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Maintaining international security and pursuing American interests is more difficult now than perhaps at any time in history. The security environment that the United States faces is more complex, dynamic, and difficult to predict. At the same time, no domestic consensus exists on the purposes of American power and how best to pursue them. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) will look ahead in this annual volume at the “flashpoints” that will likely arise in 2015, how best to deal with them, and what lasting effects they might leave for the next American administration and its allies around the world. Contributions by: Jon B. Alterman, Samuel J. Brannen, Ernest Z. Bower, Heather A. Conley, Anthony H. Cordesman, Victor Cha, Edward C. Chow, Jennifer G. Cooke, Zack Cooper, Michael J. Green, Matthew P. Goodman, John J. Hamre, Kathleen H. Hicks, Christopher K. Johnson, Stephanie Sanok Kostro, Andrew C. Kuchins, Sarah Ladislaw, Maren Leed, James A. Lewis, Haim Malka, Jeffrey Mankoff, Carl Meacham, Sarah Mendelson, Andrew A. Michta, Scott Miller, J. Stephen Morrison, Clark A. Murdock, Richard M. Rossow, Daniel F. Runde, Thomas M. Sanderson, Conor M. Savoy, Sharon Squassoni, Amy Studdart, Nicholas Szechenyi, and Juan C. Zarate.
First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
A major new book by New York Times bestselling author and geopolitical forecaster George Friedman (The Next 100 Years), with a bold thesis about coming events in Europe. This provocative work examines “flashpoints,” unique geopolitical hot spots where tensions have erupted throughout history, and where conflict is due to emerge again. “There is a temptation, when you are around George Friedman, to treat him like a Magic 8 Ball.” —The New York Times Magazine With remarkable accuracy, George Friedman has forecasted coming trends in global politics, technology, population, and culture. In Flashpoints, Friedman focuses on Europe—the world’s cultural and power nexus for the past five hundred years . . . until now. Analyzing the most unstable, unexpected, and fascinating borderlands of Europe and Russia—and the fault lines that have existed for centuries and have been ground zero for multiple catastrophic wars—Friedman highlights, in an unprecedentedly personal way, the flashpoints that are smoldering once again. The modern-day European Union was crafted in large part to minimize built-in geopolitical tensions that historically have torn it apart. As Friedman demonstrates, with a mix of rich history and cultural analysis, that design is failing. Flashpoints narrates a living history of Europe and explains, with great clarity, its most volatile regions: the turbulent and ever-shifting land dividing the West from Russia (a vast area that currently includes Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania); the ancient borderland between France and Germany; and the Mediterranean, which gave rise to Judaism and Christianity and became a center of Islamic life. Through Friedman’s seamless narrative of townspeople and rivers and villages, a clear picture of regions and countries and history begins to emerge. Flashpoints is an engrossing analysis of modern-day Europe, its remarkable past, and the simmering fault lines that have awakened and will be pivotal in the near future. This is George Friedman’s most timely and, ultimately, riveting book.
In Taiwan Straits: Crisis in Asia and the Role of the U.S. Navy, historian Bruce Elleman surveys the situation that has led to the current tensions between China and Taiwan. Starting in 1949, the final phase of the civil war in China, which ended with Communist rule of the mainland and nationalist control of Taiwan, this work explores how the 100-mile wide passage of water, known as the Taiwan Strait has served as the geographic flashpoint between the two nations. Even though U.S. Navy destroyers have patrolled this body of water from 1950 to 1979, it has seen four crises—1954-55, 1958, 1962, and, after the withdrawal of the U.S. Navy, 1995-96—that threatened to push Taiwan and China to the brink of war. Notwithstanding the role of the United States in defusing cross-strait tensions for some three decades and the cold peace that has settled in since then, the Taiwan Strait continues to be a major source of anxiety for the region and the world. Taiwan Straits: Crisis in Asia and the Role of the U.S. Navy traces the evolution of this tension between the two nations, details the history of the crises between them, and brings this story forward into the present by considering continuing sources of conflict, present diplomatic efforts by the aggrieved nations, and other key interests—from the United States and Europe to other regional powers—and future possible outcomes in the ongoing struggle between China and Taiwan relations. Simply written and cogently argued, it is the ideal source for military personnel, diplomats, and scholars and student of the modern Far East.
China’s emergence as a global economic superpower, and as a major regional military power in Asia and the Pacific, has had a major impact on its relations with the United States and its neighbors. China was the driving factor in the new strategy the United States announced in 2012 that called for a “rebalance” of U.S. forces to the Asia-Pacific region. At the same time, China’s actions on its borders, in the East China Sea, and in the South China Sea have shown that it is steadily expanding its geopolitical role in the Pacific and having a steadily increasing impact on the strategy and military developments in other Asian powers.
Maintaining international security and pursuing American interests is more difficult now than perhaps at any time in history. The security environment that the United States faces is more complex, dynamic, and difficult to predict. At the same time, no domestic consensus exists on the purposes of American power and how best to pursue them. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) looks ahead in this annual volume at the “flashpoints” that will likely arise in 2016, how best to deal with them, and what lasting effects they might leave for the next American administration and its allies around the world.
While the United States and its allies put their military focus on the post-9/11 challenges of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, Russia and China put their military focus onto the United States and the risks of regional wars that they came to believe they might have to fight against the United States. Their first priority was to put their intellectual houses in order-that is, to adapt military thought and strategic planning to the new problem. The result is a set of ideas about how to bring the United States and its allies to a "culminating point" where they choose to no longer run the costs and risks of continued war. This is the "red theory of victory." Beginning in the second presidential term of Obama administration, the U.S. military focus began to shift, driven by rising Russian and Chinese military assertiveness and outspoken opposition to the regional security orders on their peripheries. But U.S. military thought has been slow to catch up. As a recent bipartisan congressional commission concluded, the U.S. intellectual house is dangerously out of order for this new strategic problem. There is no Blue theory of victory. Such a theory should explain how the United States and its allies can strip away the confidence of leaders in Moscow and Beijing (and Pyongyang) in their "escalation calculus"-that is, that they will judge the costs too high, the benefits to low, and the risks incalculable. To develop, improve, and implement the needed new concepts requires a broad campaign of activities by the United States and full partnership with its allies.
Now in an updated edition, this pioneering and authoritative study considers the profound impact of the growing global water crunch on international peace and security as well as possible ways to mitigate the crisis. Although water is essential to sustaining life and livelihoods, geostrategist Brahma Chellaney argues that it remains the world’s most underappreciated and undervalued resource. One sobering fact is that the retail price of bottled water is already higher than the international spot price of crude oil. But unlike oil, water has no substitute, raising the specter of water becoming the next flashpoint for conflict. Water war as a concept may not mesh with the conventional construct of warfare, especially for those who plan with tanks, combat planes, and attack submarines as weapons. Yet armies don’t necessarily have to march to battle to seize or defend water resources. Water wars—in a political, diplomatic, or economic sense—are already being waged between riparian neighbors in many parts of the world, fueling cycles of bitter recrimination, exacerbating water challenges, and fostering mistrust that impedes broader regional cooperation and integration. The danger is that these water wars could escalate to armed conflict or further limit already stretched food and energy production. Writing in a direct, nontechnical, and engaging style, Brahma Chellaney draws on a wide range of research from scientific and policy fields to examine the different global linkages between water and peace. Offering a holistic picture and integrated solutions, his book has become the recognized authority on the most precious natural resource of this century and how we can secure humankind’s water future.
"Twenty-two geopolitical analysts provide an alternative vision to the fraudulent Western narrative on events in Ukraine and alert the world to the danger of a much wider war."--Page 4 of cover.
The author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller The Next 100 Years now focuses his geopolitical forecasting acumen on the next decade and the imminent events and challenges that will test America and the world, specifically addressing the skills that will be required by the decade’s leaders. In the long view, history is seen as a series of events—but the course of those events is determined by individuals and their actions. During the next ten years, individual leaders will face significant transitions for their nations: the United States’ relationships with Iran and Israel will be undergoing changes, China will likely confront a major crisis, and the wars in the Islamic world will subside. Unexpected energy and technology developments will emerge, and labor shortages will begin to matter more than financial crises. Distinguished geopolitical forecaster George Friedman analyzes these events from the perspectives of the men and women leading these global changes, focusing in particular on the American president, who will require extraordinary skills to shepherd the United States through this transitional period. The Next Decade is a provocative and fascinating look at the conflicts and opportunities that lie ahead.