This volume examines geopolitics by looking at the interaction between geography, strategy and history. This book addresses three interrelated questions: why does the geographical scope of political objectives and subsequent strategy of states change? How do these changes occur? Over what period of time do these changes occur? The theories of Sir Halford Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman are examined in order to provide an analytical narrative for five case studies, four historical and one contemporary. Taken together they offer the prospect of converting descriptions of historical change into analytic explanations, thereby highlighting the importance of a number of commonly overlooked variables. In addition, the case studies will illuminate the challenges that states face when attempting to change the scope of their foreign policy and geo-strategy in response to shifts in the geopolitical reality. This book breaks new ground in seeking to provide a way to understand why and how the geographical scope of political objectives and subsequent strategy both expands and contracts. This book will be of much interest to students of geopolitics, strategic studies, military history, and international relations.

'These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world,' said Charlie Wilson, of America's role backing the anti-Soviet mujahideen. 'And then we fucked up the endgame.' With no support for Afghanistan after that war, the vacuum was filled by the Taliban and bin Laden. 'The Ledger' assesses the West's similarly failed approach to Afghanistan after 9/11--in military, diplomatic, political and developmental terms. Dr David Kilcullen and Dr Greg Mills are uniquely placed to reflect backwards and forwards on the Afghan conflict: they worked with the international mission both as advisers and within the Arg, and they have considerable experience of counterinsurgency and stabilisation operations elsewhere in the world. Here these two experts show that there is plenty of blame to go around when explaining the failure to bring peace to Afghanistan after 9/11. The signs of collapse were conveniently ignored, in favour of political narratives of progress and success. Yet for Afghans, the war and its geopolitical effects are not over because NATO is gone--Afghanistan remains globally connected through digital communications and networks. This vital book explains why and where failings in Afghanistan happened, warning against exceptionalist approaches to future peacebuilding missions around the globe.

How do societies identify and promote merit? Enabling all people to fulfill their potential, and ensuring the selection of competent and capable leaders are central challenges for any society. These are not new concerns. Scholars, educators, and political and economic elites in China and India have been pondering them for centuries and continue to do so today, with enormously high stakes. In Making Meritocracy, Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi have gathered over a dozen experts from a range of intellectual perspectives-political science, history, philosophy, anthropology, economics, and applied mathematics-to discuss how the two most populous societies in the world have addressed the issue of building meritocracy historically, philosophically, and in practice. They focus on how contemporary policy makers, educators, and private-sector practitioners seek to promote it today. Importantly, they also discuss Singapore, which is home to large Chinese and Indian populations and the most successful meritocracy in recent times. Both China and India look to it for lessons. Though the past, present, and future of meritocracy building in China and India have distinctive local inflections, their attempts to enhance their power, influence, and social well-being by prioritizing merit-based advancement offers rich lessons both for one another and for the rest of the world-including rich countries like the United States, which are currently witnessing broad-based attacks on the very idea of meritocracy.

This book explores contemporary migration by boat through the intertwined, and under-explored, elements of empirical data, governance and geopolitics, and discourses. While the migration of people by boat is a long-standing phenomenon, journeys have become more frequent and precarious as states illegalise entry. As migration at sea becomes more common, it has gained attention from a range of actors, including enforcement authorities, political elites, media, and non/inter-governmental organizations. The sea has thus become a space of hope/desperation for migrants as well as conflict over territory and sovereignty, representing wider social debates in and beyond Australia, Canada, the European Union, and the United States. Current literature on migration by boat reflects these debates, primarily concentrating on the humanitarian and legal realities of migration by boat and border enforcement at sea , however, few studies have analysed their empirical relationship. This edited volume aims to fill this gap and thereby address three important, overlapping aspects of these debates: The first theme will explore data and methods on migration by boat, its discourse, and its enforcement, and in addition identifying appropriate research methodologies and sources to gather these data. The second theme will build upon the first by focusing on the relationship between data on migration by boat and governance and geopolitics of the "border". Building upon the two themes already outlined, the third theme will identify and analyse how elite discourses represent migration at sea.

Located in the center of Asia with one of the largest land frontiers in the world and 14 neighbors whose dispositions could not easily be predicted, China has long been obsessed with security. In this Handbook, an internationally renowned team of contributors provide a comprehensive and systematic analysis of contemporary thinking about Chinese national security. Chapters cover the PRC's historical, ideological and doctrinal heritage related to security, its security arrangements and policies targeting key regions and nations of the world, the security aspects of the PRC's ground, air, sea, space and cyber forces, as well as the changing and expanding definition and scope of China's security theory and practice. The Handbook is divided into three thematic parts: Part I focuses on national security, covering traditional views of security and the impact of China's historical experience on current security dispositions as well as non-traditional security. Part II looks at China's relations with the great powers, regional security and China's involvement with collective security organizations. Part III provides an overview of China's institutionalized security forces; looking at the army, navy, air force and Second Artillery (strategic nuclear forces) and offering analysis of China's recent interest in space as a security concern and cybersecurity. This volume is essential reading for all students of Asian Security, Chinese Politics and International Relations.

This timely 2 volume edited collection looks at the extent and nature of global jihad, focusing on the often-exoticised hinterlands of jihad beyond the traditionally viewed Middle Eastern 'centre'. As ISIS loses its footing in Syria and Iraq and al-Qaeda regroups, this comprehensive account will be a key work in the on-going battle to better understand the dynamics of jihad's global reality. The two volumes critically examine the various claims of connections between jihadist terrorism in the 'periphery', remote Islamist insurgencies of the 'periphery' and the global jihad. Each volume draws on experts in each of the geographies in question.

'So much of the reporting of the Middle East at the moment reflects war and human misery; it's inspiring to find, in this thoughtful and engaging book, a message of hope from what Fr Nadim calls "that region of the world that God chose to live in when he took human form"' Edward Stourton 'The ultimate question of this book is, why does it matter to me, a human being, to know the culture of God, and what impact should that have on my own life and existence? The culture of God is the antithesis of the culture of the Pharisees - yet again and again we fall into the trap of condemning or excluding others. Understanding the culture of God helps us to uncover God's image within us, a shining jewel buried deep under the dirt of our selfishness and greed, and helps us to shine as God intends us to, re-forming our relationships with God and with each other in our amazingly diverse world.' It is as we read the Bible, argues Father Nadim Nassar, that we are invited to discover what 'the culture of God' - the community of love that makes up the Trinity - looks like, and how it might transform our lives and our faith. But in order to do so we need to understand the culture of the Bible itself, as well as the particular culture that forms our own worldview. Ultimately it is Jesus who has direct access to the culture of God; and so we also need to understand Jesus within his first-century Levantine context. Father Nadim Nassar is the Church of England's only Syrian priest and an outspoken advocate for western Christians to recognise the Middle-Eastern roots of their faith. The fresh and provocative reflections in The Culture of God, his first book, are informed by his experience of growing up in Syria and living through the conflicts in the region, especially the civil wars in Lebanon and Syria. Taking us on a journey through the mystery of the incarnation, to Jesus' role as storyteller - Al-Hakawati - his relationship with a disparate cast of people as narrated by the gospels, and finally his death and resurrection, Father Nadim unfolds for us the culture of God and what it can mean for a world that so desperately needs both freedom and a way to embrace diversity. 'Fr Nadim's personal experience of the painful effects of war and conflict in the Middle East is an insightful lens into the brokenness of humanity that leads to the ongoing violation of the God-given sanctity and dignity of life. At the same time, the paradox of the Crucifixion and Christianity is presented as a key to understanding the restoration of that same humanity, and the possibility of reconciliation with God and one another if the life and teachings of Christ are truly lived.' Archbishop Angaelos, Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of London

A definitive overview of what political scientists are working on within the Middle East and North Africa. The Arab Uprisings of 2011-12 catalyzed a new wave of rigorous, deeply informed research on the politics of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In The Political Science of the Middle East, Marc Lynch, Jillian Schwedler, and Sean Yom present the definitive overview of this pathbreaking turn. This is a monumental stocktaking organized around a singular theme: new theorizing from the MENA has advanced the frontiers of comparative politics and international relations, and the close-range study of the region occupies a core place in mainstream political science. Its dozen chapters cover an exhaustive array of topics, including authoritarianism and democracy, contentious politics, regional security, military institutions, conflict and violence, the political economy of development, Islamist movements, identity and sectarianism, public opinion, migration, and local politics. For each of these topics, leading MENA experts and specialists highlight innovative concepts, vibrant debates, diverse methodologies, and unexpected findings. The result is an indispensable research primer, one that stands as a generational statement from a regional subfield.

This book provides an explanation of Chinese policy towards the South China Sea, and argues that this has been sculpted by the changing dynamics of the law of the sea in conjunction with regional geopolitical flux. The past few decades have witnessed a bifurcated trend in China's management of territorial disputes. Over the years, while China gradually calmed and settled most land-border disputes with its neighbors, disputes on the ocean frontier continued to simmer in a seething cauldron. China's Policy towards the South China Sea attributes the distinctive path of China's approach to maritime disputes to a unique factor - the law of the sea (LOS) as the "rules of the road" in the ocean. By deconstructing the concept of "sovereignty" and treating the LOS as an evolving regime, the book examines how the changing dynamics of the LOS regime have complicated and reshaped the nature and content of sovereign disputes in the ocean regime as well as the options of settlement. Applying the findings to the South China Sea case, the author traces the learning curve on which China has embarked to comprehend the complexity of the dispute accordingly and finds that it is the dynamic interaction of the law of the sea regime and the geopolitical conditions that has driven the evolution of China's South China Sea policy. This book will be of great interest to students of Chinese and Asian politics, international law, international relations and security studies.

Lying on the political fault line between East and West for the past seventy-five years, the significance of Hungary in geopolitical terms has far outweighed the modest size of its population. This book charts the main events of these tumultuous decades including the 1956 Uprising, the end of Hungarian communism, entry into the European Union and the rise to power of Viktor Orban and the national-conservative ruling party Fidesz.

'I'm a fairly calm fellow; I don't usually get het up about things. But I was, let's say, concerned when I tuned into the Moscow Echo radio station and heard that the Kremlin had put a price on my head. The announcement didn't quite say 'dead or alive'. But it came close...' Mikhail Khodorkovsky, March 2021 Mikhail Khodorkovsky has seen behind the mask of Vladimir Putin. Once an oil tycoon and the richest man in Russia, Khodorkovsky spoke out against the corruption of Putin's regime - and was punished by the Kremlin, stripped of his entire wealth and jailed for over ten years. Now freed, working as a pro-democracy campaigner in enforced exile, Khodorkovsky brings us the insider's battle to save his country's soul. Offering an urgent analysis of what has gone wrong with Putin, The Russia Conundrum maps the country's rise and fall against Khodorkovsky's own journey, from Soviet youth to international oil executive, powerful insider to political dissident, and now a high-profile voice seeking to reconcile East and West. With unparalleled insight, written with Sunday Times bestselling author Martin Sixsmith, The Russia Conundrum exposes the desires and damning truths of Putin's Russia, and provides an answer to the West on how it must challenge the Kremlin - in order to pave the way for a better future.

In Global Political Economy and the Modern State System Tobias ten-Brink contributes to an understanding of the modern state system, its conflicts and its transformation. In contrast to the political attractiveness of optimistic theoretical approaches to globalisation, this book demonstrates how an analytical approach rooted in Global Political Economy (GPE) helps to explain both the tendencies towards integration and towards rivalry in international relations.

Democracy in the twenty-first century faces a number of major challenges, populism, neoliberalism and globalisation being three of the most prominent. This book examines such challenges by investigating how the conditions of democratic statehood have been altered at several key historical intervals since 1945. It demonstrates that the formal mechanisms of democratic statehood, such as elections, have always been complemented by civic, cultural, educational, socio-economic and constitutional institutions that mediate between citizens and state authority. Rearticulating critical theory with a contemporary focus, the book shows why a sociological approach is urgently needed to address conceptual deficits and explain how the formal mechanisms of democratic statehood need to be complemented and updated in new ways today. -- .

Urban and regional development in the Baltic States and other Central and Eastern European countries has experienced rapid changes since their re-independence at the beginning of the 1990s. Meanwhile, urban and regional planning institutions and organizational cultures in the Baltic States have only changed rather incrementally, despite various national and European pressures for reform. As a consequence, the effects of European cohesion and structural policy measures have been quite modest, and the ability of the planning systems in the Baltic states to manage contemporary trends in urban and regional development has become increasingly limited. This book focuses on these issues and tensions of spatial planning and development in the Baltic States and their distinctiveness compared to other European countries. It provides an overview of the historical and cultural context of spatial development, a discussion of the processes of Europeanization of spatial planning in the specific context of the Baltic States, and an analysis of whether these processes may be leading to policy convergence in the region. This book was published as a special issue of European Planning Studies.

A unique analysis that assesses how we can determine which country will be the next world leader. Will China surpass the United States as the world's leader? In American Global Pre-eminence, William R. Thompson argues that the answer depends on leads in technological innovation, energy, and global reach. These are the forces that influence the hierarchy of global power-a system which began emerging a thousand years ago and started becoming more evident after the 1490s, especially after Dutch activities in the seventeenth century and British operations in the nineteenth century. The US followed in this fashion after 1945. Yet leads do not last forever. Ironically, as it becomes clearer how technological innovation, military force, and energy power interact, the processes under scrutiny may themselves be fundamentally transforming. Thus, Thompson contends, the real policy question is not whether the US is ahead or behind China but, rather, whether it will remain possible for a single state to lead the global system. As technological innovation, energy consumption, and global reach capability grow less concentrated, the prospects for systemic leadership shrink-even as global problems become more complex and acute. With a sweeping analysis of global power, Thompson provides a foundation for understanding the realities and possibilities of lead states past, present, and future.

The invention of the nation-state was the crowning achievement of the Sykes-Picot Agreement between the United Kingdom and France in 1916. As a geostrategic move to divide, defeat, and dismantle the Ottoman Empire during World War I, it was a great success and the modern colonial borders of the Arab nation-states eventually emerged in the course of World War II. Today, as nations are reconceiving their own postcolonial interpolated histories, Arab and Muslim states are becoming total states on the model of ISIS with Iran, Syria, Turkey and Egypt, among others, violently manufacturing their legitimacy. And yet simultaneously, examples such as the Nobel Peace Prize winning formation of a civil society 'Quartet' in Tunisia allude to a growing transnational public sphere across the Arab and Muslim world. In The Emperor is Naked, Hamid Dabashi boldly argues that the category of nation-state has failed to produce a legitimate and enduring unit of post-colonial polity. Considering what this liberation of nations and denial of legitimacy to ruling states will actually unfurl, Dabashi asks: What will replace the nation-state, what are the implications of this deconstruction on global politics and, crucially, what is the meaning of the post-colonial subject within this moment?

This volume examines the various aspects of territorial separatism, focusing on how and why separatist movements arise. Featuring essays by leading scholars from different disciplinary perspectives, the book aims to situate the question of separatism within the broader socio-political context of the international system, arguing that a set of historical events as well as local, regional, and global dynamics have converged to provide the catalysts that often trigger separatist conflicts. In addition, the book marks progress towards a new conceptual framework for the study of territorial separatism, by linking the survival of communities in international politics with the effective control of territory and the consequent creation of new polities. Separatist conflicts challenge conventional wisdom concerning conflict resolution within the context of international relations by unpacking a number of questions with regard to conflict transformation. Through the use of case studies, including Cyprus, the Rakhine state in Myanmar, the Shia separatism in Iraq, the Uighurs in China and the case of East Timor, the volume addresses key issues including the role of democracy, international law, intervention, post-conflict peacebuilding and the creation of new political entities. The book will be of much interest to students of Intra-StateConflict, Conflict Resolution, International Law, Security Studies and International Relations.

This volume, originally published in 1968, is in two parts. The first covers various geographical aspects of the internal structure and the external relationships of states and introduces some of the concepts which are examined in specific regional context in the case studies in Part 2.

Using the examples of the Ottoman Empire, Spain, Austria, France and Germany, this book describes the principal geopolitical features of the expansionist state. It then presents a model of the operation of the expansionist process over space and time. It goes on to apply the geopolitical characteristics of the model to the period after 1945 in order to assess the extent to which the Soviet Union might be considered as being an expansionist state, either actually or potentially. This latter question is obviously once more extremely relevant with the current events in Ukraine.

Global governance now provides people with recourse for harm through International Grievance Mechanisms, such as the Independent Accountability Mechanisms of the Multilateral Development Banks. Yet little is known about how such mechanisms work. This Element examines how IGMs provide recourse for infringements of three procedural environmental rights: access to information, access to participation, and access to justice in environmental matters, as well as environmental protections drawn from the United Nations Guiding Principles and the World Bank's protection standards. A content analysis of 394 original IAM claims details how people invoke these rights. The sections then unpack how the IAMs provide community engagement through 'problem solving', and 'compliance investigations' that identify whether the harm resulted from the MDBs. Using a database of all known submissions to the IAMs (1,052 claims from 1994 to mid-2019), this Element demonstrate how the IAMs enable people to air their grievances, without necessarily solving their problems.

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.

This book tells the story of an unprecedented experiment in public participation: the government-sponsored debate on the possible commercialization of 'GM' crops in the UK. Giving a unique and systematic account of the debate process, this revealing volume sets it within its political and intellectual contexts, and examines the practical implications for future public engagement initiatives.

The authors, an experienced team of researchers, produce a conceptually-informed and empirically-based evaluation of the debate, drawing upon detailed observation of both public and behind-the-scenes aspects of the process, the views of participants in debate events, a major MORI-administered survey of public views, and details of media coverage.

With innovative methodological work on the evaluation of public engagement and deliberative processes, the authors analyze the design, implementation and effectiveness of the debate process, and provide a critique of its official findings.

The book will undoubtedly be of interest to a wide readership, and will be an invaluable resource for researchers, policy-makers and students concerned with cross-disciplinary aspects of risk, decision-making, public engagement, and governance of technology.

**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER | BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK** Preventable tells the extraordinary story of COVID-19 and how global politics shape our health - from a world-leading expert and the pandemic's go-to science communicator Professor Devi Sridhar has risen to prominence for her vital roles in communicating science to the public and speaking truth to power. In Preventable she highlights lessons learned from outbreaks past and present in a narrative that traces the COVID-19 pandemic - including her personal experience as a scientist - and sets out a vision for how we can better protect ourselves from the inevitable health crises to come. In gripping and heartfelt prose, Sridhar exposes the varied realities of those affected (from the jailed doctor in Wuhan who sounded the alarm, and the bored passengers marooned on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, to the daily nightmares of exhausted healthcare workers), and puts you in the room with key decision makers at crucial moments (from over-confident heads of states and their hesitant scientific advisors, to the beleaguered leaders of global health organisations). Sridhar vibrantly conveys the twists and turns of a plot that saw: deadlier variants emerge (contrary to the predictions of social media pundits who argued it would mutate to a milder form); the Pyrrhic victory in many countries of the false narrative of health versus the economy (those countries which controlled the virus, like Taiwan and Denmark, had a steadier recovery); countries with weak health systems like Senegal and Vietnam fare better than countries like the US and UK (which were consistently ranked as the most prepared); and the quickest development of game-changing vaccines in history (and their unfair distribution). Combining science, politics, ethics and economics, this definitive book dissects the global structures that determine our fate, and reveals the deep-seated economic and social inequalities at their heart - it will challenge, outrage and inspire. 'A brutally compelling reminder that if voices like Devi's had been listened to, so many more could have lived' OWEN JONES 'One of the most brilliant scientists in the world who has been proven consistently right in this crisis' PIERS MORGAN 'Excellent . . . Fair, clear and compelling' NICOLA STURGEON 'Those who have found Professor Devi Sridhar's expertise and calm advice invaluable since the arrival of Covid-19 will be glad to know that she has written Preventable' RACHEL COOKE, Guardian, Non-fiction to look out for in 2022