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Recent generations have experienced dramatic improvements in the quality of human life across the globe. Wars between states are fought less frequently and are less lethal. Food is more plentiful and more easily accessed. In most parts of the world, birthrates are down and life expectancy up. Significantly fewer people live in extreme poverty, relative to the overall population. Statistics would argue that the human race has never before flourished as it has in this moment. And yet, even with this progress, we face a number of seemingly intractable challenges to the welfare of both states and individuals, including: Governmental instability undermining the lives of citizens, both within and beyond their borders; Persistent and recurring intrastate conflict due to ineffective conflict management strategies; Marginally successful development efforts and growing income inequality, both within and between nations, as a result of uncoordinated and ineffective global development strategies; Internecine conflict in multiethnic societies, manifested by exclusion, discrimination, and ultimately violence, the inevitable consequence of an insufficient focus on managing the inherent tensions in diverse societies; Global climate change with the possibility of catastrophic long-term consequences, following an inability to effectively come to terms with and respond to the impact of human activity on our environment. These challenges require a newly collaborative, intentional, and systematic approach. This book offers a blueprint for how to get there, calling for increased leadership responsibility, clarity of mission, and empowerment of states and individuals. It is designed to transform lofty but often vague agendas into concrete, measurable progress. It believes in the capacity of humanity to rise to the occasion, to come together to address these increasingly critical global problems, and offers one way forward.

This book systematically explores how different theoretical concepts of myth can be utilised to interpretively explore contemporary international politics. From the international community to warlords, from participation to effectiveness – international politics is replete with powerful narratives and commonly held beliefs that qualify as myths. Rebutting the understanding of myth-as-lie, this collection of essays unearths the ideological, naturalising, and depoliticising effect of myths. Myth and Narrative in International Politics: Interpretive Approaches to the Study of IR offers conceptual and methodological guidance on how to make sense of different myth theories and how to employ them in order to explore the powerful collective imaginations and ambiguities that underpin international politics today. Further, it assembles case studies of specific myths in different fields of International Relations, including warfare, global governance, interventionism, development aid, and statebuilding. The findings challenge conventional assumptions in International Relations, encouraging academics in IR and across a range of different fields and disciplines, including development studies, global governance studies, strategic and military studies, intervention and statebuilding studies, and peace and conflict studies, to rethink ideas that are widely unquestioned by policy and academic communities.

This book explores the origin and propagation of myths in international relations. The 16 contributions demonstrate how formative historical events are often transformed into handy cliche s which are subsequently drawn on by politicians and journalists who apply these simplistic patterns to current events. Myths discussed include the Spanish Civil War, Yalta, British difference, and the German Sonderweg. The book focuses on the relationship of these myths to current policy-making. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book addresses long-term challenges to national and human security. These include unstable governments, ineffective conflict management, uncoordinated global development, tensions in multi-ethnic societies, and the inability to deal with climate change. From his long experience in tracking and mediating conflict and crisis, Jon Wilkenfeld writes about leadership, responsibility, mission, and empowerment in the face of these challenges. Myth and Reality in International Politics is about the transformation of lofty agendas into concrete, measurable progress through collective action.

This book deconstructs a series of myths surrounding China’s economic rise. The first myth is that globalization led directly to China’s rise; the second is that China is another East Asian developmental state; the third that China’s market reform had been implemented in an incremental way; and fourth that China’s ‘resilient authoritarianism’ has been effective in ensuring the country’s economic and political transformation. Yue argues that the China model is one of ‘crony comprador capitalism’ that has hindered the country’s attempts at economic and political modernity. It is argued that the United States’ strategy of integrating China into the international system is self-defeating in the long run; not because such an approach has created a 'restless empire' capable of challenging US primacy, but because the Chinese 'miracle' has subsequently backfired on the liberal order created after World War Two. Covering the entire reform period from the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976 to the present day, the author calls for readers to rethink globalization and leave more policy space for China and the developing nations to pursue national development through internal integration, which is more conducive to democratic transition and global peace.

The UN peacekeeping system has largely outlived its usefulness and is bound to fail when applied to currently predominant, violent and messy conflagrations. Lacking radical changes in that system, the UN should disarm, restricting the peacekeeping to military observers' missions and to subcontracting other operations out to military alliances and regional organizations. The widely lamented massacres of innocent civilians under UN Peacekeeper eyes in Rwanda, Srebrenica, and the Congo influenced neither the UN's approach nor the analysis of the methods. In this book, Andrzej Sitkowski confronts two basic peacekeeping myths. First, the belief that peacekeeping is distinct from peace enforcement blurs this distinction and undermines the viability of peacekeeping operations. In fact, it is the UN's definition of self-defense, which is understood to include actions of troops against forceful obstructions to discharging their mandates, that confuses the issue. Nevertheless, that distinction remains a cornerstone of the UN doctrine. Secondly, it is widely believed that the peacekeepers are allowed to apply force only in self-defense and lack the authorization to use it in defending UN Security Councils mandates. This myth persists, even in cases when the UN Security Council undertakes explicit authorization to enforce specific goals of the mandate.

Food democracy is an important issue for human security globally. This paper seeks to address the effects of historical relationships like colonial and trading partnerships, to see their effect on present human relations. Natural resources are a scarce and food, along with its politics, has important contributions to the discourse of security in general, and human security in particular. The paper seeks to demonstrate the consequences or outcomes of domestic and international pressure on the food supply and production. The behavior of nation-states in the international system is important in order for us to evaluate how secure is our food. In the end, this paper inquires about food security through historical and economic connections by investigating how democratic current food arrangements are and how secure we are.

Intermediate Examination Paper from the year 2003 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Miscellaneous, grade: 2,3 (B), University of Göttingen, language: English, abstract: Winston Churchill coined the term Special Relationship in his famous speech in Fulton, Missouri in 1946. This term characterises the unparalleled close Anglo-American relations during the Second World War and in the time thereafter. The shared perception that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union constituted major external threats to their well-being bound the societies and leaderships of Great Britain and the United States together. The looming menace ceased to exist after the break-up of the Soviet Union and the demise of Communism, and for several authors so did the raison d ́être of the Special Relationship as well. It was more however that brought these two countries together than the shared perception of a communist threat. Why is it that "neither country has fully adjusted its mind to thinking of the members of the other society as foreigners", and that Americans still refer to Britain as the "mother country" every now and then? Why do certain authors call Britain the "fortified outpost of the Anglo-Saxon race" or the "unsinkable aircraft carrier"? And is it just by chance that fictional author George Orwell calls Britain "Airstrip One" and associates it with North America in his novel "1984"? Is it a coincidence or are these - admittedly vague - expressions signs of subtle yet overarching bonds between the two countries? This work will analyse and discuss various aspects of Anglo-American relations. The apparent cooperation in the fields of foreign and security policy will be assessed, as well as the more disguised realm of military and intelligence collaboration. Following is a chapter about two aspects that dominate our time, economy and business in the Anglo-American relationship. The last chapter attempts to illuminate the obscure field of "private" relations between th

List of illustrations --Preface --pt. 1. Voters --1. Thebig year for the youth vote : myth and reality --2. The"America divided" myth : red states, blue states, and other gaps --3. Themyth of the vanishing voters and the rise of the independent voter --pt. 2. Following campaigns --4. Misconceptions about the e-campaign : what the Internet can and cannot do for political campaigns --5. Myth or reality? : presidential campaigns have become nastier --6. Science or voodoo? : misconceptions about national election polls --7."It's the ratings, stupid" : misconceptions about media bias --8. A"dime's worth of difference?" : political parties and the myth of Tweedledum and Tweedledee --pt. 3. Understanding election outcomes --9. Selling of the president : the "image is everything" myth --10. Themisconception of competitive congressional elections --11. Presidential campaigns and "kingmaker" states : the myth of a national contest --Notes --Index --About the authors.