Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> International Relations - Arms Control

Too often, our focus on the relative handful of countries with nuclear weapons keeps us from asking an important question: Why do so many more states not have such weapons? More important, what can we learn from these examples of nuclear restraint? Maria Rost Rublee argues that in addition to understanding a state's security environment, we must appreciate the social forces that influence how states conceptualize the value of nuclear weapons. Much of what Rublee says also applies to other weapons of mass destruction, as well as national security decision making in general.

The...

Over the last decade, the failure of countries to emerge from conflict and the rise of 'failed states' has focused attention on state security sectors. External actors involved in 'protectorates' such as Kosovo and East Timor and peace agreements such as Cambodia, El Salvador or Bosnia have come face to face with the problems exposed by factionalised, wrong-sized, dictatorial and non-professional security sectors. Consequently, international institutions, the UN or World Bank, for example, and individual government ministries in countries such as the UK, USA and Germany have been...

How can the core transatlantic Allies make coalitions more effective? One year on from Kosovo, disparities in the capabilities of the coalition partners, as well as uneven levels of prior coordination, persist. To address these problems will require much greater force planning in peacetime.

This stimulating and influential work offers one of the most comprehensive independent assessments to date of the Kosovo campaign, and of the performance of the NATO allies. An important subject area in which there is a great deal of international interest.

Given their protracted economic difficulties, the nuclear and aerospace industries in Russia and Ukraine are tempted to export dual-use technologies that can contribute to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missile systems. John C. Baker proposes using international incentives to discourage irresponsible export behaviour while seeking long-term changes in the non-proliferation attitudes of their managers and government leaders.

This edited volume examines the impact of globalisation on the economies, security policies and military-industrial complexes of the Asia-Pacific region.

The work is structured into three main parts. The first explores globalization and its general effects on the policy-making of the nation-state; the second section looks at how globalisation affects a country's threat perception and defence posture within the specific context of the Asia-Pacific region; while the third explores how it impacts on a state's allocation of resources to defence, and how economic globalization affects...

This book examines the origins, functioning and work, successes and difficulties, and the continuing relevance of four UN bodies to meet the challenges of the 21st century. 

This volume examines theoretical and empirical issues relating to cyberconflict and its implications for global security and politics.

Taking a multidimensional approach to current debates in internet politics, the book comprises essays by leading experts from across the world. The volume includes a comprehensive introduction to current debates in the field and their ramifications for global politics, and follows this with empirical case studies. These include cyberconflict, cyberwars, information warfare and hacktivism, in contexts such as Sri Lanka, Lebanon and Estonia, the...

Russia is the world's foremost energy superpower, rivaling Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer and accounting for a quarter of the world's exports of natural gas. Russia's energy reserves account for half of the world's probable oil reserves and a third of the world's proven natural gas reserves. Whereas military might and nuclear weapons formed the core of Soviet cold war power, since 1991 the Russian state has viewed its monopolistic control of Russia's energy resources as the core of its power now and for the future. Since 2005, the international news has been filled with...

In Blood and Capital: The Paramilitarization of Colombia, Jasmin Hristov examines the complexities, dynamics, and contradictions of present-day armed conflict in Colombia. She conducts an in-depth inquiry into the restructuring of the state's coercive apparatus and the phenomenon of paramilitarism by looking at its military, political, and legal dimensions. Hristov demonstrates how various interrelated forms of violence by state forces, paramilitary groups, and organized crime are instrumental to the process of capital accumulation by the local elite as well as the exercise of...