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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > General
At a time when our national security and defense is being hotly debated, this intriguing new book boldly challenges the pivotal concepts underlying much of the arguments on both sides of the debate. In a path-breaking economic analysis that presents the foundations of true security policy, The Ultimate Deterrent argues that both the United States and the Soviet Union are inherently secure from invasion, nuclear blackmail, or domination by each other. According to the author, their competitive process is a stable one because they have only limited zones of interest near their own borders, making strategic military defense unnecessary and provocative. Using economic analysis to define the superpower's true spheres of interest, the book develops a new meaning for national interest, recognizing the futility of self-destructive defense, as illustrated by Vietnam and Afghanistan.
In 1992, Vasili Mitrokhin, a former KGB archivist, snuck out of Russia carrying with him a vast cache of transcriptions of top-secret KGB intelligence files. The FBI later described his trove of documents as "the most complete and extensive intelligence ever achieved from any source." Renowned historian Christopher Andrew had exclusive access to both Mitrokhin and his archive. In 1999, they published the explosive bestseller The Sword and the Shield, which provided a complete account of KGB operations in Europe and America. In The World Was Going Our Way, Andrew now chronicles the KGB's extensive penetration of governments throughout the Third World-the battlefield on which the U.S.S.R. sought to achieve global supremacy. Andrew's definitive account fundamentally revises the history of the Cold War, and sheds new light on the state of the world today. The KGB worked tirelessly for decades to foster anti-Americanism in the developing world, making this book essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the intractable hostility America faces in the ongoing war on terror.
The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence is a
state-of-the-art work on intelligence and national security. Edited
by Loch Johnson, one of the world's leading authorities on the
subject, the handbook examines the topic in full, beginning with an
examination of the major theories of intelligence. It then shifts
its focus to how intelligence agencies operate, how they collect
information from around the world, the problems that come with
transforming "raw" information into credible analysis, and the
difficulties in disseminating intelligence to policymakers. It also
considers the balance between secrecy and public accountability,
and the ethical dilemmas that covert and counterintelligence
operations routinely present to intelligence agencies. Throughout,
contributors factor in broader historical and political contexts
that are integral to understanding how intelligence agencies
function in our information-dominated age.
Under Narendra Modi, India has changed dramatically. As the world attempts to grapple with its trajectory towards authoritarianism and a 'Hindu Rashtra' (Hindu State), little attention has been paid to the linkages between Modi's India and the governments from which it has drawn inspiration, as well as military and technical support. India once called Zionism racism, but, as Azad Essa argues, the state of Israel has increasingly become a cornerstone of India’s foreign policy. Looking to replicate the 'ethnic state' in the image of Israel in policy and practice, the annexation of Kashmir increasingly resembles Israel's settler colonial project of the occupied West Bank. The ideological and political linkages between the two states are alarming; their brands of ethnonationalism deeply intertwined. Hostile Homelands puts India's relationship with Israel in its historical context, looking at the origins of Zionism and Hindutva; India’s changing position on Palestine; and the countries' growing military-industrial relationship from the 1990s. Lucid and persuasive, Essa demonstrates that the India-Israel alliance spells significant consequences for democracy, the rule of law and justice worldwide.
Gardner explores the global ramifications of the NATO-Russian relationship. He argues that NATO enlargement into Central Europe risks the overextension of NATO's political consensus and could provoke Russia and other states that do not expect to become full members of the alliance. He concludes by proposing an alternative system of security for the region. Gardner explores the global ramifications of the NATO-Russian relationship. He examines NATO's Partnership for Peace initiative as it relates to Russia, and he argues that NATO risks provoking Russia and other states that do not expect to become full members of the alliance. He contends that if NATO and Russia cannot reach a compromise over a new system of security in Central and Eastern Europe, then Russia could adopt an increasingly assertive Eurasian stance by more closely aligning with potentially anti-Western states such as Belarus, China, India, Iraq, and Iran. Likewise, the possibility of a renewed division of Europe cannot be ruled out. Gardner asserts that it is absolutely necessary to draw Russia into a concerted relationship with the United States and the European Union. He concludes by formulating a viable system of cooperative-collective security for all Central and Eastern European states backed by conjoint NATO, European, and Russian security guarantees. This is a thoughtful and provocative analysis of great interest to policymakers and students of international relations and contemporary defense issues.
This comprehensive account examines the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM)-the most significant Muslim militant group in China-including its origins, objectives, ideology, leadership, and tactics. To effectively engage China on counterterrorism issues, we must understand the capabilities and intentions of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), the most significant Muslim militant group in China. The ETIM: China's Islamic Militants and the Global Terrorist Threat is the first book to focus specifically on the ETIM, a terrorist group that demands an independent Muslim state for the Uyghur ethnic minority in northwest China. This fascinating study offers a comprehensive account of the group's origins, objectives, ideology, leadership, and tactics. It details the historical and contemporary contexts of the Uyghur separatist movement, the ETIM's alleged ties to international terrorist networks, and the Chinese government's interest in promoting the ETIM as a significant international problem. In addition, the book addresses conflicting claims about the membership and viability of the organization, noting where the Chinese government has apparently manipulated information about the ETIM to suit its own goals. A final chapter explores how various countries define ETIM activities and what that means for relations with China. Includes press releases issued by the Chinese government on violent Uyghur separatism and presents timelines of the ETIM's attacks and other activities and of major events in the history of Uyghur separatism Offers a bibliography that compiles scholarly and news sources pertaining to the ETIM and provides glossary of key terms derived from the Chinese, Uyghur, and English languages
Rethinking familiar frameworks and exploring new perspectives, this book provides a much-needed analysis of European culture, society and politics in a global context. With contributors from across the social sciences and thehumanities, this book highlights key topics and assesses the open ended question of Europe's place in a global age.
Cold War history has emphasized the division of Europe into two warring camps with separate ideologies and little in common. This volume presents an alternative perspective by suggesting that there were transnational networks bridging the gap and connecting like-minded people on both sides of the divide. Long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were institutions, organizations, and individuals who brought people from the East and the West together, joined by shared professions, ideas, and sometimes even through marriage. The volume aims at proving that the post-WWII histories of Western and Eastern Europe were entangled by looking at cases involving France, Denmark, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, and others.
While the rise of China has long been an accepted fact of international economic and political relations, the more recent rise of India as an economic power has provoked intense global interest. This book presents a Chinese assessment of how China and India see themselves each in relation to the other, focusing on their experiences of modernization and economic reform and their ramifications on each country's role in global affairs. Eschewing the geo-political idiom of competition and rivalry between emerging Asian giants, the book seeks to understand the parallel, complementary, convergent and divergent development experiences from a more self-consciously geo-civilizational perspective, contextualizing developments in both the short-term framework of independent nationhood, against the more immediate background of nationalist and anti-imperialist struggles, and in the longue duree of shared, continental histories.
This text analyzes the foreign policy decision-making processes of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama during military intervention by way of contemporary foreign policy decision-making models (FPDMs).
In the major literature on early modern Japan, the sakoku (closed country) edicts lurk in the background, and while scholars are generally aware of the major tenets of the policy, for example, the inability of Japanese to travel abroad or the clampdown on Christianity, the specifics of the edicts have yet to be studied in detail despite its potential to reveal much about this era of Japan's history. This work seeks to clarify the seventeen-article sakoku edicts of 1635 as well as to situate the edicts in the general foreign policy of seventeenth-century Edo Japan. This book will also examine a number of other policies that evolved in the first half of the seventeenth century to complete what is commonly (and somewhat erroneously) referred to as the "closed-country period." A great number of works on European and Chinese interactions with Japan have appeared over the past few decades, and most of them have done a fine job of dispensing with the myth that Japan was somehow hermetically sealed from the outside world. Scholars are aware that the Dutch played a large role in keeping the shogun informed about affairs in Europe, and that the Chinese were coming to Japan in ever greater numbers. They are also aware of the relationship between Japan and Korea. However, the fact remains that the Tokugawa did take pains to regulate the interactions of Europeans with Japan, and these measures are generally found in the various edicts passed by the bakufu in the first half of the seventeenth century. This book translates and illuminates the specific machinery of Japan's foreign relations, especially as it pertained to European trade and Christianity. In so doing, this study will situate the edicts--which are largely taken for granted, even though little has been studied--in Japan's early modern history. There are two insights this book presents. First of all, the study will demonstrate that the sakoku edicts were not a monolithic piece of legislation, but rather they evolved over time. The edicts against Christianity, the expulsion of the Spanish and the Portuguese, and the establishment of the machinery to regulate foreign trade were all responses to historical stimuli, and as such evolved in response to Japan's interactions with Europe and European trade and ideas. Second, this work will show that, ironically, the Tokugawa control of Japan's foreign policy was meant to strengthen its domestic control, especially vis-a-vis the powerful daimyo of western Japan, who traditionally profited with relations with the West. Therefore, there is much more to the sakoku edicts than simply the regulation of Japan's relations with foreigners. This book will appeal to the wider academic community working on pre-modern and early modern Japan. It will also be of value to those whose work involves the expansion of Europe into Asia, as well as European-Asian interactions. Written in a highly accessible style, this book will be of interest to even the casual reader of Japanese history.
Anglo-Irish relations in the 20th century can be described as being close but tortuous. This paradox is fused with Ireland's geographical: both isolation from Europe and proximity to the main island of the British archipelago. Using a geopolitical analysis, based on the theories of Sir Halford MacKinder, this text offers an understanding of the strategic imperatives that have driven British policy throughout the events of the 20th century. It presents a different perspective on the reality of Irish neutrality, and the importance of Northern Ireland in the Battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War. Furthermore, using US archival material, it gives an insight into Ireland's geopolitical importance in the First World War, and her contribution to victory against the German U-boats.
International education in the United States is at a significant crossroads. The magnanimity of the 102nd Congress has raised the possibility of federal financial support of international studies to a new level. The newly established governing board of the National Security Education Act can provide unprecedented coordination of federally supported international education programs. If federal financial support can be maintained and coordination achieved, the objectives of the IEA of 1966 can be realized in the 1990s. The academic community and public policy makers need to be made aware of the opportunities at hand in order for this to be possible. U.S. education generally and higher education specifically have a responsibility to improve our international capabilities in order to meet the post-Cold War challenges of a complex world.
A variety of political, economic, social, and security factors have created a situation conducive to the gradual formation of a regional grouping in West Asia. The countries of the Persian Gulf, Caucasus, and Central Asia are gradually gathering around Iran, a rising regional power. Regional and international isolation, sanctions, the Iran-Iraq War, and financial difficulties deprived Iran of its suppliers and forced it to develop itself to meet its needs. Iran has long-term interests in these three neighboring and energy-producing regions where the United States also has strategic interests. Peimani argues that the current unfriendly relations between the two countries are counterproductive for both and damage their interests. They can and must cooperate in these regions as their interests are not opposite and antagonistic, but different and compatible. Their interests require stability in these regions, for which the two should cooperate. As he points out, they must and can normalize their relations, among other factors, to preserve their long-term interests in these regions and elsewhere.
The first English-language monograph on the Slovak-Polish border in 1918-47 explores the interplay of politics, diplomacy, moral principles and self-determination. This book argues that the failure to reconcile strategic objectives with territorial claims could cost a higher price than the geographical size of the disputed region would indicate.
Although events in East Asia were a sideshow in the great drama of World War I, what happened there shattered the accord between Japan and the United States. This book pursues the two-fold question of how and why U.S.-Japanese tensions developed into antagonism during the war by inquiring into the historical sources of both sides. Kawamura explains this complex phenomenon by looking at various factors: conflicts of national interests--geopolitical and economic; perceptual problems such as miscommunication, miscalculation, and mistrust; and, most important of all, incompatible approaches to foreign policy. America's universalism and the unilateralism inherent in Wilsonian idealistic internationalism clashed with Japan's particularistic regionalism and the pluralism that derived from its strong sense of racial identity and anti-Western nationalistic sentiments. By looking at the motives and circumstances behind Japan's expansionist policy in East Asia, Kawamura suggests some of the centrifugal forces that divided the nations and challenged the premise of Wilsonian internationalism. At the same time, through critical examination of the Wilson administration's universalist and unilateral response to Japan's actions, she raises serious questions about the effectiveness of American foreign policy. At the close of the 20th century, after 50 years of Cold War, those in search of a new world order tend to resort to Wilsonian rhetoric. This book suggests that it can be unwise to apply a universalistic and idealistic approach to international conflicts that often result from extreme nationalism, regionalism, and racial rivalry.
This volume analyzes changing patterns of authority in the global
political economy with an in-depth look at the new roles played by
state and non-state actors, and addresses key themes including the
provision of global public goods, new modes of regulation and the
potential of new institutions for global governance.
Tadjoeddin uniquely explores four types of violent conflicts pertinent to contemporary Indonesia (secessionist, ethnic, routine-everyday and electoral violence), and seeks to discover what socio-economic development can do to overcome conflict and make the country's transition to democracy safe for its constituencies.
This edited volume explores a range of approaches to nonviolent or popular resistance in the Second Intifada. Written by scholar-activists with diverse experiences in Israel-Palestine, the chapters in the volume provide the reader with an overview of how nonviolent resistance is conceived and practiced in a variety of settings within the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel, and internationally. The selections explore the themes of power, tactics, and the interactions between local and international activists.
This volume is the second book based on comparative and comprehensive data from the 2003 representative European Union Company survey of Operating hours, Working times and Employment (EUCOWE) in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. The EUCOWE project is the first representative and standardised European company survey which covers all categories of firm sizes and all sectors of the economy. This volume complements and builds on the first book published in 2007, in which the methodology and the descriptive national findings as well as some first comparative analytical results were presented. In this second book the EUCOWE research team presents in-depth cross-country analyses of the relationship between operating hours, working times and employment in the European Union. Six empirical chapters of this volume provide detailed comparative analyses of the determinants and consequences of the duration and flexibility of opening hours and operating times.
Lantis examines continuity and change in German foreign policy in the decade since unification. Between 1949 and 1990, the Federal Republic of Germany pursued one of the most consistent foreign policy patterns of any Western power. Restrictions on an assertive German military posture became deeply rooted in the public psyche, in foreign policy tradition, and in the Basic Law. However, the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the unification of Germany have fundamentally changed the international and domestic parameters of German foreign policy. A review of contemporary developments shows that a dramatic evolution of German foreign policy is currently underway--from checkbook diplomacy in the Gulf War to the humanitarian relief mission in the Horn of Africa, and from Contact Group diplomacy to airstrikes in Kosovo. To explore this evolution of German foreign policy since unification, Lantis presents an innovative model of external-internal linkages derived from two important areas of scholarship on the role of international crises as catalysts for foreign policy change and the importance of domestic political conditions that ultimately determine the scope and pace of such change. Five original case studies place German political debates about how best to respond to challenges of the post-Cold War era in social and historical context by drawing on discursive analyses of government documents, parliamentary debates, and elite interviews. These cases illustrate the rise of a new consensus on the political left for engagement in global affairs, reinterpretations of historical lessons for contemporary German policy, and the constitutional challenges of global activism since unification. Of particular interest to scholars, students, and researchers involved with German politics, international security policy, and comparative foreign policy.
The Middle East has been the centerpiece of American foreign policy for decades. As President Barack Obama faces continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the nuclear debate in Iran and the ever-present Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the future of this region is once again firmly in the international spotlight. "America's Challenges in the Greater Middle East "charts U.S. policy towards key Middle Eastern states and evaluates the impact of the current Administration's policies. This edited volume brings together scholarly opinion from a diverse range of world-recognized experts and is the definitive text on the Obama Administration's engagement with this volatile, yet politically vital, part of the world. |
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