A deeply researched international history and exemplary study (New York Times Book Review) of how a divided world ended and our present world was fashioned, as the world drifts toward another great time of choosing. Two of America's leading scholar-diplomats, Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, have combed sources in several languages, interviewed leading figures, and drawn on their own firsthand experience to bring to life the choices that molded the contemporary world. Zeroing in on the key moments of decision, the might-have-beens, and the human beings working through them, they explore both what happened and what could have happened, to show how one world ended and another took form. Beginning in the late 1970s and carrying into the present, they focus on the momentous period between 1988 and 1992, when an entire world system changed, states broke apart, and societies were transformed. Such periods have always been accompanied by terrible wars -- but not this time. This is also a story of individuals coping with uncertainty. They voice their hopes and fears. They try out desperate improvisations and careful designs. These were leaders who grew up in a postwar world, who tried to fashion something better, more peaceful, more prosperous, than the damaged, divided world in which they had come of age. New problems are putting their choices, and the world they made, back on the operating table. It is time to recall not only why they made their choices, but also just how great nations can step up to great challenges. Timed for the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, To Build a Better World is an authoritative depiction of contemporary statecraft. It lets readers in on the strategies and negotiations, nerve-racking risks, last-minute decisions, and deep deliberations behind the dramas that changed the face of Europe -- and the world -- forever.

Windfall is the boldest profile of the world's energy resources since Daniel Yergin's The Quest, asserting that the new energy abundance--due to oil and gas resources once deemed too expensive--is transforming the geo-political order and is boosting American power. "Riveting and comprehensive...a smart, deeply researched primer on the subject." --The New York Times Book ReviewAs a new administration focuses on driving American energy production, O'Sullivan's "refreshing and illuminating" (Foreign Policy) Windfall describes how new energy realities have profoundly affected the world of international relations and security. New technologies led to oversupplied oil markets and an emerging natural gas glut. This did more than drive down prices--it changed the structure of markets and altered the way many countries wield power and influence. America's new energy prowess has global implications. It transforms politics in Russia, Europe, China, and the Middle East. O'Sullivan considers the landscape, offering insights and presenting consequences for each region's domestic stability as energy abundance upends traditional partnerships, creating opportunities for cooperation. The advantages of this new abundance are greater than its downside for the US: it strengthens American hard and soft power. This is "a powerful argument for how America should capitalise on the 'New Energy Abundance'" (The Financial Times) and an explanation of how new energy realities create a strategic environment to America's advantage.

Violence against women has been a focus of transnational advocacy networks since the early 1980s, and the United Nations has, in intervening years, passed a series of resolutions to condemn, prevent, investigate, and punish this violence. Member states have committed to implementing this agenda. Yet, despite this buy-in at the global level, implementation at the domestic level remains uneven. Scholars have found that states are more likely to translate global standards into national laws when pressured by women's movements and international organizations. However, a dearth of research on the implementation - at the national and street-levels - of these international women's rights norms hampers an understanding of what happens after states pass laws. In Africa, where most states have not prioritized the prevention of violence against women, and the majority of perpetrators act with impunity, there is a major implementation gap. This gap is acute in some post-conflict countries on the continent. Thus, despite the presence of laws on various forms of violence against women in most African countries, justice remains inaccessible to most victims. In Global Norms and Local Action, Peace A. Medie studies the domestic implementation of international norms by examining how and why two post-conflict states in Africa, Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire, have differed in their responses to rape and domestic violence. Specifically, she looks at the roles of the United Nations and women's movements in the establishment of specialized criminal justice sector agencies, and the referral of cases for prosecution. She argues that variation in implementation in Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire can be explained by the levels of international and domestic pressures that states face and by the favorability of domestic political and institutional conditions. Medie's study is based on interviews with over 300 policymakers, bureaucrats, staff at the UN and NGOs, police officers, and survivors of domestic violence and rape - an unprecedented depth of research into women's rights and gender violence norm implementation in post-conflict countries. Furthermore, through her interviews with survivors of violence, Medie explains not only how states implement anti-rape and anti-domestic violence norms, but also how women experience and are affected by these norms. She draws on this research to recommend that states adopt a holistic approach to addressing violence against women.

A powerful personal testimony and an urgent call for Israel to change direction, from an unexpected source: the former director of the internal security service, Shin Bet.

Raised on a kibbutz by parents who had fled the Holocaust, Ami Ayalon’s life exemplified the Zionist dream. His commitment to his country propelled a meteoric career, culminating in being named commander of the navy and receiving the Medal of Valour, Israel’s highest military decoration. All the time, he remained a staunch supporter of his country’s policies.

Then he was appointed director of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, and the unexpected happened. Forced to try and understand the lives and motivations of Palestinians for the first time, he gained empathy for ‘the enemy’ and learned that when Israel carries out anti-terrorist operations in a political context of hopelessness, the Palestinian public will support violence, because they have nothing to lose.

He came to understand that his patriotic life had blinded him to the self-defeating nature of policies that have undermined Israel’s civil society while heaping humiliation upon its neighbours. In this deeply personal journey of discovery, Ami Ayalon seeks input and perspectives from Palestinians and Israelis whose experiences differ from his own, and draws radical conclusions about what Israel must do to achieve relative peace and security.

Moscow has progressively replaced geopolitics with geoeconomics as power is recognised to derive from the state's ability to establish a privileged position in strategic markets and transportation corridors. The objective is to bridge the vast Eurasian continent to reposition Russia from the periphery of Europe and Asia to the centre of a new constellation. Moscow's 'Greater Europe' ambition of the previous decades produced a failed Western-centric foreign policy culminating in excessive dependence on the West. Instead of constructing Gorbachev's 'Common European Home', the 'leaning-to-one-side' approach deprived Russia of the market value and leverage needed to negotiate a more favourable and inclusive Europe. Eurasian integration offers Russia the opportunity to address this 'overreliance' on the West by using the Russia's position as a Eurasian state to advance its influence in Europe. Offering an account steeped in Russian economic statecraft and power politics, this book offers a rare glimpse into the dominant narratives of Russian strategic culture. It explains how the country's outlook adjusts to the ongoing realignment towards Asia while engaging in a parallel assessment of Russia's interactions with other significant actors. The author offers discussion both on Russian responses and adaptations to the current power transition and the ways in which the economic initiatives promoted by Moscow in its project for a 'Greater Eurasia' reflect the entrepreneurial foreign policy strategy of the country.

The world's fastest growing continent demographically, Africa displays nearly all the features of today's global security challenges: armed conflict, terrorism, irregular migration, organized crime, great power competition, public discontent, and economic turbulence. John Siko and Jonah Victor present their lessons from professional practice and pedagogical approach from the classroom in a concise guidebook that leads students and professionals through the most important issues, dynamics, challenges, and considerations for analysing and planning responses to security developments in Africa. This book provides issue-by-issue primers on the causes and consequences of Africa's security challenges that include: -how to anticipate security problems across current political and economic events -how to analyse African security institutions and military capabilities -how to understand historical trends across the African continent and appreciate unique variations among countries. -how to identify key drivers of future trends -how to connect security analysis to policy planning Learning is supported through the following features: - Thematic chapters which are optimized to help the reader quickly connect to the key concepts and analytic frameworks within the field. - The most relevant historical case studies, enabling students to engage in sophisticated analysis and discussion. - Connections and contrasts between the situations in North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, which are traditionally studied separately. - Special sections on understanding race and ethnicity, and advice on traveling in Africa. - Chapter-end checklists of key questions to enable practical engagement with the topics covered.

Starting with 1809, Sweden's 'year zero' and a period of deep national trauma, this book studies the relationship between Sweden and its environment, and foreign policy and overlapping security and defence policies. The book displays the pattern to Swedish foreign policy behavior, at times solidarity and involvement, at times disengagement and isolation, depending on the actions of larger powers in the neighbourhood. The author examines Sweden's independence from, dependence on, orientation towards, and then acquiescence in Europe, and the release of a 'revolution' in Swedish foreign policy from the early 1990s. The author also studies a process of steady Swedish Europeanization and the emergence of a post-neutral stance. The book's endpoint is the European Parliamentary election 2019, which resulted in a stemming of the populist tide in Sweden which had grown from disconnection between a Europe-reluctant electorate and Europe-enthusiastic politicians. The book also looks towards Swedish policy ambitions and prospects for the 2020s and continuation of the 'revolution'.

How to renew American leadership in a turbulent, polarized, and postdominant world "A worthy contribution to the public debate on America's role in the world and a tonic for our times."-John Kerry, Former U.S. Secretary of State "Imbrie mounts a well-informed examination of the country's ills and offers a discerning perspective on its future paths . . . A thoughtful consideration of myriad challenges facing the U.S." -Kirkus Reviews Is America fated to decline as a great power? Can it recover? With absorbing insight and fresh perspective, foreign policy expert Andrew Imbrie provides a road map for bolstering American leadership in an era of turbulence abroad and deepening polarization at home. This is a book about choices: the tough policy trade-offs that political leaders need to make to reinvigorate American money, might, and clout. In the conventional telling, the United States is either destined for continued dominance or doomed to irreversible decline. Imbrie argues instead that the United States must adapt to changing global dynamics and compete more wisely. Drawing on the author's own experience as an adviser to Secretary of State John Kerry, as well as on interviews and comparative studies of the rise and fall of nations, this book offers a sharp look at American statecraft and the United States' place in the world today.

Syria has been at the center of world news since 2011, following the beginnings of a popular uprising in the country and its subsequent violent and murderous repression by the Assad regime. Eight years on, Joseph Daher analyzes the resilience of the regime and the failings of the uprising, while also taking a closer look at the counter revolutionary processes that have been undermining the uprising from without and within. Joseph Daher is the author of Hezbollah: The Political Economy of the Party of God, and founder of the blog Syria Freedom Forever.

***SHORTLISTED FOR FT & MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020*** FT Best books of 2020: Business 'In a world on fire, status quo is not a great option. Henderson rightfully argues for the refoundation of capitalism and offers thought-provoking ideas on what needs to be done to address some of the world's greatest challenges.' Hubert Joly, former chairman and CEO, BestBuy ________________ What if business could help solve the greatest problems of our time? Free market capitalism is one of humanity's greatest inventions, and the greatest source of prosperity the world has ever seen. But it's also on the verge of destroying the planet and destabilizing society in its single-minded pursuit of maximizing shareholder value. Rebecca Henderson, McArthur University Professor at Harvard University, argues for a new framework; one that can simultaneously make a positive societal impact by confronting the realities of the environment and the need to address social and economic inequality, while also delivering sustained financial performance to ensure economic growth that brings prosperity and wellbeing to society as a whole. Drawing on the lessons of companies from around the world who are acting on this responsibility - who are not only surviving but are thriving, becoming leaders in their industries and beginning to drive the wheels of change - Professor Henderson proves that this is not only a moral imperative for business but also the only way to remain competitive in our changing world. ________________ 'You need to read Rebecca Henderson's Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire. This is a book for the realist with a heart.' Arthur C. Brooks, president emeritus, American Enterprise Institute; senior fellow, Harvard Business School; and author of Love Your Enemies 'Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire is a breath of fresh air. Written in lively prose, easily accessible to lay readers, and chock-full of interesting case studies, Henderson comprehensively surveys what we need to do to secure a workable future.' Larry Kramer, president, Hewlett Foundation

Partition-the physical division of territory along ethno-religious lines into separate nation-states-is often presented as a successful political "solution" to ethnic conflict. In the twentieth century, at least three new political entities-the Irish Free State, the Dominions (later Republics) of India and Pakistan, and the State of Israel-emerged as results of partition. This volume offers the first collective history of the concept of partition, tracing its emergence in the aftermath of the First World War and locating its genealogy in the politics of twentieth-century empire and decolonization. Making use of the transnational framework of the British Empire, which presided over the three major partitions of the twentieth century, contributors draw out concrete connections among the cases of Ireland, Pakistan, and Israel-the mutual influences, shared personnel, economic justifications, and material interests that propelled the idea of partition forward and resulted in the violent creation of new post-colonial political spaces. In so doing, the volume seeks to move beyond the nationalist frameworks that served in the first instance to promote partition as a natural phenomenon.

George Soros is among the world's most prominent public figures. He is one of the history's most successful investors and his philanthropy, led by the Open Society Foundations, has donated over $14 billion to promote democracy and human rights in more than 120 countries. But in recent years, Soros has become the focus of sustained right-wing attacks in the United States and around the world based on his commitment to open society, progressive politics and his Jewish background. In this brilliant and spirited book, Soros offers a compendium of his philosophy, a clarion call-to-arms for the ideals of an open society: freedom, democracy, rule of law, human rights, social justice, and social responsibility as a universal idea. In this age of nationalism, populism, anti-Semitism, and the spread of authoritarian governments, Soros's mission to support open societies is as urgent as it is important.

The area between two countries, or at the edges of a civilization, has been called many things--frontier, backcountry, and most recently, the borderland. Even though borderlands are frequently located at the peripheries of empires and nations, they nevertheless shape how centers of national power-cities, national capitols, and so forth-have defined their relation to issues such as territorial expansion, sovereignty, immigration, labor, community formation, difference, and race and ethnicity. And in this global landscape, the borderlands area can teach a lot about how societies interact and how nations came to be as they are. North American Borderlands introduces students to exemplary recent scholarship on borderlands, focusing on borderland relationships--transnational or trans-cultural explorations of the many peoples and perspectives within borderlands regions.

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.

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.

The events of the Arab Uprisings posed an existential challenge to sovereign power across the Middle East. Whilst popular movements resulted in the toppling of authoritarian rule in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, other regimes were able to withstand these pressures. This book questions why some regimes fell whilst others were able to survive. Drawing on the work of political theorists such as Agamben and Arendt, Mabon explores the ways in which sovereign power is contested, resulting in the fragmentation of political projects across the region. Combining an innovative theoretical approach with interviews with people across the region and beyond, Mabon paints a picture of Middle Eastern politics dominated by elites seeking to maintain power and wealth, seemingly at whatever cost. This, for Mabon, is a consequence of the emergence and development of particular visions of political projects that harness or marginalise identities, communities, ideologies and faiths as mechanisms designed to ensure their survival. This book is essential reading for those interested in understanding why the uprisings took place, their geopolitical consequences, and why they are likely to happen again. -- .

Barack Obama's foreign policy has failed but the American strategic mind has not yet closed. In After Obama, Robert Singh examines how and why US influence has weakened and contributed to the erosion of the world America made, endangering international order and liberal values. A well-intentioned but naive strategy of engagement has encouraged US adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran to assert themselves while allowing Western alliances to fray. But, challenging claims of an inevitable American decline, Singh argues that US leadership is a matter of will as much as wallet. Despite partisan polarization at home and the rise of the rest abroad, Washington can renew American leadership and, through a New American Internationalism, pave a path to the restoration of global order. Timely and provocative, the book offers a powerful critique of the Obama Doctrine and a call for strategic resolution in place of 'leading from behind'.

The NATO occupation of Afghanistan is over, and a balance-sheet can be drawn. These essays on war and peace in the region reveal Tariq Ali at his sharpest and most prescient. Rarely has there been such an enthusiastic display of international unity as that which greeted the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Compared to Iraq, Afghanistan became the 'good war.' But a stalemate ensued, and the Taliban waited out the NATO contingents. Today, with the collapse of the puppet regime in Kabul, what does the future hold for a traumatised Afghan people? Will China become the dominant influence in the country? Tariq Ali has been following the wars on Afghanistan for forty years. He opposed Soviet military intervention in 1979, predicting disaster. He was also a fierce critic of its NATO sequel, 'Operation Enduring Freedom'. In a series of trenchant commentaries, he described the tragedies inflicted on Afghanistan, as well as the semi-Talibanisation and militarisation of neighbouring Pakistan. Most of his predictions proved accurate. The Forty Year War in Afghanistan brings together the best of his writings and includes a new introduction.

A wide-ranging rethinking of the many factors that comprise the making of American Grand Strategy. What is grand strategy? What does it aim to achieve? And what differentiates it from normal strategic thought-what, in other words, makes it "grand"? In answering these questions, most scholars have focused on diplomacy and warfare, so much so that "grand strategy" has become almost an equivalent of "military history." The traditional attention paid to military affairs is understandable, but in today's world it leaves out much else that could be considered political, and therefore strategic. It is in fact possible to consider, and even reach, a more capacious understanding of grand strategy, one that still includes the battlefield and the negotiating table while expanding beyond them. Just as contemporary world politics is driven by a wide range of non-military issues, the most thorough considerations of grand strategy must consider the bases of peace and security-including gender, race, the environment, and a wide range of cultural, social, political, and economic issues. Rethinking American Grand Strategy assembles a roster of leading historians to examine America's place in the world. Its innovative chapters re-examine familiar figures, such as John Quincy Adams, George Kennan, and Henry Kissinger, while also revealing the forgotten episodes and hidden voices of American grand strategy. They expand the scope of diplomatic and military history by placing the grand strategies of public health, race, gender, humanitarianism, and the law alongside military and diplomatic affairs to reveal hidden strategists as well as strategies.

Barack Obama's foreign policy has failed but the American strategic mind has not yet closed. In After Obama, Robert Singh examines how and why US influence has weakened and contributed to the erosion of the world America made, endangering international order and liberal values. A well-intentioned but naive strategy of engagement has encouraged US adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran to assert themselves while allowing Western alliances to fray. But, challenging claims of an inevitable American decline, Singh argues that US leadership is a matter of will as much as wallet. Despite partisan polarization at home and the rise of the rest abroad, Washington can renew American leadership and, through a New American Internationalism, pave a path to the restoration of global order. Timely and provocative, the book offers a powerful critique of the Obama Doctrine and a call for strategic resolution in place of 'leading from behind'.

Rather than a natural frontier between natural enemies, this book approaches the English Channel as a shared space, which mediated the multiple relations between France and England in the long eighteenth century, in both a metaphorical and a material sense. Instead of arguing that Britain's insularity kept it spatially and intellectually segregated from the Continent, Renaud Morieux focuses on the Channel as a zone of contact. The 'narrow sea' was a shifting frontier between states and a space of exchange between populations. This richly textured history shows how the maritime border was imagined by cartographers and legal theorists, delimited by state administrators and transgressed by migrants. It approaches French and English fishermen, smugglers and merchants as transnational actors, whose everyday practices were entangled. The variation of scales of analysis enriches theoretical and empirical understandings of Anglo-French relations, and reassesses the question of Britain's deep historical connections with Europe.

Are we losing a war few of us realize we're fighting? Jim Sciutto, CNN's Chief National Security Correspondent, reveals the invisible fronts that make up 21st century warfare, from disinformation campaigns to advanced satellite weapons. Poisoned dissidents. Election interference. Armed invasions. International treaties thrown into chaos. Secret military buildups. Hackers and viruses. Weapons deployed in space. China and Russia (and Iran and North Korea) spark news stories by carrying out bold acts of aggression and violating international laws and norms. Isn't this just bad actors acting badly? That kind of thinking is outdated and dangerous. Emboldened by their successes, these countries are, in fact, waging a brazen, global war on the US and the West. This is a new Cold War, which will not be won by those who fail to realize they are fighting it. The enemies of the West understand that while they are unlikely to win a shooting war, they have another path to victory. And what we see as our greatest strengths-open societies, military innovation, dominance of technology on Earth and in space, longstanding leadership in global institutions-these countries are undermining or turning into weaknesses. In The Shadow War, CNN anchor and chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto provides us with a revealing and at times disturbing guide to this new international conflict. This Shadow War is already the greatest threat to America's national security, even though most Americans know little or nothing about it. With on-the-ground reporting from Ukraine to the South China Sea, from a sub under the Arctic to unprecedented access to America's Space Command, Sciutto draws on his deep knowledge, high-level contacts, and personal experience as a journalist and diplomat to paint the most comprehensive and vivid picture of a nation targeted by a new and disturbing brand of warfare. Thankfully, America is adapting and fighting back. In The Shadow War, Sciutto introduces readers to the dizzying array of soldiers, sailors, submariners and their commanders, space engineers, computer scientists, civilians, and senior intelligence officials who are on the front lines of this new kind of forever war. Intensive and disturbing, this invaluable and important work opens our eyes and makes clear that the war of the future is already here.

The NEBI Yearbook 2000 aims to provide a balanced picture of both the integrationist opportunities and disintegrationist pressures in the North European and Baltic Sea area - a region with over 50 million inhabitants and great economic and trading potentials. It brings together a wide range of scientific methods and perspectives in addition to a comprehensive statistical section with information found nowhere else. The result is a unique source of up-to-date knowledge of this increasingly important European region.

The Mexico-Guatemala border has emerged as a geopolitical hotspot of illicit flows of both goods and people. Contraband Corridor seeks to understand the border from the perspective of its long-term inhabitants, including petty smugglers of corn, clothing, and coffee. Challenging assumptions regarding security, trade, and illegality, Rebecca Berke Galemba details how these residents engage in and justify extralegal practices in the context of heightened border security, restricted economic opportunities, and exclusionary trade policies. Rather than assuming that extralegal activities necessarily threaten the state and formal economy, Galemba's ethnography illustrates the complex ways that the formal, informal, legal, and illegal economies intertwine. Smuggling basic commodities across the border provides a means for borderland peasants to make a living while neoliberal economic policies decimate agricultural livelihoods. Yet smuggling also exacerbates prevailing inequalities, obstructs the possibility of more substantive political and economic change, and provides low-risk economic benefits to businesses, state agents, and other illicit actors, often at the expense of border residents. Galemba argues that securitized neoliberalism values certain economic activities and actors while excluding and criminalizing others, even when the informal and illicit economy is increasingly one of the poor's only remaining options. Contraband Corridor contends that security, neoliberalism, and illegality are interdependent in complex ways, yet how they unfold depends on negotiations between diverse border actors.