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"Combining a rich and varied set of theoretical insights with a subtle analysis of the politics of American foreign policy, Defacing Power marks an important contribution toward understanding the power of identity in world politics. Engagingly written and rigorously argued, Steele's challenging analysis is incisive, important, and rewarding."
---Michael C. Williams, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa

"Brent Steele's marvelous excavation of the aesthetic dimensions of power is strikingly irreverent, inasmuch as he displays no commitment to ex ante disciplinary or substantive constraints in his quest to disclose those moments of creative action so often overlooked by theories and theorists wedded to the grandiose and the transhistorical. Steele samples and remixes a myriad of sources, arranging them so as to produce a transgressively insightful account of how 'work on the Self,' often condemned as self-indulgent by prior generations of intellectuals, might just point in the direction of a more sustainably secure world."
---Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, School of International Service, American University

"Defacing Power successfully integrates work from Dewey to Morgenthau to Foucault, as well as a wide range of contemporary international relations scholars, in its genealogy of power conceptualizations and characteristics. This book is theoretically sophisticated and serious. It should be of interest to students of international politics, international theory, social theory, and foreign policy."
---Cecelia Lynch, Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies, University of California, Irvine

Defacing Power investigates how nation-states create self-images in part through aesthetics and how these images can be manipulated to challenge those states' power. Although states have long employed media, such as radio, television, and film, for their own image-making purposes, counterpower agents have also seized upon new telecommunications technologies. Most recently, the Internet has emerged as contested territory where states and other actors wage a battle of words and images.

Moving beyond theory, Brent Steele illustrates his provocative argument about the vulnerability of power with examples from recent history: the My Lai Massacre and the Tet Offensive, September 11 and the al-Qaeda communiqués, the atrocities at Fallujah and Abu Ghraib, and the U.S. response to the Asian tsunami of December 2004. He demonstrates how a nation-state---even one as powerful as the United States---comes to feel threatened not only by other nation-states or terrorist organizations but also by unexpected events that challenge its self-constructed image of security. At the same time, Steele shows that as each generation uses available media to create and re-create a national identity, technological innovations allow for the shifting, upheaval, and expansion of the cultural structure of a nation.

Brent J. Steele is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Kansas.

In nine insightful chapters, this volume's contributors outline each nation's demilitarization choices and how they were made. They investigate factors such as military defeat, border security risks, economic pressures, and the development of strong peace cultures among citizenry. Also at center stage is the influence of the United States, which fills a paradoxical role as both an enabler of demilitarization and a leader in steadily accelerating militarization.

Bookended by Peter N. Stearns' thought-provoking historical introduction and forward-looking conclusion, the chapters in this volume explore what true demilitarization means and how it impacts a society at all levels, military and civilian, political and private. The examples chosen reveal that successful demilitarization must go beyond mere troop demobilization or arms reduction to generate significant political and even psychological shifts in the culture at large. Exemplifying the political difficulties of demilitarization in both its failures and successes, Demilitarization in the Contemporary World provides a possible roadmap for future policies and practices.

A critical look at the relationship between environmental degradation and international relations.

Since the end of the Cold War, environmental matters-especially the international implications of environmental degradation-have figured prominently in debates about rethinking security. But do the assumptions underlying such discussions hold up under close scrutiny? In this first treatment of environmental security from a truly critical perspective, Simon Dalby shows how attempts to explain contemporary insecurity falter over unexamined notions of both environment and security.

The authors of this book retell the political and economic history of East-Central Europe, the post-communist Balkans, and the Baltic states and speculate about their future from the vantage point of three competing forces operating in the region: territorial imperialism, globalization, and nationalism.

Exposed to imperial aspirations, the geographic area from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea has in the past 150 years been subject to alternating waves of globalization and nationalism. The nineteenth century Eastern European empires were open to forces of economic globalization, but all collapsed at the end of World War One. Emerging nation-states embraced the logic of Western-led globalization but were subjugated by Nazi and Soviet empires, which pursued policies of economic autarchy. The demise of the Soviet empire marked the revival of pre-1939 nation-states and the re-entry of forces of liberalism and globalization into the region, with multiple crises of economic transition, ethnic militancy, new forms of authoritarianism, and external security threats. By 2010 negative, nationalist-populist reactions against crises that globalization brought to Eastern Europe became the dominant political trend. The analysis involves the consideration about the very contemporary factors of Brexit and COVID, as well as Russia’s and China’s influences, and their effects on Eastern Europe.

American foreign policy is the subject of extensive debate. Many look to domestic factors as the driving forces of bad policies. Benjamin Miller instead seeks to account for changes in US international strategy by developing a theory of grand strategy that captures the key security approaches available to US decision-makers in times of war and peace.

Grand Strategy from Truman to Trump makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of competing grand strategies that accounts for objectives and means of security policy. Miller puts forward a model that is widely applicable, based on empirical evidence from post-WWII to today, and shows that external factors—rather than internal concerns—are the most determinative.

When Losing Control was first published a decade ago it was years ahead of its time. Its argument was simple - the real causes of global insecurity were the widening socio-economic divide, global marginalisation and environmental limitations, especially climate change and conflict over energy resources.

Paul Rogers, one of the most original thinkers on international security, pointed to a world in which irregular warfare from the margins would prevent powerful states from maintaining their position. He even predicted accurately how the United States would respond to a catastrophic attack.

The new edition brings the whole analysis right up to date, arguing persuasively that the world’s elite cannot maintain control and that a far more emancipatory and sustainable approach to global security has to be developed.

Among the most momentous decisions that leaders of a state are called upon to make is whether or not to initiate warfare. How their military will fare against the opponent may be the first consideration, but not far behind are concerns about domestic political response and the reaction of the international community.

            
Securing Approval makes clear the relationship between these two seemingly distinct concerns, demonstrating how multilateral security organizations like the UN influence foreign policy through public opinion without ever exercising direct enforcement power. While UN approval of a proposed action often bolsters public support, its refusal of endorsement may conversely send a strong signal to domestic audiences that the action will be exceedingly costly or overly aggressive. With a cogent theoretical and empirical argument, Terrence L. Chapman provides new evidence for how multilateral organizations matter in security affairs as well as a new way of thinking about the design and function of these institutions.

The European Union has made remarkable, unprecedented advances in both external and internal security integration. "Epistemic communities" of ambassadors, military generals, scientists, and other experts who supersede national governments in the diplomacy of security decision making are taking advantage of their shared expertise, common culture, professional norms, and frequent meetings to forge new levels of collaboration. Mai'a K. Davis Cross brings together numerous personal interviews and recent government documents across five separate case studies to construct a microsociological account of how EU governance really works and what future role the EU is likely to play internationally.