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This edited book complements and follows up on the book, Thompson and Volgy et al, Regions, Power and Conflict: Constrained Capabilities, Hierarchy, and Rivalry. It is predicated in part on the paucity of published material available on comparing regional international politics. Monadic, dyadic, and systemic approaches all have their uses and have been exploited extensively. The same cannot be said about comparative regional analysis. The premise is that a great deal of international politics takes place within regional parameters. Most states simply lack the capability or interest in devoting many resources to extra-regional affairs. Yet each region is distinctive. In some, military coups remain common while they have died out as a form of political practice in others. A few have been highly conflictual and then become more pacific, while others persist in their conflict intensity. Some have powerful neighbors with intervention tendencies, while others are surrounded by relatively weak states. Some are rich; others are poor. The point is that regions, all with proper names, have attributes that can be harnessed through comparison to explain why regional behavior differs greatly across the planet. The aim is to replace the proper names with the leading variables that appear to drive behavior. For instance, to shrug and say ¿that¿s the Middle East for yoü does not take us very far. Replacing the Middle East label with conceptualization about how a set of small, weak, autocratic states behave subject to high penetration by major powers might take us farther than shrugging off regional identity. We have good reasons to think that comparative regional analysis can deliver an explanatory value-added product just as much as alternative ¿levels of analysis¿ can. Ultimately, we might desire to integrate separate levels of analysis, rather than segregating them. But in the short term,we need to encourage comparative regional analysis because it is the least developed perspective. Why that might be the case can be debated, but it stems in part from our disciplinary tendencies for some analysts to specialize in regional behavior largely in a descriptive vein while others prefer to focus on explaining universal behavior. Comparative regional behavior tends to be squeezed out by regional scholars who suspect generalization about behavior and universal scholars who suspect particular contexts such as regions. Comparative regional analysis requires analysts who are willing to explore generalization but acknowledge regional contexts more explicitly than is customary. At the same time, more general substitutes for those regional labels must be introduced if explanatory headway is to be achieved.

This edited book is written by six authors from Asia and Africa. The individual authors focus on their own country's case or cases that they have been working on. The book features local conflicts in six countries in Asia and Africa and identifies how the local conflicts are affected by the forces of globalization. Cases include Nigeria's oil-related conflicts, the Democratic Republic of Congo's timber conflicts, continuing instability in Mozanbique, Thailand's conflict with regard to AIDS medicine, Myanmar's local conflicts after its reforms, and the Afghanistan's conflicts over minerals.  From these diverse case studies, the book examines how globalization and international politics affect local politics and conflicts, and vice versa. Even seemingly internal conflicts are shown to be significantly influenced by globalization forces and to create new dynamism in local politics. While there are other books that explore globalization and conflicts, many of them are conceptually organized with a small number of case studies. The present volume examines local conflicts in relation to globalization and demonstrates how structural inequality vis-a-vis weak stateness and statehood are significantly affected by global political economy.

The three main levels of analysis in international relations have been the systemic, the national, and the individual.  A fourth level that falls between the systemic and the national is the region.  It is woefully underdeveloped in comparison to the attention afforded the other three.  Yet regions tend to be distinctive theaters for international politics.  Otherwise, we would not recognize that Middle Eastern interstate politics somehow does not resemble Latin American interstate politics or interstate politics in Southern Africa (although once the Middle East and Southern Africa may have seemed more similar in their mutual fixation with opposition to domestic policies in Israel and  South Africa, respectively). This book, divided into three parts, first makes a case for studying regional politics even though it must also be appreciated that regional boundaries are also hazy and not always easy to pin down empirically.  The second part examines power distributions within regions as an important entry point to studying regional similarities and differences.  Two emphases are stressed.  One is that regional power assessments need to be conditioned by controlling for weak states which are more common in some regions than they are in others.  The other emphasis is on regional power hierarchies.  Some regions have strong regional hierarchies while others do not. Regions with strong hierarchies operate much differently from those without them in the sense that the former are more pacific than the latter.  The third part of the book focuses on regional differences in terms of conflict behavior, order preferences, rivalries, and rivalry termination.

The purpose of this book is to introduce readers to INDOPACOM, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in a region covering approximately 50 percent of the Earth from the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean.  INDOPACOM has not received much attention in Japan compared to USFJ or the US Seventh Fleet. This book shines a spotlight on INDOPACOM in an effort to promote an understanding of its various aspects. The mission of INDOPACOM is to protect U.S. territory, people, and national interests. However, it also includes protection of the countries within its geographic scope that are U.S. allies and security partners.  INDOPACOM and its precursor Pacific Command, established in 1947, have always been major contributors to the peace and safety of Japan in the post-World War II era. In view of the importance of U.S. interests in Northeast Asia, the region also has two Sub-Unified Combatant Commands called United States Forces Japan (USFJ) and United States Forces Korea (USFK). Each of these organizations strives to strengthen the relationship with the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the Republic of Korea armed forces. Together, the United States, Japan and our partners around the globe will continue to safeguard the rules-based security order that has underpinned peace and prosperity for decades.

This book considers that contextual factors are important for the achievement of social justice and it recognizes that vulnerability to which children are exposed is a phenomenon throughout the planet, particularly in the South. It presents a theoretical review of social justice as well as different situations of vulnerability children experience in their daily lives in which they can be injured, affecting their well-being and the exercise of their rights. It examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children, considered as a vulnerable group warranting special social policy considerations. It also presents the need to change power structures in knowledge production and decision-making processes to achieve social justice for children; the importance of investing in children; the exclusion of children from participation in certain activities and the shame of not being able to participate in equal conditions with others;  the lives of migrant children belonging to ethnic minorities exposed to language barriers and access to technological devices; and the analysis of the process of social re-integration of children from conditions of armed conflict. The book concludes that governments need to assume social justice as part of universal human interests, providing security, conditions for well-being, and guaranteeing social justice for all children.