Geopolitics Books

Shortlisted for the 2024 Financial Times Business Book of the YearA riveting inside look at an elite unit within the Pentagon—the Defense Innovation Unit, also known as Unit X—whose mission is to bring Silicon Valley’s cutting-edge technology to...

Spy satellites orbiting the Moon. Space metals worth billions. Humans on Mars within our lifetimes. This isn’t science fiction. It’s astropolitics. We’re entering a new space race – and it could revolutionise life on Earth.Space: the new frontier, a wild...

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has openly expressed his intention to annex Taiwan to mainland China, even threatening the use of force. An invasion or blockade of Taiwan by Chinese forces would be catastrophic, with severe consequences for democracies...

For much of recorded history, China was a leading science and technology power. But just as the West rose, China turned in on itself, and missed the Industrial Revolution. The result was the 'Hundred Years of Humiliation', and a long struggle for a...

Vladimir Putin's first invasion of Ukraine, in 2014, set off a global economic clash, as the West used its clout with international markets to deter and penalise the Kremlin. The battlelines of this 'war by other means'...

This book presents a comprehensive, detailed analysis of the establishment, evolution and current significance of different institutions in today's Islamic Republic of Iran. The volume draws on the insights of a number of Iran experts to examine...

How did Vladimir Putin win Russians' support for his genocidal war in Ukraine and why are so many of them willing to embrace fascism? This vivid, bottom-up narrative reveals the dark realities of youth fascism in Russia - and the darker future awaiting...

Following up on his earlier best-seller, The Global Police State, this exciting new study by critically-acclaimed scholar and activist William I. Robinson offers a big-picture contribution to understanding contemporary global society in the aftermath of...

The Cry of Mother Earth: Plan of Action of the Ecosocialist International recognizes and records the history and the future of the world's first Ecosocialist International, a chorus of grief and praise for Mother Earth, and a planetary program of...

The inside story of the U.S.-Chinese superpower conflict playing out behind the scenes of today's movie industry, from the leading media scholar. China surpassed North America to become the world 's largest movie market in 2020. Formerly the focus of...

Neil Davidson explores classic themes of nation, state, and revolution in this collection of essays. Ranging from the extent to which nationalism can be a component of led-wing politics to the difference between bourgeois and socialist revolutions, the...

Dennis Unkovic asserts that China is, contrary to popular belief,notpoised to take over from the United States as the world's pre-eminent superpower.Chinese President Xi Jinping believes his country is destined to displace the United States as the...

Days before his country signed a deal to normalise ties with Israel, the Emirati Ambassador to the US penned an article in Hebrew, directly addressing Israelis. Israel, he argued, faced a choice between engagement with the rest of the region, or...

Britain has historically been seen as an upholder of international norms, at least in its relations with western powers. This has often been contrasted with the violence perpetrated in colonial contexts on other continents. What is often missed, however,...

Eighteen years have passed since ten countries from Central & Eastern Europe joined the European Union and more than three decades since the Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989 - but ignorance about what is popularly still called Eastern Europe is as...

The great expedition to Sicily described in the sixth and seventh books of Thucydides' history can be depicted in a variety of ways. By some, it has been thoughtfully treated as an example of overreaching on the part of the Athenians. By others, it has...

A harrowing journey through the past, present, and future of mining, this expertly-researched account ends on a vision for how industry can better serve the needs of humanity.A race is on to exploit the last bonanzas of gold, silver, and industrial...

An eye-opening look at the source of the current wave of Saudi Arabian-sponsored terrorism, how it spread, and why the West did nothing. Here is the truth about ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and more. Lifting the mask of international terrorism, Terence...

Xi Jinping wants to become the world's most powerful leader. To succeed, he must balance Mao's Little Red Book with the Analects of Confucius, and more.For Xi, the task ahead of China is to preserve the guiding ideology of Marxism, while challenging...

When South Sudan's war began, the Beatles were playing their first hits and reaching the moon was an astronaut's dream. Half a century later, with millions massacred in Africa's longest war, the continent's biggest country split in two.It was an...

Recep Tayyip Erdoan, Turkey's pugnacious president, is now the country's longest-serving leader. On his way to the top, he has fought many wars. This book tells the story of those battles against domestic enemies through the lens of the Syrian conflict,...

'These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world,' said Charlie Wilson of America's role in supporting the mujahideen against the Soviet Union. 'And then we fucked up the endgame.' The...

What does liberal order actually amount to outside the West, where it has been most institutionalised? Contrary to the Atlantic or Pacific, liberal hegemony is thin in the Indian Ocean World; there are no equivalents of NATO, the EU or the US-Japan...

China's Belt and Road strategy is acknowledged to be the most ambitious geopolitical initiative of the age. Covering almost seventy countries by land and sea, it will affect every element of global society, from shipping to agriculture, digital economy...

Why is the Middle East a crisis factory, and how can it be fixed? What does the future look like for its 500 million people? And what role should the West play?Iyad El-Baghdadi and Ahmed Gatnash tell the story of the modern Middle East as a series of...

As a Cabinet minister attending meetings of the UK's National Security Council, Oliver Letwin took a profound interest in our relationship with China. So much of the discussion of world events inevitably turns into a debate about the attitudes...

Palestine, 1850: a backwater of the Ottoman Empire, but soon to become the focus of intense jealousies. Locally Arabs and Jews became increasingly polarised, internationally the vacuum left by the demise of the Ottoman Empire was filled with the...

The last four decades have been shaped by the rise of Islamist politics across significant swathes of the globe. Whether by gun or by ballot box, various Islamist movements - from as far and wide as the Malian desert and Indonesia's archipelagos - have...

The Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 was the result of declining active support for the government, and of waste and inefficiency in aid delivery. Yet, while corrosive, these problems were not in themselves sufficient to have brought about a...

How does the Taliban wage war? How has its war changed over time? Firstly, the movement's extraordinary military operation relies on financial backing. This volume analyses such funding. The Taliban's external sources of support include foreign...

During the June 2020 territorial dispute over Kalapani, India blamed tensions on a newly assertive Nepal's deepening relations with China. But beyond the accusations and grandstanding, this reflects a new reality: the power equations in South Asia have...

Between South and Central Asia, in the high mountains and cold deserts, India, Pakistan and China have fought brutal wars over barren, uninhabited territory in a bid for control over their national peripheries, including Xinjiang and Tibet in China, and...

By 2014, the world had grown weary of Iraq and its troubles. The Americans had all but gone and the media had switched its gaze towards Syria, but Iraq's problems were far from over. That same year, ISIS put Iraq back on the map as they crossed the...

Ukraine is the subject of a tug of war between the west and Russia and has been terribly let down by both, albeit in very different ways, in the months and years leading up to war.Russia has brought bloodshed and suffering to Ukraine at the behest of...

A one-volume history of the most consequential political movements of our time - populism, nationalism, socialism - and how they are influencing the twenty-first century.The distinguished political analyst John Judis has brought out a book with Columbia...

Russia's brutal February 2022 invasion of Ukraine has attracted widespread condemnation across the West. Government and media circles present the conflict as a simple dichotomy between an evil empire and an innocent victim. In this concise, accessible...

Corporate Couplooks at the attempted overthrow of the elected government of Venezuela, an intervention which, despite open backing by the United States, failed spectacularly.In January of 2019, the Trump Administration recognized a little-known...

On Shedding an Obsolete Pastprovides a much-needed and comprehensive critique of recent US national security policies in both the Trump and Biden administrations. These policy decisions have produced a series of costly disappointments and outright...

It is often remarked that critical - and especially Marxist - state theory began to lose its central place in the study of comparative politics in the 1980s. Ironically, this shift occurred just as neoliberal policies were transforming the social form...

Noam Chomsky dissectsthe multiple crises facing humankind and the planet; and provides a road map for resistance.In this completely original set of interviews between the legendary duo of Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian, the two confront topics such as...

By squeezing seven centuries and five continents between two covers, the book tracks the transition from one world order to the next-from the Iberian, British, American, and Chinese-explaining how the quest for a profitable form of energy led to the...

John Quincy Adams is widely recognized as America's most distinguished diplomat, taking into account the length and breadth of his public service and his influence on American foreign policy. In the course of this remarkable journey, John Quincy...

The United States and China are locked in a "cold tech war," and the winner will end up dominating the twenty-first century.Beijing was not considered a tech contender a decade ago. Now, some call it a leader. America is already behind in critical areas...

A bold call for the American Left to extend their politics to the issues of Israel-Palestine argues that progressives and liberals who oppose regressive policies on immigration, racial justice, gender equality, LGBTQ rights, and other issues must extend...

Named a Best Book of the Year by The EconomistA chilling work of true crime about the midair murder of a human rights activist, set against a riveting political drama in the world's fourth-largest nationOn a warm Jakarta night in September 2004, Munir...

In Global Political Economy and the Modern State System Tobias ten Brink contributes to an understanding of the modern state system, its conflicts, and its transformation. In contrast to the political attractiveness of optimistic theoretical approaches...

The Story of How Russia Becomes a Democracy after Losing to Ukraine.To understand the significance of this book, Does Putin Have to Die?, you must first understand the significance of the author: Ilya Ponomarev was a member of the Russian Parliament, or...

Why Is the Middle East Entering a "New Era?" Is It a New Dawn? Is It a Setting Sun?In the third decade of the twenty-first century, the Middle East is entering a new era. A multifaceted and intricate equilibrium will write the next chapter of this region...