This book engages with key contemporary European security issues from a variety of different theoretical standpoints, in an attempt to uncover the drivers of foreign policy and defence integration in the EU. Although European foreign policy has been attracting an ever-increasing number of International Relations (IR) scholars since the end of the Cold War, consensus on what drives European foreign policy integration has not yet emerged. This book seeks to encourage debate on this issue by examining a wide range of high-profile security issues which have roused significant interest from policy makers, academics and the public in recent years. The volume discusses, amongst other issues, the strategic posture of the European Union as a security actor, the troubled relationship with Russia, the debate regarding France's relations with the US following France's rapprochement with NATO and the EU's influence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The collective intent of the contributors to highlight the drivers of EU foreign policy and defence integration ties together the wide variety of topics covered in this volume, forming it into a comprehensive overview of this issue. By paying considerable attention not just to the internal drivers of EU cooperation, but also to the critical role played by the US as an incentive or obstacle to European security, this book presents a unique contribution to this field of debate. This book will be of much interest to students of European security, IR theory, Transatlantic Relations, European politics and EU foreign policy.

The recent proliferation of studies on terrorism has brought scholars from different fields and approaches to converge on this phenomenon. As a result, economists, social and political scientists have developed theories, evidence and, in a sense, even a peculiar jargon of their own. Starting from this assumption, the book aims to bring scholars with different expertise and background around the same table, showing how their individual perspectives can contribute to a broader understanding of the issue at stake. In other words, the aim that inspires the book is that the multi-disciplinary nature of terrorism requires a concerted effort by social sciences - in particular, economics and political science. The book deals with a number of issues - from the definition and forms of terrorism, to its economic determinants, from the distribution and forecast of terror attacks to the measurement of their impact on societies.

This book engages with key contemporary European security issues from a variety of different theoretical standpoints, in an attempt to uncover the drivers of foreign policy and defence integration in the EU. Although European foreign policy has been attracting an ever-increasing number of International Relations (IR) scholars since the end of the Cold War, consensus on what drives European foreign policy integration has not yet emerged. This book seeks to encourage debate on this issue by examining a wide range of high-profile security issues which have roused significant interest from policy makers, academics and the public in recent years. The volume discusses, amongst other issues, the strategic posture of the European Union as a security actor, the troubled relationship with Russia, the debate regarding France's relations with the US following France's rapprochement with NATO and the EU's influence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The collective intent of the contributors to highlight the drivers of EU foreign policy and defence integration ties together the wide variety of topics covered in this volume, forming it into a comprehensive overview of this issue. By paying considerable attention not just to the internal drivers of EU cooperation, but also to the critical role played by the US as an incentive or obstacle to European security, this book presents a unique contribution to this field of debate. This book will be of much interest to students of European security, IR theory, Transatlantic Relations, European politics and EU foreign policy.

Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Frammartino directs this deceptively simple and playfully philosophical study of life through the four seasons in a tiny Italian village high in the Calabrian hills in southern Italy. A majestic pine tree is cut down by the villagers to be used first as a maypole for the town festival and later turned into charcoal. An elderly, ailing goatherd (Giuseppe Fuda) quietly lives out his last days, believing in the healing powers of the dust he collects daily from the church floor, which he drinks in his water every day. But even as he is dying, a new goat kid is born and the cycle of life steadily goes on.