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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Other warfare & defence issues
With its unstable and intermittent nuclear weapon project, and the recent leadership succession issue, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has been a source of insecurity for the past decade in this region, in addition to the delicate international relations among the powerful China, United States, Japan, and Russia. The essence of DPRK issue lies in the instability and uncertainty of nuclear development that even the slightest miscalculation by any one power could disturb the sensitive balance of relationships, creating a butterfly effect with a catastrophic result. Drawing on various perspectives on the interaction over DPRK and other regional powers, this volume seeks to explore the role of DPRK in Northeast Asia, and its implication to regional security as a whole. The volume does not confirm a particular position over DPRK's nuclear showdown; rather it invites scholars to provide assessments from the viewpoints of neighbouring powers in order to present a more complete understanding of the leading issue in Northeast Asia. The volume will serve as an invaluable resource for policymakers, students and scholars of North Korean politics and international relations. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Comparative Asian Development.
-- A passionate critique of Milosevic's trial and the PR machine at the heart of international justice -- 'Study this story...The truth is hard to find, but in John Laughland we are fortunate to have a man blessed with the freedom to seek all facts, and the desire to find the truth.' Ramsey Clark, from the Foreword Slobodan Milosevic died in prison in 2006 during a four-year marathon trial at The Hague for war crimes. John Laughland was one of the last Western journalists to meet him. He followed the trial from the beginning and wrote extensively on it, challenging the legitimacy of the Yugoslav Tribunal and the hypocrisy of 'international justice' in the Guardian and The Spectator. In this short and readable book Laughland gives a full account of the trial -- the longest criminal trial in history -- from the moment the indictment was issued at the height of NATO's attack on Yugoslavia to the day of Milosevic's mysterious death in custody. 'International justice' is supposed to hold war criminals to account but, as the trials of both Milosevic and Saddam Hussein show, the indictments are politically motivated and the judicial procedures are irredeemably corrupt. Laughland argues that international justice is an impossible dream and that such show trials are little more than a propaganda exercise designed to distract attention from the war crimes committed by Western states.
Twentieth and twenty-first century communism is a failed experiment in social engineering that needlessly killed approximately 60 million people and perhaps tens of millions more. These high crimes against humanity constitute a Red Holocaust that exceeds the combined carnage of the French Reign of Terror, Ha Shoah, Showa Japan's Asian holocaust, and all combat deaths in World War I and II. This fascinating book investigates high crimes against humanity in the Soviet Union, eastern and central Europe, North Korea, China, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia 1929-2009, and compares the results with Ha Shoah and the Japanese Asian Holocaust. As in other studies, blame is ascribed to political, ideological and personal causes, but special emphasis is given to internal contradictions in Marx's utopian model as well as Stalinist and post-Stalinist transition systems concocted to realize communist ends. This faulty economic engineering forms a bridge to the larger issue of communism's historical failure. The book includes: - a comprehensive study of the transcommunist holocaust - a judicial assessment of holocaust culpability and special pleadings - an obituary for Stalinism everywhere except North Korea, and a death watch for contemporary communism in China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, North Korea, Cuba and Nepal - a comparative assessment of totalitarian high crimes against humanity - a call for memory as a defense against recurrent economic, racial and ethnic holocausts The book will be useful to undergraduate and higher level students interested in Russian history, Stalism, communism, North and South Korean economic performance and international affairs. Steven Rosefielde is a Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.
First published in 1997, this volume responds to attention in recent years which has been belatedly directed towards reviving World War II issues involving Japan. This study deals first with the manner in which such issues so long fell into abeyance under Cold War conditions, while tracing the vast and varied writing on the war which meanwhile appeared within Japan. Evolving Japanese views on the war are largely focused on debate over the revision of the postwar constitution, especially its renunciation of "war potential". The book also contains the first overview of the decades-long litigation within Japan on the screening of textbooks, especially on the war.
Throughout the 1990s, humanitarian interventionism sat at a crossroads, where ideas about rights and duties within and beyond borders collided with an international reality of civil conflict where the most basic human rights were violated in the most brutal manner. This growing awareness of humanitarian crises has been enabled by a more globalized media which increasingly shapes public perceptions of distant crises, public opinion, and political decision-making. Clarke examines the extent to which the public discourse, and particular concepts, including those of an ethical and legal nature, influenced British newspaper coverage of the 1994 crisis in Rwanda, and, in turn, the extent to which that coverage influenced the British Parliament's response to the crisis. Through his development and application of a broader methodological approach that combines both quantitative and qualitative analyses, the book offers a fuller understanding of the relationship between media coverage, parliamentary debate, and policy formulation, and the central role that the globalized media plays in this process. Integrating ethics, law and empirical analysis of the media to obtain a more cohesive understanding of the chemistry of the media-public policy nexus, this work will be of interest to graduates and scholars in a range of areas, including Genocide Studies, the Responsibility to Protect, the Media & Politics and International Relations.
On April 17, 1975, after five years of civil war, the Khmer Rouge guerrillas invaded Cambodias major cities and forced the residents on a mass exodus to the countryside. Their leader, Pol Pot, established a government based on terror to bring about his dream of an agrarian society where work was done by hand--without what he believed to be corruptive influences. By the time the Vietnamese captured Phnom Penh and ended this brutal experiment in communism in 1979, an estimated two million Cambodians were dead and hundreds of thousands had begun to flee the country for refugee camps in Thailand. Survivors of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pots reign now living in the Midwest tell their stories in this work. Many of them were children during that time, unable to comprehend exactly what was happening and why, but now able to reveal the trauma they experienced. Noeun Nor and Sinn Lok recollect being wrenched from their families and put into labor camps around the age of five. Prum Noth talks about her mother encouraging her to eat the last grains of her familys rice. Sokhary You remembers giving birth on a mountain without a doctor or hospital and using rusty scissors to cut the umbilical cord.
Although it receives much less attention than better known disarmament processes, the destruction of small arms is reshaping the military arsenals of the world. Out of roughly 200 modern military small arms world-wide, about 500,000 are destroyed every year. The commitment of major governments and international organizations makes small arms destruction is a permanent addition to the global disarmament repertoire. But the prospects for greater military small arms disarmament may be declining, as war in Afghanistan and Iraq create unprecedented demand for second-hand weaponry. Inconspicuous disarmament of small arms and ammunition is reshaping the global picture of firearms, light weapons and ammunition. The process is far from comprehensive, but much more than cosmetic. Small arms destruction is here to stay, but its contributions may be fleeting. This book is the first full-length examination of the issue. The case studies in this volume examine the politics of military small arms disarmament. When, they ask, is surplus destruction most likely? And what can be done to make destruction more likely and more effective? Case studies examine small arms destruction by NATO and the OSCE, and in Bulgaria, Cambodia, Germany, Kazakhstan, Papua New Guinea, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine and others. This book was published as a special issue of Contemporary Security Policy.
In Kosovo, America claimed its war was a 'humanitarian intervention,' in Afghanistan, 'self-defense,' and in Iraq, it claimed the authority of the Security Council of the United Nations. Yet each of these wars was illegal according to established rules of international law. According to these rules, illegal wars fall within the category of 'supreme international crimes'. So how come the war crimes tribunals never manage to turn their sights on America and always wind up putting America's enemies - 'the usual suspects' - on trial? This new book by renowned scholar Michael Mandel offers a critical account of America's illegal wars and a war crimes system that has granted America's leaders an unjust and dangerous impunity, effectively encouraging their illegal wars and the war crimes that always flow from them.
Now available in paperback, Death on the Hellships chronicles the true dimensions of the Allied POW experience at sea. It is a disturbing story; many believe the Bataan Death March even pales by comparison. Survivors describe their ordeal in the Japanese hellships as the absolute worst experience of their captivity. Crammed by the thousands into the holds of the ships, moved from island to island and put to work, they endured all the horrors of the prison camps magnified tenfold. Gregory Michno draws on American, British, Australian, and Dutch POW accounts as well as Japanese convoy histories, declassified radio intelligence reports, and a wealth of archival sources to present a detailed picture of the horror.
Originally published in 1939, this book examined how to finance the war, including chapters on the methods of industrial mobilisation and government borrowing and the growth of money income. During the course of the year 1936, when the probability of another war with Germany became exceedingly great, a group of six persons interested in the problems of financial policy began to meet, and the results of the discussions that took place between them are embodied in the present work.
This book assesses the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia's (ICTY) legacy and examines the conflicting intersection of law and politics in the search for justice, both thematically and through close analysis of some of the major trials. It analyses the related case brought against Serbia and Montenegro by Bosnia and Herzegovina at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), as well as the Ganic case in London where the ICTY and ICJ findings were challenged. The book addresses the following questions: To what extent the political climate in which the ICTY was conceived, and continues to operate, has affected the declared aims of its founders? Have political considerations and political correctness, and the perceived need for political stability and democratic transition, at times proved an obstacle to the administration of justice? Are some of the acknowledged failings of international policy in the 1990s finding some resonance in more recent court proceedings? This highly relevant and comprehensive book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, international relations, transitional justice, Balkan area studies, human rights law, international criminal and peace and conflict studies.
Genocide represents one of the deadliest scourges of the human experience. Communication practices provide the key missing ingredient toward preventing and ending this intensely symbolic activity. The Rhetoric of Genocide: Death as a Text reveals how strategic communication silences make this tragedy probable, and how a greater social ethic for communication openness repels and ends this great evil. Careful analysis of practical historical figures, such as the great debater James Farmer Jr., along with empirical policy successes in places such as Liberia provide a communication-based template for ridding the world of genocide in the twenty-first century.
Although it receives much less attention than better known disarmament processes, the destruction of small arms is reshaping the military arsenals of the world. Out of roughly 200 modern military small arms world-wide, about 500,000 are destroyed every year. The commitment of major governments and international organizations makes small arms destruction is a permanent addition to the global disarmament repertoire. But the prospects for greater military small arms disarmament may be declining, as war in Afghanistan and Iraq create unprecedented demand for second-hand weaponry. Inconspicuous disarmament of small arms and ammunition is reshaping the global picture of firearms, light weapons and ammunition. The process is far from comprehensive, but much more than cosmetic. Small arms destruction is here to stay, but its contributions may be fleeting. This book is the first full-length examination of the issue. The case studies in this volume examine the politics of military small arms disarmament. When, they ask, is surplus destruction most likely? And what can be done to make destruction more likely and more effective? Case studies examine small arms destruction by NATO and the OSCE, and in Bulgaria, Cambodia, Germany, Kazakhstan, Papua New Guinea, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine and others. This book was published as a special issue of Contemporary Security Policy.
During and after World War I, over one million Ottoman Greeks were expelled from Turkey, a watershed moment in Greek history that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. And while few dispute the expulsion's tragic scope, it remains the subject of fierce controversy, as activists have fought for international recognition of an atrocity they consider comparable to the Armenian genocide. This book provides a much-needed analysis of the Greek genocide as cultural trauma. Neither taking the genocide narrative for granted nor dismissing it outright, Erik Sjoeberg instead recounts how it emerged as a meaningful but contested collective memory with both nationalist and cosmopolitan dimensions.
This book examines the politics of biological disarmament, focusing on the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) as a treaty regime and the cornerstone of biological disarmament efforts. Biological weapons have long been banned, but the ban needs strengthening. The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) is the cornerstone of this disarmament regime. After years of deadlock and disappointment its Sixth Review Conference in 2006 generated new hope that biological disarmament could be reinforced from within. This book studies the intricate diplomacy of the Sixth Review Conference as a key moment in the recovery of self-confidence by the treaty parties. It makes detailed proposals for developing an accountability framework and stronger institutions so that the treaty regime can work better. It examines alternative futures for the BWC and the trajectories to be avoided or encouraged in the short, medium and longer terms as its regime evolves. Controversially, by comparing treaty constraints on biological, chemical and nuclear weapons it restores the BWC firmly to the realm of disarmament rather than arms control and rescues it from misleading identifications with counterproliferation and counterterrorism models. This book will appeal to policy-makers, diplomats and students of biological weapons, weapons of mass destruction, international security and IR in general. Nicholas A. Sims is Reader in International Relations at the London School of Economics. He is author of four books on aspects of disarmament.
Warfare in the 21st century is far different than warfare throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Conventional warfare was about kinetic force and bending an adversary by might and strength. Skills valued were those related to mastery of weapons and placing ordnance on target. Courage and valor were defined by conflict, militaries were distinct from the population, and occupation was an enduring stage of war. Contemporary warfare, besides continuing to be an exercise in military strength, is composed of missions that depend on skills to forge interpersonal relationships and build sustainable partnerships with a host of actors that once had no voice or role in conflict's duration or conclusion. Today, final victory does not conclude directly from conflict, in fact victory may be subsumed into the larger and more consuming equation of international stability. Twenty-first century warfare is about counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism through an array of strategies that foster collusion and collaboration not acquiescence.Cross-cultural competence (3C) is a suite of competencies and enablers that have been identified as critical to instill in expeditionary military and civilian personnel in the Department of Defense (DoD). Defined as a set of knowledge, skills, abilities and attitudes (KSAAs), 3C promotes effective interaction across cultural divides through exchanging ideas and meaning across cultures, facilitating effective cross-cultural interactions to develop and sustain relationships and providing a means to discern meaning from foreign and culturally different behavior. 3C permeates DoD policy, doctrine, strategy and operations and is now being institutionalized in DoD military and civilian education and training. Cross-Cultural Competence for a Twenty-First-Century Military: Culture, the Flipside of COIN is a volume edited by two acknowledged experts on 3C in military learning, policy and research and explores the value and necessity of 3C to developing 21st Century warfighters. This volume features chapters by the editors and a host of multidisciplinary experts that probes all aspects of 3C, from concept to application. The message carried throughout Cross-Cultural Competence for a 21st Century Military is that contemporary and future security endeavors will be successful because winning wars ultimately rest on developing and sustaining cross-cultural relationships as much as it does on weapons and force.
The plight and fate of female victims during the course of genocide is radically and profoundly different from their male counterparts. Like males, female victims suffer demonization, ostracism, discrimination, and deprivation of their basic human rights. They are often rounded up, deported, and killed. But, unlike most men, women are subjected to rape, gang rape, and mass rape. Such assaults and degradation can, and often do, result in horrible injuries to their reproductive systems and unwanted pregnancies. This volume takes one stride towards assessing these grievances, and argues against policies calculated to continue such indifference to great human suffering. The horror and pain suffered by females does not end with the act of rape. There is always the fear, and reality, of being infected with HIV/AIDS. Concomitantly, there is the possibility of becoming pregnant.Then, there is the birth of the babies. For some, the very sight of the babies and children reminds mothers of the horrific violations they suffered. When mothers harbor deep-seated hatred or distain for such children, it results in more misery. The hatred may be so great that children born of rape leave home early in order to fend for themselves on the street. This seventh volume in the Genocide series will provoke debate, discussion, reflection and, ultimately, action. The issues presented include ongoing mass rape of girls and women during periods of war and genocide, ostracism of female victims, terrible psychological and physical wounds, the plight of offspring resulting from rapes, and the critical need for medical and psychological services.
Popularized by books and films like Andersonville, The Great Escape, and The Hanoi Hilton, and recounted in innumerable postwar memoirs, the POW story holds a special place in American culture. Robert Doyle's remarkable study shows why it has retained such enormous power to move and instruct us. Long after wartime, memories of captivity haunt former wartime prisoners, their families, and their society-witness the continuing Vietnam MIA-POW controversies-and raise fundamental questions about human nature and survival under inhumane conditions. The prison landscapes have varied dramatically: Indian villages during the Forest Wars; floating hulks during the Revolution and War of 1812; slave bagnios in Algeria and Tripoli; hotels and haciendas during the Mexican War; large rural camps like Andersonville in the South or converted federal armories like Elmira in the North; stalags in Germany and death-ridden tropical camps in the Philippines; frozen jails in North Korea; and the "Hanoi Hilton" and bamboo prisons of Vietnam. But, as Doyle demonstrates, the story remains the same. Doyle shows that, though setting and circumstance may change, POW stories share a common structure and are driven by similar themes. Capture, incarceration, isolation, propaganda, torture, capitulation or resistance, death, spiritual quest, escape, liberation, and repatriation are recurrent key motifs in these narratives. It is precisely these elements, Doyle contends, that have made this genre such a fascinating and enduring literary form. Drawing from a wide array of sources, including official documents, first-person accounts, histories, and personal letters, in addition to folklore and fiction, Doyle illustrates the timelessness of the POW story and shows why it has become central to our understanding of the American experience of war.
In contrast to the plethora of works focusing on the tragic loss of human lives during the First World War, little is known about the more hopeful realities of thousands of prisoners of war from Britain, France, Germany and Belgium who were sent to Switzerland from 1916. This book explores the everyday lives of these prisoners and their impact on Switzerland. Internees were warmly welcomed by local people and given education, training and employment. Leading relatively free lives, they were able to engage in leisure activities and develop new relationships. However, they also contributed to the country's economy, helping to keep Swiss tourism alive at a time when businesses were struggling and alleviating Switzerland's labour shortage as Swiss men were called-up to defend their borders and preserve the country's neutrality. Drawing on a wide range of sources from official records to magazines and postcards, Susan Barton provides an absorbing account of the social and cultural history of internment in Switzerland.
In essays written specifically for this volume, distinguished contributors assess highly charged and fundamental questions about the Holocaust: Is it unique? How can it be compared with other instances of genocide? What constitutes genocide, and how should the international community respond? On one side of the dispute are those who fear that if the Holocaust is seen as the worst case of genocide ever, its character will diminish the sufferings of other persecuted groups. On the other side are those who argue that unless the Holocaust's uniqueness is established, the inevitable tendency will be to diminish its abiding significance. The editor's introductions provide the contextual considerations for understanding this multidimensional dispute and suggest that there are universal lessons to be learned from studying the Holocaust. The third edition brings this volume up to date and includes new readings on the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides, common themes in genocide ideologies, and Iran's reaction to the Holocaust. In a world where genocide persists and the global community continues to struggle with the implications of international crime, prosecution, justice, atonement, reparation, and healing, the issues addressed in this book are as relevant as ever.
This book highlights how, and why, torture is such a compelling tool for states and other powerful actors. While torture has a short-term use value for perpetrators, it also creates a devastating legacy for victims, their families and communities. In exposing such repercussions, this book addresses the questions ?What might torture victims need to move forward from their violation and ?How can official responses provide truth or justice for torture victims Building on observations, documentary analysis and over seventy interviews with both torture victims and transitional justice workers this book explores how torture was used, suffered and resisted in Timor-Leste. The author investigates the extent to which transitional justice institutions have provided justice for torture victims; illustrating how truth commissions and international courts operate together and reflecting on their successes and weaknesses with reference to wider social, political and economic conditions. Stanley also details victims? experiences of torture and highlights how they experience life in the newly built state of Timor-Leste Tracking the past, present and future of human rights, truth and justice for victims in Timor-Leste, Torture, Truth and Justice will be of interest to students, professionals and scholars of Asian studies, International Studies, Human Rights and Social Policy.
Gun-related violence remains an intractable problem despite a decline in the past decade. Some believe the solution lies in stricter gun control laws while others think these measures would be ineffective or counter-productive. Guns, Gun Policy, and Elections examines current gun control policy, and explains how it was adopted by discussing the roles and interactions of elected officials, interest groups, political parties, and the public. Original research on media coverage and public opinion, as well as a chapter on state policy (Virginia) make the book both informative and accessible. The book focuses on the utility of gun policy, and its discussion of policy impact is grounded in real-world politics. The importance of gun control in the Presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, as well as some U.S. Senate and statewide offices is placed in the context of both a policy input and consequence.
This book examines the emergence of new international norms to
govern the spread of small arms, and the extent to which these
norms have been established in the policies and practices of
states, regions and international organizations. It also attempts
to establish criteria for assessing norm emergence, and to assess
the process of norm development by comparing what actually happens
at the multilateral level.
This edited volume explores competing perspectives on the impact of nuclear weapons proliferation on the South Asian security environment. The spread of nuclear weapons is one of the world's foremost security concerns. The effect of nuclear weapons on the behaviour of newly nuclear states, and the potential for future international crises, are of particular concern. As a region of burgeoning economic and political importance, South Asia offers a crucial test of proliferation's effects on the crisis behaviour of newly nuclear states. This volume creates a dialogue between scholars who believe that nuclear weapons have stabilized the subcontinent, and those who believe that nuclear weapons have made South Asia more conflict prone. It does so by pairing competing analyses of four major regional crises: the 1987 "Brasstacks" crisis, the Indo-Pakistani crisis of 1990, the 1999 Kargil war, which occurred after the nuclear tests; and the 2001-2 Indo-Pakistani militarized standoff. In addition, the volume explores the implications of the South Asian nuclear experience for potential new nuclear states such as North Korea and Iran.
Between 1975 and 1978, the Khmer Rouge carried out genocide in Cambodia unparalleled in modern history. Approximately 2 million died - almost one quarter of the population. Taking an explicitly geographical approach, this book argues whether the Khmer Rouge's activities not only led to genocide, but also terracide - the erasure of space. In the Cambodia of 1975, the landscape would reveal vestiges of an indigenous pre-colonial Khmer society, a French colonialism and American intervention. The Khmer Rouge, however, were not content with retaining the past inscriptions of previous modes of production and spatial practices. Instead, they attempted to erase time and space to create their own utopian vision of a communal society. The Khmer Rouge's erasing and reshaping of space was thus part of a consistent sacrifice of Cambodia and its people - a brutal justification for the killing of a country and the birth of a new place, Democratic Kampuchea. While focusing on Cambodia, the book provides a clearer geographic understanding to genocide in general and insights into the importance of spatial factors in geopolitical conflict. |
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