Showing titles in Geopolitics

How to respond effectively to humanitarian crises is one of the most pressing and seemingly intractable problems facing the United Nations. Martin Barber, for many years a senior UN official and with decades of humanitarian experience, here argues that the explanation for UN 'failures' or only partial successes lies not with any lack of idealism or good intentions but with the constraints placed on aid workers by ill-considered policies and poor practical application officials are 'blinded by humanity'.

This book delves into genocide in Palestine, and the war crisis in eastern Europe, West Asia and East Asia. It examines the role of the Big Lie in blunting popular opposition, and describes ways countries around the world and the general public are pressing for peace.

As a new administration focuses on raising American energy production, O'Sullivan's Windfall describes how new energy realities have profoundly affected the world of international relations and security. New technologies led to oversupplied oil markets and an emerging natural gas glut. This did more than drive down prices. It changed the structure of markets and altered the way many countries wield power and influence.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine, it invaded Georgia. Both states are part of Russia's "near abroad"—newly independent states that were once part of the Soviet Union. While the Russia-Georgia war of 2008 faded from the headlines in the wake of the global recession, the geopolitical contest that created it did not. Six years later, the specter of a revanchist Russia returned when Putin's forces invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula. Eminent political geographer Gerard Toal moves beyond the polemical rhetoric to study the underlying territorial conflicts and geopolitical struggles.

"In formula: la geopolitica umana studia l’interazione tra collettività collocate nello spazio geografico calandosi nello sguardo altrui. Oggetto della sua analisi sono le aggregazioni umane, in ogni realizzazione storica. Tribù, póleis, comuni. Fino all’epoca corrente, dominata dagli Stati-nazione, dagli imperi. Mai i singoli individui. Tantomeno i leader. Ritenuti irrilevanti, mero prodotto della realtà che pensano di determinare. Nella migliore accezione, soggetti che incarnano lo spirito del tempo. "

In 2017, Elizabeth Shackelford wrote a pointed resignation letter to her then boss, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. She had watched as the State Department was gutted, and now she urged him to stem the bleeding by showing leadership and commitment to his diplomats and the country. If he couldn't do that, she said, "I humbly recommend that you follow me out the door." With that, she sat down to write her story and share an urgent message. In The Dissent Channel, former diplomat Elizabeth Shackelford shows that this is not a new problem.

A timely primer on the conflict between the United States and Iran by scholars of Middle Eastern politics who advocate diplomacy and de-escalation.

In the next decade and a half, China and India will become two of the world's indispensable powers - whether they rise peacefully or not. During that time, Asia will surpass the combined strength of North America and Europe in economic might, population size, and military spending. Both India and China will have vetoes over many international decisions, from climate change to global trade, human rights, and business standards.

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the most ambitious infrastructure project ever undertaken, and will ultimately result in more than one trillion dollars of investment by the time it is finished. The initiative is breathtaking in its scope and scale, with scores of countries participating and dozens of massive dams, railways, roads, and power projects transforming the landscape throughout the developing world.

In this urgent and timely book, Patrick Cockburn writes the first draft of the history of the current crisis in the Middle East. Here he charts the period from the recapture of Mosul in 2017 to Turkey's attack on Kurdish territory in November 2019, and recounts the new phase in the wars of disintegration that have plagued the region. The ground battle with the caliphate is perhaps over, but was this the end of the conflict that has scarred these nations for decades?

By the time one finishes reading this penetrating book of history, politics, and public health, the very real COVID-19 crisis of 2020 becomes a metaphor for China’s quest for hegemony. Helen Raleigh shows how Communist China, like the virus that began there, has spread its influence aggressively around the world. She begins with China's suppression of people within its own borders.

The world is at a turning point. The benefits of globalization - through the freer flow of money, people, ideas, and trade - have been many. But rather than a world that is flat, what has emerged is one of jagged peaks and rough, deep valleys characterized by wealth inequality, indebtedness, political recession, and imbalances across the world's economies. These peaks and valleys are undergoing what Michael O'Sullivan calls "the levelling" - a major transition in world economics, finance, and power. What's next is a levelling-out of wealth....

There is a popular belief among Americans, and particularly among Christian Zionists, that the territory of historical Palestine rightfully belonged to the Jewish people because of their ancient connection to the land. Many even believe hoax claims such as that Arabs only started populating the area in a wave of mass immigration to take advantage of the economic development from Jews returning to the land in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; that no such place as “Palestine” ever really existed; and that the idea of a “Palestinian” people is a modern invention.

In Adults in the Room, Yanis Varoufakis exposes the shocking reality of how power is wielded behind the scenes at the EU - and argues that only radical reform can save it from collapse. Yanis Varoufakis became globally famous when was elected finance minister of Greece with a specific mandate to say no to the EU: to reject the forced loans and crushing austerity forced upon his country by the Eurozone.

How China Loses tells the story of China's struggles to overcome new risks and endure the global backlash against its assertive reach. Combining on-the-ground reportage with incisive analysis, Luke Patey argues that China's predatory economic agenda, headstrong diplomacy, and military expansion undermine its global ambitions to dominate the global economy and world affairs.

The PRC is engaged in political warfare against most countries of the world. This is an aggressive brand of total war that integrates all aspects of PRC national power into its political warfare campaigns. Open societies normally lack government understanding and response to the political warfare threat, therefore typically establishing weak applicable laws and policies to combat it.

From the Baltic to the South China Sea, newly assertive authoritarian states sense an opportunity to resurrect old empires or build new ones at America's expense. Hoping that US decline is real, nations such as Russia, Iran, and China are testing Washington's resolve by targeting vulnerable allies at the frontiers of American power. The Unquiet Frontier explains why the United States needs a new grand strategy that uses strong frontier alliance networks to raise the costs of military aggression in the new century.

In this gripping essay, Hugh White explores Australia’s fateful choice to back America to the hilt and oppose China. What led both sides of politics to align with America so absolutely? Is this a case of sleepwalking to war? What tests might a new government face? White assesses America’s credibility and commitment, by examining AUKUS, the Quad, Trump and Biden. He discusses what the Ukraine conflict tells us about the future. And he argues that the US can neither contain China nor win a war over Taiwan. So where does this leave our future security and prosperity in Asia?

In Americans in China, Terry Lautz provides a series of biographical portraits of Americans who have lived and worked in China from before the Communist era to the present. The pathbreaking experiences of these men and women provide unique insights and deeply human perspectives on issues that have shaped US engagement with the People's Republic: politics, diplomacy, education, business, art, law, journalism, and human rights.

In Someone Is Out to Get Us, Brian T. Brown explores the delusions, absurdities, and best-kept secrets of the Cold War, during which the United States fought an enemy of its own making for over 40 years - and nearly scared itself to death in the process. The nation chose to fear a chimera, a rotting communist empire that couldn't even feed itself, only for it to be revealed that what lay behind the Iron Curtain was only a sad Potemkin village.