Books

Fighting Poverty and Violence analyzes what is needed to abolish the worst forms of human deprivation. Based on many international studies about the UN Sustainable Development Goals, it concludes that only two percent of world income is needed to provide all human beings with safe drinking water, sanitation, food, basic education, and simple health care. The poorest people also incur the largest numbers of victims due to wars, disasters, and  pandemics. This book contains practical suggestions for more effective civic and political action to reach the universal goal of well-being in peace. Watch the livestream of the Book Launch here!

Can’t wait to read it? Buy it here.

How modern disinformation campaigns – whose methods and composition changed through the information revolution between 1990 und 2009 – can be countered more effectively

The information revolution changed the way state-organized disinformation campaigns are conducted. Spreading various forms of propaganda, confusing half-thruths and pure falsehoods have accelerated, and social media made it possible to reach an increasing number of people targeted, in an ever-shorter news cycle. In the past disinformation actors mostly tried to persuade an audience of a single made-up story. Nowadays in the so-called post-truth era, disinformation actors rather attempt to dissuade an audience of the evidence-based story by disseminating an unending number of alternative narratives. At the core of this research lays the question how to deal with disinformation in digitized society.

Curious? Buy it here.

Een nieuwe en derde druk verschijnt in augustus 2021

De wereld verandert snel. Hoe moeten wij ons op de toekomst voorbereiden? Dat begint met een goed begrip van hoe de wereld feitelijk in elkaar zit, wat de drijvende krachten zijn, hoe machtspolitiek van de grote mogendheden op andere landen inwerkt en aan welke eisen van volkenrecht en politieke ethiek goed beleid hoort te voldoen. Ook de werking van de mondiale economie en van internationale organisaties als de VN, de NAVO en de EU is erg belangrijk.

Dit studieboek geeft een inleiding in de leer van de internationale betrekkingen. Deskundigen leggen helder uit hoe de huidige politieke wereld is ontstaan, wat er op de agenda van het buitenlands beleid staat, en in welke richting de mondiale problematiek zich ontwikkelt.

Wat is het risico op nieuwe oorlogen? Zou de Europese Unie uiteen kunnen vallen? Waarom is er ontwikkelingssamenwerking? Hoe op te treden tegen agressie en schendingen van het volkenrecht en de rechten van de mens? Hoe kunnen kleine, maar welvarende en moderne landen als Nederland en België zich staande houden en voor een veilige toekomst helpen zorgen? Horen we vooral het nationale belang te behartigen of moeten we ons als echte wereldburgers opstellen? Hoe is er opbouwende invloed uit te oefenen, als burger, kiezer, politicus, belangenbehartiger of activist voor goede doelen?

Dat zijn relevante vragen die steeds opnieuw, kritisch nadenkend, moeten worden beantwoord om betere resultaten te boeken. Wereld in Beweging is een handreiking daarvoor.

Koop het boek hier

In 1995, the enclave of Srebrenica, which the UN declared to be a ‘safe area’ during the war in the former Yugoslavia, was overrun by Serb troops. Srebrenica counted about 40.000 Bosnians. The UN Blue Helmets from the Netherlands who had been stationed there were unable to defend the area. The aggressors, commanded by General Ratko Mladic, killed many thousands of Bosnian men. About 7500 persons are still missing. Many of them were found dead in mass graves in the following years.

How could this atrocity have been prevented? What was the role of the Netherlands Blue Helmets, the UN and the allies? This mass murder gives rise to many questions.  In this book, Joris Voorhoeve added new material to the many existing studies. The book also investigated fourteen other cases of very vulnerable concentrations of civilians and refugees who faced serious risks of mass murder in different countries and regions.

The purpose of the book is to help design better ‘safe area’ policies of the UN, based on the failures of the past. The book draws fifty important policy conclusions to that end. The author, who served in the Netherlands Cabinet at the time, concludes that timely use of air power is the crucial means to save such population groups. His hypothesis is, that in the case of Srebrenica the UN Secretary-General was unwilling to keep promises to the Netherlands Government that adequate air power would assist the lightly armed and small group of peacekeepers, was a crucial omission. Also, Britain and France had agreed with the US not to apply air power against the Serb military at that time. The enclave fell due to lack of support.

The contents of this book were the subject of an hour-long prime-time television documentary in 2015. This was followed by an official investigation, ordered by the Netherlands Cabinet, into the policies of the three allies. Unwillingness to share intelligence files of that time led to an inconclusive debate, which cast doubt on the assumption that lack of air power was crucial. The author maintains this assumption, however.

Amsterdam: Atlas-Contact

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How can we survive the future if climate change, civil wars and conflict over resources increase the tensions in the world? One out of seven persons is suffering from hunger. Meanwhile, the world population is growing. The interdependency between the growing consumption of the rich and poverty and corrupt administrations in third world countries, as well as the spread of weapons and new diseases will become disastrous if policies don’t improve. In Negen Plagen Tegelijk, Joris Voorhoeve explains what citizens can do and how the Netherlands might be able to contribute. He also describes how the European Union and the UN can approach major challenges. Stories of people who fight for better policies show that inspiring persons can make a big difference. They encourage the reader to confront the threats and challenges of the 21^st century.

Buy the book here

Although it is assumed that the improved atmosphere in Greek-Turkish relations since 1999 is composed of the initiatives undertaken by both sides the paper self-consciously restricts its case-study to the contribution to this evolution on behalf of the Greek side. Europeanization of Greek Foreign Policy and Greece’s Engagement Strategy towards Turkey during the last decade constitute topics in the name of which a lot of literature has been developed. The aim of this thesis is to establish a link between them. How is Europeanization able to influence and shape the formulation of an EU member state strategy? How can it contribute to the adoption of a strategy especially in cases where the targeted state does not belong to the EU family and is perceived to hold revisionist aspirations? Why does the currently employed strategy seem according to the today’s Greek Foreign Policy Makers the proper solution to deal with their security concerns? Assuming that the adoption of this policy is of strategic importance the author is interested to highlight the indicator behind this decision and to illustrate the way this strategy was interpreted and pursued.

The book can be purchased here.

Saarbrucken: LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing, 148 pages, price: 93,99 €

This book on the foreign relations of the Netherlands shows how broad and intensive the diplomacy of a modern Small Power can be. Much of the literature on world politics has been written from the perspective of the Great Powers. Small Powers are dealt with as props on the world stage. However, the large majority of states has a different vantage point: that of middle-sized or small participants. They have to pursue their goals with only a fraction of the Super Powers’ resources against often overwhelming international forces.

Dutch foreign policy is interesting not only because of its historical evolution but also because it exemplifies modern interdependence among states. As an open trading nation, located at the cross-roads of Western Europe, as a participant in the process of European integration and an active member of many international organizations, as a nation whose public, interested in global affairs, is often eager to set an example of idealistic behavior for other states, the Netherlands portrays the many complexities of contemporary international relations.

Peace, Profits and Principles is not an official publication, but a private study. It combines the classical approach to International Relations with some of the more quantitative and economic elements of the contemporary approaches. The organization of the material and the extensive bibliographies on Small Power behavior and on Dutch foreign policy make this book suitable as a comprehensive source on the international relations of the Netherlands and as a case study for use in comparative foreign policy analysis and the general study of Small Powers.

Hard copies can be ordered for € 15,- at info@sen-foundation.org.