Flight MH17, Ukraine and the new Cold War

Author: Kees van der Pijl
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526131102
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Book Description
On 17 July 2014 Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down amid conflict in Ukraine, a crisis that led to a NATO-Russia standoff and the onset of a new period of East-West confrontation. This is the first scholarly work on the Ukrainian unrest and the tragic downing of MH17. It offers an analysis that challenges the Western consensus surrounding these events, emphasising the geopolitical and economic context of the West’s standoff with Russia, the BRICS bloc, and the struggles over the EU’s energy supply. Based on previously unpublished government and NATO documents as well as a wide array of sources this book offers an analysis of global political economy and contemporary debates about Russia and East-West relations.

Ukraine Over the Edge

Author: Gordon M. Hahn
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476628750
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
The Ukrainian crisis that dominated headlines in fall 2013 was decades in the making. Two great schisms shaped events: one within Ukraine, its western and southeastern parts divided along cultural and political lines; the other was driven by geopolitical factors. Competition between Russia and the West exacerbated Ukraine's divisions. This study focuses on the historical background and complex causality of the crisis, from the rise of mass demonstrations on Kiev's Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) to the making of the post-revolt regime. In the context of a "new cold war," the author sheds light on the role of radical Ukrainian nationalists and neofascists in the February 2014 snipers' massacre, the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, and Russia's seizure of Crimea and involvement in the civil war in the eastern region of Donbass.

NL ARMS Netherlands Annual Review of Military Studies 2020

Author: Frans Osinga
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9462654190
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 538

Book Description
This open access volume surveys the state of the field to examine whether a fifth wave of deterrence theory is emerging. Bringing together insights from world-leading experts from three continents, the volume identifies the most pressing strategic challenges, frames theoretical concepts, and describes new strategies. The use and utility of deterrence in today’s strategic environment is a topic of paramount concern to scholars, strategists and policymakers. Ours is a period of considerable strategic turbulence, which in recent years has featured a renewed emphasis on nuclear weapons used in defence postures across different theatres; a dramatic growth in the scale of military cyber capabilities and the frequency with which these are used; and rapid technological progress including the proliferation of long-range strike and unmanned systems. These military-strategic developments occur in a polarized international system, where cooperation between leading powers on arms control regimes is breaking down, states widely make use of hybrid conflict strategies, and the number of internationalized intrastate proxy conflicts has quintupled over the past two decades. Contemporary conflict actors exploit a wider gamut of coercive instruments, which they apply across a wider range of domains. The prevalence of multi-domain coercion across but also beyond traditional dimensions of armed conflict raises an important question: what does effective deterrence look like in the 21st century? Answering that question requires a re-appraisal of key theoretical concepts and dominant strategies of Western and non-Western actors in order to assess how they hold up in today’s world. Air Commodore Professor Dr. Frans Osinga is the Chair of the War Studies Department of the Netherlands Defence Academy and the Special Chair in War Studies at the University Leiden. Dr. Tim Sweijs is the Director of Research at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies and a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Military Sciences of the Netherlands Defence Academy in Breda.

The Shootdown of Malaysian Flight 17 and the Escalating Crisis in Ukraine

Author: Eurasia And Eme Subcommittee on Europe
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781507748558
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 70

Book Description
On July 17th, a civilian airliner flying over Ukraine crashed into a field about 30 miles from the Russian border. All 298 people aboard tragically lost their lives. Today, before we do anything else, let us make it clear that we all extend our sympathy to the families of those victims of that crash. There are 298 families at least who are now in deep mourning and suffering, and they have our sympathy and our thoughts and prayers today. Our world today seems overwhelmed with such turmoil. On each continent there are various groups battling each other who are willing to use force and kill others in order to change the status quo or to protect the status quo. We see this today, but we also saw this through the 40 years of Cold War that is within our memory. During that time, people in Hungary, Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, and so many other trouble spots were caught up in local differences and local power struggles that had far-reaching, way beyond their borders implications. Today, Ukraine and Russia are in transition from what is what, and to who knows what is going to happen, but it is a transition, and that transition makes for volatility and undermines the stability, yes, it undermines the stability of the world and threatens world peace.

West-Russia Relations in Light of the Ukraine Crisis

Author: Riccardo Alcaro
Publisher: Edizioni Nuova Cultura
ISBN: 8868124645
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 88

Book Description
In light of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and destabilization of Ukraine, West-Russia relations have so dramatically deteriorated that talk of a new Cold War has become routine. NATO’s role in Europe is again in the spotlight, with experts and policymakers pondering whether the Alliance needs to go back to its historical roots and re-calibrate itself as an instrument of defence from and containment of Russia. At the same time, cooperation between Russia and the West has not collapsed altogether coordinate on issues such as Iran’s nuclear programme. Clearly, tensions over Ukraine are so strong that the risk of a breakdown in relations cannot be ruled out. The contributions to this volume, the result of an international conference jointly organized by the Istituto Affari Internazionali and the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings, analyze the dramatic shift in Europe’s strategic context and explore the question of whether Russia and the West can contain tensions, manage competition, and keep cooperating on issues of mutual concern.

Hiding in Plain Sight

Author: Maksymilian Czuperski
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781619779969
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description

Near Abroad

Author: Gerard Toal
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190253304
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409

Book Description
In sum, by showing how and why local regional disputes quickly develop into global crises through the paired power of historical memory and time-space compression, Near Abroad reshapes our understanding of the current conflict raging in the center of the Eurasian landmass and international politics as a whole.

Armies of Russia's War in Ukraine

Author: Mark Galeotti
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472833457
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 65

Book Description
Explaining and illustrating the immediate background to the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, this book investigates the Ukrainian and Russian regular and irregular forces which have been fighting in the Donbas region since 2014. In February 2014, street protests in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities led to the ousting of the Russian-backed President Yanukovych. Simultaneously, Russia carried out an almost-bloodless seizure of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula. Ukraine's 'Euromaidan Revolution' would see many changes to the country's constitution, and a turn towards the West for civic assistance and military training. Meanwhile, a violent reaction in the mainly Russian-speaking south-eastern industrial Donbas region led to a local armed counter-revolution, backed by Russia from April 2014. This conflict became an essential example of Russia's policy of so-called 'hybrid warfare', which pursues its strategic aims by a blend of propaganda and misinformation with the clandestine deployment of Special Forces and regular troops, alongside 'deniable' proxies and mercenaries. Meanwhile, Ukraine's efforts to reform its government culminated in the landslide election of President Zelensky in April 2019. Using his extensive contacts in both Russia and Ukraine, Prof Mark Galeotti presents a thorough and intriguing primer on all the forces involved in the conflict up to 2018. Supported by orders-of-battle, colour photos and specially commissioned artwork, his book also analyses the background and the stuttering progress of the war, and addresses the Russian military capabilities which are today being tested in all-out battle.

Russia after 2020

Author: J. L. Black
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000450058
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 473

Book Description
This book presents a comprehensive survey of the current state of Russia and how Russia is likely to develop in the immediate future. Not always sticking to the mainstream narrative, it covers political events including Putin’s constitutional reforms of January 2020 and their likely consequences, economic developments, Russia’s international relations and military activities, and changes and issues in Russian society, including in education, the place of women, health care and religion. Special attention is paid to manifestations of the COVID-19 pandemic. The book’s overall conclusion is that events of 2020 may compel Putin to ‘think again’ before he decides whether to run for office in 2024.

Blurring Intelligence Crime

Author: Willem Bart de Lint
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811603529
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 227

Book Description
This book explores the conundrum that political fortune is dependent both on social order and big, constitutive crime. An act of outrageous harm depends on rules and protocols of crime scene discovery and forensic recovery, but political authorities review events for a social agenda, so that crime is designated according to the relative absence or presence of politics. In investigating this problem, the book introduces the concepts ‘intelligence crime’ and ‘critical forensics.’ It also reviews as an exemplar of this phenomenon ‘apex crime,’ a watershed event involving government in the support of a contested political and social order and its primary opponent as the obvious offender, which is then subject to a confirmation bias. Chapters feature case study analysis of a selection of familiar, high profile crimes in which the motives and actions of security or intelligence actors are considered as blurred or smeared depending on their interconnection in transactional political events, or according to friend/enemy status.