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This essay focuses on chapter 30 of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, one of the novel's shortest chapters. It contrasts bigness, destiny and Captain Ahab's authoritarian abuse of power with smallness, free will, and digression, the democratic virtues portrayed in Moby-Dick mostly through their absence but also, in chapter 30, by their presence in the form of a pipe that Captain Ahab smokes on deck and is then compelled to toss overboard so that The Pequod might complete is star-crossed and disastrously foreshadowed voyage.

This article provides an analysis of German foreign fighters who have left for Syria and Iraq since early 2012 and make up the second largest contingent among Western foreign fighters. It draws on statistical information about German foreign fighters, but also uses case studies in an attempt to shed more detailed light on their motivations and why they became radicalized. Drawing on recently released government data, trial documents, and media reports, the article seeks to contribute to new research on the prevailing mechanisms of Jihadi radicalization. To facilitate this kind of comprehensive analysis, McCauley and Moskalenko's Friction framework is applied to fourteen prominent German fighters, including Denis Cuspert (who served as medium-level ISIL propaganda official), Philip Bergner and Robert Baum (responsible for ISIL suicide attacks in Iraq and Syria), Kreshnik B. and Harun Pashtoon (among the first returning fighters convicted of ISIL membership and other terrorist activities). The article concludes with a discussion of countermeasures used to prevent foreign fighters from leaving Germany, deradicalize those who have started to embrace violent ideas and/or actions, and deal with returning foreign fighters.

Mit Blick auf die historischen Hintergründe (Befreiungskämpfe gegen die Kolonialmacht Portugal) und die landesspezifischen Rahmenbedingungen (Stammesstruktur etc.) analysiert die Dissertation die nach dem offiziellen Ende des angolanischen Bürgerkriegs (1976) sich entwickelnde politische und militärische Rebellion der UNITA Savimbis gegen die international anerkannte MPLA-Regierung. Im Zentrum der Untersuchung stehen neben der Organisations- und Führungsstruktur, der politischen Programmatik, der militärischen Stärke und den Kampfaktivitäten der UNITA auch die Interessenlage der sie unterstützenden ausländischen Mächte im angolanischen Stellvertreterkrieg. Erörtert werden auch die Regierungsreaktionen auf die UNITA-Aktivitäten. (BIOst-Hml)

This article analyzes and compares French and U.S. domestic responses to Jihadi radicalization, placing particular attention on the similarities between the two. In view of the political and cultural differences between the United States and France, the parallels between U.S. and French approaches to homegrown Jihadi radicalization are remarkable. Both countries got off to a late start when formulating counterradicalization strategies. While the underlying reasons (related to, inter alia, the notion of American exceptionalism and the French version of secularism) for this differ, the U.S. introduced its first counterradicalization strategy in 2011, followed by France in 2014. More important, so-called "soft" measures (including phone hotlines, dialogues and workshops, vocational training, targeted interventions, or counseling and exit programs), adopted by most Western democracies in an effort to prevent vulnerable individuals from radicalizing and reintegrate foreign fighters and others who have become infected with the Jihadi virus, have taken a back seat to "hard" security measures (including surveillance, arrests, and prosecutions) in the two countries. These findings have important implications for policymakers. Understanding what responses have been formulated, and also why, can facilitate international cooperation and provide useful insights on the characteristics, strengths, as well as limits of U.S. and French approaches to Jihadi radicals and foreign fighters.