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This book reveals the pernicious effects of aid dependence and its perversion of Cambodian democracy. It analyzes the period since international intervention liberated Cambodia from pariah state status in the early 1990s and shows how the country’s social indicators and the integrity of its political institutions declined rapidly within a few short years, while inequality grew dramatically. It argues that international intervention and foreign aid resulted in higher maternal mortality rates and unprecedented corruption by the mid-2000s. Similarly it shows that the more aid-dependent a country is, the more distorted its incentives to develop sustainably become. Contrasting Cambodia’s clothing sector with its rice and livestock sectors and its internal handling of the avian flu epidemic, the book showcases the international community’s role in preventing Cambodia from controlling its national development. It argues that as Cambodia is a post-conflict state that is unable to refuse aid, it is rife with trial-and-error donor experiments and their unintended consequences, such as bad governance and poor domestic and tax revenue performance—a major factor curbing sustainable, nationally owned development. By outlining the terms through which countries can achieve better ownership of their development, the book offers alternatives for governments that are on the brink of collapse and dependent on foreign intervention and aid.

This volume offers alternative models for assessing the challenges of a nuclear Iran for U.S. security. It is based on the assumption that Iran will soon obtain nuclear weapons. Through three different scenarios, the book explores the political, strategic, and operational challenges facing the United States in a post-Cold War world. It assesses the type of nuclear capability Iran might develop and the conditions under which Iran might resort to threatening or actually to using such weapons. It looks at the extent to which Iran's military strategy and declaratory policy might embolden Iran and its proxies to pursue more aggressive policies in the region and vis-à-vis the United States. It also assesses Iran's ability to transfer nuclear materials to others within and outside the region, which might spark a nuclear cascade. Drawing on recent post-Cold War deterrence theory, it considers Iran's nuclear ambitions as they relate to its foreign policy objectives, domestic politics and role in the Islamic world. It also suggests specific approaches to improve U.S. defense and deterrence planning.

This book provides an in-depth policy analysis of Asia's fourteen leading space programs, concentrating especially on developments in China, Japan, India, and South Korea. It shows that, in contrast to the close cooperation practiced among European states, space relations among Asian states have become increasingly tense. If current trends continue, the Asian civilian space competition could become a military space race. The book isolates the domestic motivations driving Asia's space programs, revisiting critical events such as China's 2007 anti-satellite weapons test and manned flights, Japan's successful Kaguya lunar mission and its Kibo module for the International Space Station (ISS), India's Chandrayaan lunar mission, and South Korea's astronaut visit to the ISS. It investigates these nations' divergent space goals and their tendency to focus on national solutions and self-reliance, rather than region-wide cooperation and multilateral initiatives. It concludes with recommendations for improved intra-Asian space cooperation and regional conflict prevention. The book also considers America's efforts to engage Asia's space programs in joint activities and the prospects for future U.S. space leadership. It extends its analysis to the relationship between space programs and economic development in Australia and across Asia.

This book looks at the political challenges facing modern-day Myanmar and assesses how other nations should act in relation to the country. It affirms the importance of foreign interests in Myanmar's democratic awakening, but emphasizes that this should be done through committed, grassroots strategies of engagement that encompass foreign states, international aid agencies and global corporations. The book prioritizes the opinions of local citizens and draws upon the latest scholarship on this issue, particularly research that takes historical events, contemporary political and social investigations, and global justice literature into account. It also draws on studies that focus on the effects of democratic transition, the aid industry, and socially responsible corporate investing and sanctions. It applies broad-ranging global justice theories to the issue and offers a resource for those researching Burma/Myanmar, nonspecialists interested in Southeast Asian politics and society and general readers who seek a richer understanding of Myanmar. It is the first book-length study on the nation to be completed after the contentious general elections of 2010.

Despite the destabilizing potential of governing of a vast territory and a large multicultural population, the centralized government of the People’s Republic of China has held together for decades, resisting efforts at local autonomy. By analyzing Beijing’s strategies for maintaining control even in the reformist post-Mao era, Centrifugal Empire reveals the unique thinking behind China’s approach to local governance, its historical roots, and its deflection of divergent interests. Centrifugal Empire examines the logic, mode, and instrument of local governance established by the People’s Republic, and then compares the current system to the practices of its dynastic predecessors. The result is an expansive portrait of Chinese leaders’ attitudes toward regional autonomy and local challenges, one concerned with territory-specific preoccupations and manifesting in constant searches for an optimal design of control. Jae Ho Chung reveals how current communist instruments of local governance echo imperial institutions, while exposing the Leninist regime’s savvy adaptation to contemporary issues and its need for more sophisticated inter-local networks to keep its unitary rule intact. He casts the challenges to China’s central–local relations as perennial, since the dilution of the system’s “socialist” or “Communist” character will only accentuate its fundamentally Chinese—or centrifugal—nature.

Many thought China’s rise would fundamentally remake the global order. Yet, much like other developing nations, the Chinese state now finds itself in a status quo characterized by free trade and American domination. Through a cutting-edge historical, sociological, and political analysis, Ho-fung Hung details the competing interests and economic realities that temper the dream of Chinese supremacy—forces that are stymieing growth throughout the global South. Hung focuses on four common misconceptions: that China could undermine orthodoxy by offering an alternative model of growth; that China is radically altering power relations between the East and the West; that China is capable of diminishing the global power of the United States; and that the Chinese economy would restore the world’s wealth after the 2008 financial crisis. His work reveals how much China depends on the existing order and how the interests of the Chinese elites maintain these ties. Through its perpetuation of the dollar standard and its addiction to U.S. Treasury bonds, China remains bound to the terms of its own prosperity, and its economic practices of exploiting debt bubbles are destined to fail. Hung ultimately warns of a postmiracle China that will grow increasingly assertive in attitude while remaining constrained in capability.

Many have viewed the tribute system as China's tool for projecting its power and influence in East Asia, treating other actors as passive recipients of Chinese domination. China's Hegemony sheds new light on this system and shows that the international order of Asia's past was not as Sinocentric as conventional wisdom suggests. Instead, throughout the early modern period, Chinese hegemony was accepted, defied, and challenged by its East Asian neighbors at different times, depending on these leaders' strategies for legitimacy among their populations. Focusing on China-Korea-Japan dynamics of East Asian international politics during the Ming and High Qing periods, Ji-Young Lee draws on extensive research of East Asian language sources, including records written by Chinese and Korean tributary envoys. She offers fascinating and rich details of war and peace in Asian international relations, addressing questions such as: why Japan invaded Korea and fought a major war against the Sino-Korean coalition in the late sixteenth century; why Korea attempted to strike at the Ming empire militarily in the late fourteenth century; and how Japan created a miniature tributary order posing as the center of Asia in lieu of the Qing empire in the seventeenth century.

This book examines China's place in the world and looks at a range of crucial issues now facing the country, such as the growth (or deterioration) of its economy, the government's ever-delayed democratization, the potential outcomes of a national political crisis, and the possible escalation of a revamped authoritarianism. The book draws on a wealth of archival and contemporary materials and ultimately reads China's current progress as a set of easy accomplishments presaging a more difficult era of development. It sets out the difficult decisions now confronting China's elite, who are under tremendous pressure to support an economy based on innovation and consumption, to establish a political system based on law and popular participation, to rethink their national identity and spatial organization, and to define a more positive approach to the world's problems. These leaders are also besieged by corruption among their ranks, an increasingly restless urban population, and a sharp decline in their country's demographic growth. The book highlights these anxieties and looks at the attempts that are being made to alleviate them. It reveals a China much less confident and secure than many would believe.

This anthology explores the dynamics of shared religious sites in Turkey, the Balkans, Palestine/Israel, Cyprus and Algeria, indicating where local and national stakeholders manoeuvre between competition and cooperation, coexistence, and conflict. Contributors probe the notion of coexistence and the logic that underlies centuries of “sharing,” exploring when and why sharing gets interrupted—or not—by conflict, and the policy consequences. These chapters map the choreographies of shared sacred spaces within the framework of state-society relations, juxtaposing a site's political and religious features and exploring whether sharing or contestation is primarily religious or politically motivated. Although religion and politics are intertwined phenomena, the contributors to this volume understand the category of “religion” and the “political” as devices meant to distinguish between the theological and confessional aspects of religion and the political goals of groups. The chapters clearly delineate the religious and political factors that contribute to the context and causality of conflict at these sites. They draw on history and anthropology to shed light on the often rapid switch from relative tolerance to distress and back to peace and calm.

Few beliefs seem more fundamental to American conservatism than faith in the free market. Yet throughout American history, many of the major conservative intellectual and political figures have harbored deep misgivings about the unfettered market and its disruption of traditional values, hierarchies, and communities. In Conservatives Against Capitalism, Peter Kolozi traces the history of conservative skepticism about the influence of capitalism on politics, culture, and society. Kolozi discusses conservative critiques of capitalism—from its threat to the Southern way of life to its emasculating effects on American society to the dangers of free trade—analyzing the positions of a wide-ranging set of individuals, including John Calhoun, Theodore Roosevelt, Russell Kirk, Irving Kristol, and Patrick J. Buchanan. He examines the ways in which conservative thought went from outright opposition to capitalism to more muted critiques, ultimately reconciling itself to the workings and ethos of the market. By analyzing the unaddressed historical and present-day tensions between capitalism and conservative values, Kolozi shows that figures regarded as iconoclasts belong to a coherent tradition, and he creates a vital new understanding of the American conservative pantheon.

This book traces the development of various policy disputes and perspectives from the period of South Korea’s democratic transition and provides an understanding of how policymakers have managed inter-Korean relations. It shows how, in South Korea, the contentious debate over relations with the North transcends traditional considerations of physical and economic security. It also describes how political activists play a critical role in shaping the discussion of these issues as they pursue the separate yet connected agendas of democracy, human rights, and unification. The book focuses on four case studies—the 1980 Kwangju uprising, the June 1987 uprising, the move toward democracy in the 1990s, and the decade of “progressive” government that began with the election of Kim Dae Jung in 1997. It tracks activists’ complex views on reunification along with the rise and fall of more radical voices encouraging the adoption of a North Korean style of socialism. It shows that, while these specific arguments have dissipated over the years, their vestiges can still be found in recent discussions over how to engage with North Korea and bring security and peace to the peninsula. The book shows how the historical trajectory of norms and beliefs can have a significant effect on a state’s threat perceptions and security policy.

This book investigates the role of irregular migrants in the transformation of citizenship, and argues that irregular status is an immanent (rather than aberrant) condition of global capitalism, one that is formed by the fast-tracked processes of globalization. It describes how irregular migrants complicate the boundaries of citizenship and stretch the parameters of political belonging. It explains that this group is comprised of refugees, asylum seekers, “illegal” labor migrants, and stateless persons, and argues that they occupy new sovereign spaces that generate new subjectivities. The book casts irregular migrants as more than mere victims of sovereign power, shuttled from one location to the next. Incorporating examples from the United States, Australia, and France, it shows how migrants reject their position as “illegal” outsiders and make claims on the communities in which they live and work. It says that, for these migrants, outsider status operates as both a mode of subjectification and as a site of active resistance, forcing observers to rethink the enactment of citizenship. The book connects irregular migrant activism to the complex rescaling of the neoliberal state. Mapping the broad dynamics of political belonging in a neoliberal era, the book provides an insight into the social and spatial transformation of citizenship, sovereignty, and power.

This book provides a detailed account of the British army's involvement in the Basra and Helmand campaigns. It looks at the contributions and limitations of traditional tactics in such settings, and exposes a disconcerting gap between ambitions and resources, intent and commitment. The book recounts how the British military, long considered the masters of counterinsurgency, has encountered significant problems in Iraq and Afghanistan when confronted with insurgent violence. It shows how, in its effort to apply the principles and doctrines of past campaigns, the British army has failed to prevent Basra and Helmand from descending into lawlessness, criminality, and violence. Building upon this detailed account of the Basra and Helmand campaigns, this volume provides an assessment of British military institutional adaptation in response to operations gone awry. It calls attention to the enduring effectiveness of insurgent methods and the threat posed by under-governed spaces. It underscores the need for military organizations to meet the irregular challenges of future wars in new ways.

This book examines the competing themes of space competition and cooperation while providing readers with an understanding of the basics of space technology, diplomacy, commerce, science, and military applications. In this way, it offers a primer on space policy from an international perspective. It shows how, since the end of the Cold War, space has become increasingly crowded, with new countries, companies, and even private citizens operating satellites and becoming spacefarers. It argues that the recent expansion of human space activity poses new challenges to existing treaties and other governance tools for space, increasing the likelihood of conflict over a diminishing pool of beneficial locations and resources close to Earth. Drawing on more than twenty years of experience in international space policy debates, the book examines possible avenues for cooperation among the growing pool of space actors. It considers their shared interests in space traffic management, orbital debris control, the division of the radio frequency spectrum and the prevention of military conflict. It concludes with policy recommendations for enhanced international collaboration in space situational awareness, scientific exploration, and restraining harmful military activities.

This book assesses the impact of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) that was approved by the United Nations in 2013 and which set legally binding standards to regulate global arms exports. It explores the reasons top arms-exporting democracies have put aside past sovereignty, security and economic worries in favor of humanitarian arms transfer controls, and follows the early effects of this about-face on export practice. The book explains that this groundbreaking treaty reflects a growing concern that small and major conventional arms play a significant role in perpetuating human rights violations, conflict and societal instability worldwide. It shows that, while many countries once staunchly opposed shared export controls, they are now beginning to embrace numerous agreements, such as the ATT. The book begins with a brief history of failed modern arms-export control initiatives and then tracks arms transfer trends over time. It pinpoints the normative shifts in the 1990s that put humanitarian arms control on the table, and reveals that many states committed to these policies out of concern for their international reputations. It also highlights how arms-trade scandals threaten domestic reputations and thus help improve compliance. Using statistical data and interviews conducted in France, Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom and the United States, the book challenges existing IR theories of state behavior, while providing insight into both the role of reputation as a social mechanism and the importance of government transparency and accountability in generating compliance with new norms and rules.

This book provides an effective framework for analyzing al-Qaeda's plans against America and encourages strategists and researchers to devote greater attention to jihadi ideas rather than jihadist military operations. It constructs a counter narrative to the West's supposed “war on Islam,” finding that jihadist terrorism strategy has more in common with the principles of Maoist guerrilla warfare than mainstream Islam. The book examines the Salafist roots of al-Qaeda ideology and the contributions of its most famous founders, Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. It also looks at the Arabic-language works of lesser known theoreticians who have played an instrumental role in framing al-Qaeda's so-called war of the oppressed. It shows that these authors readily cite the guerrilla strategies of Mao, Che Guevara, and the mastermind of the Vietnam War, General Giap, and also shows that they incorporate the arguments of American theorists writing on “fourth-generation warfare.” The book argues that al-Qaeda's political-military strategy is a revolutionary and largely secular departure from the classic Muslim conception of jihad. In this way, the book adds new dimensions to the operational, psychological, and informational strategies already deployed by America's military in the region.

In this volume, political scientists, religious scholars, legal theorists, and anthropologists examine the theory and practice of Indonesia's democratic transition and consider whether it can serve as a model for other Muslim countries. It looks at the events of 1998, when Indonesia's military government collapsed, igniting fears that economic, religious and political conflicts would complicate any democratic transition. It shows that, despite these concerns, in every year since 2006, the world's most populous Muslim country has received high marks from international democracy-ranking organizations. The book compares the Indonesian example with similar scenarios in Chile, Spain, India and Tunisia, as well as with the failed transitions of Yugoslavia, Egypt and Iran. The chapters explore the relationship between religion and politics and the ways in which Muslims became supportive of democracy even before change occurred. They also describe how innovative policies prevented dissident military groups, violent religious activists and secessionists from disrupting Indonesia's democratic evolution. The book concludes with a discussion of Indonesia's emerging “legal pluralism” and asks which of its forms are rights-eroding and which are rights-protecting.

This book provides an in-depth portrait of Afghanistan's recent elections as experienced by individuals and communities, and reveals how the elections have actively contributed to instability, undermining the prospects of democracy in Afghanistan. It shows how, since the invasion of the country in 2001, researchers, policymakers and the media have failed to consider the long-term implications of the country's post-conflict elections. The book is based on fieldwork in provinces across the country and interviews with more than seven hundred candidates, officials, community leaders and voters. The book merges political science with anthropology, and documents how political leaders, commanders and the new ruling elite have used elections to further their own interests and deprive local communities of access to political opportunities. It retraces presidential, parliamentary and provincial council elections over the past decade and exposes the role of international actors in promoting the polls as one-off events, detached from a broader political landscape. It shows how this approach to elections has allowed existing local powerholders to solidify their grip on resources and opportunities, derailing democratization processes and entrenching a deeper disengagement from central government. The book argues that Western powers need to re-evaluate their most basic assumptions about elections, democracy and international intervention if they are to prevent similar outcomes in the future.

Beginning with the Cold War and concluding with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, this book explores the overlooked opposition of U.S. diplomats to American foreign policy in the latter half of the twentieth century. During America's reign as a dominant world power, U.S. presidents and senior foreign policy officials largely ignored or rejected their diplomats' reports, memos, and telegrams, especially when they challenged key policies relating to the Cold War, China, and the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. The book recovers these diplomats' invaluable perspective and their commitment to the transformative power of diplomatic writing. It showcases the work of diplomats whose opposition enjoyed some success. George Kennan, John Stewart Service, John Paton Davies, George Ball, and John Brady Kiesling all caught the attention of sitting presidents and policymakers, achieving temporary triumphs yet ultimately failing to change the status quo. The book follows the circulation of documents within the State Department, the National Security Council, the C.I.A., and the military, and it details the rationale behind “The Dissent Channel,” instituted by the State Department in the 1970s, to both encourage and contain dissent. Advancing an alternative narrative of modern U.S. history, the book connects the erosion of the diplomatic establishment and the weakening of the diplomatic writing tradition to larger political and ideological trends while, at the same time, foreshadowing the resurgent significance of diplomatic writing in the age of Wikileaks.

Despite more than a decade of rapid economic development, rising living standards, and large-scale improvements in infrastructure and services, China’s western borderlands are awash in a wave of ethnic unrest not seen since the 1950s. Through on-the-ground interviews and firsthand observations, the international experts in this volume create an invaluable record of the conflicts and protests as they have unfolded—the most extensive chronicle of events to date. The authors examine the factors driving the unrest in Tibet and Xinjiang and the political strategies used to suppress them. They also explain why certain areas have seen higher concentrations of ethnic-based violence than others. Essential reading for anyone struggling to understand the origins of unrest in contemporary Tibet and Xinjiang, this volume considers the role of propaganda and education as generators and sources of conflict. It links interethnic strife to economic growth and connects environmental degradation to increased instability. It captures the subtle difference between violence in urban Xinjiang and conflict in rural Tibet, with detailed portraits of everyday individuals caught among the pressures of politics, history, personal interest, and global movements with local resonance.