While the Cold War is over, many of the problems it spawned live on. One of the worst of these is the continued presence of vast nuclear arsenals in the United States and Russia. How did the thousands of American bombs come into existence and how did they so rapidly become the United States' first line of defence?;Drawing extensively on previously classified material, Samuel R. Williamson Jr. and Steven L Rearden have written a history of this crucial period. They show how American policymakers, and least of all President Truman, never expected nuclear weapons to play such a major strategic role. Yet by relying on the atomic bomb time and again to shore up US defences in the face of worsening relations with the Soviet Union, rather than accept seemingly more costly conventional alternatives, Truman found himself ultimately with no other choice.;The authors not only document and analyze the origins and early evolution of US nuclear strategy, but they also demonstrate the close relationship between decisions affecting such diverse matters as foreign policy, new technologies and the budgetary process. The result is an analysis containing new insights and timely reminders of the myriad complications created by reliance on nuclear weapons.

Prepared by the Afghan Study Team of the Combat Studies Institure, U.S. Army, From the foreword by Genral (ret.) David Petraeus: "In 2010, as the scale and tempo of Coalition operations in Afghanistan increased, so did the need for historical accounts of small-unit actions. As commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), I commissioned the Combat Studies Institute to research and write the cases collected in this volume and in those that will follow. By capturing key insights from both lethal and non-lethal operations, I hoped these accounts would be of immediate utility to sergeants and lieutenants at the center of future operations. The eight actions described in these pages take the reader through a wide range of platoon-level operations, from an intense firefight near Kandahar to an intricate civic action project in Kunar Province. Drawing from dozens of Soldier interviews, these accounts vividly depict the actions themselves and offer critical insights of greatest benefit to the small-unit actions leaders of today and tomorrow. The US Army always has prided itself as an institution of constant learning, strongly committed to drawing lessons from its past. This volume from the Combat Studies Institute is an excellent example of that long and honorable tradition. I hope that you will find the actions n Vanguard of Valor to be both instructive and compelling. I am sure that you will find them to be inspirational."

With the end of the Cold War, the security concerns of the US, the sole superpower in the new international order, became fragmented and proliferated throughout the world. Since September 11, 2001 and the war in Iraq, the US has had to evaluate new global developments in terms of the threats they pose to regional and global stability. The nature of the potential enemy is difficult to anticipate. "United States Post-Cold War Defence Interests" gathers together seasoned analysts to examine traditional military concerns and responses to the new environment.

This analysis of France's role in Europe's new security order adds a new perspective to a post-Cold War security dialogue that has focused on the superpowers and Germany. Theodore Posner provides a historical framework for his comprehensive study of current French security policy, and he links broad themes to changes in operations. Written in a lively manner, this overview of current European politics, security issues, and modern-day French political life is intended for a broad audience of students, teachers, and policymakers in military studies, political science, and world history. The study takes as its point of departure the 1960s, when Charles de Gaulle offered Western Europe a model of cooperative security that challenged the U.S. model. Since Europe's political transformation and the end of the Cold War has altered the earlier security framework, the time is now ripe for a new model. The study defines how a French model might look institutionally today and how France could provide new leadership, but concludes that the strong initiative for doing so is probably lacking. This study is important also in analyzing events from a historical perspective and in viewing policies made at the highest level and at the operational level as well.

This is the first complete detailed study of the military aspects of the first half of this important conflict (1618-1635). Each chapter deals with a particular battle, but Guthrie also examines wider questions of strategy, leadership, armaments, organization, logistics, and war finances. The main emphasis is on the unique character and aspects of the Thirty Years War, with attention to the evolution of warfare and weapons, the impact of this evolution on actual operations, and the replacement of the previously dominant "tercio" style of warfare by the nascent linear system. The Thirty Years War is considered within its own context, rather than merely as a poor relation to the linear or Napoleonic periods. The campaigns covered in this volume include the defeat of the Bohemian and German Protestants (1618-1623), the Danish War (1625-1629), the victories of the Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus (1630-1632), and the final defeat of the Swedes at Nordlingen in 1634. Guthrie also pays particular notice to the important battle of Breitenfeld. With the inclusion of many secondary theaters and minor actions, the whole of this work constitutes a complete military history of the German War.

This work provides a theoretical and historical examination of the relationship between provision of military assistance and success in achieving donor aims. Eight case studies, which include the American Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the Vietnam War, are examined to assess four prominent features of the donor-recipient relationship: the convergence of donor and recipient aims; donor control; commitment of donor military forces; and coherence of donor policies and strategies. As an essential part of the expanding body of multidisciplinary international scholarship, this book links history and theory to policy and narrows the gap between economics, political science, and military strategy.

Each chapter refines the relevant features of the observed donor-recipient relationships into a pattern for comparison with other episodes. The final chapter collects the observations, compares them, and develops a set of uniformities that suggest a prototypical, successful donor-recipient relationship, suitable for direct application as a policy paradigm or for theoretical investigation. Mott suggests that both donor and recipient governments can use military assistance as a deliberate instrument of national policy and military strategy to achieve national aims.

Reliable information on potential security threats is not just the result of diligent intelligence work but also a product of context and culture. The volume explores the nexus between the intelligence process and strategic culture. How can and does the strategic outlook of the United States and the United Kingdom in particular, influence the intelligence gathering, assessment and dissemination process?

This book contains an assessment of how political agendas and ideological outlook have significant influence on both the content and process of intelligence. It looks in particular at the premise of hearts and minds policies, culture and intelligence gathering in counterinsurgency operations; at case studies from imperial Malaya and Iran in the 1950s and at instances of intelligence failure, e.g. the case of Iraq in 2003. How was intelligence, or the lack thereof, a product of political culture and how did it play a role in the political praxis?

The book shows that political agendas and the ideological outlook have a significant influence upon both the content and process of intelligence.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Intelligence and National Security.

In the spring of 2003, a stunned world watched the armed forces of the United States and Britain conduct a military campaign against Iraq. As a result, the Iraqi regime was dismantled, and much of the conventional wisdom about modern war was irrevocably altered. Yet as U.S. and British forces occupy Basra, Tikrit, and Mosul, the Iraqi nation has slipped into anarchy--and the phrase "shock and awe" has begun to sound more appropriate as a description of the war's aftermath, rather than its opening. Such has been the twisted trail of the Iraq War's dramatic events. But like so many other conflicts, the war ultimately seems to pose more questions than it solved. This book is the first in-depth analysis of the second war against Saddam Hussein's regime. What are the repercussions of the pre-war political fights in Washington, Paris, and the UN? Was meeting initial military goals really due to Anglo-American arms, or had Saddam's regime simply been too degraded to fight? Why didn't Baghdad become a second Stalingrad? Why weren't the occupying forces prepared to impose order? And then there is the significant question: Where are Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? Respected military analyst Anthony Cordesman incisively examines the key issues swirling around the most significant U.S. war since Vietnam. Beginning the search for answers is essential to understanding America's awesome power and its place in a new age of international terror and regional conflict.

This book argues that postwar Britain's "imperial over-extension" has been exaggerated. Britain developed and adjusted its defense strategy based upon the perceived Communist threat and available resources. It was especially successful at adapting to meet the strategic and resource challenges from the Far East from 1947-54. There British and Gurkha forces were deployed only in contingencies that threatened vital British interests, while the US and Commonwealth allies were persuaded to accept key wartime missions, thus preserving Britain's ability to fight in Western Europe.

For the majority of the post-Cold War era, Russian maritime power has hardly featured in the Euro-Atlantic community’s thinking. But in the mid-2010s, the idea that the Russian navy poses a threat to NATO began to gain ground. It took very real form in February 2022, when Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine. This book presents the first sustained examination of Russian maritime power in the period since the Cold War. It brings together leading specialists from public policy and academia to reflect on historical and contemporary aspects of Russia's naval strategy and capacities. At a time of mounting tensions, which some observers have named the ‘Fourth Battle of the Atlantic’, the book offers an informed and nuanced discussion, taking into account the view from Moscow and how this differs from western perspectives. It sketches a trajectory of Russia’s power at sea and reflects on current capabilities and problems, as well as Moscow’s strategic planning for the future. -- .

Iran today is still struggling with the legacy of its own Islamic revolution, and is deeply divided between the moderates who enjoy broad public support and the conservatives who control the levers of power. The mixed policies that result are reflected in Iran's ambivalent military posture. In recent years, Iran has only conducted a limited build-up of its armed forces and has cut defense spending and arms imports. On the other hand, Iran has developed a carefully focused program that threatens shipping in the lower Gulf and the world's oil exports. It has strengthened its capability for unconventional warfare and continues to be a significant proliferator, setting up indigenous military industries and developing a greater ability to import weapons. In this authoritative analysis of interest to Middle Eastern specialists and military affairs experts alike, Anthony Cordesman concludes that the continuation of Iran's current defensive security posture depends as much on these economic factors as on the outcomes of domestic political rivalries.

Iran may eventually limit any military expansion to a necessary defensive strength and set strategic goals for itself that are compatible with the legitimate interests of other nations, or it may choose a more aggressive course. Regardless of the ultimate outcome, argues Cordesman, it does no good to either demonize or excuse Iranian policies. Instead, the United States and other nations with interests in the Middle East and Central Asia need to deal realistically with Iran as a reemerging regional power.

There is a wide spectrum of potential threats to the U.S. homeland that do not involve overt attacks by states using long-range missiles or conventional military forces. Such threats include covert attacks by state actors, state use of proxies, independent terrorist and extremist attacks by foreign groups or individuals, and independent terrorist and extremist attacks by residents of the United States. These threats are currently limited in scope and frequency, but are emerging as potentially significant issues for future U.S. security. In this comprehensive work, Cordesman argues that new threats require new thinking, and offers a range of recommendations, from expanding the understanding of what constitutes a threat and bolstering Homeland defense measures, to bettering resource allocation and improving intelligence gathering and analysis.

No pattern of actual attacks on U.S. territory has yet emerged that provides a clear basis for predicting how serious any given form of attack might be in the future, what means of attack might be used, or how lethal new forms of attack might be. As a result, there is a major ongoing debate over the seriousness of the threat and how the U.S. government should react. This work is an invaluable contribution to that debate.

This book examines the effectiveness of multilateralism in ensuring collective security and, in particular, the EU's role in this process. In 1992, shortly after the end of the Cold War, a Security Council Summit in New York reaffirmed the salience of the system of collective security and stated the determination of the Heads of State to maintain it as the prime international instrument for preserving peace. Twenty years later, however, the record of collective security as well as of multilateralism has not been very encouraging. The system of collective security, as enshrined in the United Nations (UN) Charter, failed repeatedly to accomplish its mandate in the 1990s and has led to controversial debates in the United States and Europe that reached a climax during the Iraq crisis in 2002/03. The volume draws upon both theoretical and empirical research to answer the following core questions: What are the reasons that have made multilateralism either effective or ineffective in the field of peacekeeping, peace preservation and peacebuilding? How can multilateralism be made more effective? How can attempts made by Europe to render UN multilateralism in the security area more efficient be assessed? This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding/peacekeeping, EU policy, the UN, security studies and IR in general.

This book explores contemporary military innovation, with a particular focus on the balance between anticipation and adaption. The volume examines contemporary military thought and the doctrine that evolved around the thesis of a transformation in the character of war. Known as the Information-Technology Revolution in Military Affairs (IT-RMA), this innovation served as an intellectual foundation for the US defence transformation from the 1990s onwards. Since the mid-1990s, professional ideas generated within the American defence milieu have been further disseminated to military communities across the globe, with huge impact on the conduct of warfare. With chapters written by leading scholars in this field, this work sheds light on RMAs in general and the IT-RMA in the US, in particular. The authors analyse how military practice and doctrines were developed on the basis of the IT-RMA ideas, how they were disseminated, and the implications of them in several countries and conflicts around the world. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, defence studies, war and technology, and security studies in general.

Inequity of control over food systems is a particularly insidious form of injustice. Collectively, the contributors to this volume posit that this inequity is rooted in power asymmetries in the U.S. food system and codified through U.S. food policies. This process puts the public at risk in the U.S. and, via trade and foreign aid policies, in the Global South. Inequities are manifest in the allocation of food and food-producing resources in favor of the wealthy, exploitation of the natural environment for short-term gain of private interests over long-term public ones, the framing of public discussion on food and food deprivation, and finally, the deflection of moral challenges posed by human rights to food.The contributors draw on long-term anthropological field research to examine these tensions and their on-the-ground outcomes in diverse cultural and national contexts. The authors' insightful analyses span a wide variety of topics including dietary change, food insecurity, livestock production, and organic farming in the light of U.S. trade, food, labor, and agricultural policies and food assistance programs. The collection highlights the obstacles to, and the dilemmas and inconsistencies in, shaping policy in the public interest. This book was originally published as a special issue of Food & Foodways.

This book examines the processes and factors shaping the development of homeland security policies in the European Union (EU), within the wider context of European integration.

The EU functions in a complex security environment, with perceived security threats from Islamist terrorists, migration and border security issues, and environmental problems. In order to deal with these, the EU has undertaken a number of actions, including the adoption of the European Security Strategy in 2003, the Information Management Strategy of 2009, and the Internal Security Strategy of 2010. However, despite such efforts to achieve a more concerted European action in the field of security, there are still many questions to be answered about whether the European approach is really a strategic one.

European Homeland Security addresses two major debates in relation to the development of homeland security in Europe. First, it reflects on the absence of homeland security in European political debate and its potential consequences. Second, it examines the significant policy developments in the EU that suggest the influence of homeland security ideas, notably through policy transfer from the United States.

The book will be of great interest to students of European security and EU politics, terrorism and counter-terrorism, security studies and IR.

Richard M. Bissell, Jr., the most important CIA spymaster in history, singlehandedly led America's intelligence service from the age of Mata Hari into the space age. Under his guidance the U-2 spy-plane, the SR-71 "Blackbird," and the Corona spy satellite were developed, and the agency rose to the pinnacle of its power. Bissell was also, however, the architect of the infamous Bay of Pigs operation that failed to overthrow Castro in 1961 and led to the decline of the CIA. In this compelling memoir, Bissell gives us an insider's view of the personalities, policies, and historical forces surrounding these and other covert operations and the lessons learned during those times of conflict. Bissell begins by describing his early years as a member of America's unofficial aristocracy. Born in a house that his father bought from Samuel Clemens, he was educated at Groton and Yale and befriended by Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, among others. Bissell recounts how he became acting head of the Economic Cooperation Administration, the agency in charge of the Marshall Plan after World War II, and helped to create the European Payments Union. Bissell was brought into the CIA in 1954, where he initiated a revolution in intelligence-gathering techniques. He reveals the details of these developments, as well as of the unique CIA-Lockheed partnership he pioneered, his participation in the CIA-sponsored coup to overthrow Arbenz in Guatemala, and his involvement in crises in Laos and the Congo. Bissell's memoir sheds light not only on pivotal points of American foreign policy but also on America's evolution from isolationist to interventionist superpower.

Americans and Europeans perceive threat differently. Americans remain more religious than Europeans and generally still believe their nation is providentially blessed. American security culture is relatively stable and includes the deeply held belief that existential threat in the world emanates from the work of evil-doers. The US must therefore sometimes intervene militarily against evil. The European Union (EU) security culture model differs from traditional European iterations and from the American variant. The concept of threat as evil lost salience as Western Europe became more secularist. Threats became problems to manage and resolve. The upsurge in anti-immigrant and anti-foreigner sentiment in the midst of economic crisis undermines this model.

Sun Tzu's classic on military strategy is profound and absolutely clear. It is valuable in the political and business world today. We present the definitive translation, by Lionel Giles, assistant curator at the British Museum and Keeper of the Department of Oriental Manuscript.

This volume identifies groups of all political colorations from the establishmentarian Council on Foreign Relations to antiestablishment Greenpeace. Even the group Librarians for Nuclear Arms Control is included. Information on group activities and publications is provided, and on their finances when such information is available. Addresses and telephone numbers are listed. The research is thorough and careful. . . . The book will be of value for students, for faculty in pursuit of grants, and as a resource on public policy-making in the U.S. Choice This reference volume discusses the phenomenal expansion in the number of participatory organizations through which the public has taken a part in U.S. national security strategy formulation. The 135 groups selected for indepth coverage are organizations having a primary interest in national security and strategy. The majority are defined by the Internal Revenue Service as not-for-profit, educational, non-partisan organizations. Each entry follows a standard format and contains an extensive amount of the following information: a brief introduction designed to familiarize the researcher with the group's basic orientation; a history of the organization, including the reasons for its creation and the names of as many major founders as can be identified; organizational structure and sources of funding, as well as membership or contribution levels and number of members or contributors; electoral politics, when appropriate; specific policy concerns and tactics; and other information. The largest part of each entry is devoted to policy interests and specific actions of the organization. The section on other information provides bibliographical citations for publications about the organization prepared by outside writers. This unique reference tool provides a broad spectrum of information on the major public organizations that have impacted U.S. national security policy in the 1980s. It will be welcomed by scholars and students of political organizations and international affairs.

In this provocative history, David Tucker argues that "irregular warfare"-including terrorism, guerrilla warfare, and other insurgency tactics-is intimately linked to the rise and decline of Euro-American empire around the globe. Tracing the evolution of resistance warfare from the age of the conquistadors through the United States' recent ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, Revolution and Resistance demonstrates that contemporary conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia are simply the final stages in the unraveling of Euro-American imperialism. Tucker explores why it was so difficult for indigenous people and states to resist imperial power, which possessed superior military technology and was driven by a curious moral imperative to conquer. He also explains how native populations eventually learned to fight back by successfully combining guerrilla warfare with political warfare. By exploiting certain Euro-American weaknesses-above all, the instability created by the fading rationale for empire-insurgents were able to subvert imperialism by using its own ideologies against it. Tucker also examines how the development of free trade and world finance began to undermine the need for direct political control of foreign territory. Touching on Pontiac's Rebellion of 1763, Abd el-Kader's jihad in nineteenth-century Algeria, the national liberation movements that arose in twentieth-century Palestine, Vietnam, and Ireland, and contemporary terrorist activity, Revolution and Resistance shows how changing means have been used to wage the same struggle. Emphasizing moral rather than economic or technological explanations for the rise and fall of Euro-American imperialism, this concise, comprehensive book is required reading for anyone seeking to understand the character of contemporary conflict.

Since the Gulf War, Iraq has attempted to win through confrontation, diplomacy, and bluster what it could not achieve on the battlefield. Defense analyst Anthony Cordesman suggests that this "war of sanctions" may be a struggle that Iraq has begun to win. Saddam Hussein's regime remains aggressive and ambitious, and its military capabilities cannot be judged solely by the current state of Iraq's armed forces. Most dangerous of all is Iraq's continuing effort to build an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Cordesman analyzes Iraqi strategic intentions and diplomatic opportunities, and assesses the options available to the international community to counter the Iraqi threat. Iraq has effectively used diplomatic means to divide the United Nations and exploit Arab sympathies, while using its oil wealth as an incentive to win support for an easing of sanctions. The military potential of Iraq, and especially its development of weapons of mass destruction, must be considered as much for its intimidation value as for any actual utility in a possible war. A realistic assessment of Iraq's future capabilities, says Cordesman, must take into account these political and strategic factors as purely military considerations.

The book is a timely investigation into the European security policy dynamic from the perspective of actors engaged in the contentious policy process. Instead of looking at security actors in isolation from one another, the book enquires into the practice of the policy process and maps out the constellations of formal and informal actors sponsoring concrete ideas on what European security should be about. The understandings of security shift and advocating a particular reading of security involves entering the political contest with actors advancing different conceptions. The contributors analyse these different modalities, overlapping scenes and shifting meanings that bring about EU security policies. Our case studies illustrate how these processes unfold both at the intra-EU level, where different institutions supply and endorse their security framings, and vis-a-vis the EU and its neighbours. The purpose of the book is to uncover, by pluralistic means, the rules of the game that structure the field of the EU's security making. That way, rather than impose a rigid theoretical model, the editors structure the inquiry around three concepts: security, politics, and policy. This book was published as a special issue of Perspectives on European Politics and Society.

The European Union (EU) is making strong inroads into areas of security traditionally reserved to states, especially into internal security, or Justice and Home Affairs. The Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ), as it has been renamed in the Amsterdam Treaty, has seen significant policy developments since the late 1990s. In fact, there has been no other example of a policy-making area making its way so quickly and comprehensively to the centre of the treaties and to the top of the EU's policy-making agenda. After major treaty revisions in Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice, and, finally the Lisbon Treaty, which entered into force on 1 December 2009, as well as an increased political impetus through the European Council Summits in Tampere (1999), the Hague (2004), and Stockholm (2009), the area appears as one of the most promising policy fields for integration in the EU in the foreseeable future. This process has deepened even more significantly after the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 in the United States, on 11 March 2004 in Madrid, and on 7 July 2005 in London. This book is the first to analyse these hugely topical developments in European internal security at both the treaty and policy levels, as well as its implementation at the national level, from various disciplinary perspectives (political science, law, criminology, etc). This book was published as a special edition of European Security.

This book argues that we can understand and explain the EU as a security and peace actor through a framework of an updated and deepened concept of security governance. It elaborates and develops on the current literature on security governance in order to provide a more theoretically driven analysis of the EU in security. Whilst the current literature on security governance in Europe is conceptually rich, there still remains a gap between those that do 'security governance' and those that focus on 'security' per se. A theoretical framework is constructed with the objective of creating a conversation between these two literatures and the utility of such a framework is demonstrated through its application to the geospatial dimensions of EU security as well as specific cases studies in varied fields of EU security. This book was originally published as a special issue of European Security.