New Books in World Affairs

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey talks with Vali Nasr, Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies and former dean at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, about Iran's dangerous crossroads after its latest clash with Israel and the United States. Nasr argues that Western narratives about Iran as a reckless theocracy miss the calculated grand strategy behind its actions — a strategy rooted in centuries of imperial ambition, deep-seated insecurity, and anti-American resentment. He explains why the Islamic Republic has survived despite public disillusionment and why hopes of regime change are naïve. Nasr warns that Iran's nuclear ambitions are now more entrenched than ever, as ordinary Iranians begin to see the bomb as their only shield against annihilation. With the U.S. unwilling to invade but also disinclined to negotiate in good faith, Nasr lays out the stark choice Washington faces: a nuclear Iran or another disastrous Middle East war. Nasr recently published Iran's Grand Strategy: A Political History (Princeton University Press), and is also the author of The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat (Penguin 2014), and The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future (W.W. Norton, 2016 [2006]). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Central bank cooperation during global financial crises has been anything but consistent. While some crises are arrested with extensive cooperation, others are left to spiral. Going beyond explanations based on state power, interests, or resources, in Bankers' Trust: How Social Relations Avert Global Financial Collapse (Cornell University Press, 2025) Dr. Aditi Sahasrabuddhe argues that central bank cooperation—or the lack thereof—often boils down to ties of trust, familiarity, and goodwill between bank leaders. These personal relations influence the likelihood of access to ad hoc, bilateral arrangements with more favorable terms. Drawing on archival evidence and elite interviews, Sahasrabuddhe uncovers just how critical interpersonal trust between central bankers has been in managing global financial crises. She tracks the emergence of such relationships in the interwar 1920s, how they helped prop up the Bretton Woods system in the 1960s, and how they prevented the 2008 global financial crisis from turning into another Great Depression. When traditional signals of credibility fell short during these periods of crisis and uncertainty, established ties of trust between central bank leaders mediated risk calculations, alleviated concerns, and helped innovate less costly solutions. Dr. Sahasrabuddhe challenges the idea that central banking is purely apolitical and technocratic. She pinpoints the unique transnational power central bank leaders hold as unelected figures who nonetheless play key roles in managing states' economies. By calling attention to the influence personal relationships can have on whether countries sink or swim during crises, Bankers' Trust asks us to reconsider the transparency and democratic accountability of global financial governance today. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

A riveting account of the five most crucial days in twentieth-century diplomatic history: from Pearl Harbor to Hitler's declaration of war on the United States. By early December 1941, war had changed much of the world beyond recognition. Nazi Germany occupied most of the European continent, while in Asia, the Second Sino-Japanese War had turned China into a battleground. But these conflicts were not yet inextricably linked--and the United States remained at peace. Hitler's American Gamble recounts the five days that upended everything: December 7 to 11. Tracing developments in real time and backed by deep archival research, historians Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman show how Hitler's intervention was not the inexplicable decision of a man so bloodthirsty that he forgot all strategy, but a calculated risk that can only be understood in a truly global context. This book reveals how December 11, not Pearl Harbor, was the real watershed that created a world war and transformed international history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Global Asias: Tactics & Theories is the inaugural volume in an exciting new series that explores critical concerns animating Global Asias scholarship. It challenges the silos of academic knowledge formation that currently make legible and organize the study of Asia and its multiple diasporas. Transits, Indigeneity, Epistemology, Language, and A/Geography: These keywords highlight potential overlaps and points of disagreement between area studies, ethnic studies, and diaspora studies. Through an inventive approach and structure, the book exemplifies how the collaborative ethos of Global Asias praxis can catalyze new methods of scholarship and pedagogy—and create innovative models of academic knowledge-production. The editors offer a substantive overview of the emergent multidisciplinary field of Global Asias followed by a set of collaboratively authored research forums and pedagogical materials by a varied group of scholars working across ranks, disciplines, fields, geographies, and languages. Global Asias: Tactics & Theories will be an indispensable guide for anyone interested in learning more about this emerging field. It is crafted to provide resources for a wide range of readers: researchers, teachers, students, and administrators. The diversity and originality of the materials and approaches reflect a broad understanding of scholarly work that resists mastery by building structures of intellectual experimentation that embrace disagreement and differences. Readers will discover provocative conversations that redefine what it means to work in, at, for, and around Global Asias—not as a settled object of knowledge but a dynamic praxis of engagement. The volume is edited by Tina Chen and Charlotte Eubanks, with contributions by Omer Aijazi, Jenny Chio, Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, Neelima Jeychandran, Youngoh Jung, Junyoung Verónica Kim, Fiona Lee, Jerry Won Lee, Andrew Way Leong, Diego Javier Luis, Naveen Minai, Alexander Murphy, Carla Nappi, Kyle Shernuk, Erin Suzuki, Desirée Valadares, Jini Kim Watson, and Shaolu Yu.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

EPISODE SUMMARY: What becomes visible when you shift the lens away from Beijing to how China's Belt and Road projects unfold on the ground? Seeing China's Belt and Road, edited by Edward Schatz and Rachel Silvey, answers this question by reorienting conversations on China's global infrastructure development to their “downstream” effects. Instead of analyzing the BRI through grand geopolitical narratives or a national strategic lens, the book draws on fieldwork across Asia, Africa, and Latin America to show how local actors—mayors, contractors, migrant workers, and residents—shape and contest projects in practice. Contributing authors challenge simplified portrayals of the BRI as either neocolonial domination or benevolent development, instead revealing its fragmented, improvised, and negotiated nature. Our conversation touches on themes including the visual politics of infrastructure, how power flows through projects, and the agency of local people in shaping global connectivity. We also look ahead to emerging frontiers of China's influence, including digital corridors and cleaner energy, offering a view of China's evolving global presence. GUEST BIOS: Dr. Edward Schatz is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He is interested in identity politics, social transformations, social movements, anti-Americanism, and authoritarianism with a focus on the ex-USSR, particularly Central Asia. His publications include Slow Anti-Americanism (Stanford UP, 2021), Paradox of Power (co-edited with John Heathershaw, U. Pittsburgh Press, 2017), Political Ethnography (edited, U. Chicago Press, 2009), Modern Clan Politics (U. Washington Press, 2004), as well as articles in Comparative Politics, Slavic Review, International Political Science Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, and other academic journals. Current projects include a collaborative effort (with Rachel Silvey) to understand the downstream effects of China's Belt & Road Initiative, as well as a book about the rise of shamelessness in global politics. Dr. Rachel Silvey is Richard Charles Lee Director of the Asian Institute and Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning. She is a Faculty Affiliate in CDTS, WGSI, and the Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies Program. She received her Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a dual B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz in Environmental Studies and Southeast Asian Studies. Professor Silvey is best known for her research on women's labour and migration in Indonesia. She has published widely in the fields of migration studies, cultural and political geography, gender studies, and critical development. Her major funded research projects have focused on migration, gender, social networks, and economic development in Indonesia; immigration and employment among Southeast Asian-Americans; migration and marginalization in Bangladesh and Indonesia; and religion, rights and Indonesian migrant women workers in Saudi Arabia.LINKS TO RESOURCES Seeing China's Belt and Road: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/seeing-chinas-belt-and-road-9780197789261?cc=us&lang=en& Overview with contributing authors on Seeing China's Belt and Road: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULuHvAhUV_4 The Rise of the Infrastructure State How US–China Rivalry Shapes Politics and Place Worldwide: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-rise-of-the-infrastructure-state Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

This book provides insight into the impact of climate change on human mobility - including both migration and displacement - by synthesizing key concepts, research, methodology, policy, and emerging issues surrounding the topic. It illuminates the connections between climate change and its implications for voluntary migration, involuntary displacement, and immobility by providing examples from around the world. The chapters use the latest findings from the natural and social sciences to identify key interactions shaping current climate-related migration, displacement, and immobility; predict future changes in those patterns and methods used to model them; summarize key policy and governance instruments available to us to manage the movements of people in a changing climate; and offer directions for future research and opportunities. The book provides insights into how migration responses differ for slow- and rapid-onset climate-related hazards (including sea level rise, drought, flooding, tropical cyclones, wildfires, and others) It contributes to ongoing international discussions on the topic, which in recent years have emerged as key to UNFCCC negotiations and the UN Human Rights tribunal, and the subject of a special white paper commissioned by the White House in 2021 Finally, the book provides the most current synthesis of the state of knowledge in areas of theory, methodology, and policy considerations for climate-related migration and displacement, and will serve as a go-to resource on the subject This interview was conducted by Dr. Hannah Pool whose research focuses on human mobilities. She is a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Studies of Societies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

How to sustain an international system of cooperation in the midst of geopolitical struggle? Can the international economic and legal system survive today's fractured geopolitics? Democracies are facing a drawn-out contest with authoritarian states that is entangling much of public policy with global security issues. In Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order (Princeton University Press, 2024), Paul Tucker lays out principles for a sustainable system of international cooperation, showing how democracies can deal with China and other illiberal states without sacrificing their deepest political values. Drawing on three decades as a central banker and regulator, Tucker applies these principles to the international monetary order, including the role of the U.S. dollar, trade and investment regimes, and the financial system. Combining history, economics, and political and legal philosophy, Tucker offers a new account of international relations. Rejecting intellectual traditions that go back to Hobbes, Kant, and Grotius, and deploying instead ideas from David Hume, Bernard Williams, and modern mechanism-design economists, Tucker describes a new kind of political realism that emphasizes power and interests without sidelining morality. Incentives must be aligned with values if institutions are to endure. The connecting tissue for a system of international cooperation, he writes, should be legitimacy, creating a world of concentric circles in which we cooperate more with those with whom we share the most and whom we fear the least. Paul Tucker is a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and the author of Unelected Power (Princeton). He is a former central banker and regulator at the Bank of England, and a former director at Basel's Bank for International Settlements, where he chaired some of the groups designing reforms of the international financial system after the Global Financial Crisis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

An award-winning writer captures a year that defined the modern world, intertwining historical events around the globe with key moments from her personal history.The year 1947 marks a turning point in the twentieth century. Peace with Germany becomes a tool to fortify the West against the threats of the Cold War. The CIA is created, Israel is about to be born, Simone de Beauvoir experiences the love of her life, an ill George Orwell is writing his last book, and Christian Dior creates the hyper-feminine New Look as women are forced out of jobs and back into the home.In the midst of it all, a ten-year-old Hungarian-Jewish boy resides in a refugee camp for children of parents murdered by the Nazis. This year he has to make the decision of a lifetime, one that will determine his own fate and that of his daughter yet to be born, Elisabeth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Human rights are among our most pressing issues today. But rights promoters have reached an impasse in their effort to achieve rights for all. Human Rights for Pragmatists (Princeton University Press, 2022) explains why: activists prioritize universal legal and moral norms, backed by the public shaming of violators, but in fact, rights prevail only when they serve the interests of powerful local constituencies. Jack Snyder demonstrates that where local power and politics lead, rights follow. He presents an innovative roadmap for addressing a broad agenda of human rights concerns: impunity for atrocities, dilemmas of free speech in the age of social media, entrenched abuses of women's rights, and more.Exploring the historical development of human rights around the globe, Snyder shows that liberal rights–based states have experienced a competitive edge over authoritarian regimes in the modern era. He focuses on the role of power, the interests of individuals and the groups they form, and the dynamics of bargaining and coalitions among those groups. The path to human rights entails transitioning from a social order grounded in patronage and favoritism to one dedicated to equal treatment under impersonal rules. Rights flourish when they benefit dominant local actors with the clout to persuade ambivalent peers. Activists, policymakers, and others attempting to advance rights should embrace a tailored strategy, one that acknowledges local power structures and cultural practices.Constructively turning the mainstream framework of human rights advocacy on its head, Human Rights for Pragmatists offers tangible steps that all advocates can take to move the rights project forward. Our guest is Jack Snyder, the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia. Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Tax havens in offshore lands like Switzerland, the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas were once considered a rarity, the preserve of the super-rich. Today, they are big business available to the masses. Their goal? To avoid any form of accountability. Own nothing. Possess everything. Be answerable to no one. Where are these tax havens? What forms can they take? What future lies in store for them, and why should we care? An Anatomy of Tax Havens: Europe, the Caribbean and the United States of America (de Gruyter, 2023) answers these questions, and more, in the first comparative study in one volume of European, Caribbean and United States tax havens. It examines their simple origin to the extreme forms some take today, delving into the murky subculture that has deliberately made them impenetrably obscure. Uniquely, it combines detailed technical expertise (regulatory regimes, financial crime, legal and equitable structuring) with an analysis of their impact on domestic and global political, economic, environmental and social concerns. An Anatomy of Tax Havens is a fascinating, informative read for a broad readership; from legal, accountancy and tax practitioners to compliance regulators, law enforcement agencies, and students and researchers interested in business studies, taxation, and crime. Paul R. Beckett is a Lawyer and Academic, specializing in company, commercial and trust law; banking and fund management; cryptocurrencies and the blockchain. He practices on the Isle of Man. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

What would it feel like To Run the World? The Soviet rulers spent the Cold War trying desperately to find out. In To Run The World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power, Sergey Radchenko provides an unprecedented deep dive into the psychology of the Kremlin's decision-making. He reveals how the Soviet struggle with the United States and China reflected its irreconcilable ambitions as a self-proclaimed superpower and the leader of global revolution. This tension drove Soviet policies from Stalin's postwar scramble for territory to Khrushchev's reckless overseas adventurism and nuclear brinksmanship, Brezhnev's jockeying for influence in the third world, and Gorbachev's failed attempts to reinvent Moscow's claims to greatness. Perennial insecurities, delusions of grandeur, and desire for recognition propelled Moscow on a headlong quest for global power, with dire consequences and painful legacies that continue to shape our world. Sergey Radchenko is the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He has written extensively on the Cold War, nuclear history, and on Russian and Chinese foreign and security policies. He has served as a Global Fellow and a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Centre and as the Zi Jiang Distinguished Professor at East China Normal University (Shanghai). Professor Radchenko's books include To Run the World: the Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power (Cambridge UP, forthcoming in 2024), Two Suns in the Heavens: the Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy (Wilson Center Press & Stanford UP, 2009), and Unwanted Visionaries: the Soviet Failure in Asia (Oxford UP, 2014). Professor Radchenko is a native of Sakhalin Island, Russia, was educated in the US, Hong Kong, and the UK, where he received his PhD in 2005 (LSE). Before he joined SAIS, Professor Radchenko worked and lived in Mongolia, China, and Wales. Sidney Michelini is a post-doctoral researcher working on Ecology, Climate, and Violence at the Peace Research Institute of Frankfurt (PRIF). Book Recomendations: The Cold War: A World History by Odd Arne Westan  The World of the Cold War by Vladislav Zubok Zhou Enlai: A Life by Chen Jian Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

The United States and the Origins of World War II in Europe (Taylor & Francis, 2025), spans 1914–1939 to provide a concise interpretation of the role the United States played in the origins of the Second World War. It synthesizes recent scholarship about interwar international politics while also presenting an original interpretation of the sources of American policy. The book shows how the drive for international reform, beginning with Woodrow Wilson, reflected both America's unusual power and its fears about maintaining its domestic freedoms in a world dominated by arms races and the threat of war. The American desire to reform or to escape from the existing international system reshaped Europe's balance of power from 1914 to 1929, leaving it precarious and unlikely to produce lasting stability. America's power continued to loom globally in the 1930s, as first its isolationism and, after 1938, its open hostility toward Germany and Japan influenced the policies of the West and of Hitler. The coda at the end of the volume analyzes how the United States affected the strategic choices made by Great Britain, Nazi Germany, and Japan from 1939 to 1941 that globalized the conflict. This book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students in history and political science, especially courses focused on World War II and the history of U.S. foreign relations. Guest: Ross A. Kennedy (he/him), is a Professor of History and Chair at Illinois State University. He is the author of The Will to Believe: Woodrow Wilson, World War I, and America's Strategy for Peace and Security (2009) as well as numerous other publications on the First World War. Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Scholars@Duke: https://scholars.duke.edu/pers... Linktree: https://linktr.ee/jennapittman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

What do a barracks for British troops in the Falklands War, a floating jail off the Bronx, and temporary housing for VW factory workers in Germany have in common? The Balder Scapa: a single barge that served all three roles. Though the name would eventually change to Finnboda 12. And then to Safe Esperia. And later on, to the Bibby Resolution. And after that . . . in short, a vessel with so many names, and so many fates, that to keep it in our sights—as the protagonist of this fascinating economic parable—Ian Kumekawa has no choice but to call it, simply, the Vessel.Despite its sturdy steel structure, weighing 9,500 deadweight tons, the Vessel is a figure as elusive and abstract as the offshore market it comes to embody: a world of island tax havens, exploited labor forces, free banking zones, Thatcherism, Reaganomics, and mass incarceration, where even the prisoners are held offshore. Fitted with modular shipping containers, themselves the product of standardized global trade, the ship could become whatever the market demanded. Whether caught in an international dispute involving Hong Kong, Nigeria, Indonesia, and the Virgin Islands—to be settled in an English court of law—or flying yet another foreign “flag of convenience” to mask its ownership—the barge is ever a container for forces much larger than even its hulking self.Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge is a jaw-dropping microhistory that speaks volumes about the global economy as a whole. In following the Vessel—and its Sister Vessel, built alongside it in Stockholm—from one thankless task to the next, Kumekawa connects the dots of a neoliberal world order in the making, where regulation is for suckers and “Made in USA” feels almost quaint. Dr. Ian Kumekawa is a historian of economic thinking, capitalism, and empire. He is currently an Anniversary Fellow at the Center for History and Economics at Harvard University and a Lecturer in History at MIT. He previously published a book called 'The First Serious Optimist' about Pigou and the birth of welfare economics. His second book, which we will discuss today is called, Empty Vessel: The Global Economy in One Barge, came out with Knopf and John Murray in May 2025. Sidney Michelini is a post-doctoral researcher working on Ecology, Climate, and Violence at the Peace Research Institute of Frankfurt (PRIF). Book Recomendations: The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World by Maya JasanoffThe Toxic Ship:The Voyage of the Khian Sea and the Global Waste Trade by Simone M. MüllerThe Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Globally, the liberal international order has been under pressure for quite some time, but we often tend to discuss this in relation to big international players such as the United States and China. But how do small states like Singapore navigate and shape this increasingly contested space? Join Petra Alderman as she talks to Dylan Loh about Singapore's understanding of the liberal international order, its position on liberal democratic values and human rights, its relations with big international players, and the ways in which this small city state seeks to uphold and modify the liberal international order, so it better aligns with its own interests. Read Dylan's article ‘Singapore's conception of the liberal international order as a small state' in International Affairs. *** This episode was originally recorded in November 2024. *** Dylan Loh is an Assistant Professor at the Public Policy and Global Affairs programme, at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He studies China's foreign policy, international diplomacy, and ASEAN regionalism. He is the author of a recently published book ‘China's Rising Foreign Ministry: Practices and Representations of Assertive Diplomacy' which was published by Stanford University Press (2024). Petra Alderman is a researcher, CEDAR affiliate, and a manager of the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the world witnessed the “creative, freewheeling, darkly humorous, and deeply resilient society” that is contemporary Ukraine. In this timely and original history, a bestseller in Ukraine, the historian Yaroslav Hrytsak tells the sweeping story of his nation through a meticulous examination of the major events, conflicts, and developments that have shaped it over the course of centuries. Hrytsak, is a Ukrainian historian and public intellectual. Professor of the Ukrainian Catholic University and Honorary Professor of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Hrytsak has taught at Columbia and Harvard Universities and was a guest lecturer at the Central European University in Budapest. He is the author of many historical books, including several bestsellers and the recipient of numerous national and international awards. weaves a rich and detailed tapestry of a country in continual transformation. Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation (PublicAffairs, 2024) is essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand Ukraine's dramatic past and its global significance--from the 17th-century Cossack uprising to the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and Ukrainian independence, and from the evolution of the Ukrainian language to the warning signs that anticipated Russia's 2022 invasion. This book is the definitive story of Ukraine and its people, as told by one of its most celebrated voices. Sidney Michelini is a post-doctoral researcher working on Ecology, Climate, and Violence at the Peace Research Institute of Frankfurt (PRIF). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In The Banality of Good: The UN's Global Fight against Human Trafficking (Duke University Press, 2024), Dr. Lieba Faier examines why contemporary efforts to curb human trafficking have fallen so spectacularly short of their stated goals despite well-funded campaigns by the United Nations and its member-state governments. Focusing on Japan's efforts to enact the UN's counter-trafficking protocol and assist Filipina migrants working in Japan's sex industry, Dr. Faier draws from interviews with NGO caseworkers and government officials to demonstrate how these efforts disregard the needs and perspectives of those they are designed to help. She finds that these campaigns tend to privilege bureaucracies and institutional compliance, resulting in the compromised quality of life, repatriation, and even criminalization of human trafficking survivors. Dr. Faier expands on Hannah Arendt's idea of the “banality of evil” by coining the titular “banality of good” to describe the reality of the UN's fight against human trafficking. Detailing the protocols that have been put in place and evaluating their enactment, Dr. Faier reveals how the continued failure of humanitarian institutions to address structural inequities and colonial history ultimately reinforces the violent status quo they claim to be working to change. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

This podcast episode, hosted by Kikee Doma Bhutia from the University of Tartu, features Nitasha Kaul, Professor of Politics, International Relations, and Critical Interdisciplinary Studies and Director of Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD), University of Westminster, London, UK. The episode focuses on the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan. The discussion shows how the issue is shaped more by political narratives than by verified facts. Militant attacks, such as the one in Pahalgam, raise questions about accountability, but the governments of both countries often avoid proper investigation and turn instead to blame games and international lobbying. The episode also explores political shifts in India since 2014. It highlights the decline of democratic freedoms, the rise of Islamophobia, and increasing control over dissent. It points out how narratives about women's empowerment are often used for political purposes rather than real change. The conversation underlines the human cost of the conflict, including displacement, violence, and deepening religious divides. Also, about the potential role of international actors, including European and Nordic countries, in supporting human rights and democratic values. It suggests that greater attention to the situation in Kashmir, and the broader democratic developments in the region, could help encourage more inclusive and constructive approaches to long-standing conflicts. Kikee Doma Bhutia is a Research Fellow and India Coordinator at the Asia Centre, University of Tartu, Estonia. Her current research combines folkloristics, international relations and Asian studies, focusing on the role of religion and culture in times of crisis, national and regional identities, and geopolitics conflict between India and China Nitasha Kaul is a Professor of Politics, International Relations, and Critical Interdisciplinary Studies and Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) at the University of Westminster, London. With a background that spans economics, philosophy, creative writing, and international relations, her work explores the intersections of politics, identity, gender, and global justice Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

The Diplomacy of Détente: Cooperative Security Policies from Helmut Schmidt to George Shultz (Routledge, 2020) investigates the underlying reasons for the longevity of détente and its impact on East–West relations. The volume examines the relevance of trade across the Iron Curtain as a means to facilitate mutual trust, as well as the emergence of new habits of transparency regardless of recurring military crises. A major theme of the book concerns Helmut Schmidt's foreign policy and his contribution to the resilience of cooperative security policies in East–West relations. It examines Schmidt's crucial role in the Euromissile crisis, his Ostpolitik diplomacy and his pan-European trade initiatives to engage the Soviet Union in a joint perspective of trade, industry and technology. Another key theme concerns the crisis in US–Soviet relations and the challenges of meaningful leadership communication between Washington and Moscow in the absence of backchannel diplomacy during the Carter years. The book depicts the freeze in US–Soviet relations after the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, the declaration of martial law in Poland, and Helmut Schmidt's efforts to serve as a mediator and interpreter working for a relaunch of US–Soviet dialogue. Eventually, the book highlights George Shultz's pivotal role in the Reagan Administration's efforts to improve US-Soviet relations, well before Mikhail Gorbachev's arrival. This book will be of interest to students of Cold War studies, diplomatic history, foreign policy and international relations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Can there be purely defensive or moral wars? In response to this question and others like it, this book offers unique insights into twenty-first-century warfare through the lenses of realism, militarism, and just war theory. This book challenges its readers to consider war from different perspectives and to reevaluate their views on the morality of war.Ethical approaches to war require that we don't value only the lives of ‘our' people, as realism asserts; that we don't enforce our sense of justice with weapons, as militarism demands; that force is used only in self-defense, based on the principles of just war theory. Lily Hamourtziadou explores the issue of civilian harm in war, questioning whether the use of so-called precision weapons—celebrated for minimizing risks to soldiers and civilians—and the rapidly developing technology of lethal autonomous weapons are increasing rather than decreasing civilian harm. In engaging with these questions, The Ethics of Remote Warfare (University of Wales Press, 2024) highlights the need for new accountability mechanisms that reflect a sense of legal and moral justice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In this episode, we sit down with Shaina Potts, author of Judicial Territory: Law, Capital, and the Expansion of American Empire (Duke University Press, 2024)—a groundbreaking book that reveals how U.S. courts have quietly become instruments of global economic governance. Drawing on legal geography and a sharp understanding of finance and political economy, Shaina uncovers how American judicial authority has extended beyond borders to discipline postcolonial states, enforce the primacy of private property, and protect the rights of foreign investors. This legal reach—what she calls judicial territory—has been a crucial, yet overlooked, pillar of U.S. empire and the liberal international order. The conversation unpacks how doctrines like foreign sovereign immunity and the act of state doctrine have enabled courts in New York and elsewhere to shape global capital flows, often treating foreign governments like private firms. Through detailed case studies—such as a startling instance where a U.S. court orders Ghana to seize an Argentine ship—we trace the long arc of legal imperialism from the Cold War through today's multipolar tensions. We also ask: Could China or Russia create alternative legal geographies of power? What does the future hold for judicial authority in fields like tech regulation, climate, and global finance? GUEST BIO: Dr. Shaina Potts is an economic, legal, and political geographer and Associate Professor at UCLA. She focuses on the articulation of international political economy, geopolitics, and law. In the age of globalization, cross-border economic processes are often treated as placeless, ubiquitous flows, making nation-states and borders increasingly obsolete. Her work shows, in contrast, how transnational economic relations are inscribed in concrete and geographically specific legal and institutional practices and that states remain central to producing and governing this activity. Much of her research combines analyses of technical, economic, and legal processes with extensive historical and geopolitical contextualization to show how the perpetuation of North-South economic inequalities is shaped by the micro-operations of contracts, financial transactions, and law. A strand of her research focuses on financial geographies of sovereign debt, with a focus on debt crises in the Global South. More on Shaina and research is available here: https://geog.ucla.edu/person/shaina-potts/ LINKS TO RESOURCES: Judicial Territory: Law, Capital, and the Expansion of American Empire: https://dukeupress.edu/judicial-territory Long-form essay on Shaina Potts' Judicial Territory by Ilias Alami: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0308518X251342660 The Spectre of State Capitalism by Ilias Alami and Adam Dixon: https://academic.oup.com/book/57552 Corporate Sovereignty Law and Government under Capitalism by Joshua Barkan - https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816674275/corporate-sovereignty/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Chris Horton is a freelance journalist who has been based in Taiwan since 2015, before many Western publications had any dedicated presence on the island. Over the last decade, he has contributed to the New York Times, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, and numerous other publications regarding Taiwan-related topics. In this episode of the New Books Network, we chat with Chris about his debut book, Ghost Nation: The Story of Taiwan and Its Struggle for Survival (Pan Macmillan, 2025). Ghost Nation weaves together figures and events from across Taiwan's present and history to provide an approachable narrative about how Taiwan came to be the vibrant island nation it is today, and the challenges that it faces amidst an increasingly assertive China. Tune in as we chat with Chris about everything from stinky tofu, Chris' go-to rechao stir-fry restaurant in Taipei (Eight Immortals Grill), how one of Taiwan's former Presidents tried to “Make Taiwan China Again” (and sparked a protest movement in the process), and why democratic countries ought to stand in solidarity with the “Ghost Nation” of Taiwan. Ghost Nation will be released on July 17, 2025, and is available for pre-order today.  Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Eater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (Indiana UP, 2023)explores Africa's political economy in the first two full decades of independence through the joint projects of nation-building, economic development, and international relations. Drawing on the political careers of four heads of states: Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Julius Kambarage Nyerere of Tanzania, Independent Africa engages four major themes: what does it mean to construct an African nation-state and what should an African nation-state look like; how does one grow a tropical economy emerging from European colonialism; how to explore an indigenous model of economic development, a "third way," in the context of a Cold War that had divided the world into two camps; and how to leverage internal resources and external opportunities to diversify agricultural economies and industrialize. Combining aspects of history, economics, and political science, Independent Africa examines the important connections between the first generation of African leaders and the shared ideas that informed their endeavors at nation-building and worldmaking. Professor Akyeampong is the former Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard University Center for African Studies and the Ellen Gurney Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He joined the History faculty at Harvard upon receiving his Ph.D. in African History from the University of Virginia in 1993. He received his master's degree at Wake Forest University in North Carolina in 1989, where he concentrated on English labor history, and his bachelor's degree in History and Religions from the University of Ghana at Legon in 1984. Professor Akyeampong is currently the Ellen Gurney Professor of Professor Akyeampong's publications include Themes in West Africa's History (2005), which he edited; Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (2023); Between the Sea and the Lagoon: An Eco-Social History of the Anlo of Southeastern Ghana, 1850 to Recent Times (2001); and Drink, Power and Cultural Change: A Social History of Alcohol in Ghana, c. 1800 to Present Times (1996). He was a co-chief editor with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., for the Dictionary of African Biography, 6 Vols. (2012). Professor Akyeampong has been awarded several research fellowships, and from 1993 to 1994, he was the Zora Neale Hurston Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study and Research in the African Humanities at Northwestern University. He was named a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2002, and was nominated to be a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws by the University of Ghana. At Harvard, Professor Akyeampong is a faculty associate for the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and a member of the executive committee of the Hutchins Center. As a former chair of the Committee on African Studies, he has been instrumental, along with Professor Gates, in creating the Department of African and African American Studies and formerly served as the Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Center for African Studies. You can learn more about Professor Akyeampong's work here Afua Baafi Quarshie is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on mothering and childhood in post-independence Ghana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds: Stories of Extinction (Reaktion, 2025) by Reverend Barbara Allen presents thirty-one extinct species through the personal perspectives of those animals. This intimate approach not only highlights each species but explores the broader implications of losing a species forever. How do we honour such a loss? Can we grieve for species we never knew? These animals range from the well-known passenger pigeon, thylacine and great auk, to lesser-known creatures like the Arabian ostrich, Saint Helena earwig and Bramble Cay melomys. These poignant portraits tug on the heartstrings and aim to inspire readers to protect vulnerable and endangered species today, motivating them to play a positive role in conserving our planet's biodiversity. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Much has been written to try to understand the ideological characteristics of the current Russian government, as well as what is happening inside the mind of Vladimir Putin. Refusing pundits' clichés that depict the Russian regime as either a cynical kleptocracy or the product of Putin's grand Machiavellian designs, Ideology and Meaning-Making under the Putin Regime offers a critical genealogy of ideology in Russia today. Marlene Laruelle provides an innovative, multi-method analysis of the Russian regime's ideological production process and the ways it is operationalized in both domestic and foreign policies. Ideology and Meaning-Making under the Putin Regime reclaims the study of ideology as an unavoidable component of the tools we use to render the world intelligible and represents a significant contribution to the scholarly debate on the interaction between ideas and policy decisions. By placing the current Russian regime into a broader context of different strains of strategic culture, ideological interest groups, and intellectual history, this book gives readers key insights into how the Russo-Ukrainian War became possible and the role ideology played in enabling it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

From In Borneo, the Land of the Head-Hunters to The Epic of Everest to Camping Among the Indians, the early twentieth century was the heyday of expedition filmmaking. As new technologies transformed global transportation and opened new avenues for documentation, and as imperialism and capitalism expanded their reach, Western filmmakers embarked on journeys to places they saw as exotic, seeking to capture both the monumental and the mundane. Their films portrayed far-flung locales, the hardships of travel, and the day-to-day lives of Indigenous people through a deeply colonial lens. Nomadic Cinema: A Cultural Geography of the Expedition Film (Columbia University Press, 2025) by Dr. Alison Griffiths is a groundbreaking history of these films, analyzing them as visual records of colonialism that also offer new possibilities for recognizing Indigenous histories. Dr. Griffiths examines expedition films made in Borneo, Central Asia, Tibet, Polynesia, and the American Southwest, reinterpreting them from decolonial perspectives to provide alternative accounts of exploration. She considers the individuals and institutions—including the American Museum of Natural History—responsible for creating the films, the spectators who sought them out, and the Indigenous intermediaries whose roles white explorers minimized. Ambitious and interdisciplinary, Nomadic Cinema ranges widely, from the roots of expedition films in medieval cartography and travel writing to still-emerging technologies of virtual and augmented reality. Highlighting the material conditions of filmmaking and the environmental footprint left by exploration, this book recovers Indigenous memory and sovereignty from within long-buried sources. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

It seems beyond doubt, since 9/11, that the main responsibility of intelligence and security services is to prevent ticking bombs from going off. The thing is, though, that the West has been confronted with international terrorism and domestic political violence throughout the 1970s as well. And although intelligence organizations countered terrorism, prevention did not become the name of the game. In a case study of the Netherlands, this book explores—based on unique primary sources and from a novel conceptual approach—how the threat of terrorism was looked upon and what kind of intelligence activities were carried out to contain or counter it. The book puts into focus how the rise of terrorism in the 1970s challenged the existing perceived core functions about intelligence. Based on the work of social geographer Ben Anderson, who investigates how interventions in the present are legitimated in the name of imagined (catastrophic) futures, it is analyzed how the Dutch domestic security service Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst (BVD) scrutinized traces of terrorism between 1968 and 1978. It confronts these insights with the post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts. By doing so, the book paints a fascinating picture of core functions of intelligence more generally. Guest: Dr. Constant Hijzen (he/him), a research fellow at Universitet Leiden. Dr. Constant Hijzen focuses on the history of intelligence and security services. He uses the intelligence and security services as a lens to study broader political, societal, and bureaucratic dynamics that are at play in this specific domain, with a special focus on cultural factors and mentalities. Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Scholars@Duke Hyperlink: https://scholars.duke.edu/pers... Linktree Hyperlink: https://linktr.ee/jennapittman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

One of the most widely held views of democratic leaders is that they are cautious about using military force because voters can hold them accountable, ultimately making democracies more peaceful. How, then, are leaders able to wage war in the face of popular opposition, or end conflicts when the public still supports them? The Insiders' Game (Princeton University Press, 2024) sheds light on this enduring puzzle, arguing that the primary constraints on decisions about war and peace come from elites, not the public.Elizabeth Saunders focuses on three groups of elites—presidential advisers, legislators, and military officials—to show how the dynamics of this insiders' game are key to understanding the use of force in American foreign policy. She explores how elite preferences differ from those of ordinary voters and how leaders must bargain with elites to secure their support for war. Saunders provides insights into why leaders start and prolong conflicts the public does not want but also demonstrates how elites can force leaders to change course and end wars.Tracing presidential decisions about the use of force from the Cold War through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Saunders reveals how the elite politics of war are a central feature of democracy. The Insiders' Game shifts the focus of democratic accountability from the voting booth to the halls of power. Our guest is Elizabeth N. Saunders, Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and a member of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Professor Brian Blankenship comes back to the New Books Network to talk about what his book, The Burden-Sharing Dilemma: Coercive Diplomacy in US Alliance Politics (Cornell University Press, 2023), might be able to tell us about the quickly changing nature of US military alliances across the globe. We discuss the implications of Europe's burgeoning rearmament, the prospect of a collective defense pact in the Indo-Pacific, and how changing technologies and threats might affect burden-sharing in future alliances. Brian D. Blankenship is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In 2016 the United States was stunned by evidence of Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election. But it shouldn't have been. Subversion—domestic interference to undermine or manipulate a rival—is as old as statecraft itself. In A Measure Short of War: A Brief History of Great Power Subversion (Oxford UP, 2025) Jill Kastner and William C. Wohlforth provide a compelling ride through the history of subversion. They examine subversion's allure, its operational possibilities, and argue that, in our high stakes, changing technological landscape, a clear-eyed understanding of the history and parameters of subversion can help polities defend against it. Jill Kastner is a scholar in the Department of War Studies at Kings College London. She has a doctorate in History from Harvard University. She specializes in Cold War crises in Berlin and the Middle East. Her work has appeared in The Nation and Foreign Affairs. William C Wohlforth is the Daniel Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. His most recent books are America Abroad: The United States' Global Role in the 21st Century (2018), Written with Stephen G Brooks, and The History of International Relations and Russian Foreign Policy in the 20th century (2020), co edited with Anatoly V. Torkunov and Boris F Martynov. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

When World War II ended, about one million people whom the Soviet Union claimed as its citizens were outside the borders of the USSR, mostly in the Western-occupied zones of Germany and Austria. These “displaced persons,” or DPs—Russians, prewar Soviet citizens, and people from West Ukraine and the Baltic states forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1939—refused to repatriate to the Soviet Union despite its demands. Thus began one of the first big conflicts of the Cold War. In Lost Souls, Sheila Fitzpatrick draws on new archival research, including Soviet interviews with hundreds of DPs, to offer a vivid account of this crisis, from the competitive maneuverings of politicians and diplomats to the everyday lives of DPs.American enthusiasm for funding the refugee organizations taking care of DPs quickly waned after the war. It was only after DPs were redefined—from “victims of war and Nazism” to “victims of Communism”—in 1947 that a solution was found: the United States would pay for the mass resettlement of DPs in America, Australia, and other countries outside Europe. The Soviet Union protested this “theft” of its citizens. But it was a coup for the United States. The choice of DPs to live a free life in the West, and the West's welcome of them, became an important theme in America's Cold War propaganda battle with the Soviet Union. A compelling story of the early Cold War, Lost Souls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War (Princeton UP, 2024)is also a rare chronicle of a refugee crisis that was solved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

HIV emerged in the world at a time when medicine and healthcare were undergoing two major transformations: globalization and a turn toward legally inflected, rule-based ways of doing things. It accelerated both trends. While pestilence and disease are generally considered the domain of biological sciences and medicine, social arrangements—and law in particular—are also crucial. Drawing on years of research in HIV clinics in the United States, Thailand, South Africa, and Uganda, Governing the Global Clinic: HIV and the Legal Transformation of Medicine (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Carol Heimer examines how growing norms of legalized accountability have altered the work of healthcare systems and how the effects of legalization vary across different national contexts. A key feature of legalism is universalistic language, but, in practice, rules are usually imported from richer countries (especially the United States) to poorer ones that have less adequate infrastructure and fewer resources with which to implement them. Challenging readers to reconsider the impulse to use law to organize and govern social life, Governing the Global Clinic poses difficult questions: When do rules solve problems, and when do they create new problems? When do rules become decoupled from ethics, and when do they lead to deeper moral commitments? When do rules reduce inequality? And when do they reflect, reproduce, and even amplify inequality? This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

To what extent do cyberspace operations increase the risks of escalation between nation-state rivals? Scholars and practitioners have been concerned about cyber escalation for decades, but the question remains hotly debated. The issue is increasingly important for international politics as more states develop and employ offensive cyber capabilities, and as the international system is increasingly characterized by emergent multipolarity.In Escalation Dynamics in Cyberspace, Erica D. Lonergan and Shawn W. Lonergan tackle this question head-on, presenting a comprehensive theory that explains the conditions under which cyber operations may lead to escalation. In doing so, they challenge long-held assumptions about strategic interactions in cyberspace, arguing that cyberspace is not as dangerous as the conventional wisdom might suggest. In some cases, cyber operations could even facilitate the de-escalation of international crises. To support their claims, Lonergan and Lonergan test their theory against a range of in-depth case studies, including strategic interactions between the United States and key rivals; a series of case studies of the role of cyber operations in international crises; and plausible future scenarios involving cyber operations during conflict.  The authors then apply their analytical insights to policymaking, making the case that skepticism is warranted about the overall efficacy of employing cyber power for strategic ends. By exploring the role of cyber operations in routine competition, crises, and warfighting, Escalation Dynamics in Cyberspace presents nuanced insights about how cyberspace affects international politics Our guest is Erica D. Lonergan, an Assistant Professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In this episode Licia Cianetti talks to Johannes Gerschewski about his book The Two Logics of Autocratic Rule (Cambridge UP, 2023). We discuss how autocrats try to either hyper-politicise or de-politicise their rule in order to stay in power, whether the word “fascist” is useful today, and what the two logics identified in the book might tell us about politics in contemporary autocratising democracies. As we recorded during Johannes's stay at Thomas Mann House in LA, soon after the US 2024 elections, a lot of this had unavoidably to do with Trump. *This episode was recorded soon after the US elections, before the LA fires and Trump's second inauguration* Johannes Gerschewski is research fellow at the WZB and academic coordinator of the Theory Network at the Cluster of Excellence SCRIPTS. In his research, he works both theoretically and empirically on questions of legitimacy, stability, and crisis proneness of democratic and autocratic regimes. Licia Cianetti is Lecturer in Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham and Deputy Co-Director of CEDAR. Her most recent work on these themes is “What is a “regime”? Three definitions and their implications for the future of regime studies” (with Gianni Del Panta and Catherine Owen) published in Democratization in 2025. The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world and follow us on Twitter at @CEDAR_Bham! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Given what has happened since – from a global pandemic to wars in Europe, Africa and the Middle East – events in Hong Kong in 2019-20 can seem remote when seen from today's perspective. But the momentous scale and significance of the protests there during those years, and the ensuing crackdown and increasing restrictions on Hong Kong's distinctive politics and society, continue to resonate, not least for the tens of thousands who have left the territory recently. Jeffrey Wasserstrom's Vigil – a brilliant encapsulation of the mood in Hong Kong in 2019 and its pre-history and precedents – was published soon after the protests that year reached their zenith. Six years on, this new release of the book includes a foreword by Guardian senior China correspondent Amy Hawkins as well as an Afterword by journalist Kris Cheng. This conversation with Amy Hawkins discusses the book and events since. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University and co-host of the great podcast, These Times, about her approach to geopolitical analysis and the centrality of energy geopolitics in that approach. The pair start by talking about Thompson's book, Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century (Cambridge UP, 2023), her background and training, and how she came to develop the distinctive style of geopolitical analysis she deploys, including on episodes of These Times. Vinsel and Thompson also discuss a number of topics, including military conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East and the global energy geopolitics of Net Zero, as a way of exploring Thompson's way of thinking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Why did so many rulers throughout history risk converting to a new religion brought by outsiders? In his award-winning Unearthly Powers (2019), Dr. Alan Strathern set out a theoretical framework for understanding the relation between religion and political authority based on a distinction between two kinds of religion - immanentism and transcendentalism - and the different ways they made monarchy sacred. Please listen to his interview on that book on the New Books Network! This ambitious and innovative companion volume Converting Rulers: Global Patterns, 1450–1850 (Cambridge University Press, 2024) tests and substantiates this approach using case studies from Kongo (1480–1530), Japan (1560–1614), Ayutthaya (Thailand, 1660–1690) and Hawaii (1800–1830). Through in-depth analysis of key turning points in the careers of warlords, chiefs and kings, a tapestry of unique characters and stories is brought to light. However, these examples ultimately demonstrate that global patterns of conversion can be established to illuminate the religious geography of the world today. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In a multipolar world where America wields less relative power, the United States can no longer get away with poor statecraft. To understand how the US can approach future national security challenges, I spoke with Dennis Ross, a senior US diplomat and the counselor and William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. His new book, Statecraft 2.0: What America Needs to Lead in a Multipolar World (Oxford University Press, 2025) offers a revised toolkit for US foreign policy and global leadership. The United States may still be the world's strongest country, but it now faces real challenges at both a global and regional level. The unipolar world which was dominated by America after the Cold War is gone. Unlike the Soviet Union, China is both a military and economic competitor and it is actively challenging the norms and institutions that the US used to shape an international order during and after the Cold War. Directly and indirectly, it has partners trying to undo the American-dominated order, with Russia seeking to extinguish Ukraine, and Iran trying to undermine American presence, influence, and any set of rules for the Middle East that it does not dominate. The failures of American policy in Afghanistan and Iraq have weakened the domestic consensus for a US leadership role internationally. Traditions in US foreign policy, especially the American sense of exceptionalism, have at different points justified both withdrawal and international activism. Iraq and Afghanistan fed the instinct to withdraw and to end the “forever wars.” But the folly of these US interventions did not necessarily mean that all use of force to back diplomacy or specific political ends was wrong; rather it meant in these cases, the Bush Administration failed in the most basic task of good statecraft: namely, marrying objectives and means. Nothing more clearly defines effective statecraft than identifying well-considered goals and then knowing how to use all the tools of statecraft—diplomatic, economic, military, intelligence, information, cyber, scientific, education—to achieve them. But all too often American presidents have adopted goals that were poorly defined and not thought through. In Statecraft 2.0, Dennis Ross explains why failing to marry objectives and means has happened so often in American foreign policy. He uses historical examples to illustrate the factors that account for this, including political pressures, weak understanding of the countries where the US has intervened, changing objectives before achieving those that have been established, relying too much on ourselves and too little on allies and partners. To be fair, there have not only been failures, there have been successes as well. Ross uses case studies to look more closely at the circumstances in which Administrations have succeeded and failed in marrying objectives and means. He distills the lessons from good cases of statecraft—German unification in NATO, the first Gulf War, the surge in Iraq 2007-8—and bad cases of statecraft—going to war in Iraq 2003, and the Obama policy toward Syria. Based on those lessons, he develops a framework for applying today a statecraft approach to our policy toward China, Iran, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The book concludes with how a smart statecraft approach would shape policy toward the new national security challenges of climate, pandemics, and cyber. Dr. Andrew O. Pace is a historian of the US in the world who specializes in the moral fog of war. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

This podcast episode, hosted by Kikee Doma Bhutia from the University of Tartu, features journalist and analyst Aadil Brar discussing India's foreign policy amidst rising global tensions. The conversation focuses on India's balancing act between the US, China, and its own strategic autonomy in a contested Indo-Pacific region. Key topics include India's evolving role as a middle power, responding to China's assertiveness along the India-China border and in the Indo-Pacific, while maintaining its traditional non-alignment stance. India's foreign policy is at a crossroads, shaped by five tense years since the Galwan Valley clash with China. Despite rounds of talks, the border remains uneasy and trust is scarce. Today, China's assertiveness drives nearly every major Indian strategic decision-from military deployments and Quad partnerships to concerns over Beijing's mega-dams on the Brahmaputra. Meanwhile, the US sees India as a key counterweight to China in the Indo-Pacific, but Delhi is determined to maintain its independence and avoid being boxed into alliances. As India watches China's moves from the Himalayas to Taiwan, the question is clear: Are we witnessing a true pivot in Indian foreign policy, or simply a sharp recalibration to meet new realities? The answer will shape Asia's balance of power for years to come. The podcast was brought to you by host Dr. Kikee Doma Bhutia a Research Fellow and India Coordinator at the Asia Centre, University of Tartu, Estonia. Her current research combines folkloristics, international relations and Asian studies, focusing on the role of religion and culture in times of crisis, national and regional identities, and geopolitics conflict between India and China. The podcast guest speaker Aadil Brar is a journalist and international affairs analyst based in Taipei, currently a Reporter at TaiwanPlus News. His reporting focuses on international security, U.S.-China relations, and East Asian security. Previously, he was a China news reporter for Newsweek and has contributed to the BBC World Service, The Print India, and National Geographic. In 2023, he was a Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs Fellow and a visiting scholar at National Chengchi University in Taipei. Brar holds a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of British Columbia and an MSc. in International Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. ​ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

How did Britain cease to be global? In Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Professor Stuart Ward tells the panoramic history of the end of Britain, tracing the ways in which Britishness has been imagined, experienced, disputed and ultimately discarded across the globe since the end of the Second World War. From Indian independence, West Indian immigration and African decolonization to the Suez. Crisis and the Falklands War, he uncovers the demise of Britishness as a global civic idea and its impact on communities across the globe. He also shows the consequences of this diminished 'global reach' in Britain itself, from the Troubles in Northern Ireland to resurgent Englishness and the startling success of separatist political agendas in Scotland and Wales. Untied Kingdom puts the contemporary travails of the Union for the first time in their full global perspective as part of the much larger story of the progressive rollback of Britain's imaginative frontiers. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Ecologies of Care in Times of Climate Change: Water Security in the Global Context (Policy Press, 2024) investigates and analyses places in Europe, North America and Asia that are facing the immense challenges associated with climate change adaptation. Presenting real-world cases in the contexts of coastal change, drinking water and the cryosphere, Michael Buser shows how the concept of care can be applied to water security and climate adaptation. Exploring the everyday and often hidden ways in which water security is accomplished, the book demonstrates the pervasiveness and power of care to contribute to flourishing lives and communities in times of climate change. Michael Buser is an Associate Professor of Community Collaborative Practice at the University of the West of England, based in Bristol. Before that, he earned degrees in the Fine arts and Urban and Regional Planning. Michael has explored through his research, both developing an understanding, and subsequently addressing, the challenges that people and communities face while living in fragile and precarious environments. Of such, many of his applied research projects have been in South Asia and the UK, ranging from mental health and wellbeing to water security and climate adaptation. Based on this work, he was twice the winner of the Researcher of the Year within his University's Dept. of Architecture and Built Environment. Professor Michael Simpson has been the Director of the Resource Management and Administration graduate program at Antioch University New England, in Keene, NH. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

The Rise of Unmanned Warfare: Origins of the Us Autonomous Military Arsenal (Oxford UP, 2023) tells the fascinating story of the people, processes, and beliefs that led to the contemporary American unmanned arsenal. It takes an expansive look at automated and autonomous technologies, from mines and torpedoes to guided bombs and missiles, satellites, and ultimately, drones. Instead of asking the question, "Why unmanned rather than manned?" the book explains why certain types of unmanned systems became popular while others languished in research or in small pockets of the American military. To answer this question, Jacquelyn Schneider and Julia Macdonald use interviews of senior decision-makers, military doctrine and writings, and historical sources to detail the proliferation of over a hundred years of unmanned weapons in the US arsenal, from mines and balloons to Reapers and Global Hawks. Their exploration reveals how multiple factors--key policy entrepreneurs, like Andy Marshall in the Office of Net Assessment; critical junctures like the fall of the USSR or the 9/11 attacks; beliefs that emerged in the wake of the Vietnam War; and US military service culture--all interacted in complex ways to form today's unmanned arsenal. The Hand Behind Unmanned uses theories of organizational innovation and process tracing of historical cases to explain recent developments, including US precision munition shortfalls and the rise of unmanned aerial platforms. It also foreshadows where the US unmanned arsenal may be headed in the future. Ultimately, the book uses a remarkable case study to illustrate how ideas diffuse across people and organizations to build the weapons of modern warfare. Our guests are Doctor Jacquelyn Schneider, who is the Hargrove Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Director of the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative, and an affiliate with Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation; and Doctor Julia Macdonald, who is a Research Professor at the Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, and Director of Research and Engagement at the Asia New Zealand Foundation. Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In Struggles for the Human: Violent Legality and the Politics of Rights (Duke University Press 2024), Lara Montesinos Coleman blends ethnography, political philosophy, and critical theory to reorient debates on human rights through attention to understandings of legality, ethics, and humanity in anticapitalist and decolonial struggle. Drawing on her extensive involvement with grassroots social movements in Colombia, Coleman observes that mainstream expressions of human rights have become counterparts to capitalist violence, even as this discourse disavows capitalism's deadly implications. She rejects claims that human rights are inherently tied to capitalism, liberalism, or colonialism, instead showing how human rights can be used to combat these forces. Coleman demonstrates that social justice struggles that are rooted in marginalized communities' lived experiences can reframe human rights in order to challenge oppressive power structures and offer a blueprint for constructing alternative political economies. By examining the practice of redefining human rights away from abstract universals and contextualizing them within concrete struggles for justice, Coleman reveals the transformative potential of human rights and invites readers to question and reshape dominant legal and ethical narratives. Lara Montesinos Coleman is Professor of International Law, Ethics and Political Economy at the University of Sussex, where she also teaches on the MA in Human Rights. She is author of Struggles for the Human: Violent Legality and the Politics of Rights, published by Duke University Press in 2024 and shortlisted for the Susan Strange Best Book Prize, awarded for an outstanding book published in any field of International Studies. Tim Wyman-McCarthy is a Lecturer in the discipline of Human Rights and Associate Director of Graduate Studies at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights and the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. He can be reached at tw2468@columbia.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs