front cover of Learning from the Secret Past
Learning from the Secret Past
Cases in British Intelligence History
Robert Dover and Michael S. Goodman, Editors
Georgetown University Press, 2015

Identifying “lessons learned” is not new—the military has been doing it for decades. However, members of the worldwide intelligence community have been slow to extract wider lessons gathered from the past and apply them to contemporary challenges. Learning from the Secret Past is a collection of ten carefully selected cases from post-World War II British intelligence history. Some of the cases include the Malayan Emergency, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Northern Ireland, and the lead up to the Iraq War. Each case, accompanied by authentic documents, illuminates important lessons that today's intelligence officers and policymakers—in Britain and elsewhere—should heed.

Written by former and current intelligence officers, high-ranking government officials, and scholars, the case studies in this book detail intelligence successes and failures, discuss effective structuring of the intelligence community, examine the effective use of intelligence in counterinsurgency, explore the ethical dilemmas and practical gains of interrogation, and highlight the value of human intelligence and the dangers of the politicization of intelligence. The lessons learned from this book stress the value of past experience and point the way toward running effective intelligence agencies in a democratic society.

Scholars and professionals worldwide who specialize in intelligence, defense and security studies, and international relations will find this book to be extremely valuable.

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front cover of The Liberal Illusion
The Liberal Illusion
Does Trade Promote Peace?
Katherine Barbieri
University of Michigan Press, 2005
"A very important and long-awaited major contribution to the debate . . . Her work cannot be ignored."
--Nils Petter Gleditsch, Journal of Peace Research

"Barbieri builds on a solid foundation of work on trade and conflict and specifies the conditions under which trade reduces and increases conflict. . . . The bottom line is that this is an important book in the study of trade and conflict because of its comprehensive approach."
--Kathy L. Powers, Perspectives on Politics

"Barbieri's analysis reveals the fundamental and intellectual weaknesses of the various arguments on this topic. [A] solid and timely contribution to the literature"
--Choice


The Liberal Illusion sheds light on an increasingly important question in international relations scholarship and the domain of policy making-whether international trade promotes peace. By examining a broad range of theories about trade's impact on interstate relations and undertaking a set of empirical analyses of the trade-conflict puzzle, Katherine Barbieri provides a comprehensive assessment of the liberal view that trade promotes peace. Barbieri's stunning conclusions depart from conventional wisdom in international relations. Consequently, The Liberal Illusion serves as an important counterargument and a warning call to policymakers who rely upon trade-based strategies to promote peace, strategies that appear to offer little hope of achieving their goals.
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front cover of Libya After Qaddafi
Libya After Qaddafi
Lessons and Implications for the Future
Christopher S. Chivvis
RAND Corporation, 2014
The 2011 overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi by internationally backed rebel groups has left Libya’s new leaders with a number of post-conflict challenges, including establishing security, building political and administrative institutions, and restarting the economy. This report assesses these challenges, the impact of the limited international role in efforts to overcome them, and possible future roles for the international community.
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front cover of The Limits of Alignment
The Limits of Alignment
Southeast Asia and the Great Powers since 1975
John D. Ciorciari
Georgetown University Press, 2011

The Limits of Alignment is an engaging and accessible study that explores how small states and middle powers of Southeast Asia ensure their security in a world where they are overshadowed by greater powers. John D. Ciorciari challenges a central concept in international relations theory—that states respond to insecurity by either balancing against their principal foes, “bandwagoning” with them, or declaring themselves neutral. Instead, he shows that developing countries prefer limited alignments that steer between strict neutrality and formal alliances to obtain the fruits of security cooperation without the perils of undue dependency.

Ciorciari also shows how structural and normative shifts following the end of the Cold War and the advent of U.S. primacy have increased the prevalence of limited alignments in the developing world and that these can often place constraints on U.S. foreign policy. Finally, he discusses how limited alignments in the developing world may affect the future course of international security as China and other rising powers gather influence on the world stage.

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