Enhance your library’s holdings with our comprehensive collection of 56 titles in international law, international relations and security studies. This curated selection includes both timeless classics and pioneering new works, featuring esteemed titles from the renowned Melland Schill series, known for its signifi cant contributions to the field.
Our collection integrates contemporary research with historic texts, serving as a global repository of academic scholarship.
| Key series |
| Melland Schill Perspectives on International Law |
| Melland Schill Studies in International Law |
| Melland Schill Classics in International Law |
| New Approaches to Confl ict Analysis |
| Collection year | Titles |
| 2025 titles | 11 |
| 2023/4 titles | 10 |
| 2000-2022 titles | 31 |
| Total collection | 56 |
| Keywords |
| Conflict |
| Military |
| Geopolitics |
| War |
| Children |
| Peace |
| Thema subject categories |
| Artifical intelligence |
| Diplomacy |
| International law |
| International relations |
| Peace studies and conflict resolution |
| Religion and politics |
| Geopolitics |
SDG coverage
International law and international relations collection
This chapter examines the expansion of violence in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014 to explore the impact of proxy war on the state’s territorial control and sovereignty. It details how the Taliban, with support from Pakistan, challenged the Afghan government’s efforts to establish control after the Taliban regime’s overthrow in 2001. The chapter analyzes the geographical spread of violence and its effects on state-building, law enforcement, development projects, and state-society relations. It argues that Pakistan’s provision of sanctuary, training, organizational assistance, ideological direction, and intelligence significantly empowered the Taliban to challenge the Afghan state’s territorial control and thus effectively undermined statehood in the country. This external support facilitated the Taliban’s systematic use of violence, undermining Afghanistan’s sovereignty and statehood and leading to state fragility and widespread state dysfunctionality.
This chapter comprehensively examines the geopolitical dynamics of the proxy war in Afghanistan, focusing on the historical, regional, and international dynamics of the conflict and their impacts on state and political stability. The Afghan conflict’s complexity necessitates a deep dive into its historical and socio-political context to understand military strategies fully. The chapter explores post-9/11 competition among actors, particularly Afghanistan-Pakistan relations, US-Pakistan interactions, and the Pakistan-India rivalry within Afghanistan. This analysis underscores the multifaceted nature of competition among actors, showing how the Taliban-Pakistan relationship is rooted in broader regional disputes. The chapter aims to illuminate the complex geopolitical dynamics shaping the Afghan conflict, which forced the US to leave Afghanistan. It argues that Pakistan’s perception of the US presence and its rivalry with India drove its strategic depth policy, influencing its support for the Taliban. This support hindered state-building efforts and prolonged the conflict, demonstrating the enduring impact of proxy warfare in Afghanistan.
This chapter revisits the key theoretical and empirical arguments of the book, highlighting the findings that show how proxy war is a process of state-wrecking. It also examines the trajectory of conflict in Afghanistan from 2014 to 2024 through the book’s theoretical lens, tracking the collapse of the state in August 2021. The chapter shows how the Taliban’s return to power created new insecurity for the Afghan population and has continued to be a security concern for regional countries and the international community, leading to a humanitarian crisis and further isolating Afghanistan globally. Additionally, the chapter demonstrates how Afghanistan, under Taliban rule, became a country without a functioning state. Finally, the chapter discusses the broader implications of this study for proxy war scholarship and international security studies, particularly in understanding the destructive consequences of proxy conflicts on state structures and regional stability.
This introductory chapter delineates the central focus of the book, which centers on the examination of the significance of proxy warfare within the intricate context of the Afghanistan conflict, emphasizing its relevance to the domain of international security studies. The chapter elucidates the book’s critical approach toward proxy warfare and introduces key concepts such as proxy war, civil war, and statehood, which are foundational to the book’s analysis. Furthermore, the chapter outlines the book’s methodology and key arguments concerning the impact of proxy warfare on the target state. It also elaborates on the book’s contribution to broader discussions within the fields of proxy war studies as part of international security studies and state-building analysis in academia and policy circles. Last, the chapter provides an overview of the book’s structure, offering readers a roadmap of the subsequent chapters.
This chapter examines the intricate relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban during the post-2001 Afghan war, emphasizing Pakistan’s pivotal role in supporting the Taliban, which facilitated their survival and enabled them to intensify violence against the US-led state-building endeavor in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s support encompassed the provision of arms, training, and ideological and intelligence assistance to the Taliban, thereby influencing their organizational structure and leadership dynamics. This strategic partnership enabled the Taliban to solidify their leadership, bolster recruitment efforts, and expand operational networks within Afghanistan, thereby posing substantial challenges to the Afghan government and US forces. Furthermore, the chapter contends that despite the pivotal nature of Pakistan's support, the actual cooperation between Pakistan and the Taliban was characterized by complexity. While the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) played a significant role, the coordination between the two entities was intricate. Additionally, Pakistan engaged with the Taliban through informal channels, such as retired ISI generals providing training, and supported them ideologically through madrassas, aligning these efforts with its broader Afghan strategy.
This chapter provides a critical analysis of how proxy relations have influenced the intensity of violence by the Taliban in Afghanistan, leading to the erosion of the Afghan government’s authority. Drawing on the theoretical framework emphasizing violence’s impact on undermining state sovereignty, particularly its monopoly on force, the chapter demonstrates how heightened violence has impeded the state’s capacity to develop effective governance institutions. It explores how escalating violence has turned Afghanistan into a battleground for competing factions, each using violence to gain political advantage. This cycle perpetuates itself, shaping actors’ strategies and positions. The chapter argues that the proxy dimension of the war in Afghanistan intensified violence, impacting statehood and political order. It highlights Pakistan’s role in supporting the Taliban, providing sanctuary, training, and intelligence support, making the war unwinnable for the Afghan government and the US-led coalition. This destructive strategy aimed to undermine the Afghan government and existing political, economic, and law enforcement efforts, emphasizing violence as a form of political behavior.
This chapter examines the bargaining process in the Afghanistan war, highlighting the significance of verbal interactions alongside violent events in the state-wrecking process. It discusses how the Taliban used bargaining to advance its political position, with Pakistan’s support, ultimately undermining the Afghan state’s legitimacy. The chapter explores how peace negotiations were used by both sides to enhance their political positions rather than achieve peace. It also shows how Pakistan played a significant role in facilitating US-Taliban talks while undermining potential negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Throughout the process, the Afghanistan government was marginalized, and the Taliban found opportunities to boost its reputation and demonstrate power while talking to the US. The chapter argues that the Taliban’s strategy of violence intensification, territorial expansion, and challenge to the state’s legitimacy led to the collapse of the Afghan government in 2021, illustrating the destructive potential of proxy wars on state-building processes.
This book is about the dynamics of proxy war, focusing on Afghanistan. This book shifts the focus on literature from being focused on big powers’ strategy to the impact of proxy war within the target state. The book theorizes the impact and procedure of the war as a state-wrecking process with specific mechanisms. Proxy wars are mainly studied with a Western-centric focus that concentrates on big powers’ strategies and motivation, and thus, little attention is paid to the procedural dynamics of proxy wars and the humanitarian catastrophes within the target state witnessing conflict. This book shifts the focus of proxy studies from investigating the great powers’ strategies to the impacts and procedures of proxy war within the target state. The war in Afghanistan with the US-led invention is a case in point investigated in this book. This book theorizes the impact of proxy relations and the procedure of war on the target country by arguing that proxy relations turn an internal conflict into an effective state-wrecking process. The book shows that the US lost the war in Afghanistan due to its failure to address the proxy dimension of the war, and thus, the war turned into a state-wrecking process that appears across three dimensions. First, proxy relations significantly undermined the state’s monopoly over the use of violence through intensifying insurgent violence against the target state. Second, proxy relations undermined the state’s territorial control by empowering anti-state actors to expand their violence against the government. Third, proxy relations, directly and indirectly, enhance proxy actors’ political and military capabilities to undermine the target state’s legitimacy and bargaining power. These three dimensions of proxy war function as a state-wrecking process and significantly undermined the US-led state-building efforts in Afghanistan.
This chapter introduces the book’s theoretical framework for exploring the impact of proxy warfare on statehood in the target state. It begins by reviewing the evolution of proxy warfare within international security and strategic studies, noting its emergence as a distinct subfield. Despite the increasing attention to proxy warfare, a gap persists in understanding its consequences on statehood and the dynamics of conflict in the target state. Given this, the chapter offers critical theorization of proxy war to unpack the procedural mechanism of proxy warfare. The chapter introduces the concept of “state-wrecking” as its central concept, resulting from proxy relations, undermining the sovereignty and functions of the target state. The chapter emphasizes the critical theoretical approach adopted in the book, aiming to offer an innovative framework for understanding the impacts of proxy warfare on target states and broader international security. By offering a critical theoretical lens, the chapter identifies key procedures and strategies in proxy wars undermining the state in the target country. These procedural mechanisms will be conceptualized to analyze the impact of the Pakistan-Taliban proxy relationship in the Afghanistan case.
This chapter shows the pathway that was developed between Russia and the UK in naval cooperation. It highlights that this process started before the collapse of the USSR, hence the argument that even in times of tension, it was possible to maintain some level of dialogue. The chapter outlines a series of Confidence Building Measures that were introduced such as the talks at Adderbury starting in 1988 with retired and serving personnel from the USSR, UK and the US. Following the collapse of the USSR these talks continued to become Russia, UK, US talks (RUKUS) which also developed a practical at sea element to the events. As well as this trilateral forum, bilateral events were also taking place, for example through ship visits and exercises and senior personnel visits. Tables of these visits and those involving RUKUS are included and are a unique record derived in the main from the authors’ sources. Reasons for the success of the Adderbury and RUKUS talks are also captured. This period of positive interaction culminated in 1998 with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Royal Navy and Russian Navy on Naval Cooperation. Included in this chapter are personal anecdotes of interaction with the Soviet Navy in the Gulf, life at sea in a Russian warship, other official declarations from RUKUS talks and personal observations of those talks by Robert Avery. Also included is a first hand account of the first interaction between the Russian Naval Infantry and Royal Marines.