The first book to tell the full story of American isolationism, from the founding era through the Trump presidency. In his Farewell Address of 1796, President George Washington admonished the young nation "to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world." Isolationism thereafter became one of the most influential political trends in American history. From the founding era until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States shunned strategic commitments abroad, making only brief detours during the Spanish-American War and World War I. Amid World War II and the Cold War, Americans abandoned isolationism; they tried to run the world rather than run away from it. But isolationism is making a comeback as Americans tire of foreign entanglement. In this definitive and magisterial analysis-the first book to tell the fascinating story of isolationism across the arc of American history-Charles Kupchan explores the enduring connection between the isolationist impulse and the American experience. He also refurbishes isolationism's reputation, arguing that it constituted dangerous delusion during the 1930s, but afforded the nation clear strategic advantages during its ascent. Kupchan traces isolationism's staying power to the ideology of American exceptionalism. Strategic detachment from the outside world was to protect the nation's unique experiment in liberty, which America would then share with others through the power of example. Since 1941, the United States has taken a much more interventionist approach to changing the world. But it has overreached, prompting Americans to rediscover the allure of nonentanglement and an America First foreign policy. The United States is hardly destined to return to isolationism, yet a strategic pullback is inevitable. Americans now need to find the middle ground between doing too much and doing too little.

The Habsburg Empire's grand strategy for outmaneuvering and outlasting stronger rivals in a complicated geopolitical world The Empire of Habsburg Austria faced more enemies than any other European great power. Flanked on four sides by rivals, it possessed few of the advantages that explain successful empires. Yet somehow Austria endured, outlasting Ottoman sieges, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. A. Wess Mitchell tells the story of how this cash-strapped, polyglot empire survived for centuries in Europe's most dangerous neighborhood without succumbing to the pressures of multisided warfare. He shows how the Habsburgs played the long game in geopolitics, corralling friend and foe alike into voluntarily managing the empire's lengthy frontiers and extending a benign hegemony across the turbulent lands of middle Europe. The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire offers lessons on how to navigate a messy geopolitical map, stand firm without the advantage of military predominance, and prevail against multiple rivals.

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.

War creates brutal landscapes of control and domination that embed historical differences, creating physical legacies of inequality and denial. "Contested Spaces" is a global study of sites of conflict, places of loss, fear, resistance and pilgrimage where the materiality of violence forcibly brings the past into the present. The collection draws together scholars from cultural history, cultural geography, art history, architecture, archaeology, media studies, international relations and American studies to examine a series of internationally significant sites and how they are inhabited, represented, witnessed and visited.

As the voting public continues to diversify across the United States, political candidates, and particularly white candidates, increasingly recognize the importance of making appeals to voters who do not look like themselves. As history has shown, this has been accomplished with varying degrees of success. During the 2016 election, for example, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders campaigned vociferously among Latino voters in Nevada's early primary, where nineteen percent of the Democratic caucus consisted of Latinos. Clinton released a campaign message to these voters stating that she was just like their abuela (or grandmother). The message, widely panned, came across as insincere, and Clinton, who otherwise performed well among Latinos nationally, lost by a wide margin to Sanders. On the other hand, in 2013, Bill de Blasio, campaigning for mayor of New York City, appeared with his black son in a commercial aimed against stop and frisk policies. His appeal came across as authentic, and he received a high level of support among black voters. In Campaigning in a Racially Diversifying America, Loren Collingwood develops a theory of Cross-Racial Electoral Mobilization (CRM) to explain why, when, and how candidates of one race or ethnicity act to mobilize voters of another race or ethnicity. Specifically, Collingwood examines how and when white candidates mobilize Latino voters, and why some candidates are more succesful than others. He argues that candidates strategize by weighing the potential costs and benefits of conducting CRM based on the size of the minority electorate (the benefit) and the overall level of white racial hostility (the cost). Extensive cross-racial mobilization is most likely to occur when elections are competitive, institutional barriers to the vote are low, candidates have previously developed a welcoming racial reputation with target voters, whites' attitudes are racially liberal, and the Latino electorate is large and growing. Moreover, candidates who can demonstrate cultural competence and do so repeatedly are much more likely to be successful at making such appeals. The book looks at CRM trends and case studies over the past seventy years to gauge how politics in various places have changed as the American electorate has diversified. It draws on the author's research in over thirty archives in nine states, candidate and survey data, and experimental approaches to assess causality in voter responses to candidate behavior.

Neutrality has, supposedly, long been a pillar of the Irish national identity. But examining the concept reveals it to be a vague, flimsy and elastic notion that, throughout history, various governments have been happy to stretch or, in some cases, abandon entirely. Today, warfare has expanded to include cyberattacks, environmental concerns, election interference and disinformation. If our traditional idea of warfare is changing, should our idea of neutrality change, too? In this timely and thought-provoking examination of a core tenet of Irish society, Conor Gallagher explores the practical and ethical implications of choosing a side. He asks, in the face of aggression, is it right to sit back and do nothing? And is it even possible to be neutral in such an interconnected world?

Writers, observers, and practitioners of international politics frequently invoke the term "geopolitics" to describe, explain, or analyze specific foreign policy issues and problems. Such generalized usage ignores the fact that geopolitics as a method of understanding international relations has a history that includes a common vocabulary, well-established if sometimes conflicting concepts, an extensive body of thought, and a recognized group of theorists and scholars. In Geopolitics, Francis P. Sempa presents a history of geopolitical thought and applies its classical analyses to Cold War and post-Cold War international relations.

While mindful of the impact of such concepts as "globalization" and the "information revolution" on our understanding of contemporary events, Sempa emphasizes traditional geopolitical theories in explaining the outcome of the Cold War. He shows that, the struggle between the Western allies and the Soviet empire was unique in its ideological component and nuclear standoff, the Cold War fits into a recurring geopolitical pattern. It can be seen as a consequence of competition between land powers and sea powers, and between a potential Eurasian hegemonic power and a coalition of states opposed to that would-be hegemony.

The collapse of the Soviet empire ended the most recent threat to global stability. Acting as a successor to the British Empire, the United States organized, funded, and led a grand coalition that successfully countered the Soviet quest for domination. No power or alliance posed an immediate threat to the global balance of power. Indeed, the end of the Cold War generated hopes for a "new world order" and predictions that economics would replace geopolitics as the driving force in international politics. Russian instability, the nuclear dimension of the India-Pakistan conflict, and Chinese bids for dominance have turned the Asia-Pacific region into what Mahan called "debatable and debated ground." Russia, Turkey, Iran, India, Pakistan, China, Japan, the Koreas, and the United States all have interests that collide in one or more of the areas of this region.

We are in the midst of an enormous global energy transition happening before our eyes. Alternative energy forms including solar, wind, water, and bio-fuels are challenging the established energy sources that have fuelled the industrial era for the past century. As we look to this century's energy future an examination of the past is important to understand how these choices will be made. What political, economic, and ethical lessons can be learned from how coal, oil, and natural gas became the power of the 20th century? Are those lessons instrumental in determining future decisions about emerging alternative energy choices? The opportunities and the risks involved in making, or not making these choices are enormous. Through case studies and examples of past and present development of energy sources, the story is told of the global energy industry. In its telling Energy, Economics, and Ethics wrestles with many of the difficult questions at the heart of the emerging global energy transition

We are in the midst of an enormous global energy transition happening before our eyes. Alternative energy forms including solar, wind, water, and bio-fuels are challenging the established energy sources that have fuelled the industrial era for the past century. As we look to this century's energy future an examination of the past is important to understand how these choices will be made. What political, economic, and ethical lessons can be learned from how coal, oil, and natural gas became the power of the 20th century? Are those lessons instrumental in determining future decisions about emerging alternative energy choices? The opportunities and the risks involved in making, or not making these choices are enormous. Through case studies and examples of past and present development of energy sources, the story is told of the global energy industry. In its telling Energy, Economics, and Ethics wrestles with many of the difficult questions at the heart of the emerging global energy transition

Calais has a long history of transient refugee settlements and is often narrated through the endeavour to 'sanitize' it by both the English and the French in their policy and media discourses. Calais and its Border Politics encapsulates the border politics of Calais as an entry port through the refugee settlements known as the 'Jungle'. By deconstructing how the jungle is a constant threat to the civilisation and sanity of Calais, the book traces the story of the jungle, both its revival and destruction as a recurrent narrative through the context of border politics. The book approaches Calais historically and through the key concept of the camp or the 'jungle' - a metaphor that becomes crucial to the inhuman approach to the settlement and in the justifications to destroy it continuously. The demolition and rebuilding of Calais also emphasises the denigration of humanity in the border sites. The authors offer a comprehensive insight into the making and unmaking of one of Europe's long-standing refugee camps. The book explores the history of refugee camps in Calais and provides an insight into its representation and governance over time. The book provides an interdisciplinary perspective, employing concepts of space making, human form and corporeality, as well as modes of representation of the 'Other' to narrate the story of Calais as a border space through time, up to its recent representations in the media. This book's exploration of the representation and governance of the contentious Calais camps will be an invaluable resource to students and scholars of forced migration, border politics, displacement, refugee crisis, camps and human trauma.

Borders represent an intriguing paradox as globalization continues to leap barriers at a vigorous pace, merging economies and cultures through world trade, economic integration, the mass media, the Internet, and increasingly mobile populations. At the same time, the political boundaries separating peoples remain pervasive and problematic. Borders and Border Politics in a Globalizing World offers a carefully selected group of readings to enhance student understanding of the complexities of border regions. The reader brings together key writings on the histories of borders, their social development, their politics, and the daily life that characterizes them. The authors place their analyses of these issues in an international context, stressing how borders influence, and how they are influenced by, global processes. The selections provide a window on our current understanding of human interactions at and along national and interethnic boundaries, interactions that will characterize borders and border politics for decades to come. Drawing on a worldwide set of case studies, this text divides border issues into seven thematic categories: borders as barriers; borders, migrants, and refugees; borders and partitioned groups; borders, perceptions and culture; borders and the environment; borders, goods, and services; and maritime and space borders. An excellent text for courses on boundaries, ethnicity, and international relations, this collection of cutting-edge information and analysis on borders and border politics in the context of ongoing globalization will shed light both upon international and subnational boundaries and upon the unfolding processes of globalization.

The democratic promise of Yemen's 2011 uprising quickly unravelled, triggering a shocking political and social crisis with serious implications for the future of the country and region. Fuelled by Arab and Western intervention, the infighting in Yemen descended into civil war, with hundreds of thousands of Yemenis killed, and millions facing starvation and deep social and political fragmentation. The people of Yemen face a desperate choice between the Huthi rebels on the one side and, on the other, a range of forces propped up by a Saudi-led coalition using Western arms. In her incisive, invaluable analysis, Helen Lackner uncovers the roots of the conflicts threatening the survival of the Yemeni state and its people. This fully updated edition features a new chapter on the problems of humanitarian aid in the country.

A impassioned defense of the European Union and a concise analysis of its present challenges and future In this provocative book, renowned public intellectual Ivan Krastev reflects on the future of the European Union-and its potential lack of a future. With far-right nationalist parties on the rise across the continent and the United Kingdom planning for Brexit, the European Union is in disarray and plagued by doubts as never before. Krastev includes chapters devoted to Europe's major problems (especially the political destabilization sparked by the more than 1.3 million migrants from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia), the spread of right-wing populism (taking into account the election of Donald Trump in the United States), and the thorny issues facing member states on the eastern flank of the EU (including the threat posed by Vladimir Putin's Russia). In a new afterword written in the wake of the 2019 EU parliamentary elections, Krastev concludes that although the union is as fragile as ever, its chances of enduring are much better than they were just a few years ago.

In Someone Is Out to Get Us, Brian T. Brown explores the delusions, absurdities and best-kept secrets of the Cold War, during which the United States fought an enemy of its own making for over forty years-and nearly scared itself to death in the process. The nation chose to fear a chimera, a rotting communist empire that couldn't even feed itself, only for it to be revealed that what lay behind the Iron Curtain was only a sad Potemkin village. In fact, one of the greatest threats to our national security may have been our closest ally. The most effective spy cell the Soviets ever had was made up of aristocratic Englishmen schooled at Cambridge. Establishing a communist peril but lacking proof, J. Edgar Hoover became our Big Brother and Joseph McCarthy went hunting for witches. Richard Nixon stepped into the spotlight as an opportunistic, ruthless Cold Warrior; his criminal cover-up during a dark presidency was exposed by a Deep Throat in a parking garage. Someone Is Out to Get Us is the true and complete account of a long-misunderstood period of history during which lies, conspiracies and paranoia led Americans into a state of madness and misunderstanding, too distracted by fictions to realise that the real enemy was looking back at them in the mirror the whole time.

Although in hindsight the end of the Cold War seems almost inevitable, almost no one saw it coming and there is little consensus over why it ended. A popular interpretation is that the Soviet Union was unable to compete in terms of power, especially in the area of high technology. Another interpretation gives primacy to the new ideas Gorbachev brought to the Kremlin and to the importance of leaders and domestic considerations. In this volume, prominent experts on Soviet affairs and the Cold War interrogate these competing interpretations in the context of five "turning points" in the end of the Cold War process. Relying on new information gathered in oral history interviews and archival research, the authors draw into doubt triumphal interpretation that rely on a single variable like the superior power of the United States and call attention to the importance of how multiple factors combined and were sequenced historically. The volume closes with chapters drawing lessons from the end of the Cold War for both policy making and theory building.

In 1960, the GDP per capita of Southeast Asian countries was nearly half of that of Africa. By 1986 the gap had closed and today the trend is reversed, with more than half of the world's poorest now living in sub Saharan Africa. Why has Asia developed while Africa lagged? The Asian Aspiration chronicles the stories of explosive growth and changing fortunes: the leaders, events and policy choices that lifted a billion people out of abject poverty within a single generation, the largest such shift in human history. The relevance of Asia's example comes as Africa is facing a population boom, which can either lead to crisis or prosperity, and as Asia is again transforming, this time out of low-cost manufacturing into hi-tech, leaving a void that is Africa's for the taking. Far from the optimistic determinism of 'Africa Rising', this book calls for unprecedented pragmatism in the pursuit of African success.

This landmark volume presents vivid and intimate portraits of Palestinian Presidents Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, revealing the impact these different personalities have had on the struggle for national self-determination. Arafat and Abbas lived in Palestine as young children. Uprooted by the 1948 war, they returned in 1994 to serve as the first and second presidents of the Palestinian Authority, the establishment of which has been the Palestine Liberation Organization's greatest step towards self-determination for the Palestinian nation. Both Arafat and Abbas were shaped by earlier careers in the PLO, and each adopted their own controversial leadership methods and decision-making styles. Drawing on primary sources in Arabic, Hebrew and English, Klein gives special attention to the lesser known Abbas: his beliefs and his disagreements with Israeli and American counterparts. The book uncovers new details about Abbas' peace talks and US foreign policy towards Palestine, and analyses the political evolution of Hamas and Abbas' succession struggle. Klein also highlights the tension between the ageing leader and his society. 'Arafat and Abbas' offers a comprehensive and balanced account of the Palestinian Authority's achievements and failures over its twenty-five years of existence. What emerges is a Palestinian nationalism that refuses to disappear.

The origins of this book go back 30 years to the stimulation and interest generated by the political geography seminars led by John House at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. I was very fortunate to graduate among its extremely capable, sporty and enthusiastic "class of '68" from where several academic geographers emerged. Equally fortunately, some of them and their predecessors had already blazed a trail to undertake graduate studies in Canada. At the University of British Columbia I was supervised at different times by Julian Minghi and Victor Prescott, both of whom are not only extremely capable academics but are also very fine people. lowe an enormous debt to John, Julian and Victor and to the British and Canadian taxpayers who provided financial support for my University studies. In 1974, I began an academic career at the University of Western Australia where I have been ever since, save for a two-year period from 1991-3 as Professor of Australian Studies in the Department of International Relations at the University of Tokyo. Viewing Australia and the Asia-Pacific region from this different perspective within an extremely supportive Japanese environment had a profound impact. I am especially grateful for the support provided by so many Japanese academic colleagues and friends beginning as early as 1976. Three individuals deserve special mention for their help, guidance and enduring friendship - George Ohshima, Hiroshi Tanabe and Akihiro Kinda.

Challenging the common view that Latin America has lagged behind Europe and North America in the global history of science, this volume reveals that the region has long been a center for scientific innovation and imagination. It highlights the important relationship among science, politics, and culture in Latin American history. Scholars from a variety of fields including literature, sociology, and geography bring to light many of the cultural exchanges that have produced and spread scientific knowledge from the early colonial period to the present day. Among many topics, these essays describe ideas on health and anatomy in a medical text from sixteenth-century Mexico, how fossil discoveries in Patagonia inspired new interpretations of the South American landscape, and how Argentinian physicist Rolando Garcia influenced climate change research and the field of epistemology.Through its interdisciplinary approach, Geopolitics, Culture, and the Scientific Imaginary in Latin America shows that such scientific advancements fueled a series of visionary utopian projects throughout the region, as countries grappling with the legacy of colonialism sought to modernize and to build national and regional identities.

Throughout the post-Mao reform era, China has championed the principle of sovereign state control, which holds that states should not intervene in the affairs of other states. Yet as Tim Nicholas Ruhlig argues in China's Foreign Policy Contradictions, in recent years they have not actually acted this way. Chinese foreign policy actions fail to match up with official rhetoric, and these inconsistencies-in combination with China's growing power-will have dramatic effects on the future shape of international order. To explain these contradictions, Ruhlig draws from a rich battery of in-depth interviews with party-state officials to explain the foreign policy dynamics and processes of the normally opaque Chinese party-state. He demonstrates how different sources of the Chinese Communist Party's domestic legitimacy compete within the complex and highly fragmented Chinese party-state, resulting in contradictory foreign policies. He focuses on three issue areas: international human rights law and "responsibility to protect" (R2P); China's role in World Trade Organization (WTO) policymaking; and China's evolving relationship with Hong Kong. In each area, different factions within the party-state wrestle for control, with domestic legitimacy of the party always being the overriding goal. This incessant competition within the state's institutions often makes the PRC's foreign policy contradictory, undermining its ability to project and promote a "China Model" as an alternative to the existing international order (and more specifically as a champion of nonintervention). Instead, it often pursues narrowly nationalistic interests. By elucidating how foreign policymakers strategize and react within the context of a massive and complex bureaucratic system that is constantly under pressure from many sides, Ruhlig shows not only why China's foreign policy is so inconsistent, but why it is likely to contribute to a more particularistic, plural, and fragmented international order in the years to come. This book represents a significant advance in our understanding of the foreign policymaking process in authoritarian regimes.

Nusantaria - often referred to as 'Maritime Southeast Asia' - is the world's largest archipelago and has, for centuries, been a vital cultural and trading hub. Nusantara, a Sanskrit, then Malay, word referring to an island realm, is here adapted to become Nusantaria - denoting a slightly wider world but one with a single linguistic, cultural and trading base. Nusantaria encompasses the lands and shores created by the melting of the ice following the last Ice Age. These have long been primarily the domain of the Austronesian-speaking peoples and their seafaring traditions. The surrounding waters have always been uniquely important as a corridor connecting East Asia to India, the Middle East, Europe and Africa. In this book, Philip Bowring provides a history of the world's largest and most important archipelago and its adjacent coasts. He tells the story of the peoples and lands located at this crucial maritime and cultural crossroads, from its birth following the last Ice Age to today.

Throughout history, maps have been a powerful tool in the constitutive imaginary of governments seeking to define or contest the limits of their political reach. Today, new digital technologies have become central to mapping as a way of formulating alternative political visions. Mapping can also help marginalised communities to construct speculative designs using participatory practices. Mapping and Politics in the Digital Age explores how the development of new digital technologies and mapping practices are transforming global politics, power, and cooperation. The book brings together authors from across political and social theory, geography, media studies and anthropology to explore mapping and politics across three sections. Contestations introduces the reader to contemporary developments within mapping and explores the politics of mapping as a form of knowledge and contestation. Governance analyses mapping as a set of institutional practices, providing key methodological frames for understanding global governance in the realms of urban politics, refugee control, health crises and humanitarian interventions and new techniques of biometric regulation and autonomic computation. Imaginaries provides examples of future-oriented analytical frameworks, highlighting the transformation of mapping in an age of digital technologies of control and regulation. In a world conceived as without borders and fixed relations, new forms of mapping stress the need to rethink assumptions of power and knowledge. This book provides a sophisticated and nuanced analysis of the role ofmapping in contemporary global governance, and will be of interest to students and researchers working within politics, geography, sociology, media, and digital culture and technology.

In this shocking expose of the US government's drone programme, bestselling author Jeremy Scahill and his colleagues at the investigative website The Intercept expose stunning new details about the secret assassination policy being carried out by America and her allies. When the US government discusses drone strikes publicly, it offers assurances that such operations are a more precise alternative to troops on the ground and are authorised only when an "imminent" threat is present and there is "near certainty" that the intended target will be killed. The implicit message on drone strikes from the Obama administration has been trust, but don't verify. The online magazine The Intercept exploded this secrecy when it obtained an extraordinary cache of secret documents, the most shocking of which are included in this book, that reveal how Washington's fourteen-year targeted killing campaign suffers from an overreliance on flawed intelligence, an apparently incalculable civilian toll, and an inability to extract potentially valuable intelligence from terror suspects. The Assassination Complex is a vital, urgent book which allows us to understand at last the circumstances under which the US government and her allies have granted themselves the right to sentence individuals to death without the established checks and balances of arrest, trial, and appeal.

Being insulated by two immense oceans makes it hard for Americans to appreciate the concerns of more exposed countries. American democracy's rapid rise also fools many into thinking the same liberal system can flourish anywhere, and having populated a vast continent with relative ease impedes Americans' understanding of conflicts between different peoples over other lands. Paul R. Pillar ties the American public's misconceptions about foreign threats and behaviors to the nation's history and geography, arguing that American success in international relations is achieved often in spite of, rather than because of, the public's worldview. Drawing a fascinating line from colonial events to America's handling of modern international terrorism, Pillar shows how presumption and misperception turned Finlandization into a dirty word in American policy circles, bolstered the "for us or against us" attitude that characterized the policies of the George W. Bush administration, and continue to obscure the reasons behind Iraq's close relationship with Iran. Fundamental misunderstandings have created a cycle in which threats are underestimated before an attack occurs and then are overestimated after they happen. By exposing this longstanding tradition of misperception, Pillar hopes the United States can develop policies that better address international realities rather than biased beliefs.

This book develops a new, critical approach to global environmental politics. Instead of simply advocating the construction of new international institutions to respond to such challenges, it argues that the construction of alternative social and political structures is necessary. After an examination of policy-making surrounding sea defenses, which challenges the notion that political institutions are neutral regarding environmental change, it examines the political dynamics of car culture and of the meat-centered fast food industry.