China’s One Belt One Road policy, or OBOR, represents the largest infrastructure program in history. Yet little is known about it with any certainty. How can something so large be so bewildering?

In One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World (Harvard East Asian Monographs, 2020), Eyck Freymann, a DPhil Candidate in China Studies at the University of Oxford, explores the nature, function, and purposes of OBOR. Drawing on primary documents in five languages, interviews with senior officials, and on-the-ground case studies in Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Greece, Freymann sifts through the purposeful ambiguity of the Chinese Communist Party and unravels a series of popular myths about OBOR.

He finds that OBOR is not controlled by a monolithic state apparatus; that recipient nations do not consider OBOR a debt trap; and that appeal of OBOR is growing, not shrinking.

Ultimately, Freymann argues that the infrastructure projects are a sideshow to something else: Xi Jinping’s project to restore China’s greatness in world affairs and to solidify his place at the helm of the new Chinese empire. 

John Sakellariadis is a 2020-2021 Fulbright US Student Research Grantee. He holds a Master’s degree in public policy from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia and a Bachelor’s degree in History & Literature from Harvard University.

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Nearly 50 years since the European Foreign Ministers issued their first declaration on the conflict between Israel and Palestine in 1971, the European Union continues to have close political and economic ties with the region. Based exclusively on primary sources, Anders Persson's EU Diplomacy and the Israeli-Arab Conflict, 1967-2019 (Edinburgh UP, 2020) offers an up-to-date overview of the European Union’s involvement in the Israeli-Arab conflict since 1967. This study uses an innovative conceptual methodology to examine keyword frequency in a sample of more than 2300 declarations and statements published in the Bulletin of the European Communities/European Union (1967–2009) as well as council reports and press interviews (2009–2018) to uncover broad patterns for qualitative analysis. The study suggests that the Israeli-Arab conflict is more important to the EU than any other conflict, having been key to shaping EU’s foreign policy overall.

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The problems that gave rise to the widespread desire to introduce a common currency were myriad. While trade was able to cope with-and even to benefit from-the parallel circulation of many different types of coin, it nevertheless harmed both the common people and the political authorities. The authorities in particular suffered from neighbours who used their comparatively good money as raw material to mint poor imitations. Debasing their own coinage provided an, at best, short-term solution. Over the medium and long term, it drove the members of the Empire into rounds of competitive debasements, until they realised that a common currency was the only answer that addressed the core of the problem.

In The Silver Empire: How Germany Created Its First Common Currency (Oxford University Press, 2024) Dr. Oliver Volckart examines the conditions that shaped the monetary outlook of the member states of the Empire, paying particular attention to the uneven access to silver and gold. Following closely the negotiations that prepared the common currency, he is able to illuminate the interest groups that were formed, what their agendas and ulterior motives were, how alliances were forged, and how it was eventually possible to obtain majority agreement on what a common currency should look like: a silver-based currency that was introduced in 1559-66.

In fact, in contrast to what historians once believed, the common currency they achieved turns out to have functioned not significantly worse than other currencies of the time: it had similar problems and similar advantages as the money issued by more centralised governments.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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The Power to Persuade: Strategic Arguing at the World Trade Organization (University of Toronto Press, 2024) by Dr. Angela Geck provides an innovative and eye-opening analysis of strategic arguing as a means of power in global politics. Based on an empirical case study of arguing processes in the World Trade Organization (WTO), the book shows how discursive contexts, institutional norms and procedures, and unequal human resources condition who has the power to persuade.

While accounts of arguing in international relations are typically based on a notion of arguing as a power-free mode of interaction oriented towards understanding, Dr. Geck shows how such an approach precludes the question of persuasive power. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Geneva diplomats and a document-based analysis of the negotiations on two Doha Round issues, the book examines the practices governing strategic arguing in the WTO and uncovers two sources of persuasive power: firstly, prevalent discourses and connected regime norms empower some actors over others; secondly, their ability to debate is conditioned by exclusionary procedures and unequal human resources.

Offering a grounded theory of strategic arguing in trade politics, The Power to Persuade presents a novel analysis of the relationship between arguing and power.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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The dramatic inside story of the most important case in the history of sovereign debt law Unlike individuals or corporations that become insolvent, nations do not have access to bankruptcy protection from their creditors. When a country defaults on its debt, the international financial system is ill equipped to manage the crisis. Decisions by key individuals—from national leaders to those at the International Monetary Fund, from holdout creditors to judges—determine the fate of an entire national economy. A prime example is Argentina’s 2001 default on $100 billion in bonds, which stands out for its messy outcomes and outsized impact on sovereign debt markets, sovereign debt law, and IMF policy. 

Default: The Landmark Court Battle over Argentina's $100 Billion Debt Restructuring (Georgetown UP, 2024) is the riveting story of Argentina’s sovereign debt drama, which reveals the obscure inner workings of sovereign debt restructuring. This detailed case study describes the intense fight over the role of the IMF in Argentina’s 2005 debt restructuring and the ensuing bitter decade of litigation with holdout creditors, demonstrating that outcomes for sovereign debt are determined by a complex interplay between financial markets, governments, the IMF, the press, and the courts. This cautionary tale lays bare the institutional, political, and legal pressures that come into play when a country cannot repay its debts. It offers a deeper understanding of how global financial capitalism functions for those who work in or study debt markets, international finance, international relations, and international law.

Gregory Makoff, PhD, is a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and an expert on sovereign debt management. A former banker specializing in debt advice, liability management, and derivatives, he has also advised the US Department of the Treasury.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

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In Litigating the Environment: Process and Procedure Before International Courts and Tribunals (Edward Elgar, 2023), Dr Justine Bendel scrutinises how international courts and tribunals may respond procedurally to an ever-growing list of environmental disputes. In a time of environmental crisis, she lays crucial groundwork for strengthening the application of international environmental law, a topic of increasing relevance for global civil society.

Putting into perspective the practices of various international courts and tribunals, Dr Bendel works within the constraints of the existing judicial framework to sharpen international environmental justice and governance. She provides judges and litigators with tools that they can use when confronted with environmental disputes, to extract the best practices in the interest of improving environmental litigation for each phase of a judicial procedure.

In this podcast, Dr Bendel discusses the complexity of multiple legal, regulatory and guidance frameworks insofar as international environmental law is concerned. She explains how it is highly likely that the subject matter of an environmental dispute will cover common areas or resources that affect global or multilateral interests, which inevitably adds a political dimension to any dispute resolution when it comes to areas that transcend national jurisdictions. Dr Bendel explores how typically bilateral proceedings under international law might be expanded to accommodate the interests of other states – and non-state actors such as international non-governmental organisations – through creatively and flexibly adapting procedures that already exist before international courts and tribunals, including dispute resolution and non-compliance procedures. Now is the time, she says, for international courts and tribunals to be used to resolve environmental disputes and to make authoritative legal determinations on protecting the planet and its precious resources.

Alex Batesmith is a Lecturer in Legal Profession at the School of Law, University of Leeds, UK. His research focuses on lawyers, their professional self-identity and their motivations, and how these shape the institutions and the discipline in which they work. He has a particular interest in, and practitioner experience of, international criminal law and transitional justice. Twitter: @batesmith

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How do micro-interactions of resistance, fighting and dialogue shape larger patterns of peace and conflict? How can nonviolent resistance, conflict transformation and diplomacy be analysed in micro-detail? Exploring these questions in The Micro-Sociology of Peace and Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Dr. Isabel Bramsen introduces micro-sociology to Peace Research and International Relations.

Breaking new methodological, empirical and theoretical ground, Bramsen develops a novel theoretical and analytical framework for analysing micro-dynamics of peace and conflict. The book features chapters on the methods of micro-sociology (including Video Data Analysis) as well as analytical chapters on violence, nonviolence, conflict transformation, peace talks and international meetings. It is at once broad and specific, analysing a wide variety of phenomena and cases, while also introducing very specific lenses to analysing peace and conflict.

Presenting a highly practical and micro-detailed approach, The Micro-Sociology of Peace and Conflict will be of use to students, researchers, practitioners, activists and diplomats interested in understanding and addressing contemporary conflicts. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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Amid the bloody Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2021 and the escalating tensions across the Taiwan Strait, the geopolitical balance of power has changed significantly in a very short period. If current trends continue, we may be witnessing a tectonic realignment unseen in more than a century.

In 1904, Halford Mackinder delivered a seminal lecture entitled "The Geographical Pivot of History" to a packed house at the Royal Geographical Society in London about the historic changes then taking place on the world stage. Britain was the great power of that historical moment, but its political, military, and economic primacy was under serious challenge from the United States, Germany, and Russia. Mackinder predicted that the "heartland" of Eastern Europe held the key to global hegemony and that the struggle for control over this region would be the next great conflict. Ten years later, when an assassin's bullet in Sarajevo launched the world into a calamitous war, Mackinder's analysis proved prescient.

As esteemed historian Jeremy Black argues in Rethinking Geopolitics (Indiana UP, 2024), the 2020s may be history's next great pivot point. The continued volatility of the global system in the wake of a deadly pandemic exacerbates these pressures. At the same time, the American public remains divided by the question of engagement with the outside world, testing the limits of US postwar hegemony. The time has come for a reconsideration of the 120 years from Mackinder's lecture to now, as well as geopolitics of the present and of the future.

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A sweeping account of how small wars shaped global order in the age of empires.

Imperial conquest and colonization depended on pervasive raiding, slaving, and plunder. European empires amassed global power by asserting a right to use unilateral force at their discretion. They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence (Princeton UP, 2024) is a panoramic history of how these routines of violence remapped the contours of empire and reordered the world from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries.

In an account spanning from Asia to the Americas, Lauren Benton shows how imperial violence redefined the very nature of war and peace. Instead of preparing lasting peace, fragile truces ensured an easy return to war. Serial conflicts and armed interventions projected a de facto state of perpetual war across the globe. Benton describes how seemingly limited war sparked atrocities, from sudden massacres to long campaigns of dispossession and extermination. She brings vividly to life a world in which warmongers portrayed themselves as peacemakers and Europeans imagined "small" violence as essential to imperial rule and global order.

Holding vital lessons for us today, They Called It Peace reveals how the imperial violence of the past has made perpetual war and the threat of atrocity endemic features of the international order.

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Britain and Russia maintained a frosty civility for a few years after Napoleon's defeat in 1815. But, by the 1820s, their relations degenerated into constant acrimonious rivalry over Persia, the Ottoman Empire, Central Asia--the Great Game--and, towards the end of the century, East Asia.

The First Cold War: Anglo-Russian Relations in the 19th Century (Hurst, 2024) presents for the first time the Russian perspective on this 'game', drawing on the archives of the Tsars' Imperial Ministry. Both world powers became convinced of the expansionist aims of the other, and considered these to be at their own expense. When one was successful, the other upped the ante, and so it went on. London and St Petersburg were at war only once, during the Crimean War. But Russophobia and Anglophobia became ingrained on each side, as these two great empires hovered on the brink of hostilities for nearly 100 years.

Not until Britain and Russia recognized that they had more to fear from Wilhelmine Germany did they largely set aside their rivalries in the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, which also had major repercussions for the balance of power in Europe. Before that came a century of competition, diplomacy and tension, lucidly charted in this comprehensive new history.

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