front cover of Crude Strategy
Crude Strategy
Rethinking the US Military Commitment to Defend Persian Gulf Oil
Charles L. Glaser and Rosemary A. Kelanic, Editors
Georgetown University Press, 2016

Should the United States ask its military to guarantee the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf? If the US security commitment is in fact strategically sound, what posture should the military adopt to protect Persian Gulf oil?

Charles L. Glaser and Rosemary A. Kelanic present a collection of new essays from a multidisciplinary team of political scientists, historians, and economists that provide answers to these questions. Contributors delve into a range of vital economic and security issues: the economic costs of a petroleum supply disruption, whether or not an American withdrawal increases the chances of oil-related turmoil, the internal stability of Saudi Arabia, budgetary costs of the forward deployment of US forces, and the possibility of blunting the effects of disruptions with investment in alternative energy resources. The result is a series of bold arguments toward a much-needed revision of US policy toward the Persian Gulf during an era of profound change in oil markets and the balance of power in the Middle East.

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Cuba and the United States
Intervention and Militarism, 1868-1933
By Jose M. Hernández
University of Texas Press, 1993

When Cuba threw off the yoke of Spanish rule at the end of the nineteenth century, it did so with the help of another foreign power, the United States. Thereafter, the United States became involved in Cuban affairs, intervening twice militarily (1898-1902 and 1906-1909). What was the effect of U.S. intervention?

Conventional wisdom indicates that U.S. intervention hindered the rise of militarism in Cuba in the early years of statehood. This pathfinding study, however, takes just the opposite view. Jose M. Hernández argues that while U.S. influence may have checked the worst excesses of the Independence-war veterans who assumed control of Cuba's government, it did not completely deter them from resorting to violence. Thus, a tradition of using violence as a method for transferring power developed in Cuba that often made a mockery of democratic processes.

In substantiating this innovative interpretation, Hernández covers a crucial phase in Cuban history that has been neglected by most recent U.S. historians. Correcting stereotypes and myths, he takes a fresh and dispassionate look at Cuba's often romanticized struggle for political emancipation, describing and analyzing in persuasive detail civilmilitary relations throughout the period. This puts national hero Jose Martí's role in the 1895-1898 war of independence in an unusual perspective and sets in bold relief the historical forces that went underground in 1898-1902, only to resurface a few years later.

This study will be of interest to all students of hemispheric relations. It presents not only a more accurate picture of the Cuba spawned by American intervention, but also the Cuban side of a story that too frequently has been told solely from the U.S. point of view.

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front cover of Cuba, Castro, and the United States
Cuba, Castro, and the United States
Philip W. Bonsal
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971
Bonsal combines his memoirs of his experiences in Havana with an analysis of the relationship between Cuba and the United States both during the Batista and Castro regimes and during the earlier history of the Cuban Republic.

His discussion of Castro's personality is incisive, portraying the Maximum Leader's increasing animosity toward the United States until the final break-off of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Bonsal's observations of Castro and the sociopolitical climate in Cuba are perhaps the most incisive and accurate of any to date on the subject.

All the events from the Revolution to the termination of diplomatic relations are discussed. Of particular interest are Bonsal's accounts of his attempt to find a basis for a rational relationship between the United States and Castro's Revolution, the rejection of that attempt by Castro, and the abandonment by Washington of the policy of nonintervention in Cuban affairs which the Ambassador had advocated.

Finally, in an evaluation of future relations between the two countries, Bonsal analyzes some of the major problems of the coming years.
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The Cuban Counterrevolution
Jesús Arboleya
Ohio University Press, 2000

For forty years the Cuban Revolution has been at the forefront of American public opinion, yet few are knowledgeable about the history of its enemies and the responsibility of the U.S. government in organizing and sustaining the Cuban counterrevolution. Available in English for the first time, this outstanding study by Cuban historian and former diplomat Jesús Arboleya traces the evolution of the counterrevolutionary movement from its beginnings before 1959, to its transformation into the Cuban-American groups that today dominate U.S. policy toward Cuba. Arboleya also analyzes the role played by Cuban immigrants to the U.S. and the perspectives for improvement in relations between the two nations as a result of the generational and social changes that have been occurring in the Cuban-American community.

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front cover of The Cuban Embargo
The Cuban Embargo
The Domestic Politics of an American Foreign Policy
Patrick Haney
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005

The United States and Cuba share a complex, fractious, interconnected history. Before 1959, the United States was the island nation's largest trading partner. But in swift reaction to Cuba's communist revolution, the United States severed all economic ties between the two nations, initiating the longest trade embargo in modern history, one that continues to the presentday. The Cuban Embargo examines the changing politics of U.S. policy toward Cuba over the more than four decades since the revolution.

While the U.S. embargo policy itself has remained relatively stable since its origins during the heart of the Cold War, the dynamics that produce and govern that policy have changed dramatically. Although originally dominated by the executive branch, the president's tight grip over policy has gradually ceded to the influence of interest groups, members of Congress, and specific electoral campaigns and goals. Haney and Vanderbush track the emergence of the powerful Cuban American National Foundation as an ally of the Reagan administration, and they explore the more recent development of an anti-embargo coalition within both civil society and Congress, even as the Helms-Burton Act and the George W. Bush administration have further tightened the embargo. Ultimately they demonstrate how the battles over Cuba policy, as with much U.S. foreign policy, have as much to do with who controls the policy as with the shape of that policy itself.

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front cover of Cultured Force
Cultured Force
Makers and Defenders of the French Colonial Empire
Barnett Singer and John Langdon
University of Wisconsin Press, 2008
Bridging gaps between intellectual history, biography, and military/colonial history, Barnett Singer and John Langdon provide a challenging, readable interpretation of French imperialism and some of its leading figures from the early modern era through the Fifth Republic.  They ask us to rethink and reevaluate, pulling away from the usual shoal of simplistic condemnation.  In a series of finely-etched biographical studies, and with much detail on both imperial culture and wars (including World War I and II), they offer a balanced, deep, strong portrait of key makers and defenders of the French Empire, one that will surely stimulate much historical work in the field.
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Cultures of Border Control
Schengen and the Evolution of European Frontiers
Ruben Zaiotti
University of Chicago Press, 2011

In recent years, a number of European countries abolished national border controls in favor of Europe’s external frontiers. In doing so, they challenged long-established conceptions of sovereignty, territoriality, and security in world affairs. 

Setting forth a new analytic framework informed by constructivism and pragmatism, Ruben Zaiotti traces the transformation of underlying assumptions and cultural practices guiding European policymakers and postnational Europe, shedding light on current trends characterizing its politics and relations with others. The book also includes a fascinating comparison to developments in North America, where the United States has pursued more restrictive border control strategies since 9/11. As a broad survey of the origins, evolution, and implications of this remarkable development in European integration, Cultures of Border Control will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations and political geography.

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front cover of The Cultures of Globalization
The Cultures of Globalization
Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi, eds.
Duke University Press, 1998
A pervasive force that evades easy analysis, globalization has come to represent the export and import of culture, the speed and intensity of which has increased to unprecedented levels in recent years. The Cultures of Globalization presents an international panel of intellectuals who consider the process of globalization as it concerns the transformation of the economic into the cultural and vice versa; the rise of consumer culture around the world; the production and cancellation of forms of subjectivity; and the challenges it presents to national identity, local culture, and traditional forms of everyday life.
Discussing overlapping themes of transnational consequence, the contributors to this volume describe how the global character of technology, communication networks, consumer culture, intellectual discourse, the arts, and mass entertainment have all been affected by recent worldwide trends. Appropriate to such diversity of material, the authors approach their topics from a variety of theoretical perspectives, including those of linguistics, sociology, economics, anthropology, and the law. Essays examine such topics as free trade, capitalism, the North and South, Eurocentrism, language migration, art and cinema, social fragmentation, sovereignty and nationhood, higher education, environmental justice, wealth and poverty, transnational corporations, and global culture. Bridging the spheres of economic, political, and cultural inquiry, The Cultures of Globalization offers crucial insights into many of the most significant changes occurring in today’s world.

Contributors. Noam Chomsky, Ioan Davies, Manthia Diawara, Enrique Dussel, David Harvey, Sherif Hetata, Fredric Jameson, Geeta Kapur, Liu Kang, Joan Martinez-Alier, Masao Miyoshi, Walter D. Mignolo, Alberto Moreiras, Paik Nak-chung, Leslie Sklair, Subramani, Barbara Trent

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Curating Community
Museums, Constitutionalism, and the Taming of the Political
Stacy Douglas
University of Michigan Press, 2017
In Curating Community: Museums, Constitutionalism, and the Taming of the Political, Stacy Douglas challenges the centrality of sovereignty in our political and juridical imaginations. Creatively bringing together constitutional, political, and aesthetic theory, Douglas argues that museums and constitutions invite visitors to identify with a prescribed set of political constituencies based on national, ethnic, or anthropocentric premises. In both cases, these stable categories gloss over the radical messiness of the world and ask us to conflate representation with democracy. Yet the museum, when paired with the constitution, can also serve as a resource in the production of alternative imaginations of community. Consequently, Douglas’s key contribution is the articulation of a theory of counter-monumental constitutionalism, using the museum, that seeks to move beyond individual and collective forms of sovereignty that have dominated postcolonial and postapartheid theories of law and commemoration. She insists on the need to reconsider deep questions about how we conceptualize the limits of ourselves, as well as our political communities, in order to attend to everyday questions of justice in the courtroom, the museum, and beyond.
Curating Community is a book for academics, artists, curators, and constitutional designers interested in legacies of violence, transitional justice, and democracy.

 
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front cover of Currency Statecraft
Currency Statecraft
Monetary Rivalry and Geopolitical Ambition
Benjamin J. Cohen
University of Chicago Press, 2018
At any given time, a limited number of national currencies are used as instruments of international commerce, to settle foreign trade transactions or store value for investors and central banks. How countries whose currencies gain international appeal choose to use this status forms their strategy of currency statecraft. In different circumstances, issuing governments may welcome and promote the internationalization of their currency, tolerate it, or actively oppose it. Benjamin J. Cohen offers a provocative explanation of the strategic policy choices at play.
           
In a comprehensive review that ranges from World War II to the present, Cohen convincingly argues that one goal stands out as the primary motivation for currency statecraft: the extent of a country’s geopolitical ambition, or how driven it is to build or sustain a prominent place in the international community. When a currency becomes internationalized, it generally increases the power of the nation that produces it. In the persistent contestation that characterizes global politics, that extra edge can matter greatly, making monetary rivalry an integral component of geopolitics. Today, the major example of monetary rivalry is the emerging confrontation between the US dollar and the Chinese renminbi. Cohen describes how China has vigorously promoted the international standing of its currency in recent years, even at the risk of exacerbating relations with the United States, and explains how the outcome could play a major role in shaping the broader geopolitical engagement between the two superpowers. 
 
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Cyprus
The Post-Imperial Constitution
Vassilis K. Fouskas and Alex O. Tackie
Pluto Press, 2009


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