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The Decision to Attack: Military and Intelligence Cyber Decision-Making
Regional Pathways to Nuclear Nonproliferation
Conflict Dynamics: Civil Wars, Armed Actors, and Their Tactics
Ebook series23 titles

Studies in Security and International Affairs Ser. Series

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About this series

Security studies, also known as international security studies, is an academic subfield within the wider discipline of international relations that examines organized violence, military conflict, and national security. Meant to serve as an introduction to the field of security studies, Contextualizing Security is a collection of original essays, primary source lectures, and previously published material in the overlapping fields of security studies, political science, sociology, journalism, and philosophy. It offers both graduate and undergraduate students a grasp on both foundational issues and more contemporary debates in security studies.

Nineteen chapters cover security studies in the context of homeland security and liberty, U.S. foreign policy, lessons from the Cold War, science and technology policy, drones, cybersecurity, the War on Terror, migration, study-abroad programs, the surveillance state, Africa, and China.

CONTRIBUTORS: Amelia Ayers, James E. Baker, Roy D. Blunt, Mark Boulton, Naji Bsisu, Robert E. Burnett, Daniel Egbe, Laila Farooq, Lisa Fein, Anna Holyan, Jeh C. Johnson, Richard Ledgett, David L. McDermott, James McRae, Amanda Murdie, Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Scahill, Kristan Stoddart, Jeremy Brooke Straughn, J. R. Swanegan, and Kali Wright-Smith

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJun 15, 2018
The Decision to Attack: Military and Intelligence Cyber Decision-Making
Regional Pathways to Nuclear Nonproliferation
Conflict Dynamics: Civil Wars, Armed Actors, and Their Tactics

Titles in the series (23)

  • Conflict Dynamics: Civil Wars, Armed Actors, and Their Tactics

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    Conflict Dynamics: Civil Wars, Armed Actors, and Their Tactics
    Conflict Dynamics: Civil Wars, Armed Actors, and Their Tactics

    Conflict Dynamics presents case studies of six nation-states: Sierra Leone, the Republic of Congo, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Indonesia, and Peru. In the book, Alethia H. Cook and Marie Olson Lounsbery examine the evolving nature of violence in intrastate conflicts, as well as the governments and groups involved, by focusing on the context of the relationships involved, the capacities of the conflict’s participants, and the actors’ goals. The authors first present a theoretical framework through which the changeable mix of relative group capacities and the resulting tactical decisions can be examined systematically and as conflicts evolve over time. They then apply that framework to the six case studies to show its usefulness in better understand­ing conflicts individually and in comparison. While previous research on civil wars has tended to focus on causes and outcomes, Conflict Dynamics takes a more comprehensive approach to understanding conflict behavior. The shifting nature of relative group capacity (measured in many different ways), coupled with dynamic group goals, determines the tactical decisions of civil war actors and the paths a rebellion will take. The case studies illustrate the relevance of third parties to this process and how their interventions can influence tactics. The progression of violence in conflicts is inextricably linked to the decisions made in their midst. These influence future iterations of the conflictual relationship. Complex groups on both sides both drive and are driven by the decisions made. Understanding conflicts requires that these reciprocal impacts be considered. The comparative frame­work demonstrated in this book allows one to flesh out this complexity.

  • The Decision to Attack: Military and Intelligence Cyber Decision-Making

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    The Decision to Attack: Military and Intelligence Cyber Decision-Making
    The Decision to Attack: Military and Intelligence Cyber Decision-Making

    The debate over cyber technology has resulted in new considerations for national security operations. States find themselves in an increasingly interconnected world with a diverse threat spectrum and little understanding of how decisions are made within this amorphous domain. With The Decision to Attack, Aaron Franklin Brantly investigates how states decide to employ cyber in military and intelligence operations against other states and how rational those decisions are. In his examination, Brantly contextualizes broader cyber decision-making processes into a systematic expected utility–rational choice approach to provide a mathematical understanding of the use of cyber weapons at the state level. Discussed: The Key Concepts of Cyber The Motivation and Utility for Covert Action Digital Power Anonymity and Attribution in Cyberspace Cyber and Conventional Operations: The Dynamics of Conflict Defining the Role of Intelligence in Cyberspace How Actors Decide to Use Cyber—a Rational Choice Approach Cognitive Processes and Decision-Making in Cyberspace Finding Meaning in the Expected Utility of International Cyber Conflict

  • Regional Pathways to Nuclear Nonproliferation

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    Regional Pathways to Nuclear Nonproliferation
    Regional Pathways to Nuclear Nonproliferation

    The contemporary nuclear landscape is rife with challenges. Stagnated progress in disarmament, widespread modernization plans, and emergent proliferation pathways are contributing to the risk of catastrophe. Meanwhile, global nuclear order appears more precarious than ever. This book makes a case for a regional reorientation of the nuclear nonproliferation regime, arguing that a more specialized, decentralized, and localized arrangement could more effectively address post-Cold War challenges. In the process, it develops a framework to analyze the conditions that would allow for more robust regional nuclear cooperation.?? Regional Pathways to Nuclear Nonproliferation includes a series of case studies, centering on Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. It provides a comprehensive overview of existing nuclear cooperation at the regional level, including in the context of nuclear-weapon-free zones. For each case, the book both analyzes the viability of a stronger regional nuclear order and considers the form such an order would likely take. What is the magnitude and character of the nuclear proliferation threat across different regions? What does the presence of institutions in economic, environmental, and human security domains suggest about the likelihood of addressing that threat? A better understanding of broader regional patterns may be the key to explaining the possibility of regional nuclear cooperation. It may also help identify means to effectuate the timing and scale of that cooperation, bolstering regional nuclear orders and, in turn, ensuring the viability of global nuclear order.

  • International Cooperation on WMD Nonproliferation

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    International Cooperation on WMD Nonproliferation
    International Cooperation on WMD Nonproliferation

    International efforts to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)—including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons—rest upon foundations provided by global treaties such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Over time, however, states have created a number of other mechanisms for organizing international cooperation to promote nonproliferation. Examples range from regional efforts to various worldwide export-control regimes and nuclear security summit meetings initiated by U.S. president Barack Obama. Many of these additional nonproliferation arrangements are less formal and have fewer members than the global treaties. International Cooperation on WMD Nonproliferation calls attention to the emergence of international cooperation beyond the core global nonproliferation treaties. The contributors examine why these other cooperative nonproliferation mechanisms have emerged, assess their effectiveness, and ask how well the different pieces of the global nonproliferation regime complex fit together. Collectively, the essayists show that states have added new forms of international cooperation to combat WMD proliferation for multiple reasons, including the need to address new problems and the entrepreneurial activities of key state leaders. Despite the complications created by the existence of so many different cooperative arrangements, this collection shows the world is witnessing a process of building cooperation that is leading to greater levels of activity in support of norms against WMD and terrorism.

  • New Explorations into International Relations: Democracy, Foreign Investment, Terrorism, and Conflict

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    New Explorations into International Relations: Democracy, Foreign Investment, Terrorism, and Conflict
    New Explorations into International Relations: Democracy, Foreign Investment, Terrorism, and Conflict

    This book addresses a range of issues surrounding the search for scientific truths in the study of international conflict and international political economy. Unlike empirical studies in other disciplines, says Seung-Whan Choi, many political studies seem more competent at presenting theoretical conjecture and hypotheses than they are at performing rigorous empirical analyses. When we study global issues like democratic institutions, flows of foreign direct investment, international terrorism, civil wars, and international conflict, we often uncritically adopt established theoretical frameworks and research designs. The natural assumption is that well-known and widely cited studies, once ingrained within the tradition of the discipline, should not be challenged or refuted. However, do such noted research areas reflect scientific truth? Choi looks closely at ten widely cited empirical studies that represent well-known research programs in international relations. His discussions address such statistical and theoretical issues as endogeneity bias, model specification error, fixed effects, theoretical predictability, outliers, normality of regression residuals, and choice of estimation techniques. In addition, scientific progress made by remarkable discoveries usually results from finding a new way of thinking about long-held scientific truths, therefore Choi also demonstrates how one may search for novel ideas at minimal cost by developing new research designs with original data. Here is a valuable resource for students, scholars, and policy makers who want to quickly grasp the evolutionary pattern of scientific research on democracy, foreign investment, terrorism, and conflict; build their research designs and choose appropriate statistical techniques; and identify their own agendas for the production of cutting-edge research.

  • Norm Dynamics in Multilateral Arms Control: Interests, Conflicts, and Justice

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    Norm Dynamics in Multilateral Arms Control: Interests, Conflicts, and Justice
    Norm Dynamics in Multilateral Arms Control: Interests, Conflicts, and Justice

    This volume comprehensively covers a range of issues related to dynamic norm change in the current major international arms control regimes related to nuclear, biological,and chemical weapons; small arms and light weapons; cluster munitions; and antipersonnel mines. Arms control policies of all of the key established and rising state actors are considered, as well as those of nonaligned countries, nongovernmental organizations, and international governing bodies. Recent studies on multilateral arms control tend to focus mostly on "structure," by which opportunities and constraints for action are created. This volume pays equal attention to "agency," through which opportunities and constraints to produce change or maintain the status quo are handled. In addition-and in greater depth than in recent studies-the volume acknowledges the force of moral and ethical impulses (alongside such factors as political, legal, and technological change) in the evolution of arms control norms. The volume begins with a look at the structure of regimes, at the conflicts residing in these structures, and at the dynamic processes in which these conflicts are worked out. The impact of extrinsic factors on norm dynamics is considered next, including technological change and shifts in attitudes and power structures. Essays on the role of agency in driving norm change conclude the volume, with a particular focus on norm entrepreneurship and the importance of acknowledging the competing justice claims surrounding norm-change efforts. Contributors: Una Becker-Jakob, Alexis Below, Marco Fey, Giorgio Franceschini, Andrea Hellmann, Gregor Hofmann, Friederike Klinke, Daniel Müller, Harald Müller, Franziska Plümmer, Carsten Rauch, Judith Reuter, Elvira Rosert, Annette Schaper, Hans-Joachim Schmidt, Tabea Seidler-Diekmann, Simone Wisotzki, Carmen Wunderlich.

  • Norm Diffusion and HIV/AIDS Governance in Putin's Russia and Mbeki's South Africa

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    Norm Diffusion and HIV/AIDS Governance in Putin's Russia and Mbeki's South Africa
    Norm Diffusion and HIV/AIDS Governance in Putin's Russia and Mbeki's South Africa

    Although adopting global norms often improves domestic systems of governance, domestic obstacles to norm diffusion are frequent. States that decide to reinvent their political authority simultaneously evaluate which current global norms are desirable and to what extent. In this study, Vlad Kravtsov argues that recent debates about the nature of authority in Putin’s Russia and Mbeki’s South Africa have resulted in a set of unique ideas on the cardinal goals of the state. This is the first book to explore how these consensual ideas have shaped health governance and impinged on norm diffusion processes. Detailed comparisons of HIV/AIDS governance systems in Russia and South Africa illustrate the argument. The Kremlin’s dislike of international recommendations stemmed from the rapidly maturing statism and great power syndrome. Pretoria’s responses to global AIDS norms were consistent with the ideas of the African Renaissance, which highlighted indigenousness, market-based empowerment, and moral leadership in global affairs. This book explains how and why the governments under investigation framed the nature of the epidemic, provided evidence-based prevention services, increased universal access to proven lifesaving medicines, and interacted with other participants in social practice.

  • State Behavior and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime

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    State Behavior and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime
    State Behavior and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime

    This is the first book-length study of why states sometimes ignore, oppose, or undermine elements of the nuclear nonproliferation regime—even as they formally support it. Anchored by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the nuclear nonproliferation regime is the constellation of agreements, initiatives, and norms that work in concert to regulate nuclear material and technology. The essays gathered here show that attitudes on nonproliferation depend on a “complex, contingent decision calculus,” as states continually gauge how their actions within the regime will affect trade, regional standing, and other interests vital to any nation. The first four essays take theoretical approaches to such topics as a framework for understanding challenges to collective action; clandestine proliferation under the Bush and Obama administrations and its impact on regime legitimacy; threat construction as a lens through which to view resistance to nonproliferation measures; and the debate over the relationship between nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation. Essays comprising the second part of the book use regional and state-specific case studies to look at how U.S. security guarantees affect the willingness of states to support the regime; question the perceived spoiler role of a “vocal minority” within the Non-Aligned Movement; challenge notions that Russia is using the regime to build a coalition hostile to the United States; contrast nonproliferation strategies among Latin American countries; and explain the lag in adoption of an Additional Protocol by some Middle East and North African countries. Getting countries to cooperate on nonproliferation efforts is an ongoing challenge. These essays show that success must be measured not only by how many states join the effort but also by how they participate once they join.

  • Unfinished Business: Why International Negotiations Fail

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    Unfinished Business: Why International Negotiations Fail
    Unfinished Business: Why International Negotiations Fail

    Most studies of international negotiations take successful talks as their subject. With a few notable exceptions, analysts have paid little attention to negotiations ending in failure. The essays in Unfinished Business show that as much, if not more, can be learned from failed negotiations as from successful negotiations with mediocre outcomes. Failure in this study pertains to a set of negotiating sessions that were convened for the purpose of achieving an agreement but instead broke up in continued disagreement. Seven case studies compose the first part of this volume: the United Nations negotiations on Iraq, the Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David in 2000, Iran-European Union negotiations, the Cyprus conflict, the Biological Weapons Convention, the London Conference of 1830–33 on the status of Belgium, and two hostage negotiations (Waco and the Munich Olympics). These case studies provide examples of different types of failed negotiations: bilateral, multilateral, and mediated (or trilateral). The second part of the book analyzes empirical findings from the case studies as causes of failure falling in four categories: actors, structure, strategy, and process. This is an analytical framework recommended by the Processes of International Negotiation, arguably the leading society dedicated to research in this area. The last section of Unfinished Business contains two summarizing chapters that provide broader conclusions—lessons for theory and lessons for practice.

  • Arab Spring: Negotiating in the Shadow of the Intifadat

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    Arab Spring: Negotiating in the Shadow of the Intifadat
    Arab Spring: Negotiating in the Shadow of the Intifadat

    Beginning in January 2011, the Arab world exploded in a vibrant demand for dignity, liberty, and achievable purpose in life, rising up against an image and tradition of arrogant, corrupt, unresponsive authoritarian rule. These previously unpublished, country-specific case studies of the uprisings and their still unfolding political aftermaths identify patterns and courses of negotiation and explain why and how they occur. The contributors argue that in uprisings like the Arab Spring negotiation is “not just a ‘nice’ practice or a diplomatic exercise.” Rather, it is a “dynamically multilevel” process involving individuals, groups, and states with continually shifting priorities—and with the prospect of violence always near. From that perspective, the essayists analyze a range of issues and events—including civil disobedience and strikes, mass demonstrations and nonviolent protest, and peaceful negotiation and armed rebellion—and contextualize their findings within previous struggles, both within and outside the Middle East. The Arab countries discussed include Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. The Arab Spring uprisings are discussed in the context of rebellions in countries like South Africa and Serbia, while the Libyan uprising is also viewed in terms of the negotiations it provoked within NATO. Collectively, the essays analyze the challenges of uprisers and emerging governments in building a new state on the ruins of a liberated state; the negotiations that lead either to sustainable democracy or sectarian violence; and coalition building between former political and military adversaries. Contributors: Samir Aita (Monde Diplomatique), Alice Alunni (Durham University), Marc Anstey* (Nelson Mandela University), Abdelwahab ben Hafaiedh (MERC), Maarten Danckaert (European-Bahraini Organization for Human Rights), Heba Ezzat (Cairo University), Amy Hamblin (SAIS), Abdullah Hamidaddin (King’s College), Fen Hampson* (Carleton University), Roel Meijer (Clingendael), Karim Mezran (Atlantic Council), Bessma Momani (Waterloo University), Samiraital Pres (Cercle des Economistes Arabes), Aly el Raggal (Cairo University), Hugh Roberts (ICG/Tufts University), Johannes Theiss (Collège d’Europe), Siniša Vukovic (Leiden University), I. William Zartman* (SAIS-JHU). [* Indicates group members of the Processes of International, Negotiation (PIN) Program at Clingendael, Netherland]

  • Slaying the Nuclear Dragon: Disarmament Dynamics in the Twenty-First Century

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    Slaying the Nuclear Dragon: Disarmament Dynamics in the Twenty-First Century
    Slaying the Nuclear Dragon: Disarmament Dynamics in the Twenty-First Century

    In recent decades the debate on nuclear weapons has focused overwhelmingly on proliferation and nonproliferation dynamics. In a series of Wall Street Journal articles, however, George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn called on governments to rid the world of nuclear weapons, helping to put disarmament back into international security discussions. More recently, U.S. president Barack Obama, prominent U.S. congressional members of both political parties, and a number of influential foreign leaders have espoused the idea of a world free of nuclear weapons. Turning this vision into reality requires an understanding of the forces driving disarmament forward and those holding it back. Slaying the Nuclear Dragon provides in-depth, objective analysis of current nuclear disarmament dynamics. Examining the political, state-level factors that drive and stall progress, contributors highlight the challenges and opportunities faced by proponents of disarmament. These essays show that although conditions are favorable for significant reductions, numerous hurdles still exist. Contributors look at three categories of states: those that generate momentum for disarmament; those with policies that are problematic for disarmament; and those that actively hinder progress—whether openly, secretly, deliberately, or inadvertently. Nuclear deterrence was long credited with preventing war between the two major Cold War powers, but with the spread of nuclear technology, threats have shifted to other state powers and to nonstate groups. Slaying the Nuclear Dragon addresses an urgent need to examine nuclear disarmament in a realistic, nonideological manner.

  • Containing Russia's Nuclear Firebirds: Harmony and Change at the International Science and Technology Center

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    Containing Russia's Nuclear Firebirds: Harmony and Change at the International Science and Technology Center
    Containing Russia's Nuclear Firebirds: Harmony and Change at the International Science and Technology Center

    In Containing Russia’s Nuclear Firebirds, Glenn E. Schweitzer explores the life and legacy of the International Science and Technology Center in Moscow. He makes the case that the center’s unique programs can serve as models for promoting responsible science in many countries of the world. Never before have scientists encountered technology with the potential for such huge impacts on the global community, both positive and negative. For nearly two decades following the Soviet Union’s breakup into independent states, the ISTC has provided opportunities for underemployed Russian weapon scientists to redirect their talents toward civilian research. The center has championed the role of science in determining the future of civilization and has influenced nonproliferation policies of Russia and other states in the region. Most important, the center has demonstrated that modest investments can encourage scientists of many backgrounds to shun greed and violence and to take leading roles in steering the planet toward prosperity and peace. Schweitzer contends that the United States and other western and Asian countries failed to recognize the importance, over time, of modifying their donor-recipient approach to dealing with Russia. In April 2010 the Russian government announced that it would withdraw from the ISTC agreement. After expenditures exceeding one billion dollars, the ISTC’s Moscow Science Center will soon close its doors, leaving a legacy that has benefited Russian society as well as partners from thirty-eight countries. Schweitzer argues that a broader and more sustained movement is now needed to help prevent irresponsible behavior by dissatisfied or misguided scientists and their patrons.

  • Photographic Warfare: ISIS, Egypt, and the Online Battle for Sinai

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    Photographic Warfare: ISIS, Egypt, and the Online Battle for Sinai
    Photographic Warfare: ISIS, Egypt, and the Online Battle for Sinai

    Photographic Warfare explores the processes of visual contestation at work in the competing official media campaigns of state forces and militant, nonstate actors in the online environment. Islamist and far-right militant groups are increasingly weaponizing their visual media by displaying their actions—beheadings, trainings, fighting on the battlefield, services provision to locals, and so on— as spectacles that circulate around the globe to challenge statebased media messaging and policy agendas. In response, numerous states and coalitions have expanded their online media presence to counter such threats. Using the conflict between ISIS and the Egyptian state over the Sinai Peninsula as a case study, Kareem El Damanhoury introduces an analytical framework of visual contestation to guide future studies of competing visual media campaigns in the online environment. The proposed model provides a rubric for dissecting and understanding contemporary photographic warfare using visual framing, semiotic analysis, contextual interpretations, and comparative applications. Photographic Warfare further emphasizes the many situational factors that influence visual output and content, including militant attacks, counterterrorism operations, loss of leaders, and introduction of new groups into the battlefield.

  • The Child and the World: Child-Soldiers and the Claim for Progress

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    The Child and the World: Child-Soldiers and the Claim for Progress
    The Child and the World: Child-Soldiers and the Claim for Progress

    However unthinkable child-soldiers may be within a generalized conception of childhood, they are not imaginary figures; rather, they are a constant in almost every armed conflict around the world. The participation of children in wars may question the idea of childhood as a "once-upon-a-time story with a happy and predictable ending," disrupting the (natural) idea of a protected and innocent childhood and also eliciting fear, uncertainty, revulsion, horror, and sorrow. Using the perspectives of both childhood studies and critical approaches to international relations, Jana Tabak explores the constructions of child-soldiers as "children at risk" and, at the same time, risky children. More specifically, The Child and the World aims both to problematize the boundaries that articulate child-soldiers as necessarily deviant and pathological in relation to "normal" children and to show how these specific limits participate in the (re)production and promotion of a particular version of the international political order. In this sense, the focus of this work is not on investigating child-soldiers’ lives and experiences per se but on their presumed threatening feature as they depart from the protected territory of childhood, disquieting everyday international life.

  • Wars of Disruption and Resilience: Cybered Conflict, Power, and National Security

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    Wars of Disruption and Resilience: Cybered Conflict, Power, and National Security
    Wars of Disruption and Resilience: Cybered Conflict, Power, and National Security

    Increasingly, the power of a large, complex, wired nation like the United States rests on its ability to disrupt would-be cyber attacks and to be resil­ient against a successful attack or recurring campaign. Addressing the con­cerns of both theorists and those on the national security front lines, Chris C. Demchak presents a unified strategy for survival in an interconnected, ever-messier, more surprising cybered world and examines the institutional adaptations required of our defense, intelligence, energy, and other critical sectors for national security. Demchak introduces a strategy of “security resilience” against surprise attacks for a cybered world that is divided between modern, digitally vulner­able city-states and more dysfunctional global regions. Its key concepts build on theories of international relations, complexity in social-technical systems, and organizational-institutional adaptation. Demchak tests the strategy for reasonableness in history’s few examples of states disrupting rather than conquering and being resilient to attacks, including ancient Athens and Sparta, several British colonial wars, and two American limited wars. She applies the strategy to modern political, social, and technical challenges and presents three kinds of institutional adaptation that predicate the success of the security resilience strategy in response. Finally, Demchak discusses implications for the future including new forms of cyber aggression like the Stuxnet worm, the rise of the cyber-command concept, and the competition between the U.S. and China as global cyber leaders. Wars of Disruption and Resilience offers a blueprint for a national cyber-power strategy that is long in time horizon, flexible in target and scale, and practical enough to maintain the security of a digitized nation facing violent cybered conflict.

  • Stuck: Rwandan Youth and the Struggle for Adulthood

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    Stuck: Rwandan Youth and the Struggle for Adulthood
    Stuck: Rwandan Youth and the Struggle for Adulthood

    Young people are transforming the global landscape. As the human popu­lation today is younger and more urban than ever before, prospects for achieving adulthood dwindle while urban migration soars. Devastated by genocide, hailed as a spectacular success, and critiqued for its human rights record, the Central African nation of Rwanda provides a compelling setting for grasping new challenges to the world’s youth. Spotlighting failed masculinity, urban desperation, and forceful governance, Marc Sommers tells the dramatic story of young Rwandans who are “stuck,” striving against near-impossible odds to become adults. In Rwandan culture, female youth must wait, often in vain, for male youth to build a house before they can marry. Only then can male and female youth gain acceptance as adults. However, Rwanda’s severe housing crisis means that most male youth are on a treadmill toward failure, unable to build their house yet having no choice but to try. What follows is too often tragic. Rural youth face a future as failed adults, while many who migrate to the capital fail to secure a stable life and turn fatalistic about contracting HIV/AIDS. Featuring insightful interviews with youth, adults, and government officials, Stuck tells the story of an ambitious, controlling government trying to gov­ern an exceptionally young and poor population in a densely populated and rapidly urbanizing country. This pioneering book sheds new light on the struggle to come of age and suggests new pathways toward the attainment of security, development, and coexistence in Africa and beyond. Published in association with the United States Institute of Peace

  • Migration Crises and the Structure of International Cooperation

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    Migration Crises and the Structure of International Cooperation
    Migration Crises and the Structure of International Cooperation

    Although international cooperation on migration is often promoted, scholars have been unable to arrive at a consensus about the extent of cooperation in the current system. Under what conditions does international cooperation on migration arise, and what shape does it take? These questions are important because migrants are often vulnerable to human rights abuses during their journeys as well as in the country of destination, and international cooperation represents one mechanism for reducing this vulnerability. Jeannette Money and Sarah P. Lockhart ask these questions as they examine the patterns of migration flows during the post– World War II period, with particular attention to crises or shocks to the international system, as in the case of migration following the recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Syria. Their analysis makes several important contributions to this debate. First, they explain how the broad pattern of migration in the contemporary era—generally from poorer, less stable countries to wealthier, more stable countries—fosters cooperation that is predominantly bilateral, when cooperation does in fact occur. Second, they argue that cooperation is unlikely under most circumstances, because countries of destination prefer the current system, which privileges their sovereignty over migration flows. Finally, they posit that cooperation may arise under three conditions: when the costs of maintaining the status quo increase, when countries of origin locate a venue where their numbers allow them to control the bargaining agenda, or when migrant flows tend toward reciprocity.

  • NGOs and Human Rights: Comparing Faith-Based and Secular Approaches

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    NGOs and Human Rights: Comparing Faith-Based and Secular Approaches
    NGOs and Human Rights: Comparing Faith-Based and Secular Approaches

    This study examines and compares the important work on global human rights advocacy done by religious NGOs and by secular NGOs. By studying the similarities in how such organizations understand their work, we can better consider not only how religious and secular NGOs might complement each other but also how they might collaborate and cooperate in the advancement of human rights. However, little research has attempted to compare these types of NGOs and their approaches. NGOs and Human Rights explores this comparison and identifies the key areas of overlap and divergence. In so doing, it lays the groundwork for better understanding how to capitalize on the strengths of religious groups, especially in addressing the world’s many human rights challenges. This book uses a new dataset of more than three hundred organizations affiliated with the United Nations Human Rights Council to compare the extent to which religious and secular NGOs differ in their framing, discussion, and operationalization of human rights work. Using both quantitative analysis of the extensive data collected by the authors and forty-seven in depth interviews conducted with members of human rights organizations in the sample, Charity Butcher and Maia Carter Hallward analyze these organizations’ approaches to questions of culture, development, women’s rights, children’s rights, and issues of peace and conflict.

  • Behavioral Economics and Nuclear Weapons

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    Behavioral Economics and Nuclear Weapons
    Behavioral Economics and Nuclear Weapons

    Recent discoveries in psychology and neuroscience have improved our understanding of why our decision making processes fail to match standard social science assumptions about rationality. As researchers such as Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and Richard Thaler have shown, people often depart in systematic ways from the predictions of the rational actor model of classic economic thought because of the influence of emotions, cognitive biases, an aversion to loss, and other strong motivations and values. These findings about the limits of rationality have formed the basis of behavioral economics, an approach that has attracted enormous attention in recent years. This collection of essays applies the insights of behavioral economics to the study of nuclear weapons policy. Behavioral economics gives us a more accurate picture of how people think and, as a consequence, of how they make decisions about whether to acquire or use nuclear arms. Such decisions are made in real-world circumstances in which rational calculations about cost and benefit are intertwined with complicated emotions and subject to human limitations. Strategies for pursuing nuclear deterrence and nonproliferation should therefore, argue the contributors, account for these dynamics in a systematic way. The contributors to this collection examine how a behavioral approach might inform our understanding of topics such as deterrence, economic sanctions, the nuclear nonproliferation regime, and U.S. domestic debates about ballistic missile defense. The essays also take note of the limitations of a behavioral approach for dealing with situations in which even a single deviation from the predictions of any model can have dire consequences.

  • Repurposed Rebels: Postwar Rebel Networks in Liberia

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    Repurposed Rebels: Postwar Rebel Networks in Liberia
    Repurposed Rebels: Postwar Rebel Networks in Liberia

    Despite peace agreements, demobilization, and reintegration processes, the end of war does not automatically or necessarily make combatants abandon their wartime rebel networks. In Liberia such structures have lingered long after the civil war came to an end in 2003. Weak formal security institutions with a history of predatory behavior have contributed to the creation of an environment where informal initiatives for security and protection are called upon. In fragile postwar settings, former soldiers can be used as intimidators but have paradoxically reemerged as security providers, challenging our understanding of both the setting and the actors beyond the sphere of war. Based on original interview material and findings from fieldwork, Repurposed Rebels follows former rebel soldiers from the time of civil war to 2013. These actors have reemerged as “recycled” warriors in times of regional wars and crisis and as vigilantes and informal security providers for economic and political purposes. Through these actors, Mariam Bjarnesen examines the relevance of postwar rebel networks and ex-combatant identity in contemporary Liberia, with an eye to understanding the underlying aims of demobilization when reintegration is challenged. Bjarnesen argues that these ex-combatants have succeeded in reintegrating themselves due to, not despite, the fact that they have not been truly demobilized.

  • Power to the Population: The Political Consequences and Causes of Demographic Changes

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    Power to the Population: The Political Consequences and Causes of Demographic Changes
    Power to the Population: The Political Consequences and Causes of Demographic Changes

    Demographic changes directly affect political and socioeconomic dynamics. Whether they are the nationalities of migrating refugees, the percentage of women in the workforce, or aging as a phenomenon (population decline, age of marriage, number of children, or the resources of youth), demographics can change the political dynamics of a country, creating in some cases increased freedoms but also potentially causing conflict or civil war. Power to the Population is a comprehensive guide to predicting and evaluating different possible futures for humanity. These differing scenarios are of particular importance to decision makers, and Tadeusz Kugler focuses on the optimism of what can be created by and for the population. The book investigates the dynamic relationship between political choices and changing populations. Kugler explores how government policies seemingly focused on localized power and economic development profoundly shape the demographic makeup on local and global scales. The demographic future of a population—not only regarding numbers but also in its diversity and how historically marginalized communities are undermined—is not merely about one place, time, or people. Demography has the potential to change the economic and political future of the world.

  • Globalizing Collateral Language: From 9/11 to Endless War

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    Globalizing Collateral Language: From 9/11 to Endless War
    Globalizing Collateral Language: From 9/11 to Endless War

    Language is never just a means of communication. It terrorizes. And, especially in times of war, it has the ability to target civilians and generate fear as a means of producing specific political outcomes, most notably the passive and active acceptance of state violence itself. For this reason, the critical examination of language must be a central part of any effort to fight imperialism, militarism, demagoguery, racism, sexism, and other structures of injustice. Globalizing Collateral Language examines the discourse surrounding 9/11 and its entrenchment in global politics and culture. To interrogate this wartime lexicon of “collateral language,” editors John Collins and Somdeep Sen have assembled a volume of critical essays that explores the long shadow of America’s “War on Terror” discourse. They illuminate how this language has now found resonance across the globe and in political projects that have little to do with the “War on Terror.” Two decades after the attacks of September 11, 2001, this book calls on us to resist the tyranny of collateral language at a time when the need for such interventions in the public sphere is more urgent than ever.

  • Contextualizing Security: A Reader

    33

    Contextualizing Security: A Reader
    Contextualizing Security: A Reader

    Security studies, also known as international security studies, is an academic subfield within the wider discipline of international relations that examines organized violence, military conflict, and national security. Meant to serve as an introduction to the field of security studies, Contextualizing Security is a collection of original essays, primary source lectures, and previously published material in the overlapping fields of security studies, political science, sociology, journalism, and philosophy. It offers both graduate and undergraduate students a grasp on both foundational issues and more contemporary debates in security studies. Nineteen chapters cover security studies in the context of homeland security and liberty, U.S. foreign policy, lessons from the Cold War, science and technology policy, drones, cybersecurity, the War on Terror, migration, study-abroad programs, the surveillance state, Africa, and China. CONTRIBUTORS: Amelia Ayers, James E. Baker, Roy D. Blunt, Mark Boulton, Naji Bsisu, Robert E. Burnett, Daniel Egbe, Laila Farooq, Lisa Fein, Anna Holyan, Jeh C. Johnson, Richard Ledgett, David L. McDermott, James McRae, Amanda Murdie, Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Scahill, Kristan Stoddart, Jeremy Brooke Straughn, J. R. Swanegan, and Kali Wright-Smith

Author

Charity Butcher

CHARITY BUTCHER is professor of political science and international affairs at Kennesaw State University. She is the author of the Handbook of Cross-Border Ethnic and Religious Affinities and coeditor of Understanding International Conflict Management.

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