Why divisions have deepened and what can be done to heal them. As one part of the global democratic recession, severe political polarization is increasingly afflicting old and new democracies alike, producing the erosion of democratic norms and rising societal anger. This volume is the first book-length comparative analysis of this troubling global phenomenon, offering in-depth case studies of countries as wide-ranging and important as Brazil, India, Kenya, Poland, Turkey, and the United States. The case study authors are a diverse group of country and regional experts, each with deep local knowledge and experience. Democracies Divided identifies and examines the fissures that are dividing societies and the factors bringing polarization to a boil. In nearly every case under study, political entrepreneurs have exploited and exacerbated long-simmering divisions for their own purposes-in the process undermining the prospects for democratic consensus and productive governance. But this book is not simply a diagnosis of what has gone wrong. Each case study discusses actions that concerned citizens and organizations are taking to counter polarizing forces, whether through reforms to political parties, institutions, or the media. The book's editors distill from the case studies a range of possible ways for restoring consensus and defeating polarization in the world's democracies. Timely, rigorous, and accessible, this book is of compelling interest to civic activists, political actors, scholars, and ordinary citizens in societies beset by increasingly rancorous partisanship.

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, warnings about a 'new Cold War' proliferated. In fact, argues Gilbert Achcar in this timely new study, the Cold War has been ongoing since the turn of the century. Racing to solidify its position in the 1990s as the last remaining superpower, the US alienated Russia and China, pushing them closer and rebooting the 'old' Cold War with disastrous implications. Vladimir Putin's consequent rise and imperialist reinvention, along with Xi Jinping's own ascendancy and increasingly autocratic tendencies, would, respectively, culminate in the murderous invasion of Ukraine and mounting tensions over Taiwan and trade. Was all this inevitable? Will these three world powers' permanent readiness to war write the story of the twenty-first century? What comes after Ukraine? What might the contours of a more peaceful world look like? These questions and many others are addressed in this essential book by one of the most astute and seasoned analysts of international relations.

The Art of Creating Power explores the intellectual thought and wider impact--on military affairs, politics and the universities--of Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the world's leading authorities on strategy, conflict and international politics. In this volume, senior scholars of international relations and military history trace the long trajectory of Freedman's career, examining his scholarly contribution to a whole host of areas from nuclear strategy to US foreign policy via terrorism, the Falklands and Iraq. Individually, these essays provide fascinating and innovative insights into strategy, contemporary defence and foreign policy, and conflict. Taken together, however, they are greater than the sum of their parts as they both reflect and explore the theoretical approach adopted and taught by Freedman - one that has made him one of the great intellectual figures in the canon of international politics, strategy and war. Throughout his professional life, Freedman explored many of the uncertainties that plague our highly unstable world. But as conflicts continue to erupt across the globe, it seems we may be entering an even more precarious and uncertain era.There could hardly be a better time than today to gain a deeper understanding of Freedman's strategic insights.

Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, uncovers a systematic campaign to persecute Assange. He reveals that Assange has faced grave and systematic due process violations, judicial bias, collusion and manipulated evidence. He has been the victim of constant surveillance, defamation and threats. Melzer also gathered together consolidated medical evidence that proves that the prison has suffered prolonged psychological torture. Melzer's compelling investigation puts the UK and US state into the dock, showing how, through secrecy, impunity and, crucially, public indifference, unchecked power reveals a deeply undemocratic system. Furthermore, the Assange case sets a dangerous precedent: once telling the truth becomes a crime, censorship and tyranny will inevitably follow.

Truth to Power, the first-ever history of the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC), is told through the reflections of its eight Chairs in the period from the end of the Cold War until 2017. Co-editors Robert Hutchings and Gregory Treverton add a substantial introduction placing the NIC in its historical context going all the way back to the Board of National Estimates in the 1940s, as well as a concluding chapter that highlights key themes and judgments. This historic mission of this remarkable but little-known organization, now almost forty years old, is strategic intelligence assessment in service of senior American foreign policymakers. Its signature inside products, National Intelligence Estimates, are now accompanied by the NIC's every-four-years Global Trends. Unclassified, Global Trends has become a noted NIC brand, its release awaited by officials, academics and private sector managers around the world. Each chapter places its particular period of the NIC's history in context (the global situation, the administration, the intelligence community) and assesses the most important issues with which the NIC grappled during the period, acknowledging failures as well as claiming successes. For example, Hutchings' chapter examines the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the fallout from the ill-fated Iraqi WMD estimate, the debate over intelligence community reform, and the year-long National Intelligence Council 2020 project. With the creation of the Director of National Intelligence in 2005, the NIC's mission mushroomed to include direct intelligence support to the two main policymaking committees in the government: the Principals Committee (cabinet secretaries in the foreign affairs departments) and the Deputies Committee (their deputies or number threes). The mission shift took the NIC directly into the thick of the action but at some cost to its abilities to do strategic thinking: of some 700 NIC papers in 2016, more than half were responses to questions from the National Security Adviser or her deputies, most, though hardly all, of which were current and tactical, not longer-term and strategic.

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.

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 leading group of scholars examine the circumstances under which central states might change their shape in responding to ethnic upheavals and regionalist demands. A systematic approach is applied to a country-by-country approach examining in turn most of the key areas of state boundary disputes in the contemporary world.

The worlds' oceans have been extremely important in the development and interaction of societies throughout history. This unique book uses the tools of political geography and international relations to examine the ways in which nations and peoples have viewed and used the oceans. Most social scientists have looked on the seas as a resource, but Steinberg sees them as a space defined by society, arguing that political and economic forces have shaped the governance and representation of the sea as much as they have the land.

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.

One of Singapore's top diplomats, Bilahari Kausikan was the Institute of Policy Studies' (IPS) 2015/16 S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore. This book contains edited versions of the five public IPS-Nathan Lectures he gave between January and May 2016, and highlights of his dialogue with the audience.Kausikan gives a frank and dispassionate assessment of the international environment in the post-Cold War era and the geopolitical uncertainties that have emerged. In particular, he analyses the nature of US-China relations, the broad underlying factors in the South China Sea disputes and ASEAN's attempts to maintain order, and the role that human rights and democracy have played in international relations. He concludes by suggesting what Singapore needs to do to cope with the complexities that lie ahead, in this age without definition.The IPS-Nathan Lectures series was launched in 2014 as part of the S R Nathan Fellowship for the Study of Singapore. The S R Nathan Fellow, who is appointed annually, delivers between four and six lectures each year to advance public understanding and discussion of issues of critical national interest.

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.

How does the Taliban wage war? How has its war changed over time? Firstly, the movement's extraordinary military operation relies on financial backing. This volume analyses such funding. The Taliban's external sources of support include foreign governments and non-state groups, both of which have affected the Taliban's military campaigns and internal politics. Secondly, this is the first full-length study of the Taliban to acknowledge and discuss in detail the movement's polycentric character. Here not only the Quetta Shura, but also the Haqqani Network and the Taliban's other centres of power, are afforded the attention they deserve. The Taliban at War is based on extensive field research, including hundreds of interviews with Taliban members at all levels of the organisation, community elders in Taliban-controlled areas, and other sources. It covers the Taliban insurgency from its first manifestations in 2002 up to the end of 2015. The five-month Battle of Kunduz epitomised the ongoing transition of the Taliban from an insurgent group to a more conventional military force, intent on fighting a protracted civil war. In this latest book, renowned Afghanistan expert Antonio Giustozzi rounds off his twenty years of studying the Taliban with an authoritative study detailing the evolution of its formidable military machine.

As the world evolves in increasingly unpredictable directions, one of the key determinants of the future global order will surely be the impact of China. No country and no society can escape China's reach-indeed many seek its embrace. China brings benefits to many-but it's also a problematic interlocutor for others. In China and the World, one of the world's leading China specialists David Shambaugh has assembled fifteen leading international authorities on China to create the most comprehensive and up-to-date scholarly assessment of China's foreign relations and roles in international affairs. The volume covers China's contemporary position in all regions of the world, with all major powers, and across multiple arenas of China's international interactions. It also explores the sources of China's grand strategy, how the past shapes the present, and the impact of domestic factors that shape China's external behavior. China and the World is a uniquely focused and well-organized volume that provides many insights into China's calculations and behavior, and identifies a number of challenges China will face in the future.

The world's first independent black republic, Haiti was forged in the fire of history's only successful slave revolution. Yet more than two hundred years later, the full promise of that revolution - a free country and a free people - remains unfulfilled. Home for more than a decade to one of the world's largest UN peacekeeping forces, Haiti's tumultuous political culture - buffeted by coups and armed political partisans - combined with economic inequality and environmental degradation to create immense difficulties even before the devastating 2010 earthquake killed tens of thousands of people. This grim tale, however, is not the whole story. In this moving and detailed history, Michael Deibert, who has spent two decades reporting on Haiti, chronicles the heroic struggles of Haitians to build their longed-for country in the face of overwhelming odds. Based on hundreds of interviews with Haitian political leaders, international diplomats, peasant advocates and gang leaders, as well as ordinary Haitians, Deibert's book provides a vivid, complex and challenging analysis of Haiti's recent history.

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.

The South China Sea Disputes: Flashpoints, Turning Points and Trajectories focuses on the currently much-debated theme of the South China Sea disputes - one of the hottest international disputes of the 21st century which can easily turn from a brewing flashpoint into a regional conflict with global repercussions. Through a compilation of commentaries published by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies from 2012 to much of 2016, the book attempts to reflect the evolution of the disputes in recent years through what can be seen as turning points and trajectories in the diplomatic tensions. The book is divided into four sections, taking off from a key diplomatic or related incident/development which can be seen as a turning point for each, with the concluding section looking at what lies ahead for Southeast Asia and the larger Asia-Pacific region, amidst the uncertainties triggered by the South China Sea imbroglio.Among the contributors: Arif Havas Oegroseno, BA Hamzah, Barry Desker, Bill Hayton, David Rosenberg, Donald K. Emmerson, Ellen Frost, Hasjim Djalal, Ian Townsend-Gault, Joseph CY Liow, Kwa Chong Guan, Li Mingjiang, Li Jian Wei, Li Dexia, Marvin Ott, Mushahid Ali, Muthiah Alagappa, Nguyen Hung Son, Nguyen Thi Lan Anh, Phoak Kung, Ralf Emmers, Rene L. Pattiradjawane, Raul (Pete) Pedrozo, Richard Javad Heydarian, Robert C. Beckman, Shashi Jayakumar, Victor Savage, Yang Razali Kassim, Zha Daojiong.

Geopolitical Traditions brings together an outstanding interdisciplinary line up of contributors to analyze one hundred years of geopolitical thought. The text uses human and political geography, politics, International Relations and sociology to focus on how geopolitics has been created, negotiated and contested within a variety of contexts. It uses examples from Japan, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, India, Israel and France to explore:
* Hitler's policies for expansion
* The Cold War
* Ecology
* Religion
* Catholicism
* Judaism.

Geopolitical conditions influence all strategic behaviour - even when co-operation among different kinds of military power is expected as the norm, action has to be planned and executed in specific physical environments. The geographical world cannot be avoided, and it happens to "organized" into land, sea, air and space - and possibly the electromagnetic spectrum including "cyberspace." Although the meaning of geography for strategy is a perpetual historical theme, explicit theory on the subject is only 100 years old. Ideas about the implication of geographical, especially spatial, relationships for political power - which is to say "geopolitics" - flourished early in the 20th century.
Divided into theory and practice sections, this volume covers the big names such as Mackinder, Mahan and Haushofer as well as looking back at the vital influence of weather and geography on naval power in the long age of sail (16th-19th centuries). It also looks forward to the consequences of the revival of geopolitics in post-Soviet Russia and the new space-based field of "astropolitics."

Hong Kong without Us is a decentralized book of revolutionary poetry. Drawn directly from the voices of Hong Kong during its anti-extradition protests, the poems consist of submitted testimonies and found materials-and are all anonymous from end to end, from first speech to translated curation. This collected poetic documentation of protest is thus an authorless work that brings together many voices. The editors themselves are anonymous poets acting through the Bauhinia Project, an organization created to bring Hong Kong's struggles to the stage of transnational activism through lyric and language, in the same spirit of leaderlessness as the protests. This book is a glimpse into the movement's lives and voices. The poems here were either submitted as testimonies to the Bauhinia Project at an encrypted email address or collected as "found poems" from testimonies and protest materials on the streets, on social media, and on the news. Each was from an anonymous source in Chinese. They are a people's poetry: nameless, lowbrow, temporally bound, squeezed out from moments of gravity and strife. They are meant to reach out across the silence of oceans, through differences in language and culture.

Jairus Victor Grove contends that we live in a world made by war. In Savage Ecology he offers an ecological theory of geopolitics that argues that contemporary global crises are better understood when considered within the larger history of international politics. Infusing international relations with the theoretical interventions of fields ranging from new materialism to political theory, Grove shows how political violence is the principal force behind climate change, mass extinction, slavery, genocide, extractive capitalism, and other catastrophes. Grove analyzes a variety of subjects-from improvised explosive devices and drones to artificial intelligence and brain science-to outline how geopolitics is the violent pursuit of a way of living that comes at the expense of others. Pointing out that much of the damage being done to the earth and its inhabitants stems from colonialism, Grove suggests that the Anthropocene may be better described by the term Eurocene. The key to changing the planet's trajectory, Grove proposes, begins by acknowledging both the earth-shaping force of geopolitical violence and the demands apocalypses make for fashioning new ways of living.

To understand the current difficulties and future prospects of European integration, multiple perspectives are required. The essays in this collection explore historical and geopolitical aspects of European integration and their relevance to interpretations of the current climate. They also examine the different regional dynamics of integration and the attitudes that result from those experiences, including those in European peripheries which are so often overshadowed by the dominant centres. In drawing all of these perspectives together, the collection allows the reader to assess the EU's current crisis in context.

Geopolitics is an increasingly important tool to understand national and international relations. This book unravels how organized crime is not just a marginal problem but part of a bigger geopolitical and asymmetrical warfare strategy. It seeks to establish a direct relationship between Nation States and organized crime groups. Many States have been using criminal and terrorist organizations as a policy for issues of national sovereignty or as a tool to strengthen a nation's geopolitical position. This book demonstrates how national states are utilizing criminal organizations in covert operations and "dirty jobs" such as espionage, proxy war, arms trafficking and sabotage. Examples from the United States, China and the Soviet Union are explored, providing both an historical and contemporary analysis, from World War II through to the Cold War and to the present day. The book brings together perspectives from international relations and criminology drawing on insights from a variety of sources, including public documents and interviews.

This book presents an introduction to the subject of international sanctions. It provides summaries of fourteen major cases, including South Africa, Iraq and Serbia, and analysis of the complex political and economic problems which sanctions pose for governments of sender states as well as for targets. Goals, costs, vulnerability and humanitarian considerations are examined in the light of 20th-century experience and the enhanced role of the United Nations since the end of the Cold War receives detailed consideration.

This book examines the presence of Africa as a significant force in the western Indian Ocean. Africa will increasingly play a pivotal role in the future of the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean region. The book considers the scope for greater African involvement in Indian Ocean region-building activities, and seeks to encourage a western Indian Ocean dialogue. The book publishes some of the best papers presented at an Indian Ocean Research Group (IORG Inc.) symposium held in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2013, entitled "The Political Economy of Maritime Africa in the Indian Ocean Region." This symposium was part of a larger project on constructing a sense of "Indian Oceanness". Chapters include: India's new policy of engagement with Africa; China's growing presence in the Indian Ocean Region; security strategies in the Western Indian Ocean; the increasing importance and significance of the Western Indian Ocean littoral; and cultural linkages between Africa and the Indian Ocean region. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of the Indian Ocean Region.