The post-cold war era presented security challenges that at one level are a continuation of the cold war era; at another level, these phenomena manifested in new forms. Whether the issues of economics and trade, transfer of technologies, challenges of intervention, or humanitarian crisis, the countries of the South (previously pejoratively labelled “Third World” or “developing” countries) have continued to address these challenges within the framework of their capabilities and concerns. The volume explores defence diplomacies, national security challenges and strategies, dynamics of diplomatic manoeuvers and strategic resource management of Latin American, southern African and Asian countries.

This book analyzes examples of strategic engagement in order to identify the factors which contribute to the success or failure of defence diplomacy in preventing interstate conflict. For more than a century, nations have engaged in defence diplomacy to cultivate mutual understanding and mitigate conflict. A subset of defence diplomacy is strategic engagement, defined as peacetime defence diplomacy between nations that are actual or potential adversaries. This book analyzes three cases of strategic engagement in order to elucidate the factors which contribute to the success or failure of this diplomacy in preventing conflict. It uses an inductive framework to compare strategic engagement in the following cases: Anglo– German defence diplomacy prior to World War I; U.S.–Soviet defence diplomacy during the Cold War; and post-Cold War U.S.–China defence diplomacy. Based upon archival, literature, and personal interview research, the book argues that defence diplomacy can mitigate the risk of interstate conflict between potential adversaries. The lessons learned from this book can be employed to discern the significant elements conducive to achieving a successful outcome of strategic engagement and averting conflict or even war. This book will be of much interest to students of defence studies, diplomacy studies, foreign policy and international relations.

Including chapters from some of the leading experts in the field this Handbook provides a full overview of the nature and challenges of modern diplomacy and includes a tour d'horizon of the key ways in which the theory and practice of modern diplomacy are evolving in the 21st Century.

The military has long been associated with hard power, yet it is engaged in public diplomacy as it represents the U.S. abroad and facilitates the diffusion of ideas. Military Soft Power examines one such aspect of U.S. public diplomacy: how the United States extends its influence or “soft power” worldwide through military educational exchange programs hosted by the United States’ elite military schools, its war and staff colleges. The presence of international officers at U.S. military schools is substantial, yet very little is known about the long-term impacts of these exchanges. This study shows how the exchanges build personal and professional networks that then serve as important conduits of ideas between the United States and other countries. These networks help to improve interoperability between the U.S. military and its partner nations and to extend U.S. influence through military soft power rather than through hard power. This is an alternative bottom-up view of how military organizations can influence political processes and decisions through the development of cross-border communities of military professionals. This involves a two-step model of socialization. First, individuals (military officers) are socialized by a large political institution (the U.S. through its war and staff colleges). Second, these individuals function as idea entrepreneurs, bringing new ideas, beliefs, and practices home with them. There is a need for policies and programs that help countries successfully transition from authoritarian governance to democratic rule as well as countries undergoing democratic revolutions and those seeking more gradual change. Exchange programs are one pathway, in which an important group of citizens (military officers and their families) can experience the everyday functioning of democratic practices and institutions. This unique survey provides timely insights into the important political impacts of military exchange programs and how military institutions and their personnel influence international politics beyond simply being used as an instrument of coercion.

Between 1991 and 2002, Sierra Leone was wracked by a devastating civil war and the complete collapse of state institutions. Since then, however, the UK’s contribution to post-war reconstruction has been widely held up as an example of successful stabilisation and state-building – particularly of the country’s security and justice institutions. Securing Sierra Leone, 1997–2013 examines how the process of state-building through security-sector reform developed in Sierra Leone, and the impact of this experience on international conceptualisations of such reform as well as on international interventions more broadly. The study is the most detailed of its kind, based on a comprehensive analysis of UK engagement in Sierra Leone between 1997 and 2013, including a host of first-hand accounts from key local and international actors. This monograph shows why the UK intervention in Sierra Leone has been a relative success. However, it also questions the sustainability of state-building efforts that are driven by concepts of the liberal state. In Sierra Leone, critical challenges remain, not least in the combination of a particular vision of what a state should look like and the unrealistic expectations of progress on the part of the international community.

This book examines the questions and perennial themes that run through British overseas policy since 1945, drawing on new research by leading historians and scholars in the field.