Buffer States In World Politics
Buffer States In World Politics

Author: John Chay

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-03-13

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 0429712375

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Buffer states—countries geographically and/or politically situated between two or more regional or global powers—function to maintain peace between the larger powers. Contributors to this book, the first devoted to the buffer state concept, analyze the geographical and political factors necessary for the establishment and maintenance of a buffer state and examine its role in helping to maintain world peace. The problems and prospects of buffer states and buffer zones and the multiple roles played by the buffer in international politics are also explored. Using information from a number of countries, including Lebanon, Afghanistan, Korea, and Uruguay, the contributors argue that the function of the buffer state has not diminished with the advance of modern technology, but that the prospects for a long life for any particular buffer state are tenuous. Nevertheless, they conclude that although the international benefits from any one buffer state tend to be short term, the continued existence of the system will be an important element in preventing armed conflict in many parts of the world.

Buffer States
Buffer States

Author: Tʻornike Tʻurmaniże

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13:

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The purpose of this book is to explore the notion of buffer states and determine the characteristics of their foreign policy. The idea of writing such a book would less likely be born in the mind of a citizen of a big/powerful country, whereas this kind of study is in the natural scholarly interest of a person living in a small/weak state. Since it is considered that at different times Georgia played a role of a buffer state between various empires, the author decided to find out what does this term mean in theory and what are the implications of being a buffer state in practice, as well which countries of the world can be identified as buffer states both at present and in the past. This study tries to answer these and other important questions. The book consists of an introduction, seven chapters and a conclusion. The first chapter examines different understandings of buffer state concept and suggests a new, more elaborate definition of this term. In addition, introduces a new concept of quasibuffer states. The second chapter focuses on geographical and cultural characteristics of buffer states. The third chapter discusses their power criteria and makes relevant comparisons between centres of powers and buffer areas. The fourth chapter depicts the geopolitical situation of buffer states and tries to apply this description to Georgia's historical and current international standing. The fifth chapter is an in-depth survey of great power rivalry over potential buffer territories in world politics. The sixth chapter focuses on foreign policies of different buffer states. The last, seventh chapter explains how regional buffers systems, as segments of a broader international system, operate.

Reframing the Buffer State in Contemporary International Relations
Reframing the Buffer State in Contemporary International Relations

Author: Bibek Chand

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-05-17

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 1000868125

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This book explores buffer states' agency beyond being highly interactive spaces for the competing strategic and security interests of larger powers. Analyzing 21 political events, the author offers a new conceptual framework for the buffer state, which emphasizes strategic utility and agency. Applying this to the case study of Nepal as a buffer state between India and China, he offers a systematic analysis of Sino-Indian interests in the wider region, and Nepal’s interactions with and reactions to them, and argues that the buffer state in contemporary international relations is characterized by intense competitive overtures from its contending neighboring states. However, the buffer state is not just a spectator but an active participant that consistently assesses and reassesses its geopolitical position in between much larger competing powers. This reading offers a new understanding of the buffer state as a highly dynamic political space wherein the levels of influence and strategies of bigger powers can be examined. Aimed at a multidisciplinary audience, this book will be of particular interest to scholars, practitioners and students of international relations, security studies, strategic studies, and Asian Studies.

Small States in the International System
Small States in the International System

Author: Neal G. Jesse

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2016-06-16

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 1498509703

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Small States in the International System addresses the little understood foreign policy choices of small states. It outlines a theoretical perspective of small states that starts from the assumption that small states are not just large states writ small. In essence, small states behave differently from larger and more powerful states. As such, this book compares three theories of foreign policy choice: realism (and its emphasis on structural factors), domestic factors, and social constructivism (emphasizing norms and identity) across seven focused case studies from around the world in the 20th Century. Through an examination of the foreign policy choices of Switzerland, Ireland, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ethiopia, Somalia, Vietnam, Bolivia and Paraguay, this book concludes that realist theories built on great power politics cannot adequately explain small state behavior in most instances. When small states are threatened by larger, belligerent states, the small state behaves along the predictions of social constructivist theory; when small states threaten each other, they behave along realist predictions.

State Death
State Death

Author: Tanisha Fazal

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2011-10-30

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 1400841445

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If you were to examine an 1816 map of the world, you would discover that half the countries represented there no longer exist. Yet since 1945, the disappearance of individual states from the world stage has become rare. State Death is the first book to systematically examine the reasons why some states die while others survive, and the remarkable decline of state death since the end of World War II. Grappling with what is a core issue of international relations, Tanisha Fazal explores two hundred years of military invasion and occupation, from eighteenth-century Poland to present-day Iraq, to derive conclusions that challenge conventional wisdom about state death. The fate of sovereign states, she reveals, is largely a matter of political geography and changing norms of conquest. Fazal shows how buffer states--those that lie between two rivals--are the most vulnerable and likely to die except in rare cases that constrain the resources or incentives of neighboring states. She argues that the United States has imposed such constraints with its global norm against conquest--an international standard that has largely prevented the violent takeover of states since 1945. State Death serves as a timely reminder that should there be a shift in U.S. power or preferences that erodes the norm against conquest, violent state death may once again become commonplace in international relations.

Geographic Realities in the Middle East and North Africa
Geographic Realities in the Middle East and North Africa

Author: George Joffé

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-10-25

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 0429681623

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Celebrating the work of Keith McLachlan, a well-known and much-admired geographer of the Middle East and North Africa, this book combines three interrelated topics that define the region. The Middle East has been integral to the growth of the global oil industry, an aspect of its evolution since 1908 which has had profound geopolitical implications as well. The territory was also the arena for the last European experiment in colonialism, a development that has left its legacy even today. And, historically, it has been the location of the great hydraulic civilisations of Egypt and Mesopotamia yet is still dependent on the flow of its two major river systems – the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates – in an era of impending climate crisis. These themes form the essence of themes that are discussed in the chapters that follow. Keith McLachlan played a significant role in our understanding of these themes and of their effects in the contemporary world, as the comments of those who worked with him and have contributed towards this book reveal. Examining agriculture, oil and state construction, this volume offers an insight into how the contemporary Middle East was constructed after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It is a key resource for scholars and students interested in geopolitics and the geography of the Middle East.

Handbook on the Politics of Small States
Handbook on the Politics of Small States

Author: Godfrey Baldacchinoel

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2020-03-28

Total Pages: 447

ISBN-13: 1788112938

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Comprehensive and timely, this Handbook identifies the key characteristics, challenges and opportunities involved in the politics of small states across the globe today. Acknowledging the historical legacies behind these states, the chapters unpack the costs and benefits of different political models for small states.

Land-locked States of Africa and Asia
Land-locked States of Africa and Asia

Author: Richard Hodder-Williams

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-12-16

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1135254109

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Since 1991 more than a dozen new land-locked states have emerged to be confronted with the geostrategic problems of access and communications. Contributors present the implications of land-lockedness and the historical development of trade routes.

Power Vacuums and Global Politics
Power Vacuums and Global Politics

Author: Hanna Samir Kassab

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-06-23

Total Pages: 142

ISBN-13: 1000901157

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In this book, Hanna Samir Kassab develops a theoretical framework that explains the formulation of power vacuums and examines their impact on the international system. A power vacuum is the fundamental absence of legitimate state authority over a geographic territory, and it is a space free of governance. With no state authority governing a geographical region, opportunistic states and organized criminal and terrorist networks may attempt to control that space. Using a variety of historical examples and centering his analysis on ungoverned spaces rather than great powers, Kassab uncovers neglected areas of great power competition. Part 1 discusses state actors: specifically, the strategic space of the Arctic, the Middle East and Africa, and Afghanistan and Central Asia. Part 2 examines non-state actors, such as terrorist networks and organized criminal networks, and the formulation of paramilitaries. Power Vacuums and Global Politics is the perfect volume for both undergraduate and graduate courses in international relations, security studies, political science, comparative politics, international political economy, and war and peace.

State Formation in Afghanistan
State Formation in Afghanistan

Author: Mujib Rahman Rahimi

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-08-17

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 1786722062

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The creation of Afghanistan in 1880, following the Second Anglo-Afghan War, gave an empowering voice to the Pashtun people, the largest ethnic group in a diverse country. In order to distil the narrative of the state's formation and early years, a Pashtun-centric version of history dominated Afghan history and the political process from 1880 to the 1970s. Alternative discourses made no appearance in the fledgling state which lacked the scholarly institutions and any sense of recognition for history, thus providing no alternatives to the narratives produced by the British, whose quasi-colonial influence in the region was supreme. Since 1970, the ongoing crises in Afghanistan have opened the space for non-Pashtuns, including Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks, to form new definitions of identity, challenge the official discourse and call for the re-writing of the long-established narrative. At the same time, the Pashtun camp, through their privileged position in the political settlements of 2001, have attempted to confront the desire for change in historical perceptions by re-emphasising the Pashtun domination of Afghan history. This crisis of hegemony has led to a deep antagonism between the Pashtun and non-Pashtun perspectives of Afghan history and threatens the stability of political process in the country.