Modern Geopolitics and Security Strategies for Unwinnable Conflicts

The transformation from traditional war between nation-states to conflict between nation-states and nonstate actors requires decision makers, policy analysts, military commanders, intelligence officials, and legislators to answer the question: is there a strategy for an unwinnable conflict? This question takes on particular urgency given the extraordinary number of conflict points that define the current state of international relations.

Modern Geopolitics and Security: Strategies for Unwinnable Conflicts draws on the author's extensive experience in counterterrorism, negotiation, and the implementation of the Oslo Peace Process with his more recent work in academia. The book uses an interdisciplinary case study model to illustrate valuable lessons learned and best practices in strategic analysis and decision making that are based on international relations, international law, and negotiation/intervention.

The book defines sovereignty, intervention, geopolitics, security, and what they mean in a global landscape. It examines historical examples of global crises and security concerns as well as contemporary geopolitical issues, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, intervention in Libya, non-intervention in Syria, the Good Friday Agreement, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, and the Arab Spring.

We are entering a new era, where disaffected individuals who are willing and able to act, have more power and potential influence than ever before. Conflicts like those occurring in Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, and elsewhere are all complex organisms?nuanced as never before. Add in increasing regional asymmetrical conflicts, increasing global economic strain, social media and the accelerating speed of communication, ideological and regional state versus nonstate conflicts?such as in the case of al-Qaeda and other such movements?and traditional "business as usual" geopolitics is being somewhat turned on its head.

Modern Geopolitics and Security addresses topics that aren?t currently covered anywhere?establishing a new paradigm to rethink modern geopolitics, given new and emerging challenges to traditional schools of thought.

View an article by Amos N. Guiora that recently appeared in the The New York Times..

Background and Definitions. International Security and Diplomacy. Self-Defense, Humanitarian Intervention, Leadership, and International Cooperation. Negotiating Agreements: Security and Understanding the "Other". Sovereignty. Containment, Use of Force, and Failed States. Moving Forward: The New World.

Amos Guiora is Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center for Global Justice at the S. J. Quinney College of Law, the University of Utah. Guiora who teaches Criminal Procedure, International Law, Global Perspectives on Counterterrorism, and Religion and Terrorism incorporates innovative scenario-based instruction to address national and international security issues and dilemmas. Guiora is a Member of the American Bar Association’s Law and National Security Advisory Committee; a Research Associate at the University of Oxford, Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict; a Research Fellow at the International Institute on Counter-Terrorism, The Interdisciplinary Center, Herzylia, Israel; and a Corresponding Member, The Netherlands School of Human Rights Research, University of Utrecht School of Law. Professor Guiora has published extensively both in the United States and Europe on issues related to national security, limits of interrogation, religion, and terrorism, and the limits of power, multiculturalism, and human rights. He is the author of Legitimate Target A Criteria Based Approach to Targeted Killing; Freedom from Religion: Rights and National Security(first and second editions); Global Perspectives on Counterterrorism(first and second editions); Fundamentals of Counterterrorism; Constitutional Limits on Coercive Interrogation; Homeland Security: What is it and Where is it Going; Tolerating Intolerance: The Price of Protecting Extremism(2013), and Geopolitics and Security: Sovereignty, Intervention and the Law (2013).

Professor Guiora has received grants from both the Stuart Family Foundation and the Earhart Foundation and was awarded a Senior Specialist Fulbright Fellowship for The Netherlands in 2008. He served for 19 years in the Israel Defense Forces as Lieutenant Colonel (retired), and held a number of senior command positions, including Commander of the I