University Presses strive to publish titles of relevance, that advance scholarship and expand horizons. As a publisher of history, politics, and security studies, with a strong focus on Russia, Central Asia, and nuclear weapons, the Stanford University Press list is often starkly relevant to current affairs. The current war in Ukraine has revealed a broad lack of understanding of the region, its history, and its politics. It has also heightened concerns around authoritarianism, regional security, and the potential fragility of weapons treaties. Included here is a range of Stanford titles from the past decade that address various aspects of the current situation, ranging from studies of war in all its forms (Kaldor), Russian attitudes to religion and weapons (Adamsky), through to the development and fate of post-Soviet states (Kassenova).
The Bleeding Wound: The Soviet War in Afghanistan and the Collapse of the Soviet System »
"Yaacov Ro'i had the prescience to study the Soviet-Afghan War's effect on veterans and civilians at a time when most observers could only speculate about how the war would affect the USSR and the newly independent states. This book brings his original research into dialogue with new work and materials that have become available in intervening decades. An important and timely study that anyone interested in the region should read."
—Artemy Kalinovsky, Temple University
By the mid-1980s, public opinion in the USSR had begun to turn against Soviet involvement in Afghanistan: the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989) had become a long, painful, and unwinnable conflict, one that Mikhail Gorbachev referred to as a "bleeding wound" in a 1986 speech. The eventual decision to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan created a devastating ripple effect within Soviet society that, this book argues, became a major factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In this comprehensive survey of the effects of the war on Soviet society and politics, Yaacov Ro'i analyzes the opinions of Soviet citizens on a host of issues connected with the war and documents the systemic change that would occur when Soviet leadership took public opinion into account. The war and the difficulties that the returning veterans faced undermined the self-esteem and prestige of the Soviet armed forces and provided ample ammunition for media correspondents who sought to challenge the norms of the Soviet system. Through extensive analysis of Soviet newspapers and interviews conducted with Soviet war veterans and regular citizens in the early 1990s, Ro'i argues that the effects of the war precipitated processes that would reveal the inbuilt limitations of the Soviet body politic and contribute to the dissolution of the USSR by 1991.
Read Yaacov Ro'i's New Op-Ed on Politico EU,"Russia risks another ‘bleeding wound’ in Ukraine" »
The Neighborhood Effect: The Imperial Roots of Regional Fracture in Eurasia
Why are certain regions of the world mired in conflict? And how did some regions in Eurasia emerge from the Cold War as peaceful and resilient? Why do conflicts ignite in Bosnia, Donbas, and Damascus—once on the peripheries of mighty empires—yet other postimperial peripheries like the Baltics or Central Europe enjoy quiet stability?
Anna Ohanyan argues for the salience of the neighborhood effect: the complex regional connectivity among ethnic-religious communities that can form resilient regions. In an account of Eurasian regional formation that stretches back long before the nation-state, Ohanyan refutes the notion that stable regions are the luxury of prosperous, stable, democratic states. She examines case studies from regions once on the fringes of the Habsburg, Ottoman, and Russian Empires to find the often-overlooked patterns of bonding and bridging, or clustering and isolation of political power and social resources, that are associated with regional resilience or fracture in those regions today.
With comparative examples from Latin America and Africa, The Neighborhood Effect offers a new explanation for the conflicts we are likely to see emerge as the unipolar US-led order dissolves, making the fractures in regional neighborhoods painfully evident. And it points the way to the future of peacebuilding: making space for the smaller links and connections that comprise a stable neighborhood.
Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy: Religion, Politics, and Strategy »
"Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy is an extraordinary book that changes the way we think about the world, the use of nuclear weapons, and the role of religion in modern warfare."
—Stephen Peter Rosen, Harvard University
A nuclear priesthood has arisen in Russia. From portable churches to the consecration of weapons systems, the Russian Orthodox Church has been integrated into every facet of the armed forces to become a vital part of Russian national security, politics, and identity. This extraordinary intertwining of church and military is nowhere more visible than in the nuclear weapons community, where the priesthood has penetrated all levels of command and the Church has positioned itself as a guardian of the state's nuclear potential. Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy considers how, since the Soviet collapse in 1991, the Church has worked its way into the nuclear forces, the most significant wing of one of the world's most powerful military organizations.
Dmitry Adamsky describes how the Orthodox faith has merged with Russian national identity as the Church continues to expand its influence on foreign and domestic politics. The Church both legitimizes and influences Moscow's assertive national security strategy in the twenty-first century. This book sheds light on the role of faith in modern militaries and highlights the implications of this phenomenon for international security. Ultimately, Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy interrogates the implications of the confluence of religion and security for other members of the nuclear club, beyond Russia.
Read Adamsky's Op-Ed in Foreign Affairs, "Russia’s Menacing Mix of Religion and Nuclear Weapons" »
Proxy War: The Least Bad Option »
"Proxy War offers an excellent assessment of one of today's most important, and least understood, forms of warfare. Tyrone Groh compellingly argues that proxy war is often essential and yet often falls short."
—Daniel Byman, Georgetown University
The U.S. has indirectly intervened in international conflicts on a relatively large scale for decades. Yet little is known about the immediate usefulness or long-term effectiveness of contemporary proxy warfare. In cases when neither direct involvement nor total disengagement are viable, proxy warfare is often the best option, or, rather, the least bad option. Tyrone L. Groh describes the hazards and undesirable aspects of this strategy, as well as how to deploy it effectively.
Proxy War explores the circumstances under which indirect warfare works best, how to evaluate it as a policy option, and the possible risks and rewards. Groh offers a fresh look at this strategy, using uncommon and understudied cases to test the concepts presented. These ten case studies investigate and illustrate the different types and uses of proxy war under varying conditions. What arises is a complete theoretical model of proxy warfare that can be applied to a wide range of situations. Proxy war is here to stay and will likely become more common as players on the international stage increasingly challenge U.S. dominance, making it more important than ever to understand how and when to deploy it.
Beyond the Euromaidan: Comparative Perspectives on Advancing Reform in Ukraine »
"This excellent volume identifies the principal obstacles that have restrained reform in Ukraine over the past twenty-five years. It offers smart recommendations for overcoming those barriers and, using a comparative approach, suggests models from other countries that could help put Ukraine on the path endorsed by the Maidan Revolution—to become a normal European state."
—Steven Pifer, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution; former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine
Beyond the Euromaidan examines the prospects for advancing reform in Ukraine in the wake of the February 2014 Euromaidan revolution and Russian invasion. It examines six crucial areas where reform is needed: deep internal identity divisions, corruption, the constitution, the judiciary, plutocratic "oligarchs," and the economy. On each of these topics, the book provides one chapter that focuses on Ukraine's own experience and one chapter that examines the issue in the broader context of international practice.
Placing Ukraine in comparative perspective shows that many of the country's problems are not unique and that other countries have been able to address many of the issues currently confronting Ukraine. As with the constitution, there are no easy answers, but careful analysis shows that some solutions are better than others. Ultimately, the authors propose a series of reforms that can help Ukraine make the best of a bad situation. The book stresses the need to focus on reforms that might not have immediate effect, but that comparative experience shows can solve fundamental contextual challenges. Finally, the book shows that pressures from outside Ukraine can have a strong positive influence on reform efforts inside the country.
Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb »
"With the sweeping and inspiring Atomic Steppe, Togzhan Kassenova has unearthed insights new even to those of us who had front-row seats to Kazakhstan's nuclear saga, telling a story both accurate and humane. Anyone interested in Eurasia or in health, environmental, and nuclear challenges should read this engrossing book."
—William Courtney, former US Ambassador to Kazakhstan
Atomic Steppe tells the untold true story of how the obscure country of Kazakhstan said no to the most powerful weapons in human history. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the marginalized Central Asian republic suddenly found itself with the world's fourth largest nuclear arsenal on its territory. Would it give up these fire-ready weapons—or try to become a Central Asian North Korea?
This book takes us inside Kazakhstan's extraordinary and little-known nuclear history from the Soviet period to the present. For Soviet officials, Kazakhstan's steppe was not an ecological marvel or beloved homeland, but an empty patch of dirt ideal for nuclear testing. Two-headed lambs were just the beginning of the resulting public health disaster for Kazakhstan—compounded, when the Soviet Union collapsed, by the daunting burden of becoming an overnight nuclear power.
Equipped with intimate personal perspective and untapped archival resources, Togzhan Kassenova introduces us to the engineers turned diplomats, villagers turned activists, and scientists turned pacifists who worked toward disarmament. With thousands of nuclear weapons still present around the world, the story of how Kazakhs gave up their nuclear inheritance holds urgent lessons for global security.
Moscow in Movement: Power and Opposition in Putin's Russia »
"Civil society in Vladimir Putin's Russia is usually dismissed as beleaguered and passive. Samuel Greene takes a fresh look. He sets aside the stereotype and uncovers through empirically rich, theoretically informed analysis a phenomenon which is surprisingly resilient and enormously complex. This is the best book yet written on the topic."
—Timothy J. Colton, Professor of Government, Harvard University
Moscow in Movement is the first exhaustive study of social movements, protest, and the state-society relationship in Vladimir Putin's Russia. Beginning in 2005 and running through the summer of 2013, the book traces the evolution of the relationship between citizens and their state through a series of in-depth case studies, explaining how Russians mobilized to defend human and civil rights, the environment, and individual and group interests: a process that culminated in the dramatic election protests of 2011–2012 and their aftermath. To understand where this surprising mobilization came from, and what it might mean for Russia's political future, the author looks beyond blanket arguments about the impact of low levels of trust, the weight of the Soviet legacy, or authoritarian repression, and finds an active and boisterous citizenry that nevertheless struggles to gain traction against a ruling elite that would prefer to ignore them.
On a broader level, the core argument of this volume is that political elites, by structuring the political arena, exert a decisive influence on the patterns of collective behavior that make up civil society—and the author seeks to test this theory by applying it to observable facts in historical and comparative perspective.
Moscow in Movement will be of interest to anyone looking for a bottom-up, citizens' eye view of recent Russian history, and especially to scholars and students of contemporary Russian politics and society, comparative politics, and sociology
Read Greene’s Op-Ed in Foreign Policy, "Ukraine Deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Russia Needs It" »
New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, Third Edition »
"If you don't read Mary Kaldor's New and Old Wars, you won't understand the world of violence we live in. And you will miss the only way out: the perspective of a cosmopolitan realpolitik that Kaldor opens up and paints in detail in her highly sophisticated and original analysis. Now revised and updated, it is the classical book on new wars."
—Ulrich Beck, University of Munich
New and Old Wars has fundamentally changed the way both scholars and policy-makers understand contemporary war and conflict. In the context of globalization, this path-breaking book has shown that what we think of as war is becoming an anachronism. In its place is a new type of organized violence or 'new wars'—a mixture of war, organized crime, and massive violations of human rights.
This new edition has been fully revised and updated, and includes an afterword answering the critics of the New Wars argument. A new chapter shows how old war thinking in Afghanistan and Iraq greatly exacerbated what turned out to be, in many ways, archetypal new wars—characterized by identity politics, a criminalized war economy, and civilians as the main victims. The third edition of New and Old Wars will be essential reading for students of international relations, politics, and conflict studies, as well as to all those interested in the changing nature and prospect of warfare.
Poverty as Subsistence: The World Bank and Pro-Poor Land Reform in Eurasia »
"Poverty as Subsistence is a must read for scholars, policy makers, and development practitioners considering land transfers and market-based solutions to rural poverty. Mihai Varga's timely analysis provides powerful insights on why and how agricultural reforms advocated by the World Bank and other agencies often undermine livelihoods of tightly knit rural economies."
—Diana Mincyte, The City University of New York
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