Today's analysts of world affairs are often loosely referring to 'geopolitics', but do not always clearly define it. This book therefore offers a necessary introduction into the main components of geopolitical analysis, an overview of the main geopolitical schools of thought, as well as reflections on technology and geopolitics. In addition, empirical studies showcase innovative approaches.

Autonomy has been widely advocated as a means of managing national diversity, whilst meeting the demands of justice and stability. It comes in a variety of forms, both territorial and non-territorial and spans the categories of secession, confederation, federalism, devolution, local government and cultural self-management. Using the term in a broad way, this book examines its meanings in political and legal theory and its application in a variety of settings in Europe, North America and Asia. Among the issues discussed are: normative theories of self-determination; the definition and boundaries of autonomous communities; secession and its alternatives; the political economy of autonomy; the policy capacity of autonomous governments; legal conceptions of autonomy and the international context.

Neville Brown's The Geography of Human Conflict was chosen runner up to the winning title 'D Day' by Antony Beevor for the yearly Duke of Westminster Medal for Military Literature prize organized by the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies This book is mindful of Geography's big dilemma. How can the subject curb the encroachments of other disciplines: environmental studies, human ecology, political science, geophysics . . . ? The author believes that what we know as "strategic studies" needs urgently to address a clutch of geography-related considerations customarily seen as outside its remit. Climate change is of singular import, security-wise. Moreover, other pressures on our planetary ecology and resource base, currently appear as critical, taken collectively. Societal and philosophic contradictions are deeply endemic, too, not least within the modern post-industrial nations. Again the attendant security implications may lend themselves well to geographical interpretations. ... Informing the study throughout will be an awareness of the interactions between Space and Time, addressed not metaphysically but in mundane terms. Then again, while linear distance and bearing are becoming less crucially important, the two-dimensional aspects of geographic space (areas and densities) are becoming more critical. Germane, too, is the medium-term (20 to 30 years?) prospect of biowarfare displacing nuclear bombs as the most menacing form of mass destruction. The classical Chinese concept of yin and yang will be examined as lending itself to singularly fruitful application to conflict limitation in an ever-shrinking world. ... Throughout a distinction is preserved between those questions the author believes can be answered definitively, and those which as yet can only be aired. For both, historical experience will be evaluated in order to give more depth to the interpretation of modern challenges - actual and predicted. Emphasis will be laid on the development of regional associations strong enough to deal with various aspects of a survival strategy: nuclear deterrence, peacekeeping, arms control, developing economic resources, rural and urban ecology. A final review concludes with how one might hope a planetary community can evolve in the longer term - i.e. up to one or two centuries ahead

Without resolute counteraction, climate change will overstretch many societies' adaptive capacities within the coming decades. This could result in destabilization and violence, jeopardizing national and international security to a new degree. However, climate change could also unite the international community. This is provided that we recognize climate change as a threat to humankind and so set the course for adopting a dynamic and globally coordinated climate policy. If we fail to do so, climate change will draw ever-deeper lines of division and conflict in international relations, triggering numerous conflicts between and within countries over the distribution of resources - especially water and land, and over the management of migration, or over compensation payments between the countries mainly responsible for climate change and those countries most affected by its destructive effects. With Climate Change as a Security Risk, WBGU has compiled a flagship report on an issue that quite rightly is rising rapidly up the international political agenda. The authors pull no punches on the likelihood of increasing tensions and conflicts in a climatically constrained world and spotlight places where possible conflicts may flare up in the 21st century unless climate change is checked. The report makes it clear that climate policy is preventative security policy.

In War and Geopolitics in Interwar Manchuria Kwong Chi Man revisits the civil wars in China (1925-1928) from the perspective of the often-overlooked "warlords," who fought against the joint forces of the Nationalist and Communist parties. In particular, this work focuses on Zhang Zuolin, the leader of the "Fengian Clique" who was sometimes seen as the representative of the Japanese interest in Manchuria. Using primary and secondary sources from China, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, this work tries to revisit the wars during the period from international, political, military, and economic-financial perspectives. It sheds new light on Zhang Zuolin's decision to fight against the Nationalists and the Communists and offers an alternative explanation to the Nationalists (temporary) victory by revealing the central importance of geopolitics in the civil wars in China during the interwar period.

This book is a unique attempt at a general assessment of European Union frontiers. Internal frontiers are losing some of their key functions but there are many responses to the new situation, as a case study of French frontiers abundantly illustrates. An examination of the EU external frontier shows that the EU is acquiring some state-like features, but the eastern frontier provides abundant evidence of the external frontier's complexity. The authors conclude that the increasing openness of national frontiers will continue, but their effective abolition, whether by European integration or through globalization, is improbable.

What are the costs of the Chinese regime's fixation on quelling dissent in the name of political order, or "stability?" In Welfare for Autocrats, Jennifer Pan shows that China has reshaped its major social assistance program, Dibao, around this preoccupation, turning an effort to alleviate poverty into a tool of surveillance and repression. This distortion of Dibao damages perceptions of government competence and legitimacy and can trigger unrest among those denied benefits. Pan traces how China's approach to enforcing order transformed at the turn of the 21st century and identifies a phenomenon she calls seepage whereby one policy-in this case, quelling dissent-alters the allocation of resources and goals of unrelated areas of government. Using novel datasets and a variety of methodologies, Welfare for Autocrats challenges the view that concessions and repression are distinct strategies and departs from the assumption that all tools of repression were originally designed as such. Pan reaches the startling conclusion that China's preoccupation with order not only comes at great human cost but in the case of Dibao may well backfire.

First published in 1982. Wide-ranging and fully documented, this book is the first detailed study of the origins, contexts and consequences of the long-standing dispute between China, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines over the Paracel and Spratly Archipelagos in the South China Sea - one of the world's most strategically important inter-ocean basins and China's southern maritime frontier. Samuels' analysis: * Highlights the impact of the shifting balance of power in Asia and the growing competition for oceanic resources * Examines the implications of the dispute in terms of the historical and modern role of china as a maritime power in Asia.

This book investigates urban growth management in the USA as a contested form of state territoriality. Synthesizing, interpreting, and contributing to literature on the history, theory and practices of urban growth management, the analysis offers critically theorized case studies of four 'city-regions' located in four different growth management states."

Contents:
Abstracts
List of Maps
Notes of Transliteration, Spellings and Names
Glossary
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Fields
3. Geosophy, Geopiety, and Topophilia
4. Nostalgia, Myths and Landscape
5. The Map as Discourse
6. Historical Geography
7. Methodology

Drawing on ethno-anthropological fieldwork, this book considers issues of identity and belonging in Europe from a consciously emic perspective. The book explores issues such as borders, migration, economic organization, heritage, and the politics and practice of developing cultural understanding.

Environmental politics has traditionally been a peripheral concern for international relations theory, but increasing alarm over global environmental challenges has elevated international society's relationship with the natural world into the theoretical limelight. IR theory's engagement with environmental politics, however, has largely focused on interstate cooperation in the late twentieth century, with less attention paid to how the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century quest to tame nature came to shape the modern international order. The ideal river examines nineteenth-century efforts to establish international commissions on three transboundary rivers - the Rhine, the Danube, and the Congo. It charts how the Enlightenment ambition to tame the natural world, and human nature itself, became an international standard for rational and civilized authority and informed our geographical imagination of the international. This relationship of domination over nature shaped three core IR concepts central to the emergence of early international order: the territorial sovereign state; imperial hierarchies; and international organizations. The book contributes to environmental politics and international relations by highlighting how the relationship between society and nature is not a peripheral concern, but one at the heart of international politics. -- .

Churchill, America and Vietnam 1941-1945 offers a nuanced analysis of British policy towards the post-war structure of the European colonial empires. By ample, carefully deployed evidence, the book concludes, that Churchill was willing to sacrifice French colonial interests in Vietnam for the sake of his all-important 'special relationship' with America. This reveals not only a clear sense of Churchill's wartime priorities, but also fresh and original insights into the inconsistencies sometimes apparent in the Prime Minister's position - for example as a staunch defender of imperialism. There are also numerous illustrations of the personality and character, not only of Churchill, but also of Roosevelt and other leading figures. In effect, this book represents a fusion of British imperial and diplomatic history, and it emphasises how important they are to one another, by using the often-neglected case study of Britain's involvement with Vietnam.

Approaching Central Asia from the perspective of geopolitics, transition, oil and stability, the authors provide a very broad and diverse analysis of the region, examining domestic and international developments since 1991. The book both provides an introduction to the region and presents advanced research on international pipeline projects, political risk and developments after September 11th. The authors draw on a variety of disciplines, including economics, politics, international relations, law and sociology.

In The Origins of Political Order, Francis Fukuyama took us from the dawn of mankind to the French and American Revolutions. Here, he picks up the thread again in the second instalment of his definitive account of mankind's emergence as a political animal. This is the story of how state, law and democracy developed after these cataclysmic events, how the modern landscape - with its uneasy tension between dictatorships and liberal democracies - evolved and how in the United States and in other developed democracies, unmistakable signs of decay have emerged. If we want to understand the political systems that dominate and order our lives, we must first address their origins - in our own recent past as well as in the earliest systems of human government. Fukuyama argues that the key to successful government can be reduced to three key elements: a strong state, the rule of law and institutions of democratic accountability. This magisterial account is required reading for anyone wishing to know more about mankind's greatest achievements.

This book investigates the major internal and external pressures and constraints facing China as it enters the new century. It is widely recognised that in its capacity as a nuclear power and as a member of the UN's Security Council, China plays a major role in world politics. China is also a growing economic power, which according to some economists is projected to overtake the US 20 years from now. China has clearly emerged as the major power in the East Asian region and the major issues of contention in the region such as the tension on the Korean peninsula, the Taiwan issue and the conflicting territorial claims in the South China seas cannot be resolved without China's active participation.

The 'Western' green movement has grown rapidly in the last three decades: green ministers are in government in several European countries, Greenpeace has millions of paying supporters, and green direct action against roads, GM crops, the WTO and neo-liberalism, have become ubiquitous.
The author argues that 'greens' share a common ideological framework but are divided over strategy. Using social movement theory and drawing on research from many countries, he shows how the green movement became more differentiated over time, as groups had to face the task of deciding what kind of action was appropriate.
In the breadth of its coverage and its novel focus on the relationship between green ideas and action, this book makes an important contribution to the understanding of green politics.

Economic sanctions: panacea, symbolic but ineffectual, or useless and counterproductive? While these questions have framed much the existing debate, Drury digs deeper to why foreign policy leaders, and especially the president, choose sanctions, of which type, whether to sustain them, and when to terminate them. Skilfully integrating domestic and international factors, and placing the analysis of sanctions directly into the mainstream of strategic studies and decision theory, this book breaks new ground with its innovative argument and thorough testing using a variety of databases.

This work covers the uncertain geopolitical situation of some countries of Central and Eastern Europe, including some of those which are hoping to enter the European Union in the near future, some for which entry is far off, and some which may never seek or be eligible for membership. Attention is given to the problems arising out of economic restructuring and problems of defence. Yet, all the issues are ultimately founded in those geographic essentials that have dogged so much of Europe's modern history: the tension arising from marked differences in the standard of living between the north-west of the continent and the south and east; the way in which past migration has created significant ethnic minorities in many countries; and by the manner in which larger countries have bullied or courted their smaller neighbours.

The Irish Times bestseller 'A gripping tale of savagery and courage' Noam Chomsky 'Fascinating and captivating' Irish Times 'A beautiful book... Full of pain and longing but also joy, adventure, and excitement' Janine di Giovanni 'A superb account of the life and work of the best reporter I have ever known' Patrick Cockburn When Lara Marlowe met Robert Fisk in 1983 in Damascus, he was already a famous war correspondent. She was a young American reporter who would become a renowned journalist in her own right. For the next twenty years, they were lovers, husband and wife and friends, occasionally angry and estranged from one another, but ultimately reconciled. They learned from each other and from the people in the ruined world they reported from: Lebanon, torn apart by a vicious civil war as well as Israeli and Syrian occupations; Iran, where they were the only journalists to interview the Middle East's chief hostage-taker and dispatcher of suicide bombers; the Islamist revolt that claimed up to 200,000 lives in Algeria; the disintegration of former Yugoslavia and two US-led wars on Iraq. This is at once a portrait of a remarkable man, the story of a Middle East broken by its own divisions and outside powers, and a moving account of a relationship in dark times.

An illuminating and comprehensive exploration of a subject which has dominated the British political scene for much of the period since the Second World War. Through a wide and varied collection of documents, complemented by detailed and perceptive analysis, this book explores Britain's reactions to the dynamics of European integration.
Key subjects covered include;
European unity and "missed opportunities" in the early post-war years
the Commonwealth dimension and the "special relationship"
Britain's belated attempts to join the EC in the 1960s
the singlecurrency
Many of its numerous sources are made widely accessible here for the first time. It is an invaluable resource for all students of Politics, Modern British History and European Studies.

Over the past five years Europe has continued its growth towards closer financial ties and economic integration. Through specific policies on subfields including agriculture, trade, competition, banking and economic governance the economic fortunes of individual European countries are more closely tied than ever. The aim of this comprehensive collection is to provide an overview of these policy developments for those who wish to gain an understanding of European economic integration without assuming prior knowledge of economics or using technical terms but rather is written in an accessible style and geared towards a wider-readership. On top of this, the volume also deals with many of the current issues that the European economic integration is faced with such as the global financial economic and sovereign debt crisis.