This book aims to enrich the thinking and discussion in relation to the importance that citizenship, immigration, rights and private laws play in the modern world. This is in a time when social cohesion and national identity is being challenged. It will explore the impact these laws have had on Australia, European Union (EU) and Slovenia. Identity and social cohesion are contested concepts and can invoke different responses. The challenges states and the EU are likely to face in retaining and even strengthening their respective identities and social cohesion from continued geopolitical shocks, security, economic volatility and environmental degradation is likely to be formidable. These alone pose some of the most complex political and policy issues facing the world. The EU can be held up as a polity that, has developed an identity and level of cohesion, while allowing member states to retain their national identities. It has, to date, also been successful in managing the rise of nationalism. However, that has come under threat in recent times. Thus, the very foundations of liberal democracy could be diluted from the impact of these challenges. Moreover, the basic foundations of rights have, in part, already been diluted from the rise of terrorism (which is acceptable), however, the geopolitical differences pose a significant challenge, in, and of themselves.

Facing threats ranging from Islamist insurgencies to the Ebola pandemic, African regional actors are playing an increasingly vital role in safeguarding peace and stability across the continent. But while the African Union has demonstrated its ability to deploy forces on short notice and in difficult circumstances, the challenges posed by increasingly complex conflict zones have revealed a widening divide between the theory and practice of peacekeeping. With the AU's African Standby Force becoming fully operational in 2016, this timely and much-needed work argues that responding to these challenges will require a new and distinctively African model of peacekeeping, as well as a radical revision of the current African security framework. The first book to provide a comprehensive overview and analysis of African peace operations, The Future of African Peace Operations gives a long overdue assessment of the ways in which peacekeeping on the continent has evolved over the past decade. It will be a vital resource for policy makers, researchers and all those seeking solutions and insights into the immense security challenges which Africa is facing today.

The sovereign status of Taiwan - or the Republic of China - has been a source of instability in the Asia-Pacific region for much of the last 70 years. While Taiwan aspires to be an independent and democratic nation, the communist-led People's Republic of China sees it as a breakaway province. With Beijing flexing its muscles in recent years amid rising tensions between China and the US, the potential for a military flashpoint along the narrow Taiwan Strait cannot be overstated. The strategy of the Republic of China Armed Forces is to present Beijing with a credible deterrent, and should this fail, defend against a People's Liberation Army attack and possible invasion. The Republic of China Air Force (ROCAF) is charged with the defence of airspace over and around Taiwan and enabling military operations in land and sea domains. If necessary, it could also take the battle into China as part of a multi-pronged offensive effort. While the ROCAF is relatively well-equipped and trained, attempts to modernise have been hit by political and fiscal challenges. The ROCAF has made some headway with mid-life upgrades for the majority of its more than 20-year-old fighter fleet and will receive a much-needed boost with the introduction of F-16C/D Block 70s in the coming years. However, it still lacks many force-multiplier capabilities such as aerial refuelling and electronic warfare. Amid qualitative and quantitative improvements to the PLA air combat fleets, the military balance across the Taiwan Strait continues to tip towards Mainland China. This book provides a comprehensive study of Taiwan's air force with in-depth analysis backed by high-quality images. It examines ROCAF combat capabilities today, its aircraft fleet, and what the future holds for the air arm.

A major analysis of how China is attempting to become a media and information superpower around the world, seeking to shape the politics, local media, and information environments of both East Asia and the World. Since China's ascendancy toward major-power status began in the 1990s, many observers have focused on its economic growth and expanding military. China's ability was limited in projecting power over information and media and the infrastructure through which information flows. That has begun to change. Beijing's state-backed media, which once seemed incapable having a significant effect globally, has been overhauled and expanded. At a time when many democracies' media outlets are consolidating due to financial pressures, China's biggest state media outlets, like the newswire Xinhua, are modernizing, professionalizing, and expanding in attempt to reach an international audience. Overseas, Beijing also attempts to impact local media, civil society, and politics by having Chinese firms or individuals with close links buy up local media outlets, by signing content-sharing deals with local media, by expanding China's social media giants, and by controlling the wireless and wired technology through which information now flows, among other efforts. In Beijing's Global Media Offensive - a major analysis of how China is attempting to build a media and information superpower around the world, and how this media power integrates with other forms of Chinese influence - Joshua Kurlantzick focuses on how all of this is playing out in both China's immediate neighborhood - Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand - and also in the United States and many other parts of the world. He traces the ways in which China is trying to build an information and influence superpower, but also critically examines the new conventional wisdom that Beijing has enjoyed great success with these efforts. While China has worked hard to build a global media and information superpower, it often has failed to reap gains from its efforts, and has undermined itself with overly assertive, alienating diplomacy. Still, Kurlantzick contends, China's media, information and political influence campaigns will continue to expand and adapt, helping Beijing exports its political model and protect the ruling Party, and potentially damaging press freedoms, human rights, and democracy abroad. An authoritative account of how this sophisticated and multi-pronged campaign is unfolding, Beijing's Global Media Offensive provides a new window into China's attempts to make itself an information superpower.

'Wry, readable and often astonishing ... nimbly combines breadth and sweep with fine-grained attention to detail. The result is a provocative and absorbing history of the United States' NEW YORK TIMES

For a country that has always denied having dreams of empire, the United States owns a lot of overseas territory.

America has always prided itself on being a champion of sovereignty and independence. We know it has spread its money, language and culture across the world – but we still think of it as a contained territory, framed by Canada above, Mexico below, and oceans either side. Nothing could be further from the truth.

How to Hide an Empire tells the story of the United States outside the United States – from nineteenth-century conquests like Alaska, Hawai‘i, the Philippines and Puerto Rico, to the catalogue of islands, archipelagos and military bases dotted around the globe over which the Stars and Stripes flies. Many are thousands of miles from the mainland; all are central to its history.

But the populations of these territories, despite being subject to America’s government, cannot vote for it; they have often fought America’s wars, but they do not enjoy the rights of full citizens. These forgotten episodes cast American history, and its present, in a revealing new light. The birth control pill, chemotherapy, plastic, Godzilla, the Beatles, the name America itself – you can’t understand the histories of any of thesewithout understanding territorial empire.

Full of surprises, and driven by an original conception of what empire and globalisation mean today, How to Hide an Empire is a major and compulsively readable work of history.

In the decades since the end of the Second World War, it has been widely assumed that the western model of liberal democracy and free trade is the way the world should be governed. However, events in the early years of the twenty-first century – first, the 2003 war with Iraq and its chaotic aftermath and, second, the financial crash of 2008 – have threatened the general acceptance that continued progress under the benign (or sometimes not so benign) gaze of the western powers is the only way forwards. And as America turns inwards and Europe is beset by austerity politics and populist nationalism, the post-war consensus looks less and less secure. But is this really the worst of times?

In a forensic examination of the world we now live in, acclaimed historian Michael Burleigh sets out to answer that question. Who could have imagined that China would champion globalization and lead the battle on climate change? Or that post-Soviet Russia might present a greater threat to the world’s stability than ISIS? And while we may be on the cusp of still more dramatic change, perhaps the risks will – in time – bring not only change but a wholly positive transformation.

Incisive, robust and always insightful, The Best of Times, The Worst of Times is both a dazzling tour d’horizon of the world as it is today and a surprisingly optimistic vision of the world as it might become.

This book examines the problems of boundary demarcation and its impact on territorial disputes, and offers techniques to manage and resolve the resulting conflicts.

Historically, most civil conflicts and internal wars have been directly related to boundary or territorial disputes. Cross-border discord directly affects the sustenance and welfare of local populations, often resulting in disease, impoverishment, and environmental damage as well as creating refugees. Although the impact of territorial disputes is great, they can often be settled through bilateral, and sometimes multilateral, agreements or international arbitration.

This book sets out to probe into the problems of existing techniques on boundary demarcation and to test their possible impacts on boundary and territorial disputes. Various factors and their influences on cross-border tensions are tested, either qualitatively or quantitatively. After close examination of dozens of the most significant cases, the book presents various alternative solutions to the achievement of cross-border cooperation in disputed territories. An art of avoiding war is included within the book, comprising six key schemes and five negotiating techniques. The comparative advantages, costs and benefits of each of these is analyzed and evaluated.

This book will help guide practitioners in territorial disputes and will be of interest to students of conflict management, international security, peace and conflict studies, political violence and IR in general."

By delving into the history of geopolitics and bringing us up to date with cutting-edge case studies looking at infrastructure, terrain, and maps, this book will dispel simplistic and misleading notions about the nature of how humans interact with the environment. Stops on the way will include critical geopolitics, religious geopolitics, popular geopolitics, feminist geopolitics, and, newest of all, critical quantitative geopolitics. More importantly, it uncovers new areas of research for the next generation of researchers, showing how critical and quantitative methods can be applied to look at how geography and war relate to diverse areas such as disease, sport, dispossession, and immigration.

Between January and September 2019, the government of Kazakhstan carried out five humanitarian missions to repatriate more than 600 of its citizens from Syria. Thirty-three were adult males; the rest were women and children. The women had left Kazakhstan to become part of Islamic State - either out of personal conviction, or at the request of their jihadi husbands. Some of the children had gone with them. Others had been born amidst the horror of the war in Syria and Iraq, and the consequences of violent ideology; they knew nothing else of life. Collectively, these missions were known as Operation: Jusan (the jusan shrub, or wormwood, is symbolic for Kazkahs of home on the steppe). Erlan Karin's involvement took him from the planning stages to the extensive de-radicalisation and rehabilitation programmes that followed the airlifts. Here he reveals the full story of a high-stakes mission that required sensitive diplomacy, meticulous timing and great courage. Drawing on extensive first-hand accounts from the returnees, Karin also examines their motives in joining the would-be Caliphate, and the role of women and children within it, finally weighing up the risks of returning trained terrorists to their mother country.

Against the backdrop of climate change and tectonic political shifts in world politics, this handbook provides an overview of the most crucial geopolitical and security related issues in the Arctic. It discusses established shareholder's policies in the Arctic - those of Russia, Canada, the USA, Denmark, and Norway - as well as the politics and interests of other significant or future stakeholders, including China and India. Furthermore, it explains the economic situation and the legal framework that governs the Arctic, and the claims that Arctic states have made in order to expand their territories and exclusive economic zones. While illustrating the collaborative approach, represented by institutions such as the Arctic council, which has often been described as an exceptional institution in this region, the contributing authors examine potential resource and power conflicts between Arctic nations, due to competing interests. The authors also address topics such as changing alliances between Arctic nations, new sea lines of communication, technological shifts, and eventually the return to power politics in the area. Written by experts on international security studies and the Arctic, as well as practitioners from government institutions and international organizations, the book provides an invaluable source of information for anyone interested in geopolitical shifts and security issues in the High North.

Conventional warfare-clashes between large military forces-defined twentieth-century power. But today, facing a dominant American military, principal adversaries Russia, China and Iran, have adopted a new style of competition. Cyber attacks, covert action, proxy conflicts, information and disinformation campaigns, espionage and economic coercion-these are the tools of irregular or asymmetric warfare, which will increasingly reshape international politics. In Three Dangerous Men, defence expert Seth G. Jones profiles pioneers of irregular warfare in Moscow, Beijing and Tehran who adapted American techniques and made huge gains without waging traditional warfare. Drawing on interviews with dozens of US military, diplomatic and intelligence officials, such as CIA directors Michael Hayden and David Petraeus, the author demonstrates why the US abandoned its own irregular capabilities and is thus steadily losing ground to its global adversaries. Jones argues the US must significantly alter how it thinks about-and engages in-competition before it is too late.

A critical look at how the world is responding to China's rise, and what this means for America and the world. China is advancing its own interests with increasing aggression. From its Belt and Road Initiative linking Asia and Europe, to its "Made in China 2025" strategy to dominate high-tech industries, to its significant economic reach into Africa and Latin America, the regime is rapidly expanding its influence around the globe. Many fear that China's economic clout, tech innovations, and military power will allow it to remake the world in its own authoritarian image. But despite all these strengths, a future with China in charge is far from certain. Rich and poor, big and small, countries around the world are recognizing that engaging China produces new strategic vulnerabilities to their independence and competitiveness. How China Loses tells the story of China's struggles to overcome new risks and endure the global backlash against its assertive reach. Combining on-the-ground reportage with incisive analysis, Luke Patey argues that China's predatory economic agenda, headstrong diplomacy, and military expansion undermine its global ambitions to dominate the global economy and world affairs. In travels to Africa, Latin America, East Asia and Europe, his encounters with activists, business managers, diplomats, and thinkers reveal the challenges threatening to ground China's rising power. At a time when views are fixated on the strategic competition between China and the United States, Patey's work shows how the rest of the world will shape the twenty-first century in pushing back against China's overreach and domineering behavior. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries began to confront their political differences and economic and security challenges with China and realize the diversity and possibility for cooperation in the world today.

'This elegantly written, erudite book is essential reading for all of us, whatever our identifications' - Lynne Segal Antisemitism is one of the most controversial topics of our time. The public, academics, journalists, activists and Jewish people themselves are divided over its meaning. Antony Lerman shows that this is a result of a 30-year process of redefinition of the phenomenon, casting Israel, problematically defined as the 'persecuted collective Jew', as one of its main targets. This political project has taken the notion of the 'new antisemitism' and codified it in the flawed International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's 'working definition' of antisemitism. This text is the glue holding together an international network comprising the Israeli government, pro-Israel advocacy groups, Zionist organisations, Jewish communal defence bodies and sympathetic governments fighting a war against those who would criticise Israel. The consequences of this redefinition have been alarming, supressing free speech on Palestine/Israel, legitimising Islamophobic right-wing forces, and politicising principled opposition to antisemitism.

On October 1, 2009, the People's Republic of China (PRC) celebrated the 60th anniversary of its founding. And what an eventful and tumultuous six decades it had been. During that time, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), China was transformed from one of the world's poorest countries into the world's fastest growing major economy, and from a weak state barely able to govern or protect its own territory to a rising power that is challenging the United States for global influence. Over those same years, the PRC also experienced the most deadly famine in human history, caused largely by the actions and inactions of its political leaders. Not long after, there was a collapse of government authority that pushed the country to the brink of (and in some places actually into) civil war and anarchy. Today, China is, for the most part, peaceful, prospering, and proud. This is the China that was on display for the world to see during the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The CCP maintains a firm grip on power through a combination of popular support largely based on its recent record of promoting rapid economic growth and harsh repression of political opposition. Yet, the party and country face serious challenges on many fronts, including a slowing economy, environmental desecration, pervasive corruption, extreme inequalities, and a rising tide of social protest. The third edition of Politics in China has been extensively revised, thoroughly updated, and includes a new chapter on the internet and Politics in China. It is an authoritative introduction to how the world's most populous nation and rapidly rising global power is governed today. Written by leading China scholars, the book's chapters offers accessible overviews of major periods in China's modern political history from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, key topics in contemporary Chinese politics, and developments in four important areas located on China's geographic periphery: Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

***Winner of the L.H.M. Ling Outstanding First Book Prize 2020*** ***Shortlisted for the Bread and Roses Award 2020*** Since the first atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima, the history of nuclear warfare has been tangled with the spaces and places of scientific research and weapons testing, armament and disarmament, pacifism and proliferation. Nuclear geography gives us the tools to understand these events, and the extraordinary human cost of nuclear weapons. Disarming Doomsday explores the secret history of nuclear weapons by studying the places they build and tear apart, from Los Alamos to Hiroshima. It looks at the legacy of nuclear imperialism from weapons testing on Christmas Island and across the South Pacific, as well as the lasting harm this has caused to indigenous communities and the soldiers that conducted the tests. For the first time, these complex geographies are tied together. Disarming Doomsday takes us forward, describing how geographers and geotechnology continue to shape nuclear war, and, perhaps, help to prevent it.

We owe it to our fellow humans - and other species - to save them from the catastrophic harm caused by climate change. Philosopher Elizabeth Cripps approaches climate justice not just as an abstract idea but as something that should motivate us all. Using clear reasoning and poignant examples, starting from irrefutable science and uncontroversial moral rules, she explores our obligations to each other and to the non-human world, unravels the legacy of colonialism and entrenched racism, and makes the case for immediate action. The second half of the book looks at solutions. Who should pay the bill for climate action? Who must have a say? How can we hold multinational companies, organisations - even nations - to account? Cripps argues powerfully that climate justice goes beyond political polarization. Climate activism is a moral duty, not a political choice.

In this urgent and timely book, Patrick Cockburn writes the first draft of the history of the current crisis in the Middle East. Here he charts the period from the recapture of Mosul in 2017 to Turkey's attack on Kurdish territory in November 2019, and recounts the new phase in the wars of disintegration that have plagued the region, leading to the assassination of Iranian General Sulemani. Cockburn offers panoramic on-the-ground analysis as well as a lifetime's study of the region. As author of The Rise of Islamic State, and the Age of Jihad, he has proved to be leading, critical commentator of US intervention and the chaos it has wrecked/ And here he shows how, since Trump entered the White House promising an end to the Forever War, peace appears a distant possibility with the continuation of conflict in Syria, Saudi Arabia's violent intervention in the Yemen, the fall of the Kurds, riots in Baghdad, and the continued aggression towards Iran. While ISIS has been defeated, it is not clear whether it has disappeared from the region. Trump's policies has appeared to pour petrol on the flames, emboldening the other superpowers involved in the proxy wars. Following the collapse of the deal with Iran, and the threat of war crimes, is a new balance of power possible?

Now in a thoroughly revised edition, this innovative and engaging text surveys the field of popular geopolitics, exploring the relationship between popular culture and international relations from a geographical perspective. Jason Dittmer and Daniel Bos connect global issues with the questions of identity and subjectivity that we feel as individuals, arguing that who we think we are influences how we understand the world. Building on the strengths of the first edition, each chapter focuses on a specific theme-such as representation, audience, and affect-by explaining the concept and then outlining some of the emerging debates that have revolved around it. New and updated case studies-including heritage and social media-help illustrate the significance of the concepts and capture the ways popular culture shapes our understandings of geopolitics within everyday life. Students will enjoy the text's accessibility and colorful examples, and instructors will appreciate the way the book brings together a diverse, multidisciplinary literature and makes it understandable and relevant.

The unprecedented geographic and socioeconomic mobility of twentieth-century America was accompanied by a major reshuffling of political support in many parts of the country. Yet at the dawn of the new century these local and regional movements are still poorly understood. How can we account for persistent political regionalism and the sectional changes that have radically altered the nation's political landscape, from the Sun Belt to the Rust Belt? "Patchwork Nation" retrieves this lost knowledge, restoring geography to its central role in our nation's political behavior.

"A primer on the importance of regional identity in the electoral system. ... [A]nyone interested in learning more about how America's diversity drives its political systems would do well to take a spin through Patchwork Nation."
---Meg Kinnard, "NationalJournal.com"
"Location, location, location. What matters in politics is not just who the voters are, but where they are. Just ask Al Gore. Or read this book, a compelling demonstration that geography is often destiny."
---Bill Schneider, Senior Political Analyst, "CNN"
"This accessible and well-written book challenges us to reflect on the role that political context plays in shaping the vote. By tracing how regional politics evolves over time within and across states, Gimpel and Schuknecht have revived the important but often neglected field of political geography."
---Donald Green, Yale University
"In the spirit of V. O. Key, Gimpel and Schuknecht make a fundamental contribution. They demonstrate that states and regions are not simply important as units of aggregation, but rather as complex political arenas with profound consequences forprocesses of democratic politics both within and beyond their boundaries."
---Robert Huckfeldt, University of California, Davis

Exploring the story of Africa's contemporary history and politics through the lens of peacekeeping, this concise and accessible book, based on over a decade of research across ten countries, focuses not on peacekeeping in Africa but, rather, peacekeeping by Africans. Going beyond the question of why post-conflict states contribute troops to peacekeeping efforts, Jonathan Fisher and Nina Wilen demonstrate how peacekeeping is - and has been - weaved into Africa's national, regional and international politics more broadly, as well as what implications this has for how we should understand the continent, its history and its politics. In doing so, and drawing on fieldwork undertaken in every region of the continent, Fisher and Wilen explain how profoundly this involvement in peacekeeping has shaped contemporary Africa.

In July 2010, Wikileaks published Cablegate, one of the biggest leaks in the history of the US military, including evidence for war crimes and torture. In the aftermath Julian Assange, the founder and spokesman of Wikileaks, found himself at the centre of a media storm, accused of hacking and later sexual assault. He spent the next seven years in asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, fearful that he would be extradited to Sweden to face the accusations of assault and then sent to US. In 2019, Assange was handed over to the British police and, on the same day, the U.S. demanded his extradition. They threatened him with up to 175 years in prison for alleged espionage and computer fraud. At this point, Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, started his investigation into how the US and UK governments were working together to ensure a conviction. His findings are explosive, revealing that Assange has faced grave and systematic due process violations, judicial bias, collusion and manipulated evidence. He has been the victim of constant surveillance, defamation and threats. Melzer also gathered together consolidated medical evidence that proves that the prison has suffered prolonged psychological torture. Melzer's compelling investigation puts the UK state into the dock, showing how, through secrecy, impunity and, crucially, public indifference, unchecked power reveals a deeply undemocratic system. Furthermore, the Assange case sets a dangerous precedent: once telling the truth becomes a crime, censorship and tyranny will inevitably follow.

Power Systems is the latest collection of searing insights from intellectual superstar Noam Chomsky. In this new collection of conversations, conducted from 2010 to 2012, Noam Chomsky explores the most immediate and urgent concerns: the future of democracy in the Arab world, the implications of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the 'class war' fought by U.S. business interests against working people and the poor, the breakdown of mainstream political institutions and the rise of the far right. The latest volume from a long-established, trusted partnership, this collection shows once again that no interlocutor engages with Chomsky more effectively than David Barsamian. These interviews will inspire a new generation of readers, as well as longtime Chomsky fans eager for his latest thinking on the many crises we now confront, both at home and abroad. They confirm that Chomsky is an unparalleled resource for anyone seeking to understand our world today. Praise for Noam Chomsky: 'One of the finest minds of the twentieth century' New Yorker 'Noam Chomsky is a global phenomenon . . . he may be the most widely read American voice on foreign policy on the planet today' New York Times Book Review 'Will there ever again be a public intellectual who commands the attention of so many across the planet?' New Statesman 'The west's most prominent critic of US imperialism . . . the closest thing in the English-speaking world to an intellectual superstar' Guardian Noam Chomsky is the author of numerous bestselling political books, including Hegemony or Survival, Failed States, Interventions, What We Say Goes, Hopes and Prospects and, most recently, Occupy, all of which are published by Hamish Hamilton/Penguin. He is a professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT, and is widely credited with having revolutionized modern linguistics. David Barsamian is the award-winning founder and director of Alternative Radio. He has authored several books of interviews with leading political thinkers. www.alternativeradio.org