The Outlaw State

The shooting war is over in the Persian Gulf. However, the war of words about it is only now beginning. Elaine Sciolino, who has covered the Middle East during the past decade for ``The New York Times'', fires the opening salvo in an effort to explain and analyze how the war came about. She first warned us about Saddam Hussein in 1985 in an article for The New York Times Magazine. Now she tells us how Saddam came to power; why he invaded Kuwait, what effects the war's outcome will have; and what happens to the region's balance of power with Saddam's army destroyed.

The presence of Great Powers and outlaw states is a central but under-explored feature of international society. In this book, Gerry Simpson describes the ways in which an international legal order based on 'sovereign equality' has accommodated the Great Powers and regulated outlaw states since the beginning of the nineteenth-century. In doing so, the author offers a fresh understanding of sovereignty which he terms juridical sovereignty to show how international law has managed the interplay of three languages: the languages of Great Power prerogative, the language of outlawry (or anti-pluralism) and the language of sovereign equality. The co-existence and interaction of these three languages is traced through a number of moments of institutional transformation in the global order from the Congress of Vienna to the 'war on terrorism'.

During the first two years of Ronald Reagan’s second term the United States developed an offensive strategy for dealing with conflict in the developing world. Nicaragua was a primary target of this policy. Scholars refer to this as the Reagan offensive: the first time that the United States eschewed the norms of containment and sought to “roll-back” the gains of communism. However, the Reagan offensive was also significantly driven by a response to the emergent threat of international terrorism. Terrorism provided a vehicle that justified its use of aggressive proxy war and pursuit of regime change in Central America. U.S. policy with Nicaragua demonstrates the importance of terrorism to the development of a more aggressive United States in the post-Cold War world. This book examines the influence of the U.S.-Contra War in establishing a precedent for the use of overt pre-emptive force against sovereign nations in the name of counterterrorism. In the 21st century, the United States undertook a policy with the world based on a broad definition of self-defense that called for an array of actions that often violated traditional norms of international law and recognition of sovereign rights. This book demonstrates that the precedent for this change occurred in the late Cold War as the United States sought to respond to an escalation of global terrorism. The emergent problem of terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s transformed how and when the United States applied force in the world.

John Rawls is widely regarded as one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, and his work has permanently shaped the nature and terms of moral and political philosophy, deploying a robust and specialized vocabulary that reaches beyond philosophy to political science, economics, sociology, and law. This volume is a complete and accessible guide to Rawls' vocabulary, with over 200 alphabetical encyclopaedic entries written by the world's leading Rawls scholars. From 'basic structure' to 'burdened society', from 'Sidgwick' to 'strains of commitment', and from 'Nash point' to 'natural duties', the volume covers the entirety of Rawls' central ideas and terminology, with illuminating detail and careful cross-referencing. It will be an essential resource for students and scholars of Rawls, as well as for other readers in political philosophy, ethics, political science, sociology, international relations and law.

Although the war in Afghanistan is now in its endgame, the West’s struggle to eliminate the threat from Al Qaeda is far from over. A decade after 9/11, the war on terror has entered a new phase and, it would seem, a new territory. In early 2010, Al Qaeda operatives were reportedly “streaming” out of central Asia toward Somalia and the surrounding region. Somalia, now home to some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists, was already the world’s most failed state. Two decades of anarchy have spawned not just Islamic extremism but piracy, famine, and a seemingly endless clan-based civil war that has killed an estimated 500,000, turned millions into refugees, and caused hundreds of thousands more to flee and settle in Europe and North America. What is now happening in Somalia directly threatens the security of the world, possibly more than any other region on earth. James Fergusson’s book is the first accessible account of how Somalia became the world’s most dangerous place and what we can—and should—do about it.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A riveting, adrenaline-fueled tour of a vast, lawless, and rampantly criminal world that few have ever seen: the high seas. There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world's oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation. Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortion providers, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways—drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of miles from shore, Ian Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of this hidden world. Through their stories of astonishing courage and brutality, survival and tragedy, he uncovers a globe-spanning network of crime and exploitation that emanates from the fishing, oil, and shipping industries, and on which the world's economies rely. Both a gripping adventure story and a stunning exposé, this unique work of reportage brings fully into view for the first time the disturbing reality of a floating world that connects us all, a place where anyone can do anything because no one is watching.

A small town lives in terror of the Outlaw, but one day, he disappears—and a mysterious stranger rides into town ... In this spare and powerful story set in the Old West, people in a small town live in constant worry of another visit from the Outlaw. Then the Outlaw suddenly and mysteriously disappears. Time passes, and one day a stranger rides into town. He takes it upon himself to fix everything that is in disrepair — the clapboard schoolhouse, the train station platform. He even builds a horse trough. But when someone recognizes him as the Outlaw, the crowd turns on the stranger. It takes the courage of a small boy to change the course of events ... The subtle, beautiful mixed-media art with its nineteenth-century textural references perfectly complements this original story from debut author and illustrator Nancy Vo. Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.2 Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.3 Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.6 Distinguish their own point of view from that of the narrator or those of the characters. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.7 Explain how specific aspects of a text's illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting)