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"Eduardo Wassim Aboultaif critically analyzes civil-military relations and the way armies are constructed in divided societies. To achieve that, the book looks at four case studies with deep divisions and whose armed forces have been reconstructed after civil wars. Lebanon and Bosnia-Herzegovina represent two examples of consociational power-sharing arrangements with functioning armed forces that enjoy wide popular support and neutral in internal affairs. Iraq and Burundi, however, have semi-consociational provisions that have politicized the army and made it a partisan military that has either led to disintegration (as in the case of Iraq) or politicization and loss of legitimacy (as in Burundi)"--

"The primary structural purpose of the United States Constitution is to empower the federal government to solve problems that the states would need to act collectively to solve, and to prevent the states from undermining these solutions or causing such problems from the perspective of the Constitution or Congress. Any faithful account of what the Constitution is for and how it should be interpreted must include this main structural function. The Constitution was established principally because of the widely recognized failures of its predecessor, the Articles of Confederation, to adequately address "collective-action problems" facing the states, including funding the national government, regulating foreign and interstate commerce, and defending the nation from attack. These challenges are called collective-action problems because the states would need to cooperate or coordinate their behavior-they would need to act collectively, not individually-to solve them, and they would often struggle to do so. In a fundamental sense, the U.S. Constitution is the Collective-Action Constitution, and the sobering problems facing America today-including inadequate access to health care, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and future ones, opioid addiction, gun violence, racism and other bigotry, political extremism, unlawful immigration, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation-cannot be adequately dealt with by government if Americans do not recognize this truth. The main goal of the Collective-Action Constitution is not to vindicate a conception of economic efficiency, but to create and maintain political and economic union"--

Intro -- Title Page -- About the Author -- Dedication -- Copyright Information © -- Introduction -- Foreword -- Chapter One War, What it 'Is', 'Type' and Trajectory -- War: A Definition -- Total War as a Phenomenon -- Limited War as a Phenomenon -- Grounding Limited War: A Brief Historical Perspective -- The Dangers of Limited War -- The Seemingly Limitless Impacts of a Limited War: The Vietnam War and Its Iconoclastic Effect on the Western 'Model' of War -- Conclusion -- Chapter Two Taiwan at the Crossroads: A Robust Independent Country and a Catalyst for War -- Introduction -- Taiwan: Independent and Prosperous -- Taiwan and the Issue of 'Sovereignty' as Ascribed by the West and the United Nations -- Taiwan ROC: A Forthright Political and Economic Actor -- The Dawn of Pax-Sino: From Cataclysms to Cosmopolitanism -- Globalisation and Its Impacts and Ramifications: A Brief Deliberation -- Globalisation and the Collapse of a Superpower -- Taiwan and China: The Way it Might Have Been -- Chapter Three International Relations and War -- Globalisation as a Continuum: Politico-power and Preponderance -- International Relations and the Term 'Nascent': A Brief Deliberation -- War as it 'Is': A Conceptual Underpinning -- Chapter Four The Asia-Pacific in the Second and Third Decades of the Twenty-First Century -- The Taiwan Strait -- Taiwan as the Epicentre of an Asia-Pacific War -- A Forthcoming War: The Evidence-Base and Narrative -- How a War Will 'Happen' and the Interdependencies Therein -- China and Its Cautious Approach Toward Retrocession -- The Surprise of No 'Surprise' Attack -- Why a 'Traditional' Invasion of Taiwan Will Not Occur -- What a War Involves: A Brief Deliberation -- Taiwan and the Realities of a War with China: A Brief Deliberation -- Taiwan-China and a High-Intensity Munitions Exchange: A Brief Deliberation.

Intro -- Title Page -- About the Author -- Dedication -- Copyright Information © -- Acknowledgement -- Preface -- Chapter One Introduction -- Chapter Two Age of Feudalism -- Chapter Three A Feudal Knight's Life of Anxiety and Insecurity -- Chapter Four The Norman Invasion, 14 October 1066 -- Chapter Five The Next Twenty Years for Honfroi and Raoul -- Chapter Six The Norman Life in Anglo-Saxon England -- Chapter Seven Dominus de Castle Combe -- Chapter Eight Primogeniture, Heresy and Anarchy -- Chapter Nine A Surge of Investment in Scotland -- Chapter Ten Westward Ho -- Chapter Eleven Henry II's Boyfriend -- Chapter Twelve Dominus, Churches and Universities -- Chapter Thirteen Magna Carta and Climate Change -- Chapter Fourteen Anti-Semitism and Banking -- Chapter Fifteen Wars of Independence and the Little Ice Age -- Chapter Sixteen The Maverick -- Chapter Seventeen The Great Starvation (1315-1322) -- Chapter Eighteen The Plague, and Reinventing Duchal -- Chapter Nineteen Recovering from the Plague -- Chapter Twenty Unstable Environment as Feudalism Splutters -- Chapter Twenty-One Four Hundred and Forty Thousand Acres -- Chapter Twenty-Two The Glue That Binds, and Two Kings -- Chapter Twenty-Three Every Aspect of the Old-World Collapses -- Chapter Twenty-Four Lazy Days, a Fiendish Relative, Desperation and Defeat -- Chapter Twenty-Five Master James and the English Reformation Legislating Rational Doctrinal Changes.