According to security elites, revolutions in information, transport, and weapons technologies have shrunk the world, leaving the United States and its allies more vulnerable than ever to violent threats like terrorism or cyberwar. As a result, they practice responses driven by fear: theories of falling dominoes, hysteria in place of sober debate, and an embrace of preemptive war to tame a chaotic world. Patrick Porter challenges these ideas. In The Global Village Myth, he disputes globalism's claims and the outcomes that so often waste blood and treasure in the pursuit of an unattainable "total" security. Porter reexamines the notion of the endangered global village by examining Al-Qaeda's global guerilla movement, military tensions in the Taiwan Strait, and drones and cyberwar, two technologies often used by globalists to support their views. His critique exposes the folly of disastrous wars and the loss of civil liberties resulting from the globalist enterprise. Showing that technology expands rather than shrinks strategic space, Porter offers an alternative outlook to lead policymakers toward more sensible responses - and a wiser, more sustainable grand strategy.

Changing national identities have transformed the China-Taiwan and Korean conflicts. Democratization in Taiwan and South Korea, and liberalization in China, have forced leaders to compete for popular legitimacy by appealing to national identities. Along with the collapse of the Soviet Union, these contested national identities have been the main factors driving change in the conflicts--pushing China and Taiwan inexorably apart and toward a showdown, while helping to prop up what appeared to be a mortally wounded North Korea. This explains why one U.S. ally, Taiwan, becomes more hawkish, while the other, South Korea, becomes more dovish. U.S. foreign policy is struggling to adjust.

Since World War II, remarkable progress has been made toward establishing more effective international laws and organizations to reduce opportunities for confrontation and conflict, and to enhance the pursuit of security and well-being. This book offers a detailed record of that progress, as well as its meaning for our times and those ahead. Taking a historical, theoretical, and case-study approach, John Gibson provides the reader with a broad understanding of how international organizations evolved to serve the interests of their member states, how the constitutional charters of organizations provide a coherent statement of goals and means to goals, and how these organizations are assuming increasing authority in the international system.

The work traces the progression of international constitutional and human rights law, with an emphasis on the past 45 years. In the first part, Gibson discusses the historic processes of political relations and mutual reliance; the evolution of these patterns through World War II; the subsequent history of the United Nations; the prime goals of international constitutional law; and the organizations' range of authority--from the high state to the supra-organization level. Part two offers a case study of the progression of international human rights law. Separate chapters trace the history of human rights in religion and philosophy and the role of the state in international law, while the concluding chapter on the United Nations Commission on Human Rights demonstrates how organizations actually function. This book will be a valuable resource for courses in international relations and international law, as well as an important addition to academic and professional libraries.

As India emerges as a significant global actor, diverse states have sought to engage India with divergent agendas and interests. Some states aspire to improve their relations with New Delhi, while others pursue the transformation of Indian foreign policy -- and even India itself -- to suit their interests. "The Engagement of India" explores the strategies that key states have employed to engage and shape the relationship with a rising and newly vibrant India, their successes and failures, and Indian responses -- positive, ambivalent, and sometimes hostile -- to engagement. A multinational team of contributors examine the ways in which Australia, China, Japan, Russia, and the United States have each sought to engage India for various purposes, explore the ways in which India has responded, and assess India's own strategies to engage with Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Central Asian republics.

This informative analysis of the foreign relations of a key rising power, and first comparative study of engagement strategies, casts light on the changing nature of Indian foreign policy and the processes that shape its future. "The Engagement of India" should be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, diplomacy, and South Asia.

Over the last decade, asymmetric warfare and terrorism have become prevalent threats to the United States. National security, today more than at any other time, demands decision-making under uncertainty. The issues presented in this book demonstrate that the value of planning depends on how well the USA can prepare for a perpetually unpredictable future. Each chapter examines pertinent management, leadership, and accountability issues related to U.S. national security and places readers at the centre of difficult decisions. Although the cases collected in this volume revolve around policy questions, they also illustrate more general policy dilemmas and are designed to stimulate new ideas. Endorsement: A] diverse and rich set of cases that explore many of the new challenges that confront U.S. national security policymakers today. Drawing on a team of established scholars and experienced practitioners, this book provides both an assessment of new threats and challenges and a case-based examination of decision-making processes... a compelling argument for the case-study approach and a fruitful blending of academic and practitioner perspectives and approaches. and decision-making processes as well as to our grasp of the security challenges of the 21st century. - Robert H. Dorff, Ph.D., Professor of National Security Policy and Strategy, and Chairman, Department of National Security and Strategy, U.S. Army War College.

In keeping with the tenets of socialist internationalism, the political culture of the German Democratic Republic strongly emphasized solidarity with the non-white world: children sent telegrams to Angela Davis in prison, workers made contributions from their wages to relief efforts in Vietnam and Angola, and the deaths of Patrice Lumumba, Ho Chi Minh, and Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired public memorials. Despite their prominence, however, scholars have rarely examined such displays in detail. Through a series of illuminating historical investigations, this volume deploys archival research, ethnography, and a variety of other interdisciplinary tools to explore the rhetoric and reality of East German internationalism.

The national cinemas of Czechoslovakia and East Germany were two of the most vital sites of filmmaking in the Eastern Bloc, and over the course of two decades, they contributed to and were shaped by such significant developments as Sovietization, de-Stalinization, and the conservative retrenchment of the late 1950s. This volume comprehensively explores the postwar film cultures of both nations, using a "stereoscopic" approach that traces their similarities and divergences to form a richly contextualized portrait. Ranging from features to children's cinema to film festivals, the studies gathered here provide new insights into the ideological, political, and economic dimensions of Cold War cultural production.

During his political career, Helmut Kohl used his own life story to promote a normalization of German nationalism and to overcome the stigma of the Nazi period. In the context of the cold war and the memory of the fascist past, he was able to exploit the combination of his religious, generational, regional, and educational (he has a PhD in History) experiences by connecting nationalist ideas to particular biographical narratives. Kohl presented himself as the embodiment of "normality": a de-radicalized German nationalism which was intended to eclipse any anti-Western and post-national peculiarities. This book takes a biographical approach to the study of nationalism by examining its manifestation in Helmut Kohl and the way he historicized Germany's past.

The book examines how the Belfast Agreement came about and its effect on unionism, nationalism, the paramilitaries, electoral support for local parties and the constitutional position of Northern Ireland. It also considers the extent to which the Agreement may be regarded as an exercise in political cynicism or the basis for lasting peace.

Roudometof provides an in-depth sociological analysis of the birth and historical evolution of nationalism in the Balkans. The rise of nationalism in the region is viewed as part of a world-historical process of globalization over the last five centuries. With the growing contacts between the Ottoman Empire and the Western European system, the Eastern Orthodox of the Balkans abandoned the enthoconfessional system of social organization in favor of secular national identities.

Prior to 1820, local nationalism was influenced by the Enlightenment, though later it came to be developed on an ethnonational basis. In the post-1830 Balkans, citizenship rights were subordinated to ethnic nationalism, according to which membership to a nation is accorded on the basis of church affiliation and ethnicity. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the discourse of nationhood was institutionalized by the native intelligentsia of the Balkan states. In the first half of the 20th century, the efforts of Balkan states to achieve national homogenization produced interstate rivalry, forced population exchanges, and discrimination against minority groups. While the Cold War helped contain some of these problems, the post-1989 period has seen a return of these issues to the forefront of the Balkan political agenda.

The 1990s saw a sea change in East Asian security concerns. The role of the ocean as a highway for trade and a location of vital resources became critical to the region's economic growth. Protection of territorial waters, the Exclusive Economic Zones established under the UN Law of the Sea, and strategic lines of communication grew in importance. Soon, a significant change in the size and sophistication of many of the region's naval forces began to occur as they acquired modern weapons platforms (ships and aircraft) and weapons systems. This study uses two approaches from quantitative arms race theory, the role of the armaments-tension spiral and that of enduring national rivalries, to examine the hard data on arms races in the region. The changing balance of naval forces has been interpreted in two very different ways. One camp has viewed the development as a largely benign and justifiable "modernization" of naval forces for legitimate defense purposes. A second camp has warned of a "naval arms race" in East Asia that will spawn armed conflict. Both camps have often relied on anecdotal evidence and rhetoric. While the argument was muted by the 1997 economic crisis, many naval projects have continued to move forward. Meconis and Wallace address the meaning of East Asian naval weapons acquisitions in the 1990s in a more formal and serious manner than any previous attempts, and they propose measures that might prevent naval conflict.

Written by leading scholars in a range of disciplines (from law, philosophy, politics and sociology to media studies and translation studies), this book provides key insights into the globalization of violence and the role of translation in this context, and includes detailed empirical analyses of media representations and translators accounts.

Global politics is a crowded stage of players competing for power and authority. Who is in charge of what? How do they stay in charge and what are the effects? This volume raises these questions in case studies on regimes of torture and surveillance in women's rights, border control, media, global capital and religion. In an era of longing for hegemonic control (e.g. the US "war on terror"), the conclusions focus on the dilemmas of democratic accountability and how new spaces of resistance can be created.

Shows the role of historians in making 'Dominion' status, which combined autonomy with unity and provided the peaceful route by which Canada, Australia and New Zealand gained their independence within the British Commmonwealth of Nations, while South Africa, the Irish Free State and India, also Dominions, chose to become republics.

This book places Eurasia in its entirety within a single explanatory framework and examines, for the first time to that extent, Russia as a Eurasian energy power in its affairs with the two main geopolitical players of the region, the EU and China. Part of this geopolitical space is the Former Soviet Union (FSU) region which shares deep historical-political ties with Russia and constitutes the necessary crossing for the latter's natural gas supplies en route to the EU market. In this way, an energy triangle is established, with Russia at the top angle, the EU in the left angle, China in the right angle and the FSU region the median. Following the scheme, three bipolar relationships emerge, Russia-FSU region, Russia-EU and Russia-China, with each of them representing a different type of bilateral cooperation. In the first case there is an asymmetric relationship with one actor being overly powerful, in terms of energy, to impose its conditions, economic and political, on the other. In the second case there is a symmetric relationship with both actors having equal means of pressure at their disposal. Finally, in the third case there is balanced relationship with both actors trading on an equal basis. Within this framework, one of the dominant theoretical debates in the field of International Relations, that between Neorealism and Neoliberal Institutionalism (the so-called 'Neo-Neo' debate) seeks to shed light on the governing rationale beyond Putin's Russia foreign energy policy vis-a-vis the FSU region, the EU and China.

This book seeks to provide the most comprehensive and sustained engagement and critique of neo-Gramscian analyses available in the literature. In examining neo-Gramscian analyses in IR/IPE, the book engages with two fundamental concerns in international relations: (i) the question of historicity and (ii) the analysis of radical transformation.

The events of 9/11 prompted questions as to the origins, nature and purpose of international jihadist organisations. In particular, why had they chosen to target the US and the West in general? Turner's book provides a unique, holistic insight into these debates, taking into account historical perceptions and ideology as key factors.

In recent years, economic relations between Latin American countries and the People's Republic of China have developed steadily, exhibiting marked tendencies toward greater diversification. Using newly released data from the Chinese Government along with extensive interviews in China and Latin America, Li gives us the first systematic analysis of the economic and political ideas underlying this surge in Sino-Latin American economic relations. His focus on China's relations with six major trading partners--Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, Chile, Mexico, and Peru--provides an accurate assessment of trends and prospects for an emerging bilateral economic partnership. The conclusions of this study find that Sino-Latin American ties have become less ideological and present PRC involvement has been largely compatible with Western interests. Since China is expected to develop into a major economic player in Latin America in the years to come, it is important for the United States to understand the implications of these burgeoning relations. This study is a valuable and much-needed contribution to the literature of South-South cooperation and collective self-reliance.

Li examines three main areas of Sino-Latin American economic relations: trade, aid, and investment. Beginning with the Communist Revolution in China, he traces the history of China's relations with the six Latin countries, moving through early developments, the post-Cuban Revolution era, the 1970s normalization period, and China's Open-Door policy. Future prospects are considered in the concluding chapters, with hopes for greater economic interactions depending on the outcomes of China's own economic reforms and Latin America's economic recession. This book will be of interest to those who practice in the sphere of world political-economic relations, as well as academics who study them.

This book is a compilation of scholarly articles on a wide variety of subjects pertaining to the cultures of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. "Nordic Experiences" discusses music, art, literature, folkore, and the social fabric of past and present to offer the reader a many-faceted image of what the term Scandinavia stands for today.

There are now some 12-13 million people of Nordic descent living in the United States, and their culture has played a part in shaping the American experience. The cultural contacts and exchanges between the United States and the Nordic countries, thanks in large part to immigration, remains strong and varied, adding a significant dimension to the close ties that have existed for many years. This book is a celebration of Nordic culture and its harmonious and enduring relationship with the United States. As such, it will be of considerable interest to scholars and students alike of Scandinavian or European civilization.

This broad-ranging assessment of US power in the twenty-first century covers not just the nature and mechanics of foreign policy but the broad array of economic, military, political, social and ideational forces that shape America's global position and role, all set in a clear historical context.

This book investigates whether international standards of good governance are applied to sub-state actors as well as to states. By examining the international response to self-determination claims, this project demonstrates that the international community does indeed hold sub-state groups accountable to such standards. Claimant groups that have internalized human rights and democratic norms are more likely to receive international support in the form of empowerment (promoting some form of self-governance). To illustrate the causal forces at work, the book presents three qualitative case studies--Kosovo, Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Western Sahara--to demonstrate that predictable changes in the international response occur as international perception of each claimant group's democratic record varies over time.

This book reassesses the contribution to international thought of some of the most important thinkers of the inter-war period. It takes as its starting point E.H. Carr's famous critique which, more than any other work, established the reputation of the period as the "utopian" or "idealist" phase of international relations theorizing. This characterization of inter-war thought is scrutinized through ten detailed studies of such writers as Norman Angell, J.A. Hobson, J.M. Keynes, David Mitrany, and Alfred Zimmern. The studies demonstrate the diversity of perspectives within so-called "idealism" and call into question the descriptive and analytical value of the entire notion. It is concluded that "idealism" is an overly general term, useful for scoring debating points rather than providing a helpful category for analysis.

This volume studies the process of nation-state building, its role in modernization and developments in Afghanistan following World War II to the period of Soviet occupation of the country in December 1979, and the struggle of various social strata for social transformation in the country. The book further explores the policies of the two superpowers--the United States and the Soviet Union--and their economic assistance in Afghanistan's modernization projects following World War II. The book offers insight into this superpower struggle, examining how each superpower tried to win Afghanistan to its side by supporting a particular social strata within the state apparatus. Finally, it analyzes how one of the contending superpowers--the Soviet Union, having failed to establish its influence in Afghanistan--decided to intervene in the country's affairs in December 1979.

The book also examines the emergence and development of the Islamic movement and the Jihad struggle waged against the regime and the Soviet forces in Afghanistan. It explores the basis of U.S. policy in aiding and abetting the Pakistan-based Islamic parties and the future of U.S.-Soviet struggle in Afghanistan. Much of the book is based on Afghanistan's primary sources as well as U.S. secret documents seized by the Iranian students during the U.S. hostage crisis in Iran. The book links a survey of the literature to interviews with prominent policymakers who were active in Afghanistan's development strategies. The book should appeal to scholars and researchers on the Middle East and South Asia, as well as to lay persons interested in a new perspective and interpretation of Afghanistan politics.

Can foreign rule be morally justified? Since the end of the First World War, international transitional administrations have replaced dysfunctional states to create the conditions for lasting peace and democracy. In response to extreme state failure, the author argues, this form of foreign rule is not only justified, but a requirement of justice.