One of the challenges facing anyone who wishes to write on the war in Afghanistan is to squeeze this fiendishly difficult topic into an appropriate framework. It is not easy to find an approach that avoids oversimplifying the issues, or bamboozling the reader into boredom, confusion, deep cynicism, or a combination of all three.
One surefire way to know that a bilateral relationship is of the upmost importance is for Henry Kissinger to devote an entire book to the topic. With world stability likely to hinge in good part on the nature of future of Sino-American relations, and China’s continued rise being almost inevitable, much is at stake.
This book attempts to answer the question of ‘who do you bomb when you cannot reach military targets’. Michael L. Gross updates the ethics of just war, improving on traditional accounts for an age where asymmetric conflict is prevalent. Whilst a spirited attempt to resolve this dilemma, it is only partially successful.
This collection of articles offers insightful and diverse perspectives on the Arab uprisings, and expands to consider political unrest outside the Arab world.
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam searches for the theoretical underpinnings of the clash of civilizations. Expanding critical theory to include Islamic philosophy and poetry, this metahistory refuses to treat the Orient and the Occident as separate entities.
Although this book appeared before the November 2010 bombing of Yeonpyeong island by North Korean forces, its insights and are no less relevant to the question of reversing a dangerous trend of military provocations, brinkmanship and near-war collisions between the Koreas. As Dr. Clemens forcefully argues, a long-lasting, peaceful solution to the inter-Korean division is neither impossible, nor idealistic.
Three recent publications provide a fresh perspective of the developments which resulted in the decline of British influence in the Gulf, and the subsequent rise of the US.
Hartmut Behr’s recent book is a fascinating critical reconsideration of how generations of political thinkers have appraised the interplay between universal and particular interests among the relations of states in their understandings of “the world” from Western antiquity through the present-day
The Israel lobby thesis, despite some flaws such as a dismissal of the power of other lobby groups. it is a valid attempt to understand a unique facet in how American policy is forged.
Mario Del Pero’s chief task in his recent monograph is to break up the traditional image of Kissinger to paint a more nuanced picture of his politics and scholarship.
Kroslak contests that France was not only involved in events through passivity, but actually enabled the genocide through its support for the Hutu regime before, during and after the killing. Overall, this study represents an estimable and rigorously researched contribution to the subject, though, as this essay will unearth, there are some problematic elements to the book.