Alex Bellamy Knihy

"The suffering of Syria's civilians, caught between the government's barrel bombs and chemical weapons and religious fanatics' beheadings and mass killings, shocked the world. Yet despite international law and political commitments proclaiming a responsibility to protect civilians from mass atrocities, world actors stood aside as Syria burned. Again and again, neighboring states, global powers, and the United Nations opted for half-measures or made counterproductive choices that caused even more harm. Alex J. Bellamy provides a forensic account of the world's failure to protect Syrian civilians from mass atrocities. Drawing on interviews with key players, documents from the United Nations and other international organizations, and sources from the Middle East and beyond, he traces the missteps of the international response to Syria's civil war. Bellamy systematically examines the various peace processes and the reasons they failed, highlighting potential alternative paths that could have been taken. He details how and why key actors prioritized their own national interest, geopolitical standing, regional stability, local rivalries, counterterrorism goals, or domestic politics-anything other than the welfare of Syrians. Some governments settled on unrealistic strategies founded on misguided assumptions while others pursued naked ambition; the United Nations descended into irrelevance and even complicity. Shedding new light on the decisions that led to a vast calamity, Syria Betrayed also draws out lessons for more effective responses to future civil conflicts"-- Provided by publisher

Focusing on civil-military relations in Southeast Asia, this book examines the security reform agenda's recent developments and its potential to enhance regional stability. It evaluates the effectiveness of this agenda in reducing military interventions, providing insights into the unique challenges faced by the region. Through this analysis, the book seeks to determine whether such reforms can contribute to a more peaceful and secure Southeast Asia.

The book delves into the international response to the Kosovo conflict, tracing the timeline from the breakup of Yugoslavia to the 1999 air strikes of Operation Allied Force. It highlights Kosovo's initial exclusion from peace efforts and the complexities behind the eventual international consensus for military intervention. By addressing prevalent myths and conspiracy theories surrounding the war, it provides insight into the challenges faced by various stakeholders during this critical period in history.

In 2005, the international community made a landmark commitment to prevent mass atrocities by unanimously adopting the UN’s “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) principle. As often as not, however, R2P has failed to translate into decisive action. Why does this gap persist between the world’s normative pledges to R2P and its ability to make it a daily lived reality? In this new book, leading global authorities on humanitarian protection Alex Bellamy and Edward Luck offer a probing and in-depth response to this fundamental question, calling for a more comprehensive approach to the practice of R2P – one that moves beyond states and the UN to include the full range of actors that play a role in protecting vulnerable populations. Drawing on cases from the Middle East to sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, they examine the forces and conditions that produce atrocity crimes and the challenge of responding to them quickly and effectively. Ultimately, they advocate both for emergency policies to temporarily stop carnage and for policies leading to sustainable change within societies and governments. Only by introducing these additional elements to the R2P toolkit will the failures associated with humanitarian crises like Syria and Libya become a thing of the past.

Peace operations are now a principal tool for managing armed conflict and building world peace. The fully revised, expanded and updated second edition of Understanding Peacekeeping provides a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to the theory, practice and politics of contemporary peace operations.

The Just War tradition provides a set of criteria which political leaders and soldiers use to defend and rationalize war. This book explores the evolution of thinking about just wars and examines its role in shaping contemporary judgements about the use of force, from grand strategic issues, to the minutiae of targeting.

This book investigates world peace: what it is, whether it might be achieved, and how.

At the 2005 UN World Summit, world leaders endorsed the international principle of Responsibility to Protect (R2P), acknowledging that they had a responsibility to protect their citizens from genocide and mass atrocities and pledging to act in cases where governments manifestly failed in their responsibility.

The book explores Russia's military interventions under Putin, highlighting the pattern of aggression from Chechnya to Ukraine. It delves into the country's transformation post-1990s, revealing how Putinism and an imperial mindset emerged through these conflicts. By analyzing each intervention, the author sheds light on the strategic motivations behind Russia's actions and the implications for global stability.

Focusing on the French Revolution, the book explores the phenomenon of mass killings by states, emphasizing the significance of civilian immunity in influencing the actions of perpetrators. It analyzes the moral implications of these events and the responses from international society, providing a critical examination of how such atrocities are justified and addressed in historical and contemporary contexts.