2024 წლის ზაფხული დასასრულს უახლოვდება და რონდელის ფონდის მკვლევრები და მეგობრები გვიზიარებენ მათი აზრით ამ დროისათვის საინტერესო საკითხავს.

წარმოგიდგენთ პუბლიკაციების ჩამონათვალს – შესანიშნავ სტატიებსა და წიგნებს როგორც საგარეო პოლიტიკისა და უსაფრთხოების სპეციალისტებისთვის, ისე გლობალური განვითარებითა და ტენდენციებით დაინტერესებული ნებისმიერი მკითხველისათვის.

 

Books:

 

Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine

Authors: Gen. David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts

General David Petraeus, who commanded the US-led coalitions in both Iraq, during the Surge, and Afghanistan and former CIA director, and the prize-winning historian Andrew Roberts, explore over 70 years of conflict, drawing significant lessons and insights from their fresh analysis of the past. Drawing on their different perspectives and areas of expertise, Petraeus and Roberts show how often critical mistakes have been repeated time and again, and the challenge, for statesmen and generals alike, of learning to adapt to various new weapon systems, theories and strategies. Among the conflicts examined are the Arab-Israeli wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the two Gulf Wars, the Balkan wars in the former Yugoslavia, and both the Soviet and Coalition wars in Afghanistan, as well as guerilla conflicts in Africa and South America. Conflict culminates with a bracing look at Putin’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine, yet another case study in the tragic results when leaders refuse to learn from history, and an assessment of the nature of future warfare.

 

Two years after the fact is probably too soon to write a full-fledged history of the most transformative conflict on the European continent in decades. But if you’re a native Ukrainian and Russian speaker and the best sourced reporter in Ukraine, it might not matter. Yaroslav Trofimov, the Wall Street Journal’s chief foreign-affairs correspondent, has been the dominant reporter on the ground during the most important foreign-policy earthquakes of the past half-decade, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. His latest book, Our Enemies Will Vanish, is part travelogue through the front lines in Ukraine, part fly on the wall in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s inner sanctum.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yaroslav Trofimov has spent months on end at the heart of the conflict, very often on its front lines. In this authoritative account, he traces the war’s decisive moments—from the battle for Kyiv to more recently the gruelling and bloody arm wrestle involving the Wagner group over Bakhmut—to show how Ukraine and its allies have turned the tide against Russia, one of the world’s great military powers, in a modern-day battle of David and Goliath. Putin had intended to conquer and annex Ukraine with a vicious blitzkrieg, redrawing the map of Europe in a few short weeks with seismic geopolitical consequences. But in the face of this existential threat, the Ukrainian people fought back, turning what looked like certain defeat into a great moral victory, even as the territorial battle continues to seesaw to this day. This is the story of the epic bravery of the Ukrainian people—people Trofimov knows very well.

 

Author: Nicholas J. Cull

We are living in turbulent times, witnessing renewed international conflict, resurgent nationalism, declining multilateralism, and a torrent of hostile propaganda. How are we to understand these developments and conduct diplomacy in their presence?

Nicholas J. Cull, the distinguished historian of propaganda, revisits the international media campaigns of the past in the light of the challenges of the present. His concept of Reputational Security deftly links issues of national image and outreach to the deepest needs of any state, rescuing them from the list of low-priority optional extras to which they are so often consigned in the West. Reputational Security, he argues, comes from being known and appreciated in the world. With clarity and determination, Cull considers core tasks, approaches, and opportunities available for international actors today, including counterpropaganda, media development, diaspora diplomacy, cultural work, and – perhaps most surprisingly of all – media disarmament. This book is crucial for all who care about responding to the threat of malign media disruption, revitalizing international cooperation, and establishing the Reputational Security we and our allies need to survive and flourish.

 

How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler

Author: Peter Pomerantsev

From one of our leading experts on disinformation, this inventive biography of the rogue WWII propagandist Sefton Delmer confronts hard questions about the nature of information war: what if you can’t fight lies with truth? Can a propaganda war ever be won?

In the summer of 1941, Hitler ruled Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. Britain was struggling to combat his powerful propaganda machine, crowing victory and smearing his enemies as liars and manipulators over his frequent radio speeches, blasted out on loudspeakers and into homes. British claims that Hitler was dangerous had little impact against this wave of disinformation. Except for the broadcasts of someone called Der Chef, a German who questioned Nazi doctrine. He had access to high-ranking German military secrets and spoke of internal rebellion. His listeners included German soldiers and citizens, as well as politicians in Washington DC who were debating getting into the war. And–most importantly–Der Chef was a fiction. He was a character created by the British propagandist Thomas Sefton Delmer, a unique weapon in the war.

Then, as author Peter Pomerantsev seeks to tell Delmer’s story, he is called into a wartime propaganda effort of his own: the US response to the invasion of Ukraine. In flashes forward to the present day, Pomerantsev weaves in what he’s learning from Delmer as he seeks to fight against Vladimir Putin’s tyranny and lies. This book is the story of Delmer and his modern investigator, as they each embark on their own quest to manipulate the passions of supporters and enemies, and to turn the tide of an information war, an extraordinary history that is informing the present before our eyes.

American Diplomacy’s Public Dimension: Practitioners as Change Agents in Foreign Relations

Author: Bruce Gregory
This is the first book to frame U.S. public diplomacy in the broad sweep of American diplomatic practice from the early colonial period to the present. It tells the story of how change agents in practitioner communities – foreign service officers, cultural diplomats, broadcasters, citizens, soldiers, covert operatives, democratizers, and presidential aides – revolutionized traditional government-to-government diplomacy and moved diplomacy with the public into the mainstream. This deeply researched study bridges practice and multi-disciplinary scholarship. It challenges the common narrative that U.S. public diplomacy is a Cold War creation that was folded into the State Department in 1999 and briefly found new life after 9/11. It documents historical turning points, analyzes evolving patterns of practice, and examines societal drivers of an American way of diplomacy: a preference for hard power over soft power, episodic commitment to public diplomacy correlated with war and ambition,an information-dominant communication style, and American exceptionalism. It is an account of American diplomacy’s public dimension, the people who shaped it, and the socialization and digitalization that today extends diplomacy well beyond the confines of embassies and foreign ministries.

Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West

Author: Calder Walton

Walton engagingly charts the complex interactions between the intelligence services of the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union (and its successor, Russia), and how the duplicity of their spies influenced key political moments. This book is the secret history of spies, and intelligence, during the Cold War. Drawing on a wealth of previously classified intelligence archives, in multiple countries and languages, it reveals how Western and Eastern governments used spies, sabotage, subversion, and information warfare to battle each other during the conflict that dominated the twentieth century. Far from being a closed historical chapter, however, it shows that conflict’s ghosts are still alive. Whether Britain, America, and other Western governments like it or not, in fact they are already engaged in a new clandestine struggle with Russia. This is not really a new Cold War, but instead part of a much longer-term conflict between Western powers and Russia- the Long Cold War- in which intelligence services are again at the frontline. As a work of Applied History, this book sets out stark warnings for Western countries amid this century’s great power competition, especially between the United States and China. It provides grand strategy lessons from the world’s first super-power competition for the new one currently underway- what to expect, how it can be won, how to avoid past mistakes, and how to avoid it escalating into a catastrophic hot war.
become dominant in chip design and manufacturing and applied this technology to military systems. America’s victory in the Cold War and its global military dominance stems from its ability to harness computing power more effectively than any other power. But here, too, China is catching up, with its chip-building ambitions and military modernization going hand in hand. America has let key components of the chip-building process slip out of its grasp, contributing not only to a worldwide chip shortage but also a new Cold War with a superpower adversary that is desperate to bridge the gap.

Chip War: The Quest to Dominate the World’s Most Critical Technology

Author: Chris Miller

At once edifying and entertaining, Miller’s book traces the history of the global semiconductor industry—and examines the key flash points today, with Beijing seeking to build up design and manufacturing capabilities and Washington hoping to slow China’s progress. An epic account of the decades-long battle to control what has emerged as the world’s most critical resource—microchip technology—with the United States and China increasingly in conflict.
You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything—from missiles to microwaves, smartphones to the stock market—runs on chips. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower. Now, America’s edge is slipping, undermined by competitors in Taiwan, Korea, Europe, and, above all, China. Today, as Chip War reveals, China, which spends more money each year importing chips than it spends importing oil, is pouring billions into a chip-building initiative to catch up to the US. At stake is America’s military superiority and economic prosperity.
Miller explains how the semiconductor came to play a critical role in modern life and how the U.S. become dominant in chip design and manufacturing and applied this technology to military systems. America’s victory in the Cold War and its global military dominance stems from its ability to harness computing power more effectively than any other power. But here, too, China is catching up, with its chip-building ambitions and military modernization going hand in hand. America has let key components of the chip-building process slip out of its grasp, contributing not only to a worldwide chip shortage but also a new Cold War with a superpower adversary that is desperate to bridge the gap.

On the Edge: Life along the Russia-China Border

Authors: Franck Billé and Caroline Humphrey

Based on their firsthand field research, anthropologists Billé and Humphrey present an enthralling portrayal of the 2,600-mile border between China and Russia as the line dividing two essentially different civilizations. The border between Russia and China winds for 2,600 miles through rivers, swamps, and vast taiga forests. It’s a thin line of direct engagement, extraordinary contrasts, frequent tension, and occasional war between two of the world’s political giants. Franck Billé and Caroline Humphrey have spent years traveling through and studying this important yet forgotten region. Drawing on pioneering fieldwork, they introduce readers to the lifeways, politics, and history of one of the world’s most consequential and enigmatic borderlands.

 

Author: Mathieu Segers 
Everyone interested in postwar Europe should read The Origins of European Integration by Mathieu Segers, one of the finest Europe scholars in the Netherlands. Segers—who recently died, much too young—was a historian at Maastricht University. This book, his last, is an academic but readable account of the intellectual debates that shaped Europe after World War II. 4 ForeignPolicy.com/2024/07/13/summer-reading-list-book-recommendations-ir-history-fiction-geopoliticsIt is often said that European integration was a response to the war. But as Segers recounts in fascinating detail, grandiose, competing plans for the future of Europe were already being floated in the 1920s and ’30s. The United States and Britain supported a trans-Atlantic International Trade Organisation, while diverse European groups proposed social, political, and economic reconciliation in small steps. Segers, impressed by so much intellectual imagination (“quite a contrast with today’s intellectual poverty”), calls it a “battle of the blueprints.” The European tendency to match “liberalism with socialism, enlightenment with romanticism” was at odds with the “‘Atlantic imagination’ of a ‘better world,’” he writes. The small-steps approach prevailed. First, Adolf Hitler’s war and the collapse of the European order tempered everyone’s plans. Instead of abstract projects, Europeans prioritized reconstruction and peace. Second, the emergence of a common enemy—totalitarian communism—led European planners to stop competing and make compromises instead. The United States, concerned about the looming Cold War, decided to support this practical, hands-on approach. A good choice: This, ultimately, is what gave Europe peace and prosperity.

Dictatorship and Information: Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Communist Europe and China

Author: Martin K. Dimitrov

Dimitrov brings to light the lesser-known techniques of mass surveillance in Leninist party-states, showing how such governments obsessively collected information on dissenters, not just to target them but to preempt protest by granting economic concessions in restive areas. Fear pervades dictatorial regimes. Citizens fear leaders, the regime’s agents fear superiors, and leaders fear the masses. The ubiquity of fear in such regimes gives rise to the “dictator’s dilemma,” where autocrats do not know the level of opposition they face and cannot effectively neutralize domestic threats to their rule. The dilemma has led scholars to believe that autocracies are likely to be short-lived.
Yet, some autocracies have found ways to mitigate the dictator’s dilemma. As Martin K. Dimitrov shows in Dictatorship and Information, substantial variability exists in the survival of nondemocratic regimes, with single-party polities having the longest average duration. Offering a systematic theory of the institutional solutions to the dictator’s dilemma, Dimitrov argues that single-party autocracies have fostered channels that allow for the confidential vertical transmission of information, while also solving the problems associated with distorted information.
To explain how this all works, Dimitrov focuses on communist regimes, which have the longest average lifespan among single-party autocracies and have developed the most sophisticated information-gathering institutions. Communist regimes face a variety of threats, but the main one is the masses. Dimitrov therefore examines the origins, evolution, and internal logic of the information-collection ecosystem established by communist states to monitor popular dissent. Drawing from a rich base of evidence across multiple communist regimes and nearly 100 interviews, Dimitrov reshapes our understanding of how autocrats learn–or fail to learn–about the societies they rule, and how they maintain–or lose–power.

 

American Diplomacy Toward Lebanon

Author: David Hale

David Hale examines several key episodes in US diplomatic history with Lebanon, starting with the country’s independence in 1943, up until the present moment. Crucial events such as the Lebanese Civil War, the Cedar Revolution, and more recently the spillover from the Syrian Civil War, are examined within the context of the respective US government administrations of the time and their foreign policy strategies. Hale asks whether policy-makers had realistic and compelling goals, the right strategy, sufficient means, and capable diplomats in its diplomatic approaches towards Lebanon through the years.

 

Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media

Author: Marc Owen Jones

Jones’s astonishing study details the use of social media and communication technology by governments, notably Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as tools of tyranny and propaganda. This deception pollutes public discourse across the Middle East and, more important, inhibits the critical thinking of the citizenry. Digital deception is the new face of information warfare. Social media has been weaponised by states and commercial entities alike, as bots and trolls proliferate and users are left to navigate an infodemic of fake news and disinformation. In the Persian Gulf and the wider Middle East, where authoritarian regimes continue to innovate and adapt in the face of changing technology, online deception has reached new levels of audacity. From pro-Saudi entities that manipulate the tweets of the US president, to the activities of fake journalists and Western PR companies that whitewash human rights abuses, Marc Owen Jones’ meticulous investigative research uncovers the full gamut of tactics used by Gulf regimes and their allies to deceive domestic and international audiences. In an age of global deception, this book charts the lengths bad actors will go to when seeking to impose their ideology and views on citizens around the world.

The China Nightmare: The Grand Ambitions of a Decaying State

Author: Dan Blumenthal 

This is a book about China’s grand strategy and its future as an ambitious, declining, and dangerous rival power. Once the darling of U.S. statesmen, corporate elites, and academics, the People’s Republic of China has evolved into America’s most challenging strategic competitor. Its future appears increasingly dystopian. This book tells the story of how China got to this place and analyzes where it will go next and what that will mean for the future of U.S. strategy. The China Nightmare makes an extraordinarily compelling case that China’s future could be dark and the free world must prepare accordingly.

Author: Zsuzsanna Szelenyi

Szelenyi, herself a former Hungarian politician, provides a balanced and detailed account of Hungary’s slide from liberal democracy toward right-wing populist nationalism under Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Hungary, once the poster-child of liberal democracy, is fast becoming an autocracy under Viktor Orbán. After winning an absolute majority in 2010, Orbán launched a series of ‘reforms’, fundamentally undermining the country’s twenty-year, post-Cold War liberal consensus. For supporters and foes alike, the rise and rise of Hungary’s prime minister is a vivid example of how democracy can be subverted from within.

Zsuzsanna Szelényi, a leading member of Orbán’s Fidesz in its early years, has witnessed first-hand the party’s shift from liberalism to populist nationalism. Offering an insider’s account of Fidesz’s evolution since its creation, she explains how the party rose to leadership of the country under Orbán and made sweeping legal, political and economic changes to solidify its grip on power-from reining in the public media to slashing the number of parliamentary seats. She answers a key question: why has Orbán been so successful, winning widespread support within Hungary and wielding considerable influence in European politics? And how can Hungary’s opposition party Together, which she co-founded in 2014, work to turn the country around?

The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the CIA and the origins of America’s invasion of Iraq

Author: Steve Coll

The Achilles Trap masterfully untangles the people, ploys of power, and geopolitics that led to America’s disastrous war with Iraq and, for the first time, details America’s fundamental miscalculations during its decades-long relationship with Saddam Hussein. Beginning with Saddam’s rise to power in 1979 and the birth of Iraq’s secret nuclear weapons program, Steve Coll traces Saddam’s motives by way of his inner circle. He brings to life the diplomats, scientists, family members, and generals who had no choice but to defer to their leader—a leader directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as well as the torture or imprisonment of hundreds of thousands more.

 

Articles:

 

When sameness becomes a colonial tool of oppression

Author: Natalia Antelava

Former Soviet Republics have a lot in common with countries that have struggled against Western colonialism. So why don’t we tend to see Russia as a colonizer?
Every one of us is a carrier of a colonial legacy, either as a victim or the beneficiary—or sometimes both. Colonialism is the system of oppression that our world is built on. As we obsess with decolonizing everything from our schools to industries and corporations, it is useful to remember how easily our understanding of colonialism can be manipulated unless we first decolonize ourselves.

Why China’s shuttle diplomacy on Ukraine has gained pace

Authors: Klaus W. Larres and Lea Thome

Beijing’s diplomats have continued to be active on the international stage, keen on positioning China as a global peace mediator. On July 28, China’s special representative on Eurasian affairs Li Hui embarked on his fourth round of shuttle diplomacy on the Ukraine war, travelling to Brazil, South African and Indonesia.

China’s renewed attempts at shuttle diplomacy offer insights into Beijing’s intensified interest in resolving the Russia-Ukraine war.

The Return of Peace Through Strength

Author: Robert C. O’Brien

Si vis pacem, para bellum is a Latin phrase that emerged in the fourth century that means “If you want peace, prepare for war.” The concept’s origin dates back even further, to the second-century Roman emperor Hadrian, to whom is attributed the axiom, “Peace through strength—or, failing that, peace through threat.”

 

A Foreign Policy for the World as It Is

Author: Ben Rhodes

“America is back.” In the early days of his presidency, Joe Biden repeated those words as a starting point for his foreign policy. The phrase offered a bumper-sticker slogan to pivot away from Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership. It also suggested that the United States could reclaim its self-conception as a virtuous hegemon, that it could make the rules-based international order great again.

 

China and Russia Are Breaking the World Into Pieces

Author: Hal Brands

From Ukraine to Gaza to the South China Sea, the world is littered with crises. International cooperation is paralyzed by diplomatic rivalry; techno-optimism has given way to a pervasive techno-anxiety . The sole superpower is limping toward an election with fateful consequences, as its rivals feverishly arm themselves for wars present and, perhaps, future. Each of these challenges, in turn, is symptomatic of a deeper historic shift underway.

China’s Unique Challenge to the West

Author: David P. Goldman

If China succeeds, or rather, continues to succeed, in assimilating the six billion people of the Global South into its economic sphere, it will be the world’s dominant power. It is well on its way. Today, China graduates more engineers and installs more industrial robots than the rest of the world combined, and it leads the world in factory automation, telecom infrastructure, nuclear and solar power, and new energy vehicles.

 

The First War of the Energy Transition

Authors: Theresa Sabonis-Helf and Lauren Herzer Risi

Energy security—including access to critical minerals which are vital for the green energy transition—are being impacted by the Russia-Ukraine war and growing tensions between Russia and the West. In this interview, we bring together two leaders to discuss the current state of energy as it relates to the conflict.

 

The Age of Energy Insecurity

Authors: Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O’Sullivan

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its broader confrontation with the West a striking example of how the ambitions of a single leader can create energy insecurity for broad swaths of the world’s population and the war serves as a reminder that great-power politics never really went away. The U.S.-Chinese contest, however, may ultimately prove more consequential. The intensifying desire of the United States and China to not rely too much on each other is remaking supply chains and reinvigorating industrial policy to a degree not seen in decades.

 

Podcasts:

Matryoshka of Lies

by Ukrainska Pravda in English

In their season premiere, they challenge the propaganda narratives surrounding Russia. Ukrainian journalist and author Maksym Eristavi takes you on a journey to uncover the deeper story and expose serial imperial and colonial behavior.