But now, Noah Feldman argues, we are entering an era of renewed global struggle: the era of Cool War. Just as the Cold War matched the planet’s reigning superpowers in a contest for geopolitical supremacy, so this new age will pit the United States against a rising China in a contest for dominance, alliances, and resources. Already visible in Asia, the conflict will extend to the Middle East (U.S.-backed Israel versus Chinese-backed Iran), Africa, and beyond.   Yet this Cool War differs fundamentally from the zero-sum showdowns of the past: The world’s major power and its leading challenger are economically interdependent to an unprecedented degree. Exports to the U.S. account for nearly a quarter of Chinese trade, while the Chinese government holds 8 percent of America’s outstanding debt. This positive-sum interdependence has profound implications for nations, corporations, and international institutions. It makes what looked to be a classic contest between two great powers into something much more complex, contradictory, and badly in need of the shrewd and carefully reasoned analysis that Feldman provides.   To understand the looming competition with China, we must understand the incentives that drive Chinese policy. Feldman offers an arresting take on that country’s secretive hierarchy, proposing that the hereditary “princelings” who reap the benefits of the complicated Chinese political system are actually in partnership with the meritocrats who keep the system full of fresh talent and the reformers who are trying to root out corruption and foster government accountability. He provides a clear-eyed analysis of the years ahead, showing how China’s rise presents opportunities as well as risks. Robust competition could make the U.S. leaner, smarter, and more pragmatic, and could drive China to greater respect for human rights. Alternatively, disputes over trade, territory, or human rights could jeopardize the global economic equilibrium—or provoke a catastrophic “hot war” that neither country wants.   The U.S. and China may be divided by political culture and belief, but they are also bound together by mutual self-interest. Cool War makes the case for competitive cooperation as the only way forward that can preserve the peace and make winners out of both sides.Advance praise for Cool War   “We are leaving the era of ‘Chimerica’—when China and America were economically joined at the hip—and entering the era of what Noah Feldman has justly and wittily dubbed ‘Cool War.’ Feldman anatomizes the rapid transformation of the Sino-American relationship from an unequal trading partnership into a new and heavily armed ambivalence. Just how cool the conflict stays, Feldman suggests, will be determined not in cyberspace or at sea but in international institutions. Cool War is essential reading for any serious student of the emergent bipolar order in the Asia-Pacific region.”—Niall Ferguson, New York Times bestselling author of Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire and Civilization: The West and the Rest   “By giving realism and liberal internationalism their due, and by giving credence to both naked self-interest and legal norms, Noah Feldman's dissection of the United States–China relationship is smart, balanced, and wise.”—Robert D. Kaplan, New York Times bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography

    

    It is here that agents are brought to be trained, disciplined, and when necessary, broken.In shocking fashion, Suvorov recounts the first day of training when he is forced to watch a film that shows a disaffected GRU agent being burned alive. This is how the GRU reveals to its trainees that there is only one way out of the organization – death. Other GRU methods are as physically torturous as the viewing of that film is terrifying: electric shocks used to punish a failure of memory; being pushed off a speeding train; hand-to-hand combat with death row prisoners recruited for their viciousness. All are employed in the training of a top agent.It is the agent's job – once he is in the field – to gather information in any way he can. No source of information is too small or too banal. Agents of the GRU are said to have attended every exhibition on the planet in the last fifty years – from exhibits of military electronics and tanks to cats and flowers, with one of their most successful missions carried out at an exhibition of Chinese goldfish. Above all else, loyalty to the GRU is stressed. Agents are to trust no one and to be prepared to take even the life of a best friend for an act against the GRU. Gradually, Suvorov became disillusioned with the GRU, and it was when he was forced to betray one of his best friends that he made up his mind to defect.

    Succinct, lucidly argued, and lively in its detail, this book offers a brilliant summation of the life's work of a master historian.

    Along the way he talks to the people living through the conflict - mothers, soldiers, businessmen, poets, politicians - whose memories of a contested past shape their attitudes, allegiances and hopes for the future. Together, their stories paint a vivid picture of a nation trapped between powerful forces, both political and historical.'Visceral, gripping, heartbreaking' Simon Sebag Montefiore

    Failing to gain recognition for his music in his native United States, he achieved celebrity in South America in the early 1960s and then, unbelievably, became the biggest rock star in the Soviet Union, where he was awarded the Lenin Prize and his icons were sold alongside those of Josef Stalin. His albums went gold from Bulgaria to Berlin. He made highly successful movies and, naively earnest, was an unwitting acolyte for socialism; everywhere he went, he was mobbed by his fans. And then, in 1986, at the height of his fame, right after 60 Minutes had devoted a segment to him, finally giving him the recognition he had never attained at home, he drowned in mysterious circumstances in East Berlin.Drawn magnetically to his story, Reggie Nadelson pursued the mystery of Dean Reed's life and death across America and Eastern Europe, her own journey mirroring his. As she traveled, the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union crumbled, and Reed became an increasingly alluring figure, his life an unrepeatable tale of the Cold War world. Encountering the characters— musicians and DJs, politicians and public figures, lovers and wives—who peopled Reed's life, Nadelson was drawn further and further into a seedy, often hilarious subculture of sex, politics, and rock 'n' roll. Part biography, part memoir and personal journey, Comrade Rockstar is an unforgettable chronicle of an utterly improbable life

    More men died in the Crimean War than in the American Civil War which followed soon after, but while the Civil War has been the subject of countless books, articles, and movies, the Crimean War has been virtually ignored.Part of the reason for this is that the causes of the Crimean War are not well understood. Just what made four empires go to war in the Black Sea in 1854? The outcome of the war was also partly responsible; it can be argued that the Crimean War changed nothing and that it is not at all clear why and for what half a million men died. Even the name by which this war is now known was not used at the time; until the twentieth century, this war was known in Britain as the Russian War.Yet the Crimean War is important for a number of reasons. Although it did not change the map of Europe and did not directly cause the fall of any of the combatants, it did indirectly shape the second half of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century in Europe. This war also introduced newspaper reporters and photographers who provided regular dispatches direct from the battlefield, something that became a feature of virtually every war which followed. The presence of these reporters gave the public some idea, almost for the first time, of what war was really like for the men who fought it.Although the Crimean War did not fundamentally change the world, nothing would be quite the same after its conclusion. This is the story of the Crimean War.Discover a plethora of topics such asThe March to WarThe Charge of the Light BrigadeDeath, Disease, and the Lady with the LampInkerman and the Death of the TsarThe Naval WarThe Fall of SevastopolAnd much more!

    Easternization is the defining trend of our age the growing wealth of Asian nations is transforming the international balance of power. This shift to the East is shaping the lives of people all over the world, the fate of nations, and the great questions of war and peace. A troubled but rising China is now challenging America s supremacy, and the ambitions of other Asian powers including Japan, North Korea, India, and Pakistan have the potential to shake the whole world. Meanwhile the West is struggling with economic malaise and political populism, the Arab world is in turmoil, and Russia longs to reclaim its status as a great power. As it becomes clear that the West s historic power and influence is receding, Gideon Rachman offers a road map to the turbulent process that will define the international politics of the twenty-first century."

    This is such a story. Brian Grover was a brilliant, young engineer who seemed to have everything. His parents wanted him to join the army and settle down, but he had other ideas. In 1931, in a move that was to dramatically change the course of his life, he fled to Russia seeking fortune and adventure. Set against a background of political and social turmoil, this heart-warming and exquisitely written true story of one man's courage, bravery, and unswerving determination to be with the woman he loved is an inspiration and a delight.

    Now many analysts believe that other countries are rising and the United States is in decline. Is the unipolar moment over? Is America finished as a superpower?In this book, Michael Beckley argues that the United States has unique advantages over other nations that, if used wisely, will allow it to remain the world’s sole superpower throughout this century. We are not living in a transitional, post-Cold War era. Instead, we are in the midst of what he calls the unipolar era—a period as singular and important as any epoch in modern history. This era, Beckley contends, will endure because the US has a much larger economic and military lead over its closest rival, China, than most people think and the best prospects of any nation to amass wealth and power in the decades ahead.Deeply researched and brilliantly argued, this book covers hundreds of years of great power politics and develops new methods for measuring power and predicting the rise and fall of nations. By documenting long-term trends in the global balance of power and explaining their implications for world politics, the book provides guidance for policymakers, businesspeople, and scholars alike.

    Sophie Pinkham saw all this and more in the course of ten years working, traveling, and reporting in Ukraine and Russia, over a period that included the Maidan revolution of 2013–14, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the ensuing war in eastern Ukraine.With a keen eye for the dark absurdities of post-Soviet society, Pinkham presents a dynamic account of contemporary Ukrainian life. She meets—among others—a charismatic doctor helping to smooth the transition to democracy even as he struggles with his own drug addiction, a Bolano-esque art gallerist prone to public nudity, and a Russian Jewish clarinetist agitating for Ukrainian liberation. These fascinating personalities, rendered in a bold, original style, deliver an indelible impression of a country on the brink.Black Square is necessary reading for anyone who wishes to learn not only the political roots of the current conflict in Ukraine but also the personal stories of the people who live it every day.

    What makes the Back Sea cultures distinctive, Ascherson agrues, is the way their comonent parts came together over the millennia to shape unique communities, languages, religions, and trade. As he shows with skill and persuasiveness, Black Sea patterns in the Caucasus, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Turkey, and Greece have linked the peoples of Europe and Asia together for centuries.

    It explores how the Cold War was shaped by domestic events in both the U.S. and the Soviet Union and presents a variety of other points of view on the conflict--Chinese, Latin American, European, and Vietnamese. The text includes both engaging anecdotes and quotes from primary sources to support key points and exemplify policies, and recent scholarship and materials from openings of the U.S., Soviet, and Chinese archives.

    This volume shows how the globalization of the Cold War during the 20th century created the foundations for most of today's key international conflicts, including the "war on terror." Odd Arne Westad examines the origins and course of Third World revolutions and the ideologies that drove the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. towards interventionism. He focuses on how these interventions gave rise to resentments and resistance that, in the end, helped to topple one and to seriously challenge the other superpower. In addition, he demonstrates how these worldwide interventions determined the international and domestic framework within which political, social and cultural changes took place in such countries as China, Indonesia, Iran, Ethiopia, Angola, Cuba, and Nicaragua. According to Westad, these changes, plus the ideologies, movements and states that interventionism stirred up, constitute the real legacy of the Cold War. Odd Arne Westad is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2004 he was named head of department and co-director of the new LSE Cold War Studies Centre. Professor Westad is the author, or editor, of ten books on contemporary international history including Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950 (2003) and, with Jussi Hanhimaki, The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (2003). In addition, he is a founding editor of the journal Cold War History.

    But now the oligarchs who profited from the post-Soviet turmoil are supporting the nation's football clubs and their dreams of glory, resulting in unprecedented success. Along this journey into the heart of Russian football, Marc Bennetts meets the managers, oligarchs, players, pundits and fans that define the Russian Premier league, now the fastest-growing and most intriguing football league in the world. From Andrei Arshavin and the national team's adventures at Euro 2008 to the symbolism of a club from war-torn Chechnya lifting the Russian FA Cup, Football Dynamo uncovers shocking revelations about corruption, hooliganism and racism, but also the true beauty of the game and the country.