Download or read book Thucydides and Us Foreign Policy Debates After the Cold War written by John A. Bloxham and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 2011-03 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis examines the reception of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War in US foreign policy debates since the end of the Cold War. It begins with a background survey of Thucydides' use in foreign policy debates up to and during the Cold War, primarily by the realist school of international relations, and the comparisons which were drawn between the Cold War and the Peloponnesian War. After the Cold War, these comparisons became less relevant to current debates, and critics of realism began to use Thucydides to support their own theories. The emphasis is on how the three key movements since the Cold War, realism, liberal internationalism and neoconservatism, have each seen aspects in Thucydides' writing to admire and utilise for their theories, at the same time building competing interpretations of key sections from Thucydides' History. At the same time, as well as drawing abstract theories from Thucydides, analysts have also drawn historical parallels between the present and the Peloponnesian War in a creative process which results in modern states playing different ancient roles depending upon the context. I show that Thucydides' text lends itself particularly well to such recycling due to the author's tendency to highlight complex tensions without providing explicit authorial 'answers'.
Download or read book A Handbook to the Reception of Thucydides written by Christine Lee and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-01-20 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Handbook to the Reception of Thucydides offers an invaluable guide to the reception of Thucydides, with a strong emphasis on comparing and contrasting different traditions of reading and interpretation. • Presents an in-depth, comprehensive overview of the reception of the Greek historian Thucydides • Features personal reflections by eminent scholars on the significance and perennial importance of Thucydides’ work • Features an internationally renowned cast of contributors, including established academics as well as new voices in the field
Download or read book How to Think about War written by Thucydides and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible modern translation of essential speeches from Thucydides’s History that takes readers to the heart of his profound insights on diplomacy, foreign policy, and war Why do nations go to war? What are citizens willing to die for? What justifies foreign invasion? And does might always make right? For nearly 2,500 years, students, politicians, political thinkers, and military leaders have read the eloquent and shrewd speeches in Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War for profound insights into military conflict, diplomacy, and the behavior of people and countries in times of crisis. How to Think about War presents the most influential and compelling of these speeches in an elegant new translation by classicist Johanna Hanink, accompanied by an enlightening introduction, informative headnotes, and the original Greek on facing pages. The result is an ideally accessible introduction to Thucydides’s long and challenging History. Thucydides intended his account of the clash between classical Greece’s mightiest powers—Athens and Sparta—to be a “possession for all time.” Today, it remains a foundational work for the study not only of ancient history but also contemporary politics and international relations. How to Think about War features speeches that have earned the History its celebrated status—all of those delivered before the Athenian Assembly, as well as Pericles’s funeral oration and the notoriously ruthless “Melian Dialogue.” Organized by key debates, these complex speeches reveal the recklessness, cruelty, and realpolitik of Athenian warfighting and imperialism. The first English-language collection of speeches from Thucydides in nearly half a century, How to Think about War takes readers straight to the heart of this timeless thinker.
Download or read book Destined For War written by Graham Allison and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-05-30 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER | NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR. From an eminent international security scholar, an urgent examination of the conditions that could produce a catastrophic conflict between the United States and China—and how it might be prevented. China and the United States are heading toward a war neither wants. The reason is Thucydides’s Trap: when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one, violence is the likeliest result. Over the past five hundred years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times; war broke out in twelve. At the time of publication, an unstoppable China approached an immovable America, and both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump promised to make their countries “great again,” the seventeenth case was looking grim—it still is. A trade conflict, cyberattack, Korean crisis, or accident at sea could easily spark a major war. In Destined for War, eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison masterfully blends history and current events to explain the timeless machinery of Thucydides’s Trap—and to explore the painful steps that might prevent disaster today. SHORT-LISTED FOR THE 2018 LIONEL GELBER PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: FINANCIAL TIMES * THE TIMES (LONDON)* AMAZON “Allison is one of the keenest observers of international affairs around.” — President Joe Biden “[A] must-read book in both Washington and Beijing.” — Boston Globe “[Full of] wide-ranging, erudite case studies that span human history . . . [A] fine book.”— New York Times Book Review
Download or read book Thucydides Other Traps written by Alan Greeley Misenheimer and published by . This book was released on 2019-06-06 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of a "Thucydides Trap" that will ensnare China and the United States in a 21st century conflict-much as the rising power of Athens alarmed Sparta and made war "inevitable" between the Aegean superpowers of the 5th century BCE-has received global attention since entering the international relations lexicon 6 years ago. Scholars, journalists, bloggers, and politicians in many countries, notably China, have embraced this beguiling metaphor, coined by Harvard political science professor Graham Allison, as a framework for examining the likelihood of a Sino-American war. This case study examines the Thucydides Trap metaphor and the response it has elicited. Hewing closely to what the historian of the Peloponnesian War actually says about the causes and inevitability of war, it argues that, while Thucydides' text does not support Allison's normative assertion about the "inevitable" result of an encounter between "rising" and "ruling" powers, the History of the Peloponnesian War (hereafter, History) does identify elements of leadership and political dynamic that bear directly on whether a clash of interests between two states is resolved through peaceful means or escalates to war. It is precisely because war typically begins with a considered decision by a national command authority to reject other options and mobilize for conflict (and thus always entails an element of choice) that insight from Thucydides' History remains relevant and beneficial for the contemporary strategist, or citizen, concerned in such decisions.Accordingly, this case study concludes that the Thucydides Trap, as conceived and presented by Graham Allison, draws welcome attention both to Thucydides and to the pitfalls of great power competition, but fails as a heuristic device or predictive tool in the analysis of contemporary events. Allison's metaphor offers, at best, a potentially misleading over-simplification of Thucydides' nuanced and problematic account of the origins of the epochal conflict that defined his age. Moreover, it overlooks actual insights from the History that can help political decisionmakers-including, but not limited to, those of the United States and China-either avoid war or, if ignored, pose genuine policy "traps" that can make an avoidable war more likely, and a necessary war more costly.
Download or read book Thucydides and the Modern World written by Katherine Harloe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-05 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ancient Greek historian Thucydides has had an enormous impact on modern historiography, political theory, international relations and strategic studies, but this influence has never been properly studied. This book brings together leading scholars from a range of disciplines to explore the different facets of Thucydides' modern reception and influence, from the birth of political theory in Renaissance Europe to the rise of scientific history in nineteenth-century Germany and the triumph of 'realism' in twentieth-century international relations theory. Its chapters consider the different national and disciplinary traditions of reading and citing Thucydides, but also highlight common themes and questions; in particular, the variety of images of the historian produced by his modern readers: the scientific historian or the artful rhetorician, the brilliant analyst of society and politics or the great narrator of political and military events, the man of experience and affairs or the man of contemplation and reflection.
Download or read book Thucydides on the Outbreak of War written by S. N. Jaffe and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-09 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cause of great power war is a perennial issue for the student of politics. Some 2,400 years ago, in his monumental History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides wrote that it was the growth of Athenian power and the fear that this power inspired in Sparta which rendered the Peloponnesian War somehow necessary, inevitable, or compulsory. In this new political psychological study of Thucydides' first book, S.N. Jaffe shows how the History's account of the outbreak of the war ultimately points toward the opposing characters of the Athenian and Spartan regimes, disclosing a Thucydidean preoccupation with the interplay between nature and convention. Jaffe explores how the character of the contest between Athens and Sparta, or how the outbreak of a particular war, can reveal Thucydides' account of the recurring human causes of war and peace. The political thought of Thucydides proves bound up with his distinctive understanding of the interrelationship of particular events and more universal themes.
Download or read book Conflict After the Cold War written by Richard K. Betts and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edited by one of the most renowned scholars in the field, Richard Betts' Conflict After the Cold War assembles classic and contemporary readings on enduring problems of international security. Offering broad historical and philosophical breadth, the carefully chosen and excerpted selections in this popular reader help students engage key debates over the future of war and the new forms that violent conflict will take. Conflict After the Cold War encourages closer scrutiny of the political, economic, social, and military factors that drive war and peace. New to the Fifth Edition: Original introductions to each of 10 major parts as well as to the book as a whole have been updated by the author. An entirely new section (Part IX) on "Threat Assessment and Misjudgment" explores fundamental problems in diagnosing danger, understanding strategic choices, and measuring costs against benefits in wars over limited stakes. 12 new readings have been added or revised: Fred C. Iklé, "The Dark Side of Progress" G. John Ikenberry, "China’s Choice" Kenneth N. Waltz, "Why Nuclear Proliferation May Be Good" Daniel Byman, "Drones: Technology Serves Strategy" Audrey Kurth Cronin, "Drones: Tactics Undermine Strategy" Eyre Crowe and Thomas Sanderson, "The German Threat? 1907" Neville Henderson, "The German Threat? 1938" Vladimir Putin, "The Threat to Ukraine from the West" Eliot A. Cohen, "The Russian Threat" James C. Thomson, Jr., "How Could Vietnam Happen? An Autopsy" Stephen Biddle, "Afghanistan’s Legacy" Martin C. Libicki, "Why Cyberdeterrence is Different"
Download or read book International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2000-11-07 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The end of the Cold War has changed the shape of organized violence in the world and the ways in which governments and others try to set its limits. Even the concept of international conflict is broadening to include ethnic conflicts and other kinds of violence within national borders that may affect international peace and security. What is not yet clear is whether or how these changes alter the way actors on the world scene should deal with conflict: Do the old methods still work? Are there new tools that could work better? How do old and new methods relate to each other? International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War critically examines evidence on the effectiveness of a dozen approaches to managing or resolving conflict in the world to develop insights for conflict resolution practitioners. It considers recent applications of familiar conflict management strategies, such as the use of threats of force, economic sanctions, and negotiation. It presents the first systematic assessments of the usefulness of some less familiar approaches to conflict resolution, including truth commissions, "engineered" electoral systems, autonomy arrangements, and regional organizations. It also opens up analysis of emerging issues, such as the dilemmas facing humanitarian organizations in complex emergencies. This book offers numerous practical insights and raises key questions for research on conflict resolution in a transforming world system.
Download or read book The Cold War as History written by Louis Joseph Halle and published by Harper Perennial. This book was released on 1991 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic historical analysis of East-West relations since World War II.
Download or read book U S Army War College Guide to National Security Issues National security policy and strategy written by J. Boone Bartholomees and published by U.S. Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2012 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume II continues the analyses and discussion of national security policy and strategy.
Download or read book Ascending China and the Hegemonic United States written by Jörg Vogelmann and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-09-04 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jörg Vogelmann looks into one of the central political and economic relationships of the 21st century. The author finds Sino-U.S. ties marked by strong, slightly asymmetric (economic) interdependence, a relatively fast economic power transition under way as well as slow to moderate shifts in military power. He develops a neoliberal and a neorealist grand theory picture of Sino-U.S. and international relations, and empirically verifies these influential perspectives by analyzing post-Cold War Chinese and U.S. foreign policies in the major flashpoints the Taiwan and the North Korea issue. Despite and due to globalization, ties between ascending China (as a potential regional or once even global U.S. challenger) and the hegemonic United States may likely continue to be marked by strategic power politics – and will decisively affect trans- and international relations.
Download or read book Cycles in US Foreign Policy since the Cold War written by Thomas H. Henriksen and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-01-25 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes how American international policy alternates between engagement and disengagement cycles in world affairs. These cycles provide a unique way to understand, assess, and describe fluctuations in America’s involvement or non-involvement overseas. In addition to its basic thesis, the book presents a fair-minded account of four presidents’ foreign policies in the post-Cold War period: George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. It suggests recurring sources of cyclical change, along with implications for the future. An engaged or involved foreign policy entails the use of military power and diplomatic pressure against other powers to secure American ends. A disengaged on noninvolved policy relies on normal economic and political interaction with other states, which seeks to disassociation from entanglements.
Download or read book Sparta in Modern Thought written by Stephen Hodkinson and published by Classical Press of Wales. This book was released on 2012-12-31 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Images of ancient Sparta have had a major impact on Western thought. From the Renaissance to the French Revolution she was invoked by radical thinkers as a model for the creation of a republican political and social order. Since the 19th century she has typically been viewed as the opposite of advanced liberal and industrial democracies: a forerunner of 20th-century totalitarian and militaristic regimes such as the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. Yet positive images of Sparta remain embedded in contemporary popular media and culture. This is the first book in over 40 years to examine this important subject. Eleven ancient historians and experts in the history of ideas discuss Sparta's changing role in Western thought from medieval Europe to the 21st century, with a special focus on Enlightenment France, Nazi Germany and the USA. Images of ancient Sparta have had a major impact on Western thought. From the Renaissance to the French Revolution she was invoked by radical thinkers as a model for the creation of a republican political and social order. Since the 19th century she has typically been viewed as the opposite of advanced liberal and industrial democracies: a forerunner of 20th-century totalitarian and militaristic regimes such as the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. Yet positive images of Sparta remain embedded in contemporary popular media and culture. This is the first book in over 40 years to examine this important subject. Eleven ancient historians and experts in the history of ideas discuss Sparta's changing role in Western thought from medieval Europe to the 21st century, with a special focus on Enlightenment France, Nazi Germany and the USA.
Download or read book Foreign Policy Issues for America written by Richard W. Mansbach and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-11 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As America’s first president never to have served in government or the military, Donald Trump entered the White House with an unformed foreign policy position. Yet he was confronted by a wide range of developing issues; the rise of China, Russian-United States relations, the resurgence of nationalism in Europe, U.S. Foreign Policy in Latin America, environmental challenges, terrorism, security challenges of failing states, cyber security threats, and challenges in international political economy. This volume focuses on these sensitive foreign policy issues that determine the prospects for American decline or continued hegemony. Contributions are divided into ‘regional’ and ‘functional’ issues, exploring the nature and significance of the challenge, the previous response, and President Trump’s policies and their consequences. Topics have been selected to address political, military, economic, and social factors in global politics and the book will appeal to undergraduates and scholars of U.S. foreign policy at all levels.
Download or read book Japan s Decision For War In 1941 Some Enduring Lessons written by Dr. Jeffrey Record and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, an enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and an industrial base 10 times that of Japan? The Pacific War was one that Japan was always going to lose, so how does one explain Tokyo’s decision? Did the Japanese recognize the odds against them? Did they have a concept of victory, or at least of avoiding defeat? Or did the Japanese prefer a lost war to an unacceptable peace? Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at Japan’s decision for war, and concludes that it was dictated by Japanese pride and the threatened economic destruction of Japan by the United States. He believes that Japanese aggression in East Asia was the root cause of the Pacific War, but argues that the road to war in 1941 was built on American as well as Japanese miscalculations and that both sides suffered from cultural ignorance and racial arrogance. Record finds that the Americans underestimated the role of fear and honor in Japanese calculations and overestimated the effectiveness of economic sanctions as a deterrent to war, whereas the Japanese underestimated the cohesion and resolve of an aroused American society and overestimated their own martial prowess as a means of defeating U.S. material superiority. He believes that the failure of deterrence was mutual, and that the descent of the United States and Japan into war contains lessons of great and continuing relevance to American foreign policy and defense decision-makers.
Download or read book Ancient Greece and American Conservatism written by John Bloxham and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-03-28 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: US conservatives have repeatedly turned to classical Greece for inspiration and rhetorical power. In the 1950s they used Plato to defend moral absolutism; in the 1960s it was Aristotle as a means to develop a uniquely conservative social science; and then Thucydides helped to justify a more assertive foreign policy in the 1990s. By tracing this phenomenon and analysing these, and various other, examples of selectivity, subversion and adaptation within their broader social and political contexts, John Bloxham here employs classical thought as a prism through which to explore competing strands in American conservatism. From the early years of the Cold War to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Bloxham illuminates the depth of conservatives' engagement with Greece, the singular flexibility of Greek ideas and the varied and diverse ways that Greek thought has reinforced and invigorated conservatism. This innovative work of reception studies offers a richer understanding of the American Right and is important reading for classicists, modern US historians and political scientists alike.
