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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Defence strategy, planning & research
Missile Defenses and Western European Security is an important contribution to the current debate on how new weapons initiatives will affect prospects for world peace. Soofer generously sprinkles the book with relevant quotes from high-ranking NATO officials, respected academicians, and military policy experts, thus enhancing the readers understanding of the subject. Friday Review of Defense Literature The NATO alliance has come under increasing strain since President Reagan's announcement of plans for the strategic defense initiative (SDI) in March 1983. This study examines the logic underlying Western European reactions to SDI and assesses the validity of European anxieties about missile defenses. Systematically analyzing the positions of France, Britain, and West Germany on the full spectrum of NATO defense issues, the author attempts to determine whether strategic and tactical missile defenses can in fact contribute to U.S. and Western security. In his introduction, the author traces the history of NATO's doubts concerning the strategic nuclear guarantee, which were frequently expressed after the Soveits' first successful missile launches in the late 1950s. He next looks at Western European reactions to the SDI announcement and NATO's strategic thinking on deterrence and escalation. He discusses the relation between arms control considerations and the strategic defense initiative, focusing on NATO fears that SDI would lead to the abrogation of the 1972 ABM Treaty and with it the end of the arms control process. Turning to antitactical missile defense, Soofer argues that despite political opposition, there exists a substantial strategic rationale for missile defenses deployed in Western Europe. Offering clarification and new perspectives on many complex defense issues. Missile Defenses and Western European Security will be an important contribution to the current debate on how new weapons initiatives will affect prospects for world peace. This timely book is for specialists, students, and academics in the fields of strategic studies, peace studies,, arms control, diplomacy, and international relations.
Today, more than ever, the use of denial and deception (D&D) is being used to compensate for an opponent's military superiority, to obtain or develop weapons of mass destruction, and to violate international agreements and sanctions. Although the historical literature on the use of strategic deception is widely available, technical coverage of the subject is scattered in hard-to-find and out-of-print sources. This is the first technical volume to offer a current, comprehensive and systematic overview of the concepts and methods that underlie strategic deception and, more importantly, to provide an in-depth understanding of counterdeception.
French security policy has posed a puzzle to many people outside France, including politicians and even defense specialists such as the author, who took time off from his administrative position in Whitehall in order to study French thinking about security in detail. As with many other studies, he takes as his point of departure the traumatic defeat of 1940 but argues that the origins of current French policy are grounded in events and ideas that go back hundreds of years. They are ideas that are scarcely known or often misinterpreted in the Anglo-Saxon world.
Dwight D. Eisenhower achieved prominence as a military leader during World War II and as a statesman following the conflict, but less is known about his ambitions and preparation between the wars that served as the foundation for his later success. The first modern analysis of Eisenhower's career before his rise to fame, this study examines Ike's intellectual ideas concerning politics, military strategy, and history in the decades between the wars. Holland details Eisenhower's quest to make himself the best officer in the U.S. Army and to prepare for the next war--which he firmly believed was coming. Based upon the voluminous collection at the Eisenhower Library, this book includes discussion of Eisenhower's intellectual development, family life, military education, the roles of mentors and friends, as well as his political and international experiences. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Ike labored thanklessly in an army marked by budget cuts and incompetence. Despite this atmosphere, he persevered to become a pioneer in mechanized and aerial warfare, the author of an official history of World War I, the creator of the first industrial mobilization plan in American history, a one man public relations section for the War Department, and the organizer of the Philippine army. Through it all, Ike remained a man with a big heart, a man equally able to work with presidents or privates without losing his common touch.
The Gulf War has been the only conflict in the last half-century that featured the possible use of chemical-biological weapons against U.S. forces. Vulnerability to such an attack spurred the Department of Defense to action from the first hint of trouble in August 1990 through the end of hostilities in March 1991. Nearly disbanded in 1972, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps would be the prime force in ensuring that U.S. forces could both survive and sustain combat operations under chemical-biological warfare conditions. Focussing on the work of senior Army officials, this account assesses the degree of readiness achieved by the ground war's initiation and the lessons learned since the conflict. For an appropriately trained and equipped military force, chemical weapons pose not the danger of mass destruction but the threat of mass disruption, no more deadly than smart munitions or B-52 air strikes. This book will reveal a coordinated response to train and equip U.S. forces did take place prior to the feared Iraqi chemical and biological attacks. Undocumented in any other book, it details the plans that rushed sixty Fox reconnaissance vehicles to the Gulf, the worldwide call for protective suits and masks, and the successful placement of biological agent detectors prior to the air offensive. In addition, the work addresses what really happened at Khamisiyah. Were troops exposed to chemical weapons and what is behind the mysterious Gulf War Syndrome?
Sooner or later, if the world keeps following its current course, there will be a nuclear war. Roger Hilsman, who played a significant role during the Cuban Missile Crisis, is convinced that the only way to prevent an eventual nuclear conflict is to abolish war itself. This study examines and critiques all of the various proposals to date for incorporating nuclear weapons into strategic doctrine and concludes that these efforts have failed. Plans for abolishing only nuclear weapons are, according to Hilsman, good-intentioned but ill-advised attempts to rehabilitate war. Instead, he proposes a gradual transition to world government, which will perform the traditional social and political functions that were in the past served only by war. War will not disappear immediately. The world must still be prepared to deal with three types of war: wars that have the potential for escalating to a nuclear World War III; wars that are self-confining; and civil wars that cry out for peacekeeping intervention on humanitarian grounds. While the United States will have to be responsible for dealing with potentially nuclear wars, an entirely new force structure will be necessary. Self-confining wars, such as Bosnia, pose a particular problem as far as world public opinion for intervention is concerned; this study proposes solutions to such dilemmas. Finally, because national forces are ill-suited to peacekeeping missions in countries ravaged by civil war, the UN must recruit and maintain an international force along the lines of the French Foreign Legion.
This book gives the true inside picture of the CIA during the Cold War and how the agency saw the events in which it was involved. Breckinridge started his career with the CIA as a briefing officer (and within a year had become White House Briefing Officer) in 1953 and concluded it as Deputy Inspector General in 1979. The issues Breckinridge reports on--the Bay of Pigs, the Warren Commission Report, Vietnam, Watergate, Chile, plots against foreign leaders, the Ramparts controversy, Laos, the Church and Pike committees--are among the most controversial in the lives of Americans since the mid-twentieth century. Breckinridge demostrates that the CIA was not a "rogue elephant" but an agency acting under high level policy directives, and he reveals a great deal about the internal life of the CIA.
This book examines US recourse to military force in the post-9/11 era. In particular, it evaluates the extent to which the Bush and Obama administrations viewed legitimizing the greater use-of-force as a necessary solution to thwart the security threat presented by global terrorist networks and WMD proliferation.
The quest to limit nuclear weapons was a notable feature of the U.S.-Soviet relationship during the Cold War. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, in what history may come to judge as the Clinton administration's greatest foreign-policy achievement, an agreement was reached with key former Soviet republics to eliminate their nuclear weapons. Ellis provides a timely and authoritative analysis of the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, which removed nuclear arsenals equivalent to the combined stockpiles of Britain, France, and China, and ultimately made a significant contribution to U.S. national security at a relatively small cost. In a fascinating examination of the interplay of domestic and foreign policy, Ellis traces the debates within Congress and the foreign policy establishment, as well as the situation on the ground in Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, and he details the implementation of the CTR program. He concludes with a look at the current challenges, especially the thousands of non-strategic nuclear warheads still in Russian possession, and prospects of ongoing CTR efforts.
The uncertain Arab-Israeli peace process has scarcely put an end to the threat of war in the Middle East. Israel's relations with its Arab neighbors remain tense, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is a problem for the entire region, and the Israeli-Palestinian fighting that began in September 2000 shows that the peace process can suddenly become a war process. Renowned Middle East military expert Anthony Cordesman provides up-to-the-minute analysis in this richly detailed guide to one of the most complicated, and dangerous, regions in the world. Cordesman covers every significant aspect of military and strategic issues in the region, including conventional forces, arms transfers, force quality and morale, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, the dynamics of specific ongoing conflicts, and the outcome of possible future conflicts. He carefully weighs the political factors against what is known about actual military capabilities to shed light on the range of strategic options likely to be considered by each of the major regional actors, including Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and the Palestinian Authority. He finds no easy answers, concluding that while the balance of conventional forces has stabilized significantly in recent years, the risks from unconventional warfare have escalated considerably and that any major new peace agreement is likely to unleash a whole new set of military concerns that have the potential to disrupt diplomatic agreements. Always mindful of the complexities of the region, "Peace and War" is the definitive guide to strategic developments in this vital part of the world.
There are various Ways. There is the Way of salvation by the law of Buddha, the Way of Confucius governing the Way of learning, the Way of healing as a doctor, as a poet teaching the Way of Waka, tea, archery, and many arts and skills. Each man practises as he feels inclined. It is said the warrior's is the twofold Way of pen and sword, and he should have a taste for both Ways. Even if a man has no natural ability he can be a warrior by sticking assiduously to both divisions of the Way. Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, humanitarian relief operations in Southeast Asia, Pakistan and Louisiana have catapulted the military onto front pages and TV reports everywhere and every day. While the military's unique mission is to defend freedom by "fighting and winning the nation's wars," it has increasingly been charged with non-warfighting and foreign policy responsibilities. Because the military has been so active in so many places and with such a variety of missions, "Inside Defense" brings together scholars, policy experts and practitioners to provide a comprehensive view of the U.S. military to understand the military's role in international politics and its relationship with domestic institutions and society.
This is the first serious analysis of the combat capability of the British army in the Second World War. It sweeps away the myth that the army suffered from poor morale, and that it only won its battles through the use of 'brute force' and by reverting to the techniques of the First World War. Few soldiers were actively eager to close with the enemy, but the morale of the army never collapsed and its combat capability steadily improved from 1942 onwards.
The lifting of the Iron Curtain in response to pressures for democratic reform in the Eastern Bloc nations and the refusal of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to use the Red Army to police countries of the Warsaw Pact have led to a radically changed international environment. Preceded by over 40 years of peace and stability, unprecedented in the history of modern Europe, the Cold War ended in a climate of upheaval and uncertainty. This volume addresses issues associated with the political and military vacuum created by recent events and explores in depth a problem of military uncertainty: first strike stability. Stephen J. Cimbala argues that war in a system undergoing rapid change, including reductions in forces and political realignment, remains disturbingly possible due to the unforeseeable, inadvertent, and uncontrollable uncertainties that plague decision making and military planning in Washington, Moscow, and other international power centers, hence, first strike instability. This timely volume clarifies the kind of bargain superpowers and their allies have made in regard to nuclear weapons and command systems. Cimbala provides enhanced understandings of the concept and practice of nuclear deterrence and of first strike stability in a post-Cold War world that can help direct arms control efforts toward those areas that are most important to actual security. Broad aspects of the problem of first strike stability are set forth in the first chapter which also anticipates some of the connections between political and military levels of analysis discussed in the conclusion. Chapter two introduces the concepts of the state of nature and the state of war, explains how they apply tothe problem of first strike stability, and why the possibility of war, including nuclear war, cannot be excluded. Chapter three focuses on the "New Soviet Thinking" and why the probability of accidental and inadvertent war and escalation is not affected by reducing the levels of armaments alone. Chapter four emphasizes the problems facing the United States and NATO, and the approaches to escalation control which NATO assumes will be implemented, should deterrence fail. The results of the theoretical and administrative confusion over approaches to escalation control, outlined in chapter four, reappear in chapter five in the form of problems for war termination. The controversial issue of eliminating nuclear deterrence, with emphasis on the proposal for elimination by preclusive antinuclear strategic defenses is the focus of chapter six. The final chapter reviews the implications of the preceding chapters and arrives at some startling conclusions. Scholars and students of military affairs, political scientists, government officials, and members of the military establishment will find the up-to-the-minute information and judgements contained in First Strike Stability invaluable aids to their own decision making on this profoundly important world issue.
Scholars and policymakers in European Union foreign policy lament the European Union's inability to assert itself on the world stage. This book explains this weakness by arguing that European Union foreign policy is burdened by various internal functions, and systemizes the analysis of internal functionality, pushing the study beyond the concern with effectiveness.
If you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win numerous battles without a single loss. – Sun Tzu, The Art of War Written in the 6th century BC, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is still used as a book of military strategy today. Napoleon, Mae Zedong and Douglas MacArthur all claimed to have drawn inspiration from it. And beyond the world of war, modern-era business and management gurus have also applied Sun Tzu’s ideas to politics and corporate strategy. This pocket illustrated dual-language edition not only presents the original Chinese characters with James Trapp’s translation on the facing page, it also tests Sun Tzu’s ideas against history. Each of the 13 chapters includes a new commentary giving examples of how Sun Tzu’s wisdom has been borne out on the world’s battlefields. When, for example, has information provided by spies changed the course of a battle? How has history shown Sun Tzu’s ideas on the importance of terrain in conflict to be true? And where can we best find examples of strategic warfare being waged? From the ancient world to the 20th century, the battles featured will be illustrated with colour battle maps, paintings and artworks. Of immense influence to leaders across millennia, The Art of War Illustrated is a classic text richly deserving this illustrated and expanded dual-language edition.
This book examines the digital explosion that has ripped across the battlefield, weaponising our attention and making everyone a participant in wars without end. 'Smart' devices, apps, archives and algorithms remove the bystander from war, collapsing the distinctions between audience and actor, soldier and civilian, media and weapon. This has ruptured our capacity to make sense of war. Now we are all either victims or perpetrators. In 'Radical War', Ford and Hoskins reveal how contemporary war is legitimised, planned, fought, experienced, remembered and forgotten in a continuous and connected way, through digitally saturated fields of perception. Plotting the emerging relationship between data, attention and the power to control war, the authors chart the complex digital and human interdependencies that sustain political violence today. Through a unique, interdisciplinary lens, they map our disjointed experiences of conflict and illuminate this dystopian new ecology of war.
Of all the violent disputes that have flared across the former Soviet Union since the late 1980s, the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict is the only one to pose a genuine threat to peace and security throughout Eurasia. By right of its strategic location and oil resources, the Transcaucasus has been and will continue to be a source of interest for external powers competing to advance their geopolitical influence in the region. Under such conditions, the possibility will remain for the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict to reignite and expand to include other powers. The ten-year conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan has been one of the bloodiest and most intractable disputes to emerge from the breakup of the Soviet Union. Animosity that developed between the Armenians and Azeris under czarist Russian rule was fueled by the rise of a dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region for which both peoples feel an intense nationalistic affinity. The attachment of the region to Azerbaijan by Stalin in 1923 became a source of deep resentment for the Armenians, and during the rule of Gorbachev, a campaign was begun to achieve the peaceful unification of Armenia and Karabakh. Azerbaijan resisted the move as a threat to its territorial integrity, and clashes that broke out soon escalated into a full-scale war that outlived the USSR itself. Although a cease-fire has been observed since May, 1994, a peaceful settlement to the conflict has been elusive. Meanwhile, by right of both the strategic location and resources and the unique security characteristics of the Transcaucasus, major external powers--Russia, Turkey, and Iran--have sought to influence the dispute according to their geopolitical interests. With the growth of interest in the oil riches of the Caspian Sea and the increasing engagement of Western countries, including the United States, the risks and implications of renewed violence between Armenia and Azerbaijan will grow. This major study will be of interest to students, scholars, and policymakers involved with international relations, military affairs, and the Transcaucasus.
The Chronicle of a People's War: The Military and Strategic History of the Cambodian Civil War, 1979-1991 narrates the military and strategic history of the Cambodian Civil War, especially the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), from when it deposed the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in 1979 until the political settlement in 1991. The PRK survived in the face of a fierce insurgency due to three factors: an appealing and reasonably well-implemented political program, extensive political indoctrination, and the use of a hybrid army. In this hybrid organization, the PRK relied on both its professional, conventional army, and the militia-like, "territorial army." This latter type was lightly equipped and most soldiers were not professional. Yet the militia made up for these weaknesses with its intimate knowledge of the local terrain and its political affinity with the local people. These two advantages are keys to victory in the context of counterinsurgency warfare. The narrative and critical analysis is driven by extensive interviews and primary source archives that have never been accessed before by any scholar, including interviews with former veterans (battalion commanders, brigade commanders, division commanders, commanders of provincial military commands, commanders of military regions, and deputy chiefs of staff), articles in the People's Army from 1979 to 1991, battlefield footage, battlefield video reports, newsreel, propaganda video, and official publications of the Cambodian Institute of Military History.
This study is an account explaining how the British and Indian armies adapted to the peculiar demands of fighting an irregular tribal opponent in the mountainous no man's land between India and Afghanistan. It does so by discussing how a tactical doctrine of frontier fighting was developed and "passed on" to succeeding generations of soldiers. The book demonstrates that this form of colonial warfare always exerted a powerful influence on the organization, equipment, training and ethos of the army in India. |
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