peace calls for an end to the amalgamation between acts and actors. By focussing on the acts instead, Haspeslagh argues, international policy would be better able to consider the violent actions both of armed groups and those of the state. By separating the act and the actor, change - and thus peace - become possible. This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16, Peace, justice and strong institutions -- .
Like shifting sands of a desert, the global nuclear landscape changes every few years across its three main constituents - nuclear energy, non-proliferation and disarmament. Each of these has seen phases of cautious optimism, deep scepticism and outright pessimism over the last two decades. This book offers a bird's eye view on all the three, even as the individual authors offer a worm's eye view on each specific topic within the larger ambit. The first section of the book examines developments in the nuclear energy sector. The second part of the book is devoted to non-proliferation. The last section of the book examines the consequences of use of nuclear weapons, concepts of CBMs and arms control, and recent disarmament initiatives. A tentative exploration of the prospects of disarmament in the wake of Russia-Ukraine conflict is also undertaken. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan) |
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