Weapons proliferation is one of the most pressing global concerns following the end of the Cold War. Despite the absence of an overarching superpower conflict, armaments and related technologies have continued to spread throughout the international system. This has been particularly true in areas such as East Asia and the Middle East, where the traditional two party arms races are not readily apparent.
This book addresses these concerns and shortcomings using data on fourteen specific military technological innovations that diffused throughout the international system from 1960 to 1997.

ISIS's genocidal attack on the Yezidi population in northern Iraq in 2014 brought the world's attention to the small faith that numbers less than one million worldwide. That summer ISIS massacred Yezidi men and enslaved women and children. More than one hundred thousand Yezidis were besieged on Sinjar Mountain. The US began airstrikes to roll back ISIS, citing a duty to save the Yezidis, but the genocide is still ongoing. The headlines have moved on but thousands of Yezidi women and children remain in captivity, and many more are still displaced. Sinjar is now free from ISIS but the Yezidi homeland is at the centre of growing tensions amongst the city's liberators, making returning home for the Yezidis almost impossible. The mass abduction of Yezidi women and children is here conveyed with extraordinary intensity in the first-hand reporting of a young journalist who has been based in Iraqi Kurdistan for the past four years, covering the war with ISIS and its impact on the people of the country. Otten tells the story of the ISIS attacks, the mass enslavements of Yezidi women and the fallout from the disaster. She challenges common perceptions of Yezidi female victimhood by focusing on stories of resistance passed down by generations. Yezidi women describe how, in the recent conflict, they followed the tradition of their ancestors who, a century ago during persecutions at the fall of the Ottoman empire, put ash on their faces to make themselves unattractive and try to avoid being raped. Today, over 3,000 Yezidi women and girls remain in the Caliphate where they are bought and sold, and passed between fighters as chattel. But many others have escaped or been released. Otten bases her book on interviews with these survivors, as well as those who smuggled them to safety, painstakingly piecing together their accounts of enslavement. Their deeply moving personal narratives bring alive a human tragedy.

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.

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.

Contents:
Stoler, Mark A. A Half Century of Conflict: Interpretations of US World War II Diplomacy. Diplomatic History 18 (Summer 1994).
Louis, William Roger and Ronald Robinson. The Imperialism of Decolonization. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 22 (September 1994).
Sbrega, John J. Determination versus Drift: The Anglo-American Debate over the Trusteeship Issue, 1941-1945. Pacific Historical Review 55 (May 1986).
Sheffield, G.D. The Anglo-American Alliance, 1941-45. The Journal of Mississippi History 57 (Winter 1995).
Phillips, Hugh. Mission to America: Maksim M. Litvinov in the United States, 1941-43. Diplomatic History 12 (Summer 1988).
Maclean, Elizabeth Kimball. Joseph E. Davies and Soviet-American Relations, 1941-1943. Diplomatic History 4 (Winter 1980).
Resis, Albert. Spheres of Influence in Soviet Wartime Diplomacy. The Journal of Modern History 53 (September 1981).
Garrett, Crister S. and Stephen A. Garrett. Death and Politics: The Katyn Forest Massacre and American Foreign Policy. East European Quarterly 20 (Winter 1986).
Ma, Xiaohua. The Sino-American Alliance During World War II and the Lifting of the Chinese Exclusion Acts. American Studies International 38 (June 2000).
Dinnerstein, Leonard. America, Britain, and Palestine: The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry and the Displaced Persons, 1945-46. Diplomatic History 4 (Summer 1980).
McFarland, Stephen L. A Peripheral View of the Origins of the Cold War: The Crises in Iran, 1941-47. Diplomatic History 4 (Fall 1980): 333-51.
Thorne, Christopher. Indochina and Anglo-American Relations, 1942-1945. Pacific Historical Review 45 (February 1976).
Gallicchio, Marc. The Other China Hands: USArmy Officers and America's Failure in China, 1941-1950. The Journal of American-East Asian Relations 3 (Spring 1995).
Villa, Brian L. The US Army, Unconditional Surrender, and the Potsdam Declaration. The Journal of American History 64 (June 1976).

In recent years the international community has begun to scrutinize and, in many cases, condemn the atrocities that took place at Nanking in late 1937. This is all part of a larger worldwide movement in which both nations and multinational groups are attempting to reach closure regarding past atrocities and inhumanities. As represented by the contributors to this book, these activities have an importance reaching far beyond aggressors or victims, beyond admission or vindication, but rather are a search for the common causes of all human atrocities and for solutions that would set humanity on a path toward a more peaceful and harmonious international community.

The subject of war crimes and collective wrongdoing - whether in the name of ethnic cleansing or a more veiled form of nationalism - is in the forefront of contemporary discourse in politics, international affairs, and political philosophy. This volume addresses urgent questions about the nature of war crimes, nationalism, ethnic cleansing, and collective responsibility.

In fourteen newly written essays, a distinguished team of international scholars consider war crimes and collective wrongdoing from a variety of moral, political, and legal perspectives. There is a substantial introduction from Anthony Ellis and each group of essays is followed by an afterword from the editor and suggestions for further reading.

Consistently probing and provocative, "War Crimes and Collective Wrongdoing" promises to be of enduring interest to students and scholars alike.

In this volume, the author seeks to fully reconstruct the process by which the Kennedy administration decided to sell to Israel Hawk surface-to-air missiles. He argues that such domestic considerations as the approaching congressional elections, and such political calculations as the administration's desire to promote a Palestinian settlement, were all part of a highly complex decisional setting which affected the thinking and behaviour of members of Washington's high policy elite on the very eve of the Hawk decision, albeit not to the same degree. Ultimately, a winning coalition was formed between the Middle Eastern experts of the National Security Council and the president's liaison to the Jewish community, Myer Feldman. President Kennedy's decision to join this coalition and to approve the sale without any prior Israeli concessions to the Palestinians, determined the outcome of this process. This sealed the fate of the Department of State's efforts to prevent the sale or later to make it dependent upon an Israeli commitment to soften its traditional Palestinian posture.
This book identifies the individuals and groups involved in each phase of the decision-making process of the sale of Hawk missiles, examines their relative power and capacity to mobilize support for their respective positions, and assesses the immediate and middle-range consequences of the sale, both in the context of American-Israeli relations and Washington's relations with the Arab Middle East.

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.

In this volume, the author seeks to fully reconstruct the process by which the Kennedy administration decided to sell to Israel Hawk surface-to-air missiles. He argues that such domestic considerations as the approaching congressional elections, and such political calculations as the administration's desire to promote a Palestinian settlement, were all part of a highly complex decisional setting which affected the thinking and behaviour of members of Washington's high policy elite on the very eve of the Hawk decision, albeit not to the same degree. Ultimately, a winning coalition was formed between the Middle Eastern experts of the National Security Council and the president's liaison to the Jewish community, Myer Feldman. President Kennedy's decision to join this coalition and to approve the sale without any prior Israeli concessions to the Palestinians, determined the outcome of this process. This sealed the fate of the Department of State's efforts to prevent the sale or later to make it dependent upon an Israeli commitment to soften its traditional Palestinian posture.
This book identifies the individuals and groups involved in each phase of the decision-making process of the sale of Hawk missiles, examines their relative power and capacity to mobilize support for their respective positions, and assesses the immediate and middle-range consequences of the sale, both in the context of American-Israeli relations and Washington's relations with the Arab Middle East.

The question of national responsibility for crimes against humanity became an urgent topic due to the charge of ethnic cleansing against the previous Yugoslav government. But that was not the first such urging of legal and moral responsibility for war crimes. While the Nazi German regime has been prototypical, the actions of the Japanese military regime have been receiving increasing prominence and attention. Indeed, Peter Li's volume examines the phenomenon of denial as well as the deeds of destruction.

Certainly one of the most troublesome unresolved problems facing many Asian and Western countries after the Asia Pacific war (1931u1945) is the question of the atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army throughout Asia and the Japanese government's repeated attempts to whitewash their wartime responsibilities. The psychological and physical wounds suffered by victims, their families, and relations remain unhealed after more than half a century, and the issue is now pressing. This collection undertakes the critical task of addressing some of the multifaceted and complex issues of Japanese war crimes and redress.

This collection is divided into five themes. In "It's Never Too Late to Seek Justice," the issues of reconciliation, accountability, and Emperor Hirohito's responsibility for war crimes are explored. "The American POW Experience Remembered" includes a moving account of the Bataan Death March by an American ex-soldier. "Psychological Responses" discusses the socio-psychological affects of the Nanjing Massacre and Japanese vivisection on Chinese subjects. The way in which Japanese war atrocities have been dealt with in the theater and cinema is the focus of "Artistic Responses." And central to "History Must not Forget" are the questions of memory, trauma, biological warfare, and redress. Included in this volume are samples of the many presentations given at the International Citizens' Forum on War Crimes and Redress held in Tokyo in December 1999.

"Japanese War Crimes" will be mandatory reading for those interested in East Asian history, genocide studies, and international politics.

In recent years the international community has begun to scrutinize and, in many cases, condemn the atrocities that took place at Nanking in late 1937. This is all part of a larger worldwide movement in which both nations and multinational groups are attempting to reach closure regarding past atrocities and inhumanities. As represented by the contributors to this book, these activities have an importance reaching far beyond aggressors or victims, beyond admission or vindication, but rather are a search for the common causes of all human atrocities and for solutions that would set humanity on a path toward a more peaceful and harmonious international community.

Human Rights after Hitler reveals thousands of forgotten US and Allied war crimes prosecutions against Hitler and other Axis war criminals based on a popular movement for justice that stretched from Poland to the Pacific. These cases provide a great foundation for twenty-first-century human rights and accompany the achievements of the Nuremberg trials and postwar conventions. They include indictments of perpetrators of the Holocaust made while the death camps were still operating, which confounds the conventional wisdom that there was no official Allied response to the Holocaust at the time. This history also brings long overdue credit to the United Nations' War Crimes Commission (UNWCC), which operated during and after World War II. Dan Plesch describes the commission's work and Washington's bureaucratic obstruction to a 1944 proposal to prosecute crimes against humanity before an international criminal court. From the 1940s until a recent lobbying effort by Plesch and colleagues, the UNWCC's files were kept out of public view in the UN archives under pressure from the US government. The book answers why the commission and its files were closed and reveals that the lost precedents set by these cases have enormous practical utility for prosecuting war crimes today. They cover US and Allied prosecutions of torture, including "water treatment," wartime sexual assault, and crimes by foot soldiers who were "just following orders." Plesch's book will fascinate anyone with an interest in the history of the Second World War as well as provide ground-breaking revelations for historians and human rights practitioners alike.

The genocide of Armenians by Turks during the First World War was one of the most horrendous deeds of modern times and a precursor of the genocidal acts that have marked the rest of the twentieth century. Despite the worldwide attention the atrocities received at the time, the massacre has not remained a part of the world's historical consciousness. The parallels between the Jewish and Armenian situations and the reactions of the Jewish community in Palestine (the Yishuv) to the Armenian genocide, which was muted and largely self-interested, are explored by Yair Auron. In attempting to assess and interpret these disparate reactions, Auron maintains a fairminded balance in assessing claims of altruism and self-interest, expressed in universal, not merely Jewish, terms.

While not denying the uniqueness of the Holocaust, Auron carefully distinguishes it from the Armenian genocide reviewing existing theories and relating Armenian and Jewish experience to ongoing issues of politics and identity. As a groundbreaking work of comparative history, this volume will be read by Armenian area specialists, historians of Zionism and Israel, and students of genocide. Yair Auron is senior lecturer at The Open University of Israel and the Kibbutzim College of Education. He is the author, in Hebrew, of Jewish-Israeli Identity, Sensitivity to World Suffering: Genocide in the Twentieth Century, We Are All German Jews, and Jewish Radicals in France during the Sixties and Seventies (published in French as well)

A shocking depiction of one of the world's most ruthless regimes - and the story of one woman's fight to survive. I will never forget the camp. I cannot forget the eyes of the prisoners, expecting me to do something for them. They are innocent. I have to tell their story, to tell about the darkness they are in. It is so easy to suffocate us with the demons of powerlessness, shame, and guilt. But we aren't the ones who should feel ashamed. Born in China's north-western province, Sayragul Sauytbay trained as a doctor before being appointed a senior civil servant. But her life was upended when the Chinese authorities incarcerated her. Her crime: being Kazakh, one of China's ethnic minorities. The north-western province borders the largest number of foreign nations and is the point in China that is the closest to Europe. In recent years it has become home to over 1,200 penal camps - modern-day gulags that are estimated to house three million members of the Kazakh and Uyghur minorities. Imprisoned solely due to their ethnicity, inmates are subjected to relentless punishment and torture, including being beaten, raped, and used as subjects for medical experiments. The camps represent the greatest systematic incarceration of an entire people since the Third Reich. In prison, Sauytbay was put to work teaching Chinese language, culture, and politics, in the course of which she gained access to secret information that revealed Beijing's long-term plans to undermine not only its minorities, but democracies around the world. Upon her escape to Europe she was reunited with her family, but still lives under the constant threat of reprisal. This rare testimony from the biggest surveillance state in the world reveals not only the full, frightening scope of China's tyrannical ambitions, but also the resilience and courage of its author.

Fifty-five years have passed since Al and Van fell in love as wartime sweethearts. He returned to the States and she returned to her home in Cardiff, Wales, where they both met other loves and married. They lost touch and now both of their spouses have passed away. Will these two lovers meet again? Al Enlow shares his wartime expereinces and his memories of his wartime sweetheart, Van. You will laugh and cry over this nostalgic remembrance of days gone by. Lots of photos.

Silent Heroes is an amazing tribute to the bravery of American servicemen during the early years of World War II. The author has compiled his extensive research on many of the American pilots and crews that went down over occupied Czechoslovakia during February through July of 1944 and produced a touching book worthy of the soldiers it describes. Silent Heroes, Volume I is not about just one unit, but rather it is about the 8th - 9th & 15th Air Force aircrafts lost over occupied Czechoslovakia in 1944.

Surviving Hell is a harrowing account of Lieutenant Colonel William Miner, taken prisoner for 39 months after his unit surrendered to the Japanese on the island of Cebu, Philippines, during World War II. Despite losing every friend in his unit and suffering from torture and deprivation that would “warp men’s souls,� Bill Miner professed, “I am lucky. People fell beside me and people were blown apart beside me. Anywhere I went as a prisoner, I tried to be aware of the situation and use it the best I could to survive.� This fascinating and arresting true story features excerpts from Bill Miner’s personal prison diary, which he kept despite the accompanying risk of torture or even death, along with photos and post-war recollections. 

This book is a touching compilation of personal accounts of the men who served in the 487th Bomb Group during World War II. These accounts exemplify the dedication and sacrifice these men made in the face of grave danger while serving their country during the largest 8th Air Force mission during the Battle of the Bulge. It's been 60 years since these men left a portion of their youth in various parts of Europe, but their words make it feel lke WWII ended only yesterday. From humor to heartache, the reader runs the gamut of emotions when living vicariously through the stories of the brave men of the 487th Bomb Group - the Gentlemen From Hell.

This book takes offers a new perspective on the Medal of Honor, examining the historical facts and figures of its recipients. Provided within is a top-level view of this group in its entirety, taking a new perspective, as it analyzes and summarizes the historical facts in stunning detail.

Feb 22, 1944-July 21, 1944

The Persian Gulf area is the world's greatest paradox. Wealthy, yet economically and socially underdeveloped; traditional, yet full of the turmoil of change. It is no wonder that this area has been the focal point of so much violence, struggle and controversy in the 20th century. This volume addresses the main strategic issues in today's Persian Gulf, a region that is arguably the most likely to produce a crisis that would encourage international political and economic involvement. Among the broader questions discussed in this book are: strategic balances, modernization, internal stability, weapons of mass destruction, inter-state conflicts, ethnic rivalries, and oil. This book provides a comprehensive and systematic picture of the region's current issues and problems.

This book offers a novel sociological examination of the historical trajectories of Burundi and Rwanda. It challenges both the Eurocentric assumptions which have underpinned many sociological theorisations of modernity, and the notion that the processes of modernisation move gradually, if precariously, towards more peaceable forms of cohabitation within and between societies. Addressing these themes at critical historical junctures - precolonial, colonial and postcolonial - the book argues that the recent experiences of extremely violent social conflict in Burundi and Rwanda cannot be seen as an 'object apart' from the concerns of sociologists, as it is commonly presented. Instead, these experiences are situated within a specific route to and through modernity, one 'entangled' with Western modernity. A contribution to an emerging global historical sociology, Entanglements of Modernity, Colonialism and Genocide will appeal to scholars of sociology and social theory with interests in postcolonialism, historical sociology, multiple modernities and genocide.

Taking Lives is a pivotal effort to reconstruct the social and political contexts of twentieth century, state-inspired mass murder. Irving Louis Horowitz re-examines genocide from a new perspective -- viewing this issue as the defining element in the political sociology of our time. The fifth edition includes approximately 30 percent new materials with five new chapters. The work is divided into five parts: "Present as History Past as Prologue, " "Future as Memory, " "Toward A General Theory of State-Sponsored Crime, " "Studying Genocide." The new edition concludes with chapters reviewing the natural history of genocide studies from 1945 to the present, along with a candid self-appraisal of the author's work in this field over four decades.

Taking Lives asserts that genocide is not a sporadic or random event, nor is it necessarily linked to economic development or social progress. Genocide is a special sort of mass destruction conducted with the approval of the state apparatus. Life and death issues are uniquely fundamental, since they alone serve as a precondition for the examination of all other issues. Such concerns move us beyond abstract, formalist frameworks into new ways of viewing the social study of the human condition. Nearly all reviewers of earlier editions have recognized this. Taking Lives is a fundamental work for political scientists, sociologists, and all those concerned with the state's propensity toward evil.

The infamous Nanjing Massacre of 1937, in which the Japanese Imperial Army raped and slaughtered countless Chinese citizens on the eve of World War II, has been described in well-publicized books from various Chinese, Japanese and German perspectives. But this collection of first-hand testimony from the archives of the Yale Divinity School Library may be the most powerful record of all. Here are eyewitness accounts by a remarkable group of nine men and one woman -- dedicated, compassionate, well-educated, articulate, and devout missionaries who were there on the scene, refusing to leave, and doing everything in their power to save the Chinese victims of this appalling atrocity.