Torn between East and West

Torn between East and West
Author: Iulian Chifu
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2016-08-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 131713902X

This book is a very timely account of the legal, economic and political consequences for border states caught in the current tug-of-war between the West and Russia.The Ukraine crisis of 2014 focused policy-makers’ attention on a geographical area full of dangers that had gone relatively unnoticed since the breakup of the Soviet Union, namely the security dynamics of the border states of Eastern Europe and the Black Sea. Twenty-five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a strong Russia returns alternatively threatening and cajoling, but at risk itself of suffering economic injury from western reprisals over its nostalgia for the map drawn at Yalta. That conflict, which hotted up over the Ukraine, was soon being played out over - and in the air space over - Syria and Turkey, while the border states themselves are likely to be drawn into the European refugee crisis and have the potential, after the 2015 Paris atrocities, to be breeding grounds for international terrorists. This groundbreaking book contains prescient warnings that must be heeded by leaders and diplomats on both sides of the East-West divide.

Torn between East and West

Torn between East and West
Author: Iulian Chifu
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2016-08-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317139038

This book is a very timely account of the legal, economic and political consequences for border states caught in the current tug-of-war between the West and Russia.The Ukraine crisis of 2014 focused policy-makers’ attention on a geographical area full of dangers that had gone relatively unnoticed since the breakup of the Soviet Union, namely the security dynamics of the border states of Eastern Europe and the Black Sea. Twenty-five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a strong Russia returns alternatively threatening and cajoling, but at risk itself of suffering economic injury from western reprisals over its nostalgia for the map drawn at Yalta. That conflict, which hotted up over the Ukraine, was soon being played out over - and in the air space over - Syria and Turkey, while the border states themselves are likely to be drawn into the European refugee crisis and have the potential, after the 2015 Paris atrocities, to be breeding grounds for international terrorists. This groundbreaking book contains prescient warnings that must be heeded by leaders and diplomats on both sides of the East-West divide.

Between East and West

Between East and West
Author: Anne Applebaum
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2017-06-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0525433198

In 1991, Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag, Iron Curtain and Red Famine, took a three-month road trip through the borderlands between the fallen Soviet Union and Europe—lands that became Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Moldova. In her iconic reportage, which has become indispensable history, she captures the harrowing story of a region that is once again threatened by Russia. An extraordinary journey into the past and present of the lands east of Poland and west of Russia—an area defined throughout its history by colliding empires. Traveling from the former Soviet naval center of Kaliningrad on the Baltic to the Black Sea port of Odessa, Anne Applebaum encounters a rich range of competing cultures, religions, and national aspirations. In reasserting their heritage, the inhabitants of the borderlands attempt to build a future grounded in their fractured ancestral legacies. In the process, neighbors unearth old conflicts, devote themselves to recovering lost culture, and piece together competing legends to create a new tradition. Rich in surprising encounters and vivid characters, Between East and West brilliantly illuminates the soul of the borderlands and the shaping power of the past.

When Magic Failed

When Magic Failed
Author: Fouad Ajami
Publisher: Bombardier Books
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2022-03-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1637581769

As one of the most profound and insightful scholars of the Middle East, Fouad Ajami’s sensibility was powerfully shaped by his childhood and youth in Lebanon in the ’50s and ’60s. The time was a transitional one—not only for the Middle East, but for America and the world. Lebanon in this era was just coming into its own as a cosmopolitan destination of the international jet set as well as earnest American educators seeking to modernize Arab society. The disruptive forces of the Middle East—the Cold War, the Palestinian conflict, religious extremism, the money and oil of the Gulf—were only just beginning to appear. In this haunting and beautifully written memoir of his Lebanese childhood, the late Middle East scholar, Fouad Ajami, casts a discerning light into the corners and alleyways of an Arab reality that would later erupt into full view.

Ukraine

Ukraine
Author: Karl Schlögel
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2018-08-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 178914020X

Ukraine is a country caught in a political tug of war: looking East to Russia and West to the European Union, this pivotal nation has long been a pawn in a global ideological game. And since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014 in response to the Ukrainian Euromaidan protests against oligarchical corruption, the game has become one of life and death. In Ukraine: A Nation on the Borderland, Karl Schlögel presents a picture of a country which lies on Europe’s borderland and in Russia’s shadow. In recent years, Ukraine has been faced, along with Western Europe, with the political conundrum resulting from Russia’s actions and the ongoing Information War. As well as exploring this present-day confrontation, Schlögel provides detailed, fascinating historical portraits of a panoply of Ukraine’s major cities: Lviv, Odessa, Czernowitz, Kiev, Kharkov, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, and Yalta—cities whose often troubled and war-torn histories are as varied as the nationalities and cultures which have made them what they are today, survivors with very particular identities and aspirations. Schlögel feels the pulse of life in these cities, analyzing their more recent pasts and their challenges for the future.

The Road to Unfreedom

The Road to Unfreedom
Author: Timothy Snyder
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2019-04-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0525574476

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of On Tyranny comes a stunning new chronicle of the rise of authoritarianism from Russia to Europe and America. “A brilliant analysis of our time.”—Karl Ove Knausgaard, The New Yorker With the end of the Cold War, the victory of liberal democracy seemed final. Observers declared the end of history, confident in a peaceful, globalized future. This faith was misplaced. Authoritarianism returned to Russia, as Vladimir Putin found fascist ideas that could be used to justify rule by the wealthy. In the 2010s, it has spread from east to west, aided by Russian warfare in Ukraine and cyberwar in Europe and the United States. Russia found allies among nationalists, oligarchs, and radicals everywhere, and its drive to dissolve Western institutions, states, and values found resonance within the West itself. The rise of populism, the British vote against the EU, and the election of Donald Trump were all Russian goals, but their achievement reveals the vulnerability of Western societies. In this forceful and unsparing work of contemporary history, based on vast research as well as personal reporting, Snyder goes beyond the headlines to expose the true nature of the threat to democracy and law. To understand the challenge is to see, and perhaps renew, the fundamental political virtues offered by tradition and demanded by the future. By revealing the stark choices before us--between equality or oligarchy, individuality or totality, truth and falsehood--Snyder restores our understanding of the basis of our way of life, offering a way forward in a time of terrible uncertainty.

Conflict in Ukraine

Conflict in Ukraine
Author: Rajan Menon
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2015-02-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262536293

One of The New York Times’ “6 Books to Read for Context on Ukraine” “A short and insightful primer” to the crisis in Ukraine and its implications for both the Crimean Peninsula and Russia’s relations with the West (New York Review of Books) The current conflict in Ukraine has spawned the most serious crisis between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War. It has undermined European security, raised questions about NATO's future, and put an end to one of the most ambitious projects of U.S. foreign policy—building a partnership with Russia. It also threatens to undermine U.S. diplomatic efforts on issues ranging from terrorism to nuclear proliferation. And in the absence of direct negotiations, each side is betting that political and economic pressure will force the other to blink first. Caught in this dangerous game of chicken, the West cannot afford to lose sight of the importance of stable relations with Russia. This book puts the conflict in historical perspective by examining the evolution of the crisis and assessing its implications both for the Crimean Peninsula and for Russia’s relations with the West more generally. Experts in the international relations of post-Soviet states, political scientists Rajan Menon and Eugene Rumer clearly show what is at stake in Ukraine, explaining the key economic, political, and security challenges and prospects for overcoming them. They also discuss historical precedents, sketch likely outcomes, and propose policies for safeguarding U.S.-Russia relations in the future. In doing so, they provide a comprehensive and accessible study of a conflict whose consequences will be felt for many years to come.

Iron Curtain

Iron Curtain
Author: Anne Applebaum
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 803
Release: 2012-10-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0385536437

In the long-awaited follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of Iron Curtain.

Glory in a Line

Glory in a Line
Author: Phyllis Birnbaum
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2007-11-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0374706964

The first biography in English of the Japanese artist who was a central figure in the dazzling artistic milieu of 1920s Paris When we think of expatriates in Paris during the early decades of the twentieth century, certain names come to mind: Hemingway, Picasso, Modigliani—and Foujita, the Japanese artist whose distinctive works, bringing elements of Japanese art to Western oil painting, made him a major cultural figure in 1920s Montparnasse. Foujita was the only Japanese artist to be considered part of the "School of Paris," which also counted among its members such prominent artists as Picasso and Modigliani. Noteworthy, too, was Foujita's personal style, flamboyant even for those flamboyant times. He was best known for his drawings of female nudes and cats, and for his special white color upon which he could draw a masterful line—one that seemed to outline a woman's whole body in a single unbroken stroke. With the advent of the Second World War, Foujita returned to Japan, where he allied himself with the ruling Japanese militarists and painted canvases in support of the war effort. After Japan's defeat, he was scorned for his devotion to the military cause and returned to France, where he remained until his death in 1968. Acclaimed writer and translator Phyllis Birnbaum not only explores Foujita's fascinating, tumultuous life but also assesses the appeal of his paintings, which, in their mixture of Eastern and Western traditions, are memorable for their vibrancy of form and purity of line.

Not One Inch

Not One Inch
Author: M. E. Sarotte
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 567
Release: 2021-11-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 030026335X

Thirty years after the Soviet Union’s collapse, this book reveals how tensions between America, NATO, and Russia transformed geopolitics in the decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall “The most engaging and carefully documented account of this period in East-West diplomacy currently available.”—Andrew Moravscik, Foreign Affairs Not one inch. With these words, Secretary of State James Baker proposed a hypothetical bargain to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev after the fall of the Berlin Wall: if you let your part of Germany go, we will move NATO not one inch eastward. Controversy erupted almost immediately over this 1990 exchange—but more important was the decade to come, when the words took on new meaning. Gorbachev let his Germany go, but Washington rethought the bargain, not least after the Soviet Union’s own collapse in December 1991. Washington realized it could not just win big but win bigger. Not one inch of territory needed to be off limits to NATO. On the thirtieth anniversary of the Soviet collapse, this book uses new evidence and interviews to show how, in the decade that culminated in Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, the United States and Russia undermined a potentially lasting partnership. Prize-winning historian M. E. Sarotte shows what went wrong.