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Crises in the Post‐Soviet Space
The breakup of the Soviet Union led to the creation of new states and territorial conflicts of different levels of intensity. Scrutinising the post‐Soviet period, this volume offers explanations for both the frequency and the intensity of crises in the region. This book argues that the societies which emerged in the post-Soviet space share characteristic features, and that the instability and conflict-prone nature of the Soviet Union’s successor states can be explained by analysing the post-independence history of the region and linking it to the emergence of overlapping economic, political and violent crises (called 'Intersecting Crises Phenomena’). Transformation itself is shown to b...
Publications Combined: Russia's Regular And Special Forces In The Regional And Global War On Terror
Over 2,400 total pages ... Russian outrage following the September 2004 hostage disaster at North Ossetia’s Beslan Middle School No.1 was reflected in many ways throughout the country. The 52-hour debacle resulted in the death of some 344 civilians, including more than 170 children, in addition to unprecedented losses of elite Russian security forces and the dispatch of most Chechen/allied hostage-takers themselves. It quickly became clear, as well, that Russian authorities had been less than candid about the number of hostages held and the extent to which they were prepared to deal with the situation. Amid grief, calls for retaliation, and demands for reform, one of the more telling react...
How Socio-Cultural Codes Shaped Violent Mobilization and Pro-Insurgent Support in the Chechen Wars
This book argues that the existing scholarship on asymmetric conflict has so far failed to take into account the role of socio-cultural disparities among belligerents. In order to remedy this deficiency, this study conceptualizes socio-cultural asymmetry under the term of asymmetry of values. It proposes that socio-cultural values which are based upon the codes of retaliation, silence, and hospitality – values which are intrinsic to honor cultures, yet absent from modern institutionalized cultures – may significantly affect violent mobilization and pro-insurgent support in that they facilitate recruitment into and support for insurgent groups, while denying such support to incumbent forces. Utilizing Russia's counterinsurgency campaigns in the First and Second Chechnya Wars as an empirical case study, this study explains how asymmetry of values can have an effect on the dynamics of contemporary irregular wars.
Counterinsurgency Warfare and Brutalisation
This book offers the first analysis of the brutalisation paradigm in counter-insurgency warfare. Minimising the use of force and winning over the population’s opinion is said to be the cornerstone of success in modern counterinsurgency (COIN). Yet, this tells only one side of the story. Drawing upon primary data collected during interviews with eyewitnesses of the Second Russian-Chechen War, as well as from secondary sources, this book is the first to offer a detailed analysis of the long-neglected logic underpinning brutalisation-centred COIN campaigns. It offers a comprehensive systematisation of the brutalisation paradigm and challenges the widespread assumption of brutalisation as an underperforming paradigm of COIN warfare. It shows that, although appalling, brutalisation-centred measures can deliver success. The book also outlines a stigmatised yet widely deployed set of COIN measures and provides critical insights into how Western military blueprints can be improved without compromising important moral and ethical requirements. This book will be of much interest to students of counterinsurgency, military and strategic studies, Russian politics, and International Relations.
The Future of War
A new approach to ideas about war, from one of the UK's leading strategic thinkers In 1912 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a short story about a war fought from underwater submersibles that included the sinking of passenger ships. It was dismissed by the British admirals of the day, not on the basis of technical feasibility, but because sinking civilian ships was not something that any civilised nation would do. The reality of war often contradicts expectations, less because of some fantastic technical or engineering dimension, but more because of some human, political, or moral threshold that we had never imagined would be crossed. As Lawrence Freedman shows, ideas about the causes of war and ...
Nationalism and War
Has the emergence of nationalism made warfare more brutal? Does strong nationalist identification increase efficiency in fighting? Is nationalism the cause or the consequence of the breakdown of imperialism? What is the role of victories and defeats in the formation of national identities? The relationship between nationalism and warfare is complex, and it changes depending on which historical period and geographical context is in question. In 'Nationalism and War', some of the world's leading social scientists and historians explore the nature of the connection between the two. Through empirical studies from a broad range of countries, they explore the impact that imperial legacies, education, welfare regimes, bureaucracy, revolutions, popular ideologies, geopolitical change, and state breakdowns have had in the transformation of war and nationalism.
Understanding Ethnopolitical Conflict
This book critically evaluates the growing body of theoretical literature on ethnic conflict and civil war, using empirical data from three major South Caucasian conflicts, evaluating the relative strengths and weaknesses of the available methodological approaches.
Chechnya
The humiliation of Russia by separatist rebels in the Chechen War marked a key moment in Russian - and perhaps world - history. In this new analysis Anatol Lieven offers a riveting account of the war as a means to explore the painful fate of the post-Soviet state.
Stories from the Field
What do you do if you get stuck in an elevator in Mogadishu? How worried should you be about being followed after an interview with a ring of human traffickers in Lebanon? What happens to your research if you get placed on a government watchlist? And what if you find yourself feeling like you just aren’t cut out for fieldwork? Stories from the Field is a relatable, thoughtful, and unorthodox guide to field research in political science. It features personal stories from working political scientists: some funny, some dramatic, all fascinating and informative. Political scientists from a diverse range of biographical and academic backgrounds describe research in North and South America, Afri...
Chechnya
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