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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Other warfare & defence issues
Nuclear weapons are not a subject of intense public discussion and debate, but they should be. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were only the beginning; in recent times, nuclear annihilation at the hands of rogues and terrorists has become an even greater concern than the specter of nuclear war between superpowers. In a series of clear, calm, well-reasoned dialogues, longtime scholars and practitioners of peace Richard Falk and David Krieger probe key questions about our nuclear reality and dig beneath the surreal surface tranquility that has largely surrounded its existence. Although the authors agree on much, there are many areas where their thoughts diverge, including their assessment of the value of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and of President Obama s level of commitment to nuclear issues. They put forward new proposals and explore in the dialogues different ways to move ahead. They contend that a nuclear-free future is not a subject to be left only to experts for the so-called experts have brought us to the brink of the nuclear precipice over and over again. Falk and Krieger believe that although none of us has the power to bring about global change alone, together we are immensely powerful powerful enough to overcome the threats of the Nuclear Age and move us appreciably along the path to zero. Covers questions about living in the Nuclear Age including: How have we responded (or failed to respond) to these immensely powerful weapons? Are we capable of escaping their threat? Can civilization make the leap to survival in a world with thousands of nuclear weapons? Will humankind become the victim of its own cleverness? Will we recognize the nuclear dilemma that confronts us in the 21st century? Will we be able also to recognize our power, when acting together, to be a force for change? Will we act soon enough and forcefully enough to assure civilization s survival?"
This examination of the implementation of the nuclear non-proliferation regime focuses on critical developments, technological in particular, currently endangering the regime. Crucial technologies affecting nuclear weapon proliferation and their potential ramifications for the NPT regime as a whole are examined and potential policy options which could ameliorate or perhaps eliminate the resulting dangers are analysed. Developments and problems raised by the nuclear programmes in Iraq and North Korea receive special attention. The book contributes to the discussion and debate occurring in preparation for the 1995 NPT Extension and Review Conference.
Elements of Genocide provides an authoritative evaluation of the current perception of the crime, as it appears in the decisions of judicial authorities, the writings of the foremost academic experts in the field, and in the texts of Commission Reports. Genocide constitutes one of the most significant problems in contemporary international law. Within the last fifteen years, the world has witnessed genocidal conduct in Rwanda and Bosnia and Herzegovina, while the debate on the commission of genocide in Darfur and the DR Congo is ongoing. Within the same period, the prosecution of suspected g nocidaires has taken place in international tribunals, internationalised tribunals and domestic courts; and the names of Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic and Saddam Hussein feature among those against whom charges of genocide were brought. Pursuing an interdisciplinary examination of the existing case law on genocide in international and domestic courts, Elements of Genocide comprehensive and accessible reflection on the crime of genocide, and its inherent complexities.
German Disarmament After World War I examines the Allied disarmament of Germany and the challenges that such an enormous task presented to international efforts in enforcing the Treaty of Versailles. In the twenty-first century, disarmament remains a critical issue for the International community. This new book focuses on three key areas and lessons of Allied disarmament operations from 1920-31: the role and experience of international arms inspectors working amidst an embittered German populace the ramifications of the divergent disarmament priorities of the leaders of the disarmament coalition the effectiveness of united Allied policies backed by sanctions. These major issues are examined within the overall context of the assessment of Allied disarmament operations in Germany. While some historians perceive German disarmament as a failure, this book argues that arms inspectors successfully destroyed Germany's ability to pose a military threat to European security. This new study shows how the destructive legacy of war convinced the victorious nations, especially Britain and France, of the importance in minimizing German military strength. French post-war security concerns, however, were often faced with the unwillingness of Britain to enforce the totality of the military articles of the treaty. German obstruction also influenced Allied disarmament policies. German Disarmament After World War I examines the initial effectiveness of Allied disarmament efforts in Germany and explains how they ultimately disappeared through diverging conceptions of a post-war world. This book will be of great interest to all students of disarmament, the interwar period and of military history, modern European history and security studies.
Throughout the Cold War there were longstanding efforts to control the spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) through extensive arms control, deterrence, and defense programs. Since then counterproliferation efforts by the U.S. and international community have accelerated. Given the attention to counterproliferation in the last decade, how effective was the leadership provided by President Clinton and his Secretaries of Defense, Aspin, Perry and Cohen, in providing innovative and effective policies for countering the proliferation of WMD? Comparing the cases of U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework, the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and U.S. and U.N. efforts in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Joseph R. Cerami examines patterns of organizational leadership and policy innovation in the development and implementation of WMD policy initiatives. Rather than criticize the framework of American and international political institutions, this leadership perspective draws important insights on the capabilities of institutions to further U.S. and international goals and objectives in security policymaking. In doing so, the book argues that the U.S.'s role and the roles of its internal government agencies are most significant in international affairs. Smartly and appealingly positioned at the intersection of theory and practice, Cerami's book crafts a new perspective in international relations and public administration offering great potential for understanding as well as designing policy innovations to counter the proliferation of WMD in the 21st century.
The fourth edition of "Centuries of Genocide: Essays and Eyewitness Accounts" addresses examples of genocides perpetrated in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Each chapter of the book is written by a recognized expert in the field, collectively demonstrating a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. The book is framed by an introductory essay that spells out definitional issues, as well as the promises, complexities, and barriers to the prevention and intervention of genocide. To help the reader learn about the similarities and differences among the various cases, each case is structured around specific leading questions. In every chapter authors address: Who committed the genocide? How was the genocide committed? Why was the genocide committed? Who were the victims? What were the outstanding historical forces? What was the long-range impact? What were the responses? How do scholars interpret this genocide? How does learning about this genocide contribute to the field of study? While the material in each chapter is based on sterling scholarship and wide-ranging expertise of the authors, eyewitness accounts give voice to the victims. This book is an attempt to provoke the reader into understanding that learning about genocide is important and that we all have a responsibility not to become immune to acts of genocide, especially in the interdependent world in which we live today. Revision highlights include:
British documentary filmmaker Asad Qureshi works in the world's most dangerous places. When he set off to film secret interviews with Taliban commanders, the award-winning filmmaker found himself on the wrong end of the camera lens, with a gun at his temple and a price of 10 million US dollars on his head. Asad would spend 165 days in captivity before his family was able to pay his ransom and secure his release. The negotiations and eventual release were coordinated by Al Qaeda intermediaries. Throughout his time as a hostage, Qureshi was tortured and humiliated, as were his fellow prisoners, several of whom would not return. This is a true, first-person account of Taliban captivity in Waziristan, the dangerous border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Above all, it provides a stark reminder of the privilege of freedom.
Armenian national identity has long been associated with what has come to be known as the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Immersing the reader in the history, culture and politics of Armenia - from its foundations as the ancient kingdom of Urartu to the modern-day Republic - Gaidz Minassian moves past the massacres embedded in the Armenian psyche to position the nation within contemporary global politics. An in-depth study of history and memory, The Armenian Experience examines the characteristics and sentiments of a national identity that spans the globe. Armenia lies in the heart of the Caucasus and once had an empire - under the rule of Tigranes the Great in the first century BC - that stretched from the Caspian to the Mediterranean seas. Beginning with an overview of Armenia's historic position at the crossroads between Rome and Persia, Minassian details invasions from antiquity to modern times by Arabs, Mongols, Ottomans, Persians and Russians right up to its Soviet experience, and drawing on Armenia's post-Soviet conflict with Azerbaijan in its attempts to reunify with the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. This book questions an Armenian self-identity dominated by its past and instead looks towards the future. Gaidz Minassian emphasises the need to recognise that the Armenian story began well before the Genocide 1915, and continues as an on-going modern narrative.
This book examines how civil-military relations have been transformed in Russia, Poland, Hungary and Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in 1991. It shows how these countries have worked to reform their obsolete armed forces, and bring them into line with the new economic and strategic realities of the post-Cold War world, with new bureaucratic structures in which civilians play the key policy-making roles, and with strengthened democratic political institutions which have the right to oversee the armed forces.
This book interrogates the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement from its inception in July 2005 to its conclusion in the latter part of 2008 through 12 articles, each of which focuses on different aspects of the deal. They discuss the factors that facilitated the deal, the roadblocks that were encountered, and the implications of the deal for the future of India's foreign policy, its energy security and the international non-proliferation regime. Together, they address the internal political dynamics in India and the United States in order to present perspectives of both countries.
The Detente Deception examines the competition between the U.S.-led Western bloc and the Soviet bloc in the less developed world during the final years of Detente. Rivero assesses whether or not the Soviet bloc pushed for strategic gains in the Third World and whether this contributed to the U.S. decision to abandon Detente in 1979. This view is articulated by many acclaimed scholars such as Stephen Walt (1992), John Gaddis (1997), and Vladislav Zubok (2007). They make the case that during the final years of Detente and throughout the 1980s, U.S. policy in places such as Nicaragua and Angola was a calculated response to Soviet aggression in the less-developed world. This book challenges this position as the quantitative evidence points to U.S. aggression. Not only did the Western bloc push to maintain dominance over the Third World, archival evidence also suggests the US made significant efforts in Eastern Europe and Afghanistan during the final years of Detente to dismantle the Soviet bloc.
Since Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide after the destruction of the European Jewry during World War II, the United Nations signed the Genocide Convention in 1948. Though the Convention aimed at preventing genocide in the future, large-scale mass murder returned on all continents, in Cambodia and Rwanda as some of the most notorious cases. As demonstrated in this guidebook, the genocidal processes are complex and deeply rooted in society. International courts and tribunals play an important role in bringing suspected perpetrators to justice. To deal effectively with learning about the Holocaust and other genocides in a classroom situation, reliable knowledge about the courses of history is needed. This unique guidebook offers concise information about five 20th-century cases of genocide, as well as the response of international justice. By relevant use of illustrations and references, and by using the most recent literature, this is an indispensable work offering new insight in the processes of genocide. NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies www.holocaustandgenocide.nl.
Nuclear weapons are not a subject of intense public discussion and debate, but they should be. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were only the beginning; in recent times, nuclear annihilation at the hands of rogues and terrorists has become an even greater concern than the specter of nuclear war between superpowers. In a series of clear, calm, well-reasoned dialogues, longtime scholars and practitioners of peace Richard Falk and David Krieger probe key questions about our nuclear reality and dig beneath the surreal surface tranquility that has largely surrounded its existence. Although the authors agree on much, there are many areas where their thoughts diverge, including their assessment of the value of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and of President Obama s level of commitment to nuclear issues. They put forward new proposals and explore in the dialogues different ways to move ahead. They contend that a nuclear-free future is not a subject to be left only to experts for the so-called experts have brought us to the brink of the nuclear precipice over and over again. Falk and Krieger believe that although none of us has the power to bring about global change alone, together we are immensely powerful powerful enough to overcome the threats of the Nuclear Age and move us appreciably along the path to zero. Covers questions about living in the Nuclear Age including: How have we responded (or failed to respond) to these immensely powerful weapons? Are we capable of escaping their threat? Can civilization make the leap to survival in a world with thousands of nuclear weapons? Will humankind become the victim of its own cleverness? Will we recognize the nuclear dilemma that confronts us in the 21st century? Will we be able also to recognize our power, when acting together, to be a force for change? Will we act soon enough and forcefully enough to assure civilization s survival?"
This timely book, published in the lead up to the 2012-14 decision on Trident renewal, makes available for the first time the late Sir Michael Quinlan s private correspondence on nuclear deterrence. It shows why Sir Michael, as Policy Director and then Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence during the last years of the Cold War, became known as the high priest of deterrence: his unparalleled grasp of nuclear strategy, contribution to nuclear doctrine in the UK and NATO, and deep and genuine concern with defence ethics earned him respect and admiration around the world. Even those who challenged him on fundamental questions of strategy and morality (and many of his correspondents fell into this category, as this volume will reveal) recognised his sincere devotion to his cause: the creation of a stable system of east west nuclear deterrence for the prevention of major war. Before he died in 2009, Sir Michael made it known that he wished for his private correspondence to be published. This book helps fulfil that wish. It presents a selection of the most compelling letters among the many thousands in the Quinlan files. It is intended as a memorial to a brilliant man, an important historical record of British nuclear thinking during the cold war, and a contribution to contemporary debates over the future of nuclear deterrence."
In 1948 the United Nations passed the Genocide Convention. The international community was now obligated to prevent or halt what had hitherto, in Winston Churchill s words, been a "crime without a name," and to punish the perpetrators. Since then, however, genocide has recurred repeatedly. Millions of people have been murdered by sovereign nation states, confident in their ability to act with impunity within their own borders. Tracing the history of genocide since 1945, and looking at a number of cases across continents and decades, this book discusses a range of critical and inter-connected issues such as:
Genocide since 1945 aims to help the reader understand how, when, where and why this crime has been committed since 1945, why it has proven so difficult to halt or prevent its recurrence, and what now might be done about it. It is essential reading for all those interested in the contemporary world.
This book assesses how progress in disarmament diplomacy in the last decade has improved human security. In doing so, the book looks at three cases of the development of international norms in this arena. First, it traces how new international normative understandings have shaped the evolution of and support for an Arms Trade Treaty (the supply side of the arms trade); and, second, it examines the small arms international regime and examines a multilateral initiative that aims to address the demand side (by the Geneva Declaration); and, third, it examines the evolution of two processes to ban and regulate cluster munitions. The formation of international norms in these areas is a remarkable development, as it means that a domain that was previously thought to be the exclusive purview of states, i.e. how they procure and manage arms, has been penetrated by multiple influences from worldwide civil society. As a result, norms and treaties are being established to address the domain of arms, and states will have more multilateral restriction over their arms and less sovereignty in this domain. This book will be of much interest to students of the arms trade, international security, international law, human security and IR in general. Denise Garcia is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Northeastern University, Boston. She is author of Small Arms and Security (Routledge 2006).
Propaganda, War Crimes Trials and International Law addresses the emerging jurisprudence and international law concerning propaganda in war crimes investigations and trials. The role of propaganda in the perpetration of atrocities has emerged as a central theme in the war crimes trials in the past century. The Nuremburg trials initially, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda currently, have all substantially contributed to the development of international law in this respect. Investigating and exploring the areas between lawful and unlawful propaganda, they have dealt with specific mechanisms and consequences of the phenomenon within the perspective and framework of their international legal mandates. But the cultural codes and argots through which propaganda operates have vexed international courts struggling to assign responsibility to the instigators of mass crimes, as subtle, but potentially fatal, communications often remain undetected, misinterpreted or even dismissed as entirely irrelevant. With contributions from leading international scholars and legal practioners, Propaganda, War Crimes Trials and International Law pursues a comparative approach to this problem: providing an overview of the current state of the theory of propaganda in the social sciences; exploring this theory in the legal analysis of war crimes and related proceedings; and, finally, offering a study of the prosecution of propaganda-related crimes in international law, and the newly emerging jurisprudence of war crimes propaganda cases.
Sanctions are an important tool within the foreign policy of the European Union, which have until now remained obscure to both scholars and the general public. This book examines sanctions as a political tool of influence and evaluates the efficacy of sanctions imposed by the EU against third countries and their ability to bring about the desired outcome. While the principal sanctions activity of the EU takes place under the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the author also considers the suspension of development aid under the ACP-EU Partnership Agreement, the withdrawal of trade privileges under the Generalized System of Preferences and other sanctions outside these frameworks. Reviewing the sanctions practice of the EU in its virtual entirety, Portela assesses the relevance of classical sanctions theory by testing a series of hypotheses with empirical case-studies attempting to identify the determinants of success of EU sanctions. Enhancing our understanding of the EU's international role, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of international politics, security studies, EU studies, human rights and democracy, conflict management, IPE and development studies.
The theory and practice of arms control seemed to have its heyday during the height of the Cold War, with its focus on the East-West conflict and nuclear arms. In the past twenty years, both arms technologies and various practices aimed at their control have continued to develop, but scholarly thinking has not kept up. This volume seeks to redress this scholarly neglect of the range of issues associated with the control of the means of violence, by asking the question: what does arms control mean in the 21st Century? In asking this question, the volume examines issues surrounding sovereignty, geopolitics, nuclear disarmament, securitization of space, technological developments, human rights, the clearance of landmines, the regulation of small arms and the control of the black market for arms and nuclear secrets. The book discusses terrorism with reference to the case of the suicide attacks in Beirut in 1983 and how the Obama administration is orientating its posture on nuclear arms. This book was published as a special issue of Contemporary Security Policy.
The New York Times bestselling account of one of history's most brutal- and forgotten- massacres, when the Japanese army destroyed China's capital city on the eve of World War II In December 1937, one of the most horrific atrocities in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking (what was then the capital of China), and within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered. In this seminal work, Iris Chang, whose own grandparents barely escaped the massacre, tells this history from three perspectives: that of the Japanese soldiers, that of the Chinese, and that of a group of Westerners who refused to abandon the city and created a safety zone, which saved almost 300,000 Chinese. Drawing on extensive interviews with survivors and documents brought to light for the first time, Iris Chang's classic book is the definitive history of this horrifying episode. "Chang vividly, methodically, records what happened, piecing together the abundant eyewitness reports into an undeniable tapestry of horror." - Adam Hochschild, Salon
The role of military chaplains has changed over the past decade as Western militaries have deployed to highly religious environments such as East Africa, Afghanistan, and Iraq. US military chaplains, who are by definition non-combatants, have been called upon by their war-fighting commanders to take on new roles beyond providing religious services to the troops to also engage the local citizenry and provide their commanders with assessments of the religious and cultural landscape outside the base. More specifically, in the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan, chaplains have occasionally been asked to provide their commanders with background on the religious and cultural environment to which they deployed (e.g. Islam and the Muslim world) and to reach out to local civilian clerics in hostile territory in pursuit of peace and understanding. Despite some internal resistance to this expansion of duties, some military chaplains have engaged local religious authorities in order to quell misunderstandings and promote peace in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Horn of Africa.In this edited volume, practitioners and scholars chronicle the changes that have happened in the field in the 21st century. For example, they explain how the Multi-National Forces-Iraq command chaplain (who reported directly to General Petraeus) worked with the NGO Foundation for Reconciliation and Reconstruction in the Middle East, contributing to a significant drop in sectarian violence. In the Horn of Africa, the command chaplain, who was a Jewish rabbi, helped build relationships between Muslims and Christians. In Afghanistan, Muslim chaplains engaged with Sunni and Shia religious leaders to develop local trust and Coalition and a training program for religious leaders within the Afghan National Army. By looking at the rapidly changing role of the military chaplain, this volume raises issues critical to US foreign and national security policy and diplomacy.
Rape, traditionally a spoil of war, became a weapon of war in the ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia. The ICTY Kunarac court responded by transforming wartime rape from an ignored crime into a crime against humanity. In its judgment, the court argued that the rapists violated the Muslim women's right to sexual self-determination. Announcing this right to sexual integrity, the court transformed women's vulnerability from an invitation to abuse into a mark of human dignity. This close reading of the trial, guided by the phenomenological themes of the lived body and ambiguity, feminist critiques of the autonomous subject and the liberal sexual/social contract, critical legal theory assessments of human rights law and institutions, and psychoanalytic analyses of the politics of desire, argues that the court, by validating women's epistemic authority (their right to establish the meaning of their experience of rape) and affirming the dignity of the vulnerable body (thereby dethroning the autonomous body as the embodiment of dignity), shows us that human rights instruments can be used to combat the epidemic of wartime rape if they are read as de-legitimating the authority of the masculine autonomous subject and the gender codes it anchors.
Radhabinod Pal was an Indian jurist who achieved international fame as the judge representing India at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and dissented from the majority opinion, holding that all Japanese "Class A" war criminals were not guilty of any of the charges brought against them. In postwar Japanese politics, right-wing polemicists have repeatedly utilized his dissenting judgment in their political propaganda aimed at refuting the Tokyo trial's majority judgment and justifying Japan's aggression, gradually elevating this controversial lawyer from India to a national symbol of historical revisionism. Many questions have been raised about how to appropriately assess Pal's dissenting judgment and Pal himself. Were the arguments in Pal's judgment sound? Why did he submit such a bold dissenting opinion? What was the political context? More fundamentally, why and how did the Allies ever nominate such a lawyer as a judge for a tribunal of such great political importance? How should his dissent be situated within the context of modern Asian history and the development of international criminal justice? What social and political circumstances in Japan thrust him into such a prominent position? Many of these questions remain unanswered, while some have been misinterpreted. This book proposes answers to many of them and presents a critique of the persistent revisionist denial of war responsibility in the Japanese postwar right-wing movement.
Between February and September 1988, the Iraqi government destroyed over 2000 Kurdish villages, killing somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 civilians and displacing many more. The operation was codenamed Anfal which literally means 'the spoils of war'. For the survivors of this campaign, Anfal did not end in September 1988: the aftermath of this catastrophe is as much a part of the Anfal story as the gas attacks, disappearances and life in the camps. This book examines Kurdish women's experience of violence, destruction, the disappearance of loved ones, and incarceration during the Anfal campaign. It explores the survival strategies of these women in the aftermath of genocide. By bringing together and highlighting women's own testimonies, Choman Hardi reconstructs the Anfal narrative in contrast to the current prevaling one which is highly politicised, simplified, and nationalistic. It also addresses women's silences about sexual abuse and rape in a patriarchal society which holds them responsible for having been a victim of sexual violence.
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. |
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