The Spratly Islands have represented a potential political and military flashpoint in the South China Sea for years, involving as they do various claims by China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Taiwan. This edited volume examines the issues involved in light of confidence- building measures that new high-resolution satellite imagery can offer to this, and other, regions.

Baker, Wiencek, and their contributors assess the potential role for cooperative monitoring in mitigating the risk of conflict arising from multinational disputes over the Spratly Islands. They analyze how this new generation of civilian and commercial observation satellites can be used to reduce the changes of armed conflict breaking out by providing transparency that will detect and identify politically significant activities occurring at disputed islands and reefs among the Spratlys. Of particular interest to policy makers, scholars, and other researchers involved with military issues in Asia and international security concerns.

Exploring the representations of the war dead in early Greek mythology, particularly the Homeric poems and the Epic Cycle, alongside iconographic images on black-figure pottery and the evidence of funerary monuments adorning the graves of early Athenian elites, this book provides much-needed insight into the customs associated with the war dead in Archaic Athens. It is demonstrated that this period had remarkably little in common with the much-celebrated institutions of the Classical era, standing in fact much closer to the hierarchical ideals enshrined in the epics of Homer and early mythology. While the public burial of the war dead in Classical Athens has traditionally been a subject of much scholarly interest, and the origins of the procedures described by Thucydides as patrios nomos are still a matter of some debate, far less attention has been devoted to the Athenian war dead of the preceding era. This book aims to redress the imbalance in modern scholarship and put the spotlight on the Athenian war dead of the Archaic period. In addition, the book deepens our understanding of the processes which led to the establishment of first public burials and the Classical customs of patrios nomos, shedding significant light on the military, cultural and social history of Archaic Athens. Challenging previous assumptions and bringing new material to the table, the book proposes a number of new ways to investigate a period where many 'ancestral customs' were thought to have their roots.

In July 1993, President Bill Clinton visited the Republic of Korea as part of a tour in Northeast Asia. Looking across the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea, President Clinton described the terrain he saw as one of the scariest places on earth. Now, well into the first decade of the 21st century and several years after the end of the Cold War, President Clinton's observation remains accurate. In fact, the argument can be made that the Korean peninsula is even more dangerous than it was in 1993. How did this happen when, throughout most of its more than 2,000 year history, Korea was one of the most homogeneous countries among the world's nation states, with its people sharing a common language and ethnicity? Since the end of World War II and primarily through the actions of external powers, the Korean peninsula has been divided-with North and South Korea engaged in a competition for the heart and soul of the Korean nation and international legitimacy. Some experts have referred to the peninsula as one of the last vestiges of the Cold War. Global Security Watch-Korea compares the ways in which the two Koreas have developed their respective political and economic systems over the past 50 years, as well as the competition between them. The focus then shifts to the North Korean nuclear weapons program and an examination of some of the reasons North Korea has been willing to expend economic and political resources to build this program. Berry analyzes the challenge to peace and stability represented by a nuclear-armed North Korea and the only marginally successful efforts of the United States and other countries to convince North Korea to terminate this program, aneffort complicated by policy differences between the United States and South Korea regarding the Pyongyang regime. The handbook concludes with predictions of possible outcomes in this volatile area.

On September 10, 2001, the United States was the most open country in the world. But in the aftermath of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil, the U.S. government began to close its borders in an effort to fight terrorism. The Bush administration's goal was to build new lines of defense without stifling the flow of people and ideas from abroad that has helped build the world's most dynamic economy. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way.

Based on extensive interviews with the administration officials who were charged with securing the border after 9/11, and with many innocent people whose lives have been upended by the new security regulations, "The Closing of the American Border" is a striking and compelling assessment of the dangers faced by a nation that cuts itself off from the rest of the world.