Kirjahaku

GOLD MEDALLIST IN THE 2024 AXIOM BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS A bold new account of the state of globalization today—and what its collapse might mean for the world economy After the Cold War, globalization accelerated at breakneck speed. Manufacturing, transport, and consumption defied national borders, companies made more money, and consumers had access to an ever-increasing range of goods. But in recent years, a profound shift has begun to take place. Business executives and politicians alike are realising that globalization is no longer working. Supply chains are imperilled, Russia has been expelled from the global economy after its invasion of Ukraine, and China is using these fissures to leverage a strategic advantage. Given these pressures, what will the future of our world economy look like? In this groundbreaking account, Elisabeth Braw explores the collapse of globalization and the profound challenges it will bring to the West. Drawing on interviews with prominent executives and policymakers from around the world, Braw poses the difficult questions all businesses and economies will face—and traces the intricate story of globalization from the exuberant ’90s to the embattled present.

GOLD MEDALLIST IN THE 2024 AXIOM BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS A bold new account of the state of globalization today—and what its collapse might mean for the world economy After the Cold War, globalization accelerated at breakneck speed. Manufacturing, transport, and consumption defied national borders, companies made more money, and consumers had access to an ever-increasing range of goods. But in recent years, a profound shift has begun to take place. Business executives and politicians alike are realising that globalization is no longer working. Supply chains are imperilled, Russia has been expelled from the global economy after its invasion of Ukraine, and China is using these fissures to leverage a strategic advantage. Given these pressures, what will the future of our world economy look like? In this groundbreaking account, Elisabeth Braw explores the collapse of globalization and the profound challenges it will bring to the West. Drawing on interviews with prominent executives and policymakers from around the world, Braw poses the difficult questions all businesses and economies will face—and traces the intricate story of globalization from the exuberant ’90s to the embattled present.

When the Berlin Wall came down, the files of the East German secret police, the much-dreaded Stasi, were opened and read. And among the shocking stories revealed was that of the Stasi's infiltration of the Church. Almost 10% of the Lutheran Church's workforce were, it appears, busy involved in spying on each other, and on the Church's congregations. The Lutheran Church was the only semi-free space in East Germany, where those who rebelled against the regime could find a way of living at least a little out of the government's iron grip. Even the organisations that smuggled Bibles were infiltrated.

When the Berlin Wall came down, the files of the East German secret police, the much-dreaded Stasi, were opened and read. And among the shocking stories revealed was that of the Stasi's infiltration of the Church. Almost 10% of the Lutheran Church's workforce were, it appears, busy involved in spying on each other, and on the Church's congregations. The Lutheran Church was the only semi-free space in East Germany, where those who rebelled against the regime could find a way of living at least a little out of the government's iron grip. Even the organisations that smuggled Bibles were infiltrated.

The real-life cloak-and-dagger story of how East Germany's notorious spy agency infiltrated churches here and abroadEast Germany only existed for a short forty years, but in that time, the country's secret police, the Stasi, developed a highly successful "church department" that--using persuasion rather than threats--managed to recruit an extraordinary stable of clergy spies. Pastors, professors, seminary students, and even bishops spied on colleagues, other Christians, and anyone else they could report about to their handlers in the Stasi. Thanks to its pastor spies, the Church Department (official name: Department XX/4) knew exactly what was happening and being planned in the country's predominantly Lutheran churches. Yet ultimately it failed in its mission: despite knowing virtually everything about East German Christians, the Stasi couldn't prevent the church-led protests that erupted in 1989 and brought down the Berlin Wall.

The real-life cloak-and-dagger story of how East Germany's notorious spy agency infiltrated churches here and abroadEast Germany only existed for a short forty years, but in that time, the country's secret police, the Stasi, developed a highly successful "church department" that--using persuasion rather than threats--managed to recruit an extraordinary stable of clergy spies. Pastors, professors, seminary students, and even bishops spied on colleagues, other Christians, and anyone else they could report about to their handlers in the Stasi. Thanks to its pastor spies, the Church Department (official name: Department XX/4) knew exactly what was happening and being planned in the country's predominantly Lutheran churches. Yet ultimately it failed in its mission: despite knowing virtually everything about East German Christians, the Stasi couldn't prevent the church-led protests that erupted in 1989 and brought down the Berlin Wall.

National security threats facing the West are fundamentally changing. Turning away from the military as an omnibus tool of aggression, hostile governments are instead frequently using tools—including subversive economics, coercion of foreign companies, gradual border violations, cyberattacks, disinformation, and arbitrary detention of foreign citizens—that are often difficult for targeted countries to immediately identify, let alone tackle. Nonmilitary aggression is easy, inexpensive, and alarmingly effective. Businesses — American and foreign — have already suffered significant financial losses because of gray-zone attacks.In The Defender’s Dilemma, international security expert Elisabeth Brawer offers the first sustained analysis of how these tactics in the gray zone between war and peace dangerously weaken liberal democracies, which are open societies by definition and intimately connected to the rest of the world through globalization. She discusses the breadth of gray-zone aggression and presents strategies for better defense against it. These strategies involve not just governments but also civil society, a largely untapped resource.

National security threats facing the West are fundamentally changing. Turning away from the military as an omnibus tool of aggression, hostile governments are instead frequently using tools—including subversive economics, coercion of foreign companies, gradual border violations, cyberattacks, disinformation, and arbitrary detention of foreign citizens—that are often difficult for targeted countries to immediately identify, let alone tackle. Nonmilitary aggression is easy, inexpensive, and alarmingly effective. Businesses — American and foreign — have already suffered significant financial losses because of gray-zone attacks.In The Defender’s Dilemma, international security expert Elisabeth Brawer offers the first sustained analysis of how these tactics in the gray zone between war and peace dangerously weaken liberal democracies, which are open societies by definition and intimately connected to the rest of the world through globalization. She discusses the breadth of gray-zone aggression and presents strategies for better defense against it. These strategies involve not just governments but also civil society, a largely untapped resource.

A gripping account of the hidden battles beneath the world's oceans, where cables and pipelines - the lifelines of the modern world - are under constant threat from states, corporations, and hackers.

How sabotage and disorder threaten the fragile network of undersea cables and pipelines that makes modern life possible--and how it may already be drawing the world into an all-out underwater war The world depends on a tangle of underwater tubes on the ocean floor. Every day undersea cables transmit ninety-nine percent of the world's data, while intercontinental pipelines convey two-thirds of the world's oil and gas. These do their jobs so reliably that few would guess that "the cloud" is actually underwater, or that the stability of the global economy relies on pipelines on the seafloor. But as award-winning security expert Elisabeth Braw reveals, an invisible battle over those cables and pipelines is already ramping up. Undersea War tells the history of the underwater infrastructure that supports everyday life. After decades of apparent harmony, in 2022 two pipelines in the Baltic Sea mysteriously exploded. Within months, the cutting of Taiwan's Matsu Islands' data links to the world and the subsequent destruction of additional Baltic pipelines and cables signaled that peace in the ocean depths was over. Superpowers are now racing to protect themselves as the seabed itself becomes a battlefield. Blending engrossing historical narrative with acute strategic analysis, Undersea War shows that the next battle for global supremacy may unfold on the ocean floor.