International Disputes Books

Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

John Gray

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

For the decade that followed the end of the cold war, the world was lulled into a sense that a consumerist, globalized, peaceful future beckoned. The beginning of the twenty-first century has rudely disposed of such ideas—most obviously through 9/11and its aftermath. But just as damaging has been the rise in the West of a belief that a single model of political behavior will become a worldwide norm and that, if necessary, it will be enforced at gunpoint. In Black Mass, celebrated philosopher and critic John Gray explains how utopian ideals have taken on a dangerous significance in the hands of right-wing conservatives and religious zealots. He charts the history of utopianism, from the Reformation through the French Revolution and into the present. And most urgently, he describes how utopian politics have moved from the extremes of the political spectrum into mainstream politics, dominating the administrations of both George W. Bush and Tony Blair, and indeed coming to define the political center. Far from having shaken off discredited ideology, Gray suggests, we are more than ever in its clutches. Black Mass is a truly frightening and challenging work by one of Britain’s leading political thinkers.

Does Peacekeeping Work?: Shaping Belligerents' Choices after Civil War

Virginia Page Fortna

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Editorial Review:

In the last fifteen years, the number, size, and scope of peacekeeping missions deployed in the aftermath of civil wars have increased exponentially. From Croatia and Cambodia, to Nicaragua and Namibia, international personnel have been sent to maintain peace around the world. But does peacekeeping work? And if so, how? In Does Peacekeeping Work? Virginia Page Fortna answers these questions through the systematic analysis of civil wars that have taken place since the end of the Cold War. She compares peacekeeping and nonpeacekeeping cases, and she investigates where peacekeepers go, showing that their missions are crucial to the most severe internal conflicts in countries and regions where peace is otherwise likely to falter.

Fortna demonstrates that peacekeeping is an extremely effective policy tool, dramatically reducing the risk that war will resume. Moreover, she explains that relatively small and militarily weak consent-based peacekeeping operations are often just as effective as larger, more robust enforcement missions. Fortna examines the causal mechanisms of peacekeeping, paying particular attention to the perspective of the peacekept--the belligerents themselves--on whose decisions the stability of peace depends. Based on interviews with government and rebel leaders in Sierra Leone, Mozambique, and the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh, Does Peacekeeping Work? demonstrates specific ways in which peacekeepers alter incentives, alleviate fear and mistrust, prevent accidental escalation to war, and shape political procedures to stabilize peace.

Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa

I. William Zartman

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Editorial Review:

What causes local conflict in Africa and the rest of the Third World? What role, if any, can the U.S. play in helping to resolve these conflicts, and when is the time ripe for a response by an external power? This study, written by an internationally renowned Africanist and undertaken as part of the Africa Project of the Council on Foreign Relations, examines the causes and nature of African conflict and addresses the issue of how foreign powers can contribute productively to the management and resolution of such conflicts without resorting to the use of military force. Completely revised to incorporate up-to-the-minute information, the book focuses on four case studies of local conflict and external response--in the Western Sahara, the Horn of Africa, the Shaba province in Zaire, and Namibia--to assess various approaches to conflict management, and offers guidelines for identifying the critical moment for effective external response. The updated paper edition shows how the recommendations offered for conflict resoultion in the first edition have come to fruition, perhaps most dramatically with the recent withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola. Zartman also evaluates U.S. policy toward Third World conflict and spells out a policy toward Africa and the Third World in general that is based on preemptive treatment rather than military intervention.

The Negotiation Process and the Resolution of International Conflicts (Studies in International Relations)

P. Terrence Hopmann

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I'm surprised that I'm the first reviewer of this book! When I took a course on International Negotiations last year, all my fellow students found Hopmann's book excellent. It is by far the most structured book I've ever read, with a very simple and concise language. After creating a simple, bilateral model of negotiation, Hopmann adds additional elements one-by-one, each of which makes the model both more complex and more realistic. First, he drops the assumption of equality between parties. Second, he modifies the assumption that individuals are perfectly rational. Third, Hopmann eliminates the assumption that negotiations are conducted by individuals (or a unitary actor) and focuses instead on the role of national bureaucracies and politics on negotiations. Fourth, he no longer views negotiations in static terms, but rather looks at how the interaction process itself affects the outcomes of negotiations. Fifth, he dismisses the assumption that the parties are negotiating in a vacuum and introduces the effects of the international environment. Sixth, he drops the assumption of simple bilateral negotiations and introduces the role of third parties as arbitrators and mediators. Seventh and finally, he expands the focus to include large, complex, and multilateral negotiations of the kind that occur in OAS and the UN. As Hopmann argues: "By adding these elements of complexity one at a time, we can best analyze what special impact each feature has on the overall relationship between the negotiation process and its outcomes." This book is truly a must-have for all those interested in negotiation. It is simple and understandable, providing concrete - and at times even "amusing" - examples.

Negotiating Under Fire: Preserving Peace Talks in the Face of Terror Attacks

Matthew Levitt

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Editorial Review:

Negotiating Under Fire explores how real-time and severe security crises between two nations impact diplomatic initiatives between those countries. Using the Baruch Goldstein Hebron massacre of 1994, the Nachshon Wachsman kidnapping and execution of 1994, and the nine-day string of suicide bus bombings carried out in Israel in March 1996 as case studies to examine the impact of terrorism on negotiations over Oslo II (the Gaza-Jericho Agreement), the book concludes that insurgents or those hostile to peace talks can and do undermine negotiations.

The Shifting Grounds of Conflict and Peacebuilding: Stories and Lessons

John W. McDonald

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Editorial Review:

The Shifting Grounds of Conflict and Peacemaking contains the professional life lessons of Ambassador John W. McDonald and offers his insight into international issues, providing frank and informed discussion on the environment, women's rights, the global water crisis, sustainable resources, international development, and, above all, peace.

Diplomatic Dispute Settlement: The Use of Inter-State Conciliation

S. M. G. Koopmans

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Editorial Review:

Variations of conciliation are included in many instruments, particularly in multilateral agreements concerning the environment, human rights, international trade and investment protection. Conciliation is also used on an ad hoc basis for the resolution of disputes between States, such as in border conflicts. Nevertheless, the method is rarely studied in depth from either a legal or political aspect. Focusing on conciliation in a broad sense (including variations of mediation, inquiry and non-compliance mechanisms), Sven Koopmans offers a timely discussion of non-binding dispute settlement between States. The book argues that the lack of familiarity with conciliation both causes its popularity in treaties and its difficulties in practice. The author proposes a new way of looking at conciliation and at its potentials and restrictions, and assesses the usefulness of this way of settling disputes.

Enforcing Restraint: Collective Intervention in Internal Conflicts

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No War, No Peace: The Rejuvenation of Stalled Peace Processes and Peace Accords (Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies)

Roger Mac Ginty

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Editorial Review:

This is a critical investigation of the stalled and dysfunctional peace that often follows civil wars and an examination of how peace processes and peace accords can be revived.The author is a well-known and established writer in the field. Post-conflict reconstruction is topical and Iraq is a huge test-case. This book poses serious questions about the quality of peace experienced in post-peace accord societies. It adopts a critical perspective on peacemaking. It unpacks the notion of the 'liberal democratic peace' as the key organizing principle behind internationally supported peace processes and accords.This book investigates stalled and dysfunctional peace processes and peace accords in societies experiencing civil wars. Using a critical and comparative perspective, it offers strategies for rejuvenating and re-orientating stalled peace processes and peace accords so that they are more able to foster sustainable and inclusive peace.

The Absence of Peace: Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Nicholas Guyatt

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Suicide bombings continue remorselessly to traumatize the Israeli people as the world’s media, on each occasion, bring dramatic pictures of the terror and carnage caused. Much less wellknown, and very little publicized, however, is the daily fear, poverty and anger of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians as a result of the continuing presence of over 300,000 Jewish settlers in their midst, as well as the ongoing Israeli military occupation, economic sanctions and constant retaliations. This is what this book is about.

Equally important, Nicholas Guyatt examines the Oslo Peace Accords which, when the Israeli Government and the PLO signed them in 1993, raised such high hopes of a permanent settlement of the Palestine Question. He shows the problem to be not just incomplete implementation of the Accords (although Israel is frequently procrastinating), but their very conception. There can be no economically viable Palestinian state, nor one which can command the respect and enthusiasm of Palestinians, so long as its territory remains fragmented by a growing number of Jewish settlements, the Palestinian Authority becomes a surrogate policeman for the Israeli government, and the Palestinian enclaves are dependent on Israel for access to the outside world, for electrical power, for jobs and so many of the other necessities of life.

This book needs to be read by all those who are puzzled by why the Oslo process, from which so much was expected, now seems to be making so little contribution to peace on the ground, and who wish to understand whether there may be alternatives holding out more hope of a permanent and just settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.