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Since the end of the Cold war, the international security agenda has become increasingly important. This Very Short Introduction considers traditional topics such as war and peace, military strategy and nuclear weapons, alongside other issues such as climate change, international migration, poverty, and international terrorism.
The subject of international security is never out of the headlines. The subjects of war and peace, military strategy, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and revisionist states remain central to the discussion, but burgeoning concerns such as climate change, migration, poverty, health, and international terrorism have complicated the field. So what really matters? The traditional prioritization of state security or the security needs of individuals, humanity, and the biosphere? And where do the problems lie? Are states themselves as much a part of the problem as the solution for people's security needs? With globalization, the international security environment has become more interdepende...
Building on constructivist approaches to international relations this book develops a narrative theory of identity, action and foreign policy, which is then applied to account for the evolution of Finnish foreign policy. The book adopts an innovative approach by showing how foreign policy orientations need to be seen as grounded in overlapping and competing sets of identity narratives that reappear in different forms through history. By emphasising the dynamism implicit within identity narratives the book not only challenges traditional rationalist materialist approaches to foreign policy analysis, but also the current tendency to depict the story of Finnish foreign policy, identity and history as one of a gradual move towards a Western location. Rather the book emphasises elements of multiplicity and contingency, whilst re-establishing foreign policy as a highly political process concerned with power and the right to define reality and national subjectivity.
This book problematises the idea of and debates about a ‘divided West’ that have emerged since 9/11 and the controversy over the Iraq War.
Vicarious identity : an overview -- Vicarious identity in international relations -- US vicarious identity with Israel, 1967-2020 -- Vicarious identification as foreign policy strategy : the UK-US "special relationship" -- Aspiring for vicarious identity through engagement in war : the case of Denmark -- Conclusion.
The shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews.
“A remarkable—and singularly chilling—glimpse of human behavior. . .This meticulously researched book...represents a major contribution to the literature of the Holocaust."—Newsweek Christopher R. Browning’s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews—now with a new afterword and additional photographs. Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but,...
Reflecting on the work of one of the field's most influential scholars, the twenty essays in this book explore the evolution and application of Holocaust historiography, identify key insights into genocidal settings and point to gaps in our knowledge of humanity's most haunting problem. Why do they kill? The publication in 1992 of Christopher R. Browning's Ordinary Men raised crucial, previously unasked questions about the Holocaust: what made the members of a German police battalion - middle-aged family men of working- and lower-class background - become mass murderers of Jewish children, women, and men? How does motivation tie in with other factors that prompt participation in the final solution? And what can survivor accounts convey about genocide perpetration? Reflecting on the work of one of the field's most influential scholars, the twenty essays in this book explore the evolution and application of Holocaust historiography, identify key insights into genocidal settings and point to gaps in our knowledge of humanity's most haunting problem.
The Origins of the Final Solution is the most detailed, careful, and comprehensive analysis to date of the descent of the Nazi persecution of the Jews into mass murder: the Holocaust. Arguing that genocide was not a preconceived plan but rather a discovered possibility, Christopher Browning explains how Hitler's decision to murder the Jews en masse emerged in stages and by a process of elimination that gradually foreclosed plans for their expulsion from Europe. Only in the interval between late September and late October 1941 did the desire to "remove" the Jews intersect with the discovery of acceptable means of killing them on a large scale and with the euphoria of expected victory in Russia, all of which followed on from two years of 'race war' and 'racial imperialism' in eastern Europe that prepared 'ordinary Germans' for this fateful task.
Christopher R. Browning addresses some of the most heated controversies that have arisen from the use of postwar testimony: Hannah Arendt’s uncritical acceptance of Adolf Eichmann’s self-portrayal in Jerusalem; the conviction of Ivan Demjanuk (accused of being Treblinka death camp guard "Ivan the Terrible") on the basis of survivor testimony and its subsequent reversal by the Israeli Supreme Court; the debate in Poland sparked by Jan Gross’s use of both survivor and communist courtroom testimony in his book Neighbors; and the conflict between Browning himself and Daniel Goldhagen, author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners, regarding methodology and interpretation in the use of pre-trial testimony. Despite these controversies and challenges, Browning delineates the ways in which the critical use of such problematic sources can provide telling evidence for writing Holocaust history. He examines and discusses two starkly different sets of "collected memories"—the voluminous testimonies of notorious Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann and the testimonies of 175 survivors of an obscure complex of factory slave labor camps in the Polish town of Starachowice.