This collection offers an innovative and fresh interpretation of Antitrinitarian and rational dissent in the early modern world. The central themes focus on the fierce debates surrounding Antitrinitarianism and Unitarianism that emerged from the Reformation and the lived cultures of these dissenting movements. The chapters take an interdisciplinary approach addressing ideas in context, their reception and appropriation, and the diverse and often conflicting visions of Christianity. Drawing on previously unused sources, many from Eastern Europe and often in inaccessible languages, this book challenges our understanding of dissent as marginal and eccentric and places it at the center of contesting convictions about the nature of religious reform.

How did a small post-Soviet state become a digital and e-government powerhouse, producing world-leading tech companies and pioneering policies for remote residency?

Three decades after gaining independence from the Soviet Union, Estonia is a nation transformed. Today, the country is known worldwide as a startup hub, boasting billion-dollar companies including Wise, Veriff and Bolt-but even more impressive are Tallinn's pioneering efforts in e-government. With 99 per cent of government services digitalised and accessible online, citizens can vote via computer, or file their taxes online in minutes; and Estonia's use of artificial intelligence to enhance and automate its offering to citizens long predates ChatGPT.

Drawing on his experience as a former official for the Republic of Estonia, Joel Burke offers unique insight into the country's rapid rise as a tech and e-government powerhouse since the turn of the century. From the founding of Skype to the future of the e-state, he unveils the tactics and stories behind Estonia's spectacular journey-after years of Soviet occupation and mismanagement to global tech leadership. For those hoping to learn from Estonia's incredible journey, Burke offers insights into the government's use of AI, its creation of a digital society, and its cultivation of a culture driving public-sector creativity and innovation. Rebooting a Nation is an informative and entertaining masterclass in Estonia's modern history.

This book explores the role of the Central Security Council (CSTO) in ensuring regional security, analyzing the evolution of cooperation between post-Soviet states since the Soviet Union's demise. It focuses on the establishment of the CSTO as a regional organization since 2002, with six out of 11 CIS members. The book fills a gap in existing research on the security paradigm in post-Soviet space and the collective security mechanism of CSTO. Many western scholars have not understood the importance of multilateralism and Russia's foreign policy in maintaining security measures in the post-Soviet space. The book is an informative handbook on regional integration, Eurasianism, and CSTO for students, scholars, readers, academicians, and researchers working on this area.

This edited compilation was written in the latter part of the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020, a watershed event in world history that illustrated wide-ranging systems and structural vulnerabilities worldwide. The book provides a framework for thinking about the environmental context of unconventional political conflict and intrinsic issues of continuity and change; it highlights significant potential terror threats, trajectories, and potential inflection points for consideration by policymakers, security experts, and counterterrorism practitioners.

The book focuses on unfolding threats that will affect our security worldwide, including the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, the continuously evolving condition of environmental degradation and global warming, the probability of increased "enhanced terrorism" use, future technologies like gene editing and "Crisper," and more. The book frames empirical links between the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, terrorism, and other international system factors within the context of our contemporary globalized world, to scope out basic uncertainties, and the subtleties and nuances of complexity that pose challenges and opportunities for policymakers. It discusses looming challenges to decisionmakers who must attempt to counter terror and crime and their expected convergence in the coming era. The use of novel foresight tools in the context of anticipatory defense, science communication methodologies, knowledge sharing, its dissemination, and management to overcome threat potential is presented.

As one of the first books to delve into post-coronavirus consequences and to examine the linkages between these wide-ranging impacts, Issues of Terrorism in the Post-Coronavirus Era provides essential food for thought for decision-makers, policymakers, academics, global business leaders, students, and lay readers who are concerned about the future of humankind.

This book examines the role of the Arctic in Iceland's foreign and security policies from the end of the Cold War to the present. Based on extensive research and drawing on approaches from the fields of history and international relations, it shows that Iceland's Arctic policies have gone through multiple phases during this period, all of which have been heavily influenced by external geopolitical factors, including its relationship with the United States, the 2008 financial crisis, the rise of China, and the Ukrainian crisis. It also demonstrates how Iceland's strategic position in the North Atlantic has important repercussions for the United States, Russia and China. With an emphasis on geopolitics, nation branding, and governance, this book will appeal to scholars and students of Arctic policies, geopolitics and international relations.

For Washington, China is a strategic competitor: the only country with both the will to reshape the world order and, increasingly, the means to do so. For Europe, the People's Republic is a 'partner for cooperation, an economic competitor and a systemic rival'. For NATO, it is a 'decisive enabler' of Russia's war against Ukraine. Yet Beijing's image is far more positive in the Global South, of which the PRC considers itself a part.

Zhou Bo's essays unpack China's own view of its role today. The PRC is operating not only in a world becoming less Western, but--more importantly--a West becoming less Western; and the key to its outlook lies in Africa, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific as much as in Europe and the White House.

Are Moscow and Beijing really so closely aligned? Where are Sino-Indian relations headed? Is China a new Cold War foe for the West? Or will economic ties inevitably bring the two powers closer together?

What does it take to disrupt security? How does one disrupt the invisibility of insecurity? How does one make the invisible factors that define and impact security visible?

For a start, by giving voice to the unheard and the marginalized, engaging non-traditional understandings of security that might bring to light the cracks in our current security infrastructure and expose the insecurities that are hidden in plain sight. These voices include generational, geographic, cultural, ethnic, and gender-based perspectives of insecurity which are ignored, or simply cannot be heard, by traditional notions of security. Presently there is a lack of understanding of the language of nuanced hate being whispered from the ground that inform civil discord. These call for new intrastate actions that need to be taken to make communities safer and building layers of protective resilience into the continuing existence of the state. Unresolved grievances lay the foundation for insecurity and instability for the future at a time when states need cohesiveness more than ever and there are significant invisible insecurities, external to the state, that need to be revealed. The tapestry of interrelationships that enable security within a state requires equity, access, and agency among communities. If we are to achieve this, we must learn to see the invisible, listen to the unheard, and move beyond our static conceptions of security. In so doing we build more resilient societies in the face of a dynamic threat environment and ensure the peaceful continued existence of states.

This book is a sounding board for positive disruption, a source for alternative theories, tools, and models to aid mitigation of the whispered threats and the soft violence which accompanies chauvinism of any one way of being. In this edited book the multiplicity of factors that impact security is explored through new lenses to glean insights, such that we are better equipped to prevent harm and protect our security.

This book takes a new approach to examining the relationship between China and Russia, departing from the standard debate over whether the relationship is a true strategic partnership or merely an axis of convenience. Instead, the book argues that the best way to gain an understanding of ties between Beijing and Moscow is to watch how they interact "on the ground" in regions of the world where they both have important interests at stake. It provides an in-depth analysis of Chinese-Russian interaction in Africa, Central Asia, and East Asia, as well as an analysis of China's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The picture of the relationship that emerges portrays its dynamic, complex, and contingent nature, and reveals areas of convergence and divergence between these two powers. In doing so, it provides a new perspective useful to both scholars and policymakers.

This open access book provides a comprehensive analysis of the Maidan massacre in Ukraine. It uses a theoretical framework of rational choice, moral hazard, state- repression backfire, and Weberian ideas about rational action to explore the massacre.

The book draws on publicly available videos, photos and audio recordings of the massacre in English, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish and other languages, along with several hundred individual testimonies and revelations from the Ukrainian investigation and a trial and its verdict. By examining which parties were responsible for the massacre, the book analyses its implications for not only Russia's war on Ukraine but also political developments across the globe.

This book deals with pertinent issues and frameworks that will help readers map the course of India's Foreign Policy and its strategies. Divided in four broad sections, it aims to understand the trajectories that have shaped India's geopolitical and geostrategic manoeuvres and highlights some of the emerging dimensions of India's foreign policy.

This book analyzes the global implications of the fourth industrial revolution, the Technological Revolution 4.0, on International Relations. Examining the intersection of new technologies and international power, this volume engages in extensive discussions and debates surrounding the immediate and long-term consequences of innovations, such as artificial intelligence, big data, virtual reality, smart cities, and drones.

The rapid and potent march of technological progress intensifies global curiosity and concern, particularly regarding control over these new technologies. The book discusses essential questions, such as the theoretical analysis of new technologies in international relations, their impact on the 21st-century world order, and the pivotal roles of international actors in this revolution. Finally, it examines how these new technologies are reshaping international security, cooperation, and communication.

A critical resource for researchers and the general public, this book provides a contemporary and theoretical framework to contextualize the international discipline in light of the challenge posed by new technologies, while also discussing the key variables that mold international society in the 21st century within the parameters of this technological revolution. Moreover, it anticipates the prominent dynamics and challenges that will shape global structures, regions, and nations in the forthcoming decades.

Historically in middle-class Bengali Hindu households it has been the matriarch's responsibility to arrange and maintain the domestic shrine and to perform daily rituals of deity worship and caretaking-termed in this book as domestic shrine traditions. These traditions are often assimilated with the other domestic caretaking labor women are expected to complete for their families.

Utilizing a years-long ethnography with Bengali American Hindu women, and drawing from Marxist feminist Social Reproduction Theory, this book argues that domestic shrine traditions are reproductive labor that is essential to the transnational and transgenerational sustenance of Hindu traditions and subjectivities. As the first monograph focused on Hindu women's domestic shrine traditions in the United States, this book illuminates both the value of these traditions for the women who maintain them, and how these traditions connect immigrant Hindus to family and ethno-religious identity in ways unmatched by the public Hindu temple or organization.

Due to significant processes of transnationalization in the European context, a considerable relevance of potential social and political conflicts or disagreements in everyday life linked to Europe or the European Union can be observed. Consequently, the focus of this book is on the increasingly intertwined European citizens themselves and their everyday experiences with European and EU-related issues. The individual chapters provide fine-tuned perspectives on the connection of social and political European integration processes in the context of the EU and the everyday life of Europeans. Overall, the book draws attention to both how contestations over Europe and the EU figure in everyday life and on how European integration shapes individual (social and political) subjectivities and identities. This book is intended for scholars and advanced students of European Studies, Sociology and Political Science and International Relations.

This book covers a wide range of security issues in Nigeria, including insurgency, terrorism, herder-farmer conflicts, military reforms and internal security, the Nigeria Police Force and security management, intelligence gathering and insecurity, etc. It offers an in-depth assessment of the national security strategies and policies in Nigeria along with a critical assessment of the role of intelligence gathering in security management. It is useful for policymakers, students, and other important stakeholders in the security studies.

This book provides an introductory analysis of Norway's foreign policy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with a particular focus on the latter. Covering themes such as security and defence, foreign aid, and European integration, the author argues that despite often presenting itself as an idealist country and a 'peace nation,' Norwegian governments have demonstrated an understanding of power politics and a desire to, above all, promote national self- interests. The author explores the country's global relations with the US and NATO, the countries of the European Union, and great powers such as Russia and China. By adopting a historical perspective, the book demonstrates how continuity and stability have been fundamental features of contemporary Norwegian foreign policy. Drawing on a wide range of current and archival government sources, parliamentary debates, and opinion pieces in news outlets, as well as an extensive selection of academic sources, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of Norway's foreign relations.

An absorbing journey through a region caught between history, geography and ideology.

What is 'Central Europe'? Where do its borders lie? Does it even exist? Attempts to define it usually yield more questions than answers. But perhaps the wrong questions are being asked.

Luka Ivan Jukic disentangles the enigma of Central Europe through its birth, death and rebirth. Today, Poland, Croatia and even Ukraine proudly align themselves with it, and so with Western civilization. But the term originally described an unrecognisably different world--one formed in the eighteenth century by the unique inheritance of the Habsburg dynasty across Germany and a sprawling Danubian realm; by the rise of standard High German; and by its intermediate position between an 'advanced West' and 'backwards East'.

Two devastating world wars shattered this extraordinary civilization, reducing it to a Cold War frontier. Its unexpected reincarnation in the 1980s, as an ideological antidote to the Soviet East, spawned myths and polemics, but little clarity. Yet 'Central Europe' seems to feature in every contemporary crisis, from Russian aggression to European disunity. Why is it still such a powerful political idea?

This open access volume explores Ukraine's challenges post-war, focusing on economic revival and sustainable development. Addressing scholars, policymakers, and practitioners the book discusses pivotal issues for the rebuilding of Ukraine, such as institutional changes, economic hurdles, social stability, and environmental rejuvenation.

The book highlights the inevitable need for Ukraine's institutional transformation, essential for EU and NATO integration. It goes on to examine the global geopolitical and economic repercussions and emphasizes the pivotal role of energy independence in the European landscape.

Through a multi-disciplinary lens encompassing political science, economics, and law, this book provides evidence-based insights and policy recommendations. Offering a comprehensive presentation of post-war challenges, it offers an invaluable guide for policymakers and practitioners interested in the complexities of Ukraine's reconstruction.

This is an open access book.

This book explores the seemingly unstoppable turn away from Europe and towards Asian powers, notably China, on the part of the Russian state in the early 21st century. Ongoing global changes, the growing complexity of international interactions and internal political dynamics in Russia have led to what has become known in Russian official and expert discourse as the "Asian turn" or "turn to the East". The monograph systemically analyzes all key directions of Russia's Asian turn and assesses achievements, problems and prospects of Russian strategy in Asia in a wider international context. The book might be interesting to those who are professionally studying IR, international dynamics in Asia, and Russian foreign policy in Asia.

China's military has entered a new era. It has acquired modern weapons to rival the world's finest, undergone a massive restructuring under Xi Jinping, and been on the frontlines of territorial disputes with Japan, India, Vietnam, and the Philippines. It is readying forces to be able to seize Taiwan sometime in the next decade. It aims to be a "world-class" military on par with the United States.

China's Quest for Military Supremacy provides a broad and accessible exploration of Chinese military power, including relations between the Chinese Communist Party and its army, the strategic worldview of Chinese leaders, military strategy and resourcing, conventional and nuclear modernization, military diplomacy and coercion, preparations for war, and the People's Liberation Army's emerging global role. It also identifies the challenges facing China's military and shows how its focus on supremacy in the region means that it is not yet prepared to fight with the same lethality beyond Asia. Different futures are possible, and the book concludes with a preview of what it might take for a truly "world-class" Chinese military to take the global stage.

The book includes the extensive materials of the international conference on "The Syrian crisis and the Kurdish factor: intra-Kurdish, regional, and international aspects". It aims to discuss the intra-Syrian, regional, and international aspects of the Syrian crisis and the geopolitical significance of the Kurdish factor in the region by involving diplomatic and academic circles on the platform of Science Diplomacy. Syria plays an important role both regionally and sub-regionally, and developments in Syria have ripple effects in other Arab countries as well. The contribution aims to discuss the internal Syrian developments and the Kurdish factor from different perspectives, as well as the impact of the Syrian crisis on regional and international reality and the involvement of regional and non-regional actors (the USA, Russia, China, EU countries, Iran and Turkey) in the Syrian conflict and its consequences.

This book presents a comprehensive analysis of Kenya's foreign policy decisions, examining its pivotal role in global affairs and its interplay with regional and international dynamics. Through an insightful exploration of Kenya's national security concerns and diplomatic engagements, the book delves into the intricate nexus between geography, political stability, and foreign policy.Featuring a near-chronological examination, the book is organized thematically, with each chapter analysing Kenya's multifaceted foreign policy landscape. From exploring the genesis of Kenya's foreign policy to unravelling the political intricacies of territorial integrity and regionalism, the book illuminates the nation's historical journey in the global arena. Drawing on empirical research, it presents the complexities of Kenya's involvement in regional conflicts and its substantial contributions to international peacekeeping efforts. Furthermore, it offers a nuanced understanding of Kenya's engagement in global multilateral platforms, shedding light on its contributions to the UN Security Council and other international governing bodies. By critically analysing the socio-economic implications of global policies such as the Washington Consensus and Structural Adjustment Programs, the book details the intricate web of influences shaping Kenya's economic landscape and its intricate relations with other nations. Engaging readers with a deep exploration of Kenya's role in addressing humanitarian crises and its response to global challenges, the book provides a compelling narrative on how a seemingly 'small power' can significantly influence broader global dynamics. By emphasizing the intricate relationship between local challenges and global implications, the book serves as an indispensable guide for scholars, policymakers, and global stakeholders seeking to comprehend the nuanced interplay of geopolitics, diplomacy, and regional security within the broader context of the Global South.