Now in its sixty-eighth edition, this title continues to provide the most up-to-date geopolitical and economic information for this important world area. Key Features: - covers the Middle East and North Africa from Algeria to Yemen - includes topical contributions from acknowledged experts on regional affairs - accurately and impartially records the latest political and economic developments - provides comprehensive data on all major organizations active in the countries of the region. General Survey - introductory essays cover a wide range of topics relating to the region as a whole. Country Surveys Individual chapters on each country incorporating: - essays on the physical and social geography, recent history and economy - an extensive statistical survey of economic and social indicators, which include area and population, health and welfare, agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining, industry, finance, trade, transport, tourism, communications media and education - a full directory with names, addresses and contact details covering the constitution, government, legislature, political organizations, election commissions, diplomatic representation, judiciary, religious groups, the media, finance, trade and industry (including petroleum and natural gas), tourism, defence and education - a country-specific bibliography, providing suggestions for further research. Regional Information - includes all major international organizations active in the Middle East and North Africa; research institutes specializing in the region; and select bibliographies of books and periodicals.

As global great power competition intensifies, there is growing concern about the geopolitical future of Antarctica. This book delves into the question of how can we anticipate, prepare for, and potentially even shape that future? Now in its 60th year, the Antarctic Treaty System has been comparatively resilient and successful in governing the Antarctic region. This book assesses how our ability to make accurate predictions about the future of the Antarctic Treaty System reduces rapidly in the face of political and biophysical complexity, uncertainty, and the passage of time. This poses a critical risk for organisations making long-range decisions about their policy, strategy, and investments in the frozen south. Scenarios are useful planning tools for considering futures beyond the limits of standard prediction. This book explores how a multi-disciplinary focus of classical geopolitics might be applied systematically to create scenarios on Antarctic futures that are plausible, rigorous, and robust. This book illustrates a pragmatic, nine-step scenario development process, using the topical issue of military activities in Antarctica. Along the way, the authors make suggestions to augment current theory and practice of geopolitical scenario planning. In doing so, this book seeks to rediscover the importance of a classical (primarily state-centric) lens on Antarctic geopolitics, which in recent decades has been overshadowed by more critical perspectives. This book is written for anyone with an interest in the rigorous assessment of geopolitical futures - in Antarctica and beyond.

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.

The dilemma of how best to protect human rights is one of the most persistent problems facing the international community today. This unique and wide-ranging history of humanitarian intervention examines responses to oppression, persecution and mass atrocities from the emergence of the international state system and international law in the late sixteenth century, to the end of the twentieth century. Leading scholars show how opposition to tyranny and to religious persecution evolved from notions of the common interests of 'Christendom' to ultimately incorporate all people under the concept of 'human rights'. As well as examining specific episodes of intervention, the authors consider how these have been perceived and justified over time, and offer important new insights into ideas of national sovereignty, international relations and law, as well as political thought and the development of current theories of 'international community'.

Geopolitical conditions influence all strategic behaviour - even when cooperation 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 be '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 one hundred years old. Ideas about the implication of geographical, especially spatial, relationships for political power - which is to say 'geopolitics'- flourished early in the twentieth 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 (sixteenth to nineteenth 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".

Table of Contents

1. Why Geopolitics? Part 1. Geopolitical theory and strategy - The Words and the History of Ideas 2. Sir Halford Mackinder - the heartland theory then and now 3. Alfred Thayer Mahan, geopolitician 4. air power, space power, and geography 5. Geography in the Space Age - An Astropolitical Analysis 6. Understanding Critical Geopolitics - Geopolitics and Risk Security 7. Geopolitics - International Boundaries as Fighting Places 8. Information Power - Strategy, Geopolitics and the Fifth Dimension Part 2. Geography and Strategy - Geopolitics in Action: Inescapable Geography 9. Weather, Geography, and Naval Power in the Age of Sail - Some Thoughts on War and Geography 10. Geopolitik - Haushofer, Hitler and Lebensraum 11. "Russia will not be Trifled With" - Geopolitical Facts and Fantasies

Bolivia: Geopolitics of a Landlocked State goes beyond the traditional focus on inter-American relations, territorial issues and the maritime question to provide the first comprehensive study of Bolivian foreign policy from independence to the present day. It aims to redress the balance between the often overstated importance of external determinants - actors and forces outside Bolivia which have influenced the foreign policy process - and the understated impact of internal determinants, similar actors and forces within Bolivia. Drawing on 50 years of research and study, the author focuses on the five interrelated goals of sovereignty, national security, territorial integrity, continental solidarity and economic independence, which have characterized Bolivian foreign policy from the outset. In so doing, the negative impact which poor governance, weak state capacity and a fixation on the seaport issue had on the achievement of those five goals is centre stage in the discussion. In acknowledging the geopolitical ramifications of being landlocked, the singular nature of Bolivia's approach to the problem also is detailed. An examination of foreign policy today can no longer be confined to intergovernmental relations; instead, it must consider the full range of internal and external forces which have influenced its scope and direction. In addition to bilateral relations, boundary disputes and the seaport issue, this volume explores the impact of foreign capital and multinational companies, together with the effects of domestic entrepreneurs, political parties, labour unions and social movements. It also assesses the overlap or linkage between domestic and foreign variables when the two combined to influence Bolivian foreign policy.

'Vanessa Nakate continues to teach a most critical lesson. She reminds us that while we may all be in the same storm, we are not all in the same boat.' Greta Thunberg 'An indispensable voice for our future.' Malala Yousafzai 'A powerful global voice.' Angelina Jolie No matter your age, location or skin colour, you can be an effective activist. Devastating flooding, deforestation, extinction and starvation. These are the issues that not only threaten in the future, they are a reality. After witnessing some of these issues first-hand, Vanessa Nakate saw how the world's biggest polluters are asleep at the wheel, ignoring the Global South where the effects of climate injustice are most fiercely felt. Inspired by a shared vision of hope, Vanessa's commanding political voice demands attention for the biggest issue of our time and, in this rousing manifesto for change, shows how you can join her to protect our planet now and for the future. Vanessa realised the importance of her place in the climate movement after she, the only Black activist in an image with four white Europeans, was cropped out of a press photograph at Davos in 2020. This example illustrates how those who will see the biggest impacts of the climate crisis are repeatedly omitted from the conversation. As she explains, 'We are on the front line, but we are not on the front page.' Without A Bigger Picture, you're missing the full story on climate change.

Moving from a historical and cultural perspective, this book examines the geo-political and socio-economic changes involving the enlarged Mediterranean. Organised into two main sections, the first section (The new centrality of the Mediterranean Basin: Trends and Dynamics) is devoted to the analysis of the most relevant drivers and interdisciplinary broader issues, and the second section (Hotspots of Crisis and Regional Interferences in the Mediterranean) assesses the situation in some areas interested by the waves of uprisings since 2011-12. The book aims to uncover this new, critical centrality of the Mediterranean in the global scenario through the analysis of the interactions and intertwining of those trends and dynamics offering a historical holistic broad view. What follows is an Italian perspective that is the result of the research of a group of scholars who have been working for years on the first-hand sources of the countries examined. A peculiar vision connected not only to its unique geographical position at the center of the basin, but also to its deep relations with the southern shore throughout its long history.

Looks at the rollout of one of the largest infrastructure programs in human history to show how local governments play a complex role. China's high-speed railway network is one of the largest infrastructure programs in human history. Despite global media coverage, we know very little about the political process that led the government to invest in the railway program and the reasons for the striking regional and temporal variation in such investments. In Localized Bargaining, Xiao Ma offers a novel theory of intergovernmental bargaining that explains the unfolding of China's unprecedented high-speed railway program. Drawing on a wealth of in-depth interviews, original data sets, and surveys with local officials, Ma details how the bottom-up bargaining efforts by territorial authorities-whom the central bureaucracies rely on to implement various infrastructure projects-shaped the allocation of investment in the railway system. Demonstrating how localities of different types invoke institutional and extra-institutional sources of bargaining power in their competition for railway stations, Ma sheds new light on how the nation's massive bureaucracy actually functions.

A unique analysis of the numbers that came to define Chinese politics and how this quantification evolved over time. For decades, a few numbers came to define Chinese politics-until those numbers did not count what mattered and what they counted did not measure up. Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts argues that the Chinese government adopted a system of limited, quantified vision in order to survive the disasters unleashed by Mao Zedong's ideological leadership. Jeremy Wallace explains how that system worked and analyzes how the problems that accumulated in its blind spots led Xi Jinping to take drastic action. Xi's neopolitical turn-aggressive anti-corruption campaigns, reassertion of party authority, and personalization of power-is an attempt fix the problems of the prior system, as well as a hedge against an inability to do so. The book argues that while of course dictators stay in power through coercion and cooptation, they also do so by convincing their populations and themselves of their right to rule. Quantification is one tool in this persuasive arsenal, but it comes with its own perils.

A Search for Sovereignty maps a new approach to world history by examining the relation of law and geography in European empires between 1400 and 1900. Lauren Benton argues that Europeans imagined imperial space as networks of corridors and enclaves, and that they constructed sovereignty in ways that merged ideas about geography and law. Conflicts over treason, piracy, convict transportation, martial law, and crime created irregular spaces of law, while also attaching legal meanings to familiar geographic categories such as rivers, oceans, islands, and mountains. The resulting legal and spatial anomalies influenced debates about imperial constitutions and international law both in the colonies and at home. This original study changes our understanding of empire and its legacies and opens new perspectives on the global history of law.

Jihadist rebel groups that take control over a territory, claim authority over its population, and implement radical religious laws have become a rising security issue over the last decade. Generally brutal and authoritarian, the best-known manifestation of this phenomenon is the Islamic State (IS). While the IS has been decimated in the last few years, most analysts agree that the problem of jihadist violence is far from over, and that the IS may very well re-configure itself in a not so distant future. Moreover, beyond Iraq and Syria, the security threat posed by violent jihadism remains an acute issue. Yet no one has hitherto systematically explored the potential for civil resistance against jihadist armed groups. In Confronting the Caliphate, Isak Svensson and co-authors Daniel Finnbogason, Dino Krause, Luis Martinez Lorenzo, and Nanar Hawach focus on a core set of questions: What can civilians, who oppose the jihadists' attempt to rule them, do to manifest their dissent? To what extent are civilians engaging in acts of resistance against jihadist rebel rule and what does such resistance look like? Does it matter, and can it in any way influence the trajectories of jihadist proto-states? New military and political realities in Iraq and Syria have opened up the possibility to generate new knowledge in areas where the IS has been pushed back. The authors draw from a novel survey on civil resistance against the IS in Mosul after the IS lost control of the city. This survey-the first of its kind-concentrates on the extent and character of resistance behavior against the IS. The authors also utilize contemporary Arab-language social media blogs and news websites in order to document protests against jihadists in Syria, and they also draw on interviews with activists and civilian in Syria and Lebanon who have lived under rule of jihadist groups. Importantly, they show that the international character of jihadist groups are often perceived as alien to local customs, thereby triggering resistance. Given the events of the recent past and the potential resurgence of such groups, this book is a valuable intervention that not only shows us how jihadists rule, but provides the best explanation yet of how ordinary people resist jihadist totalitarianism.

Focusing on both Polar Regions, this book provides a comprehensive understanding of political processes related to the rapidly changing Arctic and Antarctic, where the environmental impacts of human activities are extremely visible. Environmental changes in the Arctic and the Antarctic are increasingly seen as barometers of the global impact of human activities, while newly arising economic opportunities in both Polar Regions prompt predictions that they will be the site of future conflicts. This book maps and analyses the different actors involved in the politics of the Polar Regions to explain why similar patterns of interpretation of such major issues have become dominant in practical, popular and formal geopolitical discourses. Disentangling the politics, the author illustrates how the ordering principles have evolved, explains recent dynamics in political processes and provides the groundwork needed to better forecast future trends. By focusing on the Americas, the only continent that borders both Polar Regions, the author shows how geographic proximity inspires interaction and cooperation among state and non-state actors in very different ways. This volume will be of interest to scholars and students of political science, political geography, international relations, global governance and cultural studies. It will have an international appeal particularly in the Americas, and other countries with growing interests in the Polar Regions.

Co-authored by four high-profile International Relations scholars, this book investigates the implications of the global ascent of China on cross-Strait relations and the identity of Taiwan as a democratic state. Examining an array of factors that affect identity formation, the authors consider the influence of the rapid military and economic rise of China on Taiwan's identity. Their assessment offers valuable insights into which policies have the best chance of resulting in peaceful relations and prosperity across the Taiwan Strait and builds a new theory of identity at elite and mass levels. It also possesses implications for the United States-led world order and today's most critical great power competition.

In a devastating analysis, T. J. Coles reveals the true extent of Britain's covert foreign policy that supports war, conflict and oppression around the world. Unbeknownst to the broad population, the Shadow State sponsors a `new world order' that allies Britain with America's quest for global power - what the Pentagon calls `Full Spectrum Dominance'. Coles documents how British operatives have interfered in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Iran and Yemen with the aim of deposing unwanted regimes. In doing so, they have helped create extensive terrorist networks across the Middle East, reviving previously-failing Jihadist groups such as ISIL, which has now transformed into an international terror franchise. In addition to waging clandestine wars in the Middle East, the secret services have used the military to run drugs by proxy in Colombia, train death squads in Bangladesh and support instability in Ukraine, where NATO's strategic encroachment on Russia is drawing the world closer to terminal nuclear confrontation. Coles unearths Britain's involvement in the recent ethnic cleansing of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan government, the invasion of Somalia by Somali and Ethiopian warlords, and Indonesia's atrocities in Papua. He also exposes the extensive use of drones for murder and intimidation across the Middle East and elsewhere. Britain's Secret Wars is essential reading for anyone who wants to dig beneath the surface of current events. This expanded edition features a new Preface.

The New Geopolitics of Terror examines the impact of global reach terror on states. This book surveys the current crises and tensions in the Middle East, focussing primarily on the upheavals in Syria and Iraq, and the interaction between groups, such as Al Qaeda and ISIS state actors and Western security. It explains the threat to Western interests and states from wide-reaching Islamic terrorism, geopolitical intervention by outside actors and regional power struggles. It critiques the inadequate political, military and diplomatic responses from Western powers, and the lack of effective leadership, highlighting the potential dangers should the West fail to remedy these. The book also identifies the difficulties and dangers of continued Western involvement in the Middle East, and proposes specific actions and interventions in order to prevent further deterioration in the region and in Western societies. Specifically, the book calls for a grand strategy underpinned by political ambition that combines diplomatic, political, economic and military measures, calls for effective counter-terrorism measures in more resilient Western societies, and highlights the importance of the role that global players outside those regions can and must play if peace is to be restored. Written by two leading scholars, this book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, strategic studies, defence studies, Middle Eastern politics and IR in general.

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.

Rolando Dromundo presents a political and historical analysis of the state-building processes in Ukraine, Moldova, and the unrecognized Republic of Pridnestrovia from the Soviet fall until 2015, starting with a sketch of the main geopolitical trend that surrounds these polities and its influences on them, and paying special attention to the vicissitudes of the Ukrainian political crisis of 201314 and its immediate consequences in Crimea and the Donbass. This book is a must for scholars with an interest in the Post-Soviet Space and to anyone curious about an international conflict from a realist perspective. It offers an original insight on the understanding of the oligarchs role in the Ukrainian political life and presents a different perspective of the unrecognized Republic of Pridnestrovia. Dromundo writes neither pro-Russian nor pro-Western. He sheds light on the problems from different angles and illustrates how the local inhabitants turned out to become the biggest losers in the game because they have fallen prey to local elites allied with different foreign powers disregarding local identities and needs. Altogether, the book helps to better understand the complexity of local state-building processes in a multiethnic society. Rolando Dromundo presents a political and historical analysis of the state-building processes in Ukraine, Moldova, and the unrecognized Republic of Pridnestrovia from the Soviet fall until 2015, starting with a sketch of the main geopolitical trend that surrounds these polities and its influences on them, and paying special attention to the vicissitudes of the Ukrainian political crisis of 201314 and its immediate consequences in Crimea and the Donbass. This book is a must for scholars with an interest in the Post-Soviet Space and to anyone curious about an international conflict from a realist perspective. It offers an original insight on the understanding of the oligarchs role in the Ukrainian political life and presents a different perspective of the unrecognized Republic of Pridnestrovia. Dromundo writes neither pro-Russian nor pro-Western. He sheds light on the problems from different angles and illustrates how the local inhabitants turned out to become the biggest losers in the game because they have fallen prey to local elites allied with different foreign powers disregarding local identities and needs. Altogether, the book helps to better understand the complexity of local state-building processes in a multiethnic society.

From fear and anxiety, to celebration, China's rise has provoked a variety of responses across the world. In light of this phenomenon, how are our understandings of China produced? From West to East, Mobo Gao interrogates knowledge production; rejecting the supposed objectivity of empirical statistics and challenging the assumption of a dichotomy between the Western liberal democracy and Chinese authoritarianism. By examining issues such as the Chinese Neo-Enlightenment and neoliberalism, national interest vested in Western scholarship, representations of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and the South China Sea, the book asks: how is contemporary China constructed? By dissecting the political agenda and conceptual framework of commentators on China, Gao provocatively urges those not only on the Right, but also on the Left, to be self-critical of their views on Chinese politics, economics and history.

The marine environment does not naturally respect arbitrary international boundaries. The establishment and management of transboundary marine protected areas therefore presents major governance challenges. This book analyses a series of marine transboundary conservation initiatives embedded in varying contextual situations to examine the underlying reasons for their success or failure. Utilising an adapted 'pathways of influence' framework, it provides insights into the development of marine transboundary conservation initiatives looking at the effectiveness of international rules, international norms and discourse, market forces and direct access to policy making. Examples come from a wide range of jurisdictions, including territorial seas, continental shelves, exclusive economic zones and areas beyond national jurisdiction. Case studies include initiatives in the Coral Triangle, West Africa, Central America, the Wadden Sea, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. In addition the authors assess the potential for developing wider international cooperation as a result of relationships forged though involvement within these marine transboundary conservation initiatives.

American security and prosperity now depend on Asia. William H. Overholt offers an iconoclastic analysis of developments in each major Asian country, Asian international relations, and U.S. foreign policy. Drawing on decades of political and business experience, he argues that obsolete Cold War attitudes tie the U.S. increasingly to an otherwise isolated Japan and obscure the reality that a U.S.-Chinese bicondominium now manages most Asian issues. Military priorities risk polarizing the region unnecessarily, weaken the economic relationships that engendered American preeminence, and ironically enhance Chinese influence. As a result, despite its Cold War victory, U.S. influence in Asia is declining. Overholt disputes the argument that democracy promotion will lead to superior development and peace, and forecasts a new era in which Asian geopolitics could take a drastically different shape. Covering Japan, China, Russia, Central Asia, India, Pakistan, Korea, and South-East Asia, Overholt offers invaluable insights for scholars, policymakers, business people, and general readers.

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.

'Journalists are said to write the first rough drafts of history. But I was only the messenger.' When Argentine troops surged onto the shores of the Falkland Islands, it was Harold Briley who broke the news to Britain and the rest of the world. As the BBC World Service's Latin America Correspondent, he was perfectly placed both metaphorically and physically: not only was he reporting from his base in Buenos Aires, but he had first-hand knowledge of the countries, their politics and their cultures. In Fight for Falklands Freedom: Reporting Live from Argentina and the Islands, Briley returns to the Islands to tell the full story in a breathless play-by-play account. Drawing on hundreds of his own reports, as well as interviews with political and military leaders from both sides, this is a fascinating insight into what happened, when it happened - and why.

"Line in the Sand" details the dramatic transformation of the western U.S.-Mexico border from its creation at the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 to the emergence of the modern boundary line in the first decades of the twentieth century. In this sweeping narrative, Rachel St. John explores how this boundary changed from a mere line on a map to a clearly marked and heavily regulated divide between the United States and Mexico. Focusing on the desert border to the west of the Rio Grande, this book explains the origins of the modern border and places the line at the center of a transnational history of expanding capitalism and state power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Moving across local, regional, and national scales, St. John shows how government officials, Native American raiders, ranchers, railroad builders, miners, investors, immigrants, and smugglers contributed to the rise of state power on the border and developed strategies to navigate the increasingly regulated landscape. Over the border's history, the U.S. and Mexican states gradually developed an expanding array of official laws, ad hoc arrangements, government agents, and physical barriers that did not close the line, but made it a flexible barrier that restricted the movement of some people, goods, and animals without impeding others. By the 1930s, their efforts had created the foundations of the modern border control apparatus.

Drawing on extensive research in U.S. and Mexican archives, "Line in the Sand" weaves together a transnational history of how an undistinguished strip of land became the significant and symbolic space of state power and national definition that we know today.