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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism > Armed conflict
This book examines responsibility in grave humanitarian crises, focusing on the international community's collective responsibility to take action in such cases as genocide or ethnic cleansing. The idea of collective responsibility highlights how we would like to see the global level primarily as something more akin to a community of peoples, rather than as a society of states in which other international and transnational actors operate. Since the acceptance of human rights, and in view of the atrocities of the Holocaust and other genocides, we have realized that some things concern us all: a realization that has led to the development of the responsibility to protect (R2P) framework. This book focuses on understanding the international community and its collective responsibility. Unlike the research frameworks put forward in other publications on this topic, the research model developed here does not distribute the collective responsibility to particular actors; instead, it sets out how the burden should be divided among those actors responsible in order to protect human security on a global scale. This book will be of interest to students of humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect, international law, peace and conflict studies, and international relations in general.
This book investigates the many faces of Hamas and examines its ongoing evolution as a resistance organisation in the context of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Specifically, the work interrogates Hamas' interpretation, reinterpretation and application of the twin concepts of muqawama (resistance) and jihad (striving in the name of God). The text frames the movement's capacity to accrue popular legitimacy through its evolving resistance discourses, centred on the notion of jihad, and the practical applications thereof. Moving beyond the dominant security-orientated approaches to Hamas, the book investigates the malleable nature of both resistance and jihad including their social, symbolic, political and ideational applications. The diverse interpretations of these concepts allow Hamas to function as a comprehensive social movement. Where possible, this volume attempts to privilege first-order or experiential knowledge emanating from the movement itself, its political representatives, and the Palestinian population in general. Many of these accounts were collected by the author during fieldwork in the Middle East. Not only does this work present new primary data, but it also investigates a variety of contemporary empirical events related to Palestine and the Middle East. This book offers an alternative way of viewing the movement's popular legitimacy grounded in theoretical, empirical and ethnographic terms. This book will be of much interest to students of Hamas, political violence, critical terrorism studies, Middle Eastern politics, security studies and IR in general.
The sheer size and influence of the British Indian Army, and its major role in the Allied War effort between 1939 and 1945 on behalf of a country from which it was seeking independence, maintains its fascination as a subject for a wide variety of historians. This volume presents a range of papers examining the Indian Army experience from the outbreak of world war in 1939 to the partition of India in 1947. With contributions from many of those at the forefront of the study of the Indian Army and Commonwealth history, the book focuses upon a period of Indian Army history not well covered by modern scholarship. As such it makes a substantial contribution across a range of subject areas, presenting a compendium of chapters examining Indian Army participation in the Second World War from North Africa to Burma, plus a variety of other topics including the evolution of wartime training, frontier operations, Churchill and the Indian Army, the Army's role in the development of post-war British counterinsurgency practice, and of particular note, several chapters examining aspects of the partition in 1947. As such, the book offers a fascinating insight into one of the most important yet least understood military forces of the twentieth century. It will be of interest not only to those seeking a fuller understanding of past campaigns, but also to those wishing to better understand the development and ethos of the present day military forces of the Indian subcontinent.
This volume examines the trajectory of Pakistan's democratic transition and the implications of this change for its security. In May 2013, for the first time in its 66-year history, Pakistan saw an elected government complete a full term in office and transfer power through the ballot box to another civilian government. At this important moment in Pakistan's history, this collection brings together twelve leading academics and writers with an aim to provide a far-reaching analysis of the current situation in Pakistan and emergent trends. Drawing on history, diverse theoretical perspectives, and empirical evidence, three themed sections deal respectively with democratic transition (including Islam and democracy, civil-military relations, and economics), contested borders and contested spaces (the Pashtun belt, Kashmir, and intra-Islamic conflict), and regionalism (bilateral relations from both Pakistani and Indian perspectives, US-Pakistan relations, and nuclear weapons dynamics). Together the contributors explore the status of Pakistan's democratic transition, contemporary security dynamics, and wider regional security and political dynamics, and the complex interplay of the three, to provide a wide-ranging analysis of Pakistan's contemporary national and regional challenges, its impact on the region, and evidence of some positive trends for Pakistan's future. The book will be of much interest to students of South Asian politics, Asian security, governance, and IR in general as well as policy-makers, diplomats, and military professionals.
Unmanned combat air vehicles, or in common parlance 'drones', have become a prominent instrument in US efforts to counter an objective (and subjective) cross-border terrorist threat with lethal force. As a result, critical questions abound on the legitimacy of their use. In a series of multidisciplinary essays by scholars with an extensive knowledge of international norms, this book explores the question of legitimacy through the conceptual lenses of legality, morality and efficacy, it then closes with the consideration of a policy proposal aimed at incorporating all three indispensable elements. The importance of this inquiry cannot be overstated. Non-state actors fully understand that attacking the much more powerful state requires moving the conflict away from the traditional battlefield where they are at an enormous disadvantage. Those engaging in terrorism seek to goad the ruling government into an overreaction, or abuse of power, to trigger a destabilization via an erosion of its legitimacy. Thus defending the target of legitimacy"in this case, insuring the use of deadly force is constrained by valid limiting principles"represents an essential strategic interest. This book seeks to come to grips with the new reality of drone warfare by exploring if it can be used to preserve, rather than eat away at, legitimacy. After an extensive analysis of the three key parameters in twelve chapters, the practical proposition of establishing a 'Drone Court' is put forward and examined as a way of pursuing the goal of integrating these essential components to defend the citizenry and the legitimacy of the government at the same time.
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. -- .
This book offers a comparative study of military reserves in contemporary democracies. A combination of budgetary pressures, new missions and emerging military roles during the past three decades has led the armed forces of democracies to rethink the training and use of reserve forces. Moreover, reservists have become central to the armed forces as part of moves towards "total" or "comprehensive" defense. Despite this, a scholarly bias towards studying regulars and conscripts means that reservists and reserve soldiers continue to receive only marginal attention. This volume fills that lacuna through a series of country studies examining how best to understand the peculiarities of reservist service. In contrast to regulars and conscripts, reservists are marked by their dual management of civilian and military careers, different family dynamics, diverse motivations and commitment to the armed forces, the material and non-material incentives they are offered, and their place in the political sphere. This volume suggests two frames to make sense of such differences: first, it looks at reservists as "transmigrants" traveling between the military and civilian worlds; and, second, it analyzes the multiple informal "contracts" and negotiations that bind them to the military. All the chapters adopt these conceptualizations, granting the volume a common focus and integrative frame. The volume will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, civil-military relations, sociology and International Relations.
This book examines US foreign policy and global standing in the 21st Century. The United States is the most powerful actor in world politics today. Against this backdrop, the present volume examines how the foreign policies pursued by Presidents' George W. Bush and Barack Obama have affected elite and public perceptions of the United States. By examining America's standing from the perspective of different actors from across various regions, including China, Russia, Latin America and the Middle East, while also assessing how these perceptions interact with America's own policies, this books presents a fresh interpretation of America's global standing. In doing so, the volume evaluates how these perceptions affect the realities of US power, and what impact this has on moulding US foreign policy and the policies of other global powers. A number of books address the question of which grand strategy the United States should adopt and the issue of whether or not America is in relative decline as a world power. However, the debate on these issues has largely been set against the policies of the Bush administration. By contrast, this volume argues that while Obama has raised the popularity of America since the low reached by Bush, America's credibility and overall standing have actually been damaged further under President Obama. This book will be of much interest to students of US foreign policy, US national security, strategic studies, Middle Eastern politics, international relations and security studies generally.
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.
This book examines the issue of nuclear disarmament in different strategic, political, and regional contexts. This volume seeks to provide a rich theoretical and practical insight to one of the major topics in the field of international security: global abolishment of nuclear weapons. Renewed calls for a nuclear weapons-free world have sparked a wide academic debate on both the attainability of such goal and the steps that should be taken. Comparably less attention, however, has been paid to theoretically informed considerations of the consequences of nuclear abolition. Comprising essays from leading scholars and experts within the field, this collection discusses the fundamental theoretical and conceptual foundations of nuclear disarmament and subsequently tries to assess its hypothetical impact in global and regional contexts. The varied methodological approach of the contributors aims to advance a multi-theoretical and multi-perspectival view of the issue. The book is organized in three main sections: 'Strategic Perspectives', dealing with the specific constraints and facilitators for the states to achieve their core objectives; 'Political Perspectives', with the focus on the power of norms, belief-systems and ideas; and 'Regional Perspectives', with the analyses of seven regional and/or state-specific nuclear contexts. As a whole, the volume provides a detailed, complex overview of the risks and opportunities that are embedded in the vision of a nuclear weapon-free world. This book will be of great interest to students of nuclear proliferation, arms control, war and conflict studies, international relations and security studies.
This book focuses on the key naval strategic objectives of obtaining and maintaining sea control. During times of war, sea control, or the ability of combatants to enjoy naval dominance, plays a crucial role in that side's ability to attain overall victory. This book explains and analyzes in much greater detail sea control in all its complexities, and describes the main methods of obtaining and maintaining it. Building on the views of naval classical thinkers, this book utilizes historical examples to illustrate the main methods of sea control. Each chapter focuses on a particular method, including destroying the enemy forces by a decisive action, destroying enemy forces over time-attrition, containing enemy fleet, choke point control, and capturing important enemy's positions/basing area, The aim is to provide a comprehensive theory and practice of the struggle for sea control at the operational level. It should therefore provide a guide to practitioners on how to plan and conduct operational warfare at sea. The book will be of much interest to students of naval strategy, defence studies and security studies.
This book sheds new light on the foreign policies, roles, and positions of neutral states and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in the global Cold War. The volume places the neutral states and the NAM in the context of the Cold War and demonstrates the links between the East, the West, and the so-called Third World. In doing so, this collection provides readers an alternative way of exploring the evolution and impact of the Cold War on North-South connections that challenges traditional notions of the post-1945 history of international relations. The various contributions are framed against the backdrop of the evolution of the Cold War international system and the decolonization process in the Southern hemisphere. By juxtaposing the policies of European neutrals and countries of the NAM, this book offers new perspectives on the evolution of the Cold War. With the links between these two groups of countries receiving very little attention in Cold War scholarship, the volume thus offers a window into a hitherto neglected perspective on the Cold War. Via a series of case studies, the chapters here present new viewpoints on the evolution of the global Cold War through the exploration of the ensuing internal and (mainly) external policy choices of these nations. This book will be of much interest to students of Cold War Studies, international history, foreign policy, security studies and IR in general.
James Hickey proceeds from the premise that throughout history, humans have demonstrated a proclivity for using violence against one another as a means to achieve an end, means enabled, in many respects, by the technologies available at the time. Advancing technology has often been a prime enabler of ever-increasing levels of violence and attendant human suffering. At a few junctures in history, however, certain technologies have seemingly provided the armed forces that possess them the ability to fight wars with decreasing levels of violence and suffering. Today, precision-guided munitions (PGMs) with their high degree of discrimination and accuracy again hold such promise. This book seeks to answer the question: Do PGMs mitigate suffering in war, and have these weapons changed the way decisions regarding war and peace have been made? Answering this question helps us understand possible shifts in emphasis in modern warfare, both in terms of methods employed and of the greater concern placed on limiting human suffering during conflict. This book will help students of ethics, just war and military history and senior military and civilian leaders to understand the possible outcomes and wider implications of their strategic choices to use such technology.
This book examines approaches to reconciliation and peacebuilding in settler colonial, post-conflict, and divided societies. In contrast to current literature, this book provides a broader assessment of reconciliation and conflict transformation by applying a distinctive 'multi-level' approach. The analysis provides a unique intervention in the field, one that significantly complicates received notions of reconciliation and transitional justice, and considers conflict transformation across the constitutional, institutional, and relational levels of society. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in South Africa, Northern Ireland, Australia, and Guatemala, the work presents an interdisciplinary study of the complex political challenges facing societies attempting to transition either from violence and authoritarianism to peace and democracy, or from colonialism to post-colonialism. Informed by theories of agonistic democracy, the book conceives of reconciliation as a process that is deeply political, and that prioritises the capacity to retain and develop democratic political contest in societies that have, in other ways, been able to resolve their conflicts. The cases considered suggest that reconciliation is most likely an open-ended process rather than a goal - a process that requires divided societies to pay ongoing attention to reconciliatory efforts at all levels, long after the eyes of the world have moved on from countries where the work of reconciliation is thought to be finished. This book will be of great interest to students of reconciliation, conflict transformation, peacebuilding, transitional justice and IR in general.
Many conflicts throughout the world can be characterized as sovereignty conflicts in which two states claim exclusive sovereign rights for different reasons over the same piece of land. It is increasingly clear that the available remedies have been less than successful in many of these cases, and that a peaceful and definitive solution is needed. This book proposes a fair and just way of dealing with certain sovereignty conflicts. Drawing on the work of John Rawls in A Theory of Justice, this book considers how distributive justice theories can be in tune with the concept of sovereignty and explores the possibility of a solution for sovereignty conflicts based on Rawlsian methodology. Jorge E. Nunez explores a solution of egalitarian shared sovereignty, evaluating what sorts of institutions and arrangements could, and would, best realize shared sovereignty, and how it might be applied to territory, population, government, and law.
The objective of this book is to report on contemporary trends in the defence research community on trust in teams, including inter- and intra-team trust, multi-agency trust and coalition trust. The book also considers trust in information and automation, taking a systems view of humans as agents in a multi-agent, socio-technical, community. The different types of trust are usually found to share many of the same emotive, behavioural, cognitive and social constructs, but differ in the degree of importance associated with each of them. Trust in Military Teams is written by defence scientists from the USA, Canada, Australia and the UK, under the auspices of The Transfer Cooperation Programme. It is representative of the latest thinking on trust in teams, and is written for defence researchers, postgraduate students, academics and practitioners in the human factors community.
This edited book presents an array of approaches on how human factors theory and research addresses the challenges associated with combat identification. Special emphasis is placed on reducing human error that leads to fratricide, which is the unintentional death or injury of friendly personnel by friendly weapons during an enemy engagement. Although fratricide has been a concern since humans first engaged in combat operations, it gained prominence during the Persian Gulf War. To reduce fratricide, advances in technological approaches to enhance combat identification (e.g., Blue Force Tracker) should be coupled with the application of human factors principles to reduce human error. The book brings together a diverse group of authors from academic and military researchers to government contractors and commercial developers to provide a single volume with broad appeal. Human Factors Issues in Combat Identification is intended for the larger human factors community within academia, the military and other organizations that work with the military such as government contractors and commercial developers as well as others interested in combat identification issues including military personnel and policy makers.
In 1993 luminaries from around the world signed the 'Oslo Accords' - a pledge to achieve lasting peace in the Holy Land - on the lawn of the White House. Yet things didn't turn out quite as planned. With over 1, 000 Israelis and close to four times that number of Palestinians killed since 2000, the Oslo process is now considered 'history'. Impossible Peace provides one of the first comprehensive analyses of that history. Mark LeVine argues that Oslo was never going to bring peace or justice to Palestinians or Israelis. He claims that the accords collapsed not because of a failure to live up to the agreements; but precisely because of the terms of and ideologies underlying the agreements. Today more than ever before, it's crucial to understand why these failures happened and how they will impact on future negotiations towards the 'final status agreement'. This fresh and honest account of the peace process in the Middle East shows how by learning from history it may be possible to avoid the errors that have long doomed peace in the region.
This volume evaluates the state of the art in conflict studies. Original chapters by leading scholars survey theoretical and empirical research on the origins, processes, patterns, and consequences of most forms and contexts of political conflict, protest, repression, and rebellion. Contributors examine key pillars of conflict studies, including civil war, religious conflict, ethnic conflict, transnational conflict, terrorism, revolution, genocide, climate change, and several investigations into the role of the state. The research questions guiding the text include inquiries into the interactions between the rulers and the ruled, authorities and challengers, cooperation and conflict, accommodation and resistance, and the changing context of conflict from the local to the global.
Ruthless Warfare (1998) demonstrates how close the First World War came to Australia. It has been argued that Australia was manipulated against its interests into action in WW1 by London - this unpublished collection of documents from the military division of the German Archives shows that this was not the case. The German Navy expected a major confrontation with the British Empire, both in the North Sea and further afield. German cruisers were expected to make a significant contribution in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific, pinning down British naval forces and thus undermining the British fleet's supremacy in the Atlantic. The damage and disruption to imperial trade would have had serious consequences for Australia, and these German plans also meant that a significant military intelligence system was active in the Antipodes.
As the two most influential and powerful actors in Eurasia the nature of the Turkish-Russian relationship affects the situation in the Black Sea, South Caucasus, Central Asia and Middle East and steers the foreign policy formulations of both regional states and global powers. Examining post-Cold War relations between Eurasia's most prominent actors, this book takes into account regional dynamics and global power struggles and identifies three important stages in Turkish-Russian relations during the period. Using complex interdependency theory the author offers valuable insights into the initial confrontational period and its transition to an atmosphere of compromise, cooperation and the evolution of multi-dimensional partnership. Leadership theory then explains the most recent deterioration in rapport as crises in Syria and Ukraine have placed severe strain on the previously warm bilateral relations.
This book serves primarily as a field guide and curriculum for organisations training personnel for conflict management missions abroad. Currently, a gap exists between practitioners and academia in the field of conflict management and peacebuilding. Few practitioners have studied conflict management, and few academics have experience as field workers. Conflict literature contains a range of important insights and analyses, but is useful only to a limited degree to practitioners. This book provides practitioners with a much needed guidebook which is easy to understand, academically solid and which identifies with their mission and helps them relate to real-time challenges in the field. The book focuses on a number of case studies, including peacebuilding efforts in East Timor, and offers a range of practical advice for persons about to embark on a mission, from the receipt of an appointment to establishment in the field and encountering the realities and practical challenges that handling conflicts may imply. This book will be of much interest to students of conflict management, peacebuilding and conflict resolution, as well as practitioners in the field.
Soldier-robot teams will be an important component of future battle spaces, creating a complex but potentially more survivable and effective combat force. The complexity of the battlefield of the future presents its own problems. The variety of robotic systems and the almost infinite number of possible military missions create a dilemma for researchers who wish to predict human-robot interactions (HRI) performance in future environments. Human-Robot Interactions in Future Military Operations provides an opportunity for scientists investigating military issues related to HRI to present their results cohesively within a single volume. The issues range from operators interacting with small ground robots and aerial vehicles to supervising large, near-autonomous vehicles capable of intelligent battlefield behaviors. The ability of the human to 'team' with intelligent unmanned systems in such environments is the focus of the volume. As such, chapters are written by recognized leaders within their disciplines and they discuss their research in the context of a broad-based approach. Therefore the book allows researchers from differing disciplines to be brought up to date on both theoretical and methodological issues surrounding human-robot interaction in military environments. The overall objective of this volume is to illuminate the challenges and potential solutions for military HRI through discussion of the many approaches that have been utilized in order to converge on a better understanding of this relatively complex concept. It should be noted that many of these issues will generalize to civilian applications as robotic technology matures. An important outcome is the focus on developing general human-robot teaming principles and guidelines to help both the human factors design and training community develop a better understanding of this nascent but revolutionary technology. Much of the research within the book is based on the Human Research and Engineering Directorate (HRED), U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) 5-year Army Technology Objective (ATO) research program. The program addressed HRI and teaming for both aerial and ground robotic assets in conjunction with the U.S. Army Tank and Automotive Research and Development Center (TARDEC) and the Aviation and Missile Development Center (AMRDEC) The purpose of the program was to understand HRI issues in order to develop and evaluate technologies to improve HRI battlefield performance for Future Combat Systems (FCS). The work within this volume goes beyond the research results to encapsulate the ATO's findings and discuss them in a broader context in order to understand both their military and civilian implications. For this reason, scientists conducting related research have contributed additional chapters to widen the scope of the original research boundaries.
'Complex sociotechnical systems' are systems made up of numerous interacting parts, both human and non-human, operating in dynamic, ambiguous and safety critical domains. Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) is a structured framework specifically developed for considering the development and analysis of these complex socio-technical systems. Unlike many human factors approaches, CWA does not focus on how human-system interaction should proceed (normative modelling) or how human-system interaction currently works (descriptive modelling). Instead, through a focus on constraints, it develops a model of how work can be conducted within a given work domain, without explicitly identifying specific sequences of actions (formative modelling). The framework leads the analyst to consider the environment the task takes place within, and the effect of the imposed constraints on the way work can be conducted. It provides guidance through the process of answering the questions of why the system exists, what activities can be conducted within the domain as well as how these activities can be achieved, and who can perform them. The first part of the book contains a comprehensive description of CWA, introducing it to the uninitiated. It then presents a number of applications in complex military domains to explore and develop the benefits of CWA. Unlike much of the previous literature, particular attention is placed on exploring the CWA framework in its entirety. This holistic approach focuses on the system environment, the activity that takes place within it, the strategies used to conduct this activity, the way in which the constituent parts of the system (both human and non-human) interact and the behaviour required. Each stage of this analysis identifies the constraints governing the system; it is contended that through this holistic understanding of constraints, recommendations can be made for the design of system interaction; increasing the ability of users to cope with unanticipated, unexpected situations. This book discusses the applicability of the approach in system analysis, development and evaluation. It provides process to what was previously a loosely defined framework.
Fratricide has been defined as firing on your own forces, when mistaking them for enemy forces, which results in injury or death. Rates of fratricide incidence have been steadily increasing and the complexity of the contemporary operating environment may lead to a continuation of this trend. Although the majority of research into fratricide has focused on the development of technological decision aids, recent explorations highlight the need to emphasise the social aspects within a socio-technical framework. This book presents and validates, via the use of case studies, a model of teamwork and decision-making factors that are associated with incidents of fratricide. In summary, it offers a review and evaluation of contemporary theoretical perspectives on teamwork and fratricide, as well as a range of accident analysis approaches. A novel theory of fratricide is then presented followed by a new methodology for assessing fratricide. Naturalistic case studies of teams are undertaken in the military domain. These studies illustrate the approach and offer early validation evidence. In closing, the book presents a series of principles designed to reduce the likelihood of fratricide in the future. |
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