![]() |
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
||
|
Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > Diplomacy
For most of the twentieth century, the most critical concerns of
national security have been balance-of-power politics and the
global arms race. The religious conflicts of this era and the
motives behind them, however, demand a radical break with this
tradition. If the United States is to prevail in its long-term
contest with extremist Islam, it will need to re-examine old
assumptions, expand the scope of its thinking to include religion
and other "irrational" factors, and be willing to depart from past
practice. A purely military response in reaction to such attacks
will simply not suffice. What will be required is a long-term
strategy of cultural engagement, backed by a deeper understanding
of how others view the world and what is important to them.
When her husband was appointed by President Barack Obama to be U.S. Ambassador to Spain and Andorra, Susan Solomont uprooted herself. She left her career, her friends and family, and a life she loved to join her husband for a three-and-a-half-year tour overseas. Part memoir and part travelogue, Solomont learns the rules of a diplomatic household; goes on a culinary adventure with some of Spain's greatest chefs; finds her place in the Madrid Jewish community; and discovers her own voice to create new meaning in her role as a spouse, a community member, and a 21st century woman.
The Genoa Conference of April-May 1922 saw the first serious and sustained attempt to negotiate a modus vivendi between the newly established Soviet government in Moscow and the western capitalist countries that surrounded it. Drawing upon a wide range of archival and other sources, many of them unfamiliar or previously unexplored for this purpose, this study traces the evolution of Soviet-Western relations from the Revolution up to the autumn of 1921, when the proposal for a conference first began to emerge, and then considers in more detail the course of preconference diplomacy and the proceedings of the conference itself, up to the early summer of 1922. In his final chapter Dr White argues that the failure to resolve East-West differences at Genoa was attributable to a variety of circumstances, but above all to a failure of political will.
In this book, Dr. Christopher Hill breaks new ground by presenting a detailed case study of the British government and foreign policy. He takes the dramatic period from the Munich conference of 1938 to the German invasion of the Soviet Union three years later and analyzes the patterns of argument and influence within the British Cabinet. By using extensive archival material, he examines how far the strong personalities of Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill were able to dominate their Cabinets in an area where prime ministers have traditionally been supposed to exercise considerable freedom.
The American war in Vietnam was concluded in 1973 under the terms of a truce that were effectively identical to what was offered to the Nixon administration four years earlier. Those four years cost America billions of dollars and over 35,000 war deaths and casualties, and resulted in the deaths of over 300,000 Vietnamese. And those years were the direct result of the supposed master plan of the most important voice in the Nixon White House on American foreign policy: Henry Kissinger. Using newly available archival material from the Nixon Presidential Library and Kissinger's personal papers, Robert K. Brigham shows how Kissinger's approach to Vietnam was driven by personal political rivalries and strategic confusion, while domestic politics played an outsized influence on Kissinger's so-called strategy. There was no great master plan or Bismarckian theory that supported how the US continued the war or conducted peace negotiations. As a result, a distant tragedy was perpetuated, forever changing both countries. Now, perhaps for the first time, we can see the full scale of that tragedy and the machinations that fed it.
Threats to peace and stability are real and will likely continue into the foreseeable future. Likewise, globalization and its proliferation has made it increasingly difficult in knowing whether one is a friend or foe. This is particularly true when turning to the relationship of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC); the relationships are not as clear as was the case two decades ago. Intelligence professionals the world over would be remiss in their assessments if they fail to take into account the position of each in the context of contemporary issues. Countries can be aligned on one issue and yet diametrically opposed on others. This research looks to enhance what Ernest Boyer refers to as scholarship of integration and uses the Federal Qualitative Secondary Data Case Study Triangulation Model and a variation of a model referred to as the York Intelligence Red Team Model-Modified (YIRTM-M) to conduct the analysis. More pointedly, this book looks at issues from the U.S. perspective to see how the YIRTM-M can be applied to advance its own interests on the world stage and to better understand when each can be seen as a friend or foe.
The book examines diplomatic immunity and provides a historical analysis of the granting of diplomatic immunity to non-diplomats, based on the perspectives of several states. Featuring contributions in which experts from four continents and from academia and practice present their views and perspectives; it is an insightful resource for diplomats, academics and legal professionals, while at the same time it is useful and understandable for students, junior staff and anyone just starting their venture into the diplomatic immunity issues and general international law.
International negotiations have become an increasingly widespread feature of international affairs. Cecilia Albin argues that negotiators do not simply pursue their narrow interests or those of their countries, but regularly take principles of justice and fairness into account. Her analysis is based on cases in four important areas: the environment, international trade, ethnic conflict, and arms control. Drawing on a mass of empirical data, including a large number of interviews, she relates the abstract debate over international norms and ethics to the realities of international relations.
International negotiations have become an increasingly widespread feature of international affairs. Cecilia Albin argues that negotiators do not simply pursue their narrow interests or those of their countries, but regularly take principles of justice and fairness into account. Her analysis is based on cases in four important areas: the environment, international trade, ethnic conflict, and arms control. Drawing on a mass of empirical data, including a large number of interviews, she relates the abstract debate over international norms and ethics to the realities of international relations.
View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction. "This fascinating study uses the tools and sources of diplomatic
history to examine a sweep of national and international history
far beyond the confines of diplomacya].For Horne, the slave trade,
rather than slavery, was an explosive political issue much later in
the 19th century that is normally understood. Highly
recommended." "A well-researched, skillfully-written, and carefully-argued
diplomatic history examining connections between the United States,
Brazil, Africa, and Europe as they relate to the transatlantic
slave trade. Horne sheds considerable light upon the ideas,
ruminations, and practices of U.S. nationals in their interactions
with and encounters of Brazil over the question of slavery,
especially from the mid-nineteenth century on, and makes a valuable
and important contribution to our knowledge and understanding of
(American) hemispheric relations and trajectories, both eventual
and potential." aAn important study that starts with the proposition that what
happens abroad affects developments in the United States. For the
first time we are made aware of the extensive contacts between
pro-slavery forces in the United States in the years after the
abolition of the slave trade and the promoters of slavery in and
the slave trade to Brazil and elsewhere.a During its heyday in the nineteenth century, the African slave trade was fueled by the close relationship of the United States and Brazil. The Deepest South tells the disturbing story of how U.S.nationals - before and after Emancipation -- continued to actively participate in this odious commerce by creating diplomatic, social, and political ties with Brazil, which today has the largest population of African origin outside of Africa itself. Proslavery Americans began to accelerate their presence in Brazil in the 1830s, creating alliances there - sometimes friendly, often contentious - with Portuguese, Spanish, British, and other foreign slave traders to buy, sell, and transport African slaves, particularly from the eastern shores of that beleaguered continent. Spokesmen of the Slave South drew up ambitious plans to seize the Amazon and develop this region by deporting the enslaved African-Americans there to toil. When the South seceded from the Union, it received significant support from Brazil, which correctly assumed that a Confederate defeat would be a mortal blow to slavery south of the border. After the Civil War, many Confederates, with slaves in tow, sought refuge as well as the survival of their peculiar institution in Brazil. Based on extensive research from archives on five continents, Gerald Horne breaks startling new ground in the history of slavery, uncovering its global dimensions and the degrees to which its defenders went to maintain it.
Military and civilian captivity practices by four major European powers and the United States during World War I are surveyed in this book. Speed argues that while the pressures of "total war," as they emerged during the conflict, drove the belligerents to violate many of the norms of war, they attempted to behave in accordance with a "liberal tradition of captivity" which held that prisoners of war were merely men whom nobody had a right to harm. Aside from a few journal articles that deal with small aspects of the topic, there is no other scholarly work that focuses on captivity during the First World War. Speed makes extensive use of rarely cited American diplomatic records in order to offer a more objective view of camp conditions. A special feature is the depiction of American camps in France drawn from previously uncited War Department records. The book explores the "radical tradition of captivity" that emerged in the Soviet Union. This tradition held that the prisoner was not merely a man for whom the war was over, but that he was a potential recruit in the class war whose national loyalty could be subverted in the interest of the ideological conflict. Thus, while the Western world entered the war with a single tradition of captivity, it emerged from the conflict with two antithetical traditions. While the United States and Western Europe in general have clung to the liberal tradition, third world revolutionary states like Vietnam and North Korea have embraced the radical tradition. This book is essential reading for all scholars and students of modern European/American diplomatic and military history. Government officials involved with hostages or prisoners of war will also findmuch of value here.
Thoroughly revised and updated, a new edition of the most popular guide to the United Nations for students and interested readers "My UN bible. Linda Fasulo knows all the right questions and brings back all the answers readers need to know to navigate the UN."-Olivia Ward, Toronto Star "The perfect guide to the global work on peace, development and human rights. It is 'hands on' and practical." Jan Eliasson, former UN Deputy Secretary-General Prominent NPR journalist Linda Fasulo's guide to the United Nations has established a reputation as the most lively, authoritative, and insightful book on its subject. Thoroughly revised and updated, with many new interviews of diplomats, experts, and officials, this fourth edition remains indispensable for understanding the UN's role and impact on the world today.
A splendidly illuminating book. Like it or not, George W. Bush has launched a revolution in American foreign policy. He has redefined how America engages the world, shedding the constraints that friends, allies, and international institutions once imposed on its freedom of action. In "America Unbound, " Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay caution that the Bush revolution comes with serious risks-and, at some point, we may find that America's friends and allies will refuse to follow his lead, leaving the U.S. unable to achieve its goals. This edition has been extensively revised and updated to include major policy changes and developments since the book's original publication.
This book by a leading scholar of international relations examines the origins of the new world disorder - the resurgence of Russia, the rise of populism in the West, deep tensions in the Atlantic alliance, and the new strategic partnership between China and Russia - and asks why so many assumptions about how the world might look after the Cold War - liberal, democratic and increasingly global - have proven to be so wrong. To explain this, Michael Cox goes back to the moment of disintegration and examines what the Cold War was about, why the Cold War ended, why the experts failed to predict it, and how different writers and policy-makers (and not just western ones) have viewed the tumultuous period between 1989 when the liberal order seemed on top of the world through to the current period when confidence in the western project seems to have disappeared almost completely.
A mixture of poignant biography and marvellously entertaining social history, 'Daughters of Britannia' is the story of diplomatic life as it has never been told before, seen through the eyes of some of its least-known participants: the wives, daughters and sisters who accompanied their men to the far corners of the globe. "This is a lovely book: affectionate, celebratory and as conscious of the glory as the hardship. These women lived; they saw dolphins in the Bosphorus at dawn, took tea with empresses, watched eclipses in Turkistan. And they were so lonely they wrote it all down." "Absorbing, moving and wonderfully gossipy … all of it laced with a good helping of eccentrics and the undeniable glamour of pomp and tradition in far-flung places." "This is a delightful and exceptionally well-written book, funny, lively and warm-hearted." "Part history, part anecdotal anthology, it makes unputdownable reading as famous names in diplomatic spouse lore like Emma Hamilton and Vita Sackville-West are upstaged by ordinary women faced with extraordinary situations." "Enormously enjoyable, anecdotal and scholarly."
"Diplomatic Interventions" argues that war is a social
construction. In so doing, it unsettles the definition of
intervention, as a coercive interference by one state in the
affairs of another, to examine the range of communicative or
'diplomatic' practices which through their presence modify the
experience of war. The tension between claims that war is pervasive
and that war is a social construct is analysed in relation to a
range of moral, legal, military, economic, cultural, and
therapeutic interventions. The concluding chapter highlights how
the book itself is a critical intervention that requires us look at
again from a new angle at international practice.
Taking insights and controversies from feminist political theory, Lu looks to illuminate alternative images of 'sovereignty as privacy' and 'sovereignty as responsibility', and to identify new challenges arising from the increased agency of private global civil society, and their relationship with the world of states.
Although modern life grows increasingly casual, in many sectors, protocol still reigns supreme. An Expert's Guide to International Protocol offers an overview of its associated practices, including those found within the context of diplomatic relations and the business world. Focusing on a wide range of countries and cultures, the book covers topics like precedence, seating arrangements, flags, ceremonies, invitations, dress codes, gifts and honours, and the roles of the protocol officer, guest and host. Throughout, influential diplomatic, business, and cultural figures share their own experiences with protocols around the world, also throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
The exact legacies of the two Hague Peace Conferences remain unclear. On the one hand, diplomatic and military historians, who cast their gaze to 1914, traditionally dismiss the events of 1899 and 1907 as insignificant footnotes on the path to the First World War. On the other, experts in international law posit that The Hague's foremost legacy lies in the manner in which the conferences progressed the law of war and the concept and application of international justice. This volume brings together some of the latest scholarship on the legacies of the Hague Peace Conferences in a comprehensive volume, drawing together an international team of contributors.
This book demonstrates that during the early twentieth century, the Monroe Doctrine served the role of a national security framework that justified new directions in United States foreign relations when the nation emerged as one of the world's leading imperial powers. As the United States' overseas empire expanded in the wake of the Spanish-American War, the nation's decision-makers engaged in a protracted debate over the meaning and application of the doctrine, aligning it to two antithetical core values simultaneously: regional hegemony in the Western Hemisphere on the one hand, and Pan-Americanism on the other. The doctrine's fractured meaning reflected the divisions that existed among domestic perceptions of the nation's new role on the world stage and directed the nation's approach to key historical events such as the acquisition of the Philippines, the Mexican Revolution, the construction of the Panama Canal, the First World War, and the debate over the League of Nations.
Since its establishment after World War II, the State of Israel has sought alliances with non-Arab and non-Muslim countries and minorities in the Middle East, as well as Arab states geographically distant from the Arab-Israel conflict. The text presents and explains this regional orientation and its continuing implications for war and peace. It examines Israel's strategy of outflanking, both geographically and politically, the hostile Sunni Arab Middle East core that surrounded it in the early decades of its sovereign history, a strategy that became a pillar of the Israeli foreign and defense policy. This "periphery doctrine" was a grand strategy, meant to attain the major political-security goal of countering Arab hostility through relations with alternative regional powers and potential allies. It was quietly abandoned when the Sadat initiative and the emerging coexistence between Israel and Jordan reflected a readiness on the part of the Sunni Arab core to deal with Israel politically rather than militarily. For a brief interval following the 1991 Madrid conference and the 1993 Oslo accords, Israel seemed to be accepted by all its neighbors, prompting then Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to muse that it could even consider joining the Arab League. Yet this periphery strategy had been internalized to some extent in Israel's strategic thinking and it began to reappear after 2010, following a new era of Arab revolution. The rise of political Islam in Egypt, Turkey, Gaza, southern Lebanon and possibly Syria, coupled with the Islamic regime in Iran, has generated concern in Israel that it is again being surrounded by a ring of hostile states-in this case, Islamists rather than Arab nationalists. The book analyzes Israel's strategic thinking about the Middle East region, evaluating its success or failure in maintaining both Israel's security and the viability of Israeli-American strategic cooperation. It looks at the importance of the periphery strategy for Israeli, moderate Arab, and American, and European efforts to advance the Arab-Israel peace process, and its potential role as the Arab Spring brings about greater Islamization of the Arab Middle East. Already, Israeli strategic planners are talking of "spheres of containment" and "crescents" wherein countries like Cyprus, Greece, Azerbaijan, and Ethiopia constitute a kind of new periphery. By looking at Israel's search for Middle East allies then and now, the book explores a key component of Israel's strategic behavior. Written in an accessible manner for all students, it provides a better understanding of Israel's role in the Middle East region and its Middle East identity.
Based on an essay that has been hailed as one of the most
influential policy pieces published in the last decade, Robert
Cooper sets out a radical new interpretation of the shape of the
world in this path-breaking book The Breaking of Nations.
What role, if any, does the foreign ministry perform in contemporary world politics? Is the argument that it is in a state of terminal decline accurate or rooted in only partial understandings of its changing character? Foreign Ministries in the European Union explores this theme in the context of the EU where foreign ministry has played a key role in the development of integration but where its role is increasingly questioned. The contributors examine the foreign ministry in thirteen member states and draw conclusions that challenge some conventional wisdoms.
Decolonisation and Regional Geopolitics argues that as much as the 'Congo crisis' (1960-1965) was a Cold War battleground, so too was it a battleground for Southern Africa's decolonisation. This book provides a transnational history of African decolonisation, apartheid diplomacy, and Southern African nationalist movements. It answers three central questions. First, what was the nature of South African involvement in the Congo crisis? Second, what was the rationale for this involvement? Third, how did South Africans perceive the crisis? Innovatively, the book shifts the focus on the Congo crisis away from Cold War intervention and centres it around African decolonisation and regional geopolitics.
Steamship Nationalism is a cultural, social, and political history of the S.S. Imperator, Vaterland, and Bismarck. Transatlantic passenger steamships launched by the Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Aktien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG) between 1912 and 1914, they do not enjoy the international fame of their British counterparts, most notably the Titanic. Yet the Imperator-class liners were the largest, most luxurious passenger vessels built before the First World War. In keeping with the often-overlooked history of its merchant marine as a whole, they reveal much about Imperial Germany in its national and international dimensions. As products of business decisions shaped by global dynamics and the imperatives of international travel, immigration, and trade, HAPAG's giant liners bear witness to Germany's involvement in the processes of globalization prior to 1914. Yet this book focuses not on their physical, but on their cultural construction in a variety of contemporaneous media, including the press and advertising, on both sides of the Atlantic. At home, they were presented to the public as symbolic of the nation's achievements and ambitions in ways that emphasize the complex nature of German national identity at the time. Abroad, they were often construed as floating national monuments and, as such, facilitated important encounters with Germany, both virtual and real, for the populations of Britain and America. Their overseas reception highlights the multi-faceted image of the European superpower that was constructed in the Anglo-American world in these years. More generally, it is a pointed indicator of the complex relationship between Britain, the United States, and Imperial Germany. |
You may like...
|