Bøger af Kenneth B. Moss

Conventional histories of modern Jewish politics emphasize the agency offered by Zionism, liberalism, and socialism. Kenneth B. Moss traces a darker reckoning with powerlessness amid grave dangers in Europe's largest Jewish community, recovering a search for realism about minority experience, the nation-state, and the making of a future.

Letters of marque might suggest privateers of the Elizabethan era or the American Revolution. But such conventions are duly covered in the US Constitution, and the private military instruments they sanction are very much at work today in the form of mercenaries and military contractors. A history of such practices up to the present day, Marque and Reprisal by Kenneth B. Moss offers unique insight into the role of private actors in military conflicts and the reason they are increasingly deployed in our day.Along with an overview of mercenaries and privateers, Marque and Reprisal provides a comprehensive history of the marque and reprisal clause in the US Constitution, reminding us that it is not as arcane as it seems and arguing that it is not a license for all forms of undeclared war. Within this historical context Moss explains why governments and states have sought control over warfare and actorsand why private actors have reappeared in force in recent conflicts. He also looks ahead to the likelihood that cyberwar will become an important venue for private warfare. Moss wonders if international law will be up to the challenges of private military actors in the digital realm. Is international law, in fact, equipped to meet the challenges increasingly presented in our day by such extramilitary activity?A government makes no more serious decision than whether to resort to military force and war; and when doing so, Moss suggests, it should ensure that such actions are accountable, not on the sly, and not decided in the marketplace. Marque and Reprisal should inform future deliberations and decisions on that count.

Between 1917 and 1921, Jewish intellectuals and writers across the Russian empire pursued a "Jewish renaissance." Here is a revisionist argument about the nature of cultural nationalism, the relationship between nationalism and socialism, and culture itself-the pivot point for the encounter between Jews and European modernity over the past century.