The book explores Russia's military interventions under Putin, highlighting the pattern of aggression from Chechnya to Ukraine. It delves into the country's transformation post-1990s, revealing how Putinism and an imperial mindset emerged through these conflicts. By analyzing each intervention, the author sheds light on the strategic motivations behind Russia's actions and the implications for global stability.
Ukraine is the latest of Putin's wars of aggression following Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea and Syria. This book examines each external military intervention to show how Russia rebuilt itself after the 1990s, how it embraced Putinism and an imperial vision through a series of bloody conflicts.
"The suffering of Syria's civilians, caught between the government's barrel bombs and chemical weapons and religious fanatics' beheadings and mass killings, shocked the world. Yet despite international law and political commitments proclaiming a responsibility to protect civilians from mass atrocities, world actors stood aside as Syria burned. Again and again, neighboring states, global powers, and the United Nations opted for half-measures or made counterproductive choices that caused even more harm. Alex J. Bellamy provides a forensic account of the world's failure to protect Syrian civilians from mass atrocities. Drawing on interviews with key players, documents from the United Nations and other international organizations, and sources from the Middle East and beyond, he traces the missteps of the international response to Syria's civil war. Bellamy systematically examines the various peace processes and the reasons they failed, highlighting potential alternative paths that could have been taken. He details how and why key actors prioritized their own national interest, geopolitical standing, regional stability, local rivalries, counterterrorism goals, or domestic politics-anything other than the welfare of Syrians. Some governments settled on unrealistic strategies founded on misguided assumptions while others pursued naked ambition; the United Nations descended into irrelevance and even complicity. Shedding new light on the decisions that led to a vast calamity, Syria Betrayed also draws out lessons for more effective responses to future civil conflicts"-- Provided by publisher
This book investigates world peace: what it is, whether it might be achieved, and how.
Focusing on the French Revolution, the book explores the phenomenon of mass killings by states, emphasizing the significance of civilian immunity in influencing the actions of perpetrators. It analyzes the moral implications of these events and the responses from international society, providing a critical examination of how such atrocities are justified and addressed in historical and contemporary contexts.
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was endorsed by the General Assembly of the UN in 2005, and unanimously reaffirmed by the Security Council in 2006 (Resolution 1674) and 2009 (Resolution 1894). The book includes an introduction to the issues relating to the implementation of the Responsibility to Protect principle in international relations.
In 2005, the international community made a landmark commitment to prevent mass atrocities by unanimously adopting the UN’s “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) principle. As often as not, however, R2P has failed to translate into decisive action. Why does this gap persist between the world’s normative pledges to R2P and its ability to make it a daily lived reality? In this new book, leading global authorities on humanitarian protection Alex Bellamy and Edward Luck offer a probing and in-depth response to this fundamental question, calling for a more comprehensive approach to the practice of R2P – one that moves beyond states and the UN to include the full range of actors that play a role in protecting vulnerable populations. Drawing on cases from the Middle East to sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, they examine the forces and conditions that produce atrocity crimes and the challenge of responding to them quickly and effectively. Ultimately, they advocate both for emergency policies to temporarily stop carnage and for policies leading to sustainable change within societies and governments. Only by introducing these additional elements to the R2P toolkit will the failures associated with humanitarian crises like Syria and Libya become a thing of the past.
Focusing on civil-military relations in Southeast Asia, this book examines the security reform agenda's recent developments and its potential to enhance regional stability. It evaluates the effectiveness of this agenda in reducing military interventions, providing insights into the unique challenges faced by the region. Through this analysis, the book seeks to determine whether such reforms can contribute to a more peaceful and secure Southeast Asia.
This edited volume explores the impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on international politics, emphasizing the need for interdisciplinary approaches to security. It discusses how crises can challenge old patterns and foster new perspectives on terrorism, involving contributions from various experts to rethink state responses and the nature of security.
The Just War tradition provides a set of criteria which political leaders and soldiers use to defend and rationalize war. This book explores the evolution of thinking about just wars and examines its role in shaping contemporary judgements about the use of force, from grand strategic issues, to the minutiae of targeting.