Great Power Clashes along the Maritime Silk Road
Great Power Clashes along the Maritime Silk Road

Author: Grant Frederick Rhode

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2023-10-15

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 168247867X

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Current concerns in maritime Eurasia are centered on rising powers China and India. By way of background to understanding the current regional great power rivalry within maritime Eurasia, this book asks what we can learn from historic Eurasian maritime geopolitical players and their interactions that will inform and enlighten today’s international relations practitioners. Great Power Clashes along the Maritime Silk Road examines three seminal historical cases of maritime clashes in the China Seas, four in the Indian Ocean, and one in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Each of these is an example of local or regional conflict reflecting the circumstances of time and place. The cases have been chosen to provide a comparative framework of significant premodern maritime clashes distributed along the full Eurasian maritime perimeter. Lessons include understanding struggles between continental and maritime powers in Eurasia, and understanding the decisive impact that naval leadership, intelligence, technology, alliances, and identity have had in the past and will have on the future.

China's Maritime Gray Zone Operations
China's Maritime Gray Zone Operations

Author: Andrew S. Erickson

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2019-03-15

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 159114695X

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China’s maritime “gray zone” operations represent a new challenge for the U.S. Navy and the sea services of our allies, partners, and friends in maritime East Asia. There, Beijing is waging what some Chinese sources term a “war without gunsmoke.” Already winning in important areas, China could gain far more if left unchecked. One of China’s greatest advantages thus far has been foreign difficulty in understanding the situation, let alone determining an effective response. With contributions from some of the world’s leading subject matter experts, this volume aims to close that gap by explaining the forces and doctrines driving China’s paranaval expansion, operating in the “gray zone” between war and peace. The book covers China’s major maritime forces beyond core gray-hulled Navy units, with particular focus on China’s second and third sea forces: the “white-hulled” Coast Guard and “blue-hulled” Maritime Militia. Increasingly, these paranaval forces, and the “gray zone” in which they typically operate, are on the frontlines of China’s seaward expansion.

The Energy Sector and Energy Geopolitics in the MENA Region at a Crossroad
The Energy Sector and Energy Geopolitics in the MENA Region at a Crossroad

Author: Manfred Hafner

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-08-28

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 3031307054

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This open access book offers a holistic and interdisciplinary analysis of the energy sector in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and its ongoing transformation. Taking into account global decarbonization policies, it offers a comprehensive overview of the transition’s effects in the region highlighting socioeconomic, geopolitical and cultural aspects. The book is divided into four parts, the first of which illustrates the historical, cultural and socioeconomic heterogeneity of the MENA region. The second part assesses the region's energy sector, with a special focus on the energy mix and consumption evolution at the national level. The third part addresses the geopolitics and geoeconomics of the energy sector in MENA countries, including foreign interference, conflicts, investments and partnerships both related to hydrocarbons and energy transition. Lastly, the fourth part provides overall conclusions and key takeaways on all major aspects addressed by the book, highlighting various paths and strategies for decarbonization in the region.

To Rule Eurasia's Waves
To Rule Eurasia's Waves

Author: Geoffrey F. Gresh

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2020-10-27

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0300234848

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The first book to weave Eurasia together through the perspective of the oceans and seas "A detailed account of the growing importance of the Chinese, Indian, and Russian navies and how this competition is playing out in waters stretching from the Indo-Pacific area to the Arctic and the Mediterranean."--Lawrence D. Freedman, Foreign Affairs Eurasia's emerging powers--India, China, and Russia--have increasingly embraced their maritime geographies as they have expanded and strengthened their economies, military capabilities, and global influence. Maritime Eurasia, a region that facilitates international commerce and contains some of the world's most strategic maritime chokepoints, has already caused a shift in the global political economy and challenged the dominance of the Atlantic world and the United States. Climate change is set to further affect global politics. With meticulous and comprehensive field research, Geoffrey Gresh considers how the melting of the Arctic ice cap will create new shipping lanes and exacerbate a contest for the control of Arctic natural resources. He explores as well the strategic maritime shifts under way from Europe to the Indian Ocean and Pacific Asia. The race for great power status and the earth's changing landscape, Gresh shows, are rapidly transforming Eurasia and thus creating a new world order.

Japan on the Silk Road
Japan on the Silk Road

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-10-23

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 9004274316

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Japan on the Silk Road provides for the first time the historical background indispensable for understanding Japan's current perspectives and policies in the vast area of Eurasia across the Middle East and Central Asia. Japanese diplomats, military officers, archaeologists, and linguists traversed the Silk Road, involving Japan in the Great Game and exploring ancient civilizations.The book exposes the entanglements of pre-war Japanese Pan-Asianism with Pan-Islamism, Turkic nationalism and Mongolian independence as a global history of imperialism. Japanese connections to Ottoman Turkey, India, Egypt, Iran, Afghanistan, and China at the same time reveal a discrete global narrative of cosmopolitanism and transnationality. The global team of scholars brings to light Japan’s intellectual and political encounters with the peoples and cultures of Asia, in particular Turks and Persians, Hindus and Muslims of India, Mongolians and the Uyghur of Inner Asia, and Muslims in China. Contributors include: Ian Nish, Christopher Szpilman, Sven Saaler, Selcuk Esenbel, Li Narangoa, Komatsu Hisao, Brij Tankha, Erdal Küçükyalcın, A. Merthan Dündar, Katayama Akio, Miyuki Aoki Girardelli, Klaus Röhborn, Mehmet Ölmez, Banu Kaygusuz, Oğuz Baykara, and Satō Masako.

The Silk Roads
The Silk Roads

Author: Peter Frankopan

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2016-02-16

Total Pages: 688

ISBN-13: 1101946334

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INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • Far more than a history of the Silk Roads, this book is truly a revelatory new history of the world, promising to destabilize notions of where we come from and where we are headed next. "A rare book that makes you question your assumptions about the world.” —The Wall Street Journal From the Middle East and its political instability to China and its economic rise, the vast region stretching eastward from the Balkans across the steppe and South Asia has been thrust into the global spotlight in recent years. Frankopan teaches us that to understand what is at stake for the cities and nations built on these intricate trade routes, we must first understand their astounding pasts. Frankopan realigns our understanding of the world, pointing us eastward. It was on the Silk Roads that East and West first encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas, cultures and religions. From the rise and fall of empires to the spread of Buddhism and the advent of Christianity and Islam, right up to the great wars of the twentieth century—this book shows how the fate of the West has always been inextricably linked to the East. Also available: The New Silk Roads, a timely exploration of the dramatic and profound changes our world is undergoing right now—as seen from the perspective of the rising powers of the East.

Securing the Belt and Road Initiative
Securing the Belt and Road Initiative

Author: Alessandro Arduino

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-02-01

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 9811071160

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This collection explores the expansion of Chinese outbound investments, aimed to sustain the increased need for natural resources, and how they have amplified the magnitude of a possible international crisis that the People’s Republic of China may face in the near future by bringing together the views of a wide range of scholars. President Xi’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI), aimed to promote economic development and exchanges with China for over 60 countries, necessitates a wide range of security procedures. While the threats to Chinese enterprises and Chinese workers based on foreign soil are poised to increase, there is an urgent need to develop new guidelines for risk assessment, special insurance and crisis management. While the Chinese State Owned Enterprises are expanding their international reach capabilities, they still do not have the capacity to assure adequate security. In such a climate, this collection will be of profound value to policy makers, those working in the financial sector, and academics.

China and Europe Relations in the Twenty-First Century
China and Europe Relations in the Twenty-First Century

Author: Aifen Xing

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-07-31

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 1000910989

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This book argues that although relations between China and Europe are strained in many areas, including trade, human rights and views about political systems, nevertheless established linkages, especially when considered in the context of long-term historical linkages, development trajectories and intellectual cultures, offer good prospects for future progressive collaborative exchanges. Approaching the subject in a balanced way, giving equal weight to the perspectives of both sides, the book examines China and Europe’s shared experiences of age-old civilizations, of the disorienting effects of the economic, social and political upheavals triggered by the late eighteenth century creation of the modern world, and of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries era of European empires, warfare and the Cold War. It contends that although China and Europe appear superficially to have followed different paths, with many problems in their relationship resulting, they in fact have a very great deal in common concerning how they have coped with the long shift from ancient civilizations to the modern world of natural-science-based industrial capitalism.

Great Powers, Grand Strategies
Great Powers, Grand Strategies

Author: Anders Corr

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2018-01-15

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1682472361

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Great Powers, Grand Strategies offers the analysis of a dozen experts on the “big picture” approaches to the South China Sea dispute. By exploring the international dimensions of this regional hotspot, Gordon Chang, Bernard Cole, James Fanell, Bill Hayton, and others examine how the military, diplomatic, and economic strategies of the major global actors have both contributed to solutions and exacerbated the potential for conflict. As editor of this volume, Anders Corr seeks to juxtapose the grand strategies of the great powers to determine the likely outcomes of the South China Sea dispute, as well as evaluate the ways to possibly defuse tensions in the region.

The EU, NATO and the Libya Conflict
The EU, NATO and the Libya Conflict

Author: Stefano Marcuzzi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-12-24

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1000505979

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This book explores the causes and implications of the Libyan crisis since the anti-Gaddafi uprisings of 2011 from the perspective of the EU and NATO. It asks the question of why those organizations failed to stabilize the country despite the serious challenges posed by the protracted crisis to European and transatlantic stakes in the region. This book argues that such failure originated in a twofold problem common to both organizations: their prioritization of legitimacy over strategy, and their path dependence – the insufficient degree of adaptation to meet the different needs of the crisis. Through a critical and integrated analysis of official sources and extensive interviews with EU, NATO, UN, and national government officials and militaries, as well as from NGO personnel, Libyan institutions and civil society, and media, the volume brings the perspective of both state and non-state actors to the fore. It reveals how wrong assumptions and centrifugal forces within the EU and NATO hampered initiatives, and how the inability to use hard power judiciously and effectively in an increasingly complex and multifaceted scenario worsened the crisis. This allowed for unprecedented influence of regional and global competitors such as Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Turkey and Russia in the richest African country. This book will be of key interest for scholars and students of Libya and North Africa, NATO, the European Union, security and conflict studies, Middle East studies, migration, terrorism, peacebuilding and, more broadly, international relations.