Explore the vast range of titles available.

This book is a collection of stories from witnesses and victims of Russian war atrocities that occurred in Ukraine during the full-scale Russian invasion that started in 2022. It contains first-hand stories of killings, illegal detentions, torture, and heavy bombardments of the civilian settlements carried out the Russian military during the invasion of Ukraine. It also contains stories of evacuation, losing loved ones, and the heroism of soldiers and paramedics. This book will give you the human dimension of the war, reflected in the stories of real people.

In Eastern Ukraine, unfathomable human dramas have unfolded since 2014. Thousands died in the fighting. The homes of tens of thousands were destroyed. Many were captured and tortured, millions ousted from their homes. The lives of many were broken. Volunteers started to collect food, clothes and even weapons for the frontline. Charity organizations transferred donations to the Donets’ Basin (Donbas). Priests became chaplains for soldiers. Journalists and photographers flooded into the war-zone and sometimes became involved in the events. A Hungarian and Ukrainian journalist, Eperjesi and Kachura had the opportunity to meet and talk to many of these characters. The book provides a tableau of the emblematic figures of the war in the Donbas. It not only presents tragedies, but also human moments and noble deeds. The two journalists show how the lives of ordinary people have changed as a result of the horrors of war. They also spoke to pro-Russian militiamen and even with a Russian military officer captured in Ukraine. Shreds of War is one of the few authentic books with on-the-spot coverage, interviews, and dramatic photos documenting the war in Eastern Ukraine.

The first international history of the emergence of economic sanctions during the interwar period and the legacy of this development Economic sanctions dominate the landscape of world politics today. First developed in the early twentieth century as a way of exploiting the flows of globalization to defend liberal internationalism, their appeal is that they function as an alternative to war. This view, however, ignores the dark paradox at their core: designed to prevent war, economic sanctions are modeled on devastating techniques of warfare. Tracing the use of economic sanctions from the blockades of World War I to the policing of colonial empires and the interwar confrontation with fascism, Nicholas Mulder uses extensive archival research in a political, economic, legal, and military history that reveals how a coercive wartime tool was adopted as an instrument of peacekeeping by the League of Nations. This timely study casts an overdue light on why sanctions are widely considered a form of war, and why their unintended consequences are so tremendous.

Politicians may strategically time unpopular measures to coincide with newsworthy events that distract the media and the public. We test this hypothesis in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We find that Israeli attacks are more likely to occur when US news on the following day is dominated by important predictable events. Strategic timing applies to attacks that bear risk of civilian casualties and are not too costly to postpone. Content analysis suggests that Israel’s strategy aims at minimizing next-day coverage, which is especially charged with negative emotional content. Palestinian attacks do not appear to be timed to US news.

PurposeThe new geopolitical context being created by the Ukraine–Russia war highlights the need for structured approaches to planning and implementing unhooking strategies and developing associated supply chain reconfigurations.Design/methodology/approachThe authors have interviewed six supply chain executives to begin the investigation of the key supply chain risks and disruptions caused by the Ukraine–Russia war.FindingsInitial corporate responses to the Ukraine–Russia conflict were significant, perhaps unprecedented. However, as institutional, corporate and consumer sentiment influence reconfiguration responses, the authors have identified three supply chain pathways that underpin unhooking actions.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors selected respondents from each different type of supply chain interaction with the conflict zone (inbound, outbound and within), covering both components/intermediate products and finished goods. Therefore the sample size was small and designed to fit in with the spirit of the pathway initiative.Practical implicationsThe authors reinforce the key role of procurement and supply chain management in not just supply but also in downstream markets that can accelerate decoupling and mitigate the associated supply chain disruptions.Social implicationsThe authors observe that supply chains are increasingly being weaponized, as external institutional and consumer influences necessitate companies to unhook from conflict zones, countries, or regimes. They are becoming increasingly intertwined with foreign policy.Originality/valueThe novelty of the contribution to the associated discourse is the perspective that after decades of increasing globalization and geographic dispersion of supply chains, the unhooking effort is not limited to a firm and its internal operations but involves multiple stakeholders. For instance, the full extent of the complex linkages of supply chains, networks and relationships that touch conflict zone geographies must be considered, particularly those that are incompatible with the firm's values and aims, including those of their stakeholders.

How do income shocks affect armed conflict? Theory suggests two opposite effects. If labour is used to appropriate resources violently, higher wages may lower conflict by reducing labour supplied to appropriation. This is the opportunity cost effect. Alternatively, a rise in contestable income may increase violence by raising gains from appropriation. This is the rapacity effect. Our article exploits exogenous price shocks in international commodity markets and a rich dataset on civil war in Colombia to assess how different income shocks affect conflict. We examine changes in the price of agricultural goods (which are labour intensive) as well as natural resources (which are not). We focus on Colombia's two largest exports, coffee and oil. We find that a sharp fall in coffee prices during the 1990s lowered wages and increased violence differentially in municipalities cultivating more coffee. This is consistent with the coffee shock inducing an opportunity cost effect. In contrast, a rise in oil prices increased both municipal revenue and violence differentially in the oil region. This is consistent with the oil shock inducing a rapacity effect. We also show that this pattern holds in six other agricultural and natural resource sectors, providing evidence that price shocks affect conflict in different directions depending on the type of the commodity.

In this paper, we extend the current literature by seeking answers to two questions: (1) were/are traditional stock markets or FinTech markets more volatile during the Russia–Ukraine War? (2) Which market returns were/are higher during the Russia–Ukraine War—traditional stocks or Fintech stocks. We explored whether cumulative abnormal returns and the stock price of the Fintech market, proxied by Global X Fintech ETF, of firms listed in 28 different countries’ stock markets differ during the Russia–Ukraine War than before the war. Our data set covers the period from June 1, 2021, through November 22, 2022. Our results found that traditional stock markets have been more volatile than Fintech stock markets during the Russia–Ukraine War than before the war. On the other hand, we can see that traditional market returns have been lower than Fintech market returns during the Russia–Ukraine war than before the war.

This is an annotated edition of a traditional song text, written in the Zhuang character script. The Brigands' Song is part of a living tradition, sung antiphonally by two male and two female singers. The song is probably unique in presenting the experiences of ordinary men and women during wartime in pre-modern China. The narrative relates how the men are sent off to war, fighting as native troops on behalf of the Chinese imperial armies. The song dates from the Ming dynasty and touches on many topics of historical significance, such as the use of firearms and other operational details.

The international politics of the Middle East fills a major gap in the field of middle eastern political studies by combining international relations theory with concrete case studies. It will be of immense benefit to students of middle eastern politics, international relations and comparative politics. The book begins with an overview of the rules and features of the middle east regional system - the arena in which the local states, including Egypt, Turkey, Israrel and Arab states od Syria, Jordan and Iraq, operate. It goes on to analyse foreign policy-making in key states, illustrating how systematic determinants contrain this policy-making, and how these contraints are dealt with in distinctive ways depending on particular domsetic features of the individual states. Finally, the book goes on to look at the outcomes of state policies by examining several major conflicts including the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Gulf War, and the system of regional alignment. The book assesses the impact of international pentrartion in the region, including the hsitorica reasons behind the formation of the regional state system. It also analyses the continued role of the external great powers, such as the United States and the former Soviet Union and explains the process by which the region has besome incorporated into the global capitalist market.

Powerful, centralized states controlling a large share of national income only begin to appear in Europe after 1500. We build a model that explains their emergence in response to the increasing importance of money for military success. When fiscal resources are not crucial for winning wars, the threat of external conflict stifles state-building. As finance becomes critical, internally cohesive states invest in state capacity while divided states rationally drop out of the competition, causing divergence. We emphasize the role of the \"Military Revolution\", a sequence of technological innovations that transformed armed conflict. Using data from 374 battles, we investigate empirically both the importance of money for military success and patterns of state-building in early modern Europe. The evidence is consistent with the predictions of our model.