The U.S.-led effort to fight the Islamic State in northeastern Syria since 2014 has been as controversial and poorly understood as it has been significant. Advocates of fighting "by, with and through" the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) view the campaign as a near-ideal case study of a cost-effective U.S. military intervention that should be duplicated in the future. Critics of the campaign say that the U.S. allied itself with a terrorist group and endangered its ties with Turkey, a long-stranding NATO partner; losing sight of strategic priorities in order to win tactical victories at low cost. This book combines general research with 50 interviews gathered in Syria with Kurdish, Arab and Christian SDF officers, and 50 interviews with U.S. and French officials and military officers with on-the-ground involvement in the war. It provides an unprecedented window into how the war was really prosecuted, in the eyes of the participants at all levels, uniquely looking not only at how U.S. soldiers view their partner forces, but how the local partners view them in return. This is a unique and essential insight into US strategy in Syria and beyond.

Winner of the International Studies Association's Harold and Margaret Sprout Award 2008 for the best book on international environmental problems. This pioneering study examines the impacts of neoliberal global governance on forests and provides an exhaustive overview of international forest politics: Intergovernmental Panel on Forests World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development Intergovernmental Forum on Forests United Nations Forum on Forests Forest Certification New policies to address illegal logging World Bank's forests strategy Convention on Biological Diversity - and other international forest-related processes The book is an essential reference for students of global environmental politics and required reading for forest policy makers. It concludes by arguing for a democratization of global governance and a fundamental restructuring of the regulatory environment so that final decision making authority is restored to the local level. Driven by concern at what forest loss means for communities and future generations, this is a book that stands to make a difference.

Examining globalization in the Middle East, this book provides a much needed assessment of the impact of globalization in the 'greater' Middle East, including North Africa, in the context of the powerful geopolitical forces at work in shaping the region today.

Written by a well-known authority in this area, this book demonstrates that, unlike in other regions, such as East Asia, geopolitics has been a critical factor in driving globalization in the Middle East. The author argues that whereas elsewhere globalisation has opened up the economy, society, culture and attitudes to the environment; in the Middle East it has had the opposite effect, with poor state formation, little interregional trade, foreign and interregional investment, and reassertion of traditional identities.

This book explores the impact of globalization on the polities, economies and social environment of the greater Middle East, in the context of the region's position as the central site of global geopolitical competition at the start of the twenty-first century.

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 is the third in a series of books that present a complete collection of Chomsky's writings for the New York Times Syndicate. The previous two are Interventions and Making the Future, both published by City Lights. Essays from 2011 right up to pub date, August 2015. Chomsky has a bestseller-size market ever hungry to buy his latest assessment of U.S. politics and world affairs. Because We Say So delivers the goods in short, easy to digest pieces. Huge established readership: Chomsky's Facebook page has almost 1 million fans, and his web page is visited by 1000s. Chomsky is constantly giving talks in the US that attract capacity, standing-room-only crowds, and media coverage. Cover art by Lawrence Ferlinghetti Chomsky will be 88 at date of publication.

An analysis of the political and ecological consequences of charting the Amazon River basin in narrative fiction, Mapping the Amazon examines how widely read novels from twentieth-century South America attempted to map the region for readers. Authors such as Jose Eustasio Rivera, Romulo Gallegos, Mario Vargas Llosa, Cesar Calvo, Marcio Souza, and Mario de Andrade travelled to the Amazonian regions of their respective countries and encountered firsthand a forest divided and despoiled by the spatial logic of extractivism. Writing against that logic, they fill their novels with geographic, human, and ecological realities omitted from official accounts of the region. Though the plots unfold after the height of the Amazon rubber boom (1850-1920), the authors construct landscapes marked by that first large-scale exploitation of Amazonian biodiversity. The material practices of rubber extraction resurface in the stories told about the removal of other plants, seeds, and minerals from the forest as well as its conversion into farmland. Smith places the counter-discursive impulses of each novel in dialogue with various modernizing projects that carve Amazonia into cultural and economic spaces: border commissions, extractive infrastructure, school geography manuals, Indigenous education programs, and touristic propaganda. Even the "novel maps" studied, however, have blind spots, and Mapping the Amazon considers the legacy of such unintentional omissions today.

This new book provides fresh and in-depth perspectives on so-called 'resource wars'. Highlighting the multiple forms of violence accompanying the history of resources exploitation, business practices supporting predatory regimes, insurgent groups and terrorists, this is an authoritative guide to the struggle for control of the world's resources. It includes key conceptual chapters and covers a wide range of case studies including: * the geopolitics of oil control in the Middle East, Central Asia and Columbia, * spaces of governance and 'petro-violence' in Nigeria * 'blood diamonds' and other minerals associated with conflicts in Sierra Leone and the Congo. This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal Geopolitics.

This book is an ethical critique of existing approaches to sustainable development and international environmental cooperation, providing a detailed and structured account of the tensions, normative shifts and contradictions that currently characterize it. With specific focus on three environmental regimes, the volume explores the way various notions of justice feature both implicitly and explicitly in the design of global environmental policies. In so doing, the dominant conceptions of justice that underpin key global environmental policies are identified and criticised on the basis of their compatibility with the normative essence of global sustainable development. Global Justice and Neoliberal Environmental Governance demonstrates that whilst moral norms inflict far greater impact in regime development than is currently acknowledged by orthodox approaches to regime analysis, the core polices remain rooted in two neo-liberal interpretations of justice which undermine the ability to achieve sustainable development and international justice. It will appeal to students and scholars of politics, philosophy, international relations, geography and law.

Over the past few decades, the governance of nature has taken its most radical turn. The most influential change in economic and social regulation has seen a dramatic reprise of liberal faith in less regulated markets and minimalist states, underpinned by advocacy for extending exclusive property rights to nearly everything imaginable. This complex turn, with its countless yet uncharted implications for environmental quality and governance, is captured by the contentious concept of neoliberalism. Today, neoliberalism provides the context and direction for how humans affect and interact with the non-human world and with one another. But what does this mean for nature?

This volume brings together specific case studies that span more than two decades of experience and evidence linking neoliberalism with concrete environmental changes, politics, and outcomes in diverse, international contexts. It evaluates specific political ecologies and dynamics, and the implications of particular neoliberal reforms and enforcements, while collectively affording new contributors and readers the possibility of thinking comparatively across sectors and geographic contexts. Such specificity and comparative potential serves important analytical functions because it allows the authors and editors to craft stronger, more credible answers to the central questions of what neoliberalism is and what it entails in specific sorts of circumstances.

This volume attempts to draw debates on governance, at both of these levels, into spaces of cross-border regionalism in Europe today. Embodying both supra-national and sub-national dynamics of contemporary forms of governance, cross-border regions (or euregions) enable observation of the fitful progress and contradictions of the multilevel polity that is contemporary Europe. Including case studies from throughout the EU as exemplars of specific "border regimes", the volume identifies the practical and theoretical importance of governing in Europe's new cross-border territories as part of a newly reinvigorated 'regional question'. In Europe's euregions, it is argued, issues of democracy, identity, sovereignty, citizenship and scale must be rethought, when a border runs through it. This book utilises a diversity of perspectives and a range of selected case studies to examine modes of governance emerging across the nation-state borders of Europe. It will interest students and researchers of European Union borders.

This volume examines the reasons why some despair at the prospects for an ecological form of democracy, and challenges the recent 'deliberative turn' in environmental political thought.

Deliberative democracy has become popular for those seeking a reconciliation of these two forms of politics. Demand for equal access to a public forum in which the best argument will prevail appears to offer a way of incorporating environmental interests into the democratic process. This book argues that deliberative theory, far from being friendly to the environmental movement, shackles the ability those seeking radical change to make their voices heard in the most effective manner.

Mathew Humphrey challenges beliefs about the relationship between ecological politics and democracy at a time when those who take direct action are being swept up in the War on Terror. By calling for a more open and contested form of democracy, in which the boundaries of what constitutes 'acceptable' behaviour are not decided in advance of actual debate, Ecological Politics and Democratic Theory is an original contribution to the literature on environmental politics, ecological thought and democracy.

Modern urban spaces are, by definition, mixed socio-spatial configurations. In many ways, their enduring success and vitality lie in the richness of their ethnic texture and ongoing exchange of economic goods, cultural practices, political ideas and social movements. This mixture, however, is rarely harmonious and has often led to violent conflict over land and identity. Focusing on mixed towns in Israel/Palestine, this insightful volume theorizes the relationship between modernity and nationalism and the social dynamics which engender and characterize the growth of urban spaces and the emergence therein of inter-communal relations. For more than a century, Arabs and Jews have been interacting in the workplaces, residential areas, commercial enterprises, cultural arenas and political theatres of mixed towns. Defying prevailing Manichean oppositions, these towns both exemplify and resist the forces of nationalist segregation. In this interdisciplinary volume, a new generation of Israeli and Palestinian scholars come together to explore ways in which these towns have been perceived as utopian or dystopian and whether they are best conceptualized as divided, dual or colonial. Identifying ethnically mixed towns as a historically specific analytic category, this volume calls for further research, comparison and debate.

This is a new exploration of the impacts of Arctic regimes in such vital areas as pollution, biodiversity, indigenous affairs, health and climate change. The post-Cold War era has seen an upsurge in interest in Arctic affairs. With new international regimes targeting Arctic issues at both the global and regional levels, the Northern areas seem set to play an increasingly prominent role in the domestic and foreign policies of the Arctic states and actors - not least Russia, the USA and the EU. This volume clearly distinguishes between three key kinds of impact: effectiveness, defined as mitigation or removal of specific problems addressed by a regime; political mobilization, highlighting changes in the pattern of involvement and influence in decision making on Arctic affairs; and region building, understood as contributions by Arctic institutions to denser interactive or discursive connectedness among the inhabitants of the region. Empirically, the main focus is on three institutions: the Arctic Council, the Barents Euro-Arctic Region and the Council of the Baltic Sea States. International Cooperation and Arctic Governance is essential reading for all students with an interest in Arctic affairs and their impact on global society.

In this enlightening analysis, Julia Gurol unpicks the complex security relations between the European Union (EU) and China. She investigates the principles, rationales and shifting dynamics of collaboration on a range of security issues, and their consequences for China, the EU and other regions. She pays particular attention to EU-China relations in the realm of anti-terrorism, anti-piracy and energy security, and disentangles their cooperation efforts in the context of increasing political and economic tensions. Systematic and accessible, this is an essential guide to the past, present and future of one of the world's most important, yet most complicated, security relationships.

Exploring the wide variety of political aspects relating to oil resources and markets, The Politics of Oil provides an important and accessible introduction to topics such as the so-called 'resource curse?' oil rent, producer cartels, and international oil governance. Broadening the scope further, Dag Harald Claes also examines the role of oil in political conflicts. Divided thematically into three parts, this book discusses the exercise of political control over oil resources, their extraction, and the income from oil exports; the vagaries of oil market forces and political attempts to govern them; and finally, the complex role of oil in international, regional, and domestic conflicts. Drawing on a number of academic perspectives, including economics, political science, philosophy, history, geology, and more, the key debates surrounding oil are explored. These include the role of OPEC, the future of oil in the context of climate change, and the part oil has played in civil war and terrorism. Easily accessible, this introduction to the intertwined relationship between oil and political decisions and behaviour, is an essential tool for students of political science, economics, and energy related studies of all kinds. It is also valuable for policymakers, industry practitioners, and others interested in the oil business or governance seeking a comprehensive introduction to the subject.

This volume discusses the entry of Greece and Turkey to NATO in 1952 from the perspective of history and international relations. The chapters were originally collected in 2012 to mark the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the accession of the two states to NATO. The focus is not on the diplomatic/political events that led to the accession (a subject which has already been extensively discussed in the available bibliography), but expands on a reassessment of this event for the two states as well as for the Balkans, covering aspects of the wider post-war period and providing perspectives for the policies of Turkey, Greece and NATO until the present day. This book was originally published as a special issue of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies.

This book examines the strategic and economic logic behind the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) Regional Cooperation. According to estimates, BCIM covers approximately 9 percent of the world's mass and 40 percent of the world's population spanning across four countries, constituting the confluence of East, Southeast and South Asia. It contributes about 13 percent to world trade but ironically only 5 percent to inter-regional trade. This volume compares the various approaches to cooperation - trade-led vs project-led, geo-political vs geo-strategic, Sino-centric vs India-led. The chapters explore the complex interplay of geo-economics and geo-politics associated with BCIM sub-regional cooperation in general, and the BCIM Economic Corridor (BCIM-EC) in particular. It points to the current challenges that impede globalisation and economic growth, and critically reviews implications for the stakeholders, institutional frameworks and the spatial impact of the Corridor, especially on the underdeveloped regions. The book discusses the geo-political, geo-economic and geo-strategic advantages that will accrue to the member countries once the sub-regional cooperation becomes fully functional. It advocates the adoption of best practices from similar sub-regional groupings across the globe. This book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics and international relations, geo-politics, strategic studies, sub-regional cooperation, South Asian studies, India-China relations, foreign trade and economics, besides those dealing with foreign policy and development cooperation. It will especially benefit policymakers, development agencies and strategic think tanks.

This extensively revised second edition of The Geopolitics Reader draws together the most influential and significant geopolitical readings from the last hundred years. A compendium of divergent viewpoints of global conflict and change, it includes readings from Halford Mackinder, Theodore Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, George Kennan, Samuel Huntington, Edward Said, Osama Bin Laden and American neoconservatives. It draws on the most illuminating examples of imperial, Cold War and contemporary geopolitics, as well as new environmental themes, global dangers and multiple resistances to the practices of geopolitics. Whilst retaining a coherent five part structure, the selection of readings has been updated to account for recent developments in the critical study of geopolitics and the post 9/11 geopolitical landscape (including issues in technoscience, biowarfare, oil politics, and terrorism), and key questions address issues of the transformed nature of threats in the new millennium, the debate over the hegemonic position of the US, and non-American perspectives on contemporary geopolitics. Skilfully guiding the reader through the divergent viewpoints of global conflict and change, the editors, all leading geopolitical authorities, provide comprehensive introductions and critical commentaries at the start of each section. Illustrated with provocative cartoons, this second edition of The Geopolitics Reader is the ideal textbook for introductory classes on international relations, world politics, political geography and, of course, geopolitics, provoking lively discussion of how questions of discourse and power are at the centre of the critical study of geopolitics.

Arctic Geopolitics, Media and Power provides a fresh way of looking at the potential and limitations of regional international governance in the Arctic region. Far-reaching impacts of climate change, its wealth of resources and potential for new commercial activities have placed the Arctic region into the political limelight. In an era of rapid environmental change, the Arctic provides a complex and challenging case of geopolitical interplay. Based on analyses of how actors from within and outside the Arctic region assert their interests and how such discourses travel in the media, this book scrutinizes the social and material contexts within which new imaginaries, spatial constructs and scalar preferences emerge. It places ground-breaking attention to shifting media landscapes as a critical component of the social, environmental and technological change. It also reflects on the fundamental dilemmas inherent in democratic decision making at a time when an urgent need for addressing climate change is challenged by conflicting interests and growing geopolitical tensions. This book will be of great interest to geography academics, media and communication studies and students focusing on policy, climate change and geopolitics, as well as policy-makers and NGOs working within the environmental sector or with the Arctic region. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.4324/9780367189822 has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

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.

As we move further into the 21st century, the prominence of regions can no longer be taken for granted. A certain skepticism has developed with regard to the feasibility of marginal regions achieving self-sustained growth and states have maintained their role as regulators of economic and social activities. Thus, the notion of the region and its significance is currently much debated and contested. Illustrated with a wide range of European case studies, this volume brings together the main strands of these contestations, as economic, political and social actors attempt to institutionalise their vision of their region as the dominant form of territorial governance. It questions both the external delimitation and the internal constitution of regions and critically analyses the societal processes circumscribing ways in which regions are created, maintained and undermined. The volume provides a wide range of analytical perspectives to enable an understanding of the current mosaic of regionalism in Europe.

The partition of the Indian subcontinent, the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, the reunification of Germany, the continuing feud between two Koreas, the Irish peace process, the case of Israel/Palestine and the lingering division of Cyprus, have together given rise to a huge body of literature. However, studies of partitions have usually focused on individual cases. This innovative volume uses comparative analysis to fill the gap in partition studies and examines cross-cutting issues such as:
* violence
* state formation
* union and regional unification
* geopolitics
* transition.

East Asia is a potential area of international conflict, with a number of possible 'flashpoints' and with the absence of strong regional organisations able to deal with conflict resolution. At the same time, global powers frequently get involved in the international politics of the region in order to protect their interests. This book presents a comprehensive overview of the geopolitics of the region. It focuses in particular on the way geographical and historical forces continue to play a key role in shaping international relations here. It considers the role of both regional and international powers, and assesses the risks of war in the region.

Selected as one of 'Five books that help explain what is happening in Afghanistan' (Financial Times) So-called Islamic State began to appear in what it calls Khorasan (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia, Iran and India) in 2014. Reports of its presence were at first dismissed as propaganda, but during 2015 it became clear that IS had a serious presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan at least. This book, by one of the leading experts on Islamist insurgency in the region, explores the nature of IS in Khorasan, its aim and strategies, and its evolution in an environment already populated by many jihadist organisations. Based on first-hand research and numerous interviews with members of IS in Khorasan, as well as with other participants and observers, the book addresses highly contentious issues such as funding, IS's relationship with the region's authorities, and its interactions with other insurgent groups. Giustozzi argues that the central leadership of IS invested significant financial resources in establishing its own branch in Khorasan, and as such it is more than a local movement which adopted the IS brand for its own aims. Though the central leadership has been struggling in implementing its project, it is now turning towards a more realistic approach. This is the first book on a new frontier in Islamic State's international jihad.

An accessible, powerful overview of Noam Chomsky's political thought In sixteen extended talks with Alternative Radio's David Barsamian, Noam Chomsky explains why the 'war on drugs' is really a war on poor people; how attacks on political correctness are attacks on independent thought; how historical revisionism has recast the United States as the victim in the Vietnam War. Widely recognized as one of the most original and important thinkers of our age, Chomsky's trenchant analysis of current events is a breath of fresh air in a world more and more polluted by mainstream media.