Recommending Books for Purchase (Bulletin 86 - June 2020): International Relations

First published in December 1919, this global bestseller attacking those who had made the peace in Paris after the First World War, sparked immediate controversy. It also made John Maynard Keynes famous overnight and soon came to define how people around the world viewed the Versailles Peace Treaty. In Germany the book, which argued against reparations, was greeted with enthusiasm; in France with dismay; and in the US as ammunition that could be (and was) used against Woodrow Wilson in his ultimately unsuccessful bid to sell the League of Nations to an increasingly sceptical American public. Meanwhile in his own country the book provoked outrage amongst establishment critics - Keynes was even refused membership of the prestigious British Academy - while admirers  from Winston Churchill to the founders of the LSE, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, went on to  praise Keynes for his wisdom and  humanity. Keynes may have written what he thought was a reasoned critique of the economics of the peace settlement. In effect, he had penned a political bombshell whose key arguments are still being debated today. The Economic Consequences of the Peace is now reissued by Keynes' publisher of choice with a new introduction from Michael Cox, one of the major figures in the field of International Relations today.  Scholarly yet engaged and readable, Cox's introduction to the work - written a century after the  book first hit the headlines - critically appraises Keynes' polemic contextualising and bringing to life the text for a new  generation of scholars and students of IR, IPE, Politics and History. The original text and this authoritative introduction provide essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the tragedy that was the twentieth century; why making peace with former enemies can be just as hard as winning a war against them; and how and why ideas really do matter.  

This book presents a comprehensive geopolitical analysis of European space activities. By studying outer space as a physical and socio-economic space as well as a military-diplomatic area, the author helps readers understand outer space as a geopolitical environment. The book also offers insights into the behavior and strategies of different actors, with a special focus on the European space strategy and the nature of the European space program and diplomacy.

This book examines the governance of Asian student and academic mobility, which has transformed the higher education landscape. While campuses are experiencing an unprecedented level of diversity, knowledge creation remains explicitly Eurocentric and dominated by the Global North. The authors advocate for a new educational paradigm that takes into account the transcultural flow of knowledge on campus as a public good, capitalises on Asian students and academics' multilingual competencies, and offers them equal access to creating quality-orientated education. The book argues that international higher education must be grounded in both a plurality of knowledges and the ethics of cognitive justice, and that the governing policies should facilitate the higher education sector to build a platform of internationalising affect and effect on campus.

The extra-legal effects of international and domestic war crimes trials continue to puzzle researchers and practitioners. In the former Yugoslav states, the legacy of conflict and issues of transitional justice remains central in politics, society and culture. This book provides a new theoretical and methodological approach to one of these puzzles: why universal human rights norms become distorted or undermined when they reach local publics. It investigates the social and cultural contexts that transitional justice processes take place in by looking at how emotional everyday narratives can hamper the spread of norms in society. In Croatia, these narratives define how the public understands the rule of law, history and minority rights.