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The Middle East is in crisis. The shocking events of the war in Gaza have rocked the entire region. More than a decade ago, the Arab Spring had raised hopes of a new beginning but instead ushered in a series of civil wars, coups, and even harsher autocracies. Tensions were exacerbated by the meddling of outsiders, as regional and global powers sought to further their interests. The United States, for so long the dominant actor, had stepped back, leaving a vacuum behind it to be fought over Christopher Phillips explores geopolitical rivalries in the region, and the major external powers vying for influence: Russia, China, the EU, and the US. Moving through ten key flashpoints, from Syria to Palestine, Phillips argues that the United States' overextension after the Cold War, and retreat in the 2010s, has imbalanced the region. Today, the Middle East remains blighted by conflicts of unprecedented violence and a post-American scramble for power – leaving its fate in the balance.

An unprecedented analysis of the crucial but underexplored roles the United States and other nations have played in shaping Syria's ongoing civil war Most accounts of Syria's brutal, long-lasting civil war focus on a domestic contest that began in 2011 and only later drew foreign nations into the escalating violence. Christopher Phillips argues instead that the international dimension was never secondary but that Syria's war was, from the very start, profoundly influenced by regional factors, particularly the vacuum created by a perceived decline of U.S. power in the Middle East. This precipitated a new regional order in which six external protagonists-the United States, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar-have violently competed for influence, with Syria a key battleground. Drawing on a plethora of original interviews, Phillips constructs a new narrative of Syria's war. Without absolving the brutal Bashar al-Assad regime, the author untangles the key external factors which explain the acceleration and endurance of the conflict, including the West's strategy against ISIS. He concludes with some insights on Syria and the region's future

Introduction: white salt, black servitude -- White flows the river: freedom and unfreedom in the early national west -- Babel: changed persistence on slavery's borderland -- The ten year war: sectional politics in a dividing region -- No north, no south, no east, no west: the fiction of the wartime middle ground -- Netherworld of war: civilians, soldiers, and the dominion of war -- Bitter harvest: emancipation and the politics of loyalty -- Shadow wars: the crucible of social violence -- North star, southern cross: the politics of irreconciliation -- Conclusion

Thomas Jefferson proposed that we revise the Constitution every so often, not just to reflect the changing times but to revive and perpetuate our original revolutionary spirit. Could it be that the Constitution itself is part of the reason that our democracy is on life support, our government gone haywire? To find out, Christopher Phillips, originator of the Socrates Café dialogues, sets off on a cross-country junket to engage Americans of all stripes in an offbeat constitutional convention. Given the opportunity to rewrite the Constitution, a diverse bunch--from Burning Man die-hards to army veterans, Tea Party acolytes to Orange County slackers--weighs in with some really wild and worthwhile ideas about how our nation should be governed. With Jefferson as his iconoclastic and visionary guide, Phillips moderates these discussions and complements his participants' ideas by relating them to Jefferson's own experiences with governance and to his great expectations for our democracy.--From publisher description

"In this first full-length study of Claiborne Fox Jackson, Christopher Phillips offers much more than a traditional biography. His analysis of Jackson's rise to power through the tangle that was Missouri's antebellum politics and of Jackson's complex actions in pursuit of his state's secession complete the deeper and broader story of regional identity - one that began with a growing defense of the institution of slavery and which crystallized during and after the bitter, internecine struggle in the neutral border state during the American Civil War. Placing slavery within the realm of western democratic expansion rather than of plantation agriculture in border slave states such as Missouri, Phillips argues that southern identity in the region was not born, but created.

How does the international system impact a civil war? Does polarity affect the war's outbreak, character and how long it lasts? Systemic Realists argue multipolarity makes inter-state war more likely, but is this also true of intra-state war? Using the Syria conflict (2011-present) as a case study, this article suggests a connection can be found. It argues that the end of US-dominated unipolarity, and its interaction with a new multipolarity in the Middle East region impacted the behaviour and calculations of foreign states involved, contributing to the outbreak of war and how it progressed. The same interacting multipolarity paradoxically also shaped Russia's decision to intervene in 2015, ultimately edging the war towards a conclusion, something that Systemic Realists would not expect. This study of the systemic effects in the Syria conflict suggests that the Neo-Realist concept of polarity continues to have relevance and can be useful in understanding intra- as well as inter-state conflict. It points to the importance of the interaction between regional and global systems in generating these effects, and it suggests a reconsideration of the Neo-Realist view that multipolarity always makes wars harder to end.

The war of 1914–18 was the first great conflict to be fought between highly industrial societies able to manufacture and transport immense quantities of goods to the field of battle. In Civilian Specialists at War, Christopher Phillips examines the manner in which Britain's industrial society influenced the character and conduct of industrial warfare. This book analyses the multiple connections between the military, the government and the senior executives of some of pre-war Britain's largest companies. It illustrates the British army's evolving response to the First World War and the role to be played by non-military expertise in the prosecution of such a conflict. This study demonstrates that pre-existing professional relationships between the army, the government and private enterprise were exploited throughout the conflict. It details how civilian technologies facilitated the prosecution of war on an unprecedented scale, while showing how British experts were constrained by the political and military demands of coalition warfare. Civilian Specialists at War reveals that Britain's transport experts were a key component in the country's conduct of the First World War.