Perceptions of time contributed to recent Western military failings.The "decline of the West" is once again a frequent topic of speculation. Often cited as one element of the alleged decline is the succession of prolonged and unsuccessful wars most notably those waged in recent decades by the United States. This book by three Danish military experts examines not only the validity of the speculation but also asks why the West, particularly its military effectiveness, might be perceived as in decline. Temporality is the central concept linking a series of structural fractures that leave the West seemingly muscle-bound: overwhelmingly powerful in technology and military might but strategically fragile. This temporality, the authors say, is composed of three interrelated dimensions: trajectories, perceptions, and pace. First, Western societies to tend view time as a linear trajectory, focusing mostly on recent and current events and leading to the framing of history as a story of rise and decline. The authors examine whether the inevitable fall already has happened, is underway, or is still in the future. Perceptions of time also vary across cultures and periods, shaping socio-political activities, including warfare. The enemy, for example, can be perceived as belong to another time (being "backward" or "barbarian"). And war can be seen either as cyclical or exceptional, helping frame the public's willingness to accept its violent and tragic consequences. The pace of war is another factor shaping policies and actions. Western societies emphasize speed: the shorter the war the better, even if the long-term result is unsuccessful. Ironically, one of the Western world's least successful wars also has been America's longest, in Afghanistan. This unique book is thus a critical assessment of the evolution and future of Western military power. It contributes much-needed insight into the potential for the West's political and institutional renewal.

Europe has to come to terms with its increasing cultural diversity. In current debate migration is typically presented merely as a social burden. This book envisions a future in which 'native' Europeans and those with a migrant background - together the New Europeans - come to the conclusion that they should build a new society jointly. An inclusive European society can be generated by launching a common project as an alternative to neoliberalism, developing an economy that is at the service of society. For this, democratic ownership should be the lever. In that process, migrants will be important and resilient catalysts. The book sets out a roadmap for what the future could look like, presenting a vision of Europe at the end of the 21st century as a 'real Utopia'. This book bucks the trend of depressing accounts on migration from outside Europe. It offers a promissory narrative for the continent's long-term future. Drawing on political, sociological, economic and philosophical insights, the author sticks his neck out, provokes perhaps, but always with the invitation for a constructive dialogue.

As the United States slowly disengages from the Middle East and Europe faces internal challenges, a new actor is quietly exerting greater influence across North Africa: China. Beijing's growing footprint in North Africa encompasses, but is not limited to, trade, infrastructure development, ports, shipping, financial cooperation, tourism and manufacturing. It is continuing to expand its co-operation with North African countries, not only in the economic and cultural spheres, but also those of diplomacy and defence. This engagement with North Africa relates to the key aim of President Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which wants to connect Asia, Africa and Europe and sees potential in North Africa's strategic geographic location. This book is the first to analyse China's role in North Africa. It comprises of five leading country experts - Anouar Boukhars, Yahia Zoubir, Sarah Yerkes, Tareki Magresi and Nael Shama - who examine the various socio-economic, political and security aspects of China's relationship with Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. The book explores how China is displaying a development model that seeks to combine authoritarianism with economic growth, a model and that has an eager audience among regimes across the MENA region. It reveals how the China-North Africa relationship fits within the broader dynamics of increasing China-US rivalry. In doing so, contributors explain why China's growing role in North Africa is likely to have far-reaching economic and geopolitical consequences for both countries in the region and around the world.

The May 19-20, 2011 Asan conference provided a venue to reassess foreign policy decision-making in China. Bringing together leading voices in this reassessment, the meeting elicited lively exchanges centered not on refuting rival interpretations but on jointly exploring leads that clarify the processes of China's foreign policy formulation that have yet to be adequately explained. Updating the conference papers to cover the end of 2011, this book reflects the state of analysis on the eve of the important 2012-13 transition to China's fifth-generation leaders.The Asan Institute for Policy Studies is an independent think tank located in Seoul, South Korea, that provides innovative policy solutions and spearheads public discourse on many of the core issues that Korea, East Asia, and the global community face. The goal of the institute is not only to offer policy solutions but also to train experts in public diplomacy and related fields in order to strengthen Korea's capacity to better tackle some of the most pressing problems affecting the country, the region and the world today.

This major new study examines the nature of Chinese power and its impact on the international order. Drawing on an extensive range of Chinese-language debates and discussions, the book explains the roles of different actors and interests in Chinese international interactions, and how they influence the nature of Chinese strategies for global change. It also gives a unique perspective on how assessments of the consequences of China's rise are formed, and how and why these understandings change. Providing an important challenge to scholars and policy makers who seek to engage with China, the book demonstrates just how far starting assumptions can influence the questions asked, evidence sought and conclusions reached.

Die Corona-Pandemie hat insbesondere die Europaischen Grenzregionen vor grosse Herausforderungen gestellt. Grenzschliessungen haben etablierte Muster der grenzuberschreitenden Zusammenarbeit kurzfristig zum Erliegen gebracht. Zugleich lasst sich ein neuer Motivationsschub erkennen, bisherige rechtlich-administrative Hindernisse der Kooperation zukunftig zu uberwinden. Die Beitrage des vorliegenden Sammelbands untersuchen am Beispiel des deutsch-franzoesischen Grenzraums die Frage, welche innovativen Gestaltungsoptionen der Aachener Vertrag fur eine postpandemische Perspektive der grenzuberschreitenden Zusammenarbeit in Europa bietet. La pandemie de Corona a pose des defis majeurs aux regions frontalieres europeennes. La fermeture des frontieres a paralyse les modeles etablis de cooperation transfrontaliere. En meme temps, cela permet de donner un nouvel elan de motivation pour surmonter les anciens obstacles juridico-administratifs a la cooperation a l'avenir. A l'exemple de la region frontaliere franco-allemande, les contributions a cette anthologie examinent les options de conception innovantes que peut offrir le traite d'Aix-la-Chapelle dans une perspective post-pandemique de la cooperation transfrontaliere en Europe.

This book is the first attempt to comprehensively introduce Japanese geopolitics. Europe's role in disseminating knowledge globally to shape the world according to its standards is an unchallenged premise in world politics. In this story, Japan is regarded as an enthusiastic importer of the knowledge. The book challenges this ground by examining how European geopolitics, the theory of the modern state, traveled to Japan in the first half of the last century, and demonstrates that the same theory can invoke diverged imaginations of the world by examining a range of historical, political, and literary texts. Focusing on the transformation of power, knowledge, and subjectivity in time and space, Watanabe provides a detailed account to reconsider the formation of contemporary world order of the modern territorial states.

Amid a global health crisis, the process for declaring a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) is at a crossroads. As a formal declaration by the World Health Organization, a PHEIC is governed by clear legislation as to what is, and what is not, deemed a global health security threat. However, it has become increasingly politicized, and the legal criteria now appear to be secondary to the political motivation or outcome of the announcement. Addressing multiple empirical case studies, including COVID-19, this multidisciplinary book explores the relationship between international law and international relations to interrogate how a PHEIC is declared and its role in how we collectively respond to outbreaks.

Former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo spearheaded the Trump Administration's most significant foreign policy breakthroughs. Now, he reveals how he did it, and how it could happen again. Mike Pompeo is the only person ever to have served as both America's most senior diplomat and the head of its premier espionage agency. As the only four-year national security member of President Trump's Cabinet, he worked to impose crushing pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran, avert a nuclear crisis with North Korea, deliver unmatched support for Israel, and bring peace to the Middle East. Drawing on his commitment to America's founding principles and his Christian faith, his efforts to promote religious freedom around the world were unequaled in American diplomatic history. Most importantly, he led a much-needed generational transformation of America's relationship with China. Blending remarkable and often humorous stories of his interactions with world leaders and unmatched analysis of geopolitics, Never Give an Inch tells of how Pompeo helped the Trump Administration craft the America First approach that upended Washington wisdom-and made him America's enemies' worst nightmare. It is a raw account of what it took to deliver winning outcomes in the face of a progressive activist media, partisan conspiracies, two impeachments and endless investigations, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Complete with a road map of the trends and players shaping the world today, Never Give an Inch is more than a historical review of the Trump Administration's greatest victories. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the challenges of the future. And it is an inspirational story of leadership through dangerous times that will leave you with a greater appreciation for America.

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.

A Sunday Times Book of the Year 2021 This journey to the edge of Europe mixes history, travelogue and oral testimony to spellbinding and revelatory effect. Few countries have suffered more from the convulsions and bloodshed of twentieth-century Europe than those in the eastern Baltic. Small nations such as the Baltic States of Latvia and Estonia found themselves caught between the giants of Germany and Russia, on a route across which armies surged or retreated. Subjected to foreign domination and conquest since the Northern crusades in the twelfth century, these lands faced frequent devastation as Germans, Russians and Swedish colonisers asserted control of the territory, religion, government, culture and inhabitants. The Glass Wall features an extraordinary cast of characters - contemporary and historical, foreign and indigenous - who have lived and fought in the Baltic and made the atmosphere of what was often thought to be western Europe's furthest redoubt. Too often it has seemed to be the destiny of this region to be the front line of other people's wars. By telling the stories of warriors and victims, of philosophers and Baltic Barons, of poets and artists, of rebels and emperors, and others who lived through years of turmoil and violence, Max Egremont reveals a fascinating part of Europe, on a frontier whose limits may still be in doubt. 'Fascinating . . . a rich, nuanced account of life on "the Baltic frontier"' - The Times 'Excellent' - Daily Mail 'Extraordinary' - Literary Review 'Exemplary' - Economist

Geopolitics is not dead, but nor does it involve the same old logic of a world determined by physical geography in a competition between Great Powers. Hidden Geopolitics recaptures the term to explore how the geography of power works both globally and nationally to structure and govern the workings of the global political economy. Globalization, far from its antithesis, is tightly wound up in the assumptions and practices of geopolitics, relating to the scope of regulatory authority, state sponsorship, and the political power of businesses to operate worldwide. Agnew shows how this "hidden" geopolitics and globalization have been vitally connected. He focuses on three moments: the origins of contemporary globalization in the policies pursued by successive US governments and allies after 1945 and its continued relevance even as the US role in the world changes; the close connection between geopolitical history and status of different countries and their relative capacities to exploit the possibilities and limit the costs of globalization; and new regulatory and standard-setting agencies which emerged under the sponsorship of major geopolitical powers but have grown in power and authority as the dominant states have become limited in their ability to manage the explosion of transnational transactions on their own. Agnew argues that it is time to move on from the narrow inter-imperial cast of geopolitics and the foolish policy advice it produces. The old perspective on geopolitics has taken on new life with the rise of national-populist movements in Europe and the United States and the reinvigoration of territorial-authoritarian regimes in Russia and China. Notwithstanding this trend, we must see the contemporary world through the lens of these complex, "hidden" geopolitical underpinnings that Agnew seeks to expose.

In the growing literature on middle powers, this book contributes by expanding case study analysis and extending international relations theory in its application to foreign policy decisions. Thus, this book builds on prominent middle power literature and aims to advance our theoretical understanding for why crucial foreign policies were made by the "pivotal middle" powers this book examines-Poland, South Korea, and Bolivia. For this book's three case studies and their first-term leadership's critical junctures-from first term post-communist Poland, post-authoritarian/post-ruling party South Korea, and post-colonial Bolivia-we have the antecedents for contemporary middle powers essential for realizing the regional evolution for cooperative change with greater powers systemically; we may then grasp today why those historical foreign policies, albeit not so long ago, give us crucial antecedents for adapting and trying, yet again, to resolve seemingly perennial power dilemmas regionally, peacefully. Here are why middle power impact matters, not only regionally for stronger, dominant greater power neighbours, but also for transformative middle power leaderships which proved pivotal geopolitically for their region's challenges and changes.

Numerous books on the topic of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been published hitherto. Yet, no one has written about the fire and atomic bombings in the context of the U.S. justification of the crime of indiscriminate bombings and its relationship to Japan's political exploitation of the atomic bombing to cover up Hirohito's war responsibility. Further, no one has analyzed the fundamental contradiction in Japan's peace constitution between the concealment of Hirohito's war crimes and the responsibility of the U.S. Readers will learn how Japanese and U.S. official war memories were crafted to justify their respective wartime performances, exposing the flaws and failing of present-day democracy in Japan and the U.S. This book also explores how Japanese people could potentially create a truly powerful cultural memory of war, utilizing various forms of artwork including Japan's traditional performing art, Noh. It should appeal to many readers-historians (both modern American and Japanese history specialists), constitutional scholars, students, peace and anti-nuclear activists, intellectuals as well as general readers.

This book examines the politics and international relations of Central Europe (the Visegrad Four) three decades after the fall of communism. Once bound together by a common geopolitical vision of "returning to the West," the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia now find themselves in a more ambiguous position. The 2015 European migration crisis exposed serious normative differences with Western Europe, leading to a collective V4 rebellion against the European Union's migration policies. At the same time, as this book demonstrates-despite this normative rift with Western Europe and despite the democratic backsliding in some of the V4 states-they remain deeply dependent on the West in both symbolic and material terms. Furthermore, ways in which individual Central European states position themselves vis-a-vis the West exhibit notable differences, informed by their specific political and cultural legacies. The author examines these in separate country chapters. This book also contains a chapter that analyzes the effect of the COVID-19 crisis on political discourses in the V4.

Foreign aid remains a crucial policy tool of donor countries, and many countries throughout the world have been or continue to be recipients of aid. In this two-volume set, Professor Milner and Professor Tingley bring together the key published articles from a variety of disciplines which explore and elucidate the geopolitics of foreign aid. The volumes investigate the motivations for giving aid, the politics surrounding aid for donors and recipients, the role of international institutions and military aid.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen documents the startling rise of the Arab Gulf States as regional powers with international reach and provides a definitive account of how they have become embedded in the global system of power, politics, and policy-making.

The book provides a comprehensive understanding of the unfolding geopolitical changes in the South Caucasus in the age of increased great power competition across Eurasia. Recent research on the geopolitics of the South Caucasus focuses either on interstate relations among Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia or on each of regional actor's (Russia, Turkey and Iran) ties with the region's one or all three states. Little attempt has been made to see the region's shifting geopolitical importance from a global perspective: growing US-China rivalry and shifting balance of power in Eurasia; recalibration of the US' military and diplomatic vision in western Eurasia to adjust to the Chinese challenge. The book argues, from a theoretical point of view, that the increased competition in the region fits into the global pattern of unfolding great power competition, when military and economic calculations drive regional powers to increase their influence on immediate neighborhoods sidelining the collective West from the negotiating table and the emerging new security architecture.

In the wake of its 'Caliphate' declaration in 2014, the self-described Islamic State has been the focus of countless academic papers, government studies, media commentaries and documentaries. Despite all this attention, persistent myths continue to shape--and misdirect--public understanding and strategic policy decisions. A significant factor in this trend has been a strong disinclination to engage critically with Islamic State's speeches and writings--as if doing so reflects empathy with the movement's goals or, even more absurdly, may itself lead to radicalisation. Going beyond the descriptive and the sensationalist, this volume presents and analyses a series of milestone Islamic State primary source materials. Scholar-practitioners with field experience in confronting the movement explore and contextualise its approach to warfare, propaganda and governance, examining the factors behind its dramatic evolution from failed proto-state in 2010 to standard-bearer of global jihadism in 2014, to besieged insurgency in 2019. 'The ISIS Reader' will help anyone--students and journalists, military personnel, civil servants and inquisitive observers--to better understand not only the evolution of Islamic State and the dynamics of asymmetric warfare, but the importance of primary sources in doing so.

A spy story like no other. Private spies are the invisible force that shapes our modern world: they influence our elections, effect government policies and shape the fortunes of companies. More deviously, they are also peering into our personal lives as never before, using off-the shelf technology to listen to our phone calls, monitor our emails and decide what we see on social media. Spooked takes us on a journey into a secret billion-dollar industry in which information is currency and loyalties are for sale. An industry so tentacular it reaches from Saddam Hussein to an 80s-era Trump, from the Steele dossier written by a British ex-spy to Russian oligarchs sitting pretty in Mayfair mansions, from the devious tactics of Harvey Weinstein to the growing role of corporate spies in politics and the threat to future elections. Spooked reads like the best kind of spy story: a gripping tale packed with twists and turns, uncovering a secret side of our modern world.