Loch Johnson's new book explores the subject of covert action, often referred to as a "Third Option" between America's use of diplomacy and warfare--a shadowy approach to international affairs based on the controversial use of secret propaganda, political activities, economic sabotage, and paramilitary operations (whether clandestine warfare or assassinations). The three major instruments that guide United States foreign policy are the Treaty Power, the War Power, and the Spy Power. Within the category of Spy Power is the "Third Option" the use of covert action. Ever since the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, the US has often turned to the third option in the conduct of its international relations. This controversial approach includes covert propaganda campaigns, subversive political activities, economic sabotage, and paramilitary operations ranging from clandestine warfare to the assassination of foreign leaders. From the beginning of the Cold War to the present day, America's intelligence and national security agencies have employed all of these "third option" tools in order to advance America's global interests. In The Third Option, the eminent national security scholar Loch Johnson provides a history of American covert warfare from 1947 to the present. In particular, he focuses on the morality and consequences of America's heavily veiled attempts to shape global affairs through its covert actions. Over the course of the book, a fundamental question comes into focus: Of what value has the Third Option been to the US as a complement to the nation's more open battlefield and diplomatic initiatives? Just as importantly, Johnson exposes the conflict between this controversial approach to achieving America's international objectives and the ideals that the US has always propounded: democracy, human rights, and liberalism. The Third Option closes with a sharp assessment of the policy, measuring its failures versus its successes. A richly detailed synthesis of America's covert action program ever since it became the world's preeminent power, this book serves as an ideal introduction for anyone interested in US foreign and national security policy.

Over 50 full-colour world maps and graphics break down hardcore statistics to provide a compelling analysis of all the political, social, economic and ecological nightmares that keep us awake at night. * The world's car population has grown five times as fast as the human population over the last 50 years. * Wal-Mart's sales revenue exceeds the GDP of 150 countries. * Climate change may put 2.7 billion at risk of armed conflict. * Germany generates more tourists than anywhere else. * Americans use 160 times more water than people in Rwanda. If you want to get behind the headlines and understand the world - from urbanization to globalization, terrorism to tourism, military spending to human rights - The State of the World Atlas is unmatched.

This edited collection is a timely and in-depth perception analysis of Euro-Mediterranean relations and the EU policy actions towards the Mediterranean region. The book takes as its departure point the recent geopolitical developments in the Middle East and North Africa, urging the renewal of a Euro-Mediterranean partnership while challenging the 'Eurocentric orientation of EU policies' - a critical factor which explains why the EU has been unable to adjust its policies to the region's fast-changing complexities. The volume subsequently introduces the findings of an elite survey conducted between 2017-2018 with local stakeholders in 9 countries in the Mediterranean. The findings and policy recommendations presented in the book aim to contribute to making EU policies more responsive to major challenges in the region, more flexible on the multilateral and the bilateral level and more inclusive of key stakeholders. This book will interest EU policy-makers, civil society, academics and researchers on EU policy, as well as IR experts in general.

Fully updated from the original edition. As the retreat from Kabul shows, America goes to war not to bring democracy, or glory, but in the pursuit of profit. In The Spoils of War, leading Washington reporter, Andrew Cockburn, reveals the extent of the rot that stretches from the Pentagon and the White House, to Wall St and Silicon Valley. The American war machine can only be understood in terms of the "private passions" and "interests" of those who control it - principally a passionate interest in money. Thus, as he witheringly reports, Washington expanded NATO to satisfy an arms manufacturer's urgent financial requirements; the U.S. Navy's Pacific fleet deployments were for years dictated by a corrupt contractor who bribed high-ranking officers with cash and prostitutes; senior marine commanders agreed to a troop surge in Afghanistan in 2017 "because it will do us good at budget time." Based on years of wide-ranging research, Cockburn lays bare the ugly reality of the largest military machine in history: squalid, and at the same time terrifyingly dangerous.

This is a wide-ranging and multi-disciplinary discussion of the connections between language, borders and identities. Looking at a broad, geographically diverse spectrum of border contexts, this volume illustrates a range of methodological approaches. It examines political borders that divide monoglossic and heteroglossic territories, as well as regional and local and symbolic borders. The authors assess the linguistic implications of these borders contexts such as language planning and policy (e.g. for multilingual education and protection of minority languages) and border control (via the chapter on language analysis for the determination of origin, 'LADO'). Each border is unique, making generalisations about how language functions in 'borderlands' difficult to formulate but casting the net as wide as we intend will, however, equip us to develop and refine models of how language is used to construct borders, and to indicate on which side of a border speakers situate themselves. It covers political, socio-psychological and symbolic borders. It takes a multi-disciplinary approach by combining sociolinguistic research with human geography, anthropology and social psychology. It uses international case studies and examples throughout.

Having been exposed early in life to the dangers of extreme nationalism, journalist and historian Walter Laqueur chose to align his thinking with Victor Hugo's ideal of a "European Brotherhood" where the European nations would merge into a "superior unit" overcoming war and strife. However, as time wore on and consolidating national solidarities seemed ever more impossible, Laqueur became more of a pessimist. Today, he still hopes for unity, but doubts that it will ever come to pass. This volume represents the culmination of thought of a most noteworthy, contemporary historian. Reflections of a Veteran Pessimist is divided into four sections: Europe in Decline, Jews in the Twentieth Century, Russia after the Soviet Union, and Observations. Having lived under the Nazi regime, Laqueur is keenly aware of the dangers posed by strident nationalism in Europe and rampant religious zealotry in the Middle East. Reflecting on the lingering financial crisis in Europe, Laqueur observes its serious consequences-populist movements and growing opposition to European integration. He notes that the influx of refugees resulting from Middle Eastern instability have sharpened the challenges facing Europe and weakened its unity. Laqueur also examines the growth of authoritarian nationalism in Russia and the de facto renewal of the Cold War with the West. Offering fascinating insights into a range of themes across the period, this book is valuable reading for all those interested in twentieth-century European, Russian and Jewish history.

Heela Najibullah analyzes the Afghan reconciliation processes through the lenses of transrational peace philosophy and Elicitive Conflict Transformation. The research highlights two Afghan governments reconciliation processes in 1986 and 2010 and underlines the political events that shaped the 1986 National Reconciliation Policy, drawing lessons for future processes. The author points out the historical and geopolitical patterns indicating regional and global stakeholders involvement in Afghan politics. Social healing through a middle-out approach is the missing and yet crucial component to achieve sustainable reconciliation in Afghanistan

Armies of Arabia is the first comprehensive analysis of the Gulf monarchies' armed forces, including their political, social, and economic characteristics, foreign relations, and battleground performance. The Arabian Peninsula is among the most strategically and economically important areas in the world, but its militaries remain terra incognita. In Armies of Arabia - the first book to comprehensively analyze the Gulf monarchies' armed forces - Zoltan Barany explains their notorious ineffectiveness with a combination of political-structural and sociocultural factors. Drawing on over 150 interviews and meticulous multidisciplinary research, Barany paints a fascinating portrait of Arabia's armies from Ibn Saud's Ikhwan to the present. He explores the methods ruling families employ to ensure their armies' loyalty, examines the backgrounds and career trajectories of soldiers and officers, and explains the monarchies' reliance on mercenaries and the enduring importance of tribal networks. Even though no other world region spends more on security, Arabia's armies remain ineffective because of an absence of meritocracy, the domination of personal connections over institutional norms, insipid leadership, a casual work ethic, and training that lacks intensity, frequency, and up-to-date scenarios. Massive weapons acquisitions are primarily pay-offs to the US for protecting them and have resulted in bloated and inappropriate arsenals and large-scale corruption. Barany explains why the Gulf Cooperation Council has been a squandered opportunity and examines the kingdoms' military relationships with the Arab world and beyond. The performance of the Saudi-led coalition's disastrous war in Yemen starkly illustrates the Gulf armies' humiliating combat record. The book concludes with thoughts on waste (of human potential, resources, institutions) as a dominant theme of Gulf military affairs, considers likely changes in response to long-term weakening demand for oil, and suggests ways in which the armies' effectiveness could be raised. Chock-full of insights and stories from the field and written with a general audience in mind, Armies of Arabia will be essential reading for anyone interested in military affairs and Middle Eastern politics, society, and international relations.

"Informative." - Foreign Affairs Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ruled Turkey for nearly two decades. Here, Soner Cagaptay, a leading authority on the country, offers insights on the next phase of Erdogan's rule. His dwindling support base at home, coupled with rising opposition, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and Turkey's weak economy, would appear to threaten his grip on power. How will he react? In this astute analysis, Cagaptay casts Erdogan as an inventor of nativist populist politics in the twenty-first century. The Turkish president knows how to polarize the electorate to boost his base, and how to wield oppressive tactics when polarization alone cannot win elections. Cagaptay contends that Erdogan will cling to power-with severe costs for Turkey's citizens, institutions, and allies. The associated dynamics, which carry implications far beyond Turkey's borders-and what they portend for the United States-make A Sultan in Autumn a must-read for all those interested in Turkey and the geopolitics of the next decade.

Since the mid-1990s, Japan's regional economic strategy has transformed. Once characterized by bilateralism, informality, and neomercantilism, Japanese policy has shifted to a new liberal strategy emphasizing regional institution building and rule setting. As two major global powers, China and the United States, wrestle over economic advantages, Japan currently occupies a pivotal position capable of tipping the geoeconomic balance in the region. Japan's New Regional Reality offers a comprehensive analysis of Japan's geoeconomic strategy that reveals the country's role in shaping regional economic order in the Asia-Pacific. Saori N. Katada explains Japanese foreign economic policy in light of both international and domestic dynamics. She points out the hurdles to implementing a state-led liberal strategy, detailing how domestic political and institutional changes have been much slower and stickier than the changing regional economics. Katada highlights state-market relations and shows how big businesses have responded to the country's interventionist policies. The book covers a wide range of economic issues including trade, investment, finance, currency, and foreign aid. Japan's New Regional Reality is a meticulously researched study of the dynamics that have contributed to economic and political realities in the Asia-Pacific today, with significant implications for future regional trends.

This book is based on the assumption that great powers determine global politics and, in this instance, environmental politics. It addresses the approaches of both established and rising powers and their implications for the advancement of international climate negotiations. The new introduction looks at the key developments in this realm since 2013, examining the bilateral deals between China and the United States and the results of the UNFCCC's 21st Convention of the Parties (COP) convening at Paris in 2015. Two key features link the contributions of this volume: their underlying assumption that major powers are the central actors in determining global environmental politics; and their assessment of, and implications of, the approaches both of rising and established major powers for global climate norms. One key argument of this volume is that today's geopolitics are about who gets how much in the fiercely competitive race over the available 'carbon space'. The book concludes that prudently balancing power in the new century requires a fair sharing of burden among the existing and emerging powers. In light of such burden-sharing, pluralistic domestic politics as well as diverging normative beliefs and worldviews require consideration of different conditions, even if historical legacies of the industrialised world have increasingly been put into question as a political argument by the United States. This book is based on a special issue of the journal Climate Policy.

In 2011, Egypt witnessed more protests than any other country in the world. Counter to the received narrative, Amy Austin Holmes argues that the ousting of Mubarak in 2011 did not represent the culmination of a revolution or the beginning of a transition period, but rather the beginning of a revolutionary process that would unfold in three waves, followed by two waves of counterrevolution. This book offers the first analysis of both the revolution and counterrevolution in Egypt from January 2011 until June 2018. The period of revolutionary upheaval played out in three uprisings against three distinct forms of authoritarian rule: the Mubarak regime and the police state that protected it, the unelected military junta known as the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, and the religious authoritarianism of the Muslim Brotherhood. The counterrevolution occurred over two periods: the first under Adly Mansour as interim president and the second after El Sisi was elected president. While the regime imprisoned or killed the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood and many secular activists during the first wave of the counterrevolution, it turned against civil society at large during the second: NGOs, charities, media, academia, and minority groups. In addition to providing new and unprecedented empirical data, Coups and Revolutions makes two theoretical contributions. First, it presents a new framework for analyzing the state apparatus in Egypt based on four pillars of regime support that can either prop up or press upon whoever is in power. These are the Egyptian military, the business elite, the United States, and the multi-headed opposition. Secondly, the book brings together the literature on bottom-up revolutionary movements and top-down military coups, and it introduces the concept of a coup from below in contrast to the revolution from above that took place under Gamal Abdel Nasser.

'The most important book of the Trump era' The Economist How does a democracy die? What can we do to save our own? What lessons does history teach us? In the 21st century democracy is threatened like never before. Drawing insightful lessons from across history - from Pinochet's murderous Chilean regime to Erdogan's quiet dismantling in Turkey - Levitsky and Ziblatt explain why democracies fail, how leaders like Trump subvert them today and what each of us can do to protect our democratic rights. 'This book looks to history to provide a guide for defending democratic norms when they are under threat, and finds that it is possible to fight back.' David Runciman 'A useful primer on the importance of norms, institutional restraints and civic participation in maintaining a democracy - and how quickly those things can erode when we're not paying attention' President Barack Obama 'A must-read' Andrew Marr, Sunday Times 'The greatest of the many merits of Levitsky and Ziblatt's How Democracies Die is their rejection of western exceptionalism. They tell inspiring stories I had not heard before' Nick Cohen, Observer 'Provocative, timely. One of my favourite reads this year' Elif Shafak 'Anyone who is concerned about the future of democracy should read this brisk, accessible book. Anyone who is not concerned should definitely read it' Daron Acemoglu, co-author of Why Nations Fail

This edited collection surveys how non-Western states have responded to the threats of domestic and international terrorism in ways consistent with and reflective of their broad historical, political, cultural and religious traditions. It presents a series of eighteen case studies of counterterrorism theory and practice in the non-Western world, including countries such as China, Japan, India, Pakistan, Egypt and Brazil. These case studies, written by country experts and drawing on original language sources, demonstrate the diversity of counter-terrorism theory and practice and illustrate how the world 'sees' and responds to terrorism is different from the way that the United States, the United Kingdom and many European governments do. This volume - the first ever comprehensive account of counter-terrorism in the non-Western world - will be of interest to students, scholars, students and policymakers responsible for developing counter-terrorism policy. -- .

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.

In the twenty-first century, land deals in the Global South have become increasingly prevalent and controversial. Transnational access to arable land in impoverished "land-rich" countries in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia highlights the link between the shifting geopolitics of economic development and problems of food security, climate change, and regional and international trade. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, Upland Geopolitics uses the case of Chinese agribusiness investment in northern Laos to study the unbalanced geography of the new global land rush. Connecting the current rubber plantation boom to a longer trajectory of foreign intervention in the region, Upland Geopolitics reveals how legacies of Cold War conflict continue to pave the way for transnational enclosure in a socially uneven landscape. Upland Geopolitics is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) and the generous support of Indiana University. DOI: 10.6069/9780295750507

Based on extensive, long-term fieldwork in the borderlands of Afghan and Tajik Badakhshan, this book explores the importance of local leaders and local identity groups for the stability of a state's borders, and ultimately for the stability of the state itself. It shows how the implantation of formal institutional structures at the border, a process supported by United Nations and other international bodies, can be counterproductive in that it may marginalise local leaders and alienate the local population, thereby increasing overall instability. The study considers how, in this particular borderland where trafficking of illegal drugs, weapons and people is rampant, corrupt customs and border personnel, and imperfect new institutional arrangements, contributed to a complex mix of oppression, hidden protest and subtle resistance, which benefitted illicit traders and hindered much needed humanitarian work. The book relates developments in this region to borderlands elsewhere, especially new borders in the former Soviet bloc, and argues that local leaders and organisations should be given semi-autonomy in co-ordination with state border forces in order to increase stability and the acceptance of the state.

Written by one of the world's leading political geographers, this fully revised and updated textbook examines the dramatic changes wrought by ideological, economic, socio-cultural and demographic changes unleashed since the end of the Cold War. Saul Cohen considers these forces in the context of their human and physical settings, and explores their geographical influence on foreign policy and international relations.

Vladimir Putin has a master plan to destroy Europe, divide NATO, reclaim Russian influence in the world, and most of all to marginalize the United States and the West in order to achieve regional hegemony and global power. Putin's unified strategy and vision for Europe has not been thoroughly discussed or articulated in any meaningful way until now. Putin's Master Plan is the first comprehensive attempt to systematically explain Putin's global strategy, which could inevitably and inexorably lead to the breakup of the NATO alliance, and potentially to war with the West. Currently, the West has no strategy, no plan, and no tactics to confront Putin's master plan other than imposing limited economic sanctions, which have done little to deter Putin's aggression--and may well have encouraged and facilitated it. The viewpoint taken here is not just alarmism, but an accurate and, for the first time, clear and sober portrayal of a frightening situation that, more and more, serious observers of European and Russian politics are openly recognizing and acknowledging. Putin's Master Plan makes the case that it is essential to wake up to Putin's strategy to destroy Europe, divide NATO, and build a new empire in the former Soviet Union. Russia has demonstrated an extraordinary level of aggression, most boldly in its outright invasions of Georgia and Ukraine. American weakness and a divided Europe have left Russia's terrified neighbors without an alternative to Russian domination, and even once-stalwart American allies such as the Republic of Georgia are on the brink of becoming part of Putin's new empire in Europe. Putin has made it clear that he sees NATO expansion as a fundamental threat to Russian nationhood, and he is systematically challenging the NATO Alliance as well as the United States. So far, he is winning.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has developed into a key regional security group in Asia, its member states representing no less than "half of humanity". Alarmists believe that the SCO is making itself into a NATO of the East, thus posing a long-term threat to the West. Moreover, several members are key players in economic development and energy production, hence political developments within the SCO can no longer be ignored by the global market. Even so, the organization has long been disregarded by political leaders in the West and is seldom reported in Western media or analysed in academic works. As such, this ground-breaking volume - the first study to properly treat a key regional grouping in Asia and with contributors from across the region and beyond - will be a key reference for many specialists and academics working on Asian affairs.

Secession? Peaceful secession? Why would patriotic American want to do that? How, in any case, is it possible? Michael Hart lays out the answers in clear expository prose, pinned to reality at every point by historical precedent and scientific fact. The heart of his argument is a separation of the U.S.A., at county, not state, level into a rump "blue" nation purusing current federal policies and a new "red" American Federal Republic (A/F.R.)--'a constitutional republic, with civil liberties fully protected.' The A.F.R. will begin with a new Declaration--Dr. Hart provides a full text--followed by a new Constitution containing clauses to prevent the evils that today threaten our liberties.

The 1915 Rent Strikes in Glasgow, along with similar campaigns across the UK, catalysed rent restrictions and eventually public housing as a right, with a legacy of progressive improvement in UK housing through the central decades of the 20th century. With the decimation of social housing and the resurgence of a profoundly exploitative private housing market, the contemporary political economy of housing now shares many distressing features with the situation one hundred years ago. Starting with a re-appraisal of the Rent Strikes, this book asks what housing campaigners can learn today from a proven organisational victory for the working class. A series of investigative accounts from scholar-activists and housing campaign groups across the UK charts the diverse aims, tactics and strategies of current urban resistance, seeking to make a vital contribution to the contemporary housing question in a time of crisis.