The Political Economy of Global Security: War, Future Crises and Changes in Global Governance Book

Tables and figures vii

Foreword viii

Preface xiii

Acknowledgements xvii

1 Introduction 1

2 Global security: learning from possible futures 17

3 Explaining the First World War: learning from classical theories of imperialism 36

4 The origins of the First World War: using historical counterfactuals in constructing open-system explanations 59

5 The long downward wave of the world economy in the late twentieth century: towards a return of the past? 100

6 Global insecurity in the early twenty-first century: neoliberalisation and the rise of new imperialism 124

7 Possible futures A: the logic of violence and war returns to the core areas of global political economy 156

8 Possible futures B and C: wars, crises and peaceful transformations of global governance 182

9 Conclusions: is the future of global security a tragedy, farce, or comedy? 216

Appendix 1 How to analyse and help solve global collective dilemmas 225

Appendix 2 Layers of agency, structures and geo-historical nodal points that explain the First World War 232

Notes 241

Bibliography 267

Index 287