What are humanity’s biological origins? What are the mechanisms, including culture, that continue to drive it? What is the history that has allowed it to evolve over time? And what are its functions—how does it survive and thrive by exploiting the features that define it as a species? These are the four questions of the Tinbergen Method for explaining animal behaviour, developed by the Nobel Prizewinning Dutch ethologist Niko Tinbergen. This book contends that applying this method to war—w...

How should the countries in the Baltic Sea region and their allies meet the strategic challenges posed by an openly aggressive and expansionist Russia? NATO and the nonaligned states in the region are now more concerned about an external threat than they have been since the end of the Cold War. Russia has been probing air space, maritime boundaries, and even land borders from the Baltic republics to Sweden. Russia's undermining of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea worries former Soviet repu...

This edited volume addresses the relationship between the essential nature of war and its character at the beginning of the twenty-first century.The focus is on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, situations that occupy a central role in international affairs and that have become highly influential in thinking about war in the widest sense. The intellectual foundation of the volume is Clausewitz’s insight that though war has an enduring nature, its character changes with time, s...

Discusses the impact of globalisation on security in the West and in particular the way it has changed the nature of NATO as well as its security agenda.

Rebooting Clausewitz offers an entirely new take on the work of history's greatest theorist of war. Written for an undergraduate readership that often struggles with Clausewitz's master work On War--a book that is often considered too philosophical and impenetrably dense--it seeks to unpack some of Clausewitz's key insights on theory and strategy. In three fictional interludes Clausewitz attends a seminar at West Point; debates the War on Terror at a Washington think tank; and visits a Rob...

The Improbable War explains why conflict between the USA and China cannot be ruled out. In 1914 war between the Great Powers was considered unlikely, yet it happened. We learn only from history, and popular though the First World War analogy is, the lessons we draw from its outbreak are usually mistaken. Among these errors is the tendency to over-estimate human rationality. All major conflicts of the past 300 years have been about the norms and rules of the international system. I...

Since Achilles first stormed into our imagination, literature has introduced its readers to truly unforgettable martial characters. In Men at War, Christopher Coker discusses some of the most famous of these fictional creations and their impact on our understanding of war and masculinity. Grouped into five archetypes-warriors, heroes, villains, survivors and victims-these characters range across 3000 years of history, through epic poems, the modern novel and one of the twentieth century's ...

In this paper, three long-time observers of Russia and the EU perform a reality check on the EU–Russia relationship. All three authors agree that a more realistic EU policy would deal with Russia as it is, not as the EU wants it to be. The reality of today’s Russia is complex, as is the policy formulation process in the EU. Nevertheless, the EU should start with a clearer idea of where its own interests and priorities lie. It should accept that it can achieve fruitful cooperation with Russ...

The decision to fight 'humanitarian wars' - such as Kosovo - and the development of technology to make war more humane, illustrates the trend in the West to try to humanise war, and thereby humanise modernity. This highly controversial and cutting-edge book asks whether the attempt to make war 'virtual' or 'virtuous' can succeed and whether the wes

The early 1980s brought dramatic changes in East-West relations. The decade began with the death of Yugoslavia's Tito, the birth of Poland's Solidarity trade union, and the U.S. election of Ronald Reagan as president. These key developments, together with the growing financial insolvency of the Soviet bloc and shifts in power in the Kremlin-culminating in the election of Mikhail Gorbachev as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985-signalled the end of an era. S...

Since Achilles first stormed into our imagination, literature has introduced its readers to truly unforgettable martial characters. In Men at War, Christopher Coker discusses some of the most famous of these fictional creations and their impact on our understanding of war and masculinity. Grouped into five archetypes-warriors, heroes, villains, survivors and victims-these characters range across 3000 years of history, through epic poems, the modern novel and one of the twentieth century's mos...

How the wars of the near future will be fought and who will win themMany nations, peoples and special interest groups believe that violence will advance their cause. Warfare has changed greatly since the Second World War; it continued to change during the late 20th century and this process is still accelerating. Political, technological, social and religious forces are shaping the future of warfare, but most western armed forces have yet to evolve significantly fro...