Reconceptualising Arms Control

Reconceptualising Arms Control
Author: Neil Cooper
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2014-01-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317995368

The theory and practice of arms control seemed to have its heyday during the height of the Cold War, with its focus on the East-West conflict and nuclear arms. In the past twenty years, both arms technologies and various practices aimed at their control have continued to develop, but scholarly thinking has not kept up. This volume seeks to redress this scholarly neglect of the range of issues associated with the control of the means of violence, by asking the question: what does arms control mean in the 21st Century? In asking this question, the volume examines issues surrounding sovereignty, geopolitics, nuclear disarmament, securitization of space, technological developments, human rights, the clearance of landmines, the regulation of small arms and the control of the black market for arms and nuclear secrets. The book discusses terrorism with reference to the case of the suicide attacks in Beirut in 1983 and how the Obama administration is orientating its posture on nuclear arms. This book was published as a special issue of Contemporary Security Policy.

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Security Studies

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Security Studies
Author:
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 1625
Release: 2023-02-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3319743198

This encyclopedia provides an authoritative guide intended for students of all levels of studies, offering multidisciplinary insight and analysis of over 500 headwords covering the main concepts of Security and Non-traditional Security, and their relation to other scholarly fields and aspects of real-world issues in the contemporary geopolitical world.

Arms and the State

Arms and the State
Author: Keith Krause
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 1995-08-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521558662

This book analyses the structure and motive forces that shape the global arms transfer and production system.

Nuclear Deviance

Nuclear Deviance
Author: Michal Smetana
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2019-08-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030242250

This book examines the linkage between deviance and norm change in international politics. It draws on an original theoretical perspective grounded in the sociology of deviance to study the violations of norms and rules in the global nuclear non-proliferation regime. As such, this project provides a unique conceptual framework and applies it to highly salient issues in the contemporary international security environment. The theoretical/conceptual chapters are accompanied by three extensive case studies: Iran, North Korea, and India.

Global Nuclear Disarmament

Global Nuclear Disarmament
Author: Nik Hynek
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2015-12-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317565215

This book examines the issue of nuclear disarmament in different strategic, political, and regional contexts. This volume seeks to provide a rich theoretical and practical insight to one of the major topics in the field of international security: global abolishment of nuclear weapons. Renewed calls for a nuclear weapons-free world have sparked a wide academic debate on both the attainability of such goal and the steps that should be taken. Comparably less attention, however, has been paid to theoretically informed considerations of the consequences of nuclear abolition. Comprising essays from leading scholars and experts within the field, this collection discusses the fundamental theoretical and conceptual foundations of nuclear disarmament and subsequently tries to assess its hypothetical impact in global and regional contexts. The varied methodological approach of the contributors aims to advance a multi-theoretical and multi-perspectival view of the issue. The book is organized in three main sections: ‘Strategic Perspectives’, dealing with the specific constraints and facilitators for the states to achieve their core objectives; ‘Political Perspectives’, with the focus on the power of norms, belief-systems and ideas; and ‘Regional Perspectives’, with the analyses of seven regional and/or state-specific nuclear contexts. As a whole, the volume provides a detailed, complex overview of the risks and opportunities that are embedded in the vision of a nuclear weapon-free world. This book will be of great interest to students of nuclear proliferation, arms control, war and conflict studies, international relations and security studies.

Globalization, Social Movements, and Peacebuilding

Globalization, Social Movements, and Peacebuilding
Author: Jackie Smith
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2013-07-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0815652283

Each year, governments spend billions of dollars on peacekeeping efforts around the world, and much more is spent on humanitarian aid to refugees and other victims of armed struggle. Yet, research shows that nearly one-half of all countries experiencing civil war have renewed violent conflict within five years of a peace agreement. How do we account for such a poor track record? The authors in this volume consider how global capitalism affects fragile peace processes, arguing that the international economic system itself is a major contributor to violent conflict. By including the work of anthropologists, economists, sociologists, and political scientists, this book presents a broad yet thorough exploration of the complexities of peacebuilding in a global market economy. Included in the volume are specific studies of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, as well as considerations of conflicts on a global scale.

China’s Evolving Approach to Peacekeeping

China’s Evolving Approach to Peacekeeping
Author: Marc Lanteigne
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135706840

China has become an enthusiastic supporter of and contributor to UN peacekeeping. Is China’s participation in peacekeeping likely to strengthen the current international peacekeeping regime by China’s adopting of the international norms of peacekeeping? Or, on the contrary, is it likely to alter the peacekeeping norms in a way that aligns with its own worldview? And, as China’s international confidence grows, will it begin to consider peacekeeping a smaller and lesser part of its international security activity, and thus not care so much about it? This book aims to address these questions by examining how the PRC has developed its peacekeeping policy and practices in relation to its international status. It does so by bringing in both historical and conceptual analyses and specific case-oriented discussions of China’s peacekeeping over the past twenty years. The book identifies the various challenges that China has faced at political, conceptual and operational levels and the ways in which the country has dealt with those challenges, and considers the implication of such challenges with regards to the future of international peacekeeping. This book was originally published as a special issue of International Peacekeeping.

European Security Policy and Strategic Culture

European Security Policy and Strategic Culture
Author: Peter Schmidt
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317980328

With the Lisbon Treaty in place and the European Union increasingly involved in international crisis management and stabilization operations in places near and far, this volume revisits the trajectory of a European strategic culture. Specifically, it studies the usefulness of its application in a variety of circumstances, including the EU’s operations in Africa and the Balkans as well as joint operations with NATO and the United Nations. The contributors find that strategic culture is a useful tool to explain and understand the EU's civilian and military operations, not in the sense of a ‘cause’, but as a European normative framework of preferences and constraints. Accordingly, classical notions of strategic culture in the field of international security must be adapted to highlight the specific character of Europe's strategic culture, especially by taking the interaction with the United Nations and NATO into account. Though at variance over the extent to which security and defence missions have demonstrated or promoted a shared strategic culture in Europe, the authors reveal a growing sense that a cohesive strategic culture is critical in the EU’s ambition of being a global actor. Should Europe fail to nurture a shared strategic culture, its actions will be based much more on flexibility than on cohesion. This book was published as a special issue of Contemporary Security Policy.

Contemporary Security Studies

Contemporary Security Studies
Author: Alan Collins
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 545
Release: 2016
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0198708319

This book offers an introduction to Security Studies. It features an impressive breadth and depth of coverage of the different theoretical approaches to the study of security and the ever-evolving range of issues that dominate the security agenda in the 21st Century.

Reconceptualizing Deterrence

Reconceptualizing Deterrence
Author: Elli Lieberman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 0415682134

This book offers a reconceptualisation of conventional deterrence theory, and applies it to enduring rivalries in the Middle East. The work argues that many of the problems encountered in the development of deterrence theory lay in the fact that it was developed during the Cold War, when the immediate problem it had to address was how to prevent catastrophic nuclear wars. The logic of nuclear deterrence compelled a preoccupation with the problem of stability over credibility; however, because the logic of conventional deterrence is different, the solution of the tension between credibility and stability is achieved by deference to credibility, due to the requirements of reputation and costly signaling. This book aims to narrow the gap between theory and evidence. It explores how a reconceptualization of the theory as a process that culminates in the internalization of deterrence within enduring rivalries is better suited to account for its final success: a finding that has eluded deterrence theorists for long. This interdisciplinary book will be of much interest to students of deterrence theory, strategic studies, international security, Middle Eastern studies and IR in general.