Great Powers, Weak States, and Insurgency

Great Powers, Weak States, and Insurgency PDF Author: Patrick W. Quirk
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319474197
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
This book offers an original and theoretically rich examination into the dynamics of alliances that great powers and weak states form to defeat threats, such as rebellion or insurgency, within the smaller state’s borders. The author examines contemporary examples of such “internal threat alliances,” including Russia’s collaboration with Syria’s Assad regime to defeat anti-government rebels and U.S. cooperation with Afghanistan’s ruling political elite to combat the Taliban. In each case, the weaker state’s leadership wanted to remain in power while the great power sought to safeguard its interests linked to the regime’s stability. The book adds to International Relations (IR) theory by presenting a distinct conceptual framework that explains why internal threat alliances form, why some are more cohesive than others, and why some are effective while others are not. It thus promises to be of interest to IR scholars and students working in the areas of security studies, alliance dynamics, political violence, and civil war, but also to policy-makers grappling with how to salvage interests, such as access to natural resources or regional stability, imperiled by violence in weak states.

Great Powers, Weak States, and Insurgency

Great Powers, Weak States, and Insurgency PDF Author: Patrick W. Quirk
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319474197
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book offers an original and theoretically rich examination into the dynamics of alliances that great powers and weak states form to defeat threats, such as rebellion or insurgency, within the smaller state’s borders. The author examines contemporary examples of such “internal threat alliances,” including Russia’s collaboration with Syria’s Assad regime to defeat anti-government rebels and U.S. cooperation with Afghanistan’s ruling political elite to combat the Taliban. In each case, the weaker state’s leadership wanted to remain in power while the great power sought to safeguard its interests linked to the regime’s stability. The book adds to International Relations (IR) theory by presenting a distinct conceptual framework that explains why internal threat alliances form, why some are more cohesive than others, and why some are effective while others are not. It thus promises to be of interest to IR scholars and students working in the areas of security studies, alliance dynamics, political violence, and civil war, but also to policy-makers grappling with how to salvage interests, such as access to natural resources or regional stability, imperiled by violence in weak states.

Street Gangs

Street Gangs PDF Author: Max G. Manwaring
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic government information
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Book Description
The primary thrust of the monograph is to explain the linkage of contemporary criminal street gangs (that is, the gang phenomenon or third generation gangs) to insurgency in terms f the instability it wreaks upon government and the concomitant challenge to state sovereignty. Although there are differences between gangs and insurgents regarding motives and modes of operations, this linkage infers that gang phenomena are mutated forms of urban insurgency. In these terms, these "new" nonstate actors must eventually seize political power in order to guarantee the freedom of action and the commercial environment they want. The common denominator that clearly links the gang phenomenon to insurgency is that the third generation gangs' and insurgents' ultimate objective is to depose or control the governments of targeted countries. As a consequence, the "Duck Analogy" applies. Third generation gangs look like ducks, walk like ducks, and act like ducks - a peculiar breed, but ducks nevertheless! This monograph concludes with recommendations for the United States and other countries to focus security and assistance responses at the strategic level. The intent is to help leaders achieve strategic clarity and operate more effectively in the complex politically dominated, contemporary global security arena.

Bad Strategies

Bad Strategies PDF Author: James S. Corum
Publisher: Quarto Publishing Group USA
ISBN: 161673762X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
It is the new way of war: Everywhere our military tries to make inroads, insurgents flout us—and seem to get the better of the strategists making policy and battle plans. In this book, an expert with both scholarly and military experience in the field looks at cases of counterinsurgency gone wrong. By examining the failures of strategies against insurgents in Algeria, Cyprus, Vietnam, and Iraq, Lieutenant Colonel James S. Corum offers rare and much-needed insight into what can go wrong in such situations—and how these mistakes might be avoided. In each case, Corum shows how the conflict could have been won by the major power if its strategy had addressed the underlying causes of the insurgency it faced; not doing so wastes lives and weakens the power’s position in the world. Failures in counterinsurgency often proceed from common mistakes. Bad Strategies explores these at strategic, operational and tactical levels. Above all, Corum identifies poor civilian and military leadership as the primary cause for failure in successfully combating insurgencies. His book, with clear and practical prescriptions for success, shows how the lessons of the past might apply to our present disastrous confrontations with insurgents in Iraq.

Countering Global Terrorism and Insurgency

Countering Global Terrorism and Insurgency PDF Author: N. Underhill
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137383712
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
Explores current debates around religious extremism as a means to understand and re-think the connections between terrorism, insurgency and state failure. Using case studies of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, she develops a better understanding of the underlying causes and conditions necessary for terrorism and insurgency to occur.

How Insurgency Begins

How Insurgency Begins PDF Author: Janet I. Lewis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108479669
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Why do only some incipient rebel groups become viable challengers to governments? Only those that control local rumor networks survive.

Regions and Powers

Regions and Powers PDF Author: Barry Buzan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521891110
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 598

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Book Description
This book develops the idea that since decolonisation, regional patterns of security have become more prominent in international politics. The authors combine an operational theory of regional security with an empirical application across the whole of the international system. Individual chapters cover Africa, the Balkans, CIS Europe, East Asia, EU Europe, the Middle East, North America, South America, and South Asia. The main focus is on the post-Cold War period, but the history of each regional security complex is traced back to its beginnings. By relating the regional dynamics of security to current debates about the global power structure, the authors unfold a distinctive interpretation of post-Cold War international security, avoiding both the extreme oversimplifications of the unipolar view, and the extreme deterritorialisations of many globalist visions of a new world disorder. Their framework brings out the radical diversity of security dynamics in different parts of the world.

Trends in Outside Support for Insurgent Movements

Trends in Outside Support for Insurgent Movements PDF Author: Daniel Byman
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 0833032321
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
The most useful forms of outside support for an insurgent movement include safe havens, financial support, political backing, and direct military assistance. Because states are able to provide all of these types of assistance, their support has had a profound impact on the effectiveness of many rebel movements since the end of the Cold War. However, state support is no longer the only, or indeed necessarily the most important, game in town. Diasporas have played a particularly important role in sustaining several strong insurgencies. More rarely, refugees, guerrilla groups, or other types of non-state supporters play a significant role in creating or sustaining an insurgency, offering fighters, training, or other forms of assistance. This report assesses post-Cold War trends in external support for insurgent movements. It describes the frequency that states, diasporas, refugees, and other non-state actors back guerrilla movements. It also assesses the motivations of these actors and which types of support matter most. This book concludes by assessing the implications for analysts of insurgent movements.

When States Fail

When States Fail PDF Author: Robert I. Rotberg
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400835798
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
Since 1990, more than 10 million people have been killed in the civil wars of failed states, and hundreds of millions more have been deprived of fundamental rights. The threat of terrorism has only heightened the problem posed by failed states. When States Fail is the first book to examine how and why states decay and what, if anything, can be done to prevent them from collapsing. It defines and categorizes strong, weak, failing, and collapsed nation-states according to political, social, and economic criteria. And it offers a comprehensive recipe for their reconstruction. The book comprises fourteen essays by leading scholars and practitioners who help structure this disparate field of research, provide useful empirical descriptions, and offer policy recommendations. Robert Rotberg's substantial opening chapter sets out a theory and taxonomy of state failure. It is followed by two sets of chapters, the first on the nature and correlates of failure, the second on methods of preventing state failure and reconstructing those states that do fail. Economic jump-starting, legal refurbishing, elections, the demobilizing of ex-combatants, and civil society are among the many topics discussed. All of the essays are previously unpublished. In addition to Rotberg, the contributors include David Carment, Christopher Clapham, Nat J. Colletta, Jeffrey Herbst, Nelson Kasfir, Michael T. Klare, Markus Kostner, Terrence Lyons, Jens Meierhenrich, Daniel N. Posner, Susan Rose-Ackerman, Donald R. Snodgrass, Nicolas van de Walle, Jennifer A. Widner, and Ingo Wiederhofer.

Weak States in International Relations Theory

Weak States in International Relations Theory PDF Author: Hanna Samir Kassab
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137543892
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
This book seeks to explain why weak states exist within the international system. Using the cases of Armenia, St. Kitts and Nevis, Lebanon, and Cambodia, the author argues that, if a state is weak and vulnerable, then it can practice an unexpected degree of relative autonomy unfettered by great powers.

Bullets Not Ballots

Bullets Not Ballots PDF Author: Jacqueline L. Hazelton
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501754807
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
In Bullets Not Ballots, Jacqueline L. Hazelton challenges the claim that winning "hearts and minds" is critical to successful counterinsurgency campaigns. Good governance, this conventional wisdom holds, gains the besieged government popular support, denies support to the insurgency, and makes military victory possible. Hazelton argues that major counterinsurgent successes since World War II have resulted not through democratic reforms but rather through the use of military force against civilians and the co-optation of rival elites. Hazelton offers new analyses of five historical cases frequently held up as examples of the effectiveness of good governance in ending rebellions—the Malayan Emergency, the Greek Civil War, the Huk Rebellion in the Philippines, the Dhofar rebellion in Oman, and the Salvadoran Civil War—to show that, although unpalatable, it was really brutal repression and bribery that brought each conflict to an end. By showing how compellence works in intrastate conflicts, Bullets Not Ballots makes clear that whether or not the international community decides these human, moral, and material costs are acceptable, responsible policymaking requires recognizing the actual components of counterinsurgent success—and the limited influence that external powers have over the tactics of counterinsurgent elites.