476 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies N. 6 / 2015 half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century as a homogenising vehicle of his discourse. By exposing and dissecting the role of nationalisms and the different political conceptions of confused realities of identity, of the memory of war and collective violence as the pivotal axis around which contemporary societies are forged or broken, of the feminist revolution and of its role as catalyst of political change and economic progress, or of the apparition and expansion of man’s concern for his physical and natural environment, Núñez Seixas is capable of reconstructing and analysing in detail the routes that combined to shape the world as we know it today. This volume, written by a social scientist with an extensive and broad trajectory embedded in academic relations with a large disparity of international intellectual currents, represents a magnificent opportunity to introduce the general public -or one without any specific historiographic specialisation– to the work of the historian as a scientific analyst of our immediate reality. For experts in peace and conflict in general, Núñez Seixas’ work could become a key manual in the realm of security and defence studies, capable of facilitating the understanding of complex processes, usually dealt with from a narrower viewpoint. This multi-faceted quality of the work, which places it in the tradition of so-called world history, makes it of special interest for all analysts desirous of acquiring knowledge of the basic aspects of a geopolitical context determined by a wide spectrum. It surpasses traditional political accounts which are so often lacking in depth or complexity of analysis –despite the extent or detail of their accounts- and allows one to comprehend and establish a useful conceptual map of the always complicated interrelations and dependent paths.4 The role of the new social movements and their post material demands, the role of memory in overcoming the cold war rifts in central and eastern Europe, or that of intellectual and strategic constructions that allowed the world to maintain peace in the context of MAD will not be viewed by the reader in the same light after undertaking the acute and comprehensive analysis proposed by the author. The capacity to establish connections between apparently diverging processes favours the understanding of our present-day reality from a multi-faceted viewpoint that goes beyond the usual a prioris and short-termism in the work of numerous analysts. In this sense, an analysis and confrontation between past and present of the new emerging states and the old powers poses certain future options that constitute reasoned proposals for some of the central axes around which national and international realities 4 MAHONEY, James; SCHENSUL, Daniel. “Historical Context and Path Dependence,” in GOODIN, Robert E.; TILLY, Charles. (Eds.) Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp.454-471. http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee
Revista del IEEE 6
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