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Recent years have seen a growing role for private military contractors in national and international security. To understand the reasons for this, Elke Krahmann examines changing models of the state, the citizen and the soldier in the UK, the US and Germany. She focuses on both the national differences with regard to the outsourcing of military services to private companies and their specific consequences for the democratic control over the legitimate use of armed force. Tracing developments and debates from the late eighteenth century to the present, she explains the transition from the centralized warfare state of the Cold War era to the privatized and fragmented security governance, and the different national attitudes to the privatization of force.

The world is in a second nuclear age in which regional powers play an increasingly prominent role. These states have small nuclear arsenals, often face multiple active conflicts, and sometimes have weak institutions. How do these nuclear states-and potential future ones-manage their nuclear forces and influence international conflict? Examining the reasoning and deterrence consequences of regional power nuclear strategies, this book demonstrates that these strategies matter greatly to international stability and it provides new insights into conflict dynamics across important areas of the world such as the Middle East, East Asia, and South Asia. Vipin Narang identifies the diversity of regional power nuclear strategies and describes in detail the posture each regional power has adopted over time. Developing a theory for the sources of regional power nuclear strategies, he offers the first systematic explanation of why states choose the postures they do and under what conditions they might shift strategies. Narang then analyzes the effects of these choices on a state's ability to deter conflict. Using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, he shows that, contrary to a bedrock article of faith in the canon of nuclear deterrence, the acquisition of nuclear weapons does not produce a uniform deterrent effect against opponents. Rather, some postures deter conflict more successfully than others. Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Eraconsiders the range of nuclear choices made by regional powers and the critical challenges they pose to modern international security.

Rivals – states with acrimonious, militarized histories – often intervene on opposing sides of civil conflicts. These interventions are known to exacerbate and prolong civil wars, but scholars have yet to fully understand why states engage in them, given the significant costs and countervailing strategic interests. Why Rivals Intervene argues that rivals are driven by security considerations at the international level – specifically, the prospect of future confrontations with their rival – to intervene in civil conflicts. Drawing on a theory of rivalry which accounts for this strategic rationale, John Mitton explores three case studies: Indian and Pakistani intervention in Afghanistan, Israeli and Syrian intervention in Lebanon, and US and Soviet intervention in Angola. The book examines a range of evidence, including declassified memoranda, meeting transcripts, government reports, published interviews, memoirs of political leaders, and other evidence of the thought process, rationale, and justifications of relevant decision-makers. The book claims that the imperatives for intervention are consistent across time and space, as rivals are conditioned by a history of conflict to worry about future confrontations. As a result, Why Rivals Intervene illuminates an important driver of civil conflict, with implications for how such conflicts might be solved or mitigated in the future. At the same time, it offers new insight into the nature of long-standing, acrimonious international relationships.

In an era of climate change, deforestation and massive habitat loss, we can no longer rely on parks and protected areas as isolated 'islands of wilderness' to conserve and protect vital biodiversity. Increasing connections are being considered and made between protected areas and 'connectivity' thinking has started to expand to the regional and even the continental scale to match the challenges of conserving biodiversity in the face of global environmental change. This groundbreaking book is the first guide to connectivity conservation management at local, regional and continental scales. Written by leading conservation and protected area management specialists under the auspices of the World Commission on Protected Areas of IUCN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, this guide brings together a decade and a half of practice and covers all aspects of connectivity planning and management The book establishes a context for managing connectivity conservation and identifies large scale naturally interconnected areas as critical strategic and adaptive responses to climate change. The second section presents 25 rich and varied case studies from six of the eight biogeographic realms of Earth, including the Cape Floristic Region of Africa, the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains, the Australian Alps to Atherton Corridor, and the Sacred Himalayan Landscape connectivity area (featuring Mount Everest.) The remarkable 3200 kilometre long Yellowstone to Yukon corridor of Canada and the United States of America is described in detail. The third section introduces a model for managing connectivity areas, shaped by input from IUCN workshops held in 2006 and 2008 and additional research. The final chapter identifies broad guidelines that need to be considered in undertaking connectivity conservation management prior to reinforcing the importance and urgency of this work. This handbook is a must have for all professionals in protected area management, conservation, land m

In recent years the European Union (EU) has played an increasingly important role as a manager of global conflicts. This book provides a comprehensive assessment of how the EU has performed in facilitating mediation, conflict resolution and peacebuilding across the globe. Offering an accessible introduction to the theories, processes and practice of the EU's role in managing conflict, the book features a broad range of case studies including Afghanistan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Cyprus, Israel-Palestine, Macedonia and Moldova and examines both the institutional and policy aspects including the common foreign, security and defence policy. Drawing together a wide range of contributors, this will be of great interest to students of European Foreign Policy, the EU as a global actor and conflict resolution and management.

This exciting new text illustrates and advances the argument that International Organizations (IOs) need to be taken seriously as actors in world affairs. Bringing together an international line-up of distinguished contributors, the text examines recent theories that suggest how IOs are able to set their own policies and implement them in meaningful ways. The chapters review these theoretical positions and then present a series of case studies which focus on how these theories play out when IOs are charged with solving global problems: including development, peacekeeping and environmental policy coordination. Examining and analysing both positive and negative examples of this independence, this text is a valuable resource on the topic of the internal workings of IOs, providing the richest and most focused textbook so far dealing with the capacity of IOs for independent action in international politics. It is essential reading for all students of international organizations.

Since the end of World War II and the founding of the United Nations, genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes-mass atrocities-have been explicitly illegal. When such crimes are committed, the international community has an obligation to respond: the human rights of the victims outweigh the sovereignty claims of states that engage in or allow such human rights violations. This obligation has come to be known as the responsibility to protect. Yet, parallel to this responsibility, two other related responsibilities have developed: to prosecute those responsible for the crimes, and to provide humanitarian relief to the victims-what the author calls the responsibility to palliate. Even though this rhetoric of protecting those in need is well used by the international community, its application in practice has been erratic at best. InInternational Responses to Mass Atrocities in Africa, Kurt Mills develops a typology of responses to mass atrocities, investigates the limitations of these responses, and calls for such responses to be implemented in a more timely and thoughtful manner. Mills considers four cases of international responses to mass atrocities-in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, and Darfur-putting the cases into historical context and analyzing them according to the typology, showing how the responses interact. Although all are intended to address human suffering, they are very different types of actions and accomplish different things, over different timescales, on different orders of magnitude, and by very different types of actors. But the critical question is whether they accomplish their objectives in a mutually supportive way-and what the trade-offs in using one or more of these responses may be. By expanding the understanding of international responsibilities, Mills provides critical analysis of the possibilities for the international community to respond to humanitarian crises.

The eruption in the early 1990s of highly visible humanitarian crises and exceedingly bloody civil wars in the Horn of Africa, imploding Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, set in motion a trend towards third party intervention in communal conflict in areas as far apart as the Balkans and East Timor. However haltingly and selectively, that trend towards extra-systemic means of managing ethnic and national conflict is still discernible, motivated as it was in the 1990s by the inability of in-house accommodation methods to resolve ethno-political conflicts peacefully and the tendency of such conflicts to spill into the international system in the form of massive refugee flows, regional instability, and failed states hosting criminal and terrorist elements. In its various forms, third party intervention has become a fixed part of the current international system Our book examines the various forms in which that intervention occurs, from the least intrusive and costly forms of third party activity to the most intrusive and expensive endeavors. More specifically, organized in the form of overview essays followed by case studies that explore the utility and limitations, successes and failures of various forms of third party activity in managing conflict, the book begins by examining diplomatic intervention and then proceeds to cover, in turn, legal, economic, and military instruments of conflict management before concluding with a section on political tutelage arrangements and nation/capacity building operations. The chapters themselves are authored by a mix of contributors drawn from relevant disciplines, both senior and younger scholars, academics and practitioners, and North Americans and Europeans. All treat a common theme but no attempt was made to solicit work from contributors with a common orientation towards the value of third party intervention. Nor were the authors straight-jacketed with heavy content guidelines from the editors. Their essays validate the value of this approach. Far from being chaotic in nature, they generally supplement one another, while offering opposing viewpoints on the overall topic; for example, our Italian contributor who specializes in non-government organizations offers a chapter illustrating their utility under certain conditions, whereas the chapter from an Afghan practitioner notes the downside of too much reliance on NGOs in nation-building operations. The essays also cover topics not often treated, and are written from the viewpoint of those on the ground. The chapter on creating a police force in post-Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example, reads much like a diary from the American colonel who was sent to Bosnia in early 1996 charged with that task.

Rivalry between nations has a long and sometimes bloody history. Not all political opposition culminates in war-the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union is one example-but in most cases competition between nations and peoples for resources and strategic advantage does lead to violence: nearly 80 percent of the wars fought since 1816 were sparked by contention between rival nations. Long-term discord is a global concern, since competing states may drag allies into their conflict or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction.How Rivalries Endis a study of how such rivalries take root and flourish and particularly how some dissipate over time without recourse to war. Political scientists Karen Rasler, William R. Thompson, and Sumit Ganguly examine ten political hot spots, stretching from Egypt and Israel to the two Koreas, where crises and military confrontations have occurred over the last seven decades. Through exacting analysis of thirty-two attempts to deescalate strategic rivalries, they reveal a pattern in successful conflict resolutions: shocks that overcome foreign policy inertia; changes in perceptions of the adversary's competitiveness or threat; positive responses to conciliatory signals; and continuing effort to avoid conflict after hostilities cease.How Rivalries Endsignificantly contributes to our understanding why protracted conflicts sometimes deescalate and even terminate without resort to war.

The Security Governance of Regional Organizations assesses the effectiveness of regional organizations as regional or global security providers, and examines how policy preferences, resources, capabilities, institutional mechanisms and economic and political cohesion link with collective action behaviour in four security policy functions. It investigates how regional organizations meet the new security threats or respond to strategic geopolitical changes and what adaptations they make in the process. Divided into three parts and using a common analytical framework, the book explains the changing security agenda in ten key regional organizations, each organizational chapter: identifies the nature of threats within the region examines the historical development and the degree of institutionalization assesses the level of governance explores the context of interaction investigates the compliance with the norms of the system of governance. This collection contributes to the ongoing reconceptualization of security and definition of security governance, and explores whether regional security governance processes are unique or similar and whether some organizational experiences can be seen as models for others to follow. It combines a coherent theoretical framework with strong comparative case studies, making it ideal reading for all students of security studies.