This collection offers an innovative and fresh interpretation of Antitrinitarian and rational dissent in the early modern world. The central themes focus on the fierce debates surrounding Antitrinitarianism and Unitarianism that emerged from the Reformation and the lived cultures of these dissenting movements. The chapters take an interdisciplinary approach addressing ideas in context, their reception and appropriation, and the diverse and often conflicting visions of Christianity. Drawing on previously unused sources, many from Eastern Europe and often in inaccessible languages, this book challenges our understanding of dissent as marginal and eccentric and places it at the center of contesting convictions about the nature of religious reform.

This book examines common theoretical conceptualization of terrorism, including all the following dimensions:

• Macro-criminological theories
• Psycho-criminological models of aggression
• Psycho-criminological models of risk and need (RNR)
• Psychopathology
• Social psychology, particularly in the areas of intergroup relations, identity, need for closure, and, the quest for significance
• Ideological and religious passions and extremism

International in scope, each chapter draws on a combination of these frameworks, exemplified in a collection of case series and studies, to help students, practitioners, and researchers better understand these phenomena.

Richard Sorge is one of history's most famous spies. This hard-drinking, womanising, motorcycle- crashing Soviet officer penetrated the German embassy in Tokyo during the 1930s and gathered intelligence credited with changing the course of the Second World War. It is an intriguing tale; but Sorge's spy ring was just one chapter in a much longer history of Russian and Soviet espionage in and against Japan.

Cracking the Crab tells the extraordinary full story of Russian intrigue targeting Japan, from first encounters in the eighteenth century to the Soviet declaration of war in August 1945. Colourful episodes include Gojong, King of Korea, being smuggled into the Russian legation dressed as a woman in 1896; the 1927 'Tanaka Memorial', an infamous forgery purporting to be Japan's hidden plan for world domination; and the secret intelligence of 'Nero', a Soviet agent supplying invaluable insight into Japanese strategy during the Second World War.

From Russians murdered in broad daylight in Meiji Tokyo to Soviet honey traps and 'white magic' at the Battle of Nomonhan, this is a landmark history of the covert struggle between two great powers of the modern age.

This book is the first to provide a comprehensive examination of the entities responsible for the production of data on armed conflicts (DAC), the processes by which it is generated, and the international norms that govern it. While numerous studies have focused on the statistical aspects of armed conflicts, this book distinguishes itself through its historical analysis of the relationship between actors, data generation methods, and international norms.

The book begins with an examination of the nature of data in international politics. The vast scale of the subjects being analyzed presents significant challenges to accurately measuring international political data, with war being particularly difficult to assess. This raises the question of how DAC has been structured and generated. The book highlights the existence of specific international norms as a basis for DAC. It explores the history of international norms for the protection of war dead in collecting casualty information, as well as norms for civilian protection. The book posits that DAC has been generated not only by sovereign states but also by global networks comprising international organizations and NGOs. It thus analyzes the historical development of such global networks. In the latter part of the book, the methods by which global networks generate DAC are analyzed. First, it clarifies when and how statistical analysis has been used in generating DAC. Second, it elucidates when and how forensic analysis, primarily of corpses, has been employed. Thirdly, the book reveals when and how chemical weapons analysis has been utilized.

This book offers a valuable investigation into the generative structure of DAC and mechanisms for ensuring compliance with international humanitarian law. It will appeal to a broad audience of policymakers, human rights activists, humanitarian practitioners, and academics.

The second edition of EU Foreign Policy Toward Latin America systematically examines the main aspects of the EU-Latin America relationship. The chapters provide an in-depth analysis of the long-term trends in the EU's relationship with Latin America as a region, sub-regions, and individual countries. Students and practitioners interested in interregional studies, Latin America, and EU external relations will find this an invaluable resource to examine past interactions within the Euro-Latin American space. The book advances the concept of liberal partnerships, EU capacity building, and modular interregionalism, reflecting the convergence of strategic priorities, multiple narratives, and asymmetrical relations. Under one framework of analysis, the book explains why the EU and Latin America have developed a variety of institutional mechanisms of cooperation, ranging from bilateral association agreements to regional trade negotiations.

Gaza's Cycle of Destruction: Understanding the Actors, Dynamics, and Responses is an integrated, multidisciplinary, and comprehensive academic inquiry into Gaza wars and their drivers, actors, dynamic, paradigms, and responses. Unlike studies on the previous wars in Gaza, it seeks to present to the regional and global readership a different perspective towards the conflict-one that is authored by nearly a dozen Palestinian researchers and academics. It strives to steer away from the 'Northern'-dominated research space to present an informative, analytical, and thought-provoking argument. The book provides a combination of theoretical, thematic, and topical analysis of the war. It is designed to guide the reader through the background and development of the events of the 2023 war. Put differently, the book's objective goes beyond tracing the historical roots of instability in Gaza. Instead, it directly addresses the Gaza Strip's contemporary context.

Voices from Ukraine takes you into the lives and experiences of journalists covering one of the most consequential wars of our time. This book provides a detailed examination of war reporting in Ukraine by merging the author's insights with the stories of journalists, collected from Ukrainian and international media sources. It claims that nationality, gender, technology, and politics have significantly influenced journalism during this crisis, creating possibilities and challenges that shape how the conflict is perceived and covered worldwide.

The author emphasizes the role played by journalists in conflicts and their impact on democratic discourse and public awareness of war. Voices from Ukraine examines the dangerous new paradigm of misinformation, the paradox of neutrality, and the personal, professional and ethical choices journalists face in combat zones. It also covers the experiences of international reporters and honors the outstanding work of women journalists in a field traditionally dominated by men.

Within the broader scope of war journalism literature, this book raises questions about how journalists' experiences in the war in Ukraine alter our understanding of conflict reporting.

This open access book delves into the responses of EU actors, such as member states, institutions, and political groups in the European Parliament, to the fragmentation of the liberal international order (LIO). The analytical framework adopted in this volume explores the diverse interpretations of this phenomenon and the various political initiatives associated with them. Among these interpretations is the concept of strategic autonomy, which has emerged as a key feature of debates surrounding the EU's adaptation to a fragmented LIO. The contributors examine these dynamics across different issue areas and dimensions of EU foreign policy, encompassing the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), external relations, and the externalization of internal policies. They use the term fragmentation to refer to a bundle of processes affecting the LIO that range from challenges to the universality of human rights to the crisis of global governance instruments, from the bifurcation of tech to protectionist tendencies in trade policies.

This book explores how different Chinese social groups portray or discuss the European Union. The authors engage with issues such as trade, populism, EU crises, systemic rivalry and the Chinese media's representation of European integration and Brexit. They use qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods empirical research to show that, despite China's authoritarian political system, social actors construct complex representations of the EU that may influence government policy.

Rather than dismissing Chinese scholars as little more than state agents, one can benefit from their unique insights by analysing the prisms through which they view the world. In doing so, Western scholars can better understand the distinct institutional and cultural traditions that filter their own views of China.

This book adopts an interdisciplinary social science approach. It includes original research papers on Bangladesh-China's connectivity to archaeology, history, religion, traditional Chinese medicine, language and literature, women and gender, diplomacy and strategic relations, bilateral business and trade, and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Most of the existing literature perceives bilateral and regional connectivity from economic and strategic points of view and emphasizes financial and political profit-loss and integration. This book combines the archeological and cultural issues from history and diplomacy, and soft power from the present. The content of this book has a broader scope and is divided into six parts including background and introduction; archeology, history, and religion; business and trade; diplomacy and geo-strategy; traditional Chinese medicine; language and literature; and society, culture, and gender.

This book is particularly designed for undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers, academics, journalists, and strategic think tanks from broader humanities and social sciences backgrounds including, history, archeology, religious studies, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, political sciences, international relations, economics, environmental studies, language and literary studies, gender studies, health studies, and business.

This interdisciplinary book takes stock of Ukraine's thorny European integration path in the last two decades. Engaging many Ukrainian academics and practitioners, the book seeks to offer a first-hand insight into how Ukraine moves towards EU membership, while in war with Russia, and which 'stumbling blocks' it encounters.

Based on interviews and body-cam footage, a gripping account of British and American volunteers fighting in Ukraine, from Kyiv to Bakhmut.

This book is Black Hawk Down meets Enemy at the Gates meets Band of Brothers, and it's all true. It's about what happens when Western politicians carelessly assume we're living the 'end of history'--until the Great Game comes back, uglier and more callous than ever. It's about men who tried to fix those mistakes, at the risk--sometimes loss--of their lives.

Shannon Monaghan follows a core group of Western volunteers in Ukraine, fighting together from the early battle for Kyiv through to the last stands at Severodonetsk and Bakhmut. They arrived alone, but became a family--back when nobody bothered to learn names, because they all expected to die.

These men knew they'd be fighting without the NATO support they were used to. They knew the danger they faced, and how they might be criticised for fighting someone else's war. But they also knew it was the right thing to do. This is their story.

A Financial Times 'Book of the Year'

An intrepid reporter's fast-paced investigation into the extraordinary life of Viktor Bout, the much-mythologised Russian fixer known as the 'Merchant of Death'.

Viktor Bout was a warlord's warlord, according to MI6, the US National Security Council and the CIA-a terrorist facilitator, and the world's most prolific arms dealer. They tracked him everywhere, smuggling weapons from North Korea and the former Soviet Union into the world's bloodiest conflict zones, from Liberia to Afghanistan. Intelligence services called him a secret KGB asset; the White House, the most dangerous man in the world. But Bout strenuously denied this, describing himself as a businessman.

Washington hunted Bout for more than a decade, before finally trapping him and jailing him for 25 years. Then, in December 2022, the story took an unlikely turn: President Biden pardoned Bout and sent him home to Moscow, in a prisoner exchange to rescue basketball superstar Brittney Griner, jailed in Russia on drugs charges. Soon enough, Bout cosied up with doomed Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov and the Russian governors Putin had installed in occupied Ukraine.

Has America's extraordinary decision to swap Bout undermined Western interests? Has Putin put him back to work in his old business? Through candid interviews with US investigators and Viktor Bout himself, this book reveals the true story of the 'Merchant of Death'.

This handbook comprehensively covers topics in international relations, with a specific focus on China-Europe-Africa relations. This triangular relationship brings substantial contribution for the formation of an emergent new international order. With China being the second largest economy, and a growing power in military, technology, trade and cultural relations, the book provides decisive research on the key aspects that ground the country's external relations with Europe and Africa.

The first three parts of the book covers issues related to strategy, economy, and security, with specific case studies. In addition, the fourth part, not only focuses on China-Europe-Africa, but also extends to chapters on multilateralism and relations with other countries, regions, and economic communities. In doing so, the book also addresses topics on the Ukraine war, Covid-19, the Belt and Road Initiative, the Global Gateway, and the balance of major powers.

This edited volume provides state perspectives on Europe's security engagement in the Indo-Pacific from four different sub-regions and twelve different countries in the Indo-Pacific, namely - East Asia (Japan, China and South Korea); Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore); Oceania (Australia, New Zealand and Fiji) and lastly South Asia (India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives). By engaging with diverse countries, the framing in the book also allows for the inclusion of established and emerging regional groupings, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad).

This book offers a theory-driven and evidence-based approach to the study of South Asian borders and geopolitics. In the book, readers will be particularly interested to see the multiple meanings of borders and territoriality and their effects on border communities. The analyses found within chapters show how the statist and territorialist definitions of border and geopolitics have given way to the rise of liberal, humane, and gendered definitions of borders and geopolitics. Individual chapters in this volume employ a wide variety of qualitative research methods, with some adopting a mixed method approach by combining quantitative and qualitative data. The book would be a useful reference to academics and practitioners with a regional interest in South Asia.

China's military has entered a new era. It has acquired modern weapons to rival the world's finest, undergone a massive restructuring under Xi Jinping, and been on the frontlines of territorial disputes with Japan, India, Vietnam, and the Philippines. It is readying forces to be able to seize Taiwan sometime in the next decade. It aims to be a "world-class" military on par with the United States.

China's Quest for Military Supremacy provides a broad and accessible exploration of Chinese military power, including relations between the Chinese Communist Party and its army, the strategic worldview of Chinese leaders, military strategy and resourcing, conventional and nuclear modernization, military diplomacy and coercion, preparations for war, and the People's Liberation Army's emerging global role. It also identifies the challenges facing China's military and shows how its focus on supremacy in the region means that it is not yet prepared to fight with the same lethality beyond Asia. Different futures are possible, and the book concludes with a preview of what it might take for a truly "world-class" Chinese military to take the global stage.

This edited volume brings together a series of papers on various facets of the three Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania which have not attracted much intellectual attention outside Europe, especially in South Asia. The countries regained independence in 1991 following the disintegration of the Soviet Union. They sought to secure themselves by joining the EU, NATO and the Eurozone. They are robust democracies registering steady economic growth with improved living standards and are leading hubs in the field of Information Technology. However, for these small states bordering Russia the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war brings existential fears. This volume analyses how these states with substantial number of Russian minorities are recalibrating their policies in this changing geopolitical landscape of an assertive and aggressive Russia. It provides an in-depth understanding of the Baltic countries focusing on their security concerns, regional cooperation, gender and minority issues and bi-lateral relations with emerging powers China and India.

The volume would be of immense value to scholars of International Relations, academics, journalists, researchers and policy makers.

This book explores the role of the Central Security Council (CSTO) in ensuring regional security, analyzing the evolution of cooperation between post-Soviet states since the Soviet Union's demise. It focuses on the establishment of the CSTO as a regional organization since 2002, with six out of 11 CIS members. The book fills a gap in existing research on the security paradigm in post-Soviet space and the collective security mechanism of CSTO. Many western scholars have not understood the importance of multilateralism and Russia's foreign policy in maintaining security measures in the post-Soviet space. The book is an informative handbook on regional integration, Eurasianism, and CSTO for students, scholars, readers, academicians, and researchers working on this area.

An essential guide to understanding war and information on today's data-saturated battlefields--from Ukraine to Gaza and beyond.
Thanks to smartphones, war is everywhere, all the time. Anyone can view, analyse and comment on photos, videos or other warzone media. Where did this technology come from? And what does it mean for the future of war?

This book explains why you see what you do on your phone, and how these devices shape our knowledge, conduct and representation of war in the 2020s. It shows why smartphones are indispensable in peace and wartime: every device is a potential weapon, lines blur between war and daily life, and conflict becomes a shared digital experience. Social media platforms displace state-controlled narratives, amplifying violence and shaping war's legitimacy. Apps democratise conflict, enabling anyone to identify and attack perceived enemies. As the Ukraine war has shown, this new reality involves complex, unevenly distributed infrastructures, merging civilian communication with military targeting.

With war accelerating beyond our comprehension, militaries have raced to benefit from and adapt to the smartphone age. Matthew Ford explores critical questions about today's hyper-connected battlefield.

This book explores how the Nigerian state grapples with both internal and external forces that are fueling insecurity in the country. For more than a decade, Nigeria has been viciously attacked by different clusters of non-state armed actors, ranging from religious extremists, terrorists, kidnappers, herders, bandits, secessionists, and unknown gunmen. While insurgency-related deaths have dropped, the north-east remains the epicenter of insurgency and terrorism.

This book unpacks the contemporary security challenges in Nigeria. Instead of a monolithic analysis of Boko-Haram, it discusses other armed groups, secessionist agitations, maritime security, the social context of insecurity, the nexus between the proliferation of small arms and light weapons and insecurity, the mental health outcomes of insecurity, substance abuse and security, as well as migration and national security. The book is a policy-driven research work that speaks directly to policymakers, students, and other important stakeholders in the security sector in Nigeria and beyond.

This book analyzes the global implications of the fourth industrial revolution, the Technological Revolution 4.0, on International Relations. Examining the intersection of new technologies and international power, this volume engages in extensive discussions and debates surrounding the immediate and long-term consequences of innovations, such as artificial intelligence, big data, virtual reality, smart cities, and drones.

The rapid and potent march of technological progress intensifies global curiosity and concern, particularly regarding control over these new technologies. The book discusses essential questions, such as the theoretical analysis of new technologies in international relations, their impact on the 21st-century world order, and the pivotal roles of international actors in this revolution. Finally, it examines how these new technologies are reshaping international security, cooperation, and communication.

A critical resource for researchers and the general public, this book provides a contemporary and theoretical framework to contextualize the international discipline in light of the challenge posed by new technologies, while also discussing the key variables that mold international society in the 21st century within the parameters of this technological revolution. Moreover, it anticipates the prominent dynamics and challenges that will shape global structures, regions, and nations in the forthcoming decades.

Due to significant processes of transnationalization in the European context, a considerable relevance of potential social and political conflicts or disagreements in everyday life linked to Europe or the European Union can be observed. Consequently, the focus of this book is on the increasingly intertwined European citizens themselves and their everyday experiences with European and EU-related issues. The individual chapters provide fine-tuned perspectives on the connection of social and political European integration processes in the context of the EU and the everyday life of Europeans. Overall, the book draws attention to both how contestations over Europe and the EU figure in everyday life and on how European integration shapes individual (social and political) subjectivities and identities. This book is intended for scholars and advanced students of European Studies, Sociology and Political Science and International Relations.

This book covers a wide range of security issues in Nigeria, including insurgency, terrorism, herder-farmer conflicts, military reforms and internal security, the Nigeria Police Force and security management, intelligence gathering and insecurity, etc. It offers an in-depth assessment of the national security strategies and policies in Nigeria along with a critical assessment of the role of intelligence gathering in security management. It is useful for policymakers, students, and other important stakeholders in the security studies.