Russia's intervention in the Ukraine, Donald Trump's presidency and instability in the Middle East are just a few of the factors that have brought an end to the immediate post-Cold War belief that a new international order was emerging: one where fear and uncertainty gave way to a thick normative and institutional architecture that diminished the importance of material power. This has raised questions about the instruments we use to understand order in Europe and in international relations. The chapters in this book aim to assess whether foreign policy actors in Europe understand the international system and behave as realists. They ask what drives their behaviour, how they construct material capabilities and to what extent they see material power as the means to ensure survival. They contribute to a critical assessment of realism as a way to understand both Europe's current predicament and the contemporary international system.

Despite the fact that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been active since November of 2002, the American homeland is still not secure from terrorist attack. What passes as DHS strategy is often just a list of objectives with vague references to the garnering of national resources, and the marshalling of support from other nations. Drawing on the expertise of several of the nation's leading reseachers and policy experts, Terrorism and Homeland Security: Thinking Strategically About Policy provides policymakers with a much needed starting point for the creation of an effective coherent national security strategy. Its origins pre-dating 9-11, this volume grew out of an extensive project featuring the participation of various institutions including the Army War College. The primary goal: develop a strategy that optimizes security with minimal infringement on rights and liberties After addressing points salient to a central strategy, the book then identifies the domestic and external elements that need to be addressed in building such a strategy. To this end, it examines the nature of terrorist threats, looks at challenges specific to various weapons of mass destruction, and then goes beyond terrorism to discuss safeguarding society and its infrastructure from natural disasters. In concluding, the editors present a number of preliminary suggestions. It is hoped that policymakers and others may take these suggestions into account when developing a comprehensive national security strategy.

Defense establishments and the armed forces they organize, train, equip, and deploy depend upon the security of capital and capital flows, mechanisms that have become increasingly globalized. Military capabilities are thus closely tied not only to the size of the economic base from which they are drawn, but also to the viability of global convertibility and exchange arrangements. Although the general public has a stake in these economic matters, the interests and interpretive understandings held by policy elites matter most--in particular those among the owners or managers of capital who focus on international finance and the international monetary regimes that sustain global commerce and their capital positions.
In "The Dollar and National Security," Paul Viotti explores the links between global capital flows, these policy elites, and national security. After establishing the historical link between currency, gold, and security, he continues the monetary-security story by examining the instrumental role the dollar has played in American economic and national security over the past seven decades. He reveals how perceived individual and collective interests are the key drivers toward building the kind of durable consensus necessary to sustain the external financing of American foreign and national security policy, and addresses the future implications for national security as decision-makers in the BRICs and other countries position themselves to assume an even larger policy presence in global commercial, monetary, and security matters.

Russia's intervention in the Ukraine, Donald Trump's presidency and instability in the Middle East are just a few of the factors that have brought an end to the immediate post-Cold War belief that a new international order was emerging: one where fear and uncertainty gave way to a thick normative and institutional architecture that diminished the importance of material power. This has raised questions about the instruments we use to understand order in Europe and in international relations. The chapters in this book aim to assess whether foreign policy actors in Europe understand the international system and behave as realists. They ask what drives their behaviour, how they construct material capabilities and to what extent they see material power as the means to ensure survival. They contribute to a critical assessment of realism as a way to understand both Europe's current predicament and the contemporary international system.

Defense establishments and the armed forces they organize, train, equip, and deploy depend upon the security of capital and capital flows, mechanisms that have become increasingly globalized. Military capabilities are thus closely tied not only to the size of the economic base from which they are drawn, but also to the viability of global convertibility and exchange arrangements. Although the general public has a stake in these economic matters, the interests and interpretive understandings held by policy elites matter most--in particular those among the owners or managers of capital who focus on international finance and the international monetary regimes that sustain global commerce and their capital positions.
In "The Dollar and National Security," Paul Viotti explores the links between global capital flows, these policy elites, and national security. After establishing the historical link between currency, gold, and security, he continues the monetary-security story by examining the instrumental role the dollar has played in American economic and national security over the past seven decades. He reveals how perceived individual and collective interests are the key drivers toward building the kind of durable consensus necessary to sustain the external financing of American foreign and national security policy, and addresses the future implications for national security as decision-makers in the BRICs and other countries position themselves to assume an even larger policy presence in global commercial, monetary, and security matters.