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

Despite efforts to normalize its post-colonial relationship and the downsizing of its permanent military presence, France remains a sought-after security provider in Africa. This book uncovers individual and collective motivations that drive French foreign and security policy in Africa. It explains French interventionism by drawing on actors' subjective perceptions of reality and seeks to answer why French decision-makers are ready to accept the considerable risks and costs involved in guaranteeing the security of African countries. Adopting an actor-centric constructivist ontology, the author traces the emergence and subsequent development of ideas throughout the decision-making processes that led to Operation Serval in Mali and Operation Sangaris in the Central African Republic.

This book brings together research that covers perspectives and case studies on terrorism, radicalisation and countering violent extremism (CVE). Written by experts involved in these issues at the grassroots, the book bridges the academic-practitioner gap in the field. The proliferation of academic studies and conferences devoted to these subjects has meant that policymakers and practitioners in the same fields sometimes struggle to digest the sheer volume of academic output. The same critical questions keep coming up, but it is debatable the level to which there have been tangible improvements to our real state of knowledge: knowledge in especially in terms of what "best practices" exist in the field (and what can be translated, versus what approaches remain context and location specific).  Written in an accessible manner for the general interested reader, practitioners, and policymakers in the field, this volume comprises edited versions of papers presented at CVE workshops run by the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS) at the S.Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 2016 and 2017.

This book analyses the origins of security dilemmas in the South China Sea (SCS) and the significance of China's actions in asserting its claim from the perspective of defensive realist theory. In its analysis, the book argues that security dilemmas in the SCS first arose between China and other SCS claimants, and then between China and the United States. Research in this book provides significant support to the defensive realist theory vis-à-vis offensive realism. It encourages adopting a reassurance policy to reach a peaceful resolution to the SCS disputes between China, the other claimants, and the United States. The book will be useful for policymakers, academics, researchers and students.