International Politics

Nearly 30 years after the end of the Cold War, today's world leaders are abandoning disarmament treaties, building up their nuclear arsenals, and exchanging threats of nuclear strikes. To survive this new atomic age, we must relearn the lessons of the most dangerous moment of the Cold War: the Cuban missile crisis. Serhii Plokhy offers an international perspective on the crisis, tracing the tortuous decision-making that produced and then resolved it, which involved John Kennedy and his advisers, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, and their commanders on the ground.

For over twenty years, Ittay Flescher has worked as an educator, journalist and peacebuilder in Melbourne and Jerusalem. When he woke up on the morning of October 7, 2023 to the sounds of rocket sirens over Jerusalem and later saw the devastation of Gaza in response, the grief and sadness that engulfed him—and so many others—compelled him to ask: how can we find a way forward? Following years spent facilitating dialogue between Jews, Muslims and Christians, Ittay believes that peace can only be found if we are willing to empathise with the pain of others.

Inside America’s preventable sports-gambling debacle In 2018, the United States Supreme Court opened the floodgates for states to legalize betting on sports. Eager for revenue, almost forty states have done so. The result is the explosive growth of an industry dominated by companies like...

Eat more fish, the doctors say. But is the salmon you are consuming really healthy? In the early 1970s, a group of scientists researched how to make more food for the growing population of the world. They looked to the sea. They sampled genes from salmon in 41 Norwegian and Swedish rivers and...

Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus distill their remarkable firsthand experiences of political and military interventions into a potent examination of what we can and cannot achieve in a new era of "nation building." As they delve into the massive, military-driven efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans, the expansion of the EU, and the bloodless "color" revolutions in the former Soviet states, they reveal each effort's consequences for international relations, human rights, and our understanding of state building.

The Cold War dominated international life from the end of World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But how did the conflict begin? Why did it move from its initial origins in Postwar Europe to encompass virtually every corner of the globe? And why, after lasting so long, did the war end so suddenly and unexpectedly? Robert McMahon considers these questions and more, as well as looking at the legacy of the Cold War and its impact on international relations today.

Il est admis que "1984" et "La Ferme des animaux" d'Orwell permettent de penser les dictatures du XXe siècle. Je pose l'hypothèse qu'ils permettent également de concevoir les dictatures de toujours.

Forty years ago, a majority of Americans were highly engaged in issues of war and peace. Whether to go to war or keep out of conflicts was a vital question at the heart of the country's vibrant, if fractious, democracy. But American political consciousness has drifted. In the last decade, America has gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, while pursuing a new kind of warfare in Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Pakistan.

Two of the most fascinating figures in history, John F. Kennedy, 35th president of the United States, and Allen Dulles, our nation’s longest-serving CIA director, often clashed over intelligence issues and national security. However, one such conflict has remained in the shadows until now. JFK vs. Allen Dulles: Battleground Indonesia takes listeners to the vast archipelago 3350 miles wide where this secret showdown occurred.

MI6 operative Duncan Grant has been officially missing in action for the last six months. Going on deep-cover to hunt down those responsible for the death of a close ally. Half a world away, enjoying sedate retirement under new identities, former Albion agents are being murdered. And now there's only one left. Given an ultimatum to save the last Albion or face expulsion from the agency he's sacrificed so much for, Grant has no choice but to pursue both missions at the same time.

Economists insist that recovery is at hand, yet unemployment remains high, real estate values continue to sink, and governments stagger under record deficits. The End of Growth proposes a startling diagnosis: humanity has reached a fundamental turning point in its economic history. The expansionary trajectory of industrial civilization is colliding with non-negotiable natural limits.

For Washington, China is a strategic competitor: the only country with both the will to reshape the world order and, increasingly, the means to do so. For Europe, the People's Republic is a "partner for cooperation, an economic competitor, and a systemic rival". For NATO, it is a "decisive enabler" of Russia's war against Ukraine. Yet Beijing's image is far more positive in the Global South, of which the PRC considers itself a part.

The world is a better place than it used to be. People are healthier, wealthier, and live longer. Yet the escapes from destitution by so many has left gaping inequalities between people and nations. In The Great Escape, Angus Deaton - one of the foremost experts on economic development and on poverty - tells the remarkable story of how, beginning 250 years ago, some parts of the world experienced sustained progress, opening up gaps and setting the stage for today's disproportionately unequal world.

No Go Zones. That's what they're called. And while the politically correct try to deny their existence, the shocking reality of these No Go Zones - where Sharia law can prevail and local police stay away - can be attested to by its many victims. Now Raheem Kassam, a courageous reporter and editor at Breitbart.com, takes us where few journalists have dared to tread - inside the No Go Zones, revealing areas that Western governments, including the United States, don't want to admit exist within their own borders.

In the 16th century, control of colonies and gold bullion gave Spain the edge; 17th-century Netherlands profited from trade and finance; 18th-century France gained from its larger population, while 19th-century British power rested on its primacy in the Industrial Revolution and its navy. In the era of Kennedy and Khrushchev, power resources were measured in terms of nuclear missiles, industrial capacity, and numbers of men under arms and tanks lined up ready to cross the plains of Eastern Europe. But the global information age of the 21st century is quickly rendering these traditional markers of power obsolete, remapping power relationships

While most historians of the Vietnam War focus on the origins of US involvement and the Americanization of the conflict, Lien-Hang T. Nguyen examines the international context in which North Vietnamese leaders pursued the war and American intervention ended. This riveting narrative takes the listener from the marshy Mekong Delta swamps to the bomb-saturated Red River Delta, from the corridors of power in Hanoi and Saigon to the Nixon White House, and from the peace negotiations in Paris to high-level meetings in Beijing and Moscow.

A CIA station chief, later Jordan's lawyer in Washington, reveals the secret history of a lost peace.

Jack O'Connell possessed an uncanny ability to be at the center of things. On his arrival in Jordan in 1958, he unraveled a coup aimed at the young King Hussein, who would become America's most reliable Middle East ally. Over time, their bond of trust and friendship deepened. His narrative contains secrets that will revise our understanding of the Middle East.

The Caribbean crises of the Cold War are revealed as never before in this riveting story of clashing ideologies, the rise of the politics of fear, the machinations of superpowers, and the daring of the brazen mavericks who took them on. The superpowers thought they could use Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic as puppets, but what neither bargained on was that their puppets would come to life.

Using granular data and authoritative Chinese sources, Oriana Skylar Mastro demonstrates that China was able to climb to great power status through a careful mix of strategic emulation, exploitation, and entrepreneurship on the international stage. This “upstart approach”—determined by where and how China chose to compete—allowed China to rise economically, politically, and militarily, without triggering a catastrophic international backlash that would stem its rise.

The Atlantic: A young woman sailing solo across the Atlantic makes an incredible discovery - a man narrowly clinging to life in the open ocean. But the desperate survivor is more than he appears. He is a Kidon - an Israeli assassin - who forcibly commandeers her boat with a new destination in mind: England. There the two are forced into an uneasy partnership as they run from a secretive and lethal organization.