bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Conclusion
Authors: Drake H. A. 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
The centuries after the end of imperial rule in the western Mediterranean led to a sharp decline in the standard of living in those lands, compared to the continued prosperity in the lands where the eastern empire still ruled from Constantinople, as well as those now ruled by a Muslim empire that stretched from India to the Pyrenees. This cultural divide exposes the flaw in a common assumption that the Germanic kingdoms that replaced Rome in the west were the most genuine heirs of the Roman empire. Instead, western Europe should be seen as the Third World, a position it held for centuries to come. The medieval Song of Roland reveals how much had changed.
Race, Religion, Generation, and Activism around U.S. Partisan Politics
Authors: Kurien Prema A. 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This chapter describes and explains the voting patterns and partisan behavior of Indian Americans and focuses on how Indian American groups mobilized to support Democratic or Republican candidates at the federal level over the past several elections. It shows how race and religion, sometimes working together and other times in opposing ways, interact to shape the partisan behavior of Indian American groups. We see how the fault lines discussed in earlier chapters—the mobilization of some under an Indian identity versus the mobilization of others under a South Asian umbrella and the political interests and activism of immigrants versus second-generation Indian Americans, of religious minorities in the United States versus Indian Christians, and of Hindu nationalist supporters versus opponents—all come together to shape Indian American mobilization around U.S. partisan politics in complex ways. The chapter also examines new groups that developed around the 2020 elections targeting Indian and South Asian American voters.
The Strategic Utility of Special Operations Forces from a Non-State Perspective
Authors: Rice Ian , Whiteside Craig 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
Do non-state actors conduct special operations? This chapter examines how non-state actors emulate and develop military special operation capabilities that stand in stark contrast to the normal repertoire of subversive tactics hidden from plain view. The authors develop a theoretical framework for non-state special operations and how these operations differ from what we describe as the typical tactical efforts of these non-state actors, du jour operations. Militant groups are not the only type of actor to adopt special operations. Mercenaries/private military companies, proxy militia groups, and transnational criminal organizations each have conducted special operations for diverse reasons. This chapter demonstrates that these groups conduct special operations by first determining a group’s typical operational model, du jour operations, and then comparing them to other operations that generate effects that contribute significantly to campaign or conflict outcomes. This chapter offers implications of the proliferation of special operation forces around the globe and its influence on non-state behavior, including developing in-house specialized units. This proliferation of a popularized military capability follows the general trend of the democratization of other capabilities and technologies beyond state use.
Special Operations in Europe
Authors: Pettersson Ulrica 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
The chapter adds a new perspective on resilience and resistance in modern warfare. Resistance movements need to be innovative and adaptive to contemporary times and the context within which they are operating. The author elaborates on how special operations forces can improve guerrilla warfare through lessons learned, not only form historic events such as WWI but also from more contemporary social phenomena. For instance, clusters of organized crime in the High North, which seem to operate effectively in parallel with the small state’s societies. Those clusters relentlessly challenge the state’s authorities in their use of innovative ideas and constant evolution and adaptation. Three dimensions of access have shown to be of essence; cognitive, physical and finally moral. Modern resistance movements must be prepared in advance. To improve, they could be inspired by the principles and asymmetry the organized crime cluster applies when operating in parallel with today’s societies.
Special Operations Developments in the Pacific
Authors: Maher Andrew 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
Lessons for Special Operations Forces preparedness and strategic utility today can and should be drawn from the last period of major power competition and conflict in the Indo-Pacific—World War II. The Japanese did not initiate World War II at Pearl Harbor, subversive “grey zone” tactics to “win without fighting” and subvert Western colonies werein prominent display pre-conflict, such as in competition. The Allies competed, supporting the raising of Chinese guerrillas to impose costs on the Japanese war effort in China. Again, this occurred pre-conflict. This contribution argues that several roles emerged from this World War II context of competition. Then, as now, four types of personalities and functions are relevant to special operations theory. These are elite, unorthodox, propagandist, and intelligence collector typologies. Such typologies remain an enduring organizational requirement of SO, and for understanding how SO contributes to military strategy.
The Future of Innovation in Special Operations Forces
Authors: Blanken Leo 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This chapter explores the future of innovation for Western special operations forces (SOF) in an emerging era characterized by rapidly changing technology and the rise of peer competitor states. The chapter argues that while SOF enjoys three attributes that are associated with innovative organizations—small size, high quality, and high externalConnectivity—successful innovation would only take place as the result of strategic choices made by organizational leadership, rather than being assumed as a naturallyemergent property of SOF entities. The chapter explores varying levels of ambition for SOF organizations in terms of innovation, as they may choose to focus solely on challengesaround SOF-specific problem sets or, rather, seek to be testbeds of innovation for the wider array of conventional forces, allied and partner forces, and inter-agencyorganizations with whom they collaborate. Finally, the chapter shows that pursuing an ambitious innovation agenda would involve significant trade-offs for SOF organizations interms of resources and focus.
Making Chameleons
Authors: Emanuel Peter Bovet 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This chapter explores opportunities for Special Operations Forces (SOF) in the context of strategic relevance and artificial intelligence (AI). It argues that SOF must navigate two fundamental questions: the changing character of warfare, and AI’s implications for SOF roles and structures. The forthcoming era of advanced technologies may change, not just the character, but also the nature (i.e., assemblage) of SOF. If harnessed, this can create opportunities for special operations with fewer boundaries and more freedom to adapt to changing environments and requirements. Embracing the idea of SOF becoming increasingly techno-shaped and software-defined, the chapter discusses some foreseeable tensions and opportunities for SOF assemblages. The integration of AI is expected to redefine SOF operations, requiring new skill sets and reshaping traditional concepts of command and control. The chapter concludes that treating SOF as assemblages allows for the flexibility needed to navigate these changes, ensuring their continued strategic utility in an increasingly complex global environment.
Special Operations in Galaxies and Metaverses
Authors: Kiras James D. 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
Special operations are an integral part of contemporary war and some from the special operations community see bright possibilities for future special operations. This chapter looks at these possibilities from a non-traditional perspective. First, it explores how rising and revanchist powers—China and Russia—view future conflict, specifically the importance they place on crucial and potentially decisive domains: space and cyberspace. It does so by drawing upon their more authoritative military writings as well as recent Western threat assessments. Second, this contribution outlines the contours of a novel conceptual model of space, cyberspace, and special operations to determine their points of intersection, or convergence, as well as unique attributes, or points of divergence. From these, the implications for future special operations can be deduced.
Groundshift
Authors: Paliwal Avinash 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This chapter introduces the argument, structure, and themes that inform India’s near east. It underscores why examining India’s statecraft and nation-building outside in, and diplomacy and foreign policy inside out, is of value to understanding the geopolitics of this region. The chapter also sets the tone for the rest of the book by lending focus on dynamics surrounding Burma’s separation from India in 1937, and partition of the subcontinent in 1947. Both events created centrifugal pressures and centripetal energies that continue to shape India’s domestic political ad regional strategic outlook. From birthing rivalries with China and Pakistan and sparking nationalist and revolutionary violence, these events influenced India’s determination to maintain national security and territorial integrity. In this context, identity politics, cross-border migration, political economies, and official antinomies are the key themes that determine India’s decisions on questions of waging war, making peace, and building a postcolonial state.
Two and a Half Fronts War, Borderlands, and Interventionism after 1962
Authors: Paliwal Avinash 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This chapter argues that the 1962 China-India war and the 1965 India-Pakistan war fueled ethnic separatism in India’s near east and opened space for covert and overt interventionism. Fearful of a two-and-half front conflict scenario where it needs to fight China, Pakistan, and ethnic insurgencies alike, these wars strengthened India’s resolve to assert its authority in the northeast even if it necessitated use of force outside of national borders. In Assam, Pakistan’s sponsorship of Naga rebels shaped India’s decision to enter a ceasefire with moderate Naga leaders and carve out the state of Nagaland within the Indian Union in 1963. New Delhi’s response to the 1962 coup in Burma was muted despite it triggering a mass exodus of Burmese Indians. But the outbreak of the Mizo insurgency in 1966 recalibrated India’s geopolitical calculations in its near east.
Joy Bangla
Authors: Paliwal Avinash 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This chapter shows how Hindu-Muslim communal violence, armed ethnic insurgencies, and large-scale cross-border displacement increased India’s appetite for intervention in East Pakistan. New Delhi decided that the best way to solve its two-and-half front security dilemma was to focus on the situation in East Pakistan. Under Indira Gandhi’s leadership, Indian intelligence activated covert support for rebels in Pakistan and China—but not Burma—by sponsoring Bengali and Tibetan nationalists. In East Pakistan, India found an ally in Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of the East Pakistan Awami League. Mujib’s secularism was viewed as an antidote to communalism. But India’s creation of the Mujib Bahini (an armed outfit loyal to Mujib), parallel to its support for the Mukti Bahini (a big-tent Bangladeshi nationalist armed movement), created antinomies that laid the groundwork for deep-seated resentment against India in Bangladesh.
Losing the Peace
Authors: Paliwal Avinash 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
India lost the peace after winning the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war with Pakistan. This chapter explains why. During 1972-75 India failed to gauge the depth of anti-Mujib sentiment in the Bangladeshi army, and the scale of economic crisis that the newly independent country faced. The 1974 Bangladesh famine and Mujib’s mishandling of the same played a role in his assassination. The chapter reveals in detail India’s reaction to Mujib’s killing, and how it came close to mounting a military intervention in Bangladesh in November 1975 when a countercoup failed to return Mujib loyalists to power. The chapter traces the rise of General Zia-ur-Rahman, the consequent tumult in India-Bangladesh relations till Zia’s assassination in 1981, and the coup in 1982 that led to the rise of General H.M. Ershad.
Hard Look East
Authors: Paliwal Avinash 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This chapter looks at post-Cold War India’s strategic recalibration in its near east in form of the Look East Policy (LEP). After losing an ally in the Soviet Union and facing financial default, India revisited its ties with the junta in Myanmar and the BNP in Bangladesh and privileged economic connectivity over political preferences. With the Naga rebels, India entered secret talks and signed a ceasefire in 1997. The infusion of drugs, arms, and insurgents into an electoral system undergirded by corruption and fueled by ethnic politics redefined India’s northeast. The 1990s witnessed a transformation of separatist groups into drug cartels invested in profit over welfare and representative politics. India reached a critical conclusion during this period—it preferred friendly autocrats in its neighborhood over anti-Indian populists who could gain power using democratic means.
Epilogue
Authors: Paliwal Avinash 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
The epilogue to the book pulls together all the four threads that inform India’s approach towards its near east i.e., identity politics, cross-border migration, political economies, and official antinomies. It brings the narrative of the book to a wrap by focusing on the February 2021 military coup in Myanmar, and the groundswell of anti-Hasina protests in the run-up to the January 2024 elections.
Perfect Storm
Authors: Gustafson Thane 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This book attempts to retell and reinterpret the story of Russia’s failed opening to the West. Rather than geopolitics, it considers the underlying economic, technological, and social aspects of this opening and the role these played in its ultimate failure. Although essential to an understanding of what happened, and what went wrong, they have received less attention. As the book shows, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought to a tragic close a thirty-year period of history that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reopening of Russia to the West after six decades of Soviet isolation. The opening, which lasted for three tumultuous decades, has now been followed by a new closing, driven by the Ukrainian war, the imposition of Western sanctions, and the Russian responses to them. Russian–Western relations today are as hostile as they have ever been. Who or what is to blame? There is already an abundance of analysis and reflection on the origins and causes of the Ukrainian War and the Kremlin’s role in it. Perfect Storm: Russia’s Failed Opening, War, Sanctions, and the Future reviews the mixture of motives, illusions, and hopes, that accompanied Russia’s opening to the West; its achievements and disappointments; the complexity of the post-invasion sanctions regime and the Russians’ responses to them; the quasi-exodus of Westerners from Russia and its impact on the Russian economy and society; and finally Russia’s possible futures under a new generation of leaders.
Black and White
Authors: Gustafson Thane 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This chapter tells the story of the flow of Russians into the West between 1991 and 2022 and shows how it differed from that of the West into Russia. It first describes the Russians coming to the West as consisting of four main groups: Russian banks, large industrial corporations, “oligarchs” and other magnates, and finally tens of thousands of ordinary individuals. It also shows how the impact of the Russians on Western opinion was also quite different: Russian public opinion responded to the presence of the West with a complex mixture of admiration and imitation, but also growing resentment and rejection, while Western opinion of the Russians in the West was largely negative from the first, and worsened over time, which was perceived and resented by the Russians. The chapter concludes that in different ways both currents—the West into Russia and the Russians into the West—led to a climate of public mistrust and hostility, which reinforced the simultaneous deterioration of geopolitical relations, and set the stage for the sanctions that followed in 2014 and after.
Putin and the Opening of Russia
Authors: Gustafson Thane 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This chapter shows that while Putin’s public attitudes toward the key features of a market economy—privatization, protection of property rights, “liberal” economic policy, and open international trade—were strongly positive during his first two terms, they became increasingly negative during the following two. The chapter also shows that his policies toward the presence and investment of Western businesses in Russia, and toward the economic roles of Russians in the West, were relatively open from 2000 to the mid-2010s but became increasingly restrictive thereafter. It concludes that in both cases, Putin’s economic positions and policies followed the evolution of his geopolitical views, and after 2013 and the occupation of Crimea, his economic policies were dominated overwhelmingly by his geopolitics, and especially his war on Ukraine.
The Hurricane of Western Sanctions
Authors: Gustafson Thane 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This chapter describes the machinery of the sanctions imposed on Russia by the three main sanctioning powers, the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom. It shows that, since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia has been hit by sanctions from over forty different Western countries, a hurricane of tens of thousands of documents covering everything from financial transactions to oil exports, imports of high technology and key components both civilian and military, a wide range of consumer goods and services, and thousands of persons, both inside and outside Russia. Nothing on this scale, against so large a country and one so integrated into the world economy, has ever been attempted before. The chapter’s key propositions are that if the sanctions are maintained and vigorously enforced, they will have increasingly severe long-term impacts on the Russian economy, causing its gradual degradation.
The Great Western Quasi-Exodus
Authors: Gustafson Thane 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This chapter reviews the decisions of many Western companies to remain in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, which was followed by a flurry of announcements by Western companies in Russia, pledging to stop operations, launch no new projects, make no new investments, and—for many of them—to exit from Russia. As the chapter shows, many of these pledges preceded the actual imposition of sanctions and were prompted by the companies’ desire not to appear supportive of the aggressor. But three years on, only a small minority have actually left. According to the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), out of nearly 4,000 foreign companies present in Russia at the time of the invasion, only about 425 have actually left. This chapter explains why so many Western companies remain in Russia and goes on to analyze the consequences of this “quasi-exodus” for the Western investors and the Russian economy, and the long-term prospects for a return by Western businesses, if and when Russia reopens to the West.
Around the Corners of History
Authors: Gustafson Thane 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This chapter offers a hypothetical scenario for an eventual reopening of Russia to the West under the next generation of Russian leaders. There are two possible paths: a “good” reopening based on the reaffirmation and recodification of mutual interests between Russia and the West, through negotiation and mutual concessions; or a “bad” reopening through which Russia re-enters the world “through the back door,” exploiting Western fatigue, inattention, attrition, and erosion of will and unity through evasion, manipulation, and subversion. The chapter considers that a good reopening is possible. But it would require three things: a change of leadership, a stable settlement of the Ukrainian war, and the passage of time.
The Long Shadow of German Colonialism
Authors: Melber Henning 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
From 1884 to 1914, the world’s fourth-largest overseas colonial empire was that of the German Kaiserreich. Yet this fact is little known in Germany and the subject remains virtually absent from most school textbooks. While debates are now common in France and Britain over the impact of empire on former colonies and colonizing societies, German imperialism has only more recently become a topic of wider public interest. In 2015, the German government belatedly and half-heartedly conceded that the extermination policies carried out over 1904–8 in the settler colony of German South West Africa (now Namibia) qualify as genocide. But the recent invigoration of debate on Germany’s colonial past has been hindered by continued amnesia, denialism, and a populist right endorsing colonial revisionism. A campaign against postcolonial studies has sought to denounce and ostracize any serious engagement with the crimes of the imperial age. Henning Melber presents an overview of German colonial rule and analyses how its legacy has affected and been debated in German society, politics and the media. He also discusses the quotidian experiences of Afro-Germans, the restitution of colonial loot, and how the history of colonialism affects important institutions such as the Humboldt Forum.
Challenging Colonial Asymmetries and Blind Spots
Authors: Melber Henning 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This concluding chapter returns to the emphasis on self-critical explorations when it comes to colonial mindsets and socialization even of those who are critical of colonial history. It shares some of the perspectives by descendants of formerly colonized societies challenging white supremacist perceptions and attitudes and points to the continued coloniality of power even in efforts by official German policy to come to terms with the past injustices. The reluctance if not refusal to engage with colonial atrocities in a similar degree to the efforts to engage with the Holocaust are critically examined. The emphasis of its singularity is questioned as a form of gatekeeping, preventing an adequate willingness for a similar memory culture and acknowledgement of crimes committed. The notion of multidirectional memory is introduced and presented as a guiding principle.
Brown Babies
Authors: Connell Kieran 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This chapter provides an in-depth account of everyday life in an early multicultural community in Britain: the Tiger Bay area of Cardiff in Wales. It introduces readers to St Clair Drake, the African American anthropologist on whose unpublished study of Tiger Bay in the late-1940s this chapter draws. The chapter discusses the racialized nature of the moral panic around mixed-race babies in Britain, and the extent to which this was intimately connected to the racial ideologies that underpinned Britain’s imperial project. The chapter goes on to highlight the significance of what was understood to be Tiger Bay’s multicultural “metropolis”.