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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism > Armed conflict
This book ambitiously weaves together history and politics to explain all of the major situations where mass atrocities have occurred, or been prevented, over the 15 years since the 'Responsibility to Protect' (R2P) was adopted at the 2005 UN World Summit. The author provides a history of human rights, mass atrocities and the principle of the R2P from the perspective of someone whose day job has been to work with the UN Security Council, various governments and civil society to help ensure the international community does not fail those who face the threat of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity today. It examines the implementation of the controversial principle of R2P since 2011 and how we end the politics of impunity, indifference and inaction once and for all. Using case studies from Iraq, Syria, Myanmar and Libya, the book offers a unique perspective regarding how we make 'never again' a living principle, rather than a cliche and how we end the politics of impunity, indifference and inaction once and for all. It will be of especial interest to scholars, students and policymakers working in the fields of international politics or concerned about human rights, atrocities, the United Nations and international justice in the world today.
This book, first published in 1955, analyses views common to liberal and socialist, American and European, supporters of planning in the Cold War era. It examines the levels of public planning deemed necessary to preserve the social order and security of the non-Communist world. The recognition that planning and state intervention were a requirement of the Cold War period meant a significant shift in thinking was needed in the democratic nations of the American and European West.
This book, first published in 1961, is an analysis of the great struggle of the twentieth century, the Cold War. It carefully examines the conflict's origins in the Russian Revolution of 1917, and follows the thread of antagonism between west and east all the way up to 1960. These were the key years of the Cold War, when it seemed that the prospect of nuclear confrontation was a real one, and this book offers a close reading of the main events of those years. This volume concentrates on the Cold War in the East, and Volume One focuses on the European theatre.
This book, first published in 1980, presents the findings of the SIPRI-organized 1979 international symposium on the destruction and conversion of chemical weapons. Thirty experts from 14 countries discussed the destruction and conversion of present stockpiles of chemical warfare agents and munitions; the destruction and conversion of CW research and development facilities; verification of compliance, and confidence-building measures facilitating verification; and the environmental and occupational health hazards involved in maintaining and in disposing of stockpiles of CW agents and munitions.
This book, first published in 1985, examines thinking around chemical weapons from the standpoint of national policy-making in a manner that integrates both defence and arms-control aspects. The process of multilateral negotiations on chemical warfare arms control is not simple, nor are the issues involved and their associated technical questions. Constraints, standards and verification are needed. This book analyses these issues, and the interplay of domestic issues and specific security requirements. This book offers an analytical framework within which a wide spread of different considerations may be located and assessed.
This book, first published in 1985, examines the questions of European security that lie at the heart of the confrontation between the superpowers. It concentrates on ways of achieving defence by conventional means rather than a reliance on nuclear or chemical weapons, and at the same time focuses on possible force reductions.
This book, first published in 1983, examines weapons standardisation as one aspect of NATO's efficiency. It analyses the economic arguments for weapons standardisation, the limitations of the analysis and the available evidence. A political economy or public choice approach is used, with its emphasis on policy developments in the political market place of voters, political parties, bureaucracies and interest groups. These agents are central to understanding the function of weapons procurement policy within the Alliance.
This book, first published in 1983, analyses the debate around burden-sharing in NATO, where the main issue is the distribution amongst the allies of the burden of maintaining the security arrangement. This raises problems of defining, measuring and comparing the defence efforts of the various countries. This book examines the issues, and argues for the need to address directly the fundamental problems concerning the Cold War security relationship between the United States and Western Europe.
This book, first published in 1985, analyses the polarization of popular opinion over NATO defence policies during the latter years of the Cold War. In many countries, the domestic consensus that once supported Allied policies came close to collapsing, and this study examines the question of the democratization of defence policy. It explores four themes for each of the Allied countries: views of the Soviet Union; deterrence; security; and the Allies. A rigorous and systematic analysis of the raw data allows for easy cross-national comparisons.
This book, first published in 1989, analyses the effect that interdependence has had on the defence industrial base, concentrating upon those defence industries situated at the hi-tech end, and paying particular attention to the procurement decisions that affect the production of sophisticated military aircraft. Interdependence raises questions of importance to international relations, strategic studies and defence economics, and Western industrialised states have an ongoing dilemma over the degree to which they should subject their defence industrial bases to the forces of economic interdependence. Despite worries over strategic vulnerability, most Western states have been showing increased interest in arms collaboration, with the aim of maximizing the amount of weaponry available for defence. As this book shows, such a goal becomes increasingly important s the technological sophistication of weapons grows.
This book, first published in 1986, analyses a number of emerging, enduring and neglected issues that affected European security and the stability of the Atlantic Alliance at the end of the Cold War. It provides a comprehensive review of the major political, social and economic issues that shaped the course of European security. It offers a thorough assessment of such critical questions as European views of the US Strategic Defense Initiative, the contribution of new technologies and tactics to NATO's conventional defence capabilities, and domestic factors that influenced security policy. It also provides original analysis of a number of issues, such as economic dimensions of security, the quest for a European defence identity, and protection of Western interests outside the NATO area. It provides a review of the nuclear question and of the German security debate in the aftermath of the initial US INF missile deployments.
This book, first published in 1984, carefully examine the political debate surrounding nuclear weapons and superpower polices in Cold War Western Europe. It seeks to analyse a distinctly European view in Soviet policy, as opposed to a superpower view. It examines Soviet domestic and foreign policy, economic and military practice, with the aim of understanding and countering the Soviet threat to Western Europe.
This book, first published in 1994, analyses the changing world order at the end of the Cold War. As the East-West military axis was replaced by North-South economic polarization and global insecurity, it became clear that future wars were likely to stem from resource and environmental conflict and from the effects of mass movements of displaced people. Using case studies from around the world, the authors diagnose the problems caused by increasing militarism, and analyse the links between conflict, poverty, development and the environment.
This book, first published in 1984, analyses the critically important Cold War issue of the Soviet national security decision-making process dealing with weapons acquisition, arms control and the application of military force. It conceptualises Soviet decision-making for national security from Stalinist antecedents to 1980s modes, and examines the problems of decision-making concerning weapons development, defence research and development and SALT negotiations. It also focuses on the decision-making processes which led to the use or threatened use of military force in Czechoslovakia (1968), the Middle East (1973) and Afghanistan (1979).
This book, first published in 1989, explores the ideas, proposals and counterproposals surrounding the thorny issue of Cold War conventional force disarmament in Europe. European nations acknowledged the need to reduce military tensions, but divergences remained as to the concrete ways and means for the attainment of the security objectives on the basis of mutually acceptable reductions of their respective forces. A UNIDIR-organized conference examined these issues, and presented here are the conference reports and findings, together with speaker responses.
This book, first published in 1954, is a key analysis of the guiding policies, basic assumptions, fundamental principles and methods of the Red Army, in many respects the most powerful force in the Cold War. This analysis examines the strategy and tactics, weapons systems, training, discipline and political doctrine of the Red Army, as well as focusing on the political control of the USSR and its satellite states.
This volume searches for pragmatic answers to the problems that continue to beset peacebuilding efforts at all levels of society, with a singular focus on the role of legitimacy. Many peacebuilding efforts are hampered by their inability to gain the support of those they are trying to help at the local level, or those at regional, national or international levels; whose support is necessary either for success at the local level or to translate local successes to wider arenas. There is no one agreed-upon reason for the difficulty in translating peacebuilding from one arena of action to another, but among those elements that have been studied, one that appears understudied or assumed to be unimportant, is the role of legitimacy. Many questions can be asked about legitimacy as a concept, and this volume addresses these questions through multiple case studies which examine legitimacy at local, regional, national and international levels, as well as looking at how legitimacy at one level either translates or fails to translate at other levels, in order to correlate the level of legitimacy with the success or failure of peacebuilding projects and programs The value of this work lies both in the breadth of the cases and the singular focus on the role of legitimacy in peacebuilding. By focusing on this concept this volume represents an attempt to build beyond the critical peacebuilding approach of deconstructing the liberal peacebuilding paradigm to a search for pragmatic answers to the problems that continue to plague peacebuilding efforts at all levels of society. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, conflict resolution, development studies, security studies and International Relations.
This textbook introduces students to the sub-field of critical security studies through a detailed yet accessible survey of emerging theories and practices. This third edition contains two new chapters - on 'Ontological security' and '(In)Security and the everyday' - and has been fully revised and updated. Written in an accessible and clear manner, Critical Security Studies: offers a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to critical security studies locates critical security studies within the broader context of social and political theory evaluates fundamental theoretical positions in critical security studies against a backdrop of new security challenges. The book is divided into two main parts. Part I, 'Approaches', surveys the newly extended and contested theoretical terrain of critical security studies: constructivist theories, Critical Theory, feminist and gender approaches, postcolonial perspectives, poststructuralism and International Political Sociology, Ontological security, and securitisation theory. Part II, 'Issues', examines how these various theoretical approaches have been put to work in critical considerations of environmental and planetary security; health, human security and development; information, technology and warfare; migration and border security; (in)security and the everyday; and terror, risk and resilience. The historical and geographical scope of the book is deliberately broad and each of the chapters in Part II concretely illustrates one or more of the approaches discussed in Part I, with clear internal referencing allowing the text to act as a holistic learning tool for students. This book is essential reading for upper level students of critical security studies, and an important resource for students of international/global security, political theory and international relations.
This book, first published in 1988, analyses the interests and activities of the Soviet Union in the northern Atlantic. It gives particular attention to the growth in exploration and exploitation of resources and to the problems presented by jurisdictional disputes. The responses of NATO, the United States and the Nordic countries to the expanded Soviet military presence are examined in detail.
This book offers a new perspective on peace missions in intra-state wars, based on comparative field research. In theoretical terms, this book proposes a new definition of peace operation success based on two crucial elements: the (re)establishment of order and the accomplishment of the mandate. The work presents a new typology for assessing peace operations as failures, partial failures, partial successes, or successes. This focus on 'blurry' outcomes provides a clearer theoretical framework to understand what constitutes successful peace operations. It explains the different outcomes of peace operations (based on the type of success/failure) by outlining the effect(s) of the combination of the key ingredients-strategy and the type of interveners. Empirically, this book tests the saliency of the theoretical framework by examining the peace operations which took place in Somalia, Sierra Leone and Liberia. This book refutes the classification of these three cases as the 'worst' context for 'transitional politics', and demonstrates that peace operations may succeed, partially of totally, in challenging contexts, and that the diverse outcomes are better explained by the type of intervener and the strategy employed than by the type of context. This work shows that, for a peace operation in an intra-state war, the adoption of a deterrence strategy works best for re-establishing order while the involvement of a great power facilitates the accomplishment of the mandate. This book will be of much interest to students of peacekeeping, conflict resolution, civil wars, security studies and IR in general.
"Peace and Conflict" is a biennial publication that provides key data and documents trends in national and international conflicts ranging from isolated acts of terrorism to internal civil strife to full-fledged inter-country war. A major trend it tracks is the incidence of wars beyond the protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.For 2012, "Peace & Conflict" focuses on the theme of policy guidance for preventing conflict. It covers special topics with original contributions that focus on mediation, economic recovery, and the impact of elections."Peace and Conflict" is a large format reference including numerous graphs, tables, maps, and appendices dedicated to the visual presentation of data. Crisp narratives are highlighted with pull-quote extracts that summarize trends and major findings such as the continuing increase in high casualty terrorist acts and the likelihood of genocide risk in certain areas."Guest Editor"Birger Heldt is Director of Research at the Folke Bernadotte Academy (Sweden), where he focuses on the statistical study of peacekeeping and preventative diplomacy/peacemaking.
This book offers a critical appraisal of the international legal idea of the 'Responsibility to Protect'. The idea that the international community has a responsibility to protect populations at risk has become the prominent mode and structure of address in response to mass human atrocities, gross human rights violations, and large-scale loss of life. Although the "international community" of liberal international law and of legal cosmopolitanism for the most part projects a self-assured collective project, this book maintains that it transforms global ethical responsibility into a project of governance, management, and control. Pursuing this argument, and drawing on critical legal literature, critical international relations and on ideas of responsibility and ethical relationality in the work of Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler, the book develops a concept of "irresponsibility". This concept is then juxtaposed to the dominant Responsibility to Protect discourse. By exposing and acknowledging "the sites of irresponsibility" of the Responsibility to Protect, the book argues that irresponsibility itself can become the condition of ethical responsibility and the possibility of justice. This original approach to an increasingly important topic will prove invaluable to those working in international law, international relations, politics and legal theory.
Pakistan s nuclear arsenal the fastest growing in the world raises concerns on many grounds. Although far from the scale of the Cold War, South Asia is experiencing a strategic arms race. And the more weapons there are, the more potential for theft, sabotage and nuclear terrorism. Worries that Pakistan s nuclear-weapons technology might again be transferred to nuclear aspirants have not been expunged. Being outside the nuclear club makes it harder to ensure nuclear safety. Of gravest concern is the potential for a nuclear war, triggered by another large-scale terrorist attack in India with Pakistani state fingerprints as in the 2008 Mumbai atrocity, this time followed by an Indian Army reprisal. Lowering the nuclear threshold, Pakistan has vowed to deter this with newly introduced battlefield nuclear weapons. Mark Fitzpatrick evaluates each of the potential nuclear dangers, giving credit where credit is due. Understanding the risks of nuclear terrorism and nuclear accidents, Pakistani authorities have taken appropriate steps. Pakistan and India give less attention, however, to engaging each other on the issues that could spark a nuclear clash. The author argues that to reduce the nuclear dangers, Pakistan should be offered a formula for nuclear legitimacy, tied to its adopting policies associated with global nuclear norms.
This book critiques the dominant physical and biological interpretation of the Genocide Convention and argues that the idea of "culture" is central to properly understanding the crime of genocide. Using Raphael Lemkin's personal papers, archival materials from the State Department and the UN, as well as the mid-century secondary literature, it situates the convention in the longstanding debate between Enlightenment notions of universality and individualism, and Romantic notions of particularism and holism. The author conducts a thorough review of the treaty and its preparatory work to show that the drafters brought strong culturalist ideas to the debate and that Lemkin's ideas were held widely in the immediate postwar period. Reconstructing the mid-century conversation on genocide and situating it in the much broader mid-century discourse on justice and society he demonstrates that culture is not a distraction to be read out of the Genocide Convention; it is the very reason it exists. This volume poses a forceful challenge to the materialist interpretation and calls into question decades of international case law. It will be of interest to scholars of genocide, human rights, international law, the history of international law and human rights, and treaty interpretation.
This book offers a critical analysis, both theoretical and practical, of ethics education in the military. In the twenty-first century, it has become increasingly important to ensure that the armed forces of Western and other democracies fight justly and behave ethically. The 'good soldier' has to be not only professionally skilled but morally intelligent. At a time of relentless media scrutiny, the publicising of incidents of morally and legally unacceptable behaviour, such as the gross mistreatment of prisoners and the torture of suspected terrorists, can do much to undermine the credibility of those who claim to hold the moral high ground in any particular conflict. Written by an international team of academic theorists and military practitioners, this volume provides inter-disciplinary insights into the present state, and the future, of ethics education in the militaries of Western democracies. The contributors critically address the central question of whether such education is sufficient to prepare members of the armed forces to face the peculiar challenges of conflict environments that are now primarily 'wars among the people', in which the opposing combatants may have little or no regard for human life and fail to discriminate between soldiers and civilians when choosing their targets. Drawing lessons from recent examples of unethical conduct, this original book offers insightful and constructive advice, both theoretical and practical, as to how situations can be improved and on the means that could and should be employed towards this end. This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, ethics and international relations. |
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