The Russians are invading. But the locals have a plan.

It's March 2022 and Russian tanks are roaring across the vast, snow-dusted fields of Ukraine. Their destination: Voznesensk, a town with a small bridge that could change the course of the war. The heavily-armed Russians are expecting an easy fight - or no fight at all. After all, Voznesensk is a quiet farming town, full of pensioners. But the locals appear to have other ideas.

Svetlana, a grandmother with arthritis, reacts in fury when Russian troops turn her cottage into their blood-soaked headquarters. Valentin, a quick-talking lawyer, joins the town's 'Dads Army' defenders, crouching in a trench with an AK47. Meanwhile, 21-year-old Sergei grabs a Molotov cocktail and lies in wait for Russian tanks as they push towards Dead Water Bridge.

The odds are terrible. But a plan is emerging, and there's a chance it could save not just Voznesensk, but the rest of southern Ukraine. Meanwhile, inside the tanks, an inner battle rages. As Russian officer Igor Rudenko prepares to invade, he has a secret. He is Ukrainian himself.

A gripping work of reportage that tells the story of a pivotal moment in Ukraine's war, this is a real-life thriller about ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances with resilience, humour and ingenuity

Responding to Catastrophic Events brings together the leading scholars and practitioners of consequence management to instruct a new generation in how to respond to both natural disasters and manmade events. Focusing on the relationship of disaster management to national security and the Department of Defense, the contributors cover a range of potential scenarios and address the distinct responsibilities of first responders, the Departments of Homeland Security, Defense, and State, and the military. They also point to the importance of having a plan for the media and knowing the legal obstacles and issues that may arise in a disaster situation. Using recent case studies to provide lessons learned for future responses to disasters, Responding to Catastrophic Events is a comprehensive and vital reader for any scholar of public policy, emergency management, or strategic studies.

Citizen-soldiers have played one of the most important roles in providing an integral part to the United States national defense system. From the earliest founding of the American militia in 1636, to the participation of National Guard and Reserve forces in today's war on terror, citizen-soldiers have come forward during national emergencies to provide necessary defense. The defense system of America has always had a need for citizen roles in the military, which have become the foundation for the National Guard and Reserve. These men and women have contributed greatly to their country in times of military action, especially in their roles since the attacks of September 11, 2001. This book provides groundbreaking information on the contributions of these citizen-soldiers, and gives first-hand account biographies from the men and women that help serve America. The members of the National Guard and Reserve have become essential to the nation's first line of defense in both Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years. No other book provides the extensive information and history that has shaped this crucial extension of the American defense system.

From their creation in 1636 to the continual effort they provide for the United States, the citizen-soldier has played an integral part in shaping the history of America's defense system. Through their active participation, the men and women of the National Guard and Reserve, provide the necessary manpower that is needed to defend the nation. They have come forward not only during times of war but in national emergencies and in their daily lives as well. This work provides factual articles and interpretive essays to help examine the development of the citizen-soldier in times of war and peace. Continually, it covers the importance of the National Guard and Reserve from early colonial times through the current war in Iraq. Doubler provides a human dimension of the citizen-soldier through seven biographical sketches of key individuals. In addition, a separate section contains extracts of the key legislation that has shaped the National Guard and Reserves along with an annotated chronology and bibliography for reference. No other reference handbook provides this thorough of an examination of the National Guard and Reserve, including groundbreaking information on the roles and missions of these men and women in the war on terror since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The battle for control over the National Guard began with passage of the National Defense Act of 1933. The National Guard Association's insistence on a federal role for the Guard prompted the creation of dual status for Guardsmen. After 1933 they were not only soldiers of the state, but of the nation as well. The first test of the Guard's new status came as the world plunged into the Second World War. The compromises, conflicts, emotions, and legal precedents involved in the 1940-41 mobilization were to affect the National Guard and national defense strategy for many years to come. Yet, this important aspect of American history has been largely ignored. In most works on the Roosevelt era the federalization of 18 Guard divisions--which doubled the size of the Army--is given one or two lines. Guard historians have paid close attention to Guardsmen entering federal camps, but gloss over the politics of Army-Guard maneuvering prior to mobilization. This study demonstrates the importance of the political situation between these two defense establishments and their consequences for later defense policy and legislation.

Robert Bruce Sligh shows how the mobilization in 1940-41 spurred increased federal control over the Guard. Although the Army was hesitant to take the Guard into active service, once mobilized the Guard was rapidly co-opted. The Guard's dual goals of increased federal money while staying aloof from federal control were doomed to fail. This book will be of interest to those interested in American military history, national defense policy, National Guard history, and selective service legislation.

This book examines the role of the military in the wave of democratization that has swept through Latin America in the past decade. Although much of the leading literature on the transition to democracy recognizes the importance of hardline and softline factions within the military in this process, the author takes this study one step further to investigate the motivations of the military officers themselves. Using the cases of Brazil and Bolivia, and relying on dozens of interviews with military officers, politicians, jurists, and other observers throughout Latin America, he determines that the factions' attitudes do not depend primarily on ideological commitment but on the leaders' calculation, as to the career benefits to their followers of either supporting or opposing democratization. In terms of policy making, it is important to recognize this distinction in order to help preserve the fragile democracies which are already under threat from the military once again.

Civil defence was an integral part of Britain's modern history. Throughout the cold war it was a central response of the British Government to the threat of war. This book will be the first history of the preparations to fight a nuclear war taken in Britain between the end of the Second World War and 1968.

The global distribution of power is changing. But how should we make sense of this moment of transition? With the rise of new powers and the decline of seemingly unchallenged US dominance in world politics, a conventional wisdom is gaining ground that a new multipolar order is taking shape. Yet multipolarity - an order with multiple centres of power - is variously used as a description of the current distribution of power, of the likely shape of a future global order, or even as a prescription for how power 'should' be distributed in the international system. To understand the power of the different - and sometimes competing - narratives on offer today about the changing global order, a global perspective is necessary. This book explores how the concept of a multipolar order is being used for different purposes in different national contexts. From rising powers to established powers, contemporary debates are analysed by a set of leading scholars to provide in-depth insight into the use and abuse of a widely employed but rarely explored concept. -- .

This handbook by 14 well-known experts provides an overall analysis of U.S. military strengths and weaknesses in the 1990s and needs at the turn of the century. The first part of the book covers the U.S. armed forces under the Department of Defense and the military chain of command. The second half of the book deals with the American way of war, different military conflicts, and noncombat contingencies. The introduction defines national security concepts and sets the stage for the assessments that follow; the conclusion evaluates the military challenges confronting the United States in the 21st century. Each chapter offers short lists of readings. A glossary and comprehensive index make this an easy-to-use reference for students, teachers, professionals, and general readers concerned with America's defense needs.

How do crises produce changes in specific European Union foreign policy areas, and how should we conceptualise these policy changes? This book provides a novel analytical framework that serves to investigate the way in which the EU changes its foreign policy after crisis. Ikani adapts the existing theorising of foreign policy change to a single framework applicable to the EU context, providing readers with a toolbox to both explain the process of change and measure the policy change that follows. The framework is developed through an investigation of two important EU foreign policy change episodes, taking place after the Arab uprisings and the Ukraine conflict, and test-driven in three recent cases of EU foreign policy change after crisis. The volume presents a novel typology of EU foreign policy change, advancing on the fields of foreign policy analysis, public policy studies and International Relations. In doing so, it explains both the decision-making process leading to policy change, and the variation in change outcomes following this process. Further to offering those researching the EU foreign policy response to crisis with timely and empirically rich accounts of five recent change episodes, this book adds to the literature by suggesting two forms of EU foreign policy change, symbolic change and constructive ambiguity, which unlike previously argued form frequent and important outcomes of the decision-making process. -- .

This book presents a holistic view of the geopolitics of cyberspace that have arisen over the past decade, utilizing recent events to explain the international security dimension of cyber threat and vulnerability, and to document the challenges of controlling information resources and protecting computer systems. How are the evolving cases of cyber attack and breach as well as the actions of government and corporations shaping how cyberspace is governed? What object lessons are there in security cases such as those involving Wikileaks and the Snowden affair? An essential read for practitioners, scholars, and students of international affairs and security, this book examines the widely pervasive and enormously effective nature of cyber threats today, explaining why cyber attacks happen, how they matter, and how they may be managed. The book addresses a chronology of events starting in 2005 to comprehensively explain the international security dimension of cyber threat and vulnerability. It begins with an explanation of contemporary information technology, including the economics of contemporary cloud, mobile, and control systems software as well as how computing and networking-principally the Internet-are interwoven in the concept of cyberspace. Author Chris Bronk, PhD, then documents the national struggles with controlling information resources and protecting computer systems. The book considers major security cases such as Wikileaks, Stuxnet, the cyber attack on Estonia, Shamoon, and the recent exploits of the Syrian Electronic Army. Readers will understand how cyber security in the 21st century is far more than a military or defense issue, but is a critical matter of international law, diplomacy, commerce, and civil society as well. Provides relevant, rigorous information to those in the computer security field while also being accessible to a general audience of policy, international security, and military readers who seek to understand the cyber security issue and how it has evolved Documents how contemporary society is dependent upon cyberspace for its function, and that the understanding of how it works and how it can be broken is knowledge held by a precious few Informs both technically savvy readers who build and maintain the infrastructure of cyberspace and the policymakers who develop rules, processes, and laws on how the cyber security problem is managed

Published in 1999, this book focuses on organized crime as a worldwide phenomenon that has taken great advantage of enabling technology in banking, communications and transportation to build what is probably the first true 'virtual' corporation in the world. It looks at organized crime as a threat to national and international security ironically stemming, in part, from the collapse of the Soviet empire that provided an already thriving, ruthless and well-organized system of graft, corruption and crime with a new lease of life and also unleashed it on to the world scene. Organized crime is also seen as a system of transnational alliances with the potential to destabilize democratic values and institutions; distort regional, if not worldwide, economies; and subvert the international order by allying itself with terrorist organizations, rogue states and developing countries in search of rapid industrialization and market dominance.

Homeland Security: A Documentary History provides a rich and relevant exploration of the concept of homeland security throughout the nation's history, leading up to an examination of the new Homeland Security Department and its mission and impact. The Homeland Security Department was created in 2002 and involved the largest restructuring of the federal government in over forty years. Yet American institutions and officials have responded to homeland security issues throughout the life of the nation, for example, with the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Homeland Security explores the concept and challenges of homeland security through government reports, budget proposals, public affairs campaigns and press releases, speeches, testimony, and other primary sources. Process for creating a new executive department and changing institutions and bureaucracies; Steps, major debates, and events leading up to the creation of the Department; Impact on governmental institutions and employees, such as Congress and its committees and structure, federal and state bureaucracies, and civil servants; Budgetary implications at the federal and state levels; Challenges and ramifications for citizens and civil liberties; Missions and goals, such as aviation and border security, crisis planning, and citizen preparedness. Supplemented with a chronology, print and web resource list, and an index, Homeland Security is unique in exploring historical antecedents as well as the Department's impact on political institutions and the ways Americans live and govern. Perfect for undergraduates in political science and journalism programs, AP Social Studies students, and public library patrons. publisher. His newspaper reporting has won numerous national and state journalism awards, and he has written, coauthored, edited, or contributed to more than two dozen books. His most recent books include Insider's Guide to Finding a Job in Washington: Contacts and Strategies to Build Your Career in Public Policy (1999), How to Track Politics on the Internet (1999) and How to Access the Federal Government on the Internet, Fourth Edition (1999), all published by CQ Press.

This book aims to address the issue of what the extent to which the 'logic of security', which underpins securitization, can be contained, rolled back or dismantled. One obstacle to studying how and whether security can be contested is perhaps the entrenched discussions between proponents of desecuritization and students of emancipation. Moreover, within each camp, scholars disagree, often strongly, upon the meaning of the concept they use and upon what it entails in practice. Recently, two new concepts have been invoked in order to capture different modalities of contesting the logic of security, namely resistance and resilience. As useful as such concepts might be, though, they put forward their own interpretations and generally ignore others. One aim of this volume is to bring different approaches that aim to counter security logic to confront one another and substantiate their respective analytical value, through empirical evidence. The book comprises four sections, each investigating one specific modality of contesting security: desecuritization, emancipation, resistance and resilience. The overriding objective of this volume is to clearly map out the different ways in which a dominant register of meaning that shapes a specific security formation is debased. These strategies are examined, compared and assessed, in different political and cultural environments. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, securitisation theory, social theory, and IR in general.

The United Kingdom has long been an island under siege from terrorists who believe they can advance their aims through acts of violence. Protecting the public from the excesses of extremism remains the primary responsibility of government. For over a century Special Branch, MI5 and MI6 have prevented terrorist atrocities and have pursued those who wish to destroy the United Kingdom's free and democratic way of life. Yet, despite developing one of the world's most sophisticated security architectures, successful terrorist attacks have occurred with alarming regularity. For the very first time, this new volume explores the evolution of counter-terrorism practice in the United Kingdom, brought to life with dramatic case studies and personal insider accounts provided by leading policy makers, prosecutors and counter-terrorism practitioners who openly reveal the challenges and operational reality of countering contemporary terrorist threats. From the troubles in Northern Ireland to the al Qa'ida inspired genre of international terrorism, this volume plots the trajectory of counter-terrorism policy and practice exploring the events that have served to change the course of civil protection. This unique title is enriched by leading academic perspectives providing analysis of counter-terrorism responses and identifies lessons to be learned from the past, the present, as well as exploring the terrorist threats of the future to be tackled by the next generation of counter-terrorism practitioners. This accessible and authoritative volume is required reading for all in authority and academia who are concerned with national security, counter-terrorism and the law, as well as those with a vested interest in the preservation of human rights, the protection of civil liberties and democracy itself.

William Blair's Virginia's Private War is a close study of the home front in the Confederacy and a significant contribution to our understanding of the Confederate defeat. Blair challenges and effectively overturns the dominant assumption that internal stresses and conflicts, particularly along lines of class and race, undermined the Confederacy. Rather, he shows that for most of the South the centripetal forces of Confederate nationalism and defence of home and hearth against an invading enemy were more powerful. Internal problems, including dissent, wracked the state of Virginia, yet these private wars actually helped prolong the conflict as they forced authorities to turn the war into more of a rich man's fight.

This text caused a major stir when it was first published in 1976. Redirecting scholarly attention to the county communties, it reassessed their role in the events of the 1630s and 1640s, claiming they were far more independent of London and the national leadership than usually supposed, and that provincial opinion was itself a powerful actor in the countdown to civil war. Much work has since appeared to confirm or modify these findings. In this reset second edition the original survives largely untouched; but now includes entirely new histiorographic commentary on the text and supporting documents.

Why do some American intelligence officials maintain fallout shelters and private contingency plans to evacuate their families in the event of a Russian nuclear strike--even in today's post-Cold War era of U.S.-Russian partnership? The frightening answer lies within the pages of "War Scare," a terrifying assessment of the prospect for nuclear holocaust in our day. Written by Peter Vincent Pry, a former CIA military analyst, "War Scare" provides a history of our country's little-known brushes with nuclear war and warns that, contrary to popular opinion and the assurances of our political leaders, the possibility of a Russian attack still exists. Nuclear deterrence has been the foundation of Western security for the last 50 years, but since the end of the Cold War, Russian military doctrine has become more destabilizing, and much more dangerous, than is commonly believed.

By making use of a wealth of declassified and unclassified material, Dr. Pry illustrates how Russia's brutal past continues to shape the consciousness and decision making of its leaders, many of whom are unreconstructed ideologues from the old Soviet regime. Gripped by a perpetual perception of imminent threat--a war scare--the Russian General Staff, which controls the technical capability of launching a nuclear strike, has shown itself to be unstable at best. The author explores recent history and near-disasters such as the Bosnian crisis, the Norway missile incident, and U.S. air strikes on Iraq from the perspective of the Russian General Staff, believing that only by understanding their viewpoint can we minimize the risk of unintentionally provoking a deadly attack. Wary of NATO expansion and reeling from the Russian economy's descent into chaos, the General Staff may interpret Western military exercises and operations in the Middle East and elsewhere as concealing surprise aggression against Russia. This is a grave situation, indeed, as even after the START I, II, and III agreements, Russia will retain enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world--not to mention significantly expanded chemical and biological warfare capability. "War Scare" convincingly shows that we ignore these facts at our peril.

A Sunday Times and FT Book of the Year

When a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one, the most likely outcome is war.

In this razor-sharp analysis, Harvard scholar Graham Allison examines the phenomenon known as Thucydides’s Trap, which is currently playing out between the world’s two biggest superpowers: the US and China.

Through uncanny historical parallels, Destined for War shows how close we are to the unthinkable. Yet, stressing that war is not inevitable, Allison also reveals how clashing powers have kept the peace in the past ― and what painful steps international leaders can and must take to avoid disaster.

One critical facet of Taiwan's extraordinary development is conspicuously absent from nearly all studies of its recent history: the role of the military in the nation-building process. In this important study, a soldier-citizen describes the role of the Republic of China's military in the political socialization of Taiwan's citizens during the first two decades after the Nationalists' defeat on the Chinese mainland. The book describes in detail how the military was used by the government to promote patriotic values throughout the society, often going beyond what is considered part of the military-commission. Colonel Bullard coins the term "allegiance warfare" to describe the politically neutral involvement of the military in creating and maintaining nationalistic citizen values throughout the society.

"Soldier-citizens" describes the role of the Republic of China's military in the political socialization of Taiwan's citizens during the first two decades after the loss of the Chinese mainland. This book describes in detail how the military was used by the government to promote patriotic values throughout society, often going beyond what is considered part of its military mission.

The Value of Resilience represents one of the first systematic studies of resilience in the field of security studies. At the turn of the twenty-first century, resilience has become a 'buzz-word' within fields as diverse as network engineering, ecosystems management, child psychology and military training programmes. Resilience has emerged as a solution to the common problematic of radical contingency experienced across these fields. At its most general level resilience is understood as the capacity to absorb, withstand and 'bounce-back' quickly and efficiently from a perturbation. It is considered to be both a natural property and a quality which can be improved within a broad array of complex systems. Rather than treating resilience as either a unified concept or technique of governance, this book analyses resilience as an emergent security value. Utilizing a biopolitical analytic, it demonstrates that the value of resilience has appreciated alongside transformations in the order of power/knowledge enacted by political economies of security. Zebrowski argues that resilience was not lying in wait for the march of science to provide the conditions for its recognition. Nor was it concealed by the distortions of ideology which lifted with the culmination of the Cold War. There is nothing natural about resilience. By drawing attention to the complex historical processes and significant governmental efforts required to make resilience possible, this book aims to open up a space through which the value of resilience may be more critically interrogated. It will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, security studies and conflict resolution.

The Russians are invading. But the locals have a plan.

It's March 2022 and Russian tanks are roaring across the vast, snow-dusted fields of Ukraine. Their destination: Voznesensk, a town with a small bridge that could change the course of the war. The heavily-armed Russians are expecting an easy fight - or no fight at all. After all, Voznesensk is a quiet farming town, full of pensioners. But the locals appear to have other ideas.

Svetlana, a grandmother with arthritis, reacts in fury when Russian troops turn her cottage into their blood-soaked headquarters. Valentin, a quick-talking lawyer, joins the town's 'Dads Army' defenders, crouching in a trench with an AK47. Meanwhile, 21-year-old Sergei grabs a Molotov cocktail and lies in wait for Russian tanks as they push towards Dead Water Bridge.

The odds are terrible. But a plan is emerging, and there's a chance it could save not just Voznesensk, but the rest of southern Ukraine. Meanwhile, inside the tanks, an inner battle rages. As Russian officer Igor Rudenko prepares to invade, he has a secret. He is Ukrainian himself.

A gripping work of reportage that tells the story of a pivotal moment in Ukraine's war, this is a real-life thriller about ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances with resilience, humour and ingenuity

This book is a provocative account of the ties between civil defence, national security, and public support for nuclear deterrence in the early Cold War. Oakes argues that while civil defence films and drills told Americans it was possible to survive a nuclear attack, the primary purpose of civil defence was to provide a moral foundation for nuclear deterrence.

In Bracing for Armageddon, Dee Garrison pulls back the curtain on the U.S. government's civil defense plans from World War II through the end of the Cold War. Based on government documents, peace organizations, personal papers, scientific reports, oral histories, newspapers, and popular media, her book chronicles the operations of the various federal and state civil defense programs from 1945 to contemporary issues of homeland security, as well as the origins and development of the massive public protest against civil defense from 1955 through the 1980s. At a time of increasing preoccupation over national security issues, Bracing for Armageddon sheds light on the growing distrust between the U.S. government and its subjects in postwar America.

Using the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps as a case study, this work explores the emergence and recent proliferation of civilian border patrol groups at the US-Mexico border. It is shown that the emergence of these groups can be linked, on the one hand, to an increasing criminalization and securitization of immigration. On the other hand, it is shown that it can also be connected to globalization and its associated forces of political and economic liberalization, which have transformed the security landscape in such a way that this form of citizen activism is not only tolerated, but arguably even encouraged.