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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > General
This book explores the evolution of the current U.S. research and development enterprise, asks whether this organization remains appropriate to the challenges we face today, and proposes strategies for better preparing for the global technology race shaping our future. Across the globe, nation states and societies, as well as corporations, technology developers, and even individuals, find themselves on the front lines of a global technology race. As we approach the third decade of this century, the outlines of the contest have become clear. Spending on research and development, such new methods as innovation centers, and inclusion of powerful technologies into governments and society are occurring at a rapid pace. Technology winners and losers are emerging. How did we arrive at this global technology fight? How and where will it be waged? What can we do to prepare for the future? In 10 chapters, Tech Wars addresses these questions and more, examining the conditions that have led us to this point and introducing new strategies, organizational changes, and resource allocations that will help the United States respond to the challenges that are on the horizon. Focuses on how technology affects society and individuals, recognizing that a discussion of technology must also include such topics as economics, trade, military activities, and other human endeavors Demonstrates through historical precedents and examination of potential alternative futures that changes in the global research and development ecosystem are needed Highlights the importance of technology to the economic and national security of the United States Explains how and why our science and technology, research and development, and innovation capabilities should be adapted
The financial crises that began unexpectedly in Southeast Asia in 1997 spread rapidly around the globe, causing banks to fail, stock markets to plummet, and other newsmaking disruptions. Gup and his contributors examine these failures and crises in the main arenas where they occurred--Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Russia, Argentina--and provide some important answers to the critical questions these frightening events raised. The result is a readable, easily grasped study of issues relating to bank failure and the effectiveness of bank regulation, and important reading for academics and practitioners alike. In July 1997 Thailand devalued its currency. This one event sparked financial crises that spread with astonishing speed from Southeast Asia around the world to Russia. Even in the United States and South America the impact was felt. Southeast Asia had been considered a model--in fact a miracle--of economic growth. No one foresaw the crises that soon occurred there, and the severity and contagion of these crises raised questions globally: What happened? Why? And what can we do about it? Gup and his contributors offer some answers to these critical questions. Gup and his panel finally conclude that government actions were at the root of these crises. Banks were pawns in the hands of governments, and banks helped fuel the booms that ultimately burst, booms supported by investments from other countries around the world, not incidentally. Gup goes on to lay out other provocative questions, among them: How effective are bank regulations? And how do we resolve failed and insolvent banks? The result is an important contribution to the literature in banking, finance, investment, and the role government plays in these activities--a book not only for academics but for practitioners and informed laymen as well.
This is the third and final volume in a series examining the southern anchor of the American alliance network in the Pacific--the ANZUS alliance linking the United States with Australia and New Zealand. This volume considers the policies of the three partners toward the region in which their defense alliance operates and the implications of trends in these policy areas for the future of their relationship. The work analyzes trends in three policy areas--regional security, the Pacific Islands, and regional economic cooperation--each of which provides a distinct window on the relationship. The dynamic Asia-Pacific region is of growing importance to each of the ANZUS states, and the approaches of the three to regional cooperation can only become increasingly important.
Closing a critical gap in the literature examining the strained relationship between the U.S. and Japan, this book synthesizes the economic, political, historical, and cultural factors that have led these two nations, both practitioners of capitalism, along quite different paths in search of different goals. Taking an objective, multidisciplinary approach, the author argues that there is no single explanation for Japan's domestic economic or foreign trade successes. Rather, his analysis points to a systemic mismatch that has been misdiagnosed and treated with inadequate corrective measures. This systemic mismatch in the corporate strategy, economic policies, and attitudes of the U.S. and Japan created and is perpetuating three decades of bilateral economic frictions and disequilibria. As long as both the U.S. and Japan deal more with symptoms than causes, bilateral problems will persist. This book's unique analysis will encourage a better understanding on both sides of the Pacific of what has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen if corporate executives and policymakers in the two countries do not better realize the extent of their differences and adopt better corrective measures.
Benjamin Disraeli is primarily remembered as a two-time Prime
Minister, founder of modern British Conservatism, and popular
novelist. However, in the course of a few fateful years, he had a
decisive influence on the history of the countries of the Balkan
peninsula.
India's emergence of a great power has sensitized its regional neighbours to its growing role as a key security actor in an increasingly interdependent world. Both Australia and ASEAN now view India as a major player in the formulation and application of their own broad security agendas. This emerging trilateral compendium is particularly evident in such policy areas as maritime security, climate change, energy security, law enforcement, "good governance" and the politics of security institutions or "architectures." This book represents one of the first systematic efforts to consolidate these diverse but important concerns into an overarching framework for ascertaining and cross-comparing how these three entities are approaching these policy challenges, individually and collectively. It argues that the dynamics underlying their intensifying security relations are sufficiently important to conceptualize them as a distinct analytical framework that needs to be understood in the larger context of Asia-Pacific security politics.
The chapters in this volume examine a few facets in the drama of how the beleaguered Jewish people, as a phoenix ascending of ancient legend, achieved national self-determination in the reborn State of Israel within three years of the end of World War II and of the Holocaust. They include the pivotal 1946 World Zionist Congress, the contributions of Jacob Robinson and Clark M. Eichelberger to Israel's sovereign renewal, American Jewry's crusade to save a Jewish state, the effort to create a truce and trusteeship for Palestine, and Judah Magnes's final attempt to create a federated state there. Joining extensive archival research and a lucid prose, Professor Monty Noam Penkower again displays a definitive mastery of his craft.
This book is the inaugural edition of the Nigerian Yearbook of International Law. The Yearbook is a necessary and timely publication that provides a forum for critical discourse on developments in international law, particularly where this has relevance for Nigeria, Africa and its people including those in the diaspora. The articles in this first volume explore topics under the following themes: International Law and Regional Systems, Contemporary Challenges/Emerging Issues, Criminal Law and Natural Resources/Environmental Law. There is also a section, which provides a comprehensive review of key decisions in African and International Courts/Tribunals. Contributors to this edition are international law jurists from across the world, including eminent judges of international tribunals, leading academics and an international diplomat.
This innovative new text focuses on the politics of international security: how and why issues are interpreted as threats to international security and how such threats are managed. After a brief introduction to the field and its major theories and approaches, the core chapters systematically analyze the major issues on the contemporary international security agenda. Each is examined according to a common framework that brings out the nature of the threat and the responses open to policy makers. From war, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, through environmental and economic crises, to epidemics, cyber-war and piracy, the twenty-first century world seems beset by a daunting range of international security problems. At the same time, the academic study of security has become more fragmented and contested than ever before as new actors, issues and theories increasingly challenge traditional concepts and approaches. This new edition has been heavily revised to discuss for the failings of the Obama admiration and its strategic partners on a number of different security issues, and the constant, evolving instances of turmoil the world has experienced since, whilst providing the skills students need to conduct their own research of international security issues occurring outside of this text, and for issues yet to occur. Cyber security, the 'Arab Spring' revolutions, the Ebola outbreak, and the refugee crisis are just some examples of the plethora of subjects that Smith analyses within this text. This textbook is an essential for those studying international security, whether at undergraduate or postgraduate level as part of a degree in international relations, politics, and other social sciences more generally. New to this Edition: - Chapter on cyber security - Up-to-date issues and field coverage - New 'mini-case studies' in each chapter - Updated analytical/pedagogical framework Pioneering framework for students to apply theory and empirical evidence correctly to tackle analytical and comparative tasks concerning both traditional and non-traditional security issues
The troubled early years of the postwar period, culminating in the Korean War, led to the formation of NATO as the Western response to the threat posed by the Soviet Union and its satellites at the time. These years determined the shape of world politics for nearly half a century and although the world situation is changing it is still unclear what the outcome of the present upheavals will be. Then, as now, the 'German Question' was one of the main issues facing Europe to which a clear answer has yet to be found. This volume contains significant insights into the origins of this question, which are dependent upon the different national perspectives of military historians from West Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Italy, France and Britain, and as such offers an important contribution to the present debate.
Throughout history and especially during contemporary times, presidential rhetoric sets the foreign policy tone not only for Congress but mainly for the American public. Consequently, US foreign policy is actively marketed and spun to the American public. This book describes the marketing strategy of the War on Terror and how that strategy compelled public opinion towards supporting the spread of the War on Terror from Afghanistan to Iraq. The author investigates how President George W. Bush's initial framing of the September 11th attacks provided the platform for the creation of long term public support for the War on Terror and established early public support for U.S. action in Iraq. Mining public opinion data and nearly 1500 presidential speeches over a four year period, the book argues that presidential framing of threats and losses, not gains, contributed to public support for war in Afghanistan, war in Iraq, and President Bush's successful reelection campaign. President Bush's initial framing of the terrorist threat was introduced immediately after the September 11th attacks and reinforced throughout the Afghanistan invasion. During this time period, presidential threat framing established the broad parameters for the War on Terror and enabled the president to successfully market a punitive war in Afghanistan. Second, the president marketed the strategy of preemptive war and led the country into the more costly war in Iraq by focusing on the potentially global threat of terrorism and the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction. President Bush's previous war rhetoric was repackaged into a leaner, more focused format in which the Iraq war became part of the War on Terror, resulting in increased support for the president and a successful reelection campaign. Finally, the author examines the withdraw vs. surge in Iraq debate bringing the book up to date. The book shows the influencing potential of presidential spin and of risky foreign policy in the Middle East, and presents a systematic analysis of how a president effectively pursued a marketing strategy that continues to show an enduring ability to influence public support. Even two years after the Iraq invasion, 52% of Americans believed that the U.S. should stay in Iraq until it is stabilized. This finding bypasses agenda setting explanations, which prescribes issue salience amongst the public for only one year. The large speech database available with the study will also be an added benefit to scholars seeking to teach undergraduate and graduate level qualitative research methods.
Decolonization and its Impact is a ground-breaking comparative study of decolonization from before the Second World War to the early 1960s. Compares key cases across the European colonial empires Focuses on the process and impact of decolonization at the level of the 'late colonial state' and of colonial societies Presents an original model of decolonization that seeks to reconcile imperial and nationalist perspectives Engages with important theoretical approaches Makes extensive reference to recent literature on the subject
Distinguished German historians and journalists examine Germany's new position in Europe after unification in relation to its neighbouring states since 1871 and its role in furthering European integration since 1949. The authors ask: - Does Germany need a new foreign policy? Have her priorities changed in the light of the end of the Cold War? - Does Germany need to define her own national interests rather than identifying herself with the European Union?Contributors: G. Gillessen, G. Schollgen, J. Fest, J. Thies, J. Joffe, C. Bertram, H.-P. Schwarz
France and Germany were among the major powers that abruptly lost that status as a consequence of World War II. In the 1950s and 1960s, the governments of both nations sought ways to recover their great-power standing. Each saw the cooperation of the other as crucial for its own foreign policy aspirations and tried repeatedly to engage the other in commitments that would underwrite its own ambitions. But neither succeeded. In the 1970s, France and Germany began to reconcile themselves to the permanent loss of their great-power status. The process of accepting a diminished international role has been underway for more than two decades, and, in Kocs's judgment, is very likely to continue in the future. Far from opening the door to a stronger world military role for Western Europe, the end of the Cold War is likely to serve merely to consolidate the existing situation.
Globalization and its relation to poverty reduction and development are not well understood. This book explores the ways in which globalization can overcome poverty or make it worse. The book defines the big historical trends, identifies the main globalization processes - trade, finance, aid, migration, and ideas - and examines how each can contribute to economic development. By considering what helps and what does not, the book presents policy recommendations to make globalization more effective as a vehicle for shared growth and poverty reduction. It will be of interest to students, researchers, and anyone concerned with the effects of globalization on international development.
Inspired by Michel Foucault's The Order of Things, this book tells a story about epochal change in the modern world. Like Foucault, Nicholas Onuf is concerned with how we moderns think about ourselves and our world, but in this book he emphasizes the conceptual links in the ways we think, talk, get things done, conduct ourselves, and run societies, from age to age. As with his previous work, Onuf emphasizes the "rules for rule" that have solidified over time through repeated behaviors that work themselves out into a system of social uniformity and hierarchy. Rules set out who is a member of society, establish goals, provide opportunities to act, and dictate who sits on top - in other words, what any political society looks like in a particular time and place. This book looks at the political society that has evolved since the Renaissance, or what might be called "the modern world," in order to consider what is yet to come. Onuf argues that modernity, although consisting of a succession of epochs or ages separated by great ruptures, has continued to change within the confines of a "mightie frame" (a turn of phrase he borrows from John Milton). Epoch by epoch, this frame has linked the limits of our knowledge, a la Michel Foucault, to conditions of rule, and it points to a plausible ethics for what comes next. But unlike Foucault, Onuf argues that modernism marked an end to societal and political transitions, and that we have entered a period during which established conditions of rule are likely to be reinforced - and the mighty frame will grow ever mightier.
In this fascinating inquiry into the Soviet retreat from the Third World, Melvin A. Goodman analyzes GorbacheV's policy from the standpoint of disillusionment with the Third World. He cites, among other reasons for the retreat, the diminished strategic significance of the Third World to current Soviet leadership, the limitations for Soviet power projection in distant areas, and the dilemmas in MoscoW's relations with Third World regimes. Goodman contends that GorbacheV's foreign policy shift to achieve a more stable international arena and a less militant Soviet stance allowed Moscow to focus on its internal economic problems. This volume provides the first exploration of Afghanistan as a watershed in Soviet thinking on the Third World and discusses the current Soviet emphasis on conflict management and resolution in Third World states--particularly Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua. "GorbacheV's Retreat" explains how cooperation with the United States improves MoscoW's image in the West and tends to stabilize Third World flash points. Up-to-the-minute data on Soviet military and economic assistance to the Third World as well as Third World responses to the new Soviet policy are also presented. The volume examines Soviet retrenchment and retreat in the Third World; analyzes GorbacheV's decisions relative to Third World relationships; zeroes in on the withdrawal from Afghanistan; explores some of the reasons for Soviet power limitations; and assesses the regional implications of GorbacheV's New Political Thinking. "GorbacheV's Retreat" then looks at Soviet power projection and crisis management, Soviet military and economic aid, and Soviet retreat in the 1990s. The volume will be particularly useful to undergraduate and graduate courses in foreign policy and international relations as a discussion of the impact of the new Soviet policy in the Third World and the consequences for U.S.-Soviet relations. Regional studies specialists will find its in-depth analyses of the limits on Soviet actions in the Third World cogent and timely.
Freedom Mazwi examines patterns of agricultural finance in Zimbabwe since the radical Fast Track Land Resettlement Programme (FTLRP) was implemented in 2000-and, especially, the varying impact that the FTLRP reforms have had not only on land use, but also on the well-being of farmers.Focusing on contract farming in the tobacco and sugarcane sectors, Mazwi offers penetrating insights into social contradictions and power relations in Zimbabwe's rural areas. He also assesses the institutional finance mechanisms that have emerged in response to the radical land reforms and reflects on the related political and economic isolation of the country since 2000. Not least, he suggests how agrarian policy could be restructured to better benefit small-scale farmers.
At great cost and risk to the American and world economies, consumers are ripped off billions of dollars every day by oil interests and their malevolent influence on market pricing mechanisms. It's essential Americans and oil consumers throughout the world understand where the money they pay for oil's downstream products goes-including the money paid at the pump, the money paid to heat their homes, and the money paid for the array of other petroleum-based products. In Ruminations on the Distortion of Oil Prices and Crony Capitalism, author Raymond J. Learsy not only discusses the distortion of oil pricing, but also focuses on effects of the crony capitalism that has enriched a select few and left Main Street in the lurch as a result of government mismanagement, moneyed influence, and craven oversight. This collection of previously published writings shows how speculators ratchet up the prices of basic material goods essential to daily lives. Learsy describes how ceding the determination of those prices not to the laws of supply and demand but predominantly to gambling dens on the trading floors of commodity exchanges as well as the price fixing collusion of producer nations (OPEC) is crippling to the world's economy. Focusing as well on Wall Street's corrupting influence on the price of oil, gasoline, and other commodities, Ruminations on the Distortion of Oil Prices and Crony Capitalism provides an overview of the basic and important theme: the United States' enslavement to oil and the moneyed interests inextricably tied to it.
This volume addresses the topic of circular migration with regard to its multiple dimensions and human, political and civil rights implications from a global perspective. It combines theoretical and empirical studies and presents different case studies illustrating circular migration patterns and policies in different world regions. Circular migration processes - understood as the back-and-forth movement of people between countries and regions- form part of the changing nature of migration movements across the world at the beginning of the 21st century. Over the past decades, international, regional and internal migration flows have shown a quantitative increase and have changed in scope, context, origin and nature. Migration projects are every time more open-ended, multi-directional and flexible and often include some type of circularity. Instead of mere "push-pull-scenarios", people migrate for many different reasons, including personal, family, professional, academic or political ones. In the 21st century migration journeys and the reasons underlying them are multiple and more diverse than ever before.
A Republic of Europeans looks at the changing routes and conditions of the European polity from a liberal republican angle, proposing an innovative regulative ideal for Europe's future. The book assesses the prospects for uniting diverse publics into a composite polity with its own sense of 'demos-hood'. It also places Europe's normative evolution in the wider context of an ordered global plurality made up of highly interrelated actors. In examining whether the European Union has reached a point which might be telling of an end state, the book offers a depiction of the whole as an 'organized synarchy' of entwined sovereignties, arguing that the envisaged transition from a synarchy of co-sovereigns to a self-identifying citizenry requires the constitution of a 'Republic of Europeans'. A polity which, corresponding to the liberal republican vision of 'many peoples, one demos', regulates contemporary forms of pluralism, which the authors approach as instances of a 'civic polyculturalism'. Offering new understandings on Europe's normative evolution, this book will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students in politics, Government, European studies, international relations, international organization and political theory. Doctoral students, postdoctoral and advanced researchers, as well as policy makers in government and international organizations, will also find much to interest them in this book. Contents: Preface; 1. The Global Plurality; 2. Retheorizing Europe; 3. 'One Great Republic'?; 4. Reflective Projections; 5. Postscript: Directions; References; Index
Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the Silk Road Economic Belt component of the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative at Kazakhstan in 2013. OBOR is a development strategy and framework that focuses on connectivity and cooperation among countries primarily in Eurasia. It consists of two main components, the land-based 'Silk Road Economic Belt' (SREB) and ocean-going 'Maritime Silk Road' (MSR). This book studies the equilibrium or balance between overland and maritime trade routes of OBOR.This book has two major sections. The interpretive section examines contemporary media narratives related to the OBOR initiative and how contemporary commentators appropriate narratives about historical events related to the maritime Silk Road to interpret current policy agendas and legitimize diplomatic or economic exchanges. In terms of institutional studies, the chapters related to Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will look at the issues facing the Bank in its quest in forming a new world platform for multilateral development financing.The other section, the empirical case study of the publication highlights the fact that Euro-China High Speed Rail (HSR) and Central Asia-China HSR are not viable at the moment as passenger volume is not sufficient to justify the HSR line. This section examines the overland route of the OBOR and looks at recent Chinese HSR history and conventional sub-high speed rail technology development, and identifies technical & economic criteria determining the appropriate technology for a certain line. The chapter in this section will use the developed criteria to analyze the various rail linkage projects currently under study in the OBOR framework, highlight the economic, bureaucratic and geo-political challenges that these projects likely face and lay down conditions that will determine the outcome of these projects.
This volume investigates the course of Anglo-French policy in Europe from 1936 to 1938, a critical period during which France was governed by a series of Popular Front coalition Ministries. It asserts that French policy-makers made a substantial impact upon the course of British foreign policy whilst breathing new life into the waning Entente Cordiale. The study contends that close attention to the role of French influence is fundamental to a grasp of British appeasement and rearmament policy in the period and essential to the understanding of the Anglo-French response to such problems as the Spanish Civil War, the collapse of League of Nations authority and the treatment of the Soviet Union. This text should be useful reading for students of British or French political history or the origins of World War II in Europe.
Originally published in 1912. Author: Norman Angel Language: English Keywords: Social Sciences Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Obscure Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
This book provides a survey of the U.S. civilian and military agencies responsible for postconflict reconstruction and peace-building around the world and how these agencies function in the interagency process. U.S. Peacefare: Organizing American Peace-Building Operations surveys the evolution of the American peace-building apparatus during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, with an emphasis on changes since 2003, when the invasion of Iraq led the Bush Administration to adopt a Clinton-style nation-building approach they had previously vigorously opposed. U.S. Peacefare begins with a historical overview of official U.S. peace-building, then looks at the organization and interaction of the major federal agencies in the National Security Council, the State Department, and the Defense Department, as well the U.S. Institute for Peace, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Throughout, author and former Ambassador Dane Smith emphasizes how a deeper understanding of peace-building organizations and their interactions in particular cases is essential to strengthening future U.S. conflict management. The book addresses the critical overall issue of how peace-building is funded, but within the federal budget and internationally, and concludes with Smith's recommendations for reforming those organizations. Includes original tables on the financing of peace-building activities Provides organizational charts and flow charts Presents sidebars featuring individual officials who played an interesting role in U.S. peace-building activities for their agency or office Offers a comprehensive glossary of acronyms |
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