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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism > Armed conflict
War, migration, and refugeehood are inextricably linked and the complex nature of all three phenomena offers profound opportunities for representation and misrepresentation. This volume brings together international contributors and practitioners from a wide range of fields, practices, and backgrounds to explore and problematize textual and visual inscriptions of war and migration in the arts, the media, and in academic, public, and political discourses. The essays in this collection address the academic and political interest in representations of the migrant and the refugee, and examine the constructed nature of categories and concepts such as 'war,' 'refuge(e),' 'victim,' 'border,' 'home,' 'non-place,' and 'dis/location.' Contributing authors engage with some of the most pressing questions surrounding war, migration, and refugeehood as well as with the ways in which war and its multifarious effects and repercussions in society are being framed, propagated, glorified, or contested. This volume initiates an interdisciplinary debate which re-evaluates the relationship between war, migration, and refugeehood and their representations.
This study discusses salient trends demonstrated by contemporary warfare of these first years of the 21st century. The authors reinforce previous notions of Fourth Generation Warfare, but most importantly explore the workings of new components and how these have modified the theory and practice of warfare beyond the basic divisions of conventional and unconventional warfare as witnessed in the preceding century. Throughout history there has been a close interaction between politics, communication and armed conflict and a main line of investigation of this book is to track changes that are presumed to have occurred in the way and manner in which armed conflicts are waged. Using cogent examples drawn variously from conflicts of the Arab Spring, the Islamic State and Russian adventurism in South Ossetia, Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, the authors demonstrate the application of Information Warfare, the practice of Hybrid Warfare, and offensive use of diplomacy, communications, economics and international law to obtain political and military advantages against the status quo states of the international community. The authors combine a theoretical framework with concrete empirical examples in order to create a better understanding and comprehension of the current events and processes that shape the character of contemporary armed conflicts and how they are informed and perceived in a highly mediatised and politicised world.
Palestine Book Awards Lifetime Achievement Winner 2022 'Roy is humanely and professionally committed in ways that are unmatched by any other non-Palestinian scholar' - Edward W. Said Gaza, the centre of Palestinian nationalism and resistance to the occupation, is the linchpin of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the key to its resolution. Since 2005, Israel has deepened the isolation of the territory, severing it almost completely from its most vital connections to the West Bank, Israel and beyond, and has deliberately shattered its economy, transforming Palestinians from a people with political rights into a humanitarian problem. Sara Roy unpacks this process, looking at US foreign policy towards the Palestinians, as well as analysing the trajectory of Israeli policy toward Gaza, which became a series of punitive approaches meant not only to contain the Hamas regime but weaken Gazan society. Roy also reflects on Gaza's ruination from a Jewish perspective and discusses the connections between Gaza's history and her own as a child of Holocaust survivors. This book, a follow up from the renowned Failing Peace, comes from one of the world's most acclaimed writers on the region.
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.
This new textbook introduces key mechanisms and issues in international conflict management and engages students with a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach to mitigating, managing, and transforming international conflicts. The volume identifies key historical events and international agreements that have shaped and defined the field of international conflict management, as well as key dilemmas facing the field at this juncture. The first section provides an overview of key mechanisms for international conflict management, such as negotiation, mediation, nonviolent resistance, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, transitional justice, and reconciliation. The second section tackles important cross-cutting themes, such as technology, religion, the economy, refugees and migration, and the role of civil society, examining how these issues contribute to international conflicts and how they can be leveraged to help address such conflicts. Each chapter includes a brief historical overview of the evolution of the issue or mechanism, identifies key theoretical and practical debates, and includes case studies, discussion questions, website links, and suggested further reading for further study and engagement. By providing a mixture of theory and practical examples, this textbook provides students with the necessary background to navigate this interdisciplinary field. This volume will be of great interest to students of international conflict management, conflict resolution, peace studies, and international relations in general.
This book addresses the conceptual and evidentiary issues relating to the treatment of propaganda in international criminal law. Bringing together an interdisciplinary range of scholars, researchers and legal practitioners from Africa, Australia, Europe and the United States, the book provides an in-depth analysis of the nature, position and role of the concept of propaganda in mass atrocity crimes trials. A sequel to the earlier Propaganda, War Crimes Trials and International Law: From Speakers' Corner to War Crimes (Routledge, 2011) this book is the first to synthesize the knowledge, procedures and methods of international criminal law with the social cognitive sciences. Including a comprehensive overview of the most relevant case law, jurisprudence and scientific studies, the book also offers a series of practical insights and strategies for both academics and legal professionals. An invaluable resource for those working in the area of international criminal law, this book will also be of interest to academics, practitioners and students with relevant interests in legal theory, politics, linguistics and psychology.
Through the lens of readiness theory, this book focuses on elements that determine the success and failure in negotiating peace agreements in intractable ethno-national conflicts. Examining three cases of mediated negotiation in Aceh, Sudan, and Sri Lanka, the book provides an analytical framework for studying the processes underlying the movement toward conflict resolution. By studying readiness theory's capacity to identify the factors that influence parties' readiness to reach an agreement, it constitutes another step in the development of readiness theory beyond the pre-negotiation stage. The work highlights the central role that third parties - mediators and the international community - play in the success or failure of peace processes, illuminating the mechanisms through which third parties affect the dynamics and outcome of the process. The systematic examination of readiness theory in these cases is instructive for researchers as well as for practitioners who seek to successfully mediate intractable conflicts and help adversaries achieve peace accords. This book will be of much interest to students of conflict resolution, peace studies, Asian politics, African politics and international relations in general.
Yossi Alpher, a veteran of peace process research and dialogue, explains how Israel got into its current situation of growing international isolation, political stalemate, and gathering messianic political influence. He investigates the inability of Israelis and Palestinians to make peace and end their conflict before suggesting not "solutions" (as there is no current prospect for a realistic comprehensive solution), but ways to moderate and soften the worst aspects of the situation and "muddle through" as Israel looks to a somber bi-national future. Alpher argues that a sober reassessment is long overdue in the way the West looks at the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. He submits that we have to stop talking about "the peace process" as if it still seriously exists, that 20 years of the Oslo process have failed for very substantial reasons that the professional peacemakers ignore at their risk, and that Israel is more likely to sink into a single-state reality than to remain truly "Jewish and democratic." Yet, his is a non-ideological, no nonsense book. Israel will not disappear, will not become impoverished, and will still find strategic partners. The book opens with a true story of two sisters whose lives were separated in 1947, as a parable for what is still happening in Israel's relations with the Arab world in general and the Palestinians in particular. It then offers brief analyses of how Israel looks today in the world, from a rejection of deceptive nostalgia for imaginary "good old days" to a discussion of Israel's increasingly problematic internal cohesion and the paralysis this generates in decision making regarding territories-for-peace issues. A discussion of Diaspora Jewish influence focuses on the Diaspora's anachronistic approach to the peace process. It is followed by a look at the highly negative effect regional developments are having on Israeli attitudes toward Arabs in general and peace in particular, using the summer 2014 war with Gaza-based Hamas as a case in point. Next comes a discussion of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and peace process, looking at the principal processes and dynamics that have thwarted peace and coexistence since the 1930s. Alpher argues that peace process practitioners on all sides-Israel, Palestinians, other Arabs, the US, the UN-have consistently ignored these dynamics or refused to take them seriously, producing today's stalemate. The book concludes with a look at the scaled-down alternatives available today for avoiding, or at least delaying, total paralysis and a one-state reality. These include a UN approach and another unilateral withdrawal. It concludes with an examination of the increasingly influential Israeli proponents of a one-state solution and the spectacular damage their policies are bringing about.
Today, the ideas of Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) are employed almost ubiquitously in strategic studies, military history and defence literatures, but often in a manner which distorts their true meaning. In this book, Waldman explores Clausewitz's central theoretical device for understanding war - the 'remarkable trinity' of politics, chance and passion. By situating the great Prussian in historical context, he presents a conception truer to Clausewitz's intention. Seeking to achieve this through an in-depth reinterpretation of On War and Clausewitz's other writings, conducted through the prism of the trinity, this book draws on existing studies but argues that there is room for clarification. It presents fresh perspectives into aspects of Clausewitz's thought and emphasises elements of his theory that have often been neglected. Furthermore, it provides a solid basis from which debate on the nature of modern war can move forward.
This book explores the often assumed but so far not examined proposition that a particular U.S. culture influences U.S. foreign policy behavior or, more concretely, that widely shared basic assumptions embraced by members of the U.S. administration have a notable impact on foreign policy-making. Publicly professed beliefs regarding America's role in the world and about democracy's universal appeal - despite much contestation - go to the heart of U.S. national identity. Employing extensive foreign policy text analysis as well as using the case study of U.S.-Egyptian bilateral relations during the Clinton, Bush junior, and Obama administrations, it shows that basic assumptions matter in U.S. democracy promotion in general, and the book operationalizes them in detail as well as employs qualitative content analysis to assess their validity and variation. The research presented lies at the intersection of International Relations, U.S. foreign policy, regional studies, and democracy promotion. The specific focus on the domestic 'cultural' angle for the study of foreign policy and this dimension's operationalization makes it a creative crossover study and a unique contribution to these overlapping fields.
'Ideologies need enemies to thrive, religion does not'. Using the Sahel as a source of five comparative case studies, this volume aims to engage in the painstaking task of disentangling Islam from the political ideologies that have issued from its theologies to fight for governmental power and the transformation of society. While these ideologies tap into sources of religious legitimacy, the author shows that they are fundamentally secular or temporal enterprises, defined by confrontation with other political ideologies-both progressive and liberal-within the arena of nation states. Their objectives are the same as these other ideologies, i.e., to harness political power for changing national societies, and they resort to various methods of persuasion, until they break down into violence. The two driving questions of the book are, whence come these ideologies, and why do they-sometimes-result in violence? Ideologies of Salafi radicalism are at work in the five countries of the Sahel region, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, (Northern) Nigeria and Senegal, but violence has broken out only in Mali and Northern Nigeria. Using a theoretical framework of ideological development and methods of historical analysis, Idrissa traces the emergence of Salafi radicalism in each of these countries as a spark ignited by the shock between concurrent processes of Islamization and colonization in the 1940s. However, while the spark eventually ignited a blaze in Mali and Nigeria, it has only led to milder political heat in Niger and Senegal and has had no burning effect at all in Burkina Faso. By meticulously examining the development of Salafi radicalism ideologies over time in connection with developments in national politics in each of the countries, Idrissa arrives at compelling conclusions about these divergent outcomes. Given the many similarities between the countries studied, these divergences show, in particular, that history, the behaviour of state leaders and national sociologies matter-against assumptions of 'natural' contradictions between religion (Islam) and secularism or democracy. This volume offers a new perspective in discussions on ideology, which remains-as is shown here-the independent variable of many key contemporary political processes, either hidden in plain sight or disguised in a religious garb.
During the 1990s the drive of liberal peace efforts in the form of humanitarian intervention transformed the ways in which traditional development assistance operated in war and post-war situations. From Somalia and Rwanda to Bosnia and Sri Lanka, conflict, security and development became more intertwined as more integrated programmes and interventions were advocated by the international community. Conflict and Development, whilst serving as an in-depth introduction to key themes and context, questions the extent to which international aid has over-reached in seeking to engage more centrally in addressing the causes and consequences of violent conflict. Using this framework, the author traces the evolution of the conflict and development agenda and explores the politics of aid and policymaking in relation to international conflict. By taking a combined approach of theory, policy and practice this vital new book explores and comprehensively explains the impact of conflict on development and vice-versa through the series of concise thematic chapters.
This book describes, compares, explains, and contextualises the positionings, i.e. discourses and activities, which feminists in Belgrade, Serbia and Zagreb, Croatia produced in relation to the (post-)Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Two types of positionings are analysed: those which the feminists have produced on the (sexual) war violence and those which they have produced on each other. Applying a Bourdieuian framework and using interviews with key feminist and peace activists in the region alongside a thorough examination of organisational documents and printed media articles, Ana Miskovska Kajevska challenges the common suggestion that the outbreak of the war violence in 1991 led to the same reorganisation of the Belgrade and Zagreb feminist fields. She corrects the understanding that the activists in each city, who had up until then worked together without tensions, divided at the same time and in the same manner into antinationalists and nationalists and began clashing with each other because of the different war-related positionings. Miskovska Kajevska explains further that the terms 'antinationalist' and 'nationalist' were not completely value-free and objective, and had different meanings attached to them. These designations were an essential part not only of the local and international efforts to stop the (sexual) war violence, but also of the struggle for legitimacy among the feminists in each city - endeavours in which many Western (feminist) academics, activists, and funders were involved, too. In addition to providing insights into the situation in Croatia and Serbia, this book will also help increase the understanding of intra-feminist dynamics in other regions of the world which are dominated by nationalism and war violence, and where the work of the local feminists is closely intertwined with - and often dependent on - these activists' contacts with foreign academic, funding, activist, and/or political entities.
The Survival Regime explores the concept of survival to describe the effects on politics of the fusion of war and capital in globalization. Survival defines a sort of degree zero governmentality that has resulted from the crumbling of the political and spatial architecture of modernity, particularly the state. It does not simply name the new content of all politics or the economic law of the strongest of neoliberalism. Rather, it theorizes how systemic violence and permanent instability force political life to struggle for its own existence, thus generating a regime based on productive engagement and urgent intervention. Through a critical dialogue with various contemporary thinkers (Galli, Hardt and Negri, Esposito, Agamben, Derrida, and Schmitt, among others), Edgar Illas theorizes survival as a global logic that overcomes the links between life and power explained by the Foucauldian paradigm of biopolitics. He examines parallel notions such as singularity, aleatoriness, eclecticism, and distinction to question previous theorizations of the political based on class struggle, inclusion, hegemony, or recognition of demands. Through the intersection of different lines of inquiry, including Marxism, war theory, biopolitics, and deconstruction, The Survival Regime contributes to the rethinking of critical theory, political theory, and cultural studies in globalization.
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.
This book examines the politics of military families in relation to the tensions between the state, military organization, and private life. It elaborates on the tensions between the advent of challenging worldwide deployment for the military and the prominence of the home front. The volume aims to understand the dynamics of conflict and change within triad figurations at the macro (society), meso (organizational), and micro (family) level and is guided by the following overarching research questions: What are the key issues in the three-party dynamics? What tensions exist in these dynamics? How do actors seek to arrive at a balance? What initiatives for change are made? With contributions from international scholars, who examine the workings of politics in military families at all three levels, the book argues that members within military families deal with shifting power balances and these are impacted by demands from organizations and the state. This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, sociology, organizational studies and politics.
The essays selected for this second volume on the conduct of hostilities examine discrete topics of international humanitarian law that are particularly relevant to 21st century warfare. It commences with an examination of the adequacy of traditional weapons law in the face of modern weaponry that could not have been conceived of at the time the norms were originally fashioned. Humanitarian law's protection of certain persons and objects is also addressed, especially with regard to loss of protection for civilians who participate in hostilities and to the special protections enjoyed by vulnerable groups and individuals. The essays not only set forth competing contemporary perspectives, but also illustrate how earlier generations of humanitarian lawyers struggled with many of the same issues. The essays equally illustrate humanitarian law's adaptability to changing sensitivities, as in the case of protection of the environment during armed conflict. The final essay analyzes perfidy, a violation of the law that weaker parties in asymmetrical conflicts are increasingly adopting as an operational tactic.
The essays selected for this volume explore the entire range of issues related to the question of how to implement and enforce international humanitarian law. Measures of self-help that used to play a key role in past international armed conflicts, especially reprisals, have increasingly been outlawed, and thus the enforcement of international humanitarian law has now to be achieved by other means, including criminal proceedings against those who have seriously (or gravely) committed war crimes. Accordingly, the concept of grave breaches, the universality principle and international criminal law are dealt with extensively in this collection. Finally, the volume includes an examination of the practice of 'lawfare' (an abuse of international humanitarian law for military or political purposes) which has proven increasingly effective in contemporary armed conflict.
Australia's Nuclear Policy: Reconciling Strategic, Economic and Normative Interests critically re-evaluates Australia's engagement with nuclear weapons, nuclear power and the nuclear fuel cycle since the dawn of the nuclear age. The authors develop a holistic conception of 'nuclear policy' that extends across the three distinct but related spheres - strategic, economic and normative - that have arisen from the basic 'dual-use' dilemma of nuclear technology. Existing scholarship on Australia's nuclear policy has generally grappled with each of these spheres in isolation. In a fresh evaluation of the field, the authors investigate the broader aims of Australian nuclear policy and detail how successive Australian governments have engaged with nuclear issues since 1945. Through its holistic approach, the book demonstrates the logic of seemingly conflicting policy positions at the heart of Australian nuclear policy, including simultaneous reliance on US extended deterrence and the pursuit of nuclear disarmament. Such apparent contradictions highlight the complex relationships between different ends and means of nuclear policy. How successive Australian governments of different political shades have attempted to reconcile these in their nuclear policy over time is a central part of the history and future of Australia's engagement with the nuclear fuel cycle.
Civil-military cooperation has always been a key factor in both peace and conflict situations, and is vital in today's political climate. This indispensable volume analyzes the various types of civil-military cooperation across different settings and contexts, to include humanitarian operations such as emergency relief following tsunami, earthquakes and refugee crises, as well as stability and reconstruction operations such as those in Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The book contains contributions from both senior academics and practitioners such as military officers and humanitarian personnel and discusses the benefits and logistics of civil-military cooperation. It closes with recommendations that will be of value to both academics and practitioners, making it a must read for anyone interested or involved in these operations.
This volume is the first of two addressing the legal regime governing the use of force during armed conflicts. Traditionally labeled 'Hague Law', today the norms it examines are commonly referred to as 'conduct of hostilities rules'. At the heart of this body of law is the principle of distinction, which requires that civilians and civilian objects be distinguished from combatants and military objectives during military operations. It is the purest expression of the foundational balance between humanitarian considerations and military necessity that has underpinned international humanitarian law since its inception. The essays selected consider the theoretical and practical difficulties of maintaining the balance in the face of evolving means and methods of warfare and competing perspectives as to how it is best achieved. Also addressed is the law governing warfare at sea and in the air. Essays focusing on the former examine early norms and analyze their continuing relevance to today's maritime operations whilst those exploring the latter inject much needed clarity into the subject, an essential task in light of the centrality of aerial warfare in modern combat operations.
Detention and occupation are two challenging aspects of international humanitarian law in 21st century warfare. The essays selected for this volume examine the historical foundations of these issues, as well as the contemporary practices surrounding them. Detention law was prominently codified in the 1949 Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, but has been criticized as inadequate in the face of 'new wars' involving non-State actors such as insurgents and terrorists. These essays not only explore historically problematic detention issues like repatriation and the protecting powers regime, but also question whether the extant law suffices to ensure a proper balance between humanitarian considerations and a detaining State's security concerns. Occupation law was originally designed for temporary occupations that maintained the occupied State's institutions pending return of full authority, but has been tested by recent occupations which are often prolonged and which sometimes seek to 'transform' occupied States previously governed by undemocratic and abusive regimes. The essays demonstrate that these are not novel issues and consider how they were handled in the past. They also assess various perspectives as to the purposes and limits of occupation, especially in the face of modern imperatives such as human rights.
The UK's Royal College of Defence Studies (RCDS) annual programme unites senior personnel from around the world who are preparing for the highest responsibilities in civilian and military spheres. Each year, representatives of some fifty countries share on average over a thousand years of experience in some of the most complex and demanding environments on earth. In Business and Battle is the synthesis of the expert analysis and experience of participants in that programme, tested and sharpened by extensive international field work and coupled with contributions by first-rate presenters external to the programme. It deals with strategy and top level strategic leadership together and views them from multinational, multicultural and multisectoral perspectives. In so doing, it pushes the boundaries beyond a mere description of commercial, civilian and military strategic environments; it provides extensive and deep insights into how to interpret and shape those environments.
Focusing on top civilian and military advisors within the national security establishment, this significant book looks at four case studies with a focus on civil-military relations within the US Department of Defense. It investigates whether balanced approaches produce more effective policies and outcomes than dominating structures. The culmination of Gibson's treatise is the advancement of the 'Madisonian approach' to civilian control of the military, a normative framework designed to replace Samuel Huntington's 'Objective Control' model and also the 'Subjective Control' model, initially practised by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and most recently by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The Madisonian approach calls for changes in US law and new norms to guide the interactions of key participants who populate the civil-military nexus. This book is destined to influence US strategic thinking and should be added to the syllabus of courses in civil-military relations, strategic studies and military history. Given the struggling US policy in Iraq, the time is right for a critical review of US civil-military relations and this book provides the departure point for analysis and a potential way forward.
Robert J. Pauly, Jr examines the history of US foreign policy toward the Greater Middle East in general and focuses specifically on the fundamental economic, military and political causes of the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf crisis. He investigates to what extent these causes were internal and external in origin, looks at the principal actors in the crisis, and determines whether and how these actors have continued to drive unfolding events in the Persian Gulf ever since. The volume explores in detail the role of American leaders since 1989, including how far the US should collaborate with Europe to pursue both American and collective Western economic, military and political interests in the Gulf. It also considers the prospects for the future of American-led nation-building operations in Iraq and the outlook for the eventual liberal democratization of the Greater Middle East. |
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