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A truly unique all-embracing narrative of the American war in Afghanistan from the own words of its architects. Choosing Defeat takes an unparalleled inside look at America's longest war, pulling back the curtain on the inner deliberations behind the scenes. The author combines his own extensive experience in the Army, the CIA, and the White House, with interviews from policymakers within the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations, to produce a groundbreaking study of how American leaders make wartime decisions. Transporting you inside the White House Situation Room, every key strategic debate over twenty years – from the immediate aftermath of 9/11, to Obama's surge and withdrawal, to Trump's negotiations with the Taliban, and Biden's final pullout is carefully reconstructed. Paul D. Miller identifies issues in US leadership, governance, military strategy, and policymaking that extend beyond the war in Afghanistan and highlight the existence of deeper problems in American foreign policy.
The way we govern the past to ensure peaceful futures keeps conflict anxieties alive. In pursuit of its own survival, permanence and legitimacy, the project of transitional justice, designed to put the 'Never Again' promise into practice, makes communities that ought to benefit from it anxious about potential repetition of conflict. This book challenges the benevolence of this human rights-led global project. It invites readers to reflect on the incompatibility between transitional justice and the grand goal of ensuring peace, and to imagine alternative and ungovernable futures. Rich in stories from the field, the author draws on personal experiences of conflict and transition in the former Yugoslavia to explore how different elements of transitional justice have changed the structure of this Bosnia and Herzegovina and neighbouring societies over the years. This powerful study is essential reading for students, scholars and practitioners interested in human rights and durable international peace.
In this unprecedented history of intelligence cooperation during the Cold War, Aviva Guttmann uncovers the key role of European intelligence agencies in facilitating Mossad's Operation Wrath of God. She reveals how, in the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre, Palestinians suspected of involvement in terrorism were hunted and killed by Mossad with active European cooperation. Through unique access to unredacted documents in the Club de Berne archive, she shows how a secret coalition of intelligence agencies supplied Mossad with information about Palestinians on a colossal scale and tacitly supported Israeli covert actions on European soil. These agencies helped to anticipate and thwart a number of Palestinian terrorist plots, including some revealed here for the first time. This extraordinary book reconstructs the hidden world of international intelligence, showing how this parallel order enabled state relations to be pursued independently of official foreign policy constraints or public scrutiny.
Does American influence help or hinder the capacity-building of partner states? In Hierarchy and the State, Patrick Shea challenges the conventional wisdom that US influence undermines state-building in developing countries, instead arguing that US support has actually enhanced state capacity over the past 40 years. The book asserts that American economic power plays a pivotal role in enhancing a state's ability to build and sustain itself. Tracing the evolution of US property rights promotion from 1782 to the present, it reveals the complex interplay of economic and security interests that shape American foreign policy. Through cutting-edge quantitative techniques and original data on US hierarchy, Hierarchy and the State provides robust evidence for the mechanisms linking international influence, property rights, and state-building outcomes. Its novel framework will change the way scholars examine the international politics of state-building.
Greater, lesser, or just different than the sum of their parts? For all their prominence in global affairs, international organizations remain relative strangers from the perspective of international legal theory. Drawing insights from philosophical discourse, this book moves past binary models that would have international organizations either be nothing over and above their members or simply analogous to them. Rather than compare international organizations and their members, Chasapis Tassinis asks us to understand them both as manifestations of communal organization and what international law recognizes as 'public' authority. Theorizing international organizations as only a branch within a broader family of corporate entities, this book allows us to untangle old doctrinal puzzles. These include the extent to which international organizations are bound by customary international law and can contribute to its formation, or whether they enjoy a legal personality that is opposable to members and non-members alike.
Not only did the anticolonial movements of the past two centuries help bring down the global order of colonial empires, they also produced novel, innovative and vital social thought. Anticolonialism has been largely ignored in conventional Europe-centered social thought and theory, but this book shows how our sociological imagination can be expanded by taking challenges to colonialism and imperialism seriously. Amidst their struggles to change the world, anticolonial actors offer devastating critiques of it, challenging the racism, economic exploitation, political exclusions and social inequalities central to imperialism and colonialism. Anticolonial thinkers and activists thereby seek to understand the world they are struggling against and, in the process, develop new concepts and theorize the world in new ways. Chapters by leading scholars help uncover this dissident tradition of social thought as the authors discuss an array of anticolonial thinkers, activists and movements from Palestine, India, South Africa, Brazil, Algeria and beyond.
Non-sovereign territories today account for more than half the states in the Caribbean but regional and global histories of the twentieth century tend to exclude them from narratives of protest and change. This book argues that our current understanding of global decolonisation is partial. We need a fuller picture which includes both independent and non-independent states, and moves beyond a focus on political independence, instead conceptualising decolonisation as a process of challenging and dismantling colonial structures and legacies. Decolonisation is neither an inevitable nor a linear process, but one which can ebb and flow as the colonial grip is weakened and sometimes restrengthened, often in new forms. Using the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Martinique and Guadeloupe as case studies, Grace Carrington demonstrates that a focus on the processes of decolonisation in these non-sovereign states enriches our understanding of the global experience of twentieth century decolonisation.
As international courts have risen in prominence, policymakers, practitioners and scholars observe variation in judicial deference. Sometimes international courts defer, whereby they accept a state's exercise of authority, and other times not. Differences can be seen in case outcomes, legal interpretation and reasoning, and remedial orders. How can we explain variation in deference? This book examines deference by international courts, offering a novel theoretical account. It argues that deference is explained by a court's strategic space, which is structured by formal independence, seen as a dimension of institutional design, and state preferences. An empirical analysis built on original data of the East African Court of Justice, Caribbean Court of Justice, and African Court of Human and Peoples' Rights demonstrates that robust safeguards to independence and politically fragmented memberships lend legitimacy to courts and make collective state resistance infeasible, combining to minimize deference. Persuasive argumentation and public legitimation also enable nondeference.
Why do states exit international organizations (IOs)? How often does exit from IOs – including voluntary withdrawal and forced suspension – occur? What are the effects of leaving IOs for the exiting state? Despite the importance of membership in IOs, a broader understanding of exit across states, organizations, and time has been limited. Exit from International Organizations addresses these lacunae through a theoretically grounded and empirically systematic study of IO exit. Von Borzyskowski and Vabulas argue that there is a common logic to IO exit which helps explain both its causes and consequences. By examining IO exit across 198 states, 534 IOs, and over a hundred years of history, they show that exit is driven by states' dissatisfaction, preference divergence, and is a strategy to negotiate institutional change. The book also demonstrates that exit is costly because it has reputational consequences for leaving states and significantly affects other forms of international cooperation.
How do states advance their national security interests? Conventional wisdom holds that states must court the risk of catastrophic war by 'tying their hands' to credibly protect their interests. Dan Reiter overturns this perspective with the compelling argument that states craft flexible foreign policies to avoid unwanted wars. Through a comprehensive analysis of key international crises, including the Berlin, Taiwan Straits, and Cuban Missile Crises, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars, Reiter provides new perspectives on the causes of wars, the role of international alliances, foreign troop deployments, leader madness, and the impact of AI on international relations. With critical insights into contemporary foreign policy challenges, such as America's role in NATO, the risks of war with China, containing a resurgent Russia, and the dangers of nuclear war, Untied Hands is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how states can effectively manage international crises while avoiding the wrong wars.
For decades, the field of scholarship that studies the law and practice of international organisations -also known as 'international institutional law'- has been marked by an intellectual quietism. Most of the scholarship tends to focus narrowly on providing 'legal' answers to 'legal' questions. For that reason, perspectives rarely engage with the insights of critical traditions of legal thought (for instance, feminist, postcolonial, or political economy-oriented perspectives) or with interdisciplinary contributions produced outside the field. Ways of Seeing International Organisations challenges the narrow gaze of the field by bringing together authors across multiple disciplines to reflect on the need for 'new' perspectives in international institutional law. Highlighting the limits of mainstream approaches, the authors instead interrogate international organisations as pivots in processes of world-making. To achieve this, the volume is organised around four fundamental themes: expertise; structure; performance; and capital. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
In a world demanding climate action, the oil-rich Gulf states face a pivotal moment. Can they transform their economies, built on fossil fuels, into sustainable powerhouses? This seminal work offers a comprehensive analysis of how Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar are navigating the complex transition towards decarbonization. Examining the intertwined forces of economic necessity, geopolitical shifts, and environmental pressures, the book illuminates the difficult choices and trade-offs these nations face. Through rigorous examination, it reveals the innovative policies, technological advancements, and evolving social contracts shaping the Gulf's energy future, while critically assessing the impact of decarbonization on their macroeconomic growth. This book is essential reading for scholars, policymakers, and industry leaders seeking to understand the complexities of the Gulf's energy landscape and its implications for the global fight against climate change.
Who are the mediators in international mediation? Where do they come from, why do they take up assignments, and what are their mandates? Isak Svensson and Peter Wallensteen – leading experts in mediation and conflict resolution – focus on the experiences of mediators and their mandates in Nordic countries, primarily Sweden, Norway and Finland. They explore why these countries are popular for this type of work, what their assets and shortcomings are, and how smaller countries can generate support for their efforts. Furthermore, they develop the 'Mediation Staircase' to assess achievements of mediation as a way to more effectively evaluate mediation with different types of mandates. The Peacemaking Mandate uses the Nordic experiences to provide valuable lessons for contemporary armed conflicts, wars and peace processes, which are becoming ever more important in times of turbulence across the world.
The intervention of States in legal proceedings touches upon some of the most beguiling questions in international dispute settlement. These include questions of treaty interpretation, obligations erga omnes, the sources of judicial power and rulemaking, the nature of incidental proceedings, the Monetary Gold doctrine of indispensable parties, cross-fertilization between judicial and arbitral bodies, and principles of jurisdiction, party autonomy, and res judicata. As jurists and scholars tend to address these questions in isolation, however, each development in third-State practice has raised unimagined issues of first impression-such as the 2022 declarations of dozens of States exploring mass intervention before the International Court of Justice in Ukraine v. Russia, and the participation of neighbouring States without China's presence in the 2016 South China Sea arbitration. By applying conceptual, comparative, and historical approaches to international justice, this book instead offers a uniquely holistic assessment of the practice and prospective development of intervention.
Securing Democracies examines the attacks on voting processes and the broader informational environment in which elections takes place. The volume's global cadre of scholars and practitioners highlight the interconnections among efforts to target vulnerable democratic systems and identifies ways to prevent, defend against, and mitigate their effects on both the technical and informational aspects of cybersecurity. The work takes a wider view of defending democracy by recognizing that both techniques-attacking infrastructure and using misinformation and disinformation-are means to undermine trust and confidence in democratic institutions. As such, the book proposes a wide range of policy responses to tackle these cyber-enabled threats focusing on the geopolitical front lines, namely Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
How did modern territoriality emerge and what are its consequences? This book examines these key questions with a unique global perspective. Kerry Goettlich argues that linear boundaries are products of particular colonial encounters, rather than being essentially an intra-European practice artificially imposed on colonized regions. He reconceptualizes modern territoriality as a phenomenon separate from sovereignty and the state, based on expert practices of delimitation and demarcation. Its history stems from the social production of expertise oriented towards these practices. Employing both primary and secondary sources, From Frontiers to Borders examines how this expertise emerged in settler colonies in North America and in British India – cases which illuminate a range of different types of colonial rule and influence. It also explores some of the consequences of the globalization of modern territoriality, exposing the colonial origins of Boundary Studies, and the impact of boundary experts on the Paris Peace Conference of 1919–20.
This book provides insight into the impact of climate change on human mobility - including both migration and displacement - by synthesizing key concepts, research, methodology, policy, and emerging issues surrounding the topic. It illuminates the connections between climate change and its implications for voluntary migration, involuntary displacement, and immobility by providing examples from around the world. The chapters use the latest findings from the natural and social sciences to identify key interactions shaping current climate-related migration, displacement, and immobility; predict future changes in those patterns and methods used to model them; summarize key policy and governance instruments available to us to manage the movements of people in a changing climate; and offer directions for future research and opportunities. This book will be valuable for students, researchers, and policy makers of geography, environmental science, climate and sustainability studies, demography, sociology, public policy, and political science.
The book examines the significance of the issue of political legitimacy at the international level, focusing on international law. It adopts a descriptive, critical and reconstructive approach. In order to do so, the book clarifies what political legitimacy is in general and in the context of international law. The book analyses how international law contributes to a sense of legitimacy through notions such as international membership, international rights holding, fundamental principles and hierarchy of rights holding, rightful conduct and international authority. In addition, the book stresses the serious limitations of legitimacy of international law and of the current international order that it contributes to regulate and manage. This leads the book to identify the conditions under which international order and international law could overcome their problems of legitimacy and become more legitimate. The book is inter-disciplinary in nature, mobilizing international law, political and legal theory, philosophy, history, and political science.
Civil wars and intrastate armed conflict are the predominant form of organized violence in the contemporary era. Beyond their direct devastating impact, they fundamentally change societies and are linked to broader global issues and challenges. Taking a thematic approach with a focus on conflict management and peacebuilding, this accessible textbook engages with recent research and comprehensive data to explore the nature of civil war and violent intrastate conflict. With analysis of current and historical conflicts integrated into the chapter coverage, helpful features include boxes highlighting key cases and topics, discussion points opening each chapter, graphs that illustrate important trends, photographs of significant conflicts, suggested readings for each chapter, and a timeline signposting major conflict and security events since 1945. Lecture slides are provided to instructors as an accessible entry point to topics for students from different backgrounds, including those less familiar with data.