Asia & the Pacific

Rape is common during wartime, but even within the context of the same war, some armed groups perpetrate rape on a massive scale while others never do. In Rape During Civil WarDara Kay Cohen examines variation in the severity and perpetrators of rape using an original dataset of reported rape during all major civil wars from 1980 to 2012. Cohen also conducted extensive fieldwork, including interviews with perpetrators of wartime rape, in three postconflict counties, finding that rape was widespread in the civil wars of the Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste but was far less common during El Salvador's civil war.

Is religion a force for good or evil in world politics? How much influence does it have? Despite predictions of its decline, religion has resurged in political influence across the globe, helped by the very forces that were supposed to bury it: democracy, globalization, and technology. And despite recent claims that religion is exclusively irrational and violent, its political influence is in fact diverse, sometimes promoting civil war and terrorism but at other times fostering democracy, reconciliation, and peace. Looking across the globe, the authors explain what generates these radically divergent behaviors.

"The prospects for independence of nationalist movements which reject globalization are quite poor...."

"Globalization has the effect of incapacitating states as autonomous units."

"In How the Weak Win Wars, Arreguin-Toft means to convince the reader that when the very strong meet the weak in asymmetric armed conflict, strategy matters more than power. Despite minor excursions in his conclusions, he achieves this goal through expert scholarly analysis and a writing style that elucidates complex topics with facility. His work is extremely relevant in the current geopolitical context and serves as a warning to US policy makers to get military strategy right, regardless of relative power. Arreguin-Toft's argument makes perfectly clear the perilous consequences of neglecting the importance of strategic interaction."

— Edward Bradfield, Harvard International Review (Summer 2005)

This book addresses the crucial role of territory in explaining ethnic violence.  The theory of indivisible territory is explored in an attempt to explain why some conflicts turn violent and others do not.  The case studies consist of Russia in relation to the Chechens and Tartars and Georgia in relation to the Abkhaz and Ajars, roughly from 1990 to 1994.

Chapter in Janne E. Nolan's book "Global Engagement: Cooperation and Security in the 21st Century"

In the shrinking arms market of the post-Cold War era, countries with advanced arms industries face difficult choices concerning force size, arms production, arms export, and defense industrial capacity. This book explores the links among these issues through a detailed study of the combat aircraft industries in the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden--the seven countries that develop, produce, and export all of the world's technologically advanced weapon systems.

The studies show how military strategy, planned forces, and the age of systems in the current inventory affect the domestic demand for new production; how the recent drop in domestic demand affects arms industries; and the extent to which governments and firms in the arms-producing nations are turning to exports to sustain the industries.

Book by Ashton B. Carter, Kurt M. Campbell, Steven E. Miller, and Charles Zraket