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Describes strategies used by President Putin from 2000 onwards to recreate "Greater Russia". It shows the subtlety of the means of control, through creating economic, energy, political and military dependencies. Provides comprehensive coverage of Russia's relations to the former Soviet territories of the CIS countries, including Ukraine and Putin's role in the events surrounding the "Orange Revolution", Belarus and the attempts to form a union, the Caucasus and Russia's role in the various conflicts, Moldova, including the Transdniester conflict, and Central Asia.

Post-communist democratic revolutions have, so far, taken place in six countries: Slovakia (1998), Croatia (1999-2000), Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004), and Kyrgyzstan (2005). The seven chapters in this volume situate these events within a theoretical and comparative perspective. The book draws upon extensive experience and field research conducted by political scientists specializing in comparative democratization, regime politics, political transitions, electoral studies, and the post-communist world. The papers by Valerie Bunce and Sharon Wolchik, Henry Hale, Paul D'Anieri, David R. Marples, Taras Kuzio, Lucan A. Way and Steven Levitsky as well as Anika Locke Binnendijk and Ivan Marovic explore different regime types and opposition strategies in post-communist states, the diffusion of opposition strategies between states in which democratic revolutions were attempted, the strategic importance of youth NGO's in mobilizing oppositions towards democratic revolutions, the use of non-violent strategies by the opposition, path dependent, theoretical and comparative explanations of the sources of successful and failed democratic revolutions, and the factors that lie behind divergent post-revolutionary trajectories.The volume represents a breakthrough in our understanding of why and how democratic revolutions take place in the post-communist world. It provides an integrated analysis of why such upheavals succeed in some, but fail in other states. The contributions point to, among other issues, why the post-revolutionary breakthroughs in Serbia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan have encountered obstacles, the ousted regime was never fully defeated and its representatives were able to launch counter-revolutions, as well as why, in Serbia and Ukraine, the political forces of the ousted regimes have returned to power in free elections held after democratic revolutions. "Post-Communist Democratic Revolutions in Comparative Perspective" is essential reading for scholars and policy makers alike.

We are living amidst the fallout of the most controversial conflict of our times. This book is a tough examination of how and why it was fought and of its continuing effects. This major new work contains analysis of the Iraq War from several different academic, as well as military perspectives. Its emphasis is on the links between US foreign policy, US strategy and the US conduct of war and it also covers Iraqi grand strategies, the consequences of the War for transatlantic relations, and includes a chapter on the International Law dimension. In scrutinzing the war and the behaviour of its main parties, the editors draw upon international relations, political science, strategic thought and military theory, plus international law and media studies. For those wishing to understand the Iraq war from a very wide range of rigorous perspectives, this is a must-read.

During the last two decades, the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have attempted to address the numerous human rights abuses that characterized the decades of communist rule. This book examines the main processes of transitional justice that permitted societies in those countries to come to terms with their recent past. It explores lustration, the banning of communist officials and secret political police officers and informers from post-communist politic, ordinary citizens’ access to the remaining archives compiled on them by the communist secret police, as well as trials and court proceedings launched against former communist officials and secret agents for their human rights trespasses. Individual chapters explore the progress of transitional justice in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Slovenia and the successor states of the former Soviet Union. The chapters explain why different countries have employed different models to come to terms with their communist past; assess each country’s relative successes and failures; and probe the efficacy of country-specific legislation to attain the transitional justice goals for which it was developed. The book draws together the country cases into a comprehensive comparative analysis of the determinants of post-communist transitional justice, that will be relevant not only to scholars of post-communist transition, but also to anyone interested in transitional justice in other contexts.

At the end of the Cold War, the Western international community embarked on a large-scale project of promoting democratic change and consolidation in Eastern Europe. This book explains its mixed results. It examines the strategies of European organizations and the conditions of their success and failure.

This work examines Eastern Europe's security situation and specifically explores NATO's relationship with Slovakia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and the Baltic states - all non-members - but each with its own expectations for membership and relationship to the organization.