Ecoviolence explores links between environmental scarcities of key renewable resources-such as cropland, fresh water, and forests-and violent rebellions, insurgencies, and ethnic clashes in developing countries. Detailed contemporary studies of civil violence in Chiapas, Gaza, South Africa, Pakistan, and Rwanda show how environmental scarcity has played a limited to significant role in causing social instability in each of these contexts. Drawing upon theory and key findings from ...

**From one of the world’s best-known development economists—an excoriating attack on the tragic hubris of the West’s efforts to improve the lot of the so-called developing world."Brilliant at diagnosing the failings of Western intervention in the Third World." —BusinessWeek**In his previous book, The Elusive Quest for Growth, William Easterly criticized the utter ineffectiveness of Western organizations to mitigate global poverty, and he was promptly fired...

Longlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award**'**Readers looking for good news will love this book. Jonathan Tepperman makes a compelling case, in lively and personal prose, that strong leaders willing to forsake political orthodoxy for good ideas can actually solve the toughest problems the world faces.' Ann-Marie Slaughter, author of Unfinished BusinessThe world's most intractable problems solved: ambitious lessons in leadership...

The twenty-first century has seen a rise in the global middle class that brings an unprecedented convergence of interests and perceptions, cultures and values. Kishore Mahbubani is optimistic. We are creating a new global civilization. Eighty-eight percent of the world's population outside the West is rising to Western living standards, and sharing Western aspirations. Yet Mahbubani, one of the most perceptive global commentators, also warns that a new global order needs new policies and a...

From Africa to Asia and Latin America, the era of climate wars has begun. Extreme weather is breeding banditry, humanitarian crisis, and state failure.In Tropic of Chaos, investigative journalist Christian Parenti travels along the front lines of this gathering catastrophe--the belt of economically and politically battered postcolonial nations and war zones girding the planet's midlatitudes. Here he finds failed states amid climatic disasters. But he also ...

For centuries, the Asians (Chinese, Indians, Muslims, and others) have been bystanders in world history. Now they are ready to become co-drivers.Asians have finally understood, absorbed, and implemented Western best practices in many areas: from free-market economics to modern science and technology, from meritocracy to rule of law. They have also become innovative in their own way, creating new patterns of cooperation not seen in the West.Will the West res...

"A concise, comprehensive guide to America's critical policy choices at home and overseas . . . without a partisan agenda, but with a passion for solutions designed to restore our country's strength and enable us to lead." -- Madeleine K. AlbrightA rising China, climate change, terrorism, a nuclear Iran, a turbulent Middle East, and a reckless North Korea all present serious challenges to America's national security. But it depends even more on the United States ad...

Forty thousand people died trying to cross international borders in the past decade, with the high-profile deaths along the shores of Europe only accounting for half of the grisly total.Reece Jones argues that these deaths are not exceptional, but rather the result of state attempts to contain populations and control access to resources and opportunities. "We may live in an era of globalization," he writes, "but much of the world is increasingly focused on limiting the free movemen...

Today a billion people, including about 340 million of the world's extreme poor, are estimated to live in 'fragile states'. This group of low-income countries are often trapped in cycles of conflict and poverty, which make them acutely vulnerable to a range of shocks and crises.This engaging book defines and clarifies what we mean by fragile states, examining their characteristics in relation to "weak" and "failed" states in the global system, and explaining their development from ...

The most challenging question today for the citizens of any country in the Gulf region is whether it is heading in the right direction to become a durable, sustainable system, fully supported by its people and capable of being defended from internal and external threats. In The Arab Spring and the Gulf States, Mohamed A. J. Althani, a former minister in the Qatari government, analyses the domestically important areas of demography, security, provision of food and water, and the po...

Collusion between business communities and the state can lead to a measure of security for those in power, but this kind of interaction often limits new development. In Syria, state-business involvement through informal networks has contributed to an erratic economy. With unique access to private businessmen and select state officials during a critical period of transition, this book examines Syria's political economy from 1970 to 2005 to explain the nation's pattern of state intervention ...

The Horn of Africa is a deeply troubled region engulfed in three interlocking crises. The first is a security crisis characterized by a range of devastating inter-state and inter-communal conflicts, including civil wars. The second is an economic crisis, evidenced by widespread debilitating poverty, chronic food insecurity, and frequent cycles of famines. The effects of the third - environmental - crisis are all too visible in the droughts, deforestation and desertification ravaging the re...