BiblioVault - Books about World politics

When the Stakes Are High

Deterrence and Conflict among Major Powers

Vesna Danilovic

University of Michigan Press, 2002

When the Stakes Are High is based on the premise that powers have continually played a decisive role in international conflicts. Consequently, one of the key questions concerns the conditions that are likely to trigger or abate dispute escalation into major power conflicts. In this book, Vesna Danilovic provides a rigorous theoretical and empirical analysis of these conditions.
Since the most precarious and common form of dispute between major powers arises over third nations, the author's primary focus is on so-called extended deterrence. In this type of deterrence, one side attempts to prevent another side from initiating or escalating conflict with a third nation. When the Stakes Are High addresses such questions as: When is extended deterrence likely to be effective? What happens if deterrence fails? In what circumstances is war likely to result from a deterrence failure? The author's main argument is that a major power's national interests, which shape the inherent credibility of threats and which are shaped by various regional stakes, set the limits to the relevance of other factors, which have received greater scholarly attention in the past. Strongly supported by the empirical findings, the arguments in this work draw important implications for conflict theory and deterrence policy in the post-Cold War era.
This book will appeal to the reader interested in international relations, in general, and in theories of international conflict, deterrence, causes of wars, great power behavior, and geopolitics, in particular.
Vesna Danilovic is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Texas A&M University.

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Which World?

Scenarios For The 21St Century

Allen Hammond

Island Press, 1998

In Which World?, scientist Allen Hammond imaginatively probes the consequences of present social, economic, and environmental trends to construct three possible worlds that could await us in the twenty-first century: Market World, in which economic and human progress is driven by the liberating power of free markets and human initiative; Fortress World, in which unattended social and environmental problems diminish progress, dooming hundreds of millions of humans to lives of rising conflict and violence; and Transformed World, in which human ingenuity and compassion succeed in offering a better life, not just a wealthier one, and in seeking to extend those benefits to all of humanity.

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WHO INTERVENES?

ETHNIC CONFLICT AND INTERSTATE CRISIS

DAVID CARMENT

The Ohio State University Press, 2006

Who Intervenes? takes as a given that there are tensions among ethnic groups throughout the world. But it is not at all clear when and why these tensions escalate into violence. The likelihood and character of intervention depend upon the interplay of two factors: ethnic composition and institutional constraint. A fourfold typology is produced. For example, states with high constraints and ethnic diversity are likely to intervene only for reasons related to national interests, while states with both ethnic dominance and low constraint are most disposed to intervene. The disposition to intervene is catalyzed, the authors hypothesize, by the presence of ethnic affinity and cleavage.

The book includes a comparative analysis of five case studies: India and Sri Lanka, Somalia and Ethiopia, Malaysia and the Thai Malay (a non-intervention), the immediate aftermath of the breakup of Yugoslavia, and Greece and Turkey with Cyprus. The case histories produce strong support for the relevance of the typology and catalysts. Ethnic composition, institutional constraint, and ethnic affinity and cleavage are very useful factors in distinguishing both the likelihood and form of intervention.

Policies that encourage institutional reform and support ethnic diversity can be expected to reduce the likelihood and even the perceived need for intervention.

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The Will of the Many

How the Alterglobalisation Movement is Changing the Face of Democracy

Marianne Maeckelbergh

Pluto Press, 2009

Never before has the idea of democracy enjoyed the global dominance it holds today, but neoliberalism has left the practice of democracy in deep crisis.

Marianne Maeckelbergh argues that the most promising model for global democracy is not coming from traditional political parties or international institutions, but from the global networks of resistance to neoliberal economics, known collectively as the Alter-globalisation movement. Through extensive ethnography of decision-making practices within these movements, Maeckelbergh describes an alternative form of global democracy in the making.

Perfect for activists and students of political anthropology, this powerful and enlightening book offers radical changes.

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World Politics and International Law

Francis Anthony Boyle

Duke University Press, 1985

This work tries to bridge the gap between international lawyers and those political scientists who write about international politics. In the first part, the author discusses the influence of Professor Morgenthau's realist school on the current thinking of political scientists and the abandonment of this school by its originator in the last years of his life. The author concludes that the best way to test the validity of different approaches is to discuss various international crises in the light of contrasting theories and to analyze each situation from both the legal and political points of view. In particular, he tries to ascertain to what extent vital national interests could be accommodated within an international legal framework, or could require a distortion of international rules in order to achieve national objectives.

In the second part, the author dissects the Entebbe raid, where Israeli forces rescued a group of hostages being detained by hijackers at a Ugandan airport. His analysis shows the deficiencies of the international system in dealing with such a complex issue, where several contradictory principles of international law could be applied and were defended by various protagonists.

The third part starts with a parallel problem--the Iranian hostages crisis, where a group of U.S. officials found themselves in an unprecedented situation of being captured by a band of students. A critical analysis of the handling of this problem by the Carter Administration is followed by vignettes of other crises faced by the Administration and by its successor, the Reagan Administration. This part is less analytical and more prescriptive. The author is no long satisfied with pointing out what went wrong; instead, he departs from the usual hands-off policy of political scientists and tries to indicate how much better each situation could have been handled if the decision makers had been paying more attention to international law and international organizations. The theme is slowly developed that in the long run national interest is better served not by practicing power politics and relying on the use of threat of force but by strengthening those international institutions that can provide a neutral environment for first slowing down a crisis and then finding an equitable solution acceptable to most of the parties in conflict.

The value of this book lies primarily in giving the reader a real insight into several important issues of today that are familiar to most people only from newspaper headlines and television news. While not everybody can agree with all his criticisms of the mistakes of various governments, there is an honest attempt by the author to present issues impartially and to let the blame fall where it may. Being both an international lawyer and a political scientist, the author has had the advantage of combining the methodology of these two social sciences into a rich tapestry with some startling shades and tones.

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World's Fairs in the Cold War

Science, Technology, and the Culture of Progress

Arthur P. Molella

University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019

The post–World War II science-based technological revolution inevitably found its way into almost all international expositions with displays on atomic energy, space exploration, transportation, communications, and computers. Major advancements in Cold War science and technology helped to shape new visions of utopian futures, the stock-in-trade of world’s fairs. From the 1940s to the 1980s, expositions in the United States and around the world, from Brussels to Osaka to Brisbane, mirrored Cold War culture in a variety of ways, and also played an active role in shaping it. This volume illustrates the cultural change and strain spurred by the Cold War, a disruptive period of scientific and technological progress that ignited growing concern over the impact of such progress on the environment and humanistic and spiritual values. Through the lens of world’s fairs, contributors across disciplines offer an integrated exploration of the US–USSR rivalry from a global perspective and in the context of broader social and cultural phenomena—faith and religion, gender and family relations, urbanization and urban planning, fashion, modernization, and national identity—all of which were fundamentally reshaped by tensions and anxieties of the Atomic Age.

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World's Fairs on the Eve of War

Science, Technology, and Modernity, 1937–1942

Robert H. Kargon

University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015

Since the first world’s fair in London in 1851, at the dawn of the era of industrialization, international expositions served as ideal platforms for rival nations to showcase their advancements in design, architecture, science and technology, industry, and politics. Before the outbreak of World War II, countries competing for leadership on the world stage waged a different kind of war—with cultural achievements and propaganda—appealing to their own national strengths and versions of modernity in the struggle for power. World’s Fairs on the Eve of War examines five fairs and expositions from across the globe—including three that were staged (Paris, 1937; Dusseldorf, 1937; and New York, 1939–40), and two that were in development before the war began but never executed (Tokyo, 1940; and Rome, 1942). This coauthored work considers representations of science and technology at world’s fairs as influential cultural forces and at a critical moment in history, when tensions and ideological divisions between political regimes would soon lead to war.

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Writing Political History Today

Edited by Willibald Steinmetz, Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey, and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt

Campus Verlag, 2013

In recent years political history has been rediscovered by historians. In this volume the contributors approach the new political history in a constructivist way, conceiving the political as a communicative space whose boundaries are constantly reconfigured through acts of verbal, visual, and sometimes violent communication. Writing Political History Today is organized into four sections, focusing on politics and the political as contested concepts; boundary disputes between the political and other spheres; the question whether violence is a means, an object, or the end of political communication; and on a future agenda for writing political history.

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