New Books in Diplomatic History

In The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur: War, Diplomacy, and Knowledge in Habsburg Europe (Cornell UP, 2022), Suzanne Sutherland explores the role of the military entrepreneur and explains how these international military figures emerged from, and exploited, the seventeenth century's momentous political, military, commercial, and scientific changes. During the Thirty Years' War, these figures traveled rapidly and frequently across Europe using private wealth, credit, and connections to raise and command the armies that rulers desperately needed. Using the individual of Raimondo Montecuccoli (1609–80), a middling nobleman from the Duchy of Modena, who became one of the most powerful men in the Austrian Habsburg monarchy, Sutherland uncovers the influence of military entrepreneurs not only commanders but also diplomats, natural philosophers, information brokers, clients, and subjects on the battlefield. The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur explains how Montecuccoli addressed battlefield, court, and family responsibilities while contributing to the world of scholarship on an often violent, fragmented political-military landscape. As a result, Sutherland shifts the perspective on war away from the ruler and his court to instead examine the figures supplying force, along with their methods, networks, and reflections on those experiences.Douglas Bell is a writer, teacher, and historian who lives in the Netherlands. His research interests center on American military history, American foreign policy, German history, and European Studies. Tweet him @douglasibell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI's director, John Torpey interviewed Laetitia Bucaille about the factors that explain variation in resentment and grievances in former colonies drawing from the cases of Algeria and South Africa. Bucaille delves deeper into the case of Algeria and the affected populations whose identities were crossed cut by institutions and personal experiences as a former colony. Moreover, she explains how Algeria, considered not a colony but a French territory, still implemented discriminating laws against native Algerians who were deemed as second-class citizens. Finally, the author discusses the long-lasting consequences of this decolonization process and how it gets intertwined with politics and anti-Islam narratives in France. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If there’s a starting point to the relationship between Russia and China, it’s likely the 1650s—when Manchu and Cossack forces clash near Khabarovsk, and when Russia sends its first, and unsuccessful, embassy to China.It’s an inopportune start to four centuries of trade, diplomacy, imperialism, ideology–and a lot of personal griping between different Russian and Chinese leaders, as charted by Philip Snow’s China and Russia: Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord (Yale University Press, 2023)Snow writes of Russian territorial grabs, China’s reliance on its northern neighbor for diplomatic support and training, Russia’s confused attitude towards Asia—and then the rapid reversal of power and status with the death of Stalin.In this interview, Philip and I talk about the China-Russia relationship, spanning four centuries–and what that history tells us about China and Russia’s relations today.Philip Snow has traveled extensively in Russia and China since the 1960s and has lived in Hong Kong since 1994. An expert in China’s international relations, he is the author of The Star Raft: China’s Encounter with Africa (Cornell University Press: 1989) and The Fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China, and the Japanese Occupation (Yale University Press: 2003)You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of China and Russia. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As reports of mass killings in Bosnia spread in the middle of 1995, Germans faced a dilemma. Should the Federal Republic deploy its military to the Balkans to prevent a genocide, or would departing from postwar Germany’s pacifist tradition open the door to renewed militarism? In short, when Germans said “never again,” did they mean “never again Auschwitz” or “never again war”?Looking beyond solemn statements and well-meant monuments, Andrew I. Port examines how the Nazi past shaped German responses to the genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda—and further, how these foreign atrocities recast Germans’ understanding of their own horrific history. In the late 1970s, the reign of the Khmer Rouge received relatively little attention from a firmly antiwar public that was just “discovering” the Holocaust. By the 1990s, the genocide of the Jews was squarely at the center of German identity, a tectonic shift that inspired greater involvement in Bosnia and, to a lesser extent, Rwanda. Germany’s increased willingness to use force in defense of others reflected the enthusiastic embrace of human rights by public officials and ordinary citizens. At the same time, conservatives welcomed the opportunity for a more active international role involving military might—to the chagrin of pacifists and progressives at home.Making the lessons, limits, and liabilities of politics driven by memories of a troubled history harrowingly clear, Never Again: Germans and Genocide After the Holocaust (Harvard UP, 2023) is a story with deep resonance for any country confronting a dark past.Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Again and again, American taxpayers are asked to open their wallets and pay for a national security machine that costs $1 trillion operate. Yet time and time again, the US government gets it wrong on critical issues. So what can be done? Enter bestselling author Thom Shanker and defense expert Andrew Hoehn. With decades of national security expertise between them and access to virtually every expert, they look at what's going wrong in national security and how to make it go right.Age of Danger: Keeping America Safe in an Era of New Superpowers, New Weapons, and New Threats (Hachette Books, 2023) looks at the major challenges facing America--from superpowers like Russia and China to emerging threats like pandemics, cybersecurity, climate change, and drones--and reimagines the national security apparatus into something that can truly keep Americans safe. Weaving together expert analysis with exclusive interviews from a new generation of national security leaders, Shanker and Hoehn argue that the United States must create an industrial-grade, life-saving machine out of a system that, for too long, was focused only on deterring adversaries and carrying out global military operations. It is a timely and crucial call to action--a call that if heeded, could save Americans lives, money, and our very future on the global stage.AJ Woodhams hosts the "War Books" podcast. You can subscribe on Apple here and on Spotify here. War Books is on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As European empires crumbled in the 20th century, the power structures that had dominated the world for centuries were up for renegotiation. Yet instead of a rebirth for democracy, what emerged was a silent coup – namely, the unstoppable rise of global corporate power.Exposing the origins of this epic power grab as well as its present-day consequences, Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Claire Provost & Matt Kennard is the result of two investigative journalist's reports from 30 countries around the world. It provides an explosive guide to the rise of a corporate empire that now dictates how resources are allocated, how territories are governed, and how justice is defined.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does Xi Jinping want, and what is he afraid of? What is the future of China's relationship with Russia? What should the United States be doing to counter China? Matt Pottinger, Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and former Deputy National Security Advisor, joins Madison's Notes to answer these questions and others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Khmer Nationalist: Sơn Ngc Thành, the CIA, and the Transformation of Cambodia (Northern Illinois UP, 2023) is a political history of Cambodia from World War II until 1975, examining the central role of Sõn Ngoc Thành. The book is a story of nationalist movements, political intrigue, coup attempts, war, and American intelligence operations. Matthew Jagel shows how central Sõn Ngoc Thành was to the rise of Cambodian nationalism, the brief period of Japanese dominance, the fight for independence from France, and the establishment of ties with the United States. Factoring Sõn Ngoc Thành into a discussion of Cambodian political history is a major contribution that will advance scholarly discourse about Cold War politics in Southeast Asia. Sõn Ngoc Thành’s career requires us to think about pre-Khmer Rouge Cambodia with much greater nuance.Dr. Matthew Jagel earned his MA at Northern Illinois University with a thesis entitled “PHILCAG: The History of Filipino Involvement in the Vietnam War” and his Ph.D. with a dissertation on Sõn Ngoc Thành (the source material for this book). Khmer Nationalist: Son Ngoc Thanh, the CIA, and the Transformation of Cambodia is his first book. He has taught at Northern Illinois University and worked for NIU’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Dr. Jagel currently teaches at St. Xavier University in Chicago. When he’s not doing all this amazing academic work, he’s causing trouble with Dr. Eric Jones, his co-host and unindicted co-conspirator, on Napalm in the Morning: The Vietnam War through Film, a podcast that asks serious questions about why John Wayne is facing the wrong way at sunset in The Green Berets and praises the artistic triumph that is Operation Dumbo Drop.Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Southeast Asia and South America are regions made up of largely illiberal states lacking stabilizing great powers or collective identities. But despite persistent territorial disputes, regime instability, and interstate rivalries, both regions have avoided large-scale war for decades. What accounts for the lack of war in these regions, and importantly, how are conflicts managed?In Practicing Peace: Conflict Management in Southeast Asia and South America (Oxford University Press, 2022), Dr. Aarie Glas offers a comparative regional perspective on conflict management and diplomacy in Southeast Asia and South America. Dr. Glas finds that regional interstate relations are shaped by particular habitual dispositions—discrete sets of processual and substantive qualities of relations understood and enacted by diplomatic communities of practice. Different habitual dispositions in each case shape conflict management and regionalism in important ways, and lead to a tolerance of limited regional violence. Dr. Glas expands on new developments in social International Relations theory to develop a practice-oriented and interpretive account of regional relations and explores the existence of habitual dispositions across crucial cases of regional conflict management, including the Southeast Asian response to the Preah Vihear dispute in 2011 and the South American response to the Cenepa conflict in 1995.Drawing on novel research methods and detailed interviews with regional practitioners, Practicing Peace challenges existing scholarly claims of peace in Southeast Asia and South America. Instead, Dr. Glas argues that officials successfully manage pervasive conflict short of war in both regions. He provides an in-depth look into how diplomacy unfolds and peace is practiced within diplomatic communities, from government actors to organizational officials, as they attempt to respond to and resolve territorial disputes.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Using a multidisciplinary approach and case studies based on fieldwork in nine countries scattered across Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Oceania, China in the Global South: Impact and Perceptions (Springer, 2023) scrutinizes the frequently ignored agency of the Global South sub-national actors in their interactions with rising China. Diverse case studies engage with two interrelated questions. What are the real economic, political, and social impacts of China’s growing presence in the Global South? And, more critically, how do the state and societies of the Global South frame and interpret their interactions with China amid its rise? Consequently, the volume analyzes how sub-national actors respond to China’s emergence as an increasingly consequential power in the Global South and whether they are attracted by cooperation models proposed by Beijing or deterred by its newfound assertiveness.Each chapter of this volume identifies and fills a gap in the literature on China’s rise by offering a nuanced perspective on its relations with the Global South that captures such variables as social context, intersubjective meanings, and identities. They also illuminate often neglected aspects of China’s role in the international politics of development and identify emerging trends in South-South cooperation. Critically, the central argument of the volume is that the agency of sub-state and non-state actors in developing countries meaningfully influences the evolution of their interactions with China. Far from being passive recipients of Beijing-constructed images and cooperation models, these actors are fully aware of their identity and interests and respond accordingly to China’s increasingly visible presence in the Global South.All chapters are based on extensive fieldwork and intimate knowledge of spaces whose dynamics often seem complicated or obscure to outside observers. Building their analysis on firsthand empirical findings, each contributor provides an improved and nuanced understanding of China’s interactions with diverse, frequently divergent, and complex state-society systems of the Global South. A multidisciplinary approach enriches the volume and allows us to bring together insights from International Relations, Political Geography, Government, Development Studies, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Media Studies, and International Communication Studies.Theodor Tudoroiu is a senior lecturer at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine campus, Trinidad and Tobago. Anna Kuteleva is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work intertwines international relations, development studies, energy security, and feminist-informed approaches to politics.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices