Diplomati

'A compelling history of the dark arts of statecraft... Fascinating' Jonathan RugmanToday's world is in flux. Competition between the great powers is back on the agenda and governments around the world are turning to secret statecraft and the hidden hand to navigate these uncertain waters. From poisonings to electoral interference, subversion to cyber sabotage, states increasingly operate in the shadows, while social media has created new avenues for disinformation on a mass scale.This is covert action: perhaps the most sensitive - and controversial - of all state activity. However, for all its supposed secrecy, it has become surprisingly prominent - and it is something that has the power to affect all of us. In an enthralling and urgent narrative packed with real-world examples, Rory Cormac reveals how such activity is shaping the world and argues that understanding why and how states wield these dark arts has never been more important.

This report offers a new framing of U.S. national security interests in the Middle East in light of changed political, security, and economic contexts. The authors argue for a new approach to managing U.S. security interests in the region that avoids the pattern of recurring reactive military engagements that have drawn in the United States for decades. This approach recognizes that the Middle East sits at the crossroads of multiple vital U.S. interests and that problems that start in the Middle East spread worldwide. The authors contend that the United States should not deprioritize or disengage from the Middle East but should instead manage the full range of its interests there. These include the traditional goals of preventing terrorism, protecting global energy markets, and dealing with Iranian nuclear proliferation and other malign activities, as well as additional interests related to addressing great power competition, regional conflicts, the human and financial costs of conflict, civilian displacement, climate change, the well-being of allies, and chronic instability. To safeguard its interests, the United States should rely less on military operations and more on diplomacy, economic development, and technical assistance. A reshaped U.S. strategy that both maintains the Middle East as a priority and rebalances military and civilian tools can help steer the region from one where costs to the United States prevail to one where benefits to the American people-as well as people in the Middle East-accrue. Completed before Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the report has not been revised subsequently.

Hand-Off details the Bush administration's national security and foreign policy as described at the time in then-classified Transition Memoranda prepared by the National Security Council experts who advised President Bush.

A collection of poems, dreams, notes, scores and drawings and sketches made between 2020 and 2022. The contents were created either in the process or reflection of Struggles around paper work-Immigration Bureaucratic systems.

Confessional Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe examines the role of religion in early modern European diplomacy. In the period following the Reformations, Europe became divided: all over the continent, princes and their peoples split over theological, liturgical, and spiritual matters. At the same time, diplomacy rose as a means of communication and policy, and all powers established long- or short-term embassies and sent envoys to other courts and capitals. The book addresses three critical areas where questions of religion or confession played a role: papal diplomacy, priests and other clerics as diplomatic agents, and religion as a question for diplomatic debate, especially concerning embassy chapels.

This book explores the possibility and feasibility of building a new model of major-country relations between China and the United States, which is of great significance to the sound interaction between the two countries and the preservation of peace and stability of the world. In early June 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama reached a consensus on building a new model of major-country relations at the historical Sunny lands meeting in California. In the years that followed, the two leaders were committed to that goal despite the different interpretations in its substance. How is the new model of major-country relations conceptualized and developed? What renders it possible? Is the major-country conflict inevitable? These are the basic issues addressed in this book. Now, China-US relations are at a critical juncture. The international community is watching the world's two largest economies and is quite concerned about the future of one of the world's most complicated bilateral relationships. This timely publication of Professor Tao Wenzhao provides us with a realistic approach to managing this vital relationship in a candid and balanced way.

The South Caucasus is the key strategic region between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea and the regional powers of Iran, Turkey and Russia and is the land bridge between Asia and Europe with vital hydrocarbon routes to international markets. This volume examines the resulting geopolitical positioning of Georgia, a pivotal state and lynchpin of the region, illustrating how and why Georgia's foreign policy is 'multi-vectored', facing potential challenges from Russia, int ernal and external nationalisms, the possible break-up of the European project and EU support and uncertainty over the US commitment to the traditional liberal international order.

This book focuses on the extent to which Soviet scholars and cultural theoreticians were able to act autonomously during the Stalin era.

This book examines the career of Sir Orme Sargent, one of the most important and distinguished British diplomats of the twentieth century.

This book is a diplomatic history of Europe and the wider world over a period of 500 years, from the beginning of the Sixteenth Century to the early Twenty First Century- with a crucial aspect.

With a focus on the economic battlefront and in-depth analysis of the diplomatic, military, and ideological arenas, the world¿s foremost expert on US-China global competition offers a rousing, strategic call to action and playbook¿harvesting all of our nation¿s ingenuity, confidence, and will power¿to outcompete the long-term strategies of China and its Communist Party.

"In 1948 the United Nations launched the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization following the conflict that erupted between Israel and its Arab neighbors, who profoundly opposed the creation of a Jewish state. UNTSO quickly found itself overseeing the ceasefire lines between combatant parties. In the ensuing decades, as countries along the eastern Mediterranean engaged in a series of escalating military conflicts, UNTSO was continually challenged in its peacekeeping mission, often having to alter its configuration. Matters came to a head in 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon for a second time, calling into question the efficacy of UN peacekeeping operations and US support for them. In Yanks in Blue Berets: American UN Peacekeepers in the Middle East, retired US Army colonel and former UN military observer L. Scott Lingamfelter chronicles the role of the US military in UN Middle East peacekeeping operations. Framed by his personal experiences, the book examines the difficulties faced by UN forces wedged between warring sides with limited trust in their authority as well as the challenging dichotomy of a soldier trained for combat yet immersed in unarmed peacekeeping. Yanks in Blue Berets is a "boots on the ground" perspective of the building Arab-Israeli tensions and geopolitics preceding the 1982 invasion of Lebanon"--