Books in the Adelphi series series

This Paper asks how and why border management in South-east Europe is developing as it is, and what this might mean for the future of Europe, by drawing on recent experience in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia and Albania.

Provides an analysis of the trajectory of security cooperation in Asia. This book explains the rise of a complex array of security mechanisms in Asia and argues that their limited influence on Asian states' security policy derives from a combination of institutional and diplomatic shortcomings.

Climate change has been a key factor in the rise and fall of societies and states from prehistory to the recent fighting in the Sudanese state of Darfur. The countries which will face increased risk are not necessarily the most fragile, nor those which will suffer the greatest physical effects of climate change.

Like most years in the 50-year history of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), 2008 saw events that could have significant consequences for international relations and global balances of power. These included the election of Barack Obama as US president; the brief war in Georgia, which caused the West to look at Russia with more watchful eyes; and a cataclysmic crisis in the worldΓÇÖs financial markets that seemed to threaten globalisation and even capitalism, and to herald a period of greater economic austerity. Even as these events occurred, the security issues and risks that have been the core focus of the work of the IISS during the past half-century continued to loom large, among them nuclear proliferation and the relations between the major powers. In addition to these perennial themes was another set of issues that has in recent times risen higher on the international security agenda, including the security ramifications of natural disasters and environmental dangers such as climate change. In its anniversary year, the IISS held several high-level conferences around the world. Speeches given at these events addressed all of these issues, and this Adelphi Paper offers a selection of them. The speakers were statesmen, senior military officers, high officials and international security experts. All were concerned first and foremost with the pressing issues of the moment, as their duties required them to be. But the fact that they also addressed recurrent themes testifies to the enduring nature of the strategic challenges faced by policymakers.

In contrast to the common perception that the United Nations is, or should become, a system of collective security, this paper advances the proposition that the UN Security Council embodies a necessarily selective approach.

A paper that explains how Iran has developed its nuclear programme to the point where it threatens to achieve a weapons capability within a short time frame, and analyses Western policy responses aimed at forestalling that capability.

Provides an understanding of the evolution of strategic thinking since the Adelphi Papers began during the Cold War.

Like all other terrorist movements, al-Qaeda will end. While it has traits that exploit and reflect the international context, it is not utterly without precedent: some aspects of al-Qaeda are unusual, but many are not. This paper explains five typical strategies of terrorism and why Western thinkers fail to grasp them.