International Relations Theory

We generally understand "radical Islam" as a purely Islamic phenomenon, but Buruma and Margalit show that while the Islamic part of radical Islam certainly is, the radical part owes a primary debt of inheritance to the West. Whatever else they are, al Qaeda and its ilk are revolutionary anti-Western political movements, and Buruma and Margalit show us that the bogeyman of the West who stalks their thinking is the same one who has haunted the thoughts of many other revolutionary groups, going back to the early 19th century.

Once the world's bastion of liberal, democratic values, Europe is now having to confront demons it thought it had laid to rest. The old pathologies of anti-Semitism, populist nationalism, and territorial aggression are threatening to tear the European postwar consensus apart. Based on extensive firsthand reporting, this book is a provocative, disturbing look at a continent in unexpected crisis.

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is insanity. For decades, the U.S. State Department called it diplomacy. David Friedman was an outside candidate when President Trump appointed him U.S. ambassador to Israel. He took office to find U.S.-Israel policy stuck in stalemate. For years, accepted wisdom was that extensive experience and detailed knowledge of Middle Eastern history and culture were necessary to negotiate treaties. In truth, Friedman realized, all parties played on that accepted wisdom to stall—expecting to get a better deal further down the road.

In 1950, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested for allegedly passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, an affair FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover labeled the "crime of the century". Their case became an international sensation, inspiring petitions, letters of support, newspaper editorials, and protests in countries around the world. Nevertheless, the Rosenbergs were executed after years of appeals, making them the only civilians ever put to death for conspiracy-related activities. Yet even after their executions, protests continued.

During the 45 years of the Cold War, policymakers from the US and the Soviet Union vied for primacy in the Middle East. Their motives, long held by historians to have had an ideological thrust, were, in fact, to gain control over access to oil and claim geographic and strategic advantage. In his new audiobook, Rashid Khalidi, considered the foremost US historian of the Middle East, makes the compelling case that the dynamics that played out during the Cold War continue to exert a profound influence even decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

History and geography delineate the operation of power, not only its range but also the capacity to plan and the ability to implement. Approaching state strategy and policy from the spatial angle, Jeremy Black argues that just as the perception of power is central to issues of power, so place, and its constraints and relationships, is partly a matter of perception, not merely map coordinates. Geopolitics, he maintains, is as much about ideas and perception as it is about the actual spatial dimensions of power.

As American interests assumed global proportions after 1945, policy makers were faced with the challenge of prioritizing various regions and determining the extent to which the United States was prepared to defend and support them. Superpowers and developing nations soon became inextricably linked and decolonizing states such as Vietnam, India, and Egypt assumed a central role in the ideological struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Dans les relations professionnelles, il est quelquefois difficile de rester authentique, de savoir exprimer en toute simplicité sa perception, ses opinions, ses besoins, ses réticences, ses émotions. En conséquence on se tait, on se sur-adapte, on refoule ses émotions, on "prend sur soi". Tout cela est souvent stressant, épuisant, quelquefois inutile et contre-productif. Il est toutefois possible de s’affirmer avec bienveillance, dans le respect de ses collaborateurs, de sa hiérarchie ou de ses collègues, de conjuguer fermeté et savoir-faire relationnel.

In this compelling, behind-the-scenes account, former top CIA officer and Cuba expert Brian Latell examines the extraordinary Castro brothers and the impending dynastic succession of Fidel's younger brother, Raul. Exploring the brothers' remarkable relationship, he reveals how Fidel and Raul have collaborated, divided responsibilities, and resolved disagreements for more than 46 years, a challenge to the notion that the little-known Raul has been an insignificant player.

In Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, Michael Walzer revises and extends the arguments in his influential Spheres of Justice, framing his ideas about justice, social criticism, and national identity in light of the new political world that has arisen in the past three decades. Walzer focuses on two different but interrelated kinds of moral argument: Maximalist and minimalist, thick and thin, local and universal.

Chaim Gans's A Political Theory for the Jewish People examines the two dominant interpretations of Zionism, contrasts them with post-Zionist alternatives, and develops a third model.

The United States has been the world's dominant power for more than a century. Now, many analysts believe that other countries are rising and the United States is in decline. Is the unipolar moment over? Is America finished as a superpower? In this book, Michael Beckley argues that the United States has unique advantages over other nations that, if used wisely, will allow it to remain the world's sole superpower throughout this century. We are not living in a transitional, post-Cold War era.

For proslavery leaders like John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis, the 19th-century world was torn between two hostile forces: a rising movement against bondage and an Atlantic plantation system that was larger and more productive than ever before. In this great struggle, Southern statesmen saw the United States as slavery's most powerful champion. Overcoming traditional qualms about a strong central government, slaveholding leaders harnessed the power of the state to defend slavery abroad.

In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001 (deemed then too controversial to publish), Gore Vidal challenges the comforting consensus following September 11th and goes back and draws connections to Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. He asks were these simply the acts of “evil-doers?”

The September 11 assault on the World Trade Center was the most sophisticated and horrifying in a series of operations masterminded by Osama bin Laden and his Jihad group - an organization that CNN's terrorism analyst Peter Bergen calls Holy War, Inc. One of only a handful of journalists to have interviewed the world's most wanted man face to face, Bergen explains the Jihadist network that operates globally and in secrecy.

During the 1970s, American foreign policy faced a predicament of clashing imperatives - US decision makers, already struggling to maintain stability and devise strategic frameworks to guide the exercise of American power during the Cold War, found themselves hampered by the emergence of dilemmas that would come to a head in the post-Cold War era. Their choices proved to be of enormous consequence for the development of American foreign policy in the final decades of the twentieth century and beyond.

What would the world look like if America were to reduce its role as a global leader in order to focus all its energies on solving its problems at home? And is America really in decline? Robert Kagan, New York Times best-selling author and one of the country’s most influential strategic thinkers, paints a vivid, alarming picture of what the world might look like if the United States were truly to let its influence wane.

US relations with Iran have been fraught for decades, but, under the Trump Administration, tensions are rising to startling levels. Medea Benjamin, one of the best-known 21st century activists, offers the incredible history of how a probable alliance became a bitter antagonism in this accessible and fascinating story.

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter pillories American liberals for their views on Republicans and conservative causes. Author of the best-selling anti-Clinton book High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Coulter summons pages of footnotes to support her highly original thesis that most of the media condemn even the most moderate of conservative views.

When Reagan and Gorbachev sat down in Reykjavik in 1986, George Shultz said that it was “the poker game with the highest stakes ever played”. It was the last time the world had a chance to do away entirely with nuclear weapons. This is the behind-the-scenes story of this remarkable summit conference. An Impossible Dream is the first exploration of recently available archives of both sides - top-secret archives of the Kremlin, the personal papers of Gorbachev, as well as Reagan's archives.