Civil War? Interstate War? Hybrid War?

Civil War? Interstate War? Hybrid War?
Author: Jakob Hauter
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2021-04-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3838213831

This volume of collected papers takes stock of what has become known about the war in eastern Ukraine’s Donets Basin (Donbas) between April 2014 and mid-2020. It provides an introduction to the conflict and illustrates the key point of contention in the academic debate surrounding it—the question whether this war is primarily an internal Ukrainian phenomenon or the result of a covert Russian invasion. The contributions by recognized specialists from Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and Japan offer multifaceted views and insights into this long-lasting conflict for both expert readers and those who are new to the topic. The volume’s contributors are Tymofii Brik, Jakob Hauter, Sanshiro Hosaka, Yuriy Matsiyevsky, Nikolay Mitrokhin, Maximilian Kranich, and Ulrich Schneckener.

The New Politics of Russia

The New Politics of Russia
Author: Andrew Monaghan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2016
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781784994044

Whether it is the conflict in Syria, the Winter Olympics in Sochi or the crisis in Ukraine, Russia dominates the headlines. Yet the political realities of contemporary Russia are poorly understood by Western observers and policy-makers. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, dominantpolitical narratives have focused on the theme of historical progress towards democracy, and more recently, on the increasing turn towards authoritarianism, and the major obstacle posed by President Vladimir Putin to Russia's development and reform.In this highly engaging book, Andrew Monaghan explains the importance of "getting Russia right". This book reflects on the evolution of Russia studies since the end of the Cold War, offering a robust critique of the mainstream view of Russia. It goes on to place the Ukraine crisis within a broaderhistorical framework and considers the ongoing evolution in Russian domestic politics. By delving into the depths of these difficult questions, the work offers a more dynamic and complex model for interpreting Russia.Exploring in detail the relationship between the West and Russia, the book charts the development of relations and investigates causes of the increasingly obvious sense of strategic dissonance. Monaghan examines the election year 2011-12, contextualizing the protest demonstrations and addressing theresponses of the authorities, and introduces the reader to the evolving Russian body politic: both present influential figures and those who are forming the leadership and opposition of the future.This book makes a significant contribution to public policy and academic debate and is a essential reading for students and scholars of Russian politics.

Securing the Peace

Securing the Peace
Author: Monica Duffy Toft
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2009-10-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1400831997

Timely and pathbreaking, Securing the Peace is the first book to explore the complete spectrum of civil war terminations, including negotiated settlements, military victories by governments and rebels, and stalemates and ceasefires. Examining the outcomes of all civil war terminations since 1940, Monica Toft develops a general theory of postwar stability, showing how third-party guarantees may not be the best option. She demonstrates that thorough security-sector reform plays a critical role in establishing peace over the long term. Much of the thinking in this area has centered on third parties presiding over the maintenance of negotiated settlements, but the problem with this focus is that fewer than a quarter of recent civil wars have ended this way. Furthermore, these settlements have been precarious, often resulting in a recurrence of war. Toft finds that military victory, especially victory by rebels, lends itself to a more durable peace. She argues for the importance of the security sector--the police and military--and explains that victories are more stable when governments can maintain order. Toft presents statistical evaluations and in-depth case studies that include El Salvador, Sudan, and Uganda to reveal that where the security sector remains robust, stability and democracy are likely to follow. An original and thoughtful reassessment of civil war terminations, Securing the Peace will interest all those concerned about resolving our world's most pressing conflicts.

War in Ukraine. Media and Emotions

War in Ukraine. Media and Emotions
Author: Agnieszka Turska-Kawa
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2023-10-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3031376080

The aim of the book is to present the war in its two versions and dimensions, i.e., the media image and the human factor. The choice of these two areas has not been random. Due to the situation, communication, also the one that mobilizes and shapes attitudes toward war, has moved to the Internet. From the first days of the war, pieces of information have generated various emotions, which translated into individual feelings, but also evoked broadly understood movement—in the area of spreading (dis) information and direct behavior. This movement was multi-level—we see the mobilization of people in the area of conspiracy theories, the expression of difficult emotions in memes, as well as a test of strength in the information war between Russia and Ukraine. The presentation of Volodymir and Olena Zelenski in the media also had an undeniable impact of mobilization, and their attitude built the image of heroic Ukraine from the very beginning. These and other relationships between the indicated factors are presented in the book.

Colonial Institutions and Civil War

Colonial Institutions and Civil War
Author: Shivaji Mukherjee
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 415
Release: 2021-06-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108844995

Shows how colonial indirect rule and land tenure institutions create state weakness, ethnic inequality and insurgency in India, and around the world.

Ukraine's Unnamed War

Ukraine's Unnamed War
Author: Dominique Arel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2023-01-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316511499

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has its roots in the events of 2013-2014. Russia cynically termed the seditionist conflict in Crimea and Eastern Donbas a 'civil war' in order to claim non-involvement. This flies in the face of evidence, but the authors argue that the social science literature on civil wars can be used help understand why no political solution was found between 2015 and 2022. The book explains how Russia, after seizing Crimea, was reacting to events it could not control and sent troops only to areas of Ukraine where it knew it would face little resistance (Eastern Donbas). Kremlin decisionmakers misunderstood the attachment of the Russian-speaking population to the Ukrainian state and also failed to anticipate that their intervention would transform Ukraine into a more cohesively 'Ukrainian' polity. Drawing on Ukrainian documentary sources, this concise book explains these important developments to a non-specialist readership.

Propaganda and Ideology in the Russian–Ukrainian War

Propaganda and Ideology in the Russian–Ukrainian War
Author: Jon Roozenbeek
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2024-05-31
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1009244043

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is one of the most important conflicts of the twenty-first century. With the start of military hostilities in 2014 also came an onslaught of propaganda, to both convince and confuse audiences worldwide about the war's historical and ideological underpinnings. Based on extensive research drawing on tens of thousands of news articles and hundreds of pages of legal documents and internal correspondence, this book offers the first comprehensive analysis of the role of propaganda, ideology, and identity in the Russian-Ukrainian war. It argues that, despite Russia's efforts to set up a media machine at home and abroad with eight years of propaganda legitimising Russia's presence in eastern Ukraine, Russia never managed to vocalise a convincing alternative to Ukrainian nationhood. Instead, Russian propaganda backfired: Ukraine is now more united than ever before.

The Future of War

The Future of War
Author: Lawrence Freedman
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 503
Release: 2017-10-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1610393066

An award-winning military historian, professor, and political adviser delivers the definitive story of warfare in all its guises and applications, showing what has driven and continues to drive this uniquely human form of political violence. Questions about the future of war are a regular feature of political debate, strategic analysis, and popular fiction. Where should we look for new dangers? What cunning plans might an aggressor have in mind? What are the best forms of defense? How might peace be preserved or conflict resolved? From the French rout at Sedan in 1870 to the relentless contemporary insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lawrence Freedman, a world-renowned military thinker, reveals how most claims from the military futurists are wrong. But they remain influential nonetheless. Freedman shows how those who have imagined future war have often had an idealized notion of it as confined, brief, and decisive, and have regularly taken insufficient account of the possibility of long wars-hence the stubborn persistence of the idea of a knockout blow, whether through a dashing land offensive, nuclear first strike, or cyberattack. He also notes the lack of attention paid to civil wars until the West began to intervene in them during the 1990s, and how the boundaries between peace and war, between the military, the civilian, and the criminal are becoming increasingly blurred. Freedman's account of a century and a half of warfare and the (often misconceived) thinking that precedes war is a challenge to hawks and doves alike, and puts current strategic thinking into a bracing historical perspective.

“Slava Ukraini!”

“Slava Ukraini!”
Author: Ilmari Käihkö
Publisher: Helsinki University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2023-12-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9523690957

“Slava Ukraini!” Strategy and the Spirit of Ukrainian Resistance tells the story of the volunteers lauded to have saved Ukraine twice. The volunteers first emerged in the spring of 2014 after the onset of the war in Donbas in a context characterized by ambiguity, state weakness, political uncertainty, and threat. They re-emerged again in February 2022 after the large-scale Russian invasion. Aimed at an interdisciplinary audience, this volume makes significant contributions to our understanding of events in Ukraine over the past decade. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with volunteer battalion fighters, the volume focuses on strategy, or the creation, control, and use of force. This framework is first applied to the volunteer militias to further the understanding of militia strategy conducted after 2014, and then to the first year and a half that followed the Russian invasion in 2022. “Slava Ukraini!” also discusses the long-term sociological impact of volunteer battalions and the war they fought in Ukraine. The Ukrainian spirit of resistance emerged first on the Maidan in November 2013, ignited the volunteer Spirit of 2014 after the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea, and ultimately flared-up on a national scale in a manner which surprised the invading Russian forces in 2022. Yet initially the volunteers may also have exacerbated internal divisions in Ukraine. The Spirit of 2014 was also better suited to a war of movement than immobile trench warfare that left little room for heroism and aggressive soldiering. Unrealistic expectations about modern warfare led to disillusionment, and many volunteers leaving the war in 2015. The perceived stalemate and lack of Ukrainian soldiers by late 2023 raised the question of a similar dynamic witnessed in 2014 and 1914 alike.