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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > Embargos & sanctions
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the impact of globalization
have brought about changes not only to the territorial
configuration sovereignty of states and their boundaries, but also
to traditional notions of state, boundaries, sovereignty and social
order.
Central Asia's new states have been buffeted by financial ill winds from East Asia and Russia and by Islamic revolutionary movements from the south. In the context of widespread and deepening impoverishment, endemic corruption, gaping inequalities, and external pressures to undertake difficult reforms, economic crisis threatens to expand into profoundly destabilizing social and political crises as well. This volume analyzes the geopolitical and macroeconomic situation of Central Asia, local policy responses to the current crisis, and alternative scenarios for the foreseeable future. It devotes particular attention to Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Beyond the immediate case, the book focuses on policy measures and institutional improvements that could most directly impact the capacity of economies in the region to adapt to the globalization process.
'Soros has become a standard bearer for liberal democracy' Financial Times George Soros - universally known for his philanthropy, progressive politics and investment success, and now under sustained attack from the far right, nationalists, and anti-Semites around the world - gives an impassioned defence of his core belief in open society. George Soros is among the world's most prominent public figures. He is one of the history's most successful investors and his philanthropy, led by the Open Society Foundations, has donated over $14 billion to promote democracy and human rights in more than 120 countries. But in recent years, Soros has become the focus of sustained right-wing attacks in the United States and around the world based on his commitment to open society, progressive politics and his Jewish background. In this brilliant and spirited book, Soros offers a compendium of his philosophy, a clarion call-to-arms for the ideals of an open society: freedom, democracy, rule of law, human rights, social justice, and social responsibility as a universal idea. In this age of nationalism, populism, anti-Semitism, and the spread of authoritarian governments, Soros's mission to support open societies is as urgent as it is important.
How did upstart outsiders forge vast new empires in early modern Asia, laying the foundations for today's modern mega-states of India and China? In How the East Was Won, Andrew Phillips reveals the crucial parallels uniting the Mughal Empire, the Qing Dynasty and the British Raj. Vastly outnumbered and stigmatised as parvenus, the Mughals and Manchus pioneered similar strategies of cultural statecraft, first to build the multicultural coalitions necessary for conquest, and then to bind the indigenous collaborators needed to subsequently uphold imperial rule. The English East India Company later adapted the same 'define and conquer' and 'define and rule' strategies to carve out the West's biggest colonial empire in Asia. Refuting existing accounts of the 'rise of the West', this book foregrounds the profoundly imitative rather than innovative character of Western colonialism to advance a new explanation of how universal empires arise and endure.
Shakespeare's plays have been adapted or rewritten in various, often surprising, ways since the 17th century. This anthology brings together 13 theatrical adaptations of Shakespeare's work from around the world and across the centuries. The plays include: "The Woman Prized or the Tamer Tamed" by John Fletcher; "Troilus and Cressida or Truth Found Too Late: a Tragedy" by John Dryden; "The History of King Lear" by Nahum Tate; "King Stephen: a Fragment of a Tragedy"; "The Public (El Publico)" by Federico Garcia Lorca; "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui" by Bertolt Brecht; "uMabatha" by Welcome Msomi; "Measure for Measure" by Charles Marowitz; "Hamletmachine" by Heiner Muller; "Lear's Daughter" by The Women's Theatre Group and Elaine Feinstein; "Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief" by Paula Vogel; "This Island's Mine" by Philip Osment; and "Harlem Duet" by Djanet Sears. Each play is introduced by a concise introduction with suggestions for further reading and a list of related adaptations for study.;The collection is prefaced by a general introduction, which offers an examination of issues related to theatrical adaptation and the rewriting of Shakespeare.
Condemned as an intellectual poison by the late American geographer Richard Hartshbornem, geopolitics has confounded its critics. Today it remains a popular intellectual field despite the persistent allegations that geopolitics helped to legitimate Hitler's policies of spatial expansionism and the domination of place. Using insights from critical geopolitics and cultural history, the contributors focus on how geopolitics has been created, negotiated and contested within a variety of intellectual and popular contexts. It argues that geopolitics has to take responsibility for the past whilst at the same time reconceptualizing geopolitics in a manner which accounts for the dramatic changes in the late 20th century. The book is divided into three sections: firstly "Rethinking Geopolitical Histories" concentrates on how geopolitical conversations between European scholars and the wider world unfolded; secondly "Geopolitics, Nation and Spirituality" considers how geopolitical writings have been strongly influenced by religions, iconography and doctrine with examples drawn from Catholicicsm, Judaism and Hinduism; and thirdly "Reclaiming and Refocusing Geopolitics" contemplates how geopoli
The essays here address the relationship between economic interdependence and international conflict, the political economy of economic sanctions, and the role of economic incentives in international statecraft.
Controls on the export of military and dual-use items were fundamental to international efforts to constrain Soviet military capabilities during the Cold War. While essential to combating the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, these controls also impose severe costs on national economies. Also, conflicts over export control policies often mar relations between the executive and legislative branches of government as well as between the United States and other countries. "Reluctant Champions" explores how and why the United States came to adopt its export policies by examining the administrations of four presidents: Truman, Eisenhower, Bush, and Clinton. Relevant and timely in light of recent U.S. sanctions on Russian nuclear insitutions Solidly researched Includes personal interviews with officials from Bush and Clinton administrations
This book is a very timely account of the legal, economic and political consequences for border states caught in the current tug-of-war between the West and Russia.The Ukraine crisis of 2014 focused policy-makers' attention on a geographical area full of dangers that had gone relatively unnoticed since the breakup of the Soviet Union, namely the security dynamics of the border states of Eastern Europe and the Black Sea. Twenty-five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a strong Russia returns alternatively threatening and cajoling, but at risk itself of suffering economic injury from western reprisals over its nostalgia for the map drawn at Yalta. That conflict, which hotted up over the Ukraine, was soon being played out over - and in the air space over - Syria and Turkey, while the border states themselves are likely to be drawn into the European refugee crisis and have the potential, after the 2015 Paris atrocities, to be breeding grounds for international terrorists. This groundbreaking book contains prescient warnings that must be heeded by leaders and diplomats on both sides of the East-West divide.
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".
As the world undergoes rapid technological and economic change, so
too the role and functions of the State are being challenged. There
are those who argue that that the nation state has come to an end
and that we are entering a new phase in the territorial ordering of
the world system. Others hold that boundaries have disappeared and
that a globalized world has no need or use for artificial,
man-made, territorial barriers.
In this timely book, distinguished scholars from the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt and institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow take up the challenge passionately articulated in the Foreword by Eduard Shevardnadze. Considering the unprecedented opportunities for unifying a region split into antagonistic blocs for more than forty
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.
The Cold War is over, yet many attitudes and analyses typical of the period persisted in the strategic thinking of the Great Powers. In this brilliantly original study, Simon Dalby uses the conceptual tools of geopolitical analysis to uncover the essence of American strategic discourse. Focussing on the period of the late 1970s, he shows how Washington pressure groups, political organisations and, in particular, the Committee on the Present Danger, recreated a language of confrontation that deeply influenced Western attitudes towards the Soviet Union in ways that continue to shape foreign policy.
This comprehensive volume observes how, after 25 years of transition and uncertainty in the countries that constituted the former Soviet Union, their political geographies remain in a state of flux. The authors explore the fluid relationship between Russia, by far the dominant economic and military power in the region, and the other former republics. They also examine new developments towards economic blocs, such as membership in the European Union or the competing Eurasian Economic Union, as well as new security arrangements in the form of military cooperation and alliance structures. This book reflects the broad range of changes across this important world region by engaging in insightful analysis of current developments in Central Asia, Ukraine, Russia, the Caucasus, and separatist regions. The authors explore new state alliances and the evolving cultural and geopolitical orientations of former Soviet citizens. Some chapters also examine the dynamics of wars that have occurred in the post-Soviet space, as well as how local political developments are reflected in electoral preferences and struggles over control of public spaces. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Eurasian Geography and Economics.
In order to analyse configurations of power that transcend the territorial trap, the Caucasus is an excellent case in point. Its past and present exhibit an extraordinary richness in power practices of diverse forms that intersect on various scales. This comprehensive volume offers an innovative procedural perspective on the actual workings of power not necessarily tied to the nation-state. Its focus goes well beyond national scales to tackle the manifold impacts of transboundary flows. The authors, from a wide range of academic disciplines, provide original empirical data from this intriguing but largely untapped region, with respect to the critical study of statehood. They also shed light on the diversity of political space and the ongoing process of spatial re-alignment. The chapters in this collection focus on: land governance practice in the North Caucasus; practices of local administration in Georgia; Shia influence from Iran in Azerbaijan; and trajectories of Ottoman influence in Adjara and Abkhazia respectively. They cover the South as well as North Caucasus, examining configurations of power that entangle smaller and larger scales, and providing perspectives on transboundary flows between the area and both Turkey and Iran. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Eurasian Geography and Economics.
Creativity: Research, Development, and Practice, Third Edition, summarizes research on the development, expression, and enhancement of creativity. It draws from the full range of disciplines studying creativity, including psychology, business, education, economics, philosophy, neuroscience, and more. This volume includes exploration of research on the nature/nurture debate, what influences creativity, how creativity is related to personality, how social context may affect creativity, mental health, and its relation to creativity, gender differences, and how creativity is related to and differs from, invention, innovation, imagination, and adaptability. The third edition has been thoroughly updated, with a new chapter on psychometrics and substantial updates on the biology and neuroscience of creativity, politics, and creative cognition. It includes quotations, graphics, boxed controversial issues, and biographical examples from unambiguously creative individuals.
This volume focuses on the influence that borders in the Middle East can have on actors' identity building, as well as how local, national, or transnational actors re/ define borders and boundaries. The Middle East is facing a political crisis, revealed by the Arab uprisings, that is affecting states' borders in a paradoxical way: while local, communal, or tribal dissent tends to contest international borders, states are trying to affirm their control over national territory in building border fences. Focusing on borders in their materiality as well as their symbolic dimensions - their representations - may help with reappraising the region's own history, the local/national specificities, as well as regional/ global constraints affecting borderlands and those who cross borders; be they workers, migrants, or jihadists. In this book, six case studies will provide insights on state- community relationships through the lens of border issues in the Levant and the Gulf. The theoretical framework provided by the border studies conceptual tools allows authors to delve into the process of bordering, de- bordering, and re- bordering which is affecting the region, raising questions on sovereignty, authority, and the political legitimacy of the regimes. This book was originally published as a special issue of Geopolitics.
Cold war geopolitics may be dead, but struggles over space and power are more important than ever in a world of globalizing economies and instantaneous information. Using insights from contemporary cultural theory, the contributors address questions of political identity and popular culture, state violence and genocide, speed machines and militarism, gender and resistance, cyberwar and mass media - connecting each question to a generalized re-thinking of the spaces of politics at the global scale. This book argues that the concept of geopolitics needs to be reconceptualized as the 21st century approaches. Challenging conventional geopolitical assumptions, the diverse chapters include analyses of: theories of post-modern geopolitics, historical formulations of states and cold wars, the geopolitics of the Holocaust, the gendered dimension of Kurdish insurgency, the cold war world, political cartoons concerning Bosnia, Time magazine representations of the Persian Gulf, the Zapatistas and the Chiapas revolt, the new cyber politics, conflict simulations in the US military, and the emergence of a new geopolitics of global security.
During the June 2020 territorial dispute over Kalapani, India blamed tensions on a newly assertive Nepal's deepening relations with China. But beyond the accusations and grandstanding, this reflects a new reality: the power equations in South Asia have been redrawn, to make space for China. Nepal did not turn northwards overnight. Its ties with China have deep historical roots built on Buddhism, dating to the early first millennium. While India's unofficial 2015 blockade provided momentum to the rift with Delhi, Nepal has long wanted deeper ties with Beijing, to counteract India's oppressive intimacy. With China's growing South Asian and global ambitions, Nepal now has a new primary bilateral partner-and Nepalis are forging a path towards modernity with its help, both in the remote borderlands and in the cities. All Roads Lead North offers a long view of Nepal's foreign relations, today underpinned by China's world-power status. Sharing never- before-told stories about Tibetan guerrilla fighters, failed coup leaders and trans- Himalayan traders, Nepal analyst Amish Raj Mulmi examines the histories binding mountain communities together across the Sino-Nepali border. Part history, part journalistic account, Mulmi's is a complex, compelling and rigorously researched study of a small country caught between two neighbourhood giants.
European countries have much in common. They are geographically and culturally close and they all face the problem of relative weakness vis-a-vis larger actors. However, while their many similarities lead them to cooperate, their geopolitical differences and specificities translate into conflicting priorities over how to arrange the terms of cooperation. European security is hence defined by a powerful tension between conflict and cooperation. And Europe's most powerful countries largely delineate the mechanics of such tension. By examining the interplay between geopolitical change, British, French and German grand strategy and the evolution of NATO and the European Union's (EU) Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) between 2001 and 2010, this book seeks to shed light on the nature and evolution of European security. Only by examining the grand strategies of Europe's most powerful countries can we get a sense of their interests. However, in order to properly grasp the nature and evolution of such interests we must observe how they play out at the level of specific debates. Very often, it is only when it comes to organising the specific terms of cooperation that conflicting priorities can be properly appreciated. Herein lies the importance of the EU-NATO conundrum. Throughout the 2001-2010 period, NATO and CSDP remained the best thermometers of the powerful tension between conflict and cooperation that defines European security. This book is thus fundamental reading for students, academics and practitioners with an interest in European security, geopolitics, NATO and CSDP.
The nation-states and peoples of South and Central America, Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, that together form the political geographical region of Latin America, encompass a wide range of societies, politics and economies. This text exposes the differences between places, regions and countries, individuals and societies, offering an invaluable insight into the themes of political and economic development, and provides a guide to understanding power and space relations. From the Antarctic to the tropical jungles, the coastal communities to the highland villages, the mega-cities to isolated rural existence, the political geographies of lives, localities, cities and rurality are too sophisticated to be subjected to generalizations. Adopting a critical human geography perspective, Jonathon Barton provides an understanding of similarities, difference and sophisticated human geographies.
Between January and September 2019, the government of Kazakhstan carried out five humanitarian missions to repatriate more than 600 of its citizens from Syria. Thirty-three were adult males; the rest were women and children. The women had left Kazakhstan to become part of Islamic State - either out of personal conviction, or at the request of their jihadi husbands. Some of the children had gone with them. Others had been born amidst the horror of the war in Syria and Iraq, and the consequences of violent ideology; they knew nothing else of life. Collectively, these missions were known as Operation: Jusan (the jusan shrub, or wormwood, is symbolic for Kazkahs of home on the steppe). Erlan Karin's involvement took him from the planning stages to the extensive de-radicalisation and rehabilitation programmes that followed the airlifts. Here he reveals the full story of a high-stakes mission that required sensitive diplomacy, meticulous timing and great courage. Drawing on extensive first-hand accounts from the returnees, Karin also examines their motives in joining the would-be Caliphate, and the role of women and children within it, finally weighing up the risks of returning trained terrorists to their mother country. |
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