Books

The most comprehensive study of Israel's national security to date, this book presents the first public proposal for a comprehensive Israeli national security strategy and prescribes an actionable course forward.

Coercion moves beyond these somewhat hidebound premises and examines the critical issue of coercion in the 21st century, with a particular focus on new actors, strategies and objectives in this very old bargaining game. The chapters in this volume examine intra-state, inter-state, and transnational coercion and deterrence as well as both military and non-military instruments of persuasion, thus expanding our understanding of coercion for conflict in the 21st century.

This Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the latest research from leading scholars on the international political economy of energy and resources. Highlighting the important conceptual and empirical themes, the chapters study all levels of governance, from global to local, and explore the wide range of issues emerging in a changing political and economic environment.

Most history is hierarchical: it's about emperors, presidents, prime ministers and field marshals. It's about states, armies and corporations. It's about orders from on high. Even history "from below" is often about trade unions and workers' parties. But what if that's simply because hierarchical institutions create the archives that historians rely on? What if we are missing the informal, less well documented social networks that are the true sources of power and drivers of change?

The 21st century has been hailed as the Age of Networks. However, in The Square and the Tower, Niall Ferguson argues that networks have always been with us, from the structure of the brain to the food chain, from the family tree to freemasonry. Throughout history, hierarchies housed in high towers have claimed to rule, but often real power has resided in the networks in the town square below. For it is networks that tend to innovate. And it is through networks that revolutionary ideas can contagiously spread. Just because conspiracy theorists like to fantasize about such networks doesn't mean they are not real.

From the cults of ancient Rome to the dynasties of the Renaissance, from the founding fathers to Facebook, The Square and the Tower tells the story of the rise, fall and rise of networks, and shows how network theory--concepts such as clustering, degrees of separation, weak ties, contagions and phase transitions--can transform our understanding of both the past and the present.

Just as The Ascent of Money put Wall Street into historical perspective, so The Square and the Tower does the same for Silicon Valley. And it offers a bold prediction about which hierarchies will withstand this latest wave of network disruption--and which will be toppled.

Two notable scholars demonstrate how history can explain and impact IR theory.

Fu Ying, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress, contends that the “Chinese-Russian relationship is a stable strategic partnership and by no means a marriage of convenience: it is complex, sturdy, and deeply rooted.” This chapter from Power Relations in the Twenty-First Century Mapping a Multipolar World?, a volume of Contemporary Security Studies, attempts to capture the changing dynamics of Russian-Chinese relations, focusing on how the two countries affect each other’s national interests—and how those interactions, in turn, will shape their relationship in decades to come and the prospects for a more multipolar, post-American world.

Chapter 10 of Rethinking the Silk Road: China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Emerging Eurasian Relations. The chapter is authored by Philippe Le Corre.

In 2017, the Aspen Strategy Group examined the future of the liberal world order. The papers in this volume outline the history and importance of the system of institutions and normative values that have underpinned the international system since the end of WWII. They also highlight some of the key threats to this order that have emerged over the past several years and endeavor to provide practical recommendations for meeting these challenges.

Authors include: Madeleine K. Albright, Stephen E. Biegun, Richard Danzig, John Deutch, John Dowdy, Michèle A. Flournoy, Michael Froman, Stephen Hadley, Christopher Kirchhoff, Anja Manuel, Condoleezza Rice, Carla Anne Robbins, David E. Sanger, David Shambaugh, Dov S. Zakheim, and Philip Zelikow.

This is the first time we hear from the man himself, in his own words, about what makes him tick. This is an optimistic book, written with passion, conviction and insight. It is the first in a two-volume autobiography.

Scholars have considered many analogies for cyber capabilities, grappling with how these capabilities may shape the future of conflict. One recurring theme in this literature is the comparison of cyber capabilities to powerful, strategic capabilities with the potential to cause significant death and destruction.