Critical Concepts in Military, Strategic, and Security Studies – serie

Many experts on security intelligence distinguish ‘mysteries’ from ‘secrets’. Mysteries (e.g. can Pakistan survive the threat it faces from the presence of insurgents in its western provinces?) are worldly phenomena that governments may wish to understand, but which are difficult to fathom given the foibles of human beings, not least their inability accurately to foretell the future. Secrets (e.g. the number of nuclear submarines in the Chinese navy), however, are more susceptible to understanding. Indeed, with the right spy in place, with surveillance satellites in their proper orbit, or with reconnaissance aircraft well-positioned in enemy airspace, secrets can be deduced, but governments are largely limited to thoughtful speculation about the planet’s deeper mysteries. Either way, prudent states will seek to establish intelligence-gathering agencies to ferret out secrets and help productively to ponder mysteries.Serious academic work focusing on issues in and around this kind of activity flourishes as never before, and this new four-volume collection from Routledge’s Critical Concepts in Military, Strategic, and Security Studies series addresses the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of scholarly literature.The first volume in the collection is devoted to the core mission of security intelligence—the collection and analysis of global information (the world’s secrets and mysteries). Nations take the task of acquiring security intelligence (often regarded as ‘the first line of defence’) with the utmost seriousness. Considerable resources—upwards of $50 billion per year in the case of the United States—are spent in the hope of avoiding catastrophic surprises such as the events of 11 September 2001. But, in many nations, intelligence agencies have taken on international assignments beyond this core duty, and they also conduct so-called ‘dirty tricks’. Volume II collects the most important work to describe and critically evaluate such covert action, which can include attempts to manipulate history through the use of propaganda, political and economic operations, and paramilitary activities.Intelligence agencies typically play another important role: guarding state secrets and resources from penetration by foreign governments and factions. The third volume of the collection assembles the essential thinking on the business of counterintelligence. Volume IV, meanwhile, brings together the best work on the vital question of intelligence accountability. Who will guard the guards themselves?Intelligence is fully indexed and includes a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected materials in its historical and intellectual context. It is destined to be valued by scholars and students as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.

Although prominent—some would argue pre-eminent—within the modern political lexicon, the concept of ‘security’ is complex and contested. While the meaning and reference point of security was once largely taken for granted within International Relations, the past thirty years or so have witnessed the growth of a range of approaches that refuse to take this concept and its application as self-evident. Instead, serious scholarship, often grouped under the rubric of ‘Critical Security Studies’, has sought to question and critique dominant conceptions of security, to introduce new theoretical approaches to the assessment of security discourses and practices, and to expand the range of issues considered within security analysis. This new four-volume collection from Routledge provides a timely anthology of the subdiscipline’s best and most influential scholarship to help users make sense of a now dizzyingly large body of literature and a continuing explosion in research output.Bringing together these major works in one easy-to-use reference resource, the collection illuminates the sometimes complex debates within and between different critical approaches to security, where even the meaning, form, and function of critique is itself contested. And, rather than attempting to impose a unitary or monolithic understanding of Critical Security Studies, the collection editors have instead captured the diversity and vibrancy of critical research on security by grouping the gathered materials into four interrelated themes: defining, deepening, broadening, and extending security.Volume I (‘Defining Security’), collects a variety of critical perspectives on the meaning of the concept of security. Volume II (‘Broadening Security’), meanwhile, presents arguments for and against the ‘broadening’ of security to include issues such as environmental degradation, migration, and health. The third volume (‘Deepening Security’) in the collection gathers assessments of the appropriate point of reference for security that range from the individual to the global level, while Volume IV (‘Extending Security’) brings together materials that have sought to extend existing critical approaches, and to expand further the disciplinary boundaries of Security Studies.The collection is fully indexed and includes a comprehensive introduction that places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. It is destined to be valued by students, teachers, and researchers of Security Studies—as well as those working in contiguous fields—as a vital and unique resource.

No region of the world has been more affected by the forces of instability and the factors of war and insecurity than has the Middle East. The area has seen more violence and conflict in the last three or four decades than all of the other world regions put together. Moreover, conflict in the area has an international significance far beyond its borders. These events and issues have also been of the greatest international and academic interest, with much study generated.The editor’s choice of materials in this new Routledge collection is based on an effort to cover a full range of issues concerning external and internal threats to the stability of Middle Eastern states as well as the means by which they try to ensure their security both at home and abroad. The topics include military, ideological, sub-national, Islamist, and economic challenges. In geographic terms it encompasses the greater Middle East: the Arab world, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, and Afghanistan.

The controversies raised by the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, the situation in Iraq, and the management of the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings have demonstrated anew that achieving peace is not merely a matter of ending wars. Indeed, the consequences of conflicts often extend far beyond the termination of local hostilities, impeding the reconstruction of war-torn societies, and making the resumption of violence more likely than not. Moreover, in today’s interdependent world, such consequences may jeopardize not only the stability of directly concerned states, but may also undermine regional, even global, peace. As a result, the call to build genuine, just, and sustainable peace conditions—exemplified by the establishment in 2006 of the UN Peacebuilding Commission, Fund, and Support Office—has never been more urgent, and underscores the pressing need for a comprehensive analysis and understanding of the critical concept of ‘peacebuilding’.This new four-volume Routledge Major Works collection answers such a need by bringing together the best and most influential scholarship from a wide range of academic disciplines to illuminate the idea and challenges of peacebuilding. Volume I addresses the concepts, actors, and institutions of peacebuilding. Volume II, meanwhile, assembles key works to focus on the challenges of security, welfare, justice, and the rule of law. Volume III is devoted to democratization, the state, and civil society, while Volume IV brings together major works on the implementation of peacebuilding, in particular reconciling international standards and local dynamics.With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the learned editors, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Peacebuilding is an essential work of reference. Moreover, its interdisciplinary and international perspective is certain to secure the collection a broad readership, including scholars, advanced students, policymakers, and practitioners.

SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE!(Valid until 3 months after publication)The Cold War dominated international politics between 1945 and 1990, when the two superpowers, the United States and Soviet Union, vied for supremacy. Their clash profoundly influenced the main trends of the time, including economic development, technological change, and decolonization. It divided Europe, with the fault line running through Germany. Although it never erupted into a major superpower conflagration, it was a vicious struggle that was often fought through proxies in the Third World, periodically flared into searing ‘limited’ conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, and occasionally produced the most dangerous international crises, particularly over Berlin and Cuba, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.This new Routledge title is the first reference work authoritatively to draw together all the major works on this pivotal event. The first volume explores how historians and political scientists have approached the Cold War, from the early debates between those who sought to blame one of the two superpowers for starting it, to the findings in the 1990s that were based on newly available sources from the former communist bloc. The volume also makes sense of more recent efforts to examine its global, transnational, and cultural dynamics. The next three volumes are arranged chronologically, dealing in turn with the origins of the Cold War, 1945–53; the oscillating period of crisis and détente between 1953 and 1975; and the end of the Cold War, 1975–90. These three volumes collect a compelling mixture of classic and cutting-edge works. They gathered scholarship explores the story from above and below—from the perspective not just of Washington, Moscow, and Beijing, but also of the smaller players who sought to manipulate the superpowers for their own ends.The tightly focused organization of this collection will allow scholars quickly and easily to access both established and up-to-date assessments of the Cold War, and will also make for irresistible browsing. With a comprehensive introduction, providing essential background information and relating the various pieces to each other, Cold War Studies is destined to be an indispensable resource for research and study.

It is increasingly recognized that the pandemic potential of many diseases holds the power to wreck economies, divide societies, and, indeed, to jeopardize the viability of nation states. In consequence, there is a growing—and urgent—need to understand and address such threats.As research in and around health security blossoms as never before, this new four-volume collection from Routledge’s acclaimed Critical Concepts in Military, Strategic, and Security Studies series meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a rapidly growing, and ever more complex, cross-disciplinary corpus of literature. Edited by a prominent scholar, the collection is a careful assembly of foundational and canonical work, together with innovative and cutting-edge applications and interventions.Including a full index and other navigational aids, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Health Security is an essential work of reference. The collection will be particularly useful as a one-stop database allowing scattered and often fugitive material to be easily located. It will also be welcomed as a crucial tool permitting rapid access to less familiar—and sometimes overlooked—texts. For researchers, students, practitioners, and policy-makers, it is a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.

Addressing the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of literature, European Security is a new title from Routledge’s Critical Concepts in Military, Strategic, and Security Studies series. Edited by Michael E. Smith, it is a four-volume collection which brings together the foundational and the very best cutting-edge scholarship in a one-stop ‘mini library’.Key debates covered in this indispensable collection include such hot topics as: theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of security in Europe; policies of national defence; European organizations as security providers; conflict prevention, peacekeeping, conflict resolution, and crisis management as reactions to regional insecurity; and the geo-politics of Europe and the wider world.European Security is fully indexed and includes a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. It is an essential reference work and is destined to be valued by scholars and students of Military and Strategic Studies, International Relations, and War Studies—as well as by policy-makers and practitioners—as a vital research and pedagogic resource.

No area of the world has been more involved in military matters during the last half century than has the Middle East. The region has seen seven Arab-Israeli wars; three wars involving Iraq and two more in Afghanistan; as well as civil wars in Lebanon, Libya, Algeria, Yemen, Syria, and among Palestinians; and insurgencies in several other places. Several of these wars—most notably the last one in Iraq and the Afghan ones—involved direct Western intervention.In addition, however, the military has been either the direct ruler of many countries, including Turkey among others, or the main pillar of the regime. Military coups, successful or otherwise, took place in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Algeria, and Jordan. Thus, the armed forces, their equipment, demands, goals, and other seemingly purely military issues have also become prime political determinants of Middle Eastern history.This new Routledge collection offers a survey of the scholarly work across the range of twentieth- and twenty-first-century regional history that puts these events together in a systematic context and provides a wide range of views and opinions. Comprehensively covering military history of the past hundred years, this title includes such topics as both world wars, the Turkish-Greek conflicts, Arab nationalism, the Arab-Israeli conflicts, and the post-2003 fighting in Iraq.

Addressing the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of literature, Military History is a new title from Routledge’s Critical Concepts in Military, Strategic, and Security Studies series. Edited by Jeremy Black (‘the most prolific historical scholar of our age’), it is a four-volume collection which brings together the very best scholarship in a one-stop ‘mini library’ of major works.Black avers that military history is increasingly seen as a global enterprise and Eurocentric/Western perspectives and paradigms often now appear questionable, if not redundant. Moreover, a teleology of warfare leading towards the total warfare of the twentieth century—the two world wars and the Cold War—appears far less convincing, he says, in light of developments since 1990. This kind of re-examination of long-held assumptions about military history has guided the selection of materials, which are organized chronologically, but with abundant cross-referencing to enable users to pursue thematic approaches. The focus is on major works published since 1990, first to centre on current research, questions, and perspectives and, secondly, because earlier literature can be followed through these pieces.Military History is fully indexed and includes a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. It is an essential reference work and is destined to be valued by scholars and students as a vital research and pedagogic resource.

Those working in Defence Studies explore the convergence between war and politics. It is, in the words of the editor of this new Routledge collection, ‘the socio-technological study of how martial force is understood, built, and deployed’. Indeed, the term ‘Defence Studies’ has its origins in the establishment in 1927 of the UK’s Imperial Defence College (later named the Royal College for Defence Studies in 1970), but research falling under that rubric has long been a global endeavour.Scholars of Defence Studies ask questions such as: What are the driving factors of defence policy? Why is history important for understanding emergent warfare? How might actors prepare for defence and war? Are defence policies appropriate for expected events?Now, in response to the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of literature, Routledge announces a new title in its Critical Concepts in Military, Strategic, and Security Studies series. Edited by David J. Galbreath, Professor of International Security at the University of Bath, and Director of its Centre for War and Technology, Defence Studies is a four-volume collection which brings together the very best scholarship in a one-stop anthology of major works.The collection is fully indexed and includes a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. It is destined to be valued by researchers, teachers, and advanced students as a vital research and pedagogic resource.

‘Radicalization’ has become one of the great buzzwords of our time. A Google search for the concept produces more than 1,500,000 hits—less than ‘terrorism’ but equal to ‘political violence’ and ‘extremism’. This may seem surprising, given that the term entered the academic vocabulary just ten years ago. Previous generations of scholars had, of course, been interested in why and how people become extremists, but there was no separate field of inquiry which brought together the many political scientists, historians, area studies and terrorism experts, social-movement theorists, and psychologists who had dedicated their scholarly careers—and developed different ideas and approaches—to answering these questions.The exponential growth of serious literature on radicalization (and the complementary topic of ‘de-radicalization’) has produced a more coherent scholarly field, with academics from different disciplines coalescing around similar questions and engaging in scholarly debates—for example, on the importance of ideology; the role of the Internet, and the contradictory dynamics of counterterrorism policies—that have created a common stock of knowledge from which new debates and lines of inquiry are generated. In short, the concept of radicalization—however ambiguous and ill-defined—is here to stay, and there is now a sufficiently large body of highly rigorous research from different disciplines to make this new Routledge collection of major works particularly welcome. Indeed, it is destined to make a significant contribution to shaping this young and growing field of scholarly research.