The launch of Operation Dignity in May 2014 transformed Libya’s low-level military and political conflict into a full-blown war. The seizure of Tripoli and much of western Libya by the opposing Libya Dawn movement left the country divided in two with two parliaments, two governments, and two putative armies. The violence of the last year has left the country on the brink of economic, social, and political meltdown, and provided an opportunity for the organization known as Islamic State (IS) to proliferate. If Libya goes over the edge, this will have major consequences for Europe and the region: Libya will become a base for launching terrorist operations for the foreseeable future and the scale of illegal migration and other forms of smuggling will reach previously unimaginable proportions. The international community’s efforts to resolve the crisis, particularly those of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), have failed to prevent this collapse. UNSMIL’s initial approach to solving the division of Libya’s elected parliament, the House of Representatives (HoR), did not engage key decision makers and bred mistrust on the part of the Libya Dawn camp. Consecutive drafts of a political agreement failed to reconcile the fundamental interests of each side and met with opposition from one side or another. Armed actors on both sides were not sufficiently engaged and are not invested in the solution currently on the table. The decision to close the draft agreement to further amendments and initial the agreement in Skhirat, Morocco, on 11 July, 2015, without the support of major components from the Libya Dawn camp was a risky strategy which has very limited chances for success. If this strategy fails and the agreement cannot produce an inclusive Government of National Accord, then the international community will have no choice but to pursue a more long-term and multidimensional strategy. This strategy would not eschew the possibility of a high-level political agreement, but would attempt to facilitate it.

The contributors to this book - including policymakers, diplomats, scientists, regionalists and academic specialists - have joined in an effort to survey nuclear arms control successes, ongoing initiatives, and future prospects for reducing and countering nuclear proliferation.

This Adelphi Paper examines the motives behind Libya's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, from Gadhafi's rise to power in 1969 through to the end of 2003. It also assesses the proliferation pathways that the regime followed during this period, including early dependence on Soviet technology and assistance, subsequently relying on technological infusions from the A.Q. Khan network. Wyn Q. Bowen clearly analyzes the decision to give up the quest for nuclear weapons, focusing on the main factors that influenced the Gadhafi regime's calculations, including the perceived need to re-engage, both politically and economically, with the international community, particularly the United States. It explores the process of dismantling the nuclear programme and the question of whether Libya constitutes a 'model' for addressing the challenges posed by other proliferators.

Ten years after Libya descended into conflict, the contours of a new society are emerging. How has violence remade the country--what has happened to inter-community and inter-personal relations, to social hierarchies and elite composition? Which new groups, networks and identities have formed through conflict, and how has this transformed power structures, modes of capital accumulation and governance at the local and national levels? How has the violence contributed to create new communities, both inside the country and in exile? This volume brings together leading researchers, both foreign and Libyan, to examine the deep changes undergone by Libya's society amid civil war. These transformations are bound to shape the country for decades to come, and will influence its relations with the outside world. By addressing neglected yet crucial aspects of social change amid violence, the contributors substantially broaden the picture of Libyan society beyond the current confines of scholarship, as well as enriching wider debates in Conflict Studies.

From the winner of the National Book Award and the National Books Critics’ Circle Award—and one of the most original thinkers of our time—“Andrew Solomon’s magisterial Far and Away collects a quarter-century of soul-shaking essays” (Vanity Fair). Far and Away chronicles Andrew Solomon’s writings about places undergoing seismic shifts—political, cultural, and spiritual. From his stint on the barricades in Moscow in 1991, when he joined artists in resisting the coup whose failure ended the Soviet Union, his 2002 account of the rebirth of culture in Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban, his insightful appraisal of a Myanmar seeped in contradictions as it slowly, fitfully pushes toward freedom, and many other stories of profound upheaval, this book provides a unique window onto the very idea of social change. With his signature brilliance and compassion, Solomon demonstrates both how history is altered by individuals, and how personal identities are altered when governments alter. A journalist and essayist of remarkable perception and prescience, Solomon captures the essence of these cultures. Ranging across seven continents and twenty-five years, these “meaty dispatches…are brilliant geopolitical travelogues that also comprise a very personal and reflective resume of the National Book Award winner’s globe-trotting adventures” (Elle). Far and Away takes a magnificent journey into the heart of extraordinarily diverse experiences: “You will not only know the world better after having seen it through Solomon’s eyes, you will also care about it more” (Elizabeth Gilbert).

The Routledge Handbook of Persian Gulf Politics provides a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of Persian Gulf politics, history, economics, and society. The volume begins its examination of Ottoman rule in the Arabian Peninsula, exploring other dimensions of the region’s history up until and after independence in the 1960s and 1970s. Featuring scholars from a range of disciplines, the book demonstrates how the Persian Gulf’s current, complex politics is a product of interwoven dynamics rooted in historical developments and memories, profound social, cultural, and economic changes underway since the 1980s and the 1990s, and inter-state and international relations among both regional actors and between them and the rest of the world. The book comprises a total of 36 individual chapters divided into the following six sections: Historical Context Society and Culture Economic Development Domestic Politics Regional Security Dynamics The Persian Gulf and the World Examining the Persian Gulf’s increasing importance in regional politics, diplomacy, economics, and security issues, the volume is a valuable resource for scholars, students, and policy makers interested in political science, history, Gulf studies, and the Middle East.

This book assesses the state of transatlantic relations in an era of emerging powers and growing interconnectedness, and discusses the limits and potential of transatlantic leadership in creating effective governance structures. The authors first resort to theory and history to understand the transatlantic relationship. They then consider the domestic and systemic factors that might set the relationship between the United States and Europe on a different path. Finally, the authors locate the potential for transatlantic leadership in the context of the global power shift. The world of the 21st century displays different power configurations in different policy domains. This changing structure of power complicates the exercise of leadership. Leadership requires not only greater power and authority, but also persuasion, bargaining and moral suasion, all necessary strategies to build coalitions and manage conflicts between great powers.