Ideology, Statebuilding, and Power After Civil Wars
In When Rebels Win, Kai M. Thaler explores why victorious rebel groups govern in strikingly different ways. Many assume civil wars destroy state capacity. In the Democratic Republic of Congo and Libya, for instance, victorious rebels perpetuated state weakness. Yet elsewhere, like in China and Rwanda, they built strong, capable states. Kai ......
Policy Alternatives for U.S. Nuclear Security from the 1950s to the 1990s
The Best Defense considers fundamental questions regarding the United States and the Soviet Union acquiring capabilities to destroy each other in a nuclear war. Was it inevitable? Or could they have agreed instead to address the nuclear danger through mutual emphasis on defenses? Might such an approach be a feasible option for nuclear powers in ......
A reevaluation of conflict thresholds in the context of complex cyber, conventional, and nuclear war The return of great power competition has renewed concerns about managing escalation, lest a minor crisis inadvertently spiral into nuclear war. This has become apparent during the war between Russia and Ukraine, as Western aid for Ukraine has ......
The possibility of a nuclear war that could destroy civilization has influenced the course of international affairs since 1945, suspended like a sword of Damocles above the heads of the world's leaders. The fact that we have escaped a third world war involving strategic nuclear weapons-indeed, that no atomic weapon of limited power has yet been ......
In the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with U.S.-Russia relations approaching a breaking point, this book provides a key to understanding how we got here. Specifically, Stephen P. Friot asks, how do Russians and Americans think about each other, and why do they see the world so differently? The answers, Friot suggests, lie ......
Atomic Steppe tells the untold true story of how the obscure country of Kazakhstan said no to the most powerful weapons in human history. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the marginalized Central Asian republic suddenly found itself with the world's fourth largest nuclear arsenal on its territory. Would it give up these fire-ready weapons-or try ......
International relations scholar David A. Cooper offers a reappraisal of classic arms control theory that advocates for reprioritizing deterrence over disarmament in a new era of nuclear multipolarity.
The failure of six countries to reach an agreement in the Six-Party Talks on Korea has shown the futility of negotiations to denuclearize North Korea. As Victor Ofosu shows in this timely new study, diplomacy failed because nuclear reversal is not in Pyongyang security, regional, or economic interests. This analysis examines factors which may ......
