This concise introduction to the growth and evolution of geopolitics as a discipline includes biographical information on its leading historical and contemporary practitioners and detailed analysis of its literature. An important book on a topic that has been neglected for too long, Geopolitics: A Guide to the Issues will provide readers with an enhanced understanding of how geography influences personal, national, and international economics, politics, and security. The work begins with the history of geopolitics from the late 19th century to the present, then discusses the intellectual renaissance the discipline is experiencing today due to the prevalence of international security threats involving territorial, airborne, space-based, and waterborne possession and acquisition. The book emphasizes current and emerging international geopolitical trends, examining how the U.S. and other countries, including Australia, Brazil, China, India, and Russia, are integrating geopolitics into national security planning. It profiles international geopolitical scholars and their work, and it analyzes emerging academic, military, and governmental literature, including "gray" literature and social networking technologies, such as blogs and Twitter. Biographies of major current geopolitical scholars and descriptions and listings of their works Maps of geopolitical crisis areas, such as Afghanistan/Pakistan, the South China Sea, and the Straits of Malacca Quotations from various government and military primary source documents A glossary of geopolitical terms A bibliography of international scholarly resources, including government and military documents

Since the 1990s, private military and security companies (PMSCs) have intervened in civil wars around the globe. International, legally registered corporate actors have assisted governments with a myriad of tasks including combat support, logistics, army and police training, intelligence analysis, and guard services. However, reports that such contractors have been responsible for human rights abuses have spurred the need to evaluate the industry's impact on conflicts. Are these contractors effective in curbing violence or does emphasis on profit and lack of accountability get in the way? And how can governments improve PMSCs' commitment to contractual obligations, including adherence to international humanitarian laws? This book identifies two market forces that impact PMSCs' military effectiveness: local or conflict-level competition and global or industry-level competition. Specifically, Seden Akcinaroglu and Elizabeth Radziszewski challenge the assumption that interventions by profit-driven coporations are likely to destabilize areas engaged in war, and provide data that private contractors do contribute to conflict termination under certain circumstances. They argue that competitive market pressure creates a strong monitoring system and that the company's corporate structure and external competitive environment in a given conflict help to explain the variance in accountability to clients. Including an analysis of data on international PMSCs' interventions in civil wars from 1990-2008, Akcinaroglu and Radziszewski show the impact of competition on companies' contribution to the termination of different types of civil wars.

Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Occupied Palestinian Territory has been the subject of extensive international peacebuilding and statebuilding efforts coordinated by Western donor states and international finance institutions. Despite their failure to yield peace or Palestinian statehood, the role of these organisations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is generally overlooked owing to their depiction as tertiary actors engaged in technical missions. In Palestine Ltd., Toufic Haddad explores how neoliberal frameworks have shaped and informed the common understandings of international, Israeli and Palestinian interactions throughout the Oslo peace process. Drawing upon more than 20 years of policy literature, field-based interviews and recently declassified or leaked documents, he details how these frameworks have led to struggles over influencing Palestinian political and economic behaviour, and attempts to mould the class character of Palestinian society and its leadership. A dystopian vision of Palestine emerges as the by-product of this complex asymmetrical interaction, where nationalism, neo-colonialism and `disaster capitalism' both intersect and diverge. This book is essential for students and scholars interested in Middle East Studies, Arab-Israeli politics and international development.

The Making of Eurasia investigates the multi-layered spectrum of China and Russia's Eurasian policies towards each other, ranging from competition to cooperation, as well as the role of regional actors in between. The book examines the impact of and responses to the dynamic Sino-Russian interaction in the wake of China's Belt and Road initiative, focusing on the selected case studies of Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Uzbekistan, but also on inter-regional implications across the Eurasian space. With China's imprint on inter-regional politics and ambition to make a distinctive Chinese contribution to 'globalization' and Russia's vision of a 'Greater Eurasia' in which Moscow stakes out a place for itself as an indispensable power, other regional actors adopt policies that respond to and co-shape the resulting centrifugal forces. Meanwhile, power shifts are underway on a global plane, as the normative divide between Russia and the West has widened, and as the Sino-American rivalry is intensifying. The book therefore also sheds light on the effects of Eurasian power shifts on global governance in a context where global 'leadership' is contested, and in which the US and Europe are re-defining their relationship not only towards a self-confident China but also towards each other. As such, this study will provide valuable insight for students and scholars of Eurasian Asia Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis, and International Relations at large.

Parodi shows that boundary disputes have and continue to play a major role in creating tensions in South America. Of the 25 international territorial boundaries that exist in South America, eight were marked with major wars, eight with lesser wars, and five with some level of violence. As recently as 1995, the armies of Ecuador and Peru were at war to define a boundary. In 1982 Argentina went to war, inspired by the call to restore a piece of its mutilated national territory. Venezuela and Guyana, Guyana and Suriname, and Suriname and French Guiana have not completed boundary demarcation agreements. Bolivia's insistence on its right for sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean is a source of tension with Chile and Peru. Colombia and Venezuela have unresolved boundary issues in the Gulf of Venezuela. Clearly, boundary disputes have and continue to play a major role in creating larger conflicts within South America.

Territorial boundaries are marks on the ground, but, as Parodi shows, their staying power or stability depends on their grip on consciousness. By examining the boundary theory of South American states and its implementation, he also explains how the symbolic system of South American boundaries is used to instill national identity, mobilize people to war, and control population and territory. This text will be of particular interest to scholars, students, and researchers involved with Latin American politics, diplomacy, and international relations.

The Indian Ocean Region (IOR) is of immense strategic significance on the global maritime map - not just on account of its centrality to the current trade and energy flows, but also because of the extreme disparities and inherent volatility of the region. The region faces an array of security challenges, both traditional and non-traditional. These include security of SLOCs, the problem of piracy, the possibility of renewed terrorism at and from the sea and the pervasive smuggling of people, narcotics and arms. The narrative of regional maritime security is also characterized by oscillating economic growth, growing military presence and a rapidly deteriorating ecological balance in the Indian Ocean. A stand-out feature of the IOR is the lack of correspondence between nations on issues concerning 'security'. While using the high seas for trade, transportation of energy, major powers have tended to neglect the impact of the economic activities on the sea itself. In contrast, smaller regional countries and island states with developing economies have, at best, been able to use only those resources of the sea which are vital to their survival. As the challenges rise, the need to factor in and secure effective management of the Indian Ocean has turned into a compelling imperative. While governments and authorities grapple with complex issues trying to forge a coherent maritime policy, there is a growing recognition that unless solutions are found quickly, lives, livelihoods, and in some cases the very future of local populations could be at risk. This book contains a comprehensive overview of perspectives of some of the stakeholders in the Indian Ocean Region. It seeks to identify the key maritime security issues and explores the potential contribution of the stakeholders in meeting these challenges.

In the past decade the Asia-Pacific region has become a focus of international politics and military strategies. Due to China's rising economic and military strength, North Korea's nuclear tests and missile launches, tense international disputes over small island groups in the seas around Asia, and the United States pivoting a majority of its military forces to the region, the islands of the western Pacific have increasingly become the center of global attention. While the Pacific is a cur- rent hotbed of geopolitical rivalry and intense militarization, the region is also something else: a homeland to the hundreds of millions of people that inhabit it.
Based on a decade of research in the region, "The Empires' Edge" examines the tremendous damage the militarization of the Pacific has wrought on its people and environments. Furthermore, Davis details how contemporary social movements in this region are affecting global geopolitics by challenging the military use of Pacific islands and by developing a demilitarized view of security based on affinity, mutual aid, and international solidarity. Through an examination of "sacrificed" is- lands from across the region--including Bikini Atoll, Okinawa, Hawai'i, and Guam--"The Empires' Edge" makes the case that the great political contest of the twenty-first century is not about which country gets hegemony in a global system but rather about the choice be- tween perpetuating a system of international relations based on domination or pursuing a more egalitarian and cooperative future.

The geopolitical history of the Middle East in the twentieth century, which falls into three relatively distinct phases, is best understood when approached simultaneously from the global and the regional perspectives. The imperialist phase, which began in the nineteenth century and lasted until the end of World War II, was followed by the cold war between the Soviet Union and the West that continued to the beginning of the 1990s. The last phase, which began with the demise of the Soviet Union, is still taking shape. These stages may overlap and, in some instances, unfold simultaneously, developments within the region being shaped and constrained by extra-regional forces for extra-regional purposes.

The sovereignty and independence of the states of the region has been limited in varying degrees by the wishes, needs, interests, and ambitions of the major powers. The geopolitical considerations have varied over time, being very different in the period between the world wars than in the period of intense East-West rivalry that followed, with the present post-cold war era being radically different from what preceded it. These changing geopolitical realities constitute the framework for this examination of the Middle East in the twentieth century, and the organizing principle for the selection of materials from the truly vast amount of information available. An important resource for scholars, students, and researchers involved with Middle Eastern history and international relations.

In the quarter century that has passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, fanciful establishment intellectuals have advanced the idea that an "end of history" has somehow arrived. The model of "democratic capitalism" is said to be the final stage in the development of political economy. It is often suggested that it is simply a matter of waiting for the rest of the world to catch up, and at that point the Western model will have achieved a final and eternal triumph. In this work, the anarchist philosopher Keith Preston expresses skepticism of these presumptions. Expounding upon the critique of modernity advanced by Friedrich Nietzsche well over a century ago, Preston argues that the historical cycle associated with the rise of modernity is winding down. The forces of globalism, liberalism, capitalism, democracy, and Americanization are closer to achieving universal hegemony than ever before. Yet Preston subjects all of these to relentless criticism, and challenges virtually every presumption of the present era's dominant ideological model. Drawing upon a wide range of ideological currents and intellectual influences, Preston observes how the hegemony of what he calls the "Anglo-American-Zionist-Wahhabist" axis is being challenged within the realm of international relations by both emerging blocks of rival states and insurgent non-state actors. Citing thinkers as diverse as Ernst Junger and Emma Goldman, Max Stirner and Alain de Benoist, Hans Hermann Hoppe and Kevin Carson, Preston offers an alternative vision of what the future of postmodern civilization might bring.