National security threats facing the West are fundamentally changing. Turning away from the military as an omnibus tool of aggression, hostile governments are instead frequently using tools-including subversive economics, coercion of foreign companies, gradual border violations, cyberattacks, disinformation, and arbitrary detention of foreign citizens-that are often difficult for targeted countries to immediately identify, let alone tackle. Nonmilitary aggression is easy, inexpensive, and alarmingly effective. Businesses - American and foreign - have already suffered significant financial losses because of gray-zone attacks.

In The Defender's Dilemma, international security expert Elisabeth Brawer offers the first sustained analysis of how these tactics in the gray zone between war and peace dangerously weaken liberal democracies, which are open societies by definition and intimately connected to the rest of the world through globalization. She discusses the breadth of gray-zone aggression and presents strategies for better defense against it. These strategies involve not just governments but also civil society, a largely untapped resource.

Substantially revised for the sixth edition, Constructive Conflicts explains how large-scale political and social conflicts can be waged more constructively, with more positive consequences and fewer destructive consequences for those involved. Drawing on research from political science, sociology, social-psychology, neuroscience, cultural studies, and other disciplines, Dayton and Kriesberg follow the lifecycle of social and political conflicts as they emerge, escalate, de-escalate, become settled, and often emerge again in new forms.
The sixth edition presents numerous new examples and cases of conflict episodes that have avoided extreme coercion or violence and which have resulted in the advancement of the interests of most parties involved. The book gives policymakers, concerned citizens, and students a powerful analytical framework, supported by data, for understanding and constructively intervening in conflicts of different type and scale, offering a way out of the destructive cycles of conflict management which have come to characterize contemporary social and political relations.
Key revisions and features include:
Increased attention to changes in the social and political landscape including the rise of nationalism, the erosion of liberal internationalism, conflicts related to COVID response, political polarization, and the Black Lives Matter movementThoroughly revised cases and examples throughoutKey content revisions such as the growth of bottom-up strategies for peace and conflict management, the rise of misinformation in a 'post-truth' era, and insights from neuroscience Table of contents now organized around three distinct book sections and chapter titles revised to reflect new contentNumerous new figures and tables in every chapterEnd-of-chapter summaries, discussion questions, and activitiesNew ancillary teaching materials, including experiential exercises, simulations, and lecture outlines with teaching tips

This book examines the conceptual, existential, and logical conditions under which the philosophical novel can be treated as a literary genre on a par with generally recognized literary genres, such as mystery, romantic, adventure, religious, or historical novel. Michael H. Mitias argues that the philosophical novel meets these conditions. He advances a detailed analysis of the concept of literary genre, and discusses the reasons which justify the claim that philosophical novel is a distinct literary genre. This is based on the assumption that philosophical ideas can be communicated metaphorically. An analysis of this assumption necessarily leads to a detailed discussion of the concept of metaphor and the extent to which it can be the vehicle of communicating philosophical truth.

Researching and manufacturing fighters, ships, and tanks are only part of the picture for defense contracts. Contracting for services accounts for over 41 percent of DoD contract obligations in 2018. Services include maintaining equipment, moving people and things, creating software, providing server space, and construction. Service contracting is challenging as services can be difficult to define and measure. But services are increasingly central to the U.S. economy. The Department of Defense seeks to attract new firms that will increase its speed and agility-many of these firms are service providers, e.g., data analytics or cloud computing. CSIS looked at a million contracts to evaluate how three factors influence performance:

1.service complexity
2.contract-management capacity
3.vendor's history working with a DoD contracting office

The existing data fails to explain large differences in contract office performance. More DoD transparency about contracting office capacity could help make a case for further investments.
The report also found that when vendors and contracting offices have a longer history, they tend to have better results. That means DoD needs to think not only about recruiting new partners, but also about helping them succeed.

This clear and concise text introduces four key theoretical frameworks that form the foundation of international relations-realism, liberalism, constructivism, and feminist theory-and uses levels of analysis as the primary unifying force to explain contemporary global politics. Cases on climate change; gender, peace, and security; migration; and the rise of China illustrate Kaufman's approach.

The third edition explains core issues in international relations, such as the interaction of nations in a globalized world; the growing threat posed by non-state actors and civil conflicts; and the need for countries to work together to counter what have been called "existential crises," such as climate change, which threaten human lives and the planet. Significant revisions focus on discussion of democratic backsliding, the Covid-19 pandemic, cyberterrorism and cyberwar, changes to the European Union, and expanded coverage of international political economy.

'A thinker on fire' - Robin D. G. Kelley

Identity politics is everywhere, polarising discourse from the campaign trail to the classroom and amplifying antagonisms in the media. But the compulsively referenced phrase bears little resemblance to the concept as first introduced by the radical Black feminist Combahee River Collective. While the Collective articulated a political viewpoint grounded in their own position as Black lesbians with the explicit aim of building solidarity across lines of difference, identity politics is now frequently weaponised as a means of closing ranks around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests.

But the trouble, Oluf??mi O. Taiwo deftly argues, is not with identity politics itself. Through a substantive engagement with the global Black radical tradition and a critical understanding of racial capitalism, Taiwo identifies the process by which a radical concept can be stripped of its political substance and liberatory potential by becoming the victim of elite capture -deployed by political, social and economic elites in the service of their own interests.

Taiwo's crucial intervention both elucidates this complex process and helps us move beyond the binary of 'class' vs. 'race'. By rejecting elitist identity politics in favour of a constructive politics of radical solidarity, he advances the possibility of organising across our differences in the urgent struggle for a better world.

This book explores China's engagement with Latin America and the Caribbean as a case study of its broader effort to use commercial tools and instruments of state to create a global economic order that functions to its benefit, while neutralizing challenges from institutions, states, and others that would oppose it. Unlike the common representation of the Cold War as a political-military struggle, this work uniquely examines China's current efforts as primarily seeking to dominate global value chains, with supporting political, technological, and military components. In this regard, it both leverages and goes beyond works based on dependency theory, which has played a key role in the academic and popular discourse in the region.

The book examines evidence for China's economically-focused strategy within Latin America and the Caribbean, including the interrelationships and coordination between China's activities in different sectors, and between commercial, political, and otherdimensions in the region. It further looks at the supporting role played by a diverse range of Chinese initiatives, from China's Belt and Road initiative, to people-to-people diplomacy, soft power, security engagement, and the PRC struggle with Taiwan for diplomatic recognition in the region, among others. The book highlights the implications for Latin America and the Caribbean, and for the U.S. whose prosperity and security is intimately tied to the region.

This book investigates how neoliberalism shaped the women's movement in Aotearoa/New Zealand from the mid-1980s to late 2010s and looks at the future of the movement. Based on an empirical study that encompasses the three levels of the movement-individualised feminism, the work of women's organisations, and state feminism-it explores how neoliberal rationality, promoted by governments over three decades, has impacted feminist identification and activism as well as political opportunities for organisations and institutions working within the movement. Exploring the diversity of feminist voices, the author analyses intersectional, (post)colonial and intergenerational debates within the movement in the context of neoliberalism's influence on feminist values and strategies, and examines whether neoliberal rationality succeeded in depoliticising, individualising and fragmenting the movement. The book comes to the conclusion that despite some severe drawbacks, internal conflicts and changes of strategies, the women's movement in Aotearoa/New Zealand has survived the impact of neoliberalism.

This book will be of interest to scholars of Gender Studies, Sociology, Political Science, and Women's History, as well as feminist activists.