The book reflects the author's experience across more than forty years in assessing and forming policy about nuclear weapons, mostly at senior levels close to the centre both of British governmental decision-making and of NATO's development of plans and deployments, with much interaction also with comparable levels of United States activity in the Pentagon and the State department. Part I of the book seeks to distill, from this exceptional background of practical experience, basic conceptual ways of understanding the revolution brought about by nuclear weapons. It also surveys NATO's progressive development of thinking about nuclear deterrence, and then discusses the deep moral dilemmas posed - for all possible standpoints - by the existence of such weapons. Part II considers the risks and costs of nuclear-weapon possession, including proliferation dangers, and looks at both successful and unsuccessful ideas about how to manage them. Part III illustrates specific issues by reviewing the history and current policies of one long-established possessor, the United Kingdom, and two more recent ones, India and Pakistan. Part IV turns to the future, examines the goal of eventually abolishing all nuclear armouries, and then discusses the practical agenda, short of such a goal, which governments can usefully tackle in reducing the risks of proliferation and other dangers while not surrendering prematurely the war-prevention benefits which nuclear weapons have brought since 1945.
This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.

Over the past decade, states and international organizations have shifted a surprising range of foreign policy functions to private contractors. But who is accountable when the employees of foreign private firms do violence or create harm? This timely book describes the services that are now delivered by private contractors and the threat this trend poses to core public values of human rights, democratic accountability, and transparency. The author offers a series of concrete reforms that are necessary to expand traditional legal accountability, construct better mechanisms of public participation, and alter the organizational structure and institutional culture of contractor firms. The result is a pragmatic, nuanced, and comprehensive set of responses to the problem of foreign affairs privatization.

Fills an important gap in the study of Africa's international relations and its engagement with rising economies in the Global South. When Lula da Silva became President of Brazil in 2003 he declared Africa a priority of his country's ambitious global foreign policy. During his presidency, Brazil became one of the key emergent powers in Africa through strengthening political ties, development cooperation and trade with the continent. While, the Dilma and Temer presidencies had other political priorities, strong links with the continent continued to exist. The authors trace the longhistory of Brazil-Africa relations from the early 16th century and the slave trade, through their decline during European colonialism, their resurgence following many African countries' independence, fluctuations during Brazil's military rule in the 1960s and '70s, to the expansion of its interests under Lula and the first years under Dilma. Taking a broad range of perspectives, they examine: the way in which the rights of those of African descent have become increasingly recognized without having brought racial equality; the strengthening of bilateral and multilateral links with the continent and the growth of South-South cooperation; and Brazil-Africa relations in the South Atlantic context. The final chapter looks at the wider implications of the present political and economic crises for Brazil's future foreign policy in Africa, and the likely impact of new president Jair Bolsonaro elected in late 2018. Gerhard Seibert is Lecturer at the Universidade da Integracao Internacional da Lusofonia Afro-Brasileira (UNILAB), Brazil; Paulo Fagundes Visentini is Historian and Full Professor of International Relations at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS).

Through the intervention of the European Union, the lives of people living in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo have been transformed beyond recognition. From the perspective of the Western Balkans today, the EU looks and acts like a development agency with a spectacularly broad brief and very deep pockets. Yet until the end of the 20th century, external relations and foreign policy were minor aspects of EU activity. How and why has the role of the EU changed so dramatically and what does this reveal about the future development of the Balkan states?

"Europe's Balkan Dilemma" offers the first comprehensive analysis of the impact of EU assistance and intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and newly independent Kosovo. In this important new book Adam Fagan places the fundamental question of what has been achieved through the EU's increased involvement in the region in the context of the EU's ambitions in global security and conflict management beyond the Balkan states. "Europe's Balkan Dilemma" will be a vital resource not only for students of International Relations and European Studies but also for anyone involved in helping to equip this tumultuous region for the next phase in its eventful history.

"China threat" has been one of hotly debated topics since the early 1990s, and this book is an effort to test the China threat thesis. The author argues that a test of the China threat thesis requires addressing two fundamental questions: whether China has the capabilities to challenge the international system and whether China has the motivations to do so. This book will offer a systematic study of China's foreign policy motivations by resorting to an image approach. The conclusion as to whether China is a status quo or a revisionist country will be reached by exploring how consideration of national interests and how China's perceptions of key characters of the U.S. affect China's foreign policy orientation. A summary of the dominant Chinese images of the U.S. will also contribute to understanding China's motivations vis-a-vis the U.S.

Lethal drones have been used in the last 12 years by the United States to strike targets and eliminate terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and a few other countries. Details of how armed drones are being used, in or outside of declared wars, are closely guarded secrets by all three states known to use them. However, these drones have also been responsible for killing and injuring thousands of civilians, including women and children, besides destroying homes and property. The US and its allies have claimed that the drone strikes have been spectacularly successful-in terms of both finding and killing targeted enemies. Drones have been projected as a military necessity and their market is growing fast, especially for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. The use of unmanned drones to target belligerents raises many complex issues. It is of crucial importance that traditional ethical rules and practices are applied; that rules of international law are observed even while engaging with terrorists. There are a few who justify the use of drones, but their argument is somewhat similar to the argument used for dropping atomic bombs over Japan in WWII. Lethal drones are a weapon of rich nations who have used them to attack poor, defenceless nations. This book discusses the ethical, legal and strategic issues relating to the use of drones in armed conflict.

This title examines Sub-Saharan Africa's relations with states such as the US, India, China, the EU, and Britain as well as with non-state actors. "The International Relations of Sub-Saharan Africa" is an in-depth examination Africa's place in global politics. The book provides a comprehensive and critical appraisal of the ways in which peace, prosperity, and democracy are being advanced (or restricted) by the activities of the great powers in Africa, including non-state actors, as well as who benefits from these policies and who does not. The book is a needed comparative study of the role of great powers and 'new' actors such as China and India in Africa within the wider context of neo-liberal hegemony. It fills a gap in the literature and will be of interest to any student of the continent. Its focus on external actors contributes to providing a fuller picture of Africa's place in the global political economy and how the continent interacts with the rest of the world. This is an essential work for anyone researching issues in international relations, comparative foreign policies, and African politics.

Twenty years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, we can now see that the War on Terror profoundly affected Western self-understanding and the secular liberal image it sought to project onto a global canvas at what was widely assumed to be the end of history. The dramatic change in awareness that 9/11 brought about was particularly vivid, this book maintains, in the media that sustained and displayed the West's self-image. In particular, fiction, film, drama, the visual arts, and popular music have all struggled to come to grips with the phenomena of terror, asymmetrical warfare, home grown jihadist activism, and the moral and political dilemmas they evoke. The book further argues that the evolving progressive response to 9/11 assumed an increasingly ideological character via the critical and normative international relations theories that came to dominate Western campuses after 2001. These perspectives gave substance to an increasingly critical depiction of the West's War on Terror and its popular promotion through works of literature, film, music, and the visual arts. Promoted through these popular genres, it combined the ingredients that formed "woke" ideology in an accessible formula that subsequently dominated both the mainstream media, academia, and, in time, government agencies.

Case studies explore how to improve military adaptation and preparedness in peacetime by investigating foreign wars Preparing for the next war at an unknown date against an undetermined opponent is a difficult undertaking with extremely high stakes. Even the most detailed exercises and wargames do not truly simulate combat and the fog of war. Thus, outside of their own combat, militaries have studied foreign wars as a valuable source of battlefield information. The effectiveness of this learning process, however, has rarely been evaluated across different periods and contexts. Through a series of in-depth case studies of the US Army, Navy, and Air Force, Brent L. Sterling creates a better understanding of the dynamics of learning from "other people's wars," determining what types of knowledge can be gained from foreign wars, identifying common pitfalls, and proposing solutions to maximize the benefits for doctrine, organization, training, and equipment. Other People's Wars explores major US efforts involving direct observation missions and post-conflict investigations at key junctures for the US armed forces: the Crimean War (1854-56), Russo-Japanese War (1904-5), Spanish Civil War (1936-39), and Yom Kippur War (1973), which preceded the US Civil War, First and Second World Wars, and major army and air force reforms of the 1970s, respectively. The case studies identify learning pitfalls but also show that initiatives to learn from other nations' wars can yield significant benefits if the right conditions are met. Sterling puts forth a process that emphasizes comprehensive qualitative learning to foster better military preparedness and adaptability.

A revealing examination looks at the decision-making in four NATO capitals about waging war in Kosovo and Iraq. Written by a combat veteran who also served on the faculty of the Naval War College, Waging War to Make Peace: U.S. Intervention in Global Conflicts is a thought-provoking analysis of the decision to make war in the modern world. The subject is examined through the lens of the decision-making of four NATO nations-Britain, France, Germany, and the United States-in the 1999 Kosovo campaign compared to their decisions in 2003 regarding the Iraq war. What emerges is a picture of how the bitter dispute over Iraq was the result of disagreements about who has the authority to wage war, when it is justified, and whether nations have an obligation to intervene in the case of human rights and humanitarian emergencies. The book shows how those who enthusiastically hailed a new era of warfare based upon human rights and humanitarian values misjudged the significance of the Kosovo decision, and it underscores issues with which leaders must come to grips if NATO allies are to avoid broader disputes in the years ahead. Utilizes case studies to explain the most fundamental dilemmas of world affairs, including the question of whether the UN Security Council must authorize war and what constitutes proper justification for the use of force Incorporates numerous interviews, speeches, private conversations, and UN and government documents to expose the debates among the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, and the United States about waging war in Kosovo

When Vladimir Putin became President of Russia in 2000, his first priority was to reestablish the intelligence agencies' grip on the country by portraying himself as a strongman protecting Russian citizens from security threats. Despite condemnation by the United Nations, the European Parliament, and European Union, the policy of brutal "ethnic cleansing" in Chechnya continued. For Putin, Islamist attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, were a welcome opportunity to rebrand the war against Chechen independence, not as the crushing of a democracy, but as a contribution to President George W. Bush's "War on Terror." In the years that followed, Putin's regime covertly supported and manipulated extremist factions in Chechnya and stage-managed terrorist attacks on its own citizens to justify continuing aggression. US and European condemnation of Russian atrocities in Chechnya dwindled as Russia continued to portray Chechen independence as an international terrorist threat. Chechnya's Prime Minister-in-Exile Akhmed Zakaev, who had to escape Chechnya, faced Russian calls for his extradition from the United Kingdom, which instead granted him political asylum as Russia's increased its oppressive operations.

The advent of the twenty-first century marks a significant moment in the history of Latinos in the United States. The "fourth wave" of immigration to America is primarily Latino, and the last decades of the twentieth century saw a significant increase in the number of Latino migrants, a diversification of the nations contributing to this migration, and an increase in the size of the native-born Latino population. A backlash against unauthorized immigration, which may indict all Latinos, is also underway. Understanding the growing Latino population, especially its immigrant dimensions, is therefore a key task for researchers in the social sciences and humanities. The contributors to Immigration and the Border address immigration and border politics and policies, focusing on the U.S. side of the border. The volume editors have arranged the essays into five sections. The two chapters in the first section set the stage and discuss the binational lives of Mexican migrants; chapters in the subsequent sections highlight specific political and policy themes: civic engagement, public policies, political reactions against immigrants, and immigrant leadership. Because the immigration experience encompasses many facets of political life and public policy, the varied perspectives of the contributors offer a mosaic that contextualizes the impact of and contributions by contemporary Latino immigrants. Their research will appeal not only to scholars but to policymakers and the public and will inform contentious debates about migration and migrants.

This book presents a comparative analysis of Russia and Iran under sanctions. Whilst the growing literature on sanctions has focused primarily on their effectiveness, much less attention has been paid to the ways in which sanctions have transformed target societies and states. Despite, or indeed because of, the relentless enactment of sanctions, Russia and Iran have become increasingly Hobbesian in their governance - more self-reliant, less democratic, and more aggressive towards the West. The author explores these developments through a novel Welfare State Regime framework (WSR) that combines welfare state functionality with institutional, economic, and cultural structural dimensions.

Cruelty has long been a feature of states' domestic and foreign policies but is seldom acknowledged. Governments mouth respect for human rights yet promote discrimination, violence and suppression of critics. Documenting case studies from around the world, distinguished academic and human rights activist Stuart Rees exposes politicians' cruel motives and the resulting outcomes. Using his first-hand observations and insights from international poets, he argues for courageous action to support non-violence in every aspect of public and private life for the survival of people, animals and the planet.

The world today is overwhelmed by wars between nations and within nations, wars that have dominated American politics for quite some time. Point of Attack calls for a new understanding of the grounds for war. In this book John Yoo argues that the new threats to international security come not from war between the great powers, but from the internal collapse of states, terrorist groups, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and destabilizing regional powers. In Point of Attack he rejects the widely-accepted framework built on the U.N. Charter and replaces it with a new system consisting of defensive, pre-emptive, or preventive measures to encourage wars that advance global welfare. Yoo concludes with an analysis of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, failed states, and the current challenges posed by Libya, Syria, North Korea, and Iran.

Rekindling the Strong State in Russia and China offers a thorough analysis of the profound regeneration of the State and its intense interaction with the external projections of Russia and China. In the international political scene, leaderships are under constant negotiation. Financial crisis, social and cultural transformations, values setting and migration flows have a deep impact on global powers, leading to the appearance of new actors. At present, the assumed rise of a new axis between two emerging powers, such as Russia and China, effaces their different backgrounds, leading to misinterpretations of their positioning in the geopolitical arena. This book is an essential and multifaceted guide aimed at understanding the deep changes that affect these two countries and their global aspirations. Contributors are: Marco Puleri; Andrea Passeri; Marco Balboni; Carmelo Danisi; Mingjiang Li; Mahalakshmi Ganapathy; Rosa Mule; Olga Dubrovina; Evgeny Mironov; Yongshun Cai; Vasil Sakaev; Eugenia Baroncelli; Sonia Lucarelli; Nicolo Fasola; Stefano Bianchini; Stanislav Tkachenko; Vitaly Kozyrev; Marco Borraccetti; Francesco Privitera; Antonio Fiori, Massimiliano Trentin; Arrigo Pallotti; Giuliana Laschi; Michael Leigh.

This book offers a scholarly, highly readable account of the 11th-12th century rulers of Morocco and Muslim Spain who offered a full range of meanings of jihad and challenged Ibn Khaldun's paradigm for the rise and fall of regimes. Originally West African, Berber nomads, the Almoravids emerged from what is today Mauritania to rule Morocco, western Algeria, and Muslim Spain. Over the course of the century-long lifespan of the Almoravid dynasty, the concept of jihad evolved through four distinct phases: a struggle for righteousness, a war against pagans in the Sahara to impose their own sense of righteousness, war against "bad" Muslims in Sijilmasa and the rest of the Maghrib, and finally, war against Christian infidels—the Christian kings of Iberia. The Almoravids and the Meanings of Jihad takes readers through a clear chronology of the dynasty from its birth through its dramatic rise to power, then its decline and eventual collapse. Several important themes in North African history are explored throughout the book, including the dynastic theory of noted Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, the unique relationship of rural and urban lifestyles, the interactions of distinct Berber and Arab identities, and the influence of tribal solidarity and Islam in forming the social fabric of medieval North African society

Sorge's activities between 1930 and 1942 have tended to be lauded as those of a superlative human intelligence operator and the Soviet Union's GRU (Soviet military intelligence unit) as the optimum of spy-masters. Although it was unusual for a great deal of inside knowledge to be obtained from the Japanese side, most attention has always been paid on the German side to the roles played by representatives of the German Army in Japan. This book, supported by extensive notes and a bibliography, by contrast, highlights the friendly relations between Sorge and Paul Wenneker, German naval attache in Japan from 1932 to 1937 and 1940-45. Wenneker, from extensive and expanding contacts inside the Japanese Navy (and also concealed contacts with the Japanese Army) supplied Sorge with key information on the depth of rivalry between the Japanese armed services.

This book uses several fantasy movies or movie series and television series to explain political and international relations (IR) concepts and theories. It begins with an overview of the importance of fantasy in literature, film and television, and its increasing impact on the field of International Relations. It then presents the political, IR, and social issues in each franchise, and in five chapters uses these tales' key story arcs or plot points to illustrate major political and IR themes. The volume pays particular attention to such fantasy franchises as Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, the Harry Potter films, recent fairytale and children's stories, and female-led fantasy projects.

Maritime piracy's improbable re-emergence following the end of the Cold War was surprising as the image of pirates evokes masted galleons and cutlasses. Yet, the number of incidents and their intensity skyrocketed in the 1990s and 2000s off of the coasts of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Somalia. As Ursula Daxecker and Brandon Prins demonstrate in Pirate Lands, Maritime piracy-like civil war, terrorism, and organized crime-is a problem of weak states. Surprisingly, though, pirates do not operate in the least governed areas of weak states. Daxecker and Prins address this puzzle by explaining why some coastal communities experience more pirate attacks in their vicinity than others. They find that pirates do well in places where elites and law enforcement can be bribed, but they also need access to functioning roads, ports, and markets. Using statistical analyses of cross-national and sub-national data on pirate attacks in Indonesia, Nigeria, and Somalia, Daxecker and Prins detail how governance at the state and local level explain the location of maritime piracy. Additionally, they employ geo-spatial tools to rigorously measure how local political capacity and infrastructure affect maritime piracy. Drawing upon interviews with former pirates, community members, and maritime security experts, Pirate Lands offers the first comprehensive, social-scientific account of a phenomenon whose re-appearance after centuries of remission took almost everyone by surprise.

Since the 1990s, the Chinese-North Korean border region has undergone a gradual transformation into a site of intensified cooperation, competition, and intrigue. These changes have prompted a significant volume of critical scholarship and media commentary across multiple languages and disciplines. Drawing on existing studies and new data, Decoding the Sino-North Korean Borderlands brings much of this literature into concert by pulling together a wide range of insight on the region's economics, security, social cohesion, and information flows. Drawing from multilingual sources and transnational scholarship, this volume is enhanced by the extensive fieldwork undertaken by the editors and contributors in their quests to decode the borderland. In doing so, the volume emphasizes the link between theory, methodology, and practice in the field of Area Studies and social science more broadly.

The year 2013 saw the launch of the largest, most influential investment initiative in recent memory: China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This globe-spanning strategy has reshaped local economies and regional networks, and it has become a contested subject for scholars and practitioners alike. How should we make sense of the complex interactions that the BRI has enabled? Understanding these processes requires truly global perspectives alongside careful attention to the role that local actors play in giving shape to individual BRI projects. The contributions in Global Perspectives on China's Belt and Road Initiative: Asserting Agency through Regional Connectivity provide both 'big picture' assessments of China's role in regional and global interactions and detailed case studies that home in on the role agency plays in BRI dynamics. Written by leading area studies scholars with diverse disciplinary expertise, this book reveals how Chinese efforts to recalibrate the world are taken up, challenged, revamped, and reworked in diverse contexts around the world.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is one the pioneering experiments in international criminal justice. It has left a rich legal, institutional, and non-judicial legacy. This edited collection provides a broad perspective on the contribution of the tribunal to law, memory, and justice. It explores some of the accomplishments, challenges, and critiques of the ICTY, including its less visible legacies. The book analyses different sites of legacy: the expressive function of the tribunal, its contribution to the framing of facts, events, and narratives of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, and investigative and experiential legacies. It also explores lesser known aspects of legal practice (such as defence investigative ethics, judgment drafting, contempt cases against journalists, interpretation and translation), outreach, approaches to punishment and sentencing, the tribunals' impact on domestic legal systems, and ongoing debates over impact and societal reception. The volume combines voices from inside the tribunal with external perspectives to elaborate the rich history of the ICTY, which continues to be written to this day.

By 1945, both the US State Department and US Intelligence saw Czechoslovakia as the master key to the balance of power in Europe and a chessboard for the power-game between East and West. In this book, Igor Lukes illuminates the early stages of the Cold War in postwar Prague. He paints a critical portrait of Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt and shows that although Washington understood that the outcome of the crisis in Prague might shape the political trends elsewhere in Europe, it ignored signs that democracy in Czechoslovakia was in trouble. A large section of the book deals with US Intelligence in postwar Prague. The American intelligence officials who served in Czechoslovakia from 1945 to 1948 were committed to the mission of gathering information and protecting democracy. Yet they were defeated by the Czech and Soviet clandestine services that proved to be more shrewd and better informed. Indeed, Lukes reveals that a key American officer may have been turned by the Russians. Consequently, as the Communists moved to impose their dictatorship, the American Embassy was unprepared and helpless.