International Relations

The book I read to research this post was International Relations A Very Short Introduction by Paul Wilkinson which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. The birth of international relations can probably be traced back to the Napolianic Wars when a coalition of countries defeated Napolian and his French Army. Later there was the First & Second World Wars when it was realized there needed to be dialogue between countries to prevent wars on a huge scale. From this of course came the United Nations where there was a Security which consisted of 5 members initially Britain, United States, Russia, China & France. They are looking at expanding the number of members and Britain especially is in favor of abolition the member's veto which does cause problems. The Americans for example vetoed calling on Israeli Forces to vacate the Gaza Strip. What makes the United Nations even more vital is the proliferation of nuclear weapons with even some countries connected with terrorism and some rather undesirable regimes developing them. There are some concerns about a nuclear terrorist attack and countries attacking other countries with them. There are also organizations being formed like the EEC & ASEAN which look at countries in a certain region working together. The ASEAN is in South East Asia and purposely does not include Japan or China which it was felt would wield too much influence. The EEC of course is in Europe and most regions now have similar organizations. This is an interesting book and quite an enjoyable read. The A Very Short Introduction series which includes this book is a series where they get an expert to write approximately 150 pages on a given topic primarily as an introduction. I've read and read reviewed quite a lot of books from the series. There are apparently around 300 titles in the series.