The United Nations and collective security in the face of global threats: from Ukraine and Russia to Iran, Syria and Afghanistan

This book covers some of the key global dynamics of our age. It aspires to assist the non-specialized reader, as well as the specialized one, to understand the world we live in, the forces that affect our coexistence, the trends that will shape our future and the promising avenues for peace and prosperity. Globalization, collective security, the connection between human rights, development and peace will be some of the concepts upon which the book aims to shed some light in a rigorous but a didactic manner. In addition, those complex cases that rarely are explained in the divulgative media, such as the functioning of the United Nations and its mechanisms for conflict resolution, Daesh and Al-Qaeda, the Palestinian conflict, the Arab Spring, the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan and the violence in Afrika will be examined balancing the details with the need to be pedagogical. In brief, this work is an attempt, on the one hand, to describe and explain the forces and threats that were present and contributed to the upsurge of coronavirus pandemics, such as climate change and the exploitation of nature and, on the other, to set some hopeful paths and to inform policies to rearrange our order: if social dynamics are global, global should be our political governance too. Finally, the book approaches, from an innovative and enlightening manner, the ins and outs of the Russian aggression to Ukraine."