New Books in World Affairs

Punk Anarchism: An Anti-Politics of Resistance (Bloomsbury, 2026) is a radical critique of contemporary politics, offering an alternative framework rooted in anarchism, punk rock, dadaism, situationism and political nihilism. Arguing that traditional approaches to political change are ineffective in the face of the climate crisis and the failures of liberal institutions, the book advocates for rejecting the possibility of meaningful political change within the existing political system. Drawing on historical cultural movements like the Russian and Japanese nihilists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Sean Parson calls for a politics of pure negation, centered on the destruction of the current social order, rather than its reform – advocating for a revolutionary politics that embraces resentment against the wealthy and rejects hierarchical power dynamics. Punk Anarchism asks: what if resistance were motivated by a sense of playfulness and enjoyment, rather than hope for a better future? Ultimately, Parson proposes an anti-theory of negation as a way to imagine political agency beyond traditional frameworks. Sean Parson is Professor in the Department of Politics and International Affairs at Northern Arizona University, USA. They are the author of Cooking Up a Revolution: Resistance to Gentrification (2019) and the co-editor of four edited books includingRepresentations of Political Resistance and Emancipation in Science Fiction (2020). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Nicholas Beuret, lecturer and activist studying the political economy of the green transition. He profiles the transition economy as a site of class conflict. He describes everyday squeezes from green policy, the rise of precarious green jobs and securitization. He argues for disruptive tactics, local organizing, and community-led refusals as pathways to a fairer transition.

David L. Eng, a scholar of literature and critical theory and author of Reparations and the Human, joins to explore law, psychoanalysis, and reparations. He traces colonial roots of who counts as human. He contrasts Holocaust consensus with fragmented reckonings over Hiroshima and comfort women. He examines uranium, indigenous dispossession, and calls for rethinking the human through dependency and interdependence.

Richard Clark, assistant professor at Notre Dame focused on international organizations and populism. Allison Carnegie, Columbia professor studying global governance. They discuss how IOs actively resist populist attacks. They outline four defensive strategies and trade-offs. They describe methods and practical steps IOs can take to protect multilateral institutions.

Towards the end of the Cold War, the last great struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union marked the end of détente, and escalated into the most dangerous phase of the conflict since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Aaron Donaghy examines the complex history of America's largest peacetime military buildup, which was in turn challenged by the largest peacetime peace movement. Focusing on the critical period between 1977 and 1985, Donaghy shows how domestic politics shaped dramatic foreign policy reversals by Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. These reversals, the book argues, were influenced by president's willingness to take risks, by their perception of credibility, and by the timing of their decision.  Donaghy explains why the Cold War intensified so quickly and how - contrary to all expectations - US-Soviet relations were repaired. Drawing on recently declassified archival material, The Second Cold War: Carter, Reagan, and the Politics of Foreign Policy (Cambridge UP, 2021) traces how each administration evolved in response to crises and events at home and abroad. This compelling and controversial account challenges the accepted notion of how the end of the Cold War began. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

There can be little doubt that Hong Kong has stood out as a particularly intense East Asian news hotspot in recent years. Whether reports have focused on pro-democracy protests, abducted booksellers or PRC Mainland integration plans, most of this news has revolved around a common theme - namely questions over Beijing's ruling Chinese Communist Party and its influence in Hong Kong.On this background, Christine Loh’s book Underground Front: The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong(Hong Kong University Press, 2018) is an indispensable guide to the Party's approaches to Hong Kong over time. As a former-lawmaker in the city’s Legislative Council, founder of the think tank Civic Exchange, and many other things, Loh makes the most of her unique vantage point on contemporary CCP affairs, as well her invaluable access to insights from the her hometown's colonial past. This book sets its analysis of how the Party seeks to maintain supremacy in Hong Kong within all-important historical context, and consequently will be a vital resource for anyone wishing to understand the questions of political culture, power and influence which are pivotal to the future of East Asia and the world at large. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Nationalism today depends on the perception of victimhood. The historical memory of past suffering endows nationalist movements with political legitimacy and a sense of moral superiority. Koreans recall Japanese colonial atrocities, while Japan commemorates the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Israel sanctifies the Holocaust and Poland trumpets the Nazi and Soviet occupations. Even Germany and Russia, perpetrators of historical crimes, today cast themselves as victims by pointing to national suffering. In this theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich book, Jie-Hyun Lim offers a new way to understand nationalism and its political instrumentalization of suffering, developing the concept of “victimhood nationalism” and exploring it in a range of global settings. Victimhood Nationalism: History and Memory in a Global Age (Columbia UP, 2025) examines relations among Poland, Germany, Israel, Korea, and Japan, focusing on how memories of colonialism, the Holocaust, and Stalinist terror have converged and intertwined in transnational spaces. With an emphasis on memory formation, Lim scrutinizes how perpetrators in Germany and Japan transformed themselves into victims, as well as how nationalists in Poland, Korea, and Israel portray themselves as hereditary victims in order to rebut external criticism. He considers the construction of nations as victims and perpetrators, tracing the interaction of history and memory. Ultimately, the book contends, challenging victimhood nationalism is necessary to overcome the endless competition over national suffering and instead promote reconciliation, mutual understanding, and transnational solidarity. Dr. Jie-Hyun Lim is the CIPSH Chairholder of Global Easts, Distinguished Professor, and founding director of the Critical Global Studies Institute at Sogang University. In 2025–2026, he is the Class of 1955 Visiting Professor in Global Studies at Williams College. His many books include Global Easts: Remembering, Imagining, Mobilizing (Columbia, 2022). Visit the Critical Global Studies Institute’s homepage: here Buy Victimhood Nationalism: History and Memory in a Global Age: here About the host: Leslie Hickman is an Anthropology graduate student at Emory University. She has an MA in Korean Studies and a KO-EN translation certificate from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. You can contact her at leslie.hickman@emory.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Robert Howse, Lloyd C. B. Nelson Professor of International Law at NYU and noted thinker on legal and political theory, discusses Trump’s instrumental relationship with the UN Charter from Gaza to Venezuela and Iran. He explores Strauss and Schmitt’s influence on contemporary right-wing thought. Conversations range from sovereignty and the use of force to virtue, masculinity, and the MAGA new right.

Agustín Santella, professor of sociology at the University of Buenos Aires and Marxist researcher, discusses efforts to forge a cohesive theory of collective action. He explores linking class struggle with diverse protests. Short takes cover fragmentation in Marxism, neoliberal individualization, the role of practice and materialism, and rethinking labor, reproduction, and new forms of struggle.

Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs at Harvard and author of Asia After Europe. He traces how Asians imagined continental solidarity across the twentieth century. Conversations cover anti-colonial cosmopolitanisms, competing nationalisms, Islamic and artistic networks, and why expansive Asian imaginaries rose, faltered, and might be revived through culture and civil society.