This book, first published in 1990, presents a fundamental reassessment of maritime strategy. It analyses the lessons of twentieth-century naval warfare and examines in detail the changing face of naval warfare, both in terms of the weapons used and the platforms from which they are launched and controlled. It looks at the evolving uses of the seas, both economic and military, and sets sea power against the developing world environment, political, legal and economic, discussing those factors that stimulate nations to exert power at sea and those that limit their naval capabilities. It also develops a theoretical framework for future thinking about maritime strategy and forces, revises and updates Mahan's classical analysis of the foundations of sea power, and discusses thinking about naval tasks.

The fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the United Nations was commemorated in 1995 with a number of conferences and publications which assessed the history and contemporary role of this paramount international organisation. This book is the result of a meeting of scholars and specialists who wished to further understanding of the challenges faced by the United Nations in its efforts to intervene in post-cold war conflict. In particular the experiences in Bosnia, Somalia and in Rwanda, where UN peacekeepers seemed powerless to act in the face of acts of genocide, gross violations of human rights and the widespread suffering caused by war, makes such an analysis timely and important.

This book examines the implications of counterinsurgency warfare for U.S. defense policy and makes the compelling argument that the United States' default position on counterinsurgency wars should be to avoid them. Given the unsatisfactory outcomes of the counterinsurgency (COIN) wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military is now in a heated debate over whether wars involving COIN operations are worth fighting. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the effectiveness of COIN through key historic episodes and concludes that the answer is an emphatic "no," based on a dominant record of U.S. military or political failure, and inconsistency in the reasons for the rare cases of success. The author also examines the implications of his findings for U.S. foreign policy, defense policy, and future weapons procurement. Examines a wider breadth of historical cases than other books on counterinsurgency, allowing for more accurate assessments and conclusions about the efficacy of COIN based on the lessons learned across history Presents research-based evidence that the Unites States should get involved in counterinsurgency warfare only in the rare cases in which U.S. vital interests are at stake Provides thought-provoking discussion of the domestic negative effects resulting from overseas counterinsurgency operations Questions the effectiveness of COIN strategy by utilizing numerous historical examples covered throughout the book Covers major instances of COIN warfare in history, including the French in Algeria and Indochina, the British in Malaysia and Afghanistan, the United States in Vietnam and the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and numerous others Appeals to readers and students of military history, strategy, and defense

When we take a look back at the way Western states have fought terrorist organizations in the last 20 years, it is difficult not to think that these alternatives to war might have been more ethical than the decisions to invade Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and in 2003. These cases speak for themselves as they have both led to the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, which is highly paradoxical in light of the logic that supported these interventions. There is a need to think of alternatives to war that will imply the legitimization of proactive sets of measures that would allow states to effectively prevent terrorist attacks through the use of kinetic force in a limited extent as a way to avoid the terrible and unpredictable effects of wars. Violent Alternatives to War: Justifying Actions Against Contemporary Terrorism engages in a moral discussion of the challenges associated with violent alternatives to war when confronting terrorism and suggests a comprehensive approach to how this form of violence can be legitimized and how it ought to be used against this contemporary threat.

This unique text challenges the notion that absence of conflict is the foundation and norm of a stable political environment. Combining complexity theory and the notion of signature with case studies, it argues that political processes need to be understood within their social and cultural contexts. It thus develops the idea of enduring conflict, referring to both the enduring nature of political conflict and the endurance of people in conflict-ridden societies, looking at countries involved in conflict transformation, such as Northern Ireland, Cambodia, Indonesia, and South Africa. Examining debates around trauma, memory, and reconciliation, the work shows how conflicts are so socially and culturally ingrained and protracted that political agreements alone cannot bring substantive change. In addition, key texts, such as peace agreements, along with interviews of politicians, participants, and NGOs help identify the conditions under which notions like peace, democracy, and conflict resolution can even be conceived - let alone implemented. This innovative text is a significant contribution to the literature as it highlights the limitations of conflict resolution strategies and identifies the issues that pertain to conflicts throughout global politics. Written in an accessible manner, it will be highly attractive to students in conflict processes, peace studies, and international relations theory.

Gaining a decisive technological edge is a never-ending pursuit for defense establishments and the countries they protect. Intensifying geo-strategic and geo-economic rivalry among major powers, especially the U.S. and China, and the global technology revolution occurring in the civilian and military domains promise to reshape the nature and distribution of global power. This book examines the state of global defense innovation in a select number of countries chosen because they are representative of the diverse make-up of the global defense innovation community. These include small countries with advanced defense innovation capabilities (Israel and Singapore), closed authoritarian powers (North Korea and Russia), large catch-up states (China and India), and advanced large powers (U.S.). The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies.

This book uses machine-learning to identify the causes of conflict from among the top predictors of conflict. This methodology elevates some complex causal pathways that cause civil conflict over others, thus teasing out the complex interrelationships between the most important variables that cause civil conflict. Success in this realm will lead to scientific theories of conflict that will be useful in preventing and ending civil conflict. After setting out a current review of the literature and a case for using machine learning to analyze and predict civil conflict, the authors lay out the data set, important variables, and investigative strategy of their methodology. The authors then investigate institutional causes, economic causes, and sociological causes for civil conflict, and how that feeds into their model. The methodology provides an identifiable pathway for specifying causal models. This book will be of interest to scholars in the areas of economics, political science, sociology, and artificial intelligence who want to learn more about leveraging machine learning technologies to solve problems and who are invested in preventing civil conflict.

This innovative and timely consideration of the European Union's crisis response mechanisms brings together scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds to examine how and why the EU responds to crises on its borders and further afield. The work is based on extensive fieldwork in - among other places - Afghanistan, Libya, Mali and Iraq. The book considers the construction of crises and how some issues are deemed crises and others not. A major finding from this comparative study is that EU crisis response interventions have been placing increasing emphasis on security and stabilisation and less emphasis on human rights and democratisation. This changes - quite fundamentally - the EU's stance as an international actor and leads to questions about the nature of the European Union and how it perceives itself and is perceived by others. -- .

The Routledge Handbook of Arctic Security offers a comprehensive examination of security in the region, encompassing both state-based and militarized notions of security, as well as broader security perspectives reflecting debates about changes in climate, environment, economies, and societies. Since the turn of the century, the Arctic has increasingly been in the global spotlight, resulting in the often invoked idea of "Arctic exceptionalism" being questioned. At the same time, the unconventional political power which the Arctic's Indigenous peoples hold calls into question conventional ideas about geopolitics and security. This handbook examines security in this region, revealing contestations and complementarities between narrower, state-based and/or militarized notions of security and broader security perspectives reflecting concerns and debates about changes in climate, environment, economies, and societies. The volume is split into five thematic parts: * Theorizing Arctic Security * The Arctic Powers * Security in the Arctic through Governance * Non-Arctic States, Regional and International Organizations * People, States, and Security. This book will be of great interest to students of Arctic politics, global governance, geography, security studies, and International Relations.

The need for constructive solutions to worldwide conflict and violence has stimulated some extremely productive research leading both to a clearer understanding of conflict and to the development of new modes of intervention. This Unesco Yearbook, which is drawn from an international symposium organized by the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) in collaboration with Unesco, distills current knowledge of the subject in twelve original studies of subnational and regional conflicts in societies ranging from nineteenth-century Europe to present-day South Africa. The introduction provides an overview of the different theoretical perspectives and empirical frameworks that have contributed to the work. Five essays focus on historical conflicts linked to political, social, cultural, or economic domination. The specific topics covered are landlord domination in nineteenth-century Ireland, peasant conflicts in pre-revolutionary Russia and China, European anti-semitism, and labor revolts in the Caribbean in the 1930s. The remaining chapters examine current conflicts related to ethnic and racial violence, human rights, genocide, the emergence of nations, and social pluralism, and explore international and regional responses to conflict. Several approaches to conflict resolution are described, and the goals and policy implications of each are discussed in detail. The authors make it clear that the importance of conflict resolution lies less in avoiding or suppressing conflict than in offering the means of using it creatively as an instrument of needed social change. Integrating historical and sociological modes of analysis with a thorough grasp of empirical detail, this work represents a landmark effort to come to grips with one of the most serious problems facing the world today. It will be ofinterest to academics, professionals, and policy-makers working in the areas of conflic resolution, international political economy, human rights, social change, ethnographic studies, and related fields.

Demonstrating that none of the various perspectives under review has emerged as the clear winner in the struggle for theoretical hegemony in security studies, this book shows that eclectic perspectives, like democratic realist institutionalism, can better explain peace and security in the Asian Pacific. The Asian Pacific has emerged as one of the most important regions in the world, causing scholars to pay increased attention to the various challenges, old and new, to peace and security there. Peace and Security in the Asia-Pacific: Theory and Practice is a comprehensive, critical review of the established theoretical perspectives relevant to contemporary peace and security studies in the light of recent experiences. Illuminating ongoing debates in the field, the book covers some 20 theoretical perspectives on peace and security in the Asian Pacific, including realist, liberal, socialist, peace and human security, constructivist, feminist, and nontraditional security studies. The first section of the book discusses perspectives in realist security studies, the second part covers perspectives critical of realism. The author's goal is to assess whether any of the perspectives found in nonrealist security studies are capable of undermining realism. His conclusion is that each theoretical perspective has its strengths and weaknesses, leaving eclecticism as the best way to understand the region's dynamics. An extensive bibliography covers various theoretical perspectives in the field of international relations/security studies and materials on the Asian Pacific Helpful indexes include specific countries, security issues, and theoretical perspectives

This book interrogates the concept of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as a normative construct and how the construction and promotion of this norm may have contributed to a stagnation in humanitarian action. This interrogation includes a particular focus on the impact of R2P on prevailing attitudes and discourses concerning humanitarian military intervention as well as the (under)provision of same. The study seeks to bridge the proverbial gap between theory and policy, specifically concerning our collective understanding of contemporary dynamics of humanitarian intervention and crisis. This objective is accomplished through the application and critical reformulation of the norm life cycle model and its three component stages (emergence, cascade, and internalization) relative to the presumed norm of R2P. The book advances the argument that R2P has only partially cascaded - stagnating rather than fully diffusing after reaching the ‘tipping point’, and in the process leaving the life cycle of the R2P norm in a state of dynamic equilibrium (e.g., a ‘steady state’). Consequently, the chief implication of the dynamic of stagnation within international society which the book seeks to advance and support is the non-attainment of norm internalization. Through close examination of the genesis and evolution of R2P, the work contends that R2P actually poses a significant if not fundamental challenge to the animating logic of the norm life cycle model. Having reached the requisite tipping point through formal endorsement by the UN over a decade ago, R2P has failed to manifest itself in humanitarian intervention behavior. The key to understanding why resides in deficiencies of the norm life cycle model itself. By failing to provide a sufficient account of the dynamics of norm pre-emergence (whereby ideas are transformed into proto-norms) or to acknowledge the possibility norm stagnation (whereby a norm fails to diffuse and become internalized), the norm life-cycle model provides an underspecified mechanism for understanding how and why an idea may in fact cross the threshold of the ‘tipping point’—attaining the status of a norm in international society in the process—but fail to penetrate and influence policy discourses and processes. The study seeks to bridge the proverbial gap between theory and policy, specifically concerning our collective understanding of contemporary dynamics of humanitarian intervention and crisis. This book will be of much interest to students of the Responsibility to Protect, human rights, conflict studies and international relations in general.

Countries emerging from civil war or protracted violence often face the daunting challenge of rebuilding their economy while simultaneously creating the political and social conditions for a stable peace. The implicit assumption in the international community that rapid political democratisation along with economic liberalisation holds the key to sustainable peace is belied by the experiences of countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Often, the challenges of post-conflict reconstruction revolve around the timing and sequencing of different reform that may have contradictory implications. Drawing on a range of thematic studies and empirical cases, this book examines how post-conflict reconstruction policies can be better sequenced in order to promote sustainable peace. The book provides evidence that many reforms that are often thought to be imperative in post-conflict societies may be better considered as long-term objectives, and that the immediate imperative for such societies should be 'people-centred' policies.

The UN-led Cyprus peace process is in desperate need of radical transformation. This book makes a notable contribution towards changing the current discourse by empowering the main parties to better value their relationship. By altering goals and perceptions, the authors explore alternative visions for the future of Cyprus, suggesting both realistically feasible and politically challenging ideas. Using an exciting, innovative and multifocal approach, the authors discuss the practical application of resolutions and explore the radical disagreements of the conflict at both social and political levels. Reflecting on the idea of a ?'post-settlement?' situation and the prospect of such a reality, chapters illustrate the problems, challenges and political dynamics of Cyprus. The book explores the conceptual approaches to dialogue; a review of Greek, Turkish and Cypriot policies; the challenging roles of the UN and EU; Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot perspectives on the conflict, and finally dialogical reflections and debates on past and future problems. Allowing open and expressive dialogue, this book will interest those in academic and practitioner roles focused on international politics, conflict resolution and peace studies. It allows for further understanding of the complex perspectives presented in Cyprus that have great relevance in other international settings. Contributors include: C. Adamides, A.B. Akter, D. Christofias, G. Christou, B. Ekenoglu, D. Eroglu, A. Gunal, M. Hadjipavlou, A. Heraclides, E.Icener, M. Kontos, N. Loizides, M.S. Michael, N. Moudouros, Y. Omerou, I. OEzejder, S. Sonan, A. Soezen, M.A. Talat, G. Vassilou, Y. Vural

Why violence in the Congo has continued despite decades of international intervention Well into its third decade, the military conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been dubbed a "forever war"-a perpetual cycle of war, civil unrest, and local feuds over power and identity. Millions have died in one of the worst humanitarian calamities of our time. The War That Doesn't Say Its Name investigates the most recent phase of this conflict, asking why the peace deal of 2003-accompanied by the largest United Nations peacekeeping mission in the world and tens of billions in international aid-has failed to stop the violence. Jason Stearns argues that the fighting has become an end in itself, carried forward in substantial part through the apathy and complicity of local and international actors. Stearns shows that regardless of the suffering, there has emerged a narrow military bourgeoisie of commanders and politicians for whom the conflict is a source of survival, dignity, and profit. Foreign donors provide food and urgent health care for millions, preventing the Congolese state from collapsing, but this involvement has not yielded transformational change. Stearns gives a detailed historical account of this period, focusing on the main players-Congolese and Rwandan states and the main armed groups. He extrapolates from these dynamics to other conflicts across Africa and presents a theory of conflict that highlights the interests of the belligerents and the social structures from which they arise. Exploring how violence in the Congo has become preoccupied with its own reproduction, The War That Doesn't Say Its Name sheds light on why certain military feuds persist without resolution.

The central aim of this book is to foster connections between scholarly discussions of German foreign policy and broader theoretical debates in International Relations and beyond. While there has been a lively discussion about 'new German foreign policy', this book argues that it has not engaged substantially with international and foreign policy theory, especially with respect to its more recent developments. Reviewing the recent literature on German foreign policy, this book posits that the most discussed works are still largely provided by the 'Altmeister' (Maull, Szabo, Bulmer and Paterson) who were already dominating the field a quarter of a century ago. While there is a general decline in the academic study of German foreign policy, the chapters in this edited volume show that a range of novel, theoretically sophisticated but often disconnected scholarship has appeared on the margins. This book contributes to this emerging work by providing conceptual interrogations, which question the existing research and provide theoretically-grounded alternatives; initiating critical discussions and evaluations of the nature of Germany's actorness and the environment in which it operates and proposing applications of less familiar perspectives on German foreign policy. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of German Politics.

South Africa has succeeded in establishing a democracy, but has yet to eliminate public violence from society. This book takes up the issue of post-settlement violence and ways of consolidating the newly-found democratic peace. The role of negotiated institutions such as the new police force, economic factors relevant to the anticipated "peace dividend," external factors such as arms smuggling networks, popular responses to rising threats to physical safety, and symbolic factors in enhancing the capacity of the state to deal with this issue are examined.

This handbook provides a comprehensive analysis of the contemporary theory, practice and themes in the study of national security. Part 1: Theories examines how national security has been conceptualised and formulated within the disciplines international relations, security studies and public policy. Part 2: Actors shifts the focus of the volume from these disciplinary concerns to consideration of how core actors in international affairs have conceptualised and practiced national security over time. Part 3: Issues then provides in-depth analysis of how individual security issues have been incorporated into prevailing scholarly and policy paradigms on national security. While security now seems an all-encompassing phenomenon, one general proposition still holds: national interests and the nation-state remain central to unlocking security puzzles. As normative values intersect with raw power; as new threats meet old ones; and as new actors challenge established elites, making sense out of the complex milieu of security theories, actors, and issues is a crucial task - and is the main accomplishment of this book.

The Handbook of European Security Law and Policy offers a holistic discussion of the contemporary challenges to the security of the European Union and emphasizes the complexity of dealing with these through legislation and policy. Considering security from a human perspective, the book opens with a general introduction to the key issues in European Security Law and Policy before delving into three main areas. Institutions, policies and mechanisms used by Security, Defence Policy and Internal Affairs form the conceptual framework of the book; at the same time, an extensive analysis of the risks and challenges facing the EU, including threats to human rights and sustainability, as well as the European Union's legal and political response to these challenges, is provided. This Handbook is essential reading for scholars and students of European law, security law, EU law and interdisciplinary legal and political studies.

United Nations peacekeeping has undergone radical transformation in the new millennium. Where it once was limited in scope and based firmly on consent of all parties, contemporary operations are now charged with penalizing spoilers of peace and protecting civilians from peril. Despite its more aggressive posture, practitioners and academics continue to affirm the vital importance of impartiality whilst stating that it no longer means what it once did. Taking Sides in Peacekeeping explores this transformation and its implications, in what is the first conceptual and empirical study of impartiality in UN peacekeeping. The book challenges dominant scholarly approaches that conceive of norms as linear and static, conceptualizing impartiality as a 'composite' norm, one that is not free-standing but an aggregate of other principles-each of which can change and is open to contestation. Drawing on a large body of primary evidence, it uses the composite norm to trace the evolution of impartiality, and to illuminate the macro-level politics surrounding its institutionalization at the UN, as well as the micro-level politics surrounding its implementation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, site of the largest and costliest peacekeeping mission in UN history. Taking Sides in Peacekeeping reveals that, despite a veneer of consensus, impartiality is in fact highly contested. As the collection of principles it refers to has expanded to include human rights and civilian protection, deep disagreements have arisen over what keeping peace impartially actually means. Beyond the semantics, the book shows how this contestation, together with the varying expectations and incentives created by the norm, has resulted in perverse and unintended consequences that have politicized peacekeeping and, in some cases, effectively converted UN forces into one warring party among many. Taking Sides in Peacekeeping assesses the implications of this radical transformation for the future of peacekeeping and for the UN's role as guarantor of international peace and security.

This edited book offers a collection of highly nuanced accounts of children and childhoods in peace and conflict across political time and space. Organized according to three broad themes (ontologies, pedagogies, and contingencies), each chapter explores the complexities of a particular case study, providing new insights into the ways children's lives figure as terrains of engagement, contestation, ambivalence, resistance, and reproduction of militarisms. The first three chapters challenge dominant ontologies that prefigure childhood in particular ways. These include who counts as a child worthy of protection, questions of voice and participation, and the diminution of agency. The chapters in the second section bring to view everyday pedagogies whereby myriad knowledges, performances, practices, and competencies may function to militarize children's lives, including in but not limited to advanced (post)industrial societies of the global North. The third and final section includes investigations that foreground questions of responsibility to children. Here, contributors assess, among other things, resilience-building, the exigencies of protection, and the ethics of military recruitment practices targeting children.

This open access book introduces adaptive mediation as an alternative approach that enables mediators to go beyond liberal peace mediation, or other determined-design models of mediation, in the context of contemporary conflict resolution and peace-making initiatives. Adaptive mediation is grounded in complexity theory, and is specifically designed to cope with highly dynamic conflict situations characterized by uncertainty and a lack of predictability. It is also a facilitated mediation process whereby the content of agreements emerges from the parties to the conflict themselves, informed by the context within which the conflict is situated. This book presents the core principles and practices of adaptive mediation in conjunction with empirical evidence from four diverse case studies - Colombia, Mozambique, The Philippines, and Syria - with a view to generate recommendations for how mediators can apply adaptive mediation approaches to resolve and transform contemporary and future armed conflicts.