In the 21st century, the world is confronted by threats of global scale that cannot be tackled without collective action. Although global government as such does not exist, formal and informal institutions, practices, and initiatives--together forming "global governance"--bring a greater measure of [...]

A singular development of the post Cold-War era is the use of military force to protect human beings. From Rwanda to Kosovo, Sierra Leone to East Timor, and more recently Libya to Cote d'Ivoire, soldiers have rescued some civilians in some of the world's most notorious war zones. Could more be saved[...]

This is an authoritative, one-volume, and independent treatment of the UN's sixty-year history written by distinguished scholars, analysts, and practitioners. Citations and suggested readings contain a wealth of primary and secondary references to the history, politics, and law of the world organiza[...]

Maritime Piracy is now a pressing global issue, and this work seeks to provide a concise and informative introduction to the area. Never truly having receded into a romanticized past, seaborne banditry's rapid growth was stimulated by low risks and increasingly high rewards. Currently, obsolete, inc[...]

Arguing forcefully that changing times are a clarion call for new thinking, this book convincingly shows that if humanitarian organizations continue to operate as they have in the past, they will fail to help the very victims whom they try to save. Focusing especially on the emergence of 'new wars,'[...]

Six decades after its establishment, the United Nations and its system of related agencies and programs are perpetually in crisis. While the twentieth-century's world wars gave rise to ground-breaking efforts at international organization in 1919 and 1945, today's UN is ill-equipped to deal with con[...]

Friends and foes of international cooperation puzzle about how to explain order, stability, and predictability in a world without a central authority.[...]

With some 50 billion people living under duress and threatened by wars and disasters in 2012, the demand for relief worldwide has reached unprecedented levels. Humanitarianism is now a multi-billion dollar enterprise, and aid agencies are obliged to respond to a range of economic forces in order [...]

One of the most important dynamics of the postDCold War period consists of simultaneously downsizing the armed forces and assigning them new roles. As a result, military-civilian humanitarianism_the coming together of military forces and civilian agencies to deal with the human suffering from comple[...]