The Myth of Global Chaos

The Myth of Global Chaos PDF Author: Yahya M. Sadowski
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815798083
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
When the Cold War ended in 1989, American hopes for a new world order were quickly disappointed. A new wave of violence soon erupted, engulfing places from Rwanda and Somalia to Chechnya and Bosnia. These new "clashes of civilizations," fundamentalist jihads, and ethnic massacres appeared to be more savage and less rational than the long twilight struggle with the USSR, during which Washington's adversary was clearly identified and relatively predictable. In an effort to understand these post-Cold War conflicts and to advise the government on how to deal with them, a new school of foreign policy thought has developed. Dubbed "chaos theory," it argues that the much heralded processes of globalization are actually breeding a reaction of irrational violence. Thus, the spread of Western cultural icons through new electronic media often shocks and offends moral sensibilities in traditional societies. The explosive growth of international commerce has triggered a wave of migration and urbanization that throws together people from different cultures and fertilizes xenophobia. Chaos theory has already won converts in the U.S. military, the intelligence community, and the foreign service. Its influence has been manifest in an array of policies, particularly during the U.S. engagement in Bosnia. But chaos theory is mostly wrong. In this book, the author outlines the growth of chaos theory and its growing influence, and then provides a thorough empirical critique. Using detailed studies of Bosnia and global comparisons, he shows that globalization has not played a decisive role in fueling recent conflicts. Indeed, journalists' impressions notwithstanding, there is no evidence that since 1989 warfare has become more savage or even more frequent. The advocates of chaos theory are thus urging the U.S. to invest in preparing for a threat that is largely mythical--a strategy that is at least wasteful and potentially dangerous. The author argues that the most use

The Myth of Global Chaos

The Myth of Global Chaos PDF Author: Yahya M. Sadowski
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815798083
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Get Book Here

Book Description
When the Cold War ended in 1989, American hopes for a new world order were quickly disappointed. A new wave of violence soon erupted, engulfing places from Rwanda and Somalia to Chechnya and Bosnia. These new "clashes of civilizations," fundamentalist jihads, and ethnic massacres appeared to be more savage and less rational than the long twilight struggle with the USSR, during which Washington's adversary was clearly identified and relatively predictable. In an effort to understand these post-Cold War conflicts and to advise the government on how to deal with them, a new school of foreign policy thought has developed. Dubbed "chaos theory," it argues that the much heralded processes of globalization are actually breeding a reaction of irrational violence. Thus, the spread of Western cultural icons through new electronic media often shocks and offends moral sensibilities in traditional societies. The explosive growth of international commerce has triggered a wave of migration and urbanization that throws together people from different cultures and fertilizes xenophobia. Chaos theory has already won converts in the U.S. military, the intelligence community, and the foreign service. Its influence has been manifest in an array of policies, particularly during the U.S. engagement in Bosnia. But chaos theory is mostly wrong. In this book, the author outlines the growth of chaos theory and its growing influence, and then provides a thorough empirical critique. Using detailed studies of Bosnia and global comparisons, he shows that globalization has not played a decisive role in fueling recent conflicts. Indeed, journalists' impressions notwithstanding, there is no evidence that since 1989 warfare has become more savage or even more frequent. The advocates of chaos theory are thus urging the U.S. to invest in preparing for a threat that is largely mythical--a strategy that is at least wasteful and potentially dangerous. The author argues that the most use

Tower of Babble

Tower of Babble PDF Author: Dore Gold
Publisher: Forum Books
ISBN: 140005494X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
A United Nations insider exposes the ugly truth about the UN—including how UN organizations have been funding terrorist groups! In the New York Times bestseller Tower of Babble, former United Nations ambassador Dore Gold blows the lid off the UN’s shocking failures to keep international peace, its corruption, its rampant anti-Americanism, and its emboldening of terrorist organizations. Citing previously unpublished documents, a brand-new chapter exclusive to this paperback edition provides the untold story of the infamous oil-for-food scandal—including the real scandal, that the UN let oil-for-food money go to fund terrorist organizations.

Chaos in the Liberal Order

Chaos in the Liberal Order PDF Author: Robert Jervis
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231547781
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 638

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Book Description
Donald Trump’s election has called into question many fundamental assumptions about politics and society. Should the forty-fifth president of the United States make us reconsider the nature and future of the global order? Collecting a wide range of perspectives from leading political scientists, historians, and international-relations scholars, Chaos in the Liberal Order explores the global trends that led to Trump’s stunning victory and the impact his presidency will have on the international political landscape. Contributors situate Trump among past foreign policy upheavals and enduring models for global governance, seeking to understand how and why he departs from precedents and norms. The book considers key issues, such as what Trump means for America’s role in the world; the relationship between domestic and international politics; and Trump’s place in the rise of the far right worldwide. It poses challenging questions, including: Does Trump’s election signal the downfall of the liberal order or unveil its resilience? What is the importance of individual leaders for the international system, and to what extent is Trump an outlier? Is there a Trump doctrine, or is America’s president fundamentally impulsive and scattershot? The book considers the effects of Trump’s presidency on trends in human rights, international alliances, and regional conflicts. With provocative contributions from prominent figures such as Stephen M. Walt, Andrew J. Bacevich, and Samuel Moyn, this timely collection brings much-needed expert perspectives on our tumultuous era.

The Chaos Machine

The Chaos Machine PDF Author: Max Fisher
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0316703311
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 419

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Book Description
Finalist for the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism From a New York Times investigative reporter, this “authoritative and devastating account of the impacts of social media” (New York Times Book Review) tracks the high-stakes inside story of how Big Tech’s breakneck race to drive engagement—and profits—at all costs fractured the world. The Chaos Machine is “an essential book for our times” (Ezra Klein). We all have a vague sense that social media is bad for our minds, for our children, and for our democracies. But the truth is that its reach and impact run far deeper than we have understood. Building on years of international reporting, Max Fisher tells the gripping and galling inside story of how Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social network preyed on psychological frailties to create the algorithms that drive everyday users to extreme opinions and, increasingly, extreme actions. As Fisher demonstrates, the companies’ founding tenets, combined with a blinkered focus on maximizing engagement, have led to a destabilized world for everyone. Traversing the planet, Fisher tracks the ubiquity of hate speech and its spillover into violence, ills that first festered in far-off locales, to their dark culmination in America during the pandemic, the 2020 election, and the Capitol Insurrection. Through it all, the social-media giants refused to intervene in any meaningful way, claiming to champion free speech when in fact what they most prized were limitless profits. The result, as Fisher shows, is a cultural shift toward a world in which people are polarized not by beliefs based on facts, but by misinformation, outrage, and fear. His narrative is about more than the villains, however. Fisher also weaves together the stories of the heroic outsiders and Silicon Valley defectors who raised the alarm and revealed what was happening behind the closed doors of Big Tech. Both panoramic and intimate, The Chaos Machine is the definitive account of the meteoric rise and troubled legacy of the tech titans, as well as a rousing and hopeful call to arrest the havoc wreaked on our minds and our world before it’s too late.

The Mythics Vol. 4

The Mythics Vol. 4 PDF Author: Phillipe Ogaki
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1545807698
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
One by one we’ve met the young descendants—Yuko, from Japan; Parvati, from India; Amir, from Egypt; Abigail, from Germany; Miguel, from Mexico; and Neo, from Greece. Our six adolescent heroes finally join forces, combining the powers bestowed upon them by the ancient gods, to combat the entity known as Evil. Also, a new foe, Chaos incarnate is wreaking havoc all over the world. Further complicating matters: what happens when Evil’s disciples, those once close to the Mythics and used to manipulate them, escape? It’s another globe-trotting adventure as these new young gods struggle to save the world.

The Hero and the Sea

The Hero and the Sea PDF Author: Donald H. Mills
Publisher: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers
ISBN: 0865165084
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Ancient myths about watery chaos uniquely transcend time and culture to speak to the universal human condition as expression to the hopes, aspirations and fears that have defined--for ancient thinkers as well as modern scientists--what it means to be human in a chaotic world. "The Hero and the Sea examines the mythological pattern of heroic battles with watery chaos in the "Gilgamesh Epic, the "Iliad, the "Odyssey, and the Old Testament, in the light of anthropology, comparative religion, literature, mythology, psychology, and modern chaos theory; how mythic patterns of heroic battle with chaotic adversaries respond to the cultural needs, religious concerns, and worldview of their audience. The last chapter explores points of contact between the ancient mythic patterns and the discoveries of modern scholars engaged in the theoretical study of chaos and chaotics.

The Myth of International Order

The Myth of International Order PDF Author: Arjun Chowdhury
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190686715
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
In February of 2011, Libyan citizens rebelled against Muammar Qaddafi and quickly unseated him. The speed of the regime's collapse confounded many observers, and the ensuing civil war showed Foreign Policy's index of failed states to be deeply flawed--FP had, in 2010, identified 110 states as being more likely than Libya to descend into chaos. They were spectacularly wrong, but this points to a larger error in conventional foreign policy wisdom: failed, or weak and unstable, states are not anomalies but are instead in the majority. More states resemble Libya than Sweden. Why are most states weak and unstable? Taking as his launching point Charles Tilly's famous dictum that 'war made the state, and the state made war, ' Arjun Chowdhury argues that the problem lies in our mistaken equation of democracy and economic power with stability. But major wars are the true source of stability: only the existential crisis that such wars produced could lead citizens to willingly sacrifice the resources that allowed the state to build the capacity it needed for survival. Developing states in the postcolonial era never experienced the demands major interstate war placed on European states, and hence citizens in those nations have been unwilling to sacrifice the resources that would build state capacity. For example, India and Mexico are established democracies with large economies. Despite their indices of stability, both countries are far from stable: there is an active Maoist insurgency in almost a quarter of India's districts, and Mexico is plagued by violence, drug trafficking, and high levels of corruption in local government. Nor are either effective at collecting revenue. As a consequence, they do not have the tax base necessary to perform the most fundamental tasks of modern states: controlling organized violence in a given territory and providing basic services to citizens. By this standard, the majority of states in the world--about two thirds--are weak states. Chowdury maintains that an accurate evaluation of international security requires a normative shift: the language of weakness and failure belies the fact that strong states are exceptions. Chowdhury believes that dismantling this norm is crucial, as it encourages developing states to pursue state-building via war, which is an extremely costly approach--in terms of human lives and capital. Moreover, in our era, such an approach is destined to fail because the total wars of the past are highly unlikely to occur today. Just as importantly, the non-state alternatives on offer are not viable alternatives. For better or worse, we will continue to live in a state-dominated world where most states are weak. Counterintuitive and sweeping in its coverage, The Myth of International Order demands that we fundamentally rethink foundational concepts of international politics like political stability and state failure.

In the Beginning Was Chaos

In the Beginning Was Chaos PDF Author: Sarah L. Maguire
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN: 9781720109792
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
From the noble Titan Prometheus who stole fire from Mount Olympus to the bloody tale of how Kronos castrated his own father Ouranos to avenge his mother Gaia, these visceral, often dark and powerful stories about the creation of the world are also larger than life projections of human passions, the exercise of power in a violent and hierarchical world and a reflection on the bitter-sweet human condition. With their remote origins in Mesopotamia and the ancient civilisations of the Near East, these myths come down to us primarily from the early Greek poet and farmer Hesiod in his two epic poems; the Theogony and the Works and Days. Drawing on Hesiod's account as well as ancient authors such as Ovid, Aeschylus and Apollodorus of Alexandria, In the Beginning was Chaos recounts the stories of the ancient Greeks about how the world began, the creation of humanity and their troubled relationship with the Gods. It includes the war between the Olympians and the Titans, Prometheus and his struggle with Zeus, as well as detailed descriptions of the twelve Olympian gods and goddesses and an account of the Underworld. It also includes the story Deucalion and Pyrrha and the great flood with its striking parallels to the Biblical account of the flood.

The Art of War in an Asymmetric World

The Art of War in an Asymmetric World PDF Author: Barry Scott Zellen
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441195556
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
This book examines the post Cold War security environment and how the U.S. has learned to wage war in this complex assymetrical world of conflict.

Handbook of Chinese Mythology

Handbook of Chinese Mythology PDF Author: Lihui Yang
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195332636
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Compiled from ancient and scattered texts and based on groundbreaking new research, Handbook of Chinese Mythology is the most comprehensive English-language work on the subject ever written from an exclusively Chinese perspective. This work focuses on the Han Chinese people but ranges across the full spectrum of ancient and modern China, showing how key myths endured and evolved over time. A quick reference section covers all major deities, spirits, and demigods, as well as important places, mythical animals and plants, and related items.