Böcker av Jacek Lubecki

International Studies: Introductory Readings presents students with carefully curated readings that familiarize them with foundational ideas within the discipline and frame international studies as an interdisciplinary science.The opening readings presents a panorama of international studies as a field with focus on history, geography, political science, anthropology, economics, and regional studies. Through an interdisciplinary lens, additional readings explain key terms in international studies, examine the various forms of international organizations, and introduce ideas necessary to understand global health issues. Students learn key scientific facts and read about the political, social, and economic ramifications of global climate change, as well as how patriarchy and the global oppression of women is embedded in the very structures of our thinking. Closing chapters provide an overview of different regions of the world, including Latin America, East Asia, South and Central Asia, and Africa.Designed to help studies confidently confront issues, problems, and decisions in the modern world, International Studies is an ideal supplementary resource for courses in political science and international studies.

This book utilises theoretical models to analyse the defence conditions and preparedness of Eastern Europe. It considers the transition from Cold War to post-Cold War democracies, the stability of the East-Central European States, the precarious defence positions of the Baltic states and the uneven defence preparedness of the Balkan states.

The authors of this book retell the political and economic history of East-Central Europe, the post-communist Balkans, and the Baltic states and speculate about their future from the vantage point of three competing forces operating in the region: territorial imperialism, globalization, and nationalism. Exposed to imperial aspirations, the geographic area from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea has in the past 150 years been subject to alternating waves of globalization and nationalism. The nineteenth century Eastern European empires were open to forces of economic globalization, but all collapsed at the end of World War One. Emerging nation-states embraced the logic of Western-led globalization but were subjugated by Nazi and Soviet empires, which pursued policies of economic autarchy. The demise of the Soviet empire marked the revival of pre-1939 nation-states and the re-entry of forces of liberalism and globalization into the region, with multiple crises of economic transition, ethnic militancy, new forms of authoritarianism, and external security threats. By 2010 negative, nationalist-populist reactions against crises that globalization brought to Eastern Europe became the dominant political trend. The analysis involves the consideration about the very contemporary factors of Brexit and COVID, as well as Russia's and China's influences, and their effects on Eastern Europe.