The riveting and mostly untold story about the battle for financial and technological power and mastery between the West and China over the last decade.Since China joined the WTO in December 2001, the West has been developing ever closer business and political ties. China's hosting of the Olympcis Games and its economic leadership in 2008 as the world faced recession were signs that China's new power and wealth would herald greater global prosperity for all. But th...

The Beijing-Islamabad axis plays a central role in Asia's geopolitics, from India's rise to the prospects for a post-American Afghanistan, from the threat of nuclear terrorism to the continent's new map of mines, ports and pipelines. China is Pakistan's great economic hope and its most trusted military partner; Pakistan is the battleground for China's encounters with Islamic militancy and the heart of its efforts to counter-balance the emerging US-India partnership. For decades, each count...

A secular feminist army courageously challenges the Islamic StateIn war-torn northern Syria, a democratic society—based on secularism, ethnic inclusiveness, and gender equality—has won significant victories against the Islamic State, or Daesh, with women on the front lines as fierce warriors and leaders.A Road Unforeseen recounts the dramatic, underreported history of the Rojava Kurds, whose all-women militia was instrumental in the perilo...

How Britain Broke the World is a compelling, eye‑opening account of how British foreign policy helped shape the turbulent world we're living in now. If you've wondered why the rules‑based international order feels weaker, why conflict keeps spreading, and why trust in Western leadership has eroded, this book connects the dots — from the Balkans to the Middle East, from London's financial districts to Brexit's aftershocks in Europe.Snell isn't a distant commentator. He serv...

An unprecedented analysis of the crucial but underexplored roles the United States and other nations have played in shaping Syria’s ongoing civil war“One of the best informed and non-partisan accounts of the Syrian tragedy yet published.”—Patrick Cockburn, IndependentSyria’s brutal, long-lasting civil war is widely viewed as a domestic contest that began in 2011 and only later drew foreign nations into the fray. Bu...

Seemingly from its birth, Pakistan has teetered on the brink of becoming a failed state. Today, it ranks 133rd out of 148 countries in global competitiveness. Its economy is as dysfunctional as its political system is corrupt; both rely heavily on international aid for their existence. Taliban forces occupy 30 percent of the country. It possesses over a hundred nuclear weapons that could easily fall into terrorists' hands. Why, in an era when countries across the developing world are exper...

**From a former president of the United Nations Security Council, an authoritative look at the US, China, and the defining geopolitical contest of the twenty-first century“An excellent and important book on the biggest question in international affairs: how will the relationship between the US and China evolve?” —Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator,** Financial TimesChina and the United States are world powers without serious rivals. They eye ...

This book offers a novel, incisive and wide-ranging account of Libya's '17 February Revolution' by tracing how critical towns, communities and political groups helped to shape its course. Each community, whether geographical (e.g. Misrata, Zintan), tribal/communal (e.g. Beni Walid) or political (e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood) took its own path into the uprisings and subsequent conflict of 2011, according to their own histories and relationship to Muammar Qadhafi's regime. The story of each g...

One of the U.S. government's leading China experts reveals the hidden strategy fueling that country's rise – and how Americans have been seduced into helping China overtake us as the world's leading superpower.For more than forty years, the United States has played an indispensable role helping the Chinese government build a booming economy, develop its scientific and military capabilities, and take its place on the world stage, in the belief that China's rise will...

A crucial assessment of how global and regional politics converge in the swath of Eurasia that includes South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Under the ambitious leadership of President Xi Jinping, China is transforming its wealth and economic power into tools of global political influence. But China's foreign policy initiatives, even "Belt and Road," will be shaped and redefined as they confront the ground realities of local and regional politics outside China. I...

The West's two-century epoch as global powerhouse is at an end. A new world order, with China and India as the strongest economies, dawns. How will the West react to its new status of superpower in decline?In Kishore Mahbubani's timely polemic, he argues passionately that the West can no longer presume to impose its ideology on the world, and crucially, that it must stop seeking to intervene, politically and militarily, in the affairs of other nations. He examines ...

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is infamous for its violence. The struggle it has waged for Kurdish independence in southeastern Turkey has cost in excess of 40,000 lives since 1984. A less-known fact, however, is that the PKK now embraces a non-violent end to the conflict, with its leader Abdullah Öcalan having ordered a ceasefire and engaging in a negotiated peace with the Ankara government. Whether these tentative attempts at peacemaking mean an end to the bloodshed remains to be see...