Covert Action

National Approaches to Unacknowledged Intervention

A comparative international perspective challenges conventional narratives about unacknowledged intervention

"Covert action" is generally understood as politically motivated and plausibly deniable interference by one state in the affairs of another state. It includes propaganda, political or economic subversion, paramilitary action, and assassinations. Covert action is the most consequential and controversial form of secret statecraft, and it has become a ubiquitous feature of international politics. However, it is often sensationalized or seen through a narrow, US-centric lens.

Covert Action challenges this conventional narrative and redefines secret statecraft by offering a groundbreaking comparative international perspective that explores the practice of unacknowledged intervention across twenty countries and a range of eras. Bringing together leading scholars from around the world, this volume moves beyond the American, and wider, anglosphere perspectives to examine covert action practices across states, regime types, and time.

This book will be important reading for historians, political scientists, and policymakers, and it provides a foundational study of the hidden mechanisms of international power. It takes a global perspective and thus transforms the understanding of how nations truly interact behind the scenes, revealing covert action as a complex form of international statecraft.

Contributor: Magda Long (Edited by), Rory Cormac (Edited by), Genevieve Lester (Edited by), Mark Stout (Edited by), Damien Van Puyvelde (Edited by), Rory Cormac (Contributions by), Damien Van Puyvelde (Contributions by), Jeffrey P. Rogg (Contributions by), Magda Long (Contributions by), Mark Stout (Contributions by), Marco Munier (Contributions by), William A. Stoltz (Contributions by), Jens Wegener (Contributions by), Steven Wagner (Contributions by), Melinda Haas (Contributions by), Paul M. McGarr (Contributions by), Philippe B. Nader (Contributions by), Joanisval B. Goncalves (Contributions by), Nihat A. Ozcan (Contributions by), Egemen Bezci (Contributions by), Kevin A. O'Brien (Contributions by), Folahanmi Aina (Contributions by), Jennifer Mathers (Contributions by), Kiril Avramov (Contributions by), Daniela Richterova (Contributions by), Peter Rendek (Contributions by), Radek Schovanek (Contributions by), Stephan Blancke (Contributions by), Sara B. Castro (Contributions by)

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