This book presents a unique effort to apply political philosophy to realities of the world. Among numerous objectives that states, politicians, and individuals try to reach, some are vague, like power, interest, and happiness. Some others, like democracy, order, and rule of law, are ways and means to serve more fundamental purposes. While national reunification is seen as prerequisite on the political agenda of the People's Republic of China and both South and North Koreas, and religious purity is regarded as essential to many Muslim communities, these are not universally accepted principal goals in the world. The author identifies and defines security, wealth, faith, justice, and freedom as five ultimate goals in world politics and explains why they are central. Without jargons and using many cases in China and other countries, the author illustrates that different countries at different times have varied priorities in their national politics, but they must provide security, sustain economic growth, set up a value system, maintain social justice, and secure personal freedom for their citizens. Although the world today has been relatively peaceful and accumulated much more wealth as compared to the past centuries, vacuums of faith and morality, conflicting beliefs, and lack of social justice are threatening mankind. In theory, the five ultimate goals should be reached simultaneously and reinforce each other. However, in practice they are often in contradiction. For example, national security might be strengthened at the expense of prosperity, and industrialization for economic growth has sacrificed nontraditional security interests such as the environment. The accumulation of wealth often results in its unequal distribution and grievances about injustice, and freedom and equality are regarded by some political thinkers as "natural enemies" to each other. A virtuous state should be able to reach all the five goals, while a bad state may not have even one of them. Looking around the world today, Denmark in Europe and Japan in Asia are closer to a virtuous state than most other countries despite their own deficiencies, but they are generally homogeneous in terms of ethnicity and culture. Singapore, with its ethnic diversity, has to limit freedom to obtain other goals. This book compares the development paths of China, the United States, and some other countries to demonstrate their advantages and disadvantages in becoming a better polity.

A revealing exploration of nation-building around the world and its related problems and challenges-from conflict to the role of democracy. Nation-Building: A Reference Handbook offers an in-depth examination of the nation-building process with special focus on the late 20th century to the present. U.S. national security expert Cynthia Watson explores economic, political, and social aspects of nation-building and provides unique insight into hot issues and fundamental concerns. Presenting nation-building from many perspectives, Watson discusses states such as Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkan countries, and East Timor, among others. She illustrates the challenges of rebuilding a country's infrastructure as well as unanticipated problems. The work provides a thorough treatment of the role that democracy plays in the nation-building process and illuminates the position of the United States juxtaposed with UN peacekeeping efforts. This one-of-a-kind reference work is complete with primary source documents, biographical sketches, and resource suggestions. Chronology of the dramatic history of nation-building, covering key developments such as the aftermath of military operations in Afghanistan and the rebuilding of Iraq Biographical profiles of significant individuals who have had a positive or negative impact on nation-building, including Hamid Karzai and Osama bin Laden

China's rise and stepped-up involvement in Southeast Asia have prompted a blend of anticipation and unease among its smaller neighbors. The stunning growth of China has yanked up the region's economies, but its militarization of the South China Sea and dam building on the Mekong River has nations wary about Beijing's outsized ambitions. Southeast Asians long felt relatively secure, relying on the United States as a security hedge, but that confidence began to slip after the Trump administration launched a trade war with China and questioned the usefulness of traditional alliances. This compelling book provides a snapshot of ten countries in Southeast Asia by exploring their diverse experiences with China and how this impacts their perceptions of Beijing's actions and its long-term political, economic, military, and "soft power" goals in the region.

This book develops the discourse on the experiences of ex-combatants and their transition from war to peace, from the perspective of scholars across disciplines. Ex-combatants are often overlooked and ignored in the post-conflict search for memory and understanding, resulting in their voice being excluded or distorted. This collection seeks to disclose something of the lived experience of ex-combatants who have made the transition from war to peace to help to understand some of the difficulties they have encountered in social and emotional reintegration in the wake of combat. These include: motivations and mobilizations to participation in military struggle; the material difficulties experienced in social reintegration after the war; the emotional legacies of conflict; the discourses they utilize to reconcile their past in a society moving forward from conflict toward peace; and ex-combatants' subsequent engagement - or not - in peacebuilding. It also examines the contributions that former combatants have made to post-conflict compromise, reconciliation and peacebuilding. It focusses on male non-state actors, women, child soldiers and, unusually, state veterans, and complements previous volumes which captured the voices of victims in Northern Ireland, South Africa and Sri Lanka. This volume speaks to those working in the areas of sociology, criminology, security studies, politics, and international relations, and professionals working in social justice and human rights NGOs.

The amount of publicly and often freely available information is staggering. Yet, the intelligence community still continues to collect and use information in the same manner as during WWII, when the OSS set out to learn as much as possible about Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan by scrutinizing encyclopedias, guide books, and short-wave radio. Today, the supply of information is greater than any possible demand, and anyone can provide information. In effect, intelligence analysts are drowning in information.
The book explains how to navigate this rising flood and make best use of these new, rich sources of information. Written by a pioneer in the field, it explores the potential uses of digitized data and the impact of the new means of creating and transmitting data, recommending to the intelligence community new ways of collecting and processing information.
This comprehensive overview of the world of open source intelligence will appeal not only to practitioners and students of intelligence, but also to anyone interested in communication and the challenges posed by the information age.

This open access book provides an updated and fully revised 4th edition of this authoritative analysis of Swiss democracy. It particularly explains the institutions of federalism and consensus government through political power sharing. In this new edition, the authors also address several important changes and challenges that have affected Swiss democracy, including the country's relationship with the EU, fiscal equalisation, direct democracy and the legitimacy of national referendums, territorial conflict, as well as the polarisation of party politics.

Two decades ago, the idea that a "radical right" could capture and drive Israeli politics seemed highly improbable. While it was a boisterous faction and received heavy media coverage, it constituted a fringe element. Yet by 2009, Israel's radical right had not only entrenched itself in mainstream Israeli politics, it was dictating policy in a wide range of areas. The government has essentially caved to the settlers on the West Bank, and restrictions on non-Jews in Israel have increased in the past few years. Members of the radical right have assumed prominent positions in Israel's elite security forces. The possibility of a two state solution seems more remote than ever, and the emergence of ethnonationalist politician Avigdor Lieberman suggests that its power is increasing. Quite simply, if we want to understand the seemingly intractable situation in Israel today, we need a comprehensive account of the radical right. In The Triumph of Israel's Radical Right, acclaimed scholar Ami Pedahzur provides an invaluable and authoritative analysis of its ascendance to the heights of Israeli politics. After analyzing what, exactly, they believe in, he explains how mainstream Israeli policies like "the right of return" have served as unexpected foundations for their nativism and authoritarian tendencies. He then traces the right's steady rise, from the first intifada to the "Greater Israel" movement that is so prominent today. Throughout, he focuses on the radical right's institutional networks and how the movement has been able to expand its constituency. His closing chapter is grim yet realistic: he contends that a two state solution is no longer viable and that the vision of the radical rabbi Meir Kahane, who was a fringe figure while alive, has triumphed.

Now, more than ever, we need to avoid nostalgia in thinking about the Good War. This collection of essays reveals some of the challenges that Americans' commitment to the rule of law faced during the Second World War. As a total war, World War II required an unprecedented mobilization of society and growth of the federal government. The American state survived as a government of laws, not men, but in a very different form than its prewar counterpart. Using examples from the war era, this study demonstrates that major wars can imperil and transform one of our most deeply held values, the notion that public officials are constructed by law.

As a result of total war, the political landscape changed, and, with it, Americans' notions of what law could do. Supreme Court justices endangered their reputation as being above politics through their behind-the-scenes relations with FDR, and in several important constitutional decisions they relinquished the judicial supremacy that many Americans had considered a crucial safeguard of freedom. The national government's power to tax was dramatically expanded in ways that left tax resistors looking like cranks rather than freedom fighters. When New Dealers tried to realize the potential of law as a vehicle of social organization, they fell prey to conservative rivals in the federal bureaucracy and Congress, but this defeat did nothing to slow the overall expansion of the administrative state, which continued under the formal oversight of the federal judiciary.

This book is a useful tool to anyone who is interested in the enlargement of the E.U., to the citizens of the ten acceded countries who would like to know how they managed to accede and also to officials of the new candidate countries, who are preparing their country for accession. The "Accession Story" provides a unique overview of the enlargement of the E.U. from 15 to 25 countries. It consists of two main parts. In the first part the then Director General of D.G. Enlargement, Mr. Eneko Landaburu, and Denmark's Permanent Representative in the E.U., Ambassador Poul Christoffersen, provides a comprehensive picture of the enlargement process from the beginning to the end, from the Brussels' point of view. The second part, written by the ten people responsible for negotiating the accession of their countries, presents the challenges, problems and difficulties each one of the ten countries had to overcome, in order to succeed to adopt the acquis communautaire and be accepted into the E.U.

At the turn of the 21st Century, the world was immediately gripped by the War on Terrorism followed by the Iraq War. In reflection, the 20th Century was a period marked by tremendous technological and economic progress -- but it was also the most violent century in human history. It witnessed two horrendous world wars, as well as the conflicts during the Cold War. Why do wars persistently erupt among nations, particularly the Great Powers? What are the primary factors that drive nations to violence -- power, prestige, ideology or territory? Or is it motivated by pure fear and mistrust? Peering nervously at the 21st Century, we wonder whether American supremacy and globalization will help ensure peace and stability. Or will shifts in power with the emergence of new economic super-nations lead to further tensions and conflicts in this century? Together with 29 Peace Nobel laureates, an outstanding group of scholars gathered in Oslo, Norway, on December 6, 2001, for the three-day Nobel Centennial Symposium to discuss The Conflicts of the 20th Century and the Solutions for the 21st Century. Read this book for the scholars' candid insights and analyses, as well as their thought-provoking views on the factors that led to conflicts in the 20th Century and whether the 21st Century will be a more peaceful one. This is a rare -- and possibly the best and only book compilation of the highly intellectual analyses by world experts and Nobel Peace laureates on the perennial issues of War & Peace.

Sabic, Bukowski, and their contributors examine the efforts, thus far fruitless. of Slovenia to achieve full membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The rejection of the Slovenian application received considerable attention, both in Europe and in the United States. Within Slovenia, the rejection was seen as a heavy blow to its government. Policymakers and scholars alike have been sorting out the reasons for this political defeat, with the Slovenian government sponsoring this volume to better understand its options and the positions of other small states in the international community.

Early in the post-socialist era, Slovenia viewed full North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership as one of its major political goals. Yet, this goal has not yet been accomplished, with only the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland admitted during the first round of NATO enlargement. The rejection of the Slovenian application received considerable attention, both in Europe and in the United States. Furthermore, the fact that Slovenia did not qualify for the first round of NATO expansion has been perceived in Slovenia as a heavy blow to its government. Policymakers and scholars alike are still sorting out the reasons for this political defeat.

This book describes an adaptable biothreat assessment process to complement overall biorisk management programs, incorporating threat management and the unique natures of biological assets. Further, this book examines the nexus between public health, international security, and developing technologies, building a case for augmenting biosecurity to levels beyond the laboratory constraints. With the face of biological and biomedical sciences changing, this book describes how with proper biosecurity development, these can become assets, rather than liabilities, to secure our world from natural and man-made biological disasters. The world is changing rapidly with respect to developing threats, such as terrorism, and dual-use technologies, such as synthetic biology, that are challenging how we think about biosafety and biosecurity. Further, the fields of public health and international security are colliding, as both of these share the common enemy: intentional or natural biological incidents. To date, biosecurity has been limited to laboratory-level application, and complicating efforts, and lacks credentialed biosecurity professionals skilled in both the biological sciences and threat management techniques. The result is a fragmented field of practice, with tremendous need, from the lab to the outbreak. Underpinning these principles is the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic, providing a historic milestone to examine biosecurity through a global lens. This book describes biosecurity as a set of practices and principles to be augmented out of the constrained laboratory environment, and applied to larger efforts, such as international threat reduction and biological incident management.

This book probes the depths of libertarian philosophy and highlights the need for laws that protect all individuals in society. This book defines libertarianism as a theory of what is just law, it is predicated upon the non-aggression principle (NAP). This legal foundation of the libertarian philosophy states that it should be illicit to threaten or engage in initiatory violence against innocent people. Ultimately, this book presents the notion, defend the "undefendable." This book defines that as; any person, institution, professional, worker, which is either reviled by virtually everyone, or prohibited by law, and does not violate the NAP. Weaved throughout, this book uses political philosophy to present three fundamental premises to explain this libertarian point of view. Firstly, this book defines the non-aggression principle (NAP). Secondly, demonstrates the importance and relevance of private property rights in this context. This book uses practical examples to demonstrate the theoretical application of freedom rights using libertarianism principles.

The perceived impact of WTO law on the domestic regulatory autonomy of WTO Members is increasingly becoming the subject of controversy and debate. This book brings together in an integrated analytical framework the main WTO parameters defining the interface between the WTO and domestic legal orders, and examines how WTO adjudicators, i.e. panels and the Appellate Body, have construed those rules. A critical analysis identifies the flaws or weaknesses of these quasi-judicial solutions and their potential consequences for Members' regulatory autonomy. In an attempt to identify a more proper balance between WTO law and regulatory autonomy, it develops an innovative interpretation of the National Treatment obligations in GATT and GATS, drawing upon compelling arguments from legal, logic and economic theory.

This book examines different intellectual frameworks for international relations, including the bureaucratic politics model, neorealism, and institutionalism as tools for understanding the European Union's (EU) China policy. Based on a study of three political economy-related cases, it demonstrates what approaches not just apply, but apply best in various stages of the policy cycle, why some models apply to several policy stages, and why some seem to work better than others in certain policy stages. The three cases include the EU-China solar panel dispute (2012-2018), the EU investigation into Chinese mobile telecommunications networks (2012-2014), and the EU's response to China's rise in Africa via the European Commission initiated EU-China-Africa trilateral cooperation initiative in 2008. Those interested in EU-China affairs can apply this innovative analytical framework to these three cases and a wide range of other issues; scholars, journalists, diplomats, and businesspeople will find this book of value.

This book examines the direction of the BRICS association. Beginning with historical analyses of the broader Global South and the fundamental composition of the BRICS countries and then moving on to present trends, The BRICS Order evaluates the variables that will influence the association's future. While the BRICS as a forum emerged as a result of the visible fragmentation of the post-1945 world order, it itself remains dogged by issues emanating from internal divergences among member states and from external factors. The contributors interrogate the extent to which this formation of "emerging economies" is indicative of a challenge to the West, or in fact a complimentary relation. Integral to these studies - which encompass examinations of such diverse areas as governance systems, issues in bilateral relations, security threats, multilateral institution building, the transnational creation and dissemination of knowledge, and technological innovation - are patterns of convergence and divergence which render the countries not a formal alliance, but as signifiers of a multilateral future in which the West is itself to become more heterogeneous and thus become occasionally complemented depending on the vacillating consensus within the BRICS association and on the interests of the BRICS countries at different points in time.

A striving for national self-sufficiency is shaping up to be one of the greatest forces of twenty-first century geopolitics - Exile Economics is a provocative warning about the risks of abandoning globalisation and how isolationism weakens the global economy.

The dangerous race for self-sufficiency has begun. Be warned.

Nations are turning away from each other. Faith in globalisaton has been fatally undermined by the pandemic, the energy crisis, surging trade frictions and swelling great power rivalry. A new vision is vying to replace what we've known for many decades. This vision - Exile Economics - entails a rejection of interdependence, a downgrading of multilateral collaboration and a striving for greater national self-sufficiency. The supporters of this new order argue it will establish genuine security, prosperity and peace. But is this promise achievable? Or a seductive delusion?

Through the stories of globally traded commodities - from silicon to steel and from soybeans to solar panels - economics journalist Ben Chu illustrates the intricate web of interdependence that has come to bind nations together - and underlines the dangers of this new push to isolationism. Exile Economics is an essential guide to this new world in all its promise and peril.

FULL COLOR PUBLICATION. Global megatrends for the next 20 years and how they will affect the United States. This is the fifth installment in the National Intelligence Council's series aimed at providing a framework for thinking about possible futures and their implications. The report is intended to stimulate strategic thinking about the rapid and vast geopolitical changes characterizing the world today and possible global trajectories during the next 15-20 years by identifying critical trends and potential discontinuities. The authors distinguish between megatrends, those factors that will likely occur under any scenario, and game-changers, critical variables whose trajectories are far less certain. Appropriate for anyone, from business to banks, government to start-ups, technology to teachers and more, this publication helps anticipate where the world will be socially, politically, technically and culturally over the next few decades.

Throughout history, Central Asia has formed an important strategic link between the East and the West and been described as thegreat pivot in the early-twentieth century. This book looks at the relations between the Central Asian states and major external powers. It shows how these nations have kept the fragile geopolitics of the region free of