Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- Mediating estrangement: a theory for diplomacy -- Arms, hostages, and the importance of shredding in earnest: reading the national security culture (II) -- The (s)pace of international relations: simulation, surveillance, and speed -- Narco-terrorism at home and abroad -- The terrorist discourse: signs, states, and systems of global political violence -- S/N: international theory, Balkanisation and the new world order -- Cyberwar, video games, and the Gulf War syndrome -- ACT IV: fathers (and sons), mother courage (and her children), and the dog, the cave, and the beef -- The value of security: Hobbes, Marx, Nietzsche and Baudrillard -- The CIA, Hollywood, and sovereign conspiracies -- Great men, monumental history, and not-so-grand theory: a meta-review of Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy -- Post-theory: the eternal return of ethics in international relations -- Cyber-deterrence -- Global swarming, virtual security, and Bosnia -- The simulation triangle: in the simulated battlefields of tomorrow, war has more in common with Disneyworld than the Pentagon -- Virtuous war and Hollywood: the Pentagon wants what Hollywood's got -- Virtuous war/virtual theory -- The illusion of a grand strategy -- In terrorem: before and after 9/11 -- The question of information technology in international relations -- Hedley Bull and the case for a post-classical approach.