Ambassadors of Realpolitik
Ambassadors of Realpolitik

Author: Aryo Makko

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2016-11-01

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 1785332856

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During the Cold War, Sweden actively cultivated a reputation as the “conscience of the world,” working to build bridges between East and West and embracing a nominal commitment to international solidarity. This groundbreaking study explores the tension between realism and idealism in Swedish diplomacy during a key episode in Cold War history: the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, culminating in the 1975 Helsinki Accords. Through careful analysis of new evidence, it offers a compelling counternarrative of this period, showing that Sweden strategically ignored human rights violations in Eastern Europe and the nonaligned states in its pursuit of national interests.

US Policy Toward Africa
US Policy Toward Africa

Author: Herman J. Cohen

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781626378698

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Herman Cohen draws on both the documentary record and his years of on-the-ground experience to provide a uniquely comprehensive survey and interpretation of nearly eight decades of US policy toward Africa. Tracing how this policy has evolved across successive administrations since 1942 (beginning with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third term in office), Cohen illuminates the debates that have taken place at the highest levels of government; shows how policy toward Africa has been affected over the years by US relations with Europe, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, and most recently China; and points to the increasing reliance of Western economic interests on Africa's natural resources. His deeply informed narrative reveals the roles not only of circumstance and ideology, but also of personalities, in the formulation and implementation of US foreign policy.

Ambassador of Progress
Ambassador of Progress

Author: Walter Jon Williams

Publisher: Walter Jon Williams

Published: 2015-05-02

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 0985454377

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“Well-developed characters, an intriguing plot and a clear-eyed view of the double-edged sword called change make [AMBASSADOR OF PROGRESS] an engrossing book...” LIBRARY JOURNAL “Williams has an above-average knack for fast pacing, gritty realism, and high-tech details.” BOOKLIST An interstellar catastrophe has left humanity scattered on dozens of primitive worlds. Fiona is an emissary to one such world, charged with helping the inhabitants of Echidne rise from barbarism. But once she’s arrived on the planet, she finds herself in the middle of a war... the Brodaini, the world’s most ferocious warriors, have risen in revolt against their overlords. The combat soon threatens to become a war of extermination. Fiona is a neutral. But Echidne is proving a perilous place for neutrals...

Author:

Publisher:

Published:

Total Pages: 535

ISBN-13: 0544716248

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The Real Fidel Castro
The Real Fidel Castro

Author: Leycester Coltman

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2008-10-01

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 0300133391

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Rhetoric during and after the Cold War years has painted starkly contrasting portraits of Cuba's Fidel Castro: an unblemished idealist on the one hand, a ruthless dictator on the other. This insightful book, the most intimate and dispassionate biography of the revolutionary leader to date, shows that neither assessment is true. Leycester Coltman, British ambassador to Cuba in the early 1990s, came as close to personal friendship with Castro as any foreigner was permitted. With frequent contact and regular conversations, Coltman was in a unique position to observe the dictator's personality in both public and private situations. Here he presents a close-up view of the man who for half a century has been loved, admired, feared, and hated, but seldom really understood. Coltman chronicles the events of the Cuban leader's extraordinary life from the political activism of his university days in Havana to periods of exile, imprisonment, and guerilla warfare alongside Che Guevara, to the uncertainties of his old age. Drawing on personal observation and archival sources in Cuba and abroad, Coltman explores the contradiction between the private character and the public reputation, and highlights the complexities of the consummate actor who continues to play a crucial role on the international stage.

The Ambassadors
The Ambassadors

Author: Robert Cooper

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Published: 2021-02-18

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 0297608541

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History does not run in straight lines. Instead of inevitable progress, what we get is more often false starts, blind alleys, random events, good intentions that go wrong. Robert Cooper's incisive and elegant book is therefore not a continuous diplomatic history. Richelieu and Mazarin inhabited a 16th-century world we can hardly imagine today, but it is from their time that we can begin to see the outline of today's Europe. The Ambassadors includes a brilliant analysis of the people who built the Western side of the Cold War. Henry Kissinger is a pivotal figure in the post-war world, and his story is in some ways typical: he failed in his most important aims and succeeded in ways he never expected. Robert Cooper's pieces together history and considers the illuminating fragments it leaves behind.

The Changing Meanings of the Welfare State
The Changing Meanings of the Welfare State

Author: Nils Edling

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2019-01-02

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 178920125X

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In discussions of economics, governance, and society in the Nordic countries, “the welfare state” is a well-worn analytical concept. However, there has been much less scholarly energy devoted to historicizing this idea beyond its postwar emergence. In this volume, specialists from Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland chronicle the historical trajectory of “the welfare state,” tracing the variable ways in which it has been interpreted, valued, and challenged over time. Each case study generates valuable historical insights into not only the history of Northern Europe, but also the welfare state itself as both a phenomenon and a concept.

Five to Rule Them All
Five to Rule Them All

Author: David L. Bosco

Publisher: American Chemical Society

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0195328760

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In this lively, fast-moving, and often humorous narrative, David Bosco illuminates the role of the Security Council in the postwar world, telling the inside story of this remarkable diplomatic creation. Drawing on extensive research, including dozens of interviews with serving and former ambassadors on the Council, the book chronicles political battles and personality clashes as it opens the closed doors of its meeting room. What emerges here is a revealing portrait of the most powerful diplomatic body in the world.

Bismarck
Bismarck

Author: Jonathan Steinberg

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-06-01

Total Pages: 592

ISBN-13: 0199782660

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This riveting, New York Times bestselling biography illuminates the life of Otto von Bismarck, the statesman who unified Germany but who also embodied everything brutal and ruthless about Prussian culture. Jonathan Steinberg draws heavily on contemporary writings, allowing Bismarck's friends and foes to tell the story. What rises from these pages is a complex giant of a man: a hypochondriac with the constitution of an ox, a brutal tyrant who could easily shed tears, a convert to an extreme form of evangelical Protestantism who secularized schools and introduced civil divorce. Bismarck may have been in sheer ability the most intelligent man to direct a great state in modern times. His brilliance and insight dazzled his contemporaries. But all agreed there was also something demonic, diabolical, overwhelming, beyond human attributes, in Bismarck's personality. He was a kind of malign genius who, behind the various postures, concealed an ice-cold contempt for his fellow human beings and a drive to control and rule them. As one contemporary noted: "the Bismarck regime was a constant orgy of scorn and abuse of mankind, collectively and individually." In this comprehensive and expansive biography--a brilliant study in power--Jonathan Steinberg brings Bismarck to life, revealing the stark contrast between the "Iron Chancellor's" unmatched political skills and his profoundly flawed human character.

Master of the Game
Master of the Game

Author: Martin Indyk

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2021-10-26

Total Pages: 689

ISBN-13: 1101947551

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A perceptive and provocative history of Henry Kissinger's diplomatic negotiations in the Middle East that illuminates the unique challenges and barriers Kissinger and his successors have faced in their attempts to broker peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. “A wealth of lessons for today, not only about the challenges in that region but also about the art of diplomacy . . . the drama, dazzling maneuvers, and grand strategic vision.”—Walter Isaacson, author of The Code Breaker More than twenty years have elapsed since the United States last brokered a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. In that time, three presidents have tried and failed. Martin Indyk—a former United States ambassador to Israel and special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2013—has experienced these political frustrations and disappointments firsthand. Now, in an attempt to understand the arc of American diplomatic influence in the Middle East, he returns to the origins of American-led peace efforts and to the man who created the Middle East peace process—Henry Kissinger. Based on newly available documents from American and Israeli archives, extensive interviews with Kissinger, and Indyk's own interactions with some of the main players, the author takes readers inside the negotiations. Here is a roster of larger-than-life characters—Anwar Sadat, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Hafez al-Assad, and Kissinger himself. Indyk's account is both that of a historian poring over the records of these events, as well as an inside player seeking to glean lessons for Middle East peacemaking. He makes clear that understanding Kissinger's design for Middle East peacemaking is key to comprehending how to—and how not to—make peace.