The False Promise Of Superiority

This political analysis exposes the fanciful logic that the United States can use nuclear weapons to vanquish nuclear adversaries or influence them when employing various coercive tactics. During the Cold War, American policymakers sought nuclear advantages to offset an alleged Soviet edge. Policymakers hoped that US nuclear capabilities would safeguard deterrence, when backed perhaps by a set of coercive tactics. But policymakers also hedged their bets with plans to fight a nuclear war to their advantage should deterrence fail. In The False Promise of Superiority, James H. Lebovic argues that the US approach was fraught with peril and remains so today. He contends that the United States can neither simply impose its will on nuclear adversaries nor safeguard deterrence using these same coercive tactics without risking severe, counterproductive effects. As Lebovic shows, the current faith in US nuclear superiority could produce the disastrous consequences that US weapons and tactics are meant to avoid. This book concludes that US interests are best served when policymakers resist the temptation to use, or prepare to use, nuclear weapons first or to brandish nuclear weapons for coercive effect.

Dystopian States of America is a crucial resource that studies the impact of dystopian works on American society-including ways in which they reflect our deep and persistent fears about environmental calamities, authoritarian governments, invasive technologies, and human weakness. Dystopian States of America provides students and researchers with an illuminating resource for understanding the impact and relevance of dystopian and apocalyptic works in contemporary American culture. Through its wide survey of dystopian works in numerous forms and genres, the book encourages readers to connect with these works of fiction and understand how the catastrophically grim or disquieting worlds they portray offer insights into our own current situation. In addition to providing more than 150 encyclopedia articles on a large and representative sample of dystopian/apocalyptic narratives in fiction, film, television, and video games (including popular works that often escape critical inquiry), Dystopian States of America features a suite of critical essays on five themes-war, pandemics, totalitarianism, environmental calamity, and technological overreach-that serve as the foundation for most dystopian worlds of the imagination. These offerings complement one another, enabling readers to explore dystopian conceptions of America and the world from multiple perspectives and vantage points.

In an age of demagogues, hostile great powers and trade wars, foreign policy traditionalists dream of restoring liberal international order. This order, they claim, ushered in seventy years of peace and prosperity and saw post-war America domesticate the world to its values. The False Promise of Liberal Order exposes the flaws in this nostalgic vision. The world shaped by America came about as a result of coercion and, sometimes brutal, compromise. Liberal projects – to spread capitalist democracy – led inadvertently to illiberal results. To make peace, America made bargains with authoritarian forces. Even in the Pax Americana, the gentlest order yet, ordering was rough work. As its power grew, Washington came to believe that its order was exceptional and even permanent – a mentality that has led to spiralling deficits, permanent war and Trump. Romanticizing the liberal order makes it harder to adjust to today’s global disorder. Only by confronting the false promise of liberal order and adapting to current realities can the United States survive as a constitutional republic in a plural world.

Showing how the upswell of paranoia and growing demand for security in the post-9/11 world has paradoxically created widespread insecurity, these varied essays examine how this anxiety-laden mindset erodes spaces both architectural and personal, encroaching on all aspects of everyday life. Starting from the most literal level—barricades and barriers in front of buildings, beefed up border patrols, gated communities, "safe rooms,"—to more abstract levels—enhanced surveillance at public spaces such as airports, increasing worries about contagion, the psychological predilection for fortified space—the contributors cover the full gamut of securitized public life that is defining the zeitgeist of twenty-first century America

Gain an understanding of the threat to freedom that is posed by state regulation of adolescent sexual behavior Sexual autonomy encompasses both the right to engage in wanted sexual activity and the right to be free and protected from unwanted sexual aggression. Only when both aspects of adolescents’ rights are recognized can human sexual dignity be fully respected. In Adolescence, Sexuality, and the Criminal Law, experts from several disciplines use case studies, legal analysis, empirical examinations, and tables and figures to provide you with an insightful contribution to the debate surrounding child sexual abuse. Much has been written about the undisputedly essential fight against child sexual exploitation. In Adolescence, Sexuality, and the Criminal Law, experts investigate for the first time what distinguishes the sexual contacts of adolescents from those of children and why they should be treated separately. This updated version of the papers delivered to the International Association for the Treatment of Sex Offenders in 2002 is an essential guide for lawmakers, sexologists, psychologists, and lawyers interested in an interdisciplinary approach to adolescent sexuality and the criminal law. This resource carefully examines child sexual abuse laws that fail to distinguish between children and adolescents. The text includes discussions of the history of the age of consent, adolescent sexuality, relations between adolescents and adults, and adolescent prostitution and pornography that will leave you better informed about the sexual rights of adolescents and the criminal politics of youth protection. Adolescence, Sexuality, and the Criminal Law examines adolescent sexuality and the various policies that threaten adolescents’ autonomy, including: the question of youthful sexuality and how society has attempted to deal with it recent attempts to deny youthful sexuality through abstinence or changes in the law intergenerational sexual interaction child pornography and much more! As the debate surrounding child sexual abuse laws escalates, the value of this authoritative and timely text will continue to increase. Whether you are a lawmaker, a sexologist, a social worker, a lawmaker, or a lawyer, Adolescence, Sexuality, and the Criminal Law is a resource that you’ll return to again and again as you work to understand the importance of adolescent sexual rights.

“A sparkling, thought-provoking account of sexual differences. Whether you’re a man or a woman, you’ll find his conclusions gripping.”—Jared Diamond There is a human genetic fluke that is surprisingly common, due to a change in a key pair of chromosomes. In the normal condition the two look the same, but in this disorder one is malformed and shrunken beyond recognition. The result is a shortened life span, higher mortality at all ages, an inability to reproduce, premature hair loss, and brain defects variously resulting in attention deficit, hyperactivity, conduct disorder, hypersexuality, and an enormous excess of both outward and self-directed aggression. It is called maleness. Melvin Konner traces the arc of evolution to explain the relationships between women and men. With patience and wit he explores the knotty question of whether men are necessary in the biological destiny of the human race. He draws on multiple, colorful examples from the natural world—such as the mating habits of the octopus, black widow, angler fish, and jacana—and argues that maleness in humans is hardly necessary to the survival of the species. In characteristically humorous and engaging prose, Konner sheds light on our biologically different identities, while noting the poignant exceptions that challenge the male/female divide. We meet hunter-gatherers such as those in Botswana, whose culture gave women a prominent place, invented the working mother, and respected women’s voices around the fire. Recent human history has upset this balance, as a dense world of war fostered extreme male dominance. But our species has been recovering over the past two centuries, and an unstoppable move toward equality is afoot. It will not be the end of men, but it will be the end of male supremacy and a better, wiser world for women and men alike.

In this book, the contributors challenge dominant discourses and practices in the fields of early childhood and middle grades education that are based on the last century's grand developmental theories.

For decades, the idea that more education will lead to greater individual and national prosperity has been a cornerstone of developed economies. Challenging this conventional wisdom, 'The Global Auction' forces us to reconsider our deeply held and mistaken views about how the global economy really works and how to thrive in it.