Russia and Iran

partners in defiance from Syria to Ukraine

Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has cast a spotlight on Russia's burgeoning partnership with Iran. Moscow looked to Tehran for drones and ammunition to fuel its so-called 'special military operation', and Iran's support for Russia's war reflected a ...

US grand strategy and the Madman Theory

from Nixon to Trump

What happens when a president convinces the world he might just do the unthinkable? In US grand strategy and the Madman Theory, James D. Boys argues that projecting calculated irrationality can terrify adversaries into submission, but at enormous risk. From Nixon's secret Cold War ...

National perspectives on a multipolar order

interrogating the global power transition

The global distribution of power is changing. But how should we make sense of this moment of transition? With the rise of new powers and the decline of seemingly unchallenged US dominance in world politics, a conventional wisdom is gaining ground that a new multipolar ...

Iraq's Shi'a warriors

from battlefield to parliament

By examining the PMU's self-positioning as a pillar of Iraq's defence infrastructure, this book offers a critical perspective on the prospects for Security Sector Reform (SSR) and highlights the limitations of externally driven Disarmament, Demobilisation, and Reintegration (DDR) efforts. It speaks to scholars ...

The sociology of sovereignty

politics, social transformations and conceptual change

The book examines the intellectual history of the concept of sovereignty from a sociological perspective. Informed by the sociologists Max Weber and Niklas Luhmann, it addresses the concept as the centre of constitutional controversy and as a resource to deal with paradoxes of power in ...

Inventing the modern region

Basque identity and the French nation-state

This book explores the process by which the French Basque country acquired a folkloric regional identity in the long nineteenth century. It argues that, despite its origins in pre-modern customs, this stereotypical identity was invented as part of France's process of nation-building. The abolition ...

Beyond Ukraine

debating the future of war

Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine has sparked a major shift in thinking about the future of war. This book offers a comprehensive examination of its impact on visions of conflict. War in the 21st century will remain a chameleon that takes on different forms ...

Protecting democracy in Europe

pluralism, autocracy and the future of the EU

The future of Europe as a community of democratic states is deeply uncertain. The European Union, founded to promote 'ever closer' integration, aims nominally for peaceful, prosperous cooperation. But this ideal has been battered by a series of bruising crises, and now by war. Protecting ...

Preparing for war

strategy, power and military change

An original conceptual approach to the study of war, attempting to capture the entire phenomenon of military adaptation-whether strategic, institutional or in the field. The unravelling of the post-Cold War order has intensified geopolitical tensions, driving a global increase in defence spending. Most military organisations ...

Demagogues and despots

democracies on the brink

Democracy and despotism live closer together than you'd expect-this briskly astute book reveals why that should alarm us all. We live in troubled times, marked by a sinister trend threatening democracy everywhere: the triumph of despotism not only in countries like Russia, Iran and ...

Belarus

what everyone needs to know

Recent events have thrust Belarus into the international spotlight, but for years after declaring independence in 1991, Belarus remained a little-known republic in the West, despite its important geostrategic position between Poland and Russia, and as a conduit for Russian energy supplies to central Europe ...

Unpaid

the past, present, and future of wage theft

Unpaid upends conventional wisdom about how we value work, exposing wage theft as one of capitalism's enduring open secrets. From unpaid overtime and under-the-table jobs to algorithmic exploitation, there are as many ways to steal wages as there are to pay them. But what ...

Washington is burning

corruption and lies in the age of Trump

Washington Is Burning reveals the inner workings of Trump's Washington - a grotesque carnival of corruption. Andrew Cockburn sets fire to US pieties, focusing on the spectacular greed at the heart of the nation's political system. Graft and self-interest have long typified both Democratic ...

Axis of empire

a history of Iran-US relations

Ironic plot twists and colorful characters abound in Afshin Matin-Asgari's accessible history of relations between the United States and Iran. The missionaries and educators who descended on Iran in the early nineteenth century made way for the next century's oilmen, CIA agents, scholars ...

Aristotle's political terminology

Comprehensive examination of the different senses in which Aristotle uses a group of the most important expressions in his political writings, with the aim of making possible a firmer understanding of his positions. Aristotle's Political Terminology offers a fresh approach to Aristotle's political ...

The diplomacy of Pope Francis

The Vatican and international politics

A portrait of the Catholic Church's role in today's geopolitical framework through the eyes of the first Latin American pope In an interconnected world marked by a "piecemeal world war" and dominated by apocalyptic perspectives, how did Pope Francis see the role of ...

The DGSE

a concise history of France's foreign intelligence service

France's foreign intelligence service for espionage, analysis, covert action, and security is the formidable Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE). The DGSE's remit spans a wide range of threats, including foreign interference, terrorism and international crime, the proliferation of weapons of mass ...

Japan and the emotional politics of national image

"Although Japan is often ranked among the most popular countries in the world, its negative image in China and South Korea bedevils diplomacy with these two close neighbors. Paul A. Kowert explores how the politics of emotion shapes regional perceptions of Japan. Examining the role ...

Conventional maritime deterrence

the operational foundations of influence at sea

A conceptual framework for understanding the critical role of naval operations in deterrence strategies A future clash between the United States and China would occur across the seas, islands, and peninsulas of the Indo-Pacific region. Thus, mastering maritime deterrence-creating and displaying naval power to discourage ...

Lógica coalicional

Estrategias democráticas para la gobernabilidad en contextos de poder compartido

En un mundo político cada vez más fragmentado, la capacidad de ejercer plenamente el poder y gobernar en solitario es la excepción. La proliferación de partidos, la polarización y los gobiernos divididos hacen que las coaliciones se conviertan en la clave para la estabilidad democrática ...