This book examines the phenomenon of paramilitarism across Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia, offering a nuanced perspective while identifying key patterns in the way paramilitary violence is implicated in processes of capital accumulation, state-building, and the reproduction of social power. Paramilitary violence, a key modality of coercion in the era of globalization, has been pursued by states and dominant classes in the Global South, to reproduce or extend their power over subaltern groups. Paramilitary groups are responsible for atrocities, including extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture, rape, and forced displacement. The book integrates empirically rich investigations into an emergent theory of political violence, capturing the relationship between parastatal armed actors, capital, and the state. The analysis sheds light on globally relevant phenomena such as the end of the Cold War, the shifting role of US hegemony, and evolving nature of the nation-state. The book is suitable for academics, graduate and upper-year undergraduate students, and policy-makers in development, human rights, and violence prevention. Given its interdisciplinary subject, it appeals to scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including political science, sociology, political anthropology, development, peace and conflict, security and terrorism, international relations, and global studies.

While the scholarly study of culture as a politically contested sphere in Palestine/Israel has become an established field over the past two decades, this volume highlights some particular understudied aspects of it: the relations between Arab identity, Mizrahi identity, and Israeli nationalism; the nightclub scene as a field of encounter, appropriation, and exclusion; an analysis of the institutional and political conditions of Palestinian cinema; the implications of the intersectional relationship between gender, ethnicity and national identity in the field of popular culture, and the concrete relations between particular aesthetic forms and symbolic power. The authors come from diverse disciplines, including anthropology, architecture, ethnomusicology, history, sociology, and political science. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

This book examines the role of social process and routinised violence in the use of underaged soldiers in the country now known as South Sudan during the twenty-one-year civil war between Sudan's northern and southern regions. Drawing on accounts of South Sudanese who as children and teenagers were part of the Red Army-the youth wing of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA)-the book sheds light on the organised nature of the exploitation of children and youth by senior adult figures within the movement. The book also includes interviews with several of the original Red Army commanders, all of whom went on to hold senior positions within the military and government of South Sudan. The author chronicles the cultural transformation experienced by members of the Red Army and considers whether an analysis of the processes involved in what was then Africa's longest civil war can aid our understanding of South Sudan's more recent descent into ethnicised conflict. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, and political science with interests in ethnography, conflict, and the military exploitation of children.

This book offers an explanation and evaluation of preventative diplomacy in an age of increasing precariousness. It emphasises the importance of pursuing diplomacy and human security in connection with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) which promote development grounded in peace, justice, and universal respect for human rights. It explores and uncovers efforts to set up diplomatic channels designed to ensure relations between the great powers, intra- and inter-state conflict, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, human rights, and the global watch over human security do not escalate out of control. Discussing evolving tensions between the United States and China, and the United States and Russia, this book recalls past examples of preventive diplomacy between them, and explores ideas for the exercise of preventive diplomacy in the future. Presenting evidence that contemporary preventive diplomacy is pursued not only by international or regional officials but also by nongovernmental organizations and individuals, the book emphasises the need to pursue and enhance a comprehensive effort to realize SDG16 and human security. The book contains a range of practical recommendations to improve preventive diplomacy and provides a unique optic into understanding the threats facing the planet. It will be of interest to scholars and students of diplomacy, security studies, global governance and practitioners in government and international organisations. .

This book provides a comprehensive narrative history of Liberia's first civil war, from its origins in the 1980s right through the conflict and up to the peace agreement and conclusion of hostilities in 1997. The first Liberian Civil War was one of Africa's most devastating conflicts, claiming the lives of more than 200,000 Liberians, and sending shockwaves across the world. Drawing on a wide range of local and international sources, the book traces the background of the war and its long-term and immediate causes, before analysing the detail of the unfolding conflict, the eventual ceasefire, peace agreement and subsequent elections. In particular, the book shines a light on hitherto unseen first-hand Roman Catholic indigenous and missionary sources, which offer a rare intimacy to the analysis. Detailing the impact of Liberia's individual warlords and peacemakers, the book also explains the roles played by non-governmental agencies, national, regional and international actors, by the UN, ECOWAS and the Organisation of African Unity, and by nations with special interests and influence, such as the USA and other West African states. This book's detailed narrative analysis of the Liberian conflict will be an important read for anyone with an interest in the Liberian conflict, including researchers within African studies, political science, contemporary history, international relations, and peace and conflict studies.

This book analyses collective punishment in the context of human rights law. Collective punishment is a concept deriving from the law of armed conflict. It describes the punishment of a group for an act allegedly committed by one of its members and is prohibited in times of armed conflict. Although the imposition of collective punishment has been witnessed in situations outside armed conflict as well, human rights instruments do not explicitly address collective punishment. Consequently, there is a genuine gap in the protection of affected groups in situations outside of or short of armed conflict. Supported by two case studies on collective punishment in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in Chechnya, the book examines potential options to close this gap in human rights law in a way contributing to the empowerment of affected groups. This analysis centres on the European Convention on Human Rights due to its relevance to the situation in Chechnya. By questioning whether human rights instruments can encompass a prohibition of collective punishment, the book contributes to the broader academic debate on rights held by collectivities in general and on collective human rights in particular. The book will be of interest to students, academics and policy makers in the areas of International Human Rights Law, International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law.

This book analyses the current legal framework seeking to protect cultural heritage during armed conflict and discusses proposed and emerging paradigms for its better protection. Cultural heritage has always been a victim of conflict, with monuments and artefacts frequently destroyed as collateral damage in wars throughout history. In addition, works of art have been viewed as booty by victors and stolen in the aftermath of conflict. However, deliberate destruction of cultural sites and items has also occurred, and the Intentional destruction of cultural heritage has been a hallmark of recent conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, where we have witnessed unprecedented, systematic attacks on culture as a weapon of war. In Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Mali, extremist groups such as ISIS and Ansar Dine have committed numerous acts of iconoclasm, deliberately destroying heritage sites, and looting valuable artefacts symbolic of minority cultures. This study explores how the international law framework can be fully utilised in order to tackle the destruction of cultural heritage, and analyses various paradigms which have recently been suggested for its better protection, including the Responsibility to Protect paradigm and the peace and security paradigm. This volume will be an essential resource for scholars and practitioners in the areas of public international law, especially international humanitarian law and cultural heritage law.

This volume examines the role of international law in shaping and regulating transitional contexts, including the institutions, policies, and procedures that have been developed to steer constitutional regime changes in countries affected by catalytic events. The book offers a new perspective on the phenomenon of conflict-related transitions, whereby societies are re-constitutionalized through a set of interim governance arrangements subject to variable degrees of internationalization. Specifically, this volume interrogates the relevance, contribution, and perils of international law for this increasingly widespread phenomenon of inserting an auxiliary phase between two ages of constitutional government. It develops a nuanced understanding of the various international legal discourses surrounding conflict- and political crisis-related transitional governance by studying the contextual factors that influence the transitional arrangements themselves, with a specific focus on international aspects, including norms, actors, and related forms of expertise. In doing so, the book builds a bridge between comparative constitutional law and international legal scholarship in the practical and highly dynamic terrain of transitional governance. This book will be of much interest to practitioners and students of international law, diplomacy, mediation, security studies, and international relations.

Supported by genuine historical cases, this book argues that certain new technologies in warfare can not only be justified within the current framework of the just war theory, but that their use is mandatory from a moral perspective. Technological developments raise questions about the manner in which wars ought to be fought. The growing use of drones, capacity-increasing technologies, and cyberattacks are perceived by many as posing great challenges to Just War Theory. Instead of seeing these technologies as inherently unethical, this book adopts a different perspective by arguing that they are morally necessary since they can limit the potential violations of the moral rules of war and ensure that militaries better respect their obligation to protect their members. Caron's research offers insights into how and under what conditions autonomous or semi-autonomous robots, artificial intelligence, cyberwarfare, and capacityincreasing technologies can be considered as legitimate weapons. This book will be of interest to students, members of the armed forces, and scholars studying Politics, International Relations, Security Studies, Ethics, and Just War Theory.

Necrogeopolitics: On Death and Death-Making in International Relations brings together a diverse array of critical IR scholars, political theorists, critical security studies researchers, and critical geographers to provide a series of interventions on the topic of death and death-making in global politics. Contrary to most existing scholarship, this volume does not place the emphasis on traditional sources or large-scale configurations of power/force leading to death in IR. Instead, it details, theorizes, and challenges more mundane, perhaps banal, and often ordinary modalities of violence perpetrated against human lives and bodies, and often contributing to horrific instances of death and destruction. Concepts such as "slow death," "soft killing," "superfluous bodies," or "extra/ordinary" destruction/disappearance are brought to the fore by prominent voices in these fields alongside more junior creative thinkers to rethink the politics of life and death in the global polity away from dominant IR or political theory paradigms about power, force, and violence. The volume features chapters that offer thought-provoking reconsiderations of key concepts, theories, and practices about death and death-making along with other chapters that seek to challenge some of these concepts, theories, or practices in settings that include the Palestinian territories, Brazilian cities, displaced population flows from the Middle East, sites of immigration policing in North America, and spaces of welfare politics in Scandinavian states.

Exploring NATO's post-Cold War determination to support democracy abroad, this book addresses the alliance's adaptation to the new illiberal backlashes in Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans and Afghanistan after the alleged 'return of history'. The book engages the question of what has driven NATO to pursue democratisation in face of the significant region-specific challenges and what can explain policy expansion or retrenchment over time. Explaining NATO's adaptation from the perspective of power dynamics that push for international change and historical experience that informs grand strategy allows wider inferences not only about democratisation as a foreign policy strategy but also about the nature of the transatlantic alliance and its relations with a mostly illiberal environment. Larsen offers a theoretical conception of NATO as a patchwork of one hegemonic and several great power interests that converge or diverge in the formulation of common policy, as opposed to NATO as a community of universal values. This volume will appeal to researchers of transatlantic relations, NATO's functional and geographical expansion, hegemony and great power politics, democracy promotion, lessons of the past, (Neoclassical) Realism, alliance theory, and the crisis of the liberal world order.

Around the world in the twentieth century, political violence in emerging states gave rise to different kinds of silence within their societies. This book explores the histories of these silences, how they were made, maintained, evaded, and transformed. This book gives a comprehensive view of the ongoing evolutions and multiple faces of silence as a common strand in the struggles of state-building. It begins with chapters that examine the construction of "regimes of silence" as an act of power, and it continues through explorations of the ambiguous limits of speech within communities marked by this violence. It highlights national and transnational attempts to combat state silences, before concluding with a series of considerations of how these regimes of silence continue to be extrapolated in the gaps of records and written history. This volume explores histories of the composed silences of political violence across the emerging states of the late twentieth century, not solely as a present concern of aftermath or retrospection but as a diachronic social and political dimension of violence itself. This book makes a major original contribution to international history, as well as to the study of political terror, human rights violations, social recovery, and historical memory.

This book analyses the European Union's (EU) approach to peacebuilding in its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions, and explores how this approach impacts the EU's role in international conflict management. Peacebuilding carried out through CSDP instruments has become central to the self-conception of the EU as an actor in international conflict management. EU missions and operations have, for the most part, been deployed to promote peacebuilding efforts in post-conflict situations, in particular through capacity-building, reforms and rebuilding of state structures. This book focuses explicitly on the peacebuilding dimension of the CSDP while exploring why and how the EU has adopted peacebuilding in its CSDP actions as a norm and a practice. It analyses how peacebuilding in EU missions is conceptualised, designed, governed and implemented. The book examines the extent to which EU missions and operations reflect a normative and practical commitment of the EU to peacebuilding - that is to say, the extent to which CSDP instruments have been shaped by international peacebuilding norms and EU foreign policy. Drawing on empirical insights from decision- and policymaking processes in Brussels as well as from missions in Mali and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, this book offers critical perspectives on the EU's role as an international peacebuilding actor. This book will be of much interest to students of European security, EU policy, peace and conflict studies, security studies and international relations.

This book is a comprehensive analysis of the Taliban, and how it has affected post-9/11 U.S.-Pakistan relations. It analyzes the genesis of the Taliban, the rationale behind their emergence and how they consolidated their rule in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. It examines the U.S. policies towards the Taliban in the post 9/11 era and Pakistan's role as an ally in their efforts towards dismantling Taliban rule in Afghanistan-from Obama's 'fight and talk' policy to the Doha peace agreement in 2020. It also discusses the outcomes of the Global War on Terror (GWoT), as well as the Taliban's response to the U.S.-led ISAF and NATO forces in Afghanistan. The volume brings into focus Pakistan's policies vis-a-vis the Taliban following the start of GWoT and how it pushed the U.S.-Pakistan relations to its lowest ebb; and then its role in bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table which resulted in the U.S.-Taliban deal in Doha in February 2020. The author introduces a 'new balance of threat' theory and expands on its applicability through the Taliban case study. The book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of U.S. foreign policy, international relations, peace and conflict studies, strategic studies, history, diplomatic studies and South Asian politics.

This book seeks to chart and evaluate the impact of social research on the military itself. By "impact", the authors in this volume simply mean that which has a marked effect or influence on changing military policy, practices, knowledge, skills, behaviour, or living conditions. The book comprises a series of reflective contributions from scholars who have conducted research on the military as external scholars with no formal ties to the armed forces, as "native" researchers formally linked to them, as well as various kinds of contracted social scientists enabled by the military to carry out their investigations. The authors were asked to make the question of the impact of social scientific research on the armed forces an object of study in itself and to situate their reflections in terms of wider analytical questions. As a result, the chapters can be divided, broadly speaking, into two types of orientation: some are centered on theoretical and analytical issues, while others focus on the researchers' lived experiences. This book will be of interest to students of military studies, sociology, organisational studies, psychology and political science.

This book explores the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) phenomenon - its impact and implications for Israel and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as well as the inextricable linkage between its anti-Israeli/anti-Zionist propaganda and antisemitism, unraveled from yet unknown perspectives. The edited volume offers groundbreaking research: While Israeli public diplomacy focused on security, Palestinian diplomacy focused on a fabricated history. The book analyzes the old Russian anti-Zionist propaganda and its application by the BDS. The public space of BDS activity projects a humane facade, yet the covert part harbors antisemitic and violent supporters including terror groups and Iran. Western universities turned into incubators of pro-Palestinian groups that portray Israel as the source of evil. The academic boycott of Israel worked to isolate and stigmatize Jewish scholars in America because of a presumed Jewish occupation of the American academe. Western "liberals" wish to build bridges with the Muslim world, unable to overcome differences on democracy, secularism, women's rights, etc., they focus on what they agree: animosity towards Israel. So has the UN; the ICC; Bedouin advocacy; and Human Rights Watch. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Israel Affairs.

This book explores, through the lens of the conflict in Syria, why international law and the United Nations have failed to halt conflict and massive human rights violations in many places around the world which has allowed tens of millions of people to be killed and hundreds of millions more to be harmed. The work presents a critical socio-legal analysis of the failures of international law and the United Nations (UN) to deal with mass atrocities and conflict. It argues that international law, in the way it is set up and operates, falls short in dealing with these issues in many respects. The argument is that international law is state-centred rather than victim-friendly, is, to some extent, outdated, is vague and often difficult to understand and, therefore, at times, hard to apply. While various accountability processes have come to the fore recently, processes do not exist to assist individual victims while the conflict occurs or the abuses are being perpetrated. The book focuses on the problems of international law and the UN and, in the context of the many enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions in Syria, why nothing has been done to deal with a rogue state that has regularly violated international law. It examines why the responsibility to protect (R2P) has not been applied and why it ought to be used, generally, and in Syria. It uses the Syrian context to evaluate the weaknesses of the system and why reform is needed. It examines the UN institutional mechanisms, the role they play and why a civilian protection system is needed. It examines what mechanism ought to be set up to deal with the possible one million people who have been disappeared and detained in Syria. The book will be a valuable resource for students, academics and policy-makers working in the areas of public international law, international human rights law, political science and peace and security studies.

This book explores, through the lens of the conflict in Syria, why international law and the United Nations have failed to halt conflict and massive human rights violations in many places around the world which has allowed tens of millions of people to be killed and hundreds of millions more to be harmed. The work presents a critical socio-legal analysis of the failures of international law and the United Nations (UN) to deal with mass atrocities and conflict. It argues that international law, in the way it is set up and operates, falls short in dealing with these issues in many respects. The argument is that international law is state-centred rather than victim-friendly, is, to some extent, outdated, is vague and often difficult to understand and, therefore, at times, hard to apply. While various accountability processes have come to the fore recently, processes do not exist to assist individual victims while the conflict occurs or the abuses are being perpetrated. The book focuses on the problems of international law and the UN and, in the context of the many enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions in Syria, why nothing has been done to deal with a rogue state that has regularly violated international law. It examines why the responsibility to protect (R2P) has not been applied and why it ought to be used, generally, and in Syria. It uses the Syrian context to evaluate the weaknesses of the system and why reform is needed. It examines the UN institutional mechanisms, the role they play and why a civilian protection system is needed. It examines what mechanism ought to be set up to deal with the possible one million people who have been disappeared and detained in Syria. The book will be a valuable resource for students, academics and policy-makers working in the areas of public international law, international human rights law, political science and peace and security studies.

War and Peace in Contemporary India examines the importance of institutions and the role played by international actors in crucial episodes of India's strategic history. The contributions trace India's tryst with war and peace from immediately before the foundation of the contemporary Indian state, to the last military conflict between India and Pakistan in 1999. The focus of the chapters included in this edited volume is as much on India as it is on Pakistan and China, its opponents in war. The chapters offer a fresh take on the creation of India as a regional military power, and her approach to War and Peace in the post-independence period. Importantly, it advances the broader work on Indian strategic history during the Cold War and after, an otherwise under-studied intellectual landscape. The book offers fresh insights based on archival work, as well as a closer conceptual reading of Indian, British and American decision making at times of war and peace in contemporary India. This book will be of great interest to scholars, researchers and students interested in strategic studies, diplomatic and military history, international diplomacy, as well as Indian history and politics. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies.

Technology has always played a central role in international politics; it shapes the ways states fight during wartime and compete during peacetime. Today, rapid advancements have contributed to a widespread sense that the world is again on the precipice of a new technological era. Emerging technologies have inspired much speculative commentary, but academic scholarship can improve the discussion with disciplined theory-building and rigorous empirics. This book aims to contribute to the debate by exploring the role of technology - both military and non-military - in shaping international security. Specifically, the contributors to this edited volume aim to generate new theoretical insights into the relationship between technology and strategic stability, test them with sound empirical methods, and derive their implications for the coming technological age. This book is very novel in its approach. It covers a wide range of technologies, both old and new, rather than emphasizing a single technology. Furthermore, this volume looks at how new technologies might affect the broader dynamics of the international system rather than limiting the focus to a stability. The contributions to this volume walk readers through the likely effects of emerging technologies at each phase of the conflict process. The chapters begin with competition in peacetime, move to deterrence and coercion, and then explore the dynamics of crises, the outbreak of conflict, and war escalation in an environment of emerging technologies. The chapters in this book, except for the Introduction and the Conclusion, were originally published in the Journal of Strategic Studies.

Ending War: A Dialogue across Disciplines examines how wars end from a multidisciplinary perspective and includes enquiries into the politics of war, the laws of war, and the military and intellectual history of war. In recent years, the changes in the character of contemporary warfare have created uncertainties across different disciplines about how to identify and conceptualise the end of war. A whole constellation of questions arises from such uncertainties: How do philosophers define ethical responsibilities in bello and post bellum if the boundary between war and peace is ever so blurred? How do strategists define their objectives if the teleology of action becomes uncertain? How do historians bracket the known endings of war and delve into the arguments that preceded them? Which answers can international law provide for the ending of wars - and which challenges remain or have recently arisen? This volume addresses these questions and enables both an understanding of how 'the end' as a concept informs the understanding of war in international relations, in international law, and in history, as well as a reconsideration of the nature of scientific method in the field of war studies as such. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Strategic Studies.

This collection explores the discursive strategies and linguistic resources underpinning conflict and polarization, taking a multidisciplinary approach to examine the ways in which conflict is constructed across a diverse range of contexts. The volume is divided into two sections as a means of identifying two different dimensions to conflict construction and bridging the gap between different perspectives through a constructivist framework. The first part comprises chapters looking at sociopolitical conflicts across specific geographic contexts across the US, Europe and Latin America. The second half of the book unpacks sociocultural conflicts, those not defined by physical borders but shaped by ideological differences on core values, such as on religion, gender and the environment. Drawing on frameworks across such fields as linguistics, critical discourse analysis, rhetoric studies and cognitive studies, the book offers new insights into the discursive polarization that permeates contemporary communicative interactions and the ways in which a better understanding of conflict and its origins might serve as a mechanism for providing new ways forward. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in critical discourse analysis, linguistics, rhetoric studies and peace and conflict studies.

This book proposes a normative framework specifically designed for the complex and legally uncertain time period between armed conflicts and peace. As such, it contributes both to the furthering of a jus post bellum framework, and to enhanced legal clarity in complex and legally uncertain environments. This, in turn, contributes to strengthened protection engagements, and thus to improved prospects of enabling sustainable peace and security in both national and international perspectives. The book offers a novel but persuasive argument for a legal framework specific for transitional environments. Such legal framework, it is argued, is warranted in order to enable legal clarity to contemporary and outstanding legal issues, as well as to furthering peace efforts in complex environments. The legal framework suggested proposes a dividing line between applicable legal frameworks that, it is submitted, enhances both legal clarity on protection engagements and the quest for sustainable peace. The framework proposed is founded on a legal analysis of the protective nature and function of law. It thus provides a rare but important perspective on law that is of value in the quest for sustainable peace and security. The research draws uniquely on both contemporary legal debates, and on peace and conflict research. It does so in order to enable legal analysis that is both legally sound, as well as appropriate and adequate in today's peace and security realities. The book provides a valuable resource for academics, researchers and policy-makers in the areas of Public International Law, International Humanitarian Law, International Human Rights Law, (the law of) Peace Operations, and Peace and Security Studies.

Launches and develops the concept of cultural statecraft that has advantages compared to alternative terms, such as cultural diplomacy and soft power. Russia's cultural statecraft has received growing attention in the Western world, but there is no comprehensive analysis of the interlinkages between politics and culture across a variety of fields.

Challenging the focus on great powers in the international debate, this book explores how rising middle power states are engaging with emerging major military innovations and analyses how this will affect the stability and security of the Indo Pacific. Presenting a data-based analysis of how middle power actors in the Indo-Pacific are responding to the emergence of military Artificial Intelligence and Killer Robots, the book asserts that continuing to exclude non-great power actors from our thinking in this field enables the dangerous diffusion of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) to smaller states and terrorist groups, and demonstrates the disruptive effects of these military innovations on the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific. Offering a detailed analysis of the resource capacities of China, United States, Singapore and Indonesia, it shows how major military innovation acts as a circuit breaker between competitor states disrupting the conventional superiority of the dominant hegemonic state and giving a successful adopter a distinct advantage over their opponent. This book will appeal to researchers, end-users in the military and law enforcement communities, and policymakers. It will also be a valuable resource for researchers interested in strategic stability for the broader Asia-Pacific and the role of middle power states in hegemonic power transition and conflict.