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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > General
International Organizations play a pivotal role on the modern global stage and have done, this book argues, since the beginning of the 20th century. This volume offers the first historical exploration into the formative years of international public administrations, covering the birth of the League of Nations and the emergence of the second generation that still shape international politics today such as the UN, NATO and OECD. Centring on Europe, where the multilaterization of international relations played out more intensely in the mid-20th century than in other parts of the world, it demonstrates a broad range of historiographical and methodological approaches to institutions in international history. The book argues that after several 'turns' (cultural, linguistic, material, transnational), international history is now better equipped to restate its core questions of policy and power with a view to their institutional dimensions. Making use of new approaches in the field, this book develops an understanding of the specific powers and roles of IO-administrations by delving into their institutional make-up.
Understand the complexities of the most lethal insurgent group of America's longest war-the Taliban. Battle hardened, tribally oriented, and deeply committed to its cause, the Taliban has proven itself resourceful, adaptable, and often successful. As such, the Taliban presents a counterinsurgency puzzle for which the United States has yet to identify effective military tactics, information operations, and Coalition developmental policies. Written by one of the Department of the Army's leading intelligence and military analysts on the Taliban, this book covers the group's complete history, including its formation, ideology, and political power, as well as the origins of its current conflict with the United States. The work carefully analyzes the agenda, capabilities, and support base of the Taliban; forecasts the group's likely course of action to retake Afghanistan; and details the Coalition forces' probable counterinsurgency responses. Author Mark Silinsky also reviews the successes and failures of the latest U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine to extrapolate the best strategies for future counterinsurgency campaigns. Provides insights from an author with academic training in politics and economics as well as a 30-year defense intelligence community background, including serving as an Army analyst in Afghanistan Presents information recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act Analyzes the tribal, religious, political, and international elements of the greater Taliban problem
The disastrous Buffalo Creek Treaty of 1838 called for the Senecas' removal to Kansas (then part of the Indian Territory). From this low point, the Seneca Nation of Indians, which today occupies three reservations in western New York, sought to rebound. Beginning with events leading to the Seneca Revolution in 1848, which transformed the nation's government from a council of chiefs to an elected system, Laurence M. Hauptman traces Seneca history through the New Deal. Based on the author's nearly fifty years of archival research, interviews, and applied work, Coming Full Circle shows that Seneca leaders in these years learned valuable lessons and adapted to change, thereby preparing the nation to meet the challenges it would face in the post-World War II era, including major land loss and threats of termination. Instead of emphasizing American Indian decline, Hauptman stresses that the Senecas were actors in their own history and demonstrated cultural and political resilience. Both Native belief, in the form of the Good Message of Handsome Lake, and Christianity were major forces in Seneca life; women continued to play important social and economic roles despite the demise of clan matrons' right to nominate the chiefs; and Senecas became involved in national and international competition in long-distance running and in lacrosse. The Seneca Nation also achieved noteworthy political successes in this period. The Senecas resisted allotment, and thus saved their reservations from breakup and sale. They recruited powerful allies, including attorneys, congressmen, journalists, and religious leaders. They saved their Oil Spring Reservation, winning a U.S. Supreme Court case against New York State on the issue of taxation and won remuneration in their Kansas Claims case. These efforts laid the groundwork for the Senecas' postwar endeavor to seek compensation before the Indian Claims Commission and pursuit of a series of land claims and tax lawsuits against New York State.
How do countries democratize? What route does the way out of totalitarianism take? Students of Russian politics have pursued answers to these questions by surveying Russians on a variety of attitudes, beliefs, norms, and practices. This book attends to political discourse to demonstrate how it creates and constraints political opportunities. It examines an important period of Russian political history: from Boris Yeltsin's second presidential election in 1996, when democracy was pronounced victorious, through its gradual slide toward authoritarian practices during Vladimir Putin's initial two terms in office, and to the election of his protege Dmitry Medvedev in 2008. This analysis challenges the assertions of Russian democracy as doomed by the governing rationalities of the elites. Likewise, it refutes the notion of Russians as an apathetic nation in chronic need of a "strong hand." It argues that if we are to understand how Russia lives, how it endures, and how it can change, we need to pay attention to the discourses that shape Russian political identities and the nation's political future.
Composer and cultural official Nicolas Nabokov (1903-78) led an unusual life even for a composer who was also a high-level diplomat. Nabokov was for nearly three decades an outstanding and far-sighted player in international cultural exchanges during the Cold War, much admired by some of the most distinguished minds of his century for the range of his interests and the breadth of his vision. Nicolas Nabokov: A Life in Freedom and Music follows Nabokov's life through its fascinating details: a privileged Russian childhood before the Revolution; exile, first to Germany, then to France; the beginnings of a promising musical career, launched under the aegis of Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes with Ode in 1928; his twelve-year "American exile" during which he occupied several academic positions; his return to Europe after the war to participate in the denazification of Germany; his involvement in anti-Stalinist causes in the first years of the Cold War; his participation in the Congress for Cultural Freedom; his role as cultural adviser to the Mayor of Berlin and director of the Berlin Festival in the early 1960s; the resumption of his American academic and musical career in the late 1960s and 1970s. Nabokov is unique not only in that he was involved on a high level in international cultural politics, but also in that his life intersected at all times with a vast array of people within, and also well beyond, the confines of classical music. Drawing on a vast array of primary sources, Vincent Giroud's first-ever biography of Nabokov will be of interest readers interested in twentieth-century music, Russian music, Russian emigration, and the Cold War, particularly in its cultural aspects. Musicians and musicologists interested in Nabokov as a composer, or in twentieth century Russian composers in general, will find in the book information not available anywhere else.
Academic and accepted orthodoxy maintains that Southeast Asia, and Asia generally, is evolving into a distinctive East Asian regional order. This book questions this claim and reveals instead uncertainty and incoherence at the heart of ASEAN, the region's foremost institution. The authors provide a systematic critique of ASEAN's evolution and institutional development, as well as a unified understanding of the international relations and political economy of ASEAN and the Asia-Pacific. It is the first study to provide a sceptical analysis of international relations orthodoxies regarding regionalization and institutionalism, and is based on wide-ranging and rigorous research. Students of international relations, the Asia-Pacific, Southeast Asia, regional studies, international history and security and defence studies will find this book of great interest, as will scholars, policy makers and economic forecasters with an interest in long-term Asia-Pacific trends.
Most observers who follow nuclear history agree on one major aspect regarding Israel's famous policy of nuclear ambiguity; mainly that it is an exception. More specifically, it is largely accepted that the 1969 Nixon-Meir understanding, which formally established Israel's policy of nuclear ambiguity and transformed it from an undeclared Israeli strategy into a long-lasting undisclosed bilateral agreement, was in fact a singularity, aimed at allowing Washington to turn a blind eye to the existence of an Israeli arsenal. According to conventional wisdom, this nuclear bargain was a foreign policy exception on behalf of Washington, an exception which reflected a relationship growing closer and warmer between the superpower leading the free world and its small Cold War associate. Contrary to the orthodox narrative, this research demonstrates that this was not the case. The 1969 bargain was not, in fact, an exception, but rather the first of three Cold War era deals on nuclear tests brokered by Washington with its Cold War associates, the other two being Pakistan and South Africa. These two deals are not well known and until now were discussed and explored in the literature in a very limited fashion. Bargaining on Nuclear Tests places the role of nuclear tests by American associates, as well as Washington's attempts to prevent and delay them, at the heart of a new nuclear history narrative.
Product of a Post-doctoral research done at the University of Washington, (Seattle), USA, the present work is an attempt to conceptualise and analyse the postulates underlying India's Foreign Policy from its formative years in the early fifties to its maturation in the early eighties of the last century. It subjects the management of foreign relations by India to a full scale theoretical examination from the political economy angle-an exercise few scholars then or now have undertaken .Notions of security, national interest, diplomatic leverage, decision making process and so on have, in this work, been revisited in the decisive context of a domestic-external continuum in which forces of economic origin were seen as defining the rationale of a foreign policy that was supposed to take a developing nation to the fulfilment of its legitimate aspirations. At the same time, the innovations that were made with practically no earlier precedent to go by and the kind of institution building required for the purpose have been dealt with critically so as to bring out the interplay of domestic development aspirations and the art of ensuring policy independence by appropriate diplomacy. In the turbulent context of the Cold War the Indian experiment in the management of foreign relations and the positive gains it reaped in collectivising the principle of non-alignment did constitute a subject that demanded a non-conventional approach to get to the bottom of it. That is precisely what distinguishes the book by one of the most qualified experts in International Relations, enjoying intellectual acclaim both at home and abroad. The book starts with a theoretical discourse on the applicability or otherwise of the political economy approach as it stood at the time of writing. In subsequent chapters it examines a dependent economy's quest for an independent foreign policy, the central challenge before the external affairs ministry of the country. It needed, among other things handling of external aid, and foreign investment to recharge the developmental enterprises at home in a manner that would not interfere with the autonomy in judging and reacting to external events. Economic restructuring at home which brought a strong public sector as complementary to a fledgling private sector constituted an essential aspect. So also came up the new experiment of building a collective economic front with other developing nations. In its compact, yet well documented, analysis the book provides the most engaging scholarly presentation of the subject in all its relevant technicalities.
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Global health arguably represents the most pressing issues facing humanity. Trends in international migration and transnational commerce render state boundaries increasingly porous. Human activity in one part of the world can lead to health impacts elsewhere. Animals, viruses and bacteria as well as pandemics and environmental disasters do not recognize or respect political borders. It is now widely accepted that a global perspective on the understanding of threats to health and how to respond to them is required, but there are many practical problems in establishing such an approach. This book offers a foundational study of these urgent and challenging problems, combining critical analysis with practically focused policy contributions. The contributors span the fields of ethics, human rights, international relations, law, philosophy and global politics. They address normative questions relating to justice, equity and inequality and practical questions regarding multi-organizational cooperation, global governance and international relations. Moving from the theoretical to the practical, Global Health and International Community is an essential resource for scholars, students, activists and policy makers across the globe.
In Moral Pressure for Responsible Globalization, Sherrie M. Steiner offers an account of religious diplomacy with the G8, G7 and G20 to evoke new possibilities in an effort to influence globalization to become more equitable and sustainable. Commonly portrayed as 'out of control', globalization is considered here as a political process that can be redirected to avoid the tragedy of the global commons. The secularization tradition of religion depicts faith-based public engagement as dangerous. Making use of historical materials from faith-based G-plus System shadow summits (2005-2017), Steiner provides ample information to arrive at an interpretation that significantly differs from traditional accounts. Using broader scope conditions, Steiner considers how human induced environmental changes contribute to religious resurgence under conditions of weakening nation states.
Historians of American environmentalism have long given religion either a negligible role or a negative one in the development of the field. According to the standard view, Christianity fostered attitudes hostile or indifferent to nature, with Protestantism the worst offender. While virtually all leading environmental figures did eventually leave organized religion, a large majority however had religious childhoods, usually in Reformed Protestant churches, and often counted clergy as close relatives. And although popular support for conservation and environmentalism was relatively non-denominational, Congregationalists provided the foundational ideas of conservation, while the rise and decline of environmentalism as a powerful national movement coincided with the prevalence of Presbyterian leadership. By tracing the history of American environmentalism from a perspective that puts religion at the center rather than the margins, Mark Stoll opens up a fundamentally new and much needed narrative in environmental studies. Inherit the Holy Mountain argues against the divide between religion and American environmentalism, demonstrating how religion necessarily provided environmentalists with deeply-embedded moral and cultural ways of viewing the world giving content, direction, and tone to the environmental causes they espoused. The book demonstrates how individuals' denominational origins corresponded with characteristic sets of ideas about nature and the environment, with each denomination fostering a distinctive culture with its own moral framework and its own placement of humans within the natural world. Stoll also demonstrates how each denomination also fostered a distinctive aesthetic reaction to nature, beginning each chapter of the book with an analysis of a representative work of art. Inherit the Holy Mountain also provides insight into the possible future of environmentalism in the United States, concluding with an examination of the current religious scene and consideration of what it may tell us. Whatever form the response to these problems will take in the twenty-first century, Stoll says, it will look very different, with different values, goals, and styles of leadership, than it did when the children of the Reformed churches created and led it.
Humans rank with the powerful forces of nature transforming Earth. Since the mid-20th century, population growth, industrialization, and globalization have had such deep and wide-ranging impacts that our planet no longer functions as it did during the previous eleven millennia. So distinctive is this collective human intervention that a new geological interval has been proposed; it is called the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is intriguing scientifically, fascinating intellectually, and deeply disturbing politically, socially, economically, and ethically. We must learn how to co-exist sustainably with the rest of nature in what is emerging as a new planetary state. To do so, we must first understand what "Anthropocene" means in all its dimensions. This book adopts a multidisciplinary approach, starting with an exploration of the Anthropocene as a geological concept: ranging across the physical changes to the landscape, to the rapidly heating climate, to a biosphere undergoing transformation. And what of the "anthropos" in the Anthropocene? While geoscience does not normally address political and ethical issues of justice and equity, or economics and culture, Anthropocene studies in the humanities and social sciences investigate the complexities of the human activity driving global change. Here the book looks at human history, both in the deep past and more recently, the politics and economics of growth spurring the Anthropocene, and potential ways of mitigating its cruel effects. Our fragile, still beautiful, planet is finite. The new realities of the Anthropocene will need our best efforts, across disciplinary divides, at effective hope and action.
Despite the boycott Hamas was subjected to since its victory in the 2006 parliamentary elections, it has become a significant player on the international stage. It boasts a territory identifiable by its borders, internationally recognized cease-fire lines and effective authority over a population. This book, a study in international relations, shows how Hamas willingly mobilizes Palestinian internal issues to establish its legitimacy on a global scale, and at the same time, uses its relations with non-Palestinian players to compete against its political rivals on the Palestinian national stage. Leila Seurat reveals that Hamas's foreign and internal policy are strongly intertwined and centred mainly on Hamas's quest for recognition. The book then is a comprehensive diplomatic history of Palestine, focused on the political orientations of Hamas towards both Israel and other countries. Its coverage spans the movement's victory in 2006 up until more recent momentous events, including, Hamas' response to Trump's 'deal of the century' and Israel's announcement of the annexation of the Jordan Valley, as well as the proclamation of normalization accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and the impact of Covid19. The book is based on Leila Seurat's extensive fieldwork and interviews with Hamas's leading officials across the West Bank, Gaza, Damascus, Geneva and Beirut in addition to recent video-conferences planned by various NGOs and attended by West Bank, Gaza and Diaspora Palestinians.
The Chinese (Taiwan) Yearbook of International Law and Affairs includes articles and international law materials relating to the Republic of China on Taiwan and contemporary Asia-Pacific issues. This volume provides insight into the South China Sea Arbitration, investment and financial integration in Asia, the Ma-Xi Summit in Singapore, the Taiwan-Philippines Fisheries Agreement, and the 70th Anniversary of the ROC's War of Resistance against Japan. Questions and comments can be directed to the editorial board of the Yearbook by email at [email protected]
This Palgrave Pivot argues that if we are to understand civil conflict we need to grasp how everyday life is shaped by local conflict imaginaries. In order to examine this claim the book sets out to explore the contours of conflict imaginaries from two very different sites of conflict. Both Colombia and Indonesia have suffered from the collective trauma of political violence but in very different social, cultural and political contexts. Sketching out what they mean by a conflict imaginary, and explaining the relationship of this key concept to social imaginaries more broadly, the authors provide a historical overview of how political violence has been represented in both countries. They go on to outline the original qualitative research methods used to provide empirical evidence for the importance of conflict imaginaries, methods which allow them to explore the images and metaphors that underpin the spatial, chronological and emotional cartographies through which people make sense of political violence. With an emphasis on the construction of place-based knowledge, they consider the role of the local, the national and the global in the imagining of civil conflict, and show how film can be used to explore the imaginative worlds of social actors living alongside violence, revealing in the process the need to take seriously their hopes, fears, dreams and fantasies.
Guatemala emerged from the clash between Spanish invaders and Maya
cultures that began five centuries ago. The conquest of these "rich
and strange lands," as Hernan Cortes called them, and their "many
different peoples" was brutal and prolonged. ""Strange Lands and
Different Peoples"" examines the myriad ramifications of Spanish
intrusion, especially Maya resistance to it and the changes that
took place in native life because of it.
Now updated and expanded for its second edition, this book investigates the role intelligence plays in maintaining homeland security and emphasizes that effective intelligence collection and analysis are central to reliable homeland security. The first edition of Homeland Security and Intelligence was the go-to text for a comprehensive and clear introduction to U.S intelligence and homeland security issues, covering all major aspects including analysis, military intelligence, terrorism, emergency response, oversight, and domestic intelligence. This fully revised and updated edition adds eight new chapters to expand the coverage to topics such as recent developments in cyber security, drones, lone wolf radicalization, whistleblowers, the U.S. Coast Guard, border security, private security firms, and the role of first responders in homeland security. This volume offers contributions from a range of scholars and professionals from organizations such as the Department of Homeland Security, the Center for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School, the National Intelligence University, the Air Force Academy, and the Counterterrorism Division at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. This breadth of unique and informed perspectives brings a broad range of experience to the topic, enabling readers to gain a critical understanding of the intelligence process as a whole and to grasp what needs to happen to strengthen these various systems. The book presents a brief history of intelligence in the United States that addresses past and current structures of the intelligence community. Recent efforts to improve information-sharing among the federal, state, local, and private sectors are considered, and the critical concern regarding whether the intelligence community is working as intended-and whether there is an effective system of checks and balances to govern it-is raised. The book concludes by identifying the issues that should be addressed in order to better safeguard our nation in the future. Addresses the most recent changes in homeland security and intelligence, explains the dynamics and structure of the intelligence community, and assesses the effectiveness of new intelligence processes Focuses on the evolving structure of the intelligence community and its processes in the age of ISIS and organized, widespread terrorist threats as witnessed by the events in Boston, San Bernardino, and Paris Contains seven new chapters as well as revisions and updates throughout this second edition Underscores how intelligence can work-and needs to function-across homeland security efforts at the federal, state, and local levels
Intelligence is currently facing increasingly challenging cross-pressures from both a need for accurate and timely assessments of potential or imminent security threats and the unpredictability of many of these emerging threats. We are living in a social environment of growing security and intelligence challenges, yet the traditional, narrow intelligence process is becoming increasingly insufficient for coping with diffuse, complex, and rapidly-transforming threats. The essence of intelligence is no longer the collection, analysis, and dissemination of secret information, but has become instead the management of uncertainty in areas critical for overriding security goals--not only for nations, but also for the international community as a whole. For its part, scientific research on major societal risks like climate change is facing a similar cross-pressure from demand on the one hand and incomplete data and developing theoretical concepts on the other. For both of these knowledge-producing domains, the common denominator is the paramount challenges of framing and communicating uncertainty and of managing the pitfalls of politicization National Intelligence and Science is one of the first attempts to analyze these converging domains and the implications of their convergence, in terms of both more scientific approaches to intelligence problems and intelligence approaches to scientific problems. Science and intelligence constitute, as the book spells out, two remarkably similar and interlinked domains of knowledge production, yet ones that remain traditionally separated by a deep political, cultural, and epistemological divide. Looking ahead, the two twentieth-century monoliths--the scientific and the intelligence estates--are becoming simply outdated in their traditional form. The risk society is closing the divide, though in a direction not foreseen by the proponents of turning intelligence analysis into a science, or the new production of scientific knowledge.
From the Vanguard to the Margins is dedicated to the work of the late British historian, Dr Mark Pittaway (1971-2010), a prominent scholar of post-war and contemporary Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Breaking with orthodox readings on Eastern bloc regimes, which remain wedded to the 'totalitarianism' paradigm of the Cold War era, the essays in this volume shed light on the contradictory historical and social trajectory of 'real socialism' in the region. Mainstream historiography has presented Stalinist parties as 'omnipotent', effectively stripping workers and society in general of its 'relative autonomy'. Building on an impressive amount of archive material, Pittaway convincingly shows how dynamics of class, gender, skill level, and rural versus urban location, shaped politics in the period. The volume also offers novel insights on historical and sociological roots of fascism in Hungary and the politics of legitimacy in the Austro-Hungarian borderlands.
The advent of the all-volunteer force and the evolving nature of modern warfare have transformed our military, changing it in serious if subtle ways that few Americans are aware of. Edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David M. Kennedy, this stimulating volume brings together insights from a remarkable group of scholars, who shed important new light on the changes effecting today's armed forces. Beginning with a Foreword by former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, the contributors take an historical approach as they explore the ever-changing strategic, political, and fiscal contexts in which the armed forces are trained and deployed, and the constantly shifting objectives that they are tasked to achieve in the post-9/11 environment. They also offer strong points of view. Lawrence Freedman, for instance, takes the leadership to task for uncritically embracing the high-tech Revolution in Military Affairs when "conventional" warfare seems increasingly unlikely. And eminent psychiatrist Jonathan Shay warns that the post-battle effects of what he terms "moral wounds" currently receive inadequate attention from the military and the medical profession. Perhaps most troubling, Karl Eikenberry raises the issue of the "political ownership" of the military in an era of all-volunteer service, citing the argument that, absent the political protest common to the draft era, government decision-makers felt free to carry out military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Andrew Bacevich goes further, writing that "it's no longer our army; it hasn't been for years; it's theirs [the government's] and they intend to keep it." Looking at such issues as who serves and why, the impact of non-uniformed "contractors" in the war zone, and the growing role of women in combat, this volume brings together leading thinkers who illuminate the American military at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Governance and Nationbuilding describes how aid donors have attempted to improve the performance of government in developing countries and countries in crisis. Kate Jenkins and William Plowden review the widespread lack of success, tracing the history of international government intervention, the roles of donors and recipient countries, the ways in which expert advice and support have been provided, and the donors' own evaluation of their work. The authors outline and analyse the many obstacles to success, highlighting how the lack of effective learning from experience has led to repeated failures to improve the quality of government. The authors draw on the donors' own assessments of the issues and on their own experience in the British Government and many other countries. They recommend a new approach to improving government: much less grandiose and more modest expectations on the part of the donors, and a new and enhanced role for recipient countries. This is a hard-hitting analysis of the problems and potential proposals for change by two experts in the field. Both have not only advised governments in many different countries but also have first-hand experience of working at a senior level in British Government. The aid community worldwide, academics and students of international politics, international relations and public policy, along with officials and politicians outside the aid community will all find this fascinating book of great value. It will also appeal to journalists and commentators
The Kremlin's ability to shape global affairs appeared decimated following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Coupled with the internal instability that gripped Russia in the 1990s, Moscow struggled to develop a coherent and effective foreign policy for almost a decade. But under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has steadily reemerged as one of the most significant countries in the world-and one that is increasingly willing to challenge the United States. In Budget Superpower, geopolitics journalist John P. Ruehl explores how Russia has achieved this feat, despite its relatively limited economic strength. The book is divided into eight chapters, each exploring a tool or approach of the Kremlin's and how and where it has used this method to maximize Russia's influence. Each chapter also analyzes the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of Russia's strategies, as well as cautious predictions for how they may evolve in the future. Russia's determination to confront the United States has become increasingly apparent over the last decade, culminating in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In addition to demonstrating how Russia has effectively undermined the American-led global order, Budget Superpower will help readers understand why Russia has committed to this policy in the face of increasing push back and globally destabilizing consequences. |
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