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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism > Armed conflict
This book examines the communicative aspects and implications of US counter-terrorist policies towards al-Qaeda. Recent US counter-terrorist strategy has been largely based upon projecting certain perceptions of America as an actor to those drawn to al-Qaeda, and this book investigates in what ways, and to what extent, US officials believed that the signals sent by what America did and said could influence the behaviour of the terrorist and would-be terrorist. The study then draws on a growing understanding of that audience to analyse how those drawn to al-Qaeda were and, indeed, still are likely to be influenced by the perceptions of America that Washington's policies generated. The study's central argument is that, given al-Qaeda's unconventional strategy and the particularities of the world-view characterising those drawn to the group, America's counter-terrorist signalling proved largely counter-productive to America's objective of undermining al-Qaeda's strategic narrative, instead serving in many ways to validate it. Firstly, this book seeks to reveal the significant and largely unexplored role that signalling has played in US counter-terrorist policy towards al-Qaeda. Second, it tries to capture the objectives, strategy, tactics, ideology, and other defining features of the world-view characterising those drawn to al-Qaeda. Third, it strives to combine those two lines of inquiry by applying the al-Qaeda world-view to a critical analysis of the signals sent by US policies. Finally, the book aims to offer broad policy implications that demonstrate how an informed understanding of the world-view of those drawn to al-Qaeda can be employed to revise and refine American counter-terrorist signalling. This book will be of much interest to students of US foreign policy and public diplomacy, counter-terrorism, strategy and international security. Joshua Alexander Geltzer has a PhD in War Studies from Kings College London, and is currently a juris doctoral student at Yale Law School.
This book seeks to reassess the role of Europe in the end of the Cold War and the process of German unification. Much of the existing literature on the end of the Cold War has focused primarily on the role of the superpowers and on that of the US in particular. This edited volume seeks to re-direct the focus towards the role of European actors and the importance of European processes, most notably that of integration. Written by leading experts in the field, and making use of newly available source material, the book explores "Europe" in all its various dimensions, bringing to the forefront of historical research previously neglected actors and processes. These include key European nations, endemic evolutions in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, European integration, and the pan-European process. The volume serves therefore to rediscover the transformation of 1989-90 as a European event, deeply influenced by European actors, and of great significance for the subsequent evolution of the continent.
Private Contractors and the Reconstruction of Iraq examines the controversial role of military contractors in the reconstruction of Iraq. When 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' was launched in March 2003, few, if any, of the Coalition's political leaders could have envisaged that within a few months the number of private contractors engaged to keep the troops supplied would exceed their actual combat strength. This alternative 'army' was not only to become the largest assemblage of contractors in living memory to accompany a military force into a war zone, but was also responsible for a fundamental transformation of how military logistics were delivered. This book explains how and why the US and UK governments became so dependent upon military contractors during the war in Iraq. It also examines the ramifications this new dependency will have on future military operations, as the conflict in Iraq has shown that private contractors are now indispensable to the attainment of both the military and political objectives of war. Finally, the book discusses what advantages and disadvantages these companies have brought to the reconstruction of Iraq, and what lessons need to be learned from this experience. This book will be of great interest to students of military and strategic studies, Middle Eastern politics and international security, and as well as policymakers and military professionals. Christopher Kinsey is a lecturer in international security at King's College London, Defence Studies Department, at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, Shrivenham. His previous publications include Corporate Soldiers and International Security: The Rise of Private Military Companies (Routledge: 2006)
The mysterious life and career of Desmond Morton, Intelligence officer and personal adviser to Winston Churchill during the Second World War, is exposed for the first time in this study based on full access to official records. After distinguished service as artillery officer and aide-de-camp to General Haig during the First World War, Morton worked for the Secret Intelligence Service from 1919-1934, and the fortunes of SIS in the interwar years are described here in unprecedented detail. As Director of the Industrial Intelligence Centre in the 1930s, Morton s warnings of Germany s military and industrial preparations for war were widely read in Whitehall, though they failed to accelerate British rearmament as much as Morton - and Churchill - considered imperative. Morton had met Churchill on the Western Front in 1916 and supported him throughout the wilderness years, moving to Downing Street as the Prime Minister s Intelligence adviser in May 1940. There he remained in a liaison role, with the Intelligence Agencies and with Allied resistance authorities, until the end of the war, when he became a troubleshooter for the Treasury in a series of tricky international assignments. Throughout Morton s career, myth, rumour and deliberate obfuscation have created a misleading picture of his role and influence. This book shines a light into many hitherto shadowy corners of British history in the first half of the twentieth century. This book will be of great interest to scholars and informed lay readers with an interest in the Second World War, intelligence studies and the life of Winston Churchill.
American Soldiers in Iraq offers a unique snapshot of American soldiers in Iraq, analyzing their collective narratives in relation to the military sociology tradition. Grounded in a century-long tradition of sociology offering a window into the world of American soldiers, this volume serves as a voice for their experience. It provides the reader with both a generalized and a deep view into a major social institution in American society and its relative constituents-the military and soldiers-during a war. In so doing, the book gives a backstage insight into the U.S. military and into the experiences and attitudes of soldiers during their most extreme undertaking-a forward deployment in Iraq while hostilities are intense. The author triangulates qualitative and quantitative field data collected while residing with soldiers in Iraq, comparing and contrasting various groups from officers to enlisted soldiers, as well as topics such as boredom, morale, preparation for war, day-to-day life in Iraq, attitudes, women soldiers, communication with the home-front, "McDonaldization" of the force, civil-military fusion, the long-term impact of war, and, finally, the socio-demographics of fatalities. The heart of American Soldiers in Iraq captures the experiences of American soldiers deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom at the height of the conflict in a way unprecedented in the literature to date. This book will be essential reading for students of military studies, sociology, American politics and the Iraq War, as well as being of much interest to informed general readers.
This book examines the language and the ideology of the Pax Romana, the Pax Britannica and the Pax Americana within the broader contexts of 'hegemony' and 'empire'. It addresses three main themes: a conceptual examination of the way in which hegemony has been justified; a linguistic study of how the notion of pax (usually translated as peace) has been used in ancient and modern times; and a study of the international orders created by Rome and Britain. Using an historiographical approach, the book draws upon texts from Greco-Roman antiquity, and sources from the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries to show how the pax ideology has served as a justification for hegemonic foreign policy, and as an intellectual exercise in power projection. From Tacitus' condemnation of what he described as 'creating a wilderness and calling it peace', to debates about the establishment of a Pax Americana in post-Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the book shows not only how the governing elite in each of the three hegemonic orders prescribed to a loose interpretation of the pax ideology, but also how their internal disagreements and different conceptualisations of pax have affected the process of 'empire-building'. This book will be of interest to students of international history, empire, and International Relations in general.
Bereft of any comprehensive analysis and subject to little if any
sustained debate, the tangential location of the prohibition of
propaganda for war in the discourse of international law has
resulted in a situation where state conduct in this area too often
appears to be acting in a legal vacuum. In proposing a more robust
role for international law in responding to what is a matter of
widespread public concern, the book analyses the context in which
international law first came to be concerned with propaganda for
war in the years following the First World War. With the
establishment of the United Nations and the corresponding
development of international human rights law, the issue of the
prohibition of propaganda for war in both human rights law and
international criminal law became a highly significant, yet
frequently divisive matter during the Cold War.
First published in 2008. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
This book seeks to demonstrate how rules not only guide a variety of practices within international politics but also contribute to the chaos and tension on the part of agents in light of the structures they sustain. Four central themes- practice, legitimacy, regulation, and responsibility- reflect different dimensions of a rule governed political order. The volume does not provide a single new set of rules for governing an increasingly chaotic international system. Instead, it provides reflections upon the way in which rules can and cannot deal with practices of violence. While many assume that "obeying the rules" will bring more peaceful outcomes, the chapters in this volume demonstrate that this may occur in some cases, but more often than not the very nature of a rule governed order will create tensions and stresses that require a constant attention to underlying political dynamics. This wide-ranging volume will be of great interest to students of International Law, International Security and IR theory.
Adolescents in Humanitarian Crisis investigates the experiences of adolescents displaced by humanitarian crisis. The world is currently seeing unprecedented levels of mass displacement, and almost half of the world's 70 million displaced people are children and adolescents under the age of 18. Displacement for adolescents comes with huge disruption to their education and employment prospects, as well as increased risks of poor psychosocial outcomes and sexual and gender-based violence for girls. Considering these intersectional vulnerabilities throughout, this book explores the experiences of adolescents from refugee, internally displaced persons and stateless communities in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Rwanda. Drawing on innovative mixed-methods research, the book investigates adolescent capabilities, including education, health and nutrition, freedom from violence and bodily integrity, psychosocial wellbeing, voice and agency, and economic empowerment. Centring the diverse voices and experiences of young people and focusing on how policy and programming can be meaningfully improved, this book will be a vital guide for humanitarian students and researchers, and for practitioners seeking to build effective, evidence-based policy. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003167013, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
This book seeks to demonstrate how rules not only guide a variety of practices within international politics but also contribute to the chaos and tension on the part of agents in light of the structures they sustain. Four central themes- practice, legitimacy, regulation, and responsibility- reflect different dimensions of a rule governed political order. The volume does not provide a single new set of rules for governing an increasingly chaotic international system. Instead, it provides reflections upon the way in which rules can and cannot deal with practices of violence. While many assume that "obeying the rules" will bring more peaceful outcomes, the chapters in this volume demonstrate that this may occur in some cases, but more often than not the very nature of a rule governed order will create tensions and stresses that require a constant attention to underlying political dynamics. This wide-ranging volume will be of great interest to students of International Law, International Security and IR theory.
Globally, in the past ten years, there has been a four-fold increase in internal war or civil war in developing countries. This book is one of the first full length studies on the subject. A century ago, most conflicts were between nations, and 90 per cent of casualties were soldiers; today almost all wars are civil, and 90 per cent of the victims are civilians. Many of the conflicts that appeared to have been resolved through processes of intervention or negotiation have reappeared. The researches produced by many international bodies suggest that more and more states are going to be drawn into such conflicts in the twenty-first century. This poses the following questions: What explains the steady rise in civil war? How can this cycle be broken? What is the international community's role? Politics of Civil Wars aims to answer these questions and contains case studies that cover a variety of zones of conflict including Africa, Asia and Latin America. This book will appeal to students of international relations, war and conflict studies and peace studies.
Globally, in the past ten years, there has been a four-fold increase in internal war or civil war in developing countries. This book is one of the first full length studies on the subject. A century ago, most conflicts were between nations, and 90 per cent of casualties were soldiers; today almost all wars are civil, and 90 per cent of the victims are civilians. Many of the conflicts that appeared to have been resolved through processes of intervention or negotiation have reappeared. The researches produced by many international bodies suggest that more and more states are going to be drawn into such conflicts in the twenty-first century. This poses the following questions: What explains the steady rise in civil war? How can this cycle be broken? What is the international community's role? Politics of Civil Wars aims to answer these questions and contains case studies that cover a variety of zones of conflict including Africa, Asia and Latin America. This book will appeal to students of international relations, war and conflict studies and peace studies.
This book presents an innovative model linking insights from democratization, development and conflict studies to explain personalist behavior and their violent transitions. Based on multiple case studies from Sub Saharan Africa, the author maps and predicts regime transitions, presenting examples of how states can avoid such vicious circles of conflict and tyranny. By integrating decades of specialist literature from various subfields of political science, the book models personalist behavior, its impact on the states they govern, and their future transitions. By systematizing regime behavior (coup-proofing, gatekeeping, repression and hoarding), the model identifies the mechanics on how personalist regimes establish vicious circles of personalism and explains how exactly they end up again in authoritarianism or in new personalist tyrannies after their demise, and so seldom transition to democracy. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of African politics, democratization and democratic consolidation, authoritarian rule and more broadly to political science, comparative politics, area studies, political leadership, peace and conflict studies and development studies.
Ethno-religious violence in Indonesia illustrates in detail how and why previously peaceful religious communities can descend into violent conflict. From 1999 until 2000, the conflict in North Maluku, Indonesia, saw the most intense communal violence of Indonesia's period of democratization. For almost a year, militias waged a brutal religious war which claimed the lives of almost four thousand lives. The conflict culminated in ethnic cleansing along lines of religious identity, with approximately three hundred thousand people fleeing their homes. Based on detailed research, this book provides an in depth picture of all aspects of this devastating and brutal conflict. It also provides numerous examples of how different conflict theories can be applied in the analysis of real situations of tensions and violence, illustrating the mutually reinforcing nature of mass level sentiment and elite agency, and the rational and emotive influences on those involved. This book will be of interest to researchers in Asian Studies, conflict resolution and religious violence.
The Seven Years War has been described as the first global conflict in history. It engulfed the Euro-Atlantic world from 1756 to 1763, and engaged the energies of European cabinets as never before. More than previous conflicts, the Seven Years War involved a variety of approaches to war, and taxed the military, material and moral resources of the powers involved. Drawing on a diverse array of archival, printed primary and secondary sources, The Seven Years War: A Transatlantic History covers the war's origins, its conduct on land and at sea, its effects on logistics and finance, its interactions with domestic politics, its influence on international relations and its approach to peace. The book highlights the role of personality, alongside the enduring importance of communication, misperception and understanding. In so doing, it endeavours not merely to chronicle the war's events, but to situate them in the context of mid-eighteenth century warfare, finance, politics and diplomacy. The Seven Years War will be of great interest to students of the European history, American history, maritime history, diplomatic and military history.
The privatisation of defence assets and the outsourcing of military services from the armed forces to the private sector is an increasing trend. This book shows the extent to which many military functions and activities, ranging from military research to military consulting/training to operational support services, have been outsourced in the US and in Europe. While other books in this field largely cover the issues of Private Military Companies and of security contractors, this book focuses on technical and management services.This detailed study provides new and updated information on the ongoing privatisation of the defence sector and offers an original theoretical explanation of why the most modern armed forces throughout the world have come increasingly to rely on private companies for nearly everything they do. Contributing to a better understanding of military privatisation and its close connection to technological change, this book explains the complexity of the whole phenomenon and discusses its implications for national and international security.
The end of the Cold War, in particular German unification and the demise of the Soviet Empire, are among the best documented and the most thoroughly researched events in recent history. Yet, efforts to understand the end of the Cold War historically can be described, to this day, as partial. The time has come for a broader and, at the same time, more European-focused endeavor. Such an effort is made possible by the growing availability of new sources, including archives which are now beginning to open up systematically. By choosing to concentrate on "Europe" in its various dimensions (Western Europe, Eastern Europe as well as the pan-European dimension) this book aims at bringing to the forefront of historical research previously neglected actors or processes whose contributions to the end of the Cold War were, in our view, decisive, including key European nations, endemic evolutions in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, European integration, and the pan-European process. This book will be of great interest to students of Cold War Studies, Contemporary European History and International Relations in general.
Wars in this century are radically different from the major conflicts of the 20th century-more amorphous, asymmetrical, globally connected, and unending. Choreographies of 21st Century Wars is the first book to analyze the interface between choreography and wars in this century, a pertinent inquiry since choreography has long been linked to war and military training. The book draws on recent political theory that posits shifts in the kinds of wars occurring since the First and Second World Wars and the Cold War, all of which were wars between major world powers. Given the dominance of today's more indeterminate, asymmetrical, less decisive wars, we ask if choreography, as an organizing structure and knowledge system, might not also need revision in order to reflect on, and intercede in, a globalized world of continuous warfare. In an introduction and sixteen chapters, authors from a number of disciplines investigate how choreography and war in this century impinge on each other. Choreographers write of how they have related to contemporary war in specific works, while other contributors investigate the interconnections between war and choreography through theatrical works, dances, military rituals and drills, the choreography of video war games and television shows. Issues investigated include torture and terror, the status of war refugees, concerns surrounding fighting and peacekeeping soldiers, national identity tied to military training, and more. The anthology is of interest to scholars in dance, performance, theater, and cultural studies, as well as the social sciences.
This book looks at conflict zones in the Asia Pacific with a special focus on secessionist groups/movements in the Indian Northeast, Tibet, Chinese Xinjiang, the Burmese borderlands, Kashmir in South Asia, CHT in Bangladesh, South Thailand, and Aceh in Indonesia. These conflict zones are predominantly ethnic minority provinces, which by and large do not share a sense of one-ness with the country that they are currently a part of; most of these insurgencies have had strong linkages with separatist nationalist groups in the region. Methodologically, the author uses extensive fieldwork, interview data, and participant observation from these conflict zones to take a bottom-up approach, giving importance to the voices of ordinary people and/or the residents of these conflict zones whose voices have generally been ignored. Although the book looks at both the historical background and contemporary dimensions of these conflicts, the author focuses on exploring how the role of race, ethnicity and religion in these conflicts can be both direct and indirect. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of conflict and security in contemporary Asia with a background in politics, history, IR, security studies, religion, and sociology.
The twentieth century was dominated by war and by preparations for war in a way that is unparalleled in history. Originally published in 1988, this textbook highlights key themes of warfare throughout the world and emphasizes the gulf between the theory of war and its practice. The contributors are professional historians and strategists who consider the impact of war upon society, theories of insurgency and counter-insurgency and nuclear strategy, as well as more 'traditional topics' such as tactics and strategy on land, the role of sea power, the evolution of strategic bombing, colonial and revolutionary warfare. Each chapter discusses recent research on the topic and provides guides to further reading. Together they give a clear up-to-date overview of the conflicts which dominated the twentieth century. This textbook is useful reading for all students and teachers of strategic and war studies, military history and international relations and for all those concerned with the study of major conflicts in the twentieth century.
Denationalisation of Defence consists of two major parts: first, a generic and analytical section which presents the developmental trends in privatization and internationalization of armed force, and second, an empirical section analyzing the impact of these trends on the Nordic countries' defence and security sectors. The Nordic countries have a special relevance as objects of study given their traditionally strong public spheres and state-orientated systems of governance. This volume questions whether the process of denationalization has reached a point where countries are reacting to changes in their security environment by increasingly introducing elements of privatization and international integration.
This book advances an interdisciplinary understanding of moral injury by analyzing the stories of military veterans of combat and peace missions. In the past decade, the concept of moral injury has emerged to address the potential moral impact of deployment. This book contributes to an interdisciplinary conceptualization of moral injury while, at the same time, critically evaluating the concept's premises and implications. It paints an urgent and compassionate picture of the moral impact of soldiers' deployment experience and the role of political practices and public perceptions in moral injury. It does so by drawing on the experiences of close to a hundred Dutch veterans deployed to Bosnia (Srebrenica) and Afghanistan, and analyzing their stories from the perspectives of psychology, philosophy, theology and social sciences. Ultimately, this book advances the understanding of moral, political and societal dimensions of moral injury and contributes to practical efforts aimed at its prevention. This book will be of much interest to students of ethics and war, cultural anthropology, conflict studies and international relations.
This book deals with two significant issues: the peculiar and paradoxical question of why regular armies, better suited to fighting conventional high-intensity wars, adopt inappropriate measures when fighting guerilla wars; and the evolution of the Indian army's counterinsurgency doctrine over the last decade. In addition, the book also includes the first detailed analysis of the trajectory of the army's counterinsurgency doctrine, arguing that while it was consolidated only over the last decade, the essential elements of the doctrine may in fact be traced back to the army's first confrontation with the Naga guerillas in the 1950s. It outlines the three essential elements that make up the Indian army's counterinsurgency doctrine: that there are no military solutions to an insurgency; that military force can only help to reduce levels of violence to enable political solutions; and that there should be limited use of military force. Rajagopalan argues that international circumstances - particularly the need to counter conventional military threats from Pakistan and China - led to a counterinsurgency doctrine that had a strong conventional war bias. This bias also conditioned the organisational culture of the Indian army.
This third edition of Conflicts in the Middle East since 1945 analyzes the nature of conflict in the Middle East, with its racial, ethnic, political, cultural, religious and economic factors. Throughout the book Peter Hinchcliffe and Beverley Milton-Edwards put the main conflicts into their wider context, with thematic debates on issues such as the emergence of radical Islam, the resolution of conflicts, diplomacy and peace-making, and the role of the superpowers. The book is brought fully up to date with events in the Middle East, covering, for instance, developments in Iraq in 2006 where a democratically elected government is in place but the insurgency show no sign of coming under control. The analysis of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is also brought up to the present day, to include the election of the Hamas government and the 2006 conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hizballah. Including a newly updated bibliography and maps of the area, this is the perfect introduction for all students wishing to understand the complex situation in the Middle East, in its historical context. |
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