In this book, an assortment of regional specialists in military relations are gathered together to comment on the current state of the military in various Eastern bloc states. The book focuses on the relationship between the military, politics, and society in these new and burgeoning democracies.

Written from the perspectives of regional and international participants, this book explores the causes and consequences of chronic conflicts in the Balkans. Assessing the likelihood of a region-wide conflagration, the contributors examine the ongoing carnage in Bosnia, the looming crisis over Kosovo, the dispute between Greece and Macedonia over t

Many generous people deserve special thanks for their assistance in the preparation and completion of this project. I wish to express my gratitude to each of the contributors for agreeing to tackle a difficult and inherently controversial subject. I am only sorry that C.I. Eugene Kim did not live long enough to see the fruits of his labor; he will be sorely missed by all of us who knew him. The Third World and the military do not respond easily to scrutiny by social scientists. Many collea...

From open civil war in Bosnia and Georgia to the Russian president’s use of military units against an uncooperative parliament, civil-military conflicts in the former USSR and Yugoslavia are increasingly attracting world-wide attention and concern. This volume brings together fourteen essays that explore the roles of the armed forces in the ongoing struggles for control over the processes of state formation and government in these newly independent countries. Twelve chapters focus on the e...

First published in 1988, Military Disengagement from Politics explores the reasons and conditions for military withdrawal from politics. It gives an in-depth analysis of specific grounds and circumstances of a representative list of countries whose military intervened, ruled, and eventually withdrew allowing for either full-scale civilian rule, or a more circumscribed set up in which the armed forces retain varying degrees of control in the governing process.The book provi...

This book presents a number of case studies focusing on the factors, methods and means of civilian control of the military in Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Guyana, Jamaica, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Cameroon, Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia.

Military disengagement from power in favour of a civilian government is not an uncommon phenomenon, especially in the developing world. First published in 1992, From Military to Civilian Rule is the first comparative study of the motives behind military withdrawal and the establishment of sustainable civilian rule.Using case studies from Africa, Central and South America, the Caribbean and Europe written by regional specialists, the book looks at the future of civil–military relati...

The unfolding crisis in Ukraine has brought the world to the brink of a new Cold War. As Russia and Ukraine tussle for Crimea and the eastern regions, relations between Putin and the West have reached an all-time low. How did we get here? Richard Sakwa here unpicks the context of conflicted Ukrainian identity and of Russo-Ukrainian relations and traces the path to the recent disturbances through the events which have forced Ukraine, a country internally divided between East and West, to ch...

When guns began firing again in Europe, why was it Ukraine that became the battlefield? Conventional wisdom dictates that Ukraine's current crisis can be traced to the linguistic differences and divided political loyalties that have long fractured the country. However this theory only obscures the true significance of Ukraine's recent civic revolution and the conflict's crucial international dimension. The 2013-14 Ukrainian revolution presented authoritarian powers in Russia with both a de...

Before Russia invaded Ukraine, it invaded Georgia. Both states are part of Russia's "near abroad" - newly independent states that were once part of the Soviet Union and are now Russia's neighbors. While the Russia-Georgia war of 2008 faded from the headlines in the wake of the global recession, the geopolitical contest that created it did not. Six years later, the spectre of a revanchist Russia returned when Putin's forces invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula, once part of Russia but ...

In this new Brookings Marshall Paper, Michael O'Hanlon argues that now is the time for Western nations to negotiate a new security architecture for neutral countries in eastern Europe to stabilize the region and reduce the risks of war with Russia. He believes NATO expansion has gone far enough. The core concept of this new security architecture would be one of permanent neutrality. The countries in question collectively make a broken-up arc, from Europe's far north to its south: Finland a...

Since the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, there has been much talk of a new Cold War between the West and Russia. Under Putin’s authoritarian leadership, Moscow is widely seen as volatile, belligerent and bent on using military force to get its way.In this incisive analysis, top Russian foreign and security policy analyst Dmitri Trenin explains why the Cold War analogy is misleading. Relations between the West and Russia are certainly bad and dangerous but - he argues - they are ba...