Globalization and Challenges to Building Peace


Book Description

This fascinating collected volume explores the relationship between world conflict, political unrest and the driving forces of Capitalism and Globalization.




Globalization and Armed Conflict


Book Description

Shows that expanding commercial ties between states pacifies some, but not necessarily all, political relationships.




Water, Peace, and War


Book Description

Now in an updated edition, this pioneering and authoritative study considers the profound impact of the growing global water crunch on international peace and security as well as possible ways to mitigate the crisis. Although water is essential to sustaining life and livelihoods, geostrategist Brahma Chellaney argues that it remains the world’s most underappreciated and undervalued resource. One sobering fact is that the retail price of bottled water is already higher than the international spot price of crude oil. But unlike oil, water has no substitute, raising the specter of water becoming the next flashpoint for conflict. Water war as a concept may not mesh with the conventional construct of warfare, especially for those who plan with tanks, combat planes, and attack submarines as weapons. Yet armies don’t necessarily have to march to battle to seize or defend water resources. Water wars—in a political, diplomatic, or economic sense—are already being waged between riparian neighbors in many parts of the world, fueling cycles of bitter recrimination, exacerbating water challenges, and fostering mistrust that impedes broader regional cooperation and integration. The danger is that these water wars could escalate to armed conflict or further limit already stretched food and energy production. Writing in a direct, nontechnical, and engaging style, Brahma Chellaney draws on a wide range of research from scientific and policy fields to examine the different global linkages between water and peace. Offering a holistic picture and integrated solutions, his book has become the recognized authority on the most precious natural resource of this century and how we can secure humankind’s water future.




Territoriality and Conflict in an Era of Globalization


Book Description

Predictions that globalization would undermine territorial attachments and weaken the sources of territorial conflict have not been realized in recent decades. Globalization may have produced changes in territoriality and the functions of borders, but it has not eliminated them. The contributors to this volume examine this relationship, arguing that much of the change can be attributed to sources other than economic globalization. Bringing the perspectives of law, political science, anthropology, and geography to bear on the complex causal relations among territoriality, conflict, and globalization, leading contributors examine how territorial attachments are constructed, why they have remained so powerful in the face of an increasingly globalized world, and what effect continuing strong attachments may have on conflict. They argue that territorial attachments and people's willingness to fight for territory depends upon the symbolic role it plays in constituting people's identities, and producing a sense of belonging in an increasingly globalized world.




Economic Interdependence and International Conflict


Book Description

The claim that open trade promotes peace has sparked heated debate among scholars and policymakers for centuries. Until recently, however, this claim remained untested and largely unexplored. Economic Interdependence and International Conflict clarifies the state of current knowledge about the effects of foreign commerce on political-military relations and identifies the avenues of new research needed to improve our understanding of this relationship. The contributions to this volume offer crucial insights into the political economy of national security, the causes of war, and the politics of global economic relations. Edward D. Mansfield is Hum Rosen Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics at the University of Pennsylvania. Brian M. Pollins is Associate Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University and a Research Fellow at the Mershon Center.




The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Peace and Conflict


Book Description

This Handbook brings together contributions from leading scholars who take an economic perspective to study peace and conflict. Some chapters are largely empirical, exploring the correlates and quantifying the costs of conflict. Others are more theoretical, examining the mechanisms that lead to war or are more conducive to peace.




Shadow Globalization, Ethnic Conflicts and New Wars


Book Description

Focusing on the political economy of so-called new wars, this book presents a series of studies that analyse the complexities of current warfare by moving from the global sphere to local spots of organised violence. It thus raises questions about the very idea of intra-state wars and shows that these wars are inseparably linked to the global econom




Producing Security


Book Description

Scholars and statesmen have debated the influence of international commerce on war and peace for thousands of years. Over the centuries, analysts have generally treated the questions "Does international commerce influence security?" and "Do trade flows influence security?" as synonymous. In Producing Security, Stephen Brooks maintains that such an overarching focus on the security implications of trade once made sense but no longer does. Trade is no longer the primary means of organizing international economic transactions; rather, where and how multinational corporations (MNCs) organize their international production activities is now the key integrating force of global commerce. MNC strategies have changed in a variety of fundamental ways over the past three decades, Brooks argues, resulting in an increased geographic dispersion of production across borders. The author shows that the globalization of production has led to a series of shifts in the global security environment. It has a differential effect on security relations, in part because it does not encompass all countries and industries to the same extent. The book's findings indicate that the geographic dispersion of MNC production acts as a significant force for peace among the great powers. The author concludes that there is no basis for optimism that the globalization of production will promote peace elsewhere in the world. Indeed, he finds that it has a net negative influence on security relations among developing countries.




The Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Change in International Relations


Book Description

"Abstract: With the rapid rise of China and the relative decline of the United States, the topic of power transition conflicts is back in popular and scholarly attention. The discipline of International Relations offers much on why violent power transition conflicts occur, yet very few substantive treatments exist on why and how peaceful changes happen in world politics. This Handbook is the first comprehensive treatment of the subject of peaceful change in International Relations. It contains some 41 chapters, all written by scholars from different theoretical and conceptual backgrounds examining the multi-faceted dimensions of this subject. In the first part, key conceptual and definitional clarifications are offered and in the second part, papers address the historical origins of peaceful change as an International Relations subject matter during the Inter-War, Cold War, and Post-Cold War eras. In the third part, each of the IR theoretical traditions and paradigms in particular Realism, liberalism, constructivism and critical perspectives and their distinct views on peaceful change are analyzed. In the fourth part papers tackle the key material, ideational and social sources of change. In the fifth part, the papers explore selected great and middle powers and their foreign policy contributions to peaceful change, realizing that many of these states have violent past or tend not to pursue peaceful policies consistently. In part six, the contributors evaluate the peaceful change that occurred in the world's key regions. In the final part, the editors address prospective research agenda and trajectories on this important subject matter. Keywords: Peaceful Change; War; Security; International Relations Theory; Sources of Change; Systemic Theory; Realism; Liberalism; Constructivism; Critical Theories"--




Globalization and Conflict


Book Description

This volume highlights the gap between the new security environment and the notion of state-centred national security favoured by Washington, showing how a Cold War phenomenon known as the national security state, in which defence and foreign policy interests essentially converge, remains largely intact. The conventional wisdom since the suicide attacks of 9/11 is that the world has been transformed and, according to President Bush, "September 11 changed the strategic thinking" of the US. This book challenges these assumptions. Indeed, the Bush administration’s National Security strategy of 2002 has reinvigorated and even extended the idea of national security. Paradoxically, the renewed emphasis on a distinctly state-centred approach to security, including the War on Terror, has unfolded during an era of deepening globalization. Drawing on the international expertise of fourteen specialists, the book examines four inter-related themes: the impact of globalization on the concept of security the strategic outlook of the world’s only superpower, the US the new conflicts that have come to characterize the post-Cold War era efforts to regulate the emerging patterns of conflict in the world. Globalization and Conflict will be essential reading for students of strategic studies, security studies and international relations.