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UN military interventions since the end of the Cold War have followed an inconsistent pattern. The US plays a key role in the UN's decisions. Its attention to crises forces other countries to define their attitudes more precisely. A formula for UN interventions would take the number of refugees into account, as well as the amount of media coverage of a crisis.

Issues discussed concern British and United Nations (UN) military operations in Sierra Leone, focusing on the UN's management of its armed forces. Topics addressed include the financial and political backing of the UN, and the relationship between the UN and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The later years of the Cold War were said do be dominated by the `arc of crisis' that stretched from Afghanistan, through Iran and the Middle East to Africa. The current arc stretches from the Caucasus through Afghanistan and the Pakistan to the Gulf, the Middle East and also as far as east and north Africa which is distinguished by the possibility of a complete political meltdown from central Asia to central Africa, which would have wider effects deep into three continents.

An analysis of the political and military strategy behind the possibility of launching a war in Iraq and the respective objectives of the US and the UK if such a war is launched. It is argued that the actual objective for a war in Iraq are still unclear and that possibly the best option for all involved would be to delay taking any action for the time being.

The global war on terror has become a political fact and recognized as popular fiction with the Madrid bomb of March 11. Madrid's 3/11 has taken on the guise of Europe's 9/11 and confirmed in the popular mind that the scourge of international terrorism affects all western countries and their allies.

The 2016 presidential election demonstrated the rise of a “restraint constituency” in American politics that openly questions Washington's bipartisan post-Cold War pursuit of a grand strategy of primacy or liberal hegemony. This constituency has been animated by the return of the Jacksonian tradition of American foreign policy, most notably in the candidacy of Donald Trump, which directly questions the benefits of alliance relationships as well as U.S. underwriting of an open global economic system. It also stresses the need for the United States to act unilaterally in defense of its core foreign policy interests. The resurgence of the Jacksonian tradition will make it difficult for the next President to reestablish a foreign policy consensus and combat perceptions of American decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the effect of the War on Terrorism on global politics, strategic alliances, and the petroleum industry. Topics include hostility, structural change, and NATO organization.

China's Eurasian frontiers have emerged as a major factor in Beijing's foreign policy through President Xi Jinping's “One Belt, One Road” strategy. The article argues that this strategy has been given impetus by the shifting geopolitical landscape in Central Asia resulting from the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia's relative decline, and Beijing's quest for stability in its restive province of Xinjiang. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conversation among the editors of ARIEL and Timothy Clark addresses his 2012 essay, "Derangements of Scale," published in Telemorphosis: Theory in the Era of Climate Change. In his essay, Clark suggests that scale effects play an important role in contemporary global politics and climate change, and he proposes a new, larger scale of literary study commensurate with an awareness of these issues. The editors discuss the implications of Clark's essay for postcolonial studies, the merits of his proposed method of literary interpretation, and the ramifications of his discussion of human agency. Clark takes up all of these issues in his response to the editors' conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The French government is reassessing the whole basis on which it trains and equips its diplomats for their calling, driven by a growing perception that French diplomacy has not been performing well. The 'Heisbourg Report' on the state of French diplomacy pulled no punches and accused French diplomats of being closed to international influences, untrained for modern diplomacy and stifled by a state-centrist view of modern international relations. On the face of it this can all be interpreted as a milestone in an underlying convergence between Francophone and Anglophone approaches to modern diplomacy and security. In very important respects, however, Britain and France are mirror images of each other. What is defined here as mirror imaging can be seen to exist at three different levels which are self-reinforcing, though not in obvious ways: in the pros and cons of each others' policy-making style; in their inextricable fate to develop the European Security and Defence Policy project; and even at the most abstract levels in the predicaments they face in the light of globalization. Seen in this context, it is evident that it is not merely the skills and techniques of French and British policy-makers that need to be re-examined, but rather their way of thinking about their own state and about the nature of the international system around them in an era when globalization is symptomatic of deep structural change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]