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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Defence strategy, planning & research > Civil defence
In an era defined by the threat of nuclear annihilation, Western nations attempted to prepare civilian populations for atomic attack through staged drills, evacuations, and field exercises. In Stages of Emergency the distinguished performance historian Tracy C. Davis investigates the fundamentally theatrical nature of these Cold War civil defense exercises. Asking what it meant for civilians to be rehearsing nuclear war, she provides a comparative study of the civil defense maneuvers conducted by three NATO allies-the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom-during the 1950s and 1960s. Delving deep into the three countries' archives, she analyzes public exercises involving private citizens-Boy Scouts serving as mock casualties, housewives arranging home protection, clergy training to be shelter managers-as well as covert exercises undertaken by civil servants.Stages of Emergency covers public education campaigns and school programs-such as the ubiquitous "duck and cover" drills-meant to heighten awareness of the dangers of a possible attack, the occupancy tests in which people stayed sequestered for up to two weeks to simulate post-attack living conditions as well as the effects of confinement on interpersonal dynamics, and the British first-aid training in which participants acted out psychological and physical trauma requiring immediate treatment. Davis also brings to light unpublicized government exercises aimed at anticipating the global effects of nuclear war. Her comparative analysis shows how the differing priorities, contingencies, and social policies of the three countries influenced their rehearsals of nuclear catastrophe. When the Cold War ended, so did these exercises, but, as Davis points out in her perceptive afterword, they have been revived-with strikingly similar recommendations-in response to twenty-first-century fears of terrorists, dirty bombs, and rogue states.
Violent conflict can spell catastrophe for developing countries and their neighbors, stunting and even reversing the course of economic growth. Recent World Bank research on the causes of conflict and civil war finds that the countries most likely to be blighted by conflict are those whose economies depend heavily on natural resources. Natural Resources and Violent Conflict: Options and Actions first explains the links between resource dependence conflict and then considers what can be done to help reduce the risk of civil war in these nations. In this collection of previously unpublished essays by experts in the field, contributors consider the risks of corruption, secessionist movements, and rebel financing. They also consider the roles played by government, the development community, and the country's population and propose an agenda for global action. Focusing on what we can do collectively to diminish the likelihood of civil war, contributors to this volume suggest practical approaches and policies that could be adopted by the international community-from financial and resource reporting procedures to commodity tracking systems and enforcement techniques, including sanctions, certification requirements, and aid conditionality. A fascinating look at the results of important new World Bank research, this book represents an important addition to the dialogue on development.
"Kenneth Rose's One Nation Underground explores U.S. nuclear
history from the bottom up--literally. . . . Rose deserves credit
for not trivializing this period of our history, as so many
retrospectives of the Cold War era have tended to do." "Important . . . One Nation Underground is an elegant account of
the issues involved in the nuclear age." "This is a fine compilation of a massive amount of research,
well founded in the existing literature, and presented in a
readable narrative." "A readable short history of the fallout shelters and the
broader political debate over civil defense. . . . Mr. Rose is a
good storyteller, and One Nation Underground is engagingly writen,
with an array of evocative photgraphs." "Rose writes well, with a good eye for the telling phrase and revealing example."--"Journal of Social History" For the half-century duration of the Cold War, the fallout shelter was a curiously American preoccupation. Triggered in 1961 by a hawkish speech by John F. Kennedy, the fallout shelter controversy--"to dig or not to dig," as "Business Week" put it at the time--forced many Americans to grapple with deeply disturbing dilemmas that went to the very heart of their self-image about what it meant to be an American, an upstanding citizen, and a moral human being. Given the much-touted nuclear threat throughout the 1960s and the fact that 4 out of 5 Americans expressed a preference for nuclear war over living under communism, what's perhaps most striking is how few American actually built backyard shelters. Tracing theways in which the fallout shelter became an icon of popular culture, Kenneth D. Rose also investigates the troubling issues the shelters raised: Would a post-war world even be worth living in? Would shelter construction send the Soviets a message of national resolve, or rather encourage political and military leaders to think in terms of a "winnable" war? Investigating the role of schools, television, government bureaucracies, civil defense, and literature, and rich in fascinating detail--including a detailed tour of the vast fallout shelter in Greenbriar, Virginia, built to harbor the entire United States Congress in the event of nuclear armageddon--One Nation, Underground goes to the very heart of America's Cold War experience.
Our understanding of civil war is shot through with the spectre of quagmire, a situation that traps belligerents, compounding and entrenching war's dangers. Despite the subject's importance, its causes are obscure. A pervasive 'folk' notion that quagmire is intrinsic to certain countries or wars has foreclosed inquiry, and scholarship has failed to identify quagmire as an object of study in its own right. Schulhofer-Wohl provides the first treatment of quagmire in civil war. In a rigorous but accessible analysis, he explains how quagmire can emerge from domestic-international interactions and strategic choices. To support the argument, Schulhofer-Wohl draws upon field research on Lebanon's sixteen-year civil war, structured comparisons with civil wars in Chad and Yemen, and rigorous statistical analyses of all civil wars worldwide fought between 1944 and 2006. The results make clear that the 'folk' notion misdiagnoses quagmire and demand that we revisit policies that rest upon it. Schulhofer-Wohl demonstrates that quagmire is made, not found.
In the aftermath of the information sharing failures leading to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York City, at the Pentagon, and in a Pennsylvania field, states and localities across the United States established what are known today as State and Major Urban Area Fusion Centers. Collectively known as the National Network of Fusion Centers, many of these (now numbering 78) fusion centres are still in their infancy. The Homeland has been attacked five times since 2001: the Little Rock Recruiting Station shooting (2009); the Fort Hood shooting (2009); the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day (2009); the attempted car bombing in Times Square (2010), and the Boston Marathon bombings (2013). In the wake of these attacks, we have come to understand that homeland security, including counter-terrorism efforts, must be a national responsibility, a true and equal partnership across all levels of government, and inclusive of the American people themselves. A top down, wholly federal approach simply does not and cannot suffice. Fully integrating state and local law enforcement and emergency response providers as national mission partners requires a grassroots intelligence and analytic capability. This book provides a comprehensive study of the National Network of Fusion Centers in an effort to understand current strengths and gaps and provide recommendations for improvement.
Since the early 1990s, refugee crises in the Balkans, Central Africa, the Middle East, and West Africa have led to the international spread of civil war. In Central Africa alone, more than three million people have died in wars fueled, at least in part, by internationally supported refugee populations. The recurring pattern of violent refugee crises prompts the following questions: Under what conditions do refugee crises lead to the spread of civil war across borders? How can refugee relief organizations respond when militants use humanitarian assistance as a tool of war? What government actions can prevent or reduce conflict? To understand the role of refugees in the spread of conflict, Sarah Kenyon Lischer systematically compares violent and nonviolent crises involving Afghan, Bosnian, and Rwandan refugees. Lischer argues against the conventional socioeconomic explanations for refugee-related violence abysmal living conditions, proximity to the homeland, and the presence of large numbers of bored young men. Lischer instead focuses on the often-ignored political context of the refugee crisis. She suggests that three factors are crucial: the level of the refugees' political cohesion before exile, the ability and willingness of the host state to prevent military activity, and the contribution, by aid agencies and outside parties, of resources that exacerbate conflict. Lischer's political explanation leads to policy prescriptions that are sure to be controversial: using private security forces in refugee camps or closing certain camps altogether. With no end in sight to the brutal wars that create refugee crises, Dangerous Sanctuaries is vital reading for anyone concerned with how refugee flows affect the dynamics of conflicts around the world."
This book explores the National Defense Strategy (NDS) which serves as the Defense Department's capstone document in a long-term effort. It flows from the NSS and informs the National Military Strategy. It also provides a framework for other DoD strategic guidance, specifically on campaign and contingency planning, force development, and intelligence. It reflects the results of the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and lessons learned from on-going operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. It addresses how the U.S. Armed Forces will fight and win America's wars and how they seek to work with and through partner nations to shape opportunities in the international environment to enhance security and avert conflict. The challenges that the United States, our allies and our partners face are examined in this book, including violent transnational extremist networks, hostile states armed with weapons of mass destruction, rising regional powers, emerging space and cyber threats, natural and pandemic disasters, and a growing competition for resources. The Department of Defense must respond to these challenges while anticipating and preparing for those of tomorrow. |
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