Over time a growing body of cultural artefacts – documentaries, biographies, compilations – have emerged seeking to tell the ‘truth’ about The Clash. In these competing renditions of the band, one of the voices that has often been drowned out is that of the fans. Drawing on the author’s own experience of running away from home to follow The Clash on tour, this chapter seeks to capture what the band meant to those who witnessed their legendary live performances, typically without the privilege of backstage access. This autobiographical ‘true fiction’ offers a perspective that underlines one of the most important affirmations of the group’s much-disputed ‘authenticity’. While the members of The Clash were often unforgiving to one another, they were unremittingly generous to their travelling fans. The chapter also suggests that the focus on metropolitan London in many accounts overlooks the importance of suburban centres in nurturing the early punk scene. A case in point is that of High Wycome, a setting neglected in the standard accounts of the period, but which in fact deserves its own place in the story of the subculture.

This short chapter provides an overview of Queer exceptions: solo performance in neoliberal times, and locates the study in relation to debates concerning solo performance, individuality, neoliberalism and the politics of exceptionality.

This chapter seeks to examine the turbulent political context in which The Clash recorded their enduring body of work. The songs that the band crafted together provide a compelling account of the rise and ultimate triumph of the neoliberal project as the 1970s turned into the 1980s. While The Clash were one of the critical voices raised against this dramatic turn to the right, their political power was always compromised by their proximity to a corporate world they claimed to despise. As many bands before and since have learned, the culture industries have a facility for incorporation that diminishes the political valence and authenticity of even the most critical artists. In spite of the constraints of the corporate environment in which they were operating, however, The Clash wrote scores of songs that have retained a political resonance even today. The political power of the band derives ironically from previous cultural movements that they often claimed to loathe. In large measure, the enduring influence of The Clash comes from their rechanneling of the 1960s counterculture and the band should be seen then as heirs to that prior movement of radical cultural dissent.

Some doubt the idea of a Russian grand strategy. Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia, is among those who argue that Putin does not know what he wants from the Ukraine crisis, has no grand plan and makes policy up as he goes. This introduction also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book explores the implications of the emphasis on military modernisation, the problems that Russian observers emphasise and the ways they undermine strategy, and the ways hints at 'mobilisation' relate to Russian grand strategy. It argues that Russian strategy is less to be found in Moscow's plans, and more in the so-called vertical of power. In so doing, the book reveals important shifts underway in the Russian political and security landscape and shapes an argument about a missed diagnosis of Russian state mobilisation.

The introduction outlines the ways by which fanzines were integral to the development of punk-related cultures and embodied the ethos of do-it-yourself (DIY). It assesses some of the previous writing on fanzines and outlines the content of the book.

Chapter 1 sets up conceptual and theoretical frameworks for understanding divergence and convergence in Czech, Slovak, Polish, and Hungarian (“Visegrád Four” countries) defense policies in the post-communist era. The chapter’s central argument is that post-communist convergence between Visegrád Four defense policies is best understood as a result of the universal adoption of liberal democratic political systems and ideologies by the countries in question. However, the chapter argues, post-communist divergence in the respective countries’ defense policies, made especially visible by their post-2014 differential reactions to the Russo-Ukrainian Crisis and its fallout cannot be understood within the framework of liberalism as both a political system and a theory of international relations. Different schools and concepts of realism and constructivism are therefore evoked as necessary for illuminating the noted divergence between Poland, which responded robustly and in militaristic fashion to the perception of Russian threat, and the rest of the Visegrád countries, with their lukewarm responses. Within realism, the chapter draws attention to Poland’s distinctive geopolitical position. Within constructivism, the chapter evokes the notions of “role theory” and “strategic cultures” as key for understanding the countries’ diverging polices.

This chapter considers how influential strains of theorising in International Relations have fed what is described as a ‘vulgar Leninism’, in which the basic problems of the contemporary international order are distorted and misconstrued. Instead of imperial rapacity, this chapter argues that it is imperial failure that must be explained. Alternatives to intervention and empire, such as state-building, are also considered and shown not to get around the problems posed by the need for self-determination. The new form of state authority emerging from the era of permanent intervention is considered, its paradigmatic statement being the doctrine of the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P). It is argued that to do proper justice to this paradigm it needs to be considered not purely as an international norm or emerging form of law, but rather as a theory of state. Once analysed like this, it becomes apparent that this doctrine embodies a paternalist legitimisation of state power that cuts against ideas of representative government in favour of simply providing security. It is shown that the implications of this new paradigm are even more authoritarian than the traditional Hobbesian accounts of state power.

IR changed during World War II. This chapter tries to show how. First, it presents the war aims of the major belligerents – Germany, Britain, the USSR and the USA. It spends some time on Germany’s war aims before it zeroes in on the US approach to the war and its visions of the post-war peace. The main vision was liberal and internationalist in nature. It was expressed by President F.D. Roosevelt who drove a purposeful war-time diplomacy to lay down the institutional foundations for a liberal post-war order. The chapter discusses Roosevelt’s war-time conferences with Churchill and Stalin. It then takes up the criticism of the Roosevelt administration. George F. Kennan thought that it was naïve about Soviet affairs and the ‘realities of power’. Reinhold Niebuhr was critical of the ways in which the administration gullibly negotiated peace with master-Realists like Stalin. However, the sharpest attack came from Hans J. Morgenthau. In the wake of the war, he claimed that the Roosevelt administration was composed of naïve technocrats who did not know the first thing about the power-based politics among nations.

Industrial culture emerged and developed in parallel with punk, though often sharing audiences and component themes. This chapter looks at way fanzines informed the transgressive mentality that helped define industrial culture.

Anarcho-punk emerged as a distinct strand of punk culture into the 1980s. Typically associated with the band Crass, the tenets of anarcho-punk were also developed through artworks, writing and debate conducted within multiple punk fanzines. The chapter looks at the contested development of anarcho-punks politics and aesthetic.