The book explains why some Third World states have centralized, conventional military forces while others rely on militias, paramilitaries, and other non-state actors using detailed case studies of Indonesia, Iraq, and Iran and offers policy recommendations for dealing with weak states based on this analysis.

Cyber Mercenaries explores the secretive relationships between states and hackers. As cyberspace has emerged as the new frontier for geopolitics, states have become entrepreneurial in their sponsorship, deployment, and exploitation of hackers as proxies to project power. Such modern-day mercenaries and privateers can impose significant harm undermining global security, stability, and human rights. These state-hacker relationships therefore raise important questions about the control, authority, and use of offensive cyber capabilities. While different countries pursue different models for their proxy relationships, they face the common challenge of balancing the benefits of these relationships with their costs and the potential risks of escalation. This book examines case studies in the United States, Iran, Syria, Russia, and China for the purpose of establishing a framework to better understand and manage the impact and risks of cyber proxies on global politics.

In Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship, scholars from a wide range of disciplines reflect on the transformation of the world away from the absolute sovereignty of independent nation-states and on the proliferation of varieties of plural citizenship. The emergence of possible new forms of allegiance and their effect on citizens and on political processes underlie the essays in this volume. The essays reflect widespread acceptance that we cannot grasp either the empirical realities or the important normative issues today by focusing only on sovereign states and their actions, interests, and aspirations. All the contributors accept that we need to take into account a great variety of globalizing forces, but they draw very different conclusions about those realities. For some, the challenges to the sovereignty of nation-states are on the whole to be regretted and resisted. These transformations are seen as endangering both state capacity and state willingness to promote stability and security internationally. Moreover, they worry that declining senses of national solidarity may lead to cutbacks in the social support systems many states provide to all those who reside legally within their national borders. Others view the system of sovereign nation-states as the aspiration of a particular historical epoch that always involved substantial problems and that is now appropriately giving way to new, more globally beneficial forms of political association. Some contributors to this volume display little sympathy for the claims on behalf of sovereign states, though they are just as wary of emerging forms of cosmopolitanism, which may perpetuate older practices of economic exploitation, displacement of indigenous communities, and military technologies of domination. Collectively, the contributors to this volume require us to rethink deeply entrenched assumptions about what varieties of sovereignty and citizenship are politically possible and desirable today, and they provide illuminating insights into the alternative directions we might choose to pursue.

This volume of wide-ranging essays by sport historians and sociologists examines the complex relations of war, peace and sport through a series of case studies from South and North America, Europe, North Africa, Asia and New Zealand. From formal military training in the late nineteenth century to contemporary esports, the relationship between military and sporting cultures has endured across nations in times of conflict and peace. This collection contextualizes debates around the morality and desirability of continuing to play sport against the backdrop of war as others are dying for their nation. It also examines the legacy and memory of particular wars as expressed in a range of sporting practices in the immediate aftermath of conflicts such as the World Wars and wars of independence. At the same time, this book analyses the history of sport and peace by considering how sport can operate as a pacification in some contexts and a tool of reconciliation in others. Together, and through an introductory framing essay, these essays offer scholars of sport, conflict studies and cultural history more broadly a multinational analysis of the war-peace-sport nexus that has operated throughout the world since the late nineteenth century. Chapter 11 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.taylorfrancis.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Funded by Tokyo University.

Someone’s Else’s Empire coolly reassesses Britain’s relationship with the United States. Elite descriptions of Britain’s position in the world (‘punching above our weight’) are untenable, Tom Stevenson argues. Yet there is a refusal, in most parts of society, to examine the assumptions behind them. Half a century after British withdrawal from “east of Suez,” why has the Indo-Pacific tilt become a Whitehall priority? Why are newly opened Persian Gulf bases working side by side with Saudi and Emirati forces engaged in the catastrophic war on Yemen? The impetus for so many decisions about British foreign policy comes from a desire to maintain lieutenant rank with Washington. But British leaders and defence specialists tend to dislike seeing Britain framed by American power. A great effort is required to clear away the build-up of irrelevant, nostalgic detritus around “Global Britain.” Stevenson looks at the infrastructure of a US world order re-energised by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and fits the UK into the picture without the usual euphemisms. It is one thing to station military forces around the world to maintain your empire, he observes, but quite another to do so for someone else’s.

This book calls into question the commonly held contentions that central governments are the most important or even the sole sources of a nation's stability, and that subnational and transnational nonstate forces are a major source of global instability. By assessing recent real-world trends, Mandel reveals that areas exist where it makes little sense to rely on state governments for stability, and that attempts to bolster such governments to promote stability often prove futile. He demonstrates how armed nonstate groups can sometimes provide local stability better than states, and how power-sharing arrangements between states and armed nonstate groups may sometimes be viable. He concludes that these trends in the international setting call for major shifts in our understanding of what constitutes stable governance—proposing that we adopt a fluid "emergent actor" approach. And he calls for significant deviation from standard policy responses to the opportunities and dangers posed by nontraditional sources of national authority.

There is no magic, only Ka'uun-the energy of creation-provided by the planet's spirit; the urKa'uun are its users. Caught in the angst of being a teenager, Bartholomew Fix rails against what he perceives to be a pointless and mundane existence, craving some sort of adventure. He gets more than he bargains for as he is infected the bite of the Wandering Bug and compelled to seek out an agent of the Universe who transports him to another planet in need of his off-world energy. He awakens in the home of a great urKa'uun and becomes his apprentice where he learns how to use Ka'uun and none too soon for the thousand-year king is dying before his time, causing the realm to be on the brink of war. They have fought each other for ages under the slave yolk of the Perq, recently chased out of their world. The king, the one empowered with enough Ka'uun to stop the five kingdoms of men from warring with each other and keep the fearsome Urilok at bay, needs the answer that the Scrolls of Udanadar may hold on its pages. The boy is sent out with the urKa'uun's other ward, a skilled girl born of the wild-wise Duvar, to bring back the Scrolls of Udandar, containing the instructions creating the king and the kingmaker device, which can find the successor. But a simple mission is never so simple, and soon the two find themselves on a quest spanning the realm to find these items and stave off war. The adventure is at times humorous and other times fraught with danger as they face bandits, pirates, evil spirits, and an ancient enemy that rears its head. These trials force Bartholomew to grow from a naive boy concerned with the little things in his world, into a brave hero learning what is to sacrifice in order to achieve a higher goal.

As the Middle East descends ever deeper into violence and chaos, 'sectarianism' has become a catch-all explanation for the region's troubles. The turmoil is attributed to 'ancient sectarian differences', putatively primordial forces that make violent conflict intractable. In media and policy discussions, sectarianism has come to possess trans-historical causal power. This book trenchantly challenges the lazy use of 'sectarianism' as a magic-bullet explanation for the region's ills, focusing on how various conflicts in the Middle East have morphed from non-sectarian (or cross-sectarian) and nonviolent movements into sectarian wars. Through multiple case studies -- including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen and Kuwait -- this book maps the dynamics of sectarianisation, exploring not only how but also why it has taken hold. The contributors examine the constellation of forces -- from those within societies to external factors such as the Saudi-Iran rivalry -- that drive the sectarianisation process and explore how the region's politics can be de-sectarianised. Featuring leading scholars -- and including historians, anthropologists, political scientists and international relations theorists -- this book will redefine the terms of debate on one of the most critical issues in international affairs today.

This book describes militias as significant and prevalent actors in today’s international security environment. To separate them from other types of violent non-state groups, such as terrorists, guerrillas and insurgents, the author describes militias as local guardians that use violence to fill a variety of political, social and security gaps, which have created vulnerabilities for their particular constituencies. Although militias are local in orientation, their effects are not contained to particular countries and have only added to the instability in the international system. This book explores how militias contribute to international security issues by furthering state fragility, undermining human rights and democratization, enabling illicit trafficking, prolonging internal conflicts and fostering proxy wars.

The Middle East: Crises, Conflicts, and Wars aims to evaluate the Middle East through international politics with diverse theoretical frameworks. Chapters have been written by many contributors who explore the Middle East from multiperspectives. The scope of this book is very comprehensive and many relevant issue areas are examined. In addition to focusing on the different perspectives of international relations, current problems are considered, especially in the axis of classic, modern and post-modern security studies. The main issues of Syria, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, the UAE, Jordan, Palestine, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain, Israel and Turkey are included. Maritime disputes, the Arab Spring, energy transfer, migration, the EU, hydro-politics, Green Sukuk (green Islamic bond), youth policies and strategic investments in the Middle East, are a number of the topics examined.