Costa Rica is the only full-fledged and totally independent country to be entirely demilitarized. Its military was abolished in 1948, with the keys to the armory handed to the Department of Education. Socially, Costa Rica is a success story. Although 94th in the world for GDP, it is in the top 10 on various measurements of health and well-being. Citizens enjoy high standards of living that include universal access to healthcare, education, and pensions. In addition, the country practices sustainable resource management, such as reforestation and the development of solar and wind power, and it expects to be carbon neutral by 2020. Hunting is illegal. 25% of the landmass is parks and reserves. The government supports universal health care, especially maternal and child health. Costa Rica even has a Blue Zone, an area where people live extraordinarily long, healthy lives. To some extent, Costa Rica is simply lucky: it was largely inaccessible, and it had virtually no precious minerals, therefore it was mostly spared the ravages of predatory colonialism. The Costa Rican people made very good social decisions, ranging from an avowed commitment to social democracy at the national level, to local land distribution to develop stable middle class farmers. But Costa Rica's neighbors have not enjoyed nearly as much peace and prosperity. It is unlikely that Costa Rica's demilitarization and its remarkable social success are coincidental; clearly, something special is going on. Through good luck, good leadership, and good decisions, Costa Rica has become arguably the sanest and most progressive country on earth. This book examines how and why Costa Rica is safe and independent without any military at all, and what the rest of us can learn from its success.

54 Day Spiritual training and Novena

The human race has often put a high value on struggle, strife, turmoil, and excitement. Peace has been regarded as a utopian, unattainable, perhaps dull ideal or as some random element over which we have no control. However, the desperate necessities of the nuclear age have forced us to take peace seriously as an object of both personal and national policy. Stable Peace attempts to answer the question, If we had a policy for peace, what would it look like? A policy for peace aims to speed up the historically slow, painful, but persistent transition from a state of continual war and turmoil to one of continual peace. In a stable peace, the war-peace system is tipped firmly toward peace and away from the cycle of folly, illusion, and ill will that leads to war. Boulding proposes a number of modest, easily attainable, eminently reasonable policies directed toward this goal. His recommendations include the removal of national boundaries from political agendas, the encouragement of reciprocal acts of good will between potential enemies, the exploration of the theory and practice of nonviolence, the development of governmental and nongovernmental organizations to promote peace, and the development of research in the whole area of peace and conflict management. Written in straightforward, lucid prose, Stable Peace will be of importance to politicians, policy makers, economists, diplomats, all concerned citizens, and all those interested in international relations and the resolution of conflict.

Joblessness is the root cause of the global unrest threatening American security. Fostering entrepreneurship is the remedy. The combined weight of American diplomacy and military power cannot end unrest and extremism in the Middle East and other troubled regions of the world, Steven Koltai argues. Koltai says an alternative approach would work: investing in entrepreneurship and reaping the benefits of the jobs created through entrepreneurial startups. From 9/11 and the Arab Spring to the self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate, instability and terror breed where young people cannot find jobs. Koltai marshals evidence to show that joblessness—not religious or cultural conflict—is the root cause of the unrest that vexes American foreign policy and threatens international security. Drawing on Koltai’s stint as senior adviser for Entrepreneurship in Secretary Hillary Clinton’s State Department, and his thirty-year career as a successful entrepreneur and business executive, Peace through Entrepreneurship argues for the significant elevation of entrepreneurship in the service of foreign policy; not rural microfinance or mercantile trading but the scalable stuff of Silicon Valley and Sam Walton, generating the vast majority of new jobs in economies large and small. Peace through Entrepreneurship offers a nonmilitary, long-term solution at a time of disillusionment with Washington’s “big development” approach to unstable and underdeveloped parts of the world—and when the new normal is fear of terrorist attacks against Western targets, beheadings in Syria, and jihad. Extremism will not be resolved by a war on terror. The answer, Koltai shows, is stimulating entrepreneurial economic opportunities for the virtually limitless supply of desperate, unemployed young men and women leading lives of endless economic frustration.

Robert C. O'Brien's collection of essays on U.S. national security and foreign policy, with a forward by Hugh Hewitt, is a wake up call to the American people. The world has become steadily more dangerous under President Obama's "lead from behind" foreign policy. The Obama Administration's foreign policy has emboldened our adversaries and disheartened our allies. Indeed, Obama's nuclear deal with Iran is a 1938 moment. At the same time, the U.S. military has been cut and risks returning to the hollow force days of the 1970s. O'Brien lays out the challenges and provides the common sense "peace through strength" solutions that will allow the next president to make America great again.

The question of what causes war has concerned statesmen since the time of Thucydides. The Steps to War utilizes new data on militarized interstate disputes from 1816 to 2001 to identify the factors that increase the probability that a crisis will escalate to war. In this book, Paul Senese and John Vasquez test one of the major behavioral explanations of war--the steps to war--by identifying the various factors that put two states at risk for war. Focusing on the era of classic international politics from 1816 to 1945, the Cold War, and the post-Cold War period, they look at the roles of territorial disputes, alliances, rivalry, and arms races and show how the likelihood of war increases significantly as these risk factors are combined. Senese and Vasquez argue that war is more likely in the presence of these factors because they increase threat perception and put both sides into a security dilemma. The Steps to War calls into question certain prevailing realist beliefs, like peace through strength, demonstrating how threatening to use force and engaging in power politics is more likely to lead to war than to peace.

Violence and war have raged between Zionists and Palestinians for over a century, ever since Zionists, trying to establish a nation-state in Palestine, were forced to confront the fact that the country was already populated. Covering every conflict in Israel’s history, War over Peace reveals that Israeli nationalism was born ethnic and militaristic and has embraced these characteristics to this day. In his sweeping and original synthesis, Uri Ben-Eliezer shows that this militaristic nationalism systematically drives Israel to find military solutions for its national problems, based on the idea that the homeland is sacred and the territory is indivisible. When Israelis opposed to this ideology brought about change during a period that led to the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, cultural and political forces, reinforced by religious and messianic elements, prevented the implementation of the agreements, which brought violence back in the form of new wars. War over Peace is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the role of ethnic nationalism and militarism in Israel as well as throughout the world.

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring The concept of peace has always attracted radical thought, action, and practices. It has been taken to mean merely an absence of overt violence or war, but in the contemporary era it is often used interchangeably with 'peacemaking', 'peacebuilding', 'conflict resolution', and 'statebuilding'. The modern concept of peace has therefore broadened from the mere absence of violence to something much more complicated. In this Very Short Introduction, Oliver Richmond explores the evolution of peace in practice and in theory, exploring our modern assumptions about peace and the various different interpretations of its applications. This second edition has been theoretically and empirically updated and introduces a new framework to understand the overall evolution of the international peace architecture. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.