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The history of the modern social sciences can be seen as a series of attempts to confront the challenges of social disorder and revolution wrought by the international expansion of capitalist social relations. Alexander Anievas focuses on one particularly significant aspect of this story: the intersocietal or geosocial origins of the two world wars, and, more broadly, the confluence of factors behind the Thirty Years’ Crisis between 1914 and 1945.

Anievas presents the Thirty Years’ Crisis as a result of the development of global capitalism with all its destabilizing social and geopolitical consequences, particularly the intertwined and co-constitutive nature of imperial rivalries, social revolutions, and anti-colonial struggles. Building on the theory of uneven and combined development, he unites geopolitical and sociological explanations into a single framework, thereby circumventing the analytical stalemate between primacy of domestic politics and primacy of foreign policy approaches.

China’s Challenges and International Order Transition introduces an integrated conceptual framework of “international order” categorized by three levels (power, rules, and norms) and three issue-areas (security, political, and economic). Each contributor engages one or more of these analytical dimensions to examine two questions: (1) Has China already challenged this dimension of international order? (2) How will China challenge this dimension of international order in the future?

The contested views and perspectives in this volume suggest it is too simple to assume an inevitable conflict between China and the outside world. With different strategies to challenge or reform the many dimensions of international order, China’s role is not a one-way street. It is an interactive process in which the world may change China as much as China may change the world.

The aim of the book is to broaden the debate beyond the “Thucydides Trap” perspective currently popular in the West. Rather than offering a single argument, this volume offers a platform for scholars, especially Chinese scholars vs. Western scholars, to exchange and debate their different views and perspectives on China and the potential transition of international order.

Why does the United States need European allies, and why is it getting more difficult for those allies to partner with Washington in standing up to China, pushing back against Russia, and pursuing other common interests around the world? This book addresses the economic, demographic, political, and military trends that are fundamentally upending the ability and willingness of European allies to work with Washington. Brexit and its impact on Britain’s economy and its military, Germany’s seemingly relentless economic and political rise, France’s continuing economic malaise, Italy’s aging population and its withdrawal from major overseas operations, and Poland’s demographic decline and single-minded obsession with Russia will combine to make partnership with Washington nearly impossible. In short, the constellation of allies and partners the United States has relied on since 9/11 will look very different a decade from now. How should Washington respond? It doesn’t hold all the cards, but this book offers an array of practical recommendations for American leaders. By leveraging these proposals, U.S. policy-makers can avoid the worst-case scenarios and make the most of limited opportunities.

Concepts are socially and linguistically constructed and used for multiple purposes, such as justifying war in the name of democracy; or, using the idea of democracy to resist Western intervention and influence. In this fascinating and novel edited collection, Piki Ish-Shalom and the contributors interrogate the “conceptions of concepts” in international relations. Using theoretical frameworks from Gramsci and Bourdieu, among others, the authors show that not interrogating the meaning of the language we use to talk about international relations obscures the way we understand (or portray) IR.  The authors examine self-determination, winning in war, avoidance of war, military design and reform agenda, vagueness in political discourse, “blue economy,” friendship, and finally, the very idea of the “international community” itself. As the author asserts, Bourdieu’s sociology of field and Gramsci’s political theory, combined, “offer us a socio-political theory of relations of power and domination concealed by doxic knowledge and taken-for-granted rules, in which essential contested concepts and political-serving conceptions can and do play an important role.”