Reuben Steff - Böcker

This book offers a multidisciplinary analysis of emerging technologies and their impact on the new international security environment across three levels of analysis.While recent technological developments, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics and automation, have the potential to transform international relations in positive ways, they also pose challenges to peace and security and raise new ethical, legal and political questions about the use of power and the role of humans in war and conflict. This book makes a contribution to these debates by considering emerging technologies across three levels of analysis: (1) the international system (systemic level) including the balance of power; (2) the state and its role in international affairs and how these technologies are redefining and challenging the state’s traditional roles; and (3) the relationship between the state and society, including how these technologies affect individuals and non-state actors. This provides specific insights at each of these levels and generates a better understanding of the connections between the international and the local when it comes to technological advance across time and spaceThe chapters examine the implications of these technologies for the balance of power, examining the strategies of the US, Russia, and China to harness AI, robotics and automation (and how their militaries and private corporations are responding); how smaller and less powerful states and non-state actors are adjusting; the political, ethical and legal implications of AI and automation; what these technologies mean for how war and power is understood and utilized in the 21st century; and how these technologies diffuse power away from the state to society, individuals and non-state actors. This volume will be of much interest to students of international security, science and technology studies, law, philosophy, and international relations.

This book investigates the drivers, tactics, and strategy that propel the Trump administration’s foreign policy.The key objective of this book is to look beyond the ‘noise’ of the Trump presidency in order to elucidate and make sense of contemporary US foreign policy. It examines the long-standing convictions of the president and the brutal worldview that he applies to US foreign policy; and his hard-line negotiation tactics and employment of unpredictability to keep America’s major foreign interlocutors off-guard, such as NATO members, China, Mexico, Canada, North Korea, and Iran – each of which are considered here. In strategy terms, the book explains that the president is responding to a new multipolar structure of power by engaging a Kissingerian strategy that eschews liberal values and seeks to adjust great power relations in Washington’s favor. By drawing upon a range of evidence and case studies, this book makes a number of compelling and provocative points to offer a new vector for debate about the workings, successes and failures, and ultimately the long-term implications for the world, of the Trump presidency.This book will be of much interest to students of US foreign policy, security studies, and IR in general.

This book offers a multidisciplinary analysis of emerging technologies and their impact on the new international security environment across three levels of analysis.While recent technological developments, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics and automation, have the potential to transform international relations in positive ways, they also pose challenges to peace and security and raise new ethical, legal and political questions about the use of power and the role of humans in war and conflict. This book makes a contribution to these debates by considering emerging technologies across three levels of analysis: (1) the international system (systemic level) including the balance of power; (2) the state and its role in international affairs and how these technologies are redefining and challenging the state’s traditional roles; and (3) the relationship between the state and society, including how these technologies affect individuals and non-state actors. This provides specific insights at each of these levels and generates a better understanding of the connections between the international and the local when it comes to technological advance across time and spaceThe chapters examine the implications of these technologies for the balance of power, examining the strategies of the US, Russia, and China to harness AI, robotics and automation (and how their militaries and private corporations are responding); how smaller and less powerful states and non-state actors are adjusting; the political, ethical and legal implications of AI and automation; what these technologies mean for how war and power is understood and utilized in the 21st century; and how these technologies diffuse power away from the state to society, individuals and non-state actors. This volume will be of much interest to students of international security, science and technology studies, law, philosophy, and international relations.

This book investigates the drivers, tactics, and strategy that propel the Trump administration’s foreign policy.The key objective of this book is to look beyond the ‘noise’ of the Trump presidency in order to elucidate and make sense of contemporary US foreign policy. It examines the long-standing convictions of the president and the brutal worldview that he applies to US foreign policy; and his hard-line negotiation tactics and employment of unpredictability to keep America’s major foreign interlocutors off-guard, such as NATO members, China, Mexico, Canada, North Korea, and Iran – each of which are considered here. In strategy terms, the book explains that the president is responding to a new multipolar structure of power by engaging a Kissingerian strategy that eschews liberal values and seeks to adjust great power relations in Washington’s favor. By drawing upon a range of evidence and case studies, this book makes a number of compelling and provocative points to offer a new vector for debate about the workings, successes and failures, and ultimately the long-term implications for the world, of the Trump presidency.This book will be of much interest to students of US foreign policy, security studies, and IR in general.

A systematic critical survey of American strategic thinking and the strategic culture in which it is formed. In particular, this book seeks to interrogate the theory and strategy of nuclear deterrence, and its relationship to the concept of missile defence. Drawing widely on the theoretical literature in international relations and strategic studies, it identifies the key groups that have competed over America's nuclear policy post-1945 and examines how the concept of missile defence went through a process of gestation and intellectual contestation, leading to its eventual legitimization in the late 1990s. Steff sheds light on the individuals, groups, institutions and processes that led to the decision by the Bush administration to deploy a national missile defence shield. Additionally, Steff systematically examines the impact deployment had on the calculations of Russia and China. In the process he explains that their reactions under the Bush administration have continued into the Obama era, revealing that a new great power security dilemma has broken out. This, Steff shows, has led to a decline in great power relations as a consequence.

A systematic critical survey of American strategic thinking and the strategic culture in which it is formed. In particular, this book seeks to interrogate the theory and strategy of nuclear deterrence, and its relationship to the concept of missile defence. Drawing widely on the theoretical literature in international relations and strategic studies, it identifies the key groups that have competed over America's nuclear policy post-1945 and examines how the concept of missile defence went through a process of gestation and intellectual contestation, leading to its eventual legitimization in the late 1990s. Steff sheds light on the individuals, groups, institutions and processes that led to the decision by the Bush administration to deploy a national missile defence shield. Additionally, Steff systematically examines the impact deployment had on the calculations of Russia and China. In the process he explains that their reactions under the Bush administration have continued into the Obama era, revealing that a new great power security dilemma has broken out. This, Steff shows, has led to a decline in great power relations as a consequence.

This volume in the Weapons of Mass Destruction series makes the case that the United States’ expansive missile defence policy has eroded both its own security and that of its allies. These findings are based on an examination of the response of a number of key states to U.S. policy, including Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. Situating their argument in the theoretical debate on balancing in unipolarity, the authors contrast their view to influential perspectives that see little evidence of hard balancing against the U.S. in the post-Cold War era. Adopting a neorealist perspective, the authors demonstrate the clear presence of this inter-state practice, providing insight into the international politics of unipolarity, showing how hard balancing and security dilemma-related dynamics operate in the contemporary strategic environment.