Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
|||
Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Defence strategy, planning & research
Sure to be found controversial by some, compelling by all, this is the only available book-length examination of the way the U.S. Army and Department of Defense have tried to create the capabilities promised by the high-tech Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Of more immediate concern, it is also the only in-depth account of the effect RMA and transformation concepts had on the American operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many of the problems in both Iraq and Afghanistan, Adams argues, arose from the DoD's implacable desire to implement RMA-driven transformation concepts-whether they were appropriate or not. What we need to do, he maintains, is to fight the war we have, not the war we want. Over the last several decades, military theorists and others began to believe that new technologies were generating a "revolution in military affairs" (RMA), capabilities so revolutionary that they would redefine warfare. Spurred by these beliefs, and led by President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Department of Defense (DoD) set out to transform the U.S. armed forces by adopting RMA concepts-and spending billions to make the hypothetical capabilities real. The entire structure of the armed forces changed as a result. This vision, however, was totally dependent on a set of unproven suppositions and often nonexistent capabilities, especially a network of information technologies. Moreover, the services, the media, Congress, and industry each had its own agenda, all of which continue to come into play in the development of RMA strategies. The interplay of politics, technology and military reality offers a fascinating narrative.
This book examines US naval strategy and the role of American seapower over three decades, from the late 20th century to the early 21st century. This study uses the concept of seapower as a framework to explain the military and political application of sea power and naval force for the United States of America. It addresses the context in which strategy, and in particular US naval strategy and naval power, evolves and how US naval strategy was developed and framed in the international and national security contexts. It explains what drove and what constrained US naval strategy and examines selected instances where American sea power was directed in support of US defense and security policy ends - and whether that could be tied to what a given strategy proposed. The work utilizes naval capstone documents in the framework of broader maritime conceptual and geopolitical thinking, and discusses whether these documents had lasting influences in the strategic mind-set, the force structure, and other areas of American sea power. Overall, this work provides a deeper understanding of the crafting of US naval strategy since the final decade of the Cold War, its contextual and structural framework setting, and its application. To that end, the work bridges the gap between the thinking of American naval officers and planners on the one hand and academic analyses of Navy strategy on the other hand. It also presents the trends in the use of naval force for foreign policy objectives and into strategy-making in the American policy context. This book will be of much interest to students of naval power, maritime strategy, US national security and international relations in general.
The fourth and final volume in a pioneering series on the Chinese
military, "Imagined Enemies" offers an unprecedented look at its
history, operational structure, modernization, and strategy.
Beginnning with an examination of culturee adn thought in Part I,
the authors explore the transition away transition away from Mao
Zedong's revolutionary doctrine, the conflict with Moscow, and
Beijing's preoccupation with Taiwanese separatism and preparations
for war to thwart it. Part II focuses on operational and policy
decisions in the National Command Authority and, subsequently, in
the People's Liberation Army. Part III provides a detailed study of
the Second Artillery, China's strategic rocket forces. The book
concludes with the transformation of military strategy and shows
how it is being tested in military exercises, with Taiwan and the
United States as "imagined enemies."
This volume explores the contemporary challenges to US national cybersecurity. Taking stock of the field, it features contributions by leading experts working at the intersection between academia and government and offers a unique overview of some of the latest debates about national cybersecurity. These contributions showcase the diversity of approaches and issues shaping contemporary understandings of cybersecurity in the West, such as deterrence and governance, cyber intelligence and big data, international cooperation, and public-private collaboration. The volume's main contribution lies in its effort to settle the field around three main themes exploring the international politics, concepts, and organization of contemporary cybersecurity from a US perspective. Related to these themes, this volume pinpoints three pressing challenges US decision makers and their allies currently face as they attempt to govern cyberspace: maintaining international order, solving conceptual puzzles to harness the modern information environment, and coordinating the efforts of diverse partners. The volume will be of much interest to students of cybersecurity, defense studies, strategic studies, security studies, and IR in general.
This book provides a critical examination of NATO's evolving strategic and operational roles in the Western Balkans since the disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991, with a particular focus on Bosnia, Kosovo and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, in both the conflict and post-conflict phases. While there is a myriad of literature available on the various conflicts that engulfed the former Yugoslavia after the collapse of communism, less has been written on NATO's overall role in these conflicts. This text, therefore, fills the gap, offering a thematic study of NATO's roles and duties in this region from the early 1990s to the present day. The 'levels of analysis' introduced by Mulchinock provide a new framework for examining NATO's response to the Yugoslav wars of secession, focusing on the role of key NATO member states and the role of different NATO Secretaries-General, along with the impact of inter-institutional cooperation (and conflict) with other international organisations.
War, nuclear weapons, and terrorism are all major threats to US security, but a new set of emerging threats are challenging the current threat response apparatus and our ability to come up with creative and effective solutions. This book considers new, 'non-traditional' security issues such as: transnational organized crime, immigration and border security, cybersecurity, countering violent extremism and terrorism, environmental and energy security, as well as the rise of external actors. The work examines the major challenges and trends in security and explores the policy responses of the U.S. government. By using international relations theory as an analytical approach, Fonseca and Rosen present how these security threats have evolved over time.
This book examines changes in the Persian Gulf security complex following the United States (US) invasion of Iraq in 2003, focusing on threats to the collective identities of two religious sects - Shia and Sunni. Although there is a growing body of literature examining security in the Persian Gulf, little focus has been given to the theoretical and methodological aspects of the problem. In this volume, Shayan analyses the causes behind the security changes which occurred in the region since 2003 and demonstrates how regional security dynamics are interlinked to perceived sectarian threats on the Shia and Sunni religious identities. This text is essential reading for political scientists, policy makers and scholars of international relations.
Russian annexation of Crimea and the subsequent air campaign over Syria took the world by surprise. The capabilities and efficiency of Putin's armed forces during both operations signalled to the world that Russia was back in business as a significant military actor on the international stage. In this cutting-edge study, Bettina Renz and Hanna Smith combine their respective expertise in strategic studies and foreign policy to offer an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of Russia's military revival under Putin's leadership. Whilst the West must adjust to the reality of a modernised and increasingly powerful Russian military, they argue that the renaissance of Russian military might and its implications for the balance of global power can only be fully understood within a wider historical context. Assessing developments in Russian Great Power thinking, military capabilities, Russian strategic thought and views on the use of force throughout the post-Soviet era, the book shows that rather than signifying a sudden Russian military resurgence, recent developments are consistent with longstanding trends in Russian military strategy and foreign policy. This timely and thoughtful book is a must-read for students of politics as well as anyone interested in current affairs.
This book provides a detailed analysis of the complicated relations between Iran and its Arab neighbours. Arab perceptions of Iran, its regional policies and role in the Arab region, have never been more complicated than today. How is one to make sense of the increasingly complex and at times tense relationship between Iran and its Arab neighbours? Given the strategic significance of this sub-region and the importance of relations between its states to international security, this edited volume systematically accounts for each Arab neighbour's perception, policies and approach towards the Islamic republic, for the first time providing a clear and detailed comparative analysis of these relationships. This book, bringing together a group of leading scholars of the region, not only provides a clear lens for the policy community through which to gauge the causes of change and the reasons for continuity in relations, but also offers an invaluable tool for scholars of the wider region and the growing community of researchers focusing on this sub-region.
Selected as a Financial Times Best Book of 2013 In Strategy: A History, Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the world's leading authorities on war and international politics, captures the vast history of strategic thinking, in a consistently engaging and insightful account of how strategy came to pervade every aspect of our lives. The range of Freedman's narrative is extraordinary, moving from the surprisingly advanced strategy practiced in primate groups, to the opposing strategies of Achilles and Odysseus in The Iliad, the strategic advice of Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, the great military innovations of Baron Henri de Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz, the grounding of revolutionary strategy in class struggles by Marx, the insights into corporate strategy found in Peter Drucker and Alfred Sloan, and the contributions of the leading social scientists working on strategy today. The core issue at the heart of strategy, the author notes, is whether it is possible to manipulate and shape our environment rather than simply become the victim of forces beyond one's control. Time and again, Freedman demonstrates that the inherent unpredictability of this environment-subject to chance events, the efforts of opponents, the missteps of friends-provides strategy with its challenge and its drama. Armies or corporations or nations rarely move from one predictable state of affairs to another, but instead feel their way through a series of states, each one not quite what was anticipated, requiring a reappraisal of the original strategy, including its ultimate objective. Thus the picture of strategy that emerges in this book is one that is fluid and flexible, governed by the starting point, not the end point. A brilliant overview of the most prominent strategic theories in history, from David's use of deception against Goliath, to the modern use of game theory in economics, this masterful volume sums up a lifetime of reflection on strategy.
This book provides a comprehensive coverage of crucial issues concerning EU co-operation and European security. At present, Europe is confronted with a number of serious common and global challenges, the most important being the economic crisis, migration issues, geopolitical tensions at its external borders, terrorism, climate change and environmental challenges. These developments have a huge impact on the stability and security of the continent as a whole and on each individual European country. Europe, more particularly the European Union, has to organize its governance and security infrastructure in such a way that it can cope with these global threats. This edited volume collects a number of topics and themes connected to the governance and/or security dimensions of EU co-operation. The book is divided into several parts, which deal respectively with the values and general principles of EU co-operation; institutional aspects of EU co-operation; a number of individual policy domains; areas of European criminal law; the external relations of the EU; and the future functioning of EU co-operation as a whole. The eighteen chapters, written by a team of experts with extensive practical and academic experience, contain insights and information valuable to researchers, students, practitioners and policy makers concerned with EU law and international law.About the editors Jaap de Zwaan is Lector European Integration at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, and Emeritus Professor of the European Union Law at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He served for nearly twenty years as a member of the Diplomatic Service of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he worked notably in the domain of European integration. He was also the Director of the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael in The Hague for almost six years. Martijn Lak is a historian and a Lecturer and Researcher at the Department of European Studies of The Hague University of Applied Sciences. He studied Journalism and History at the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, and obtained his Ph.D. in 2011. Martijn Lak specializes in post-war Dutch-German economic and political relations and contemporary German history. Abiola Makinwa is a Senior Researcher and Lecturer in commercial Law with a special focus on Anti-Corruption Law and Policy at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. Abiola Makinwa holds a Ph.D. from Erasmus University, Rotterdam. She is a frequent speaker on anti-corruption law and policy and has introduced Anti-Corruption Compliance as an undergraduate course at The Hague University. Piet Willems is a Lecturer in International and European Law at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, where he focuses on project-based learning, moot court coaching and competition law. His research activities focus on regulation in the European Union. He obtained both his Master's degree and his LL.M. in European Law from Ghent University. -based learning, moot court coaching and competition law. His research activities focus on regulation in the European Union. He obtained both his Master's degree and his LL.M. in European Law from Ghent University.
This book uncovers how US-India relations have changed and intensified during the administrations of Bill Clinton, George Bush Jr., and Barack Obama. Throughout the Cold War, US-India relations were often distant and volatile as India mostly received attention at times of grave international crises, but from the late 1990s onwards, the US showed a more sustained interest in India. How was this shift possible? While previous scholarship has focused on the civilian nuclear deal as a turning point, this book presents an alternative account for this change by analyzing how India's identity has been constructed in different terms after the Cold War. It examines the underlying discourse and explains how this enables or constrains US foreign policymakers when they establish security policies with India and improve US-India relations.
In 1993 the first Clinton administration declared environmental security a national security issue, but by the end of the Bush administrations environmental security had vanished from the government's agenda. This book uses changing US environmental security policy to propose a revised securitisation theory, one that both allows insights into the intentions of key actors and enables moral evaluations in the environmental sector of security. Security and the Environment brings together the subject of environmental security and the Copenhagen School s securitisation theory. Drawing on original interviews with former key players in United States environmental security, Rita Floyd makes a significant and original contribution to environmental security studies and security studies more generally. This book will be of interest to international relations scholars and political practitioners concerned with security, as well as students of international environmental politics and US policy-making."
The official book behind the Academy Award-winning film The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley Alan Turing was the mathematician whose cipher-cracking transformed the Second World War. Taken on by British Intelligence in 1938, as a shy young Cambridge don, he combined brilliant logic with a flair for engineering. In 1940 his machines were breaking the Enigma-enciphered messages of Nazi Germany's air force. He then headed the penetration of the super-secure U-boat communications. But his vision went far beyond this achievement. Before the war he had invented the concept of the universal machine, and in 1945 he turned this into the first design for a digital computer. Turing's far-sighted plans for the digital era forged ahead into a vision for Artificial Intelligence. However, in 1952 his homosexuality rendered him a criminal and he was subjected to humiliating treatment. In 1954, aged 41, Alan Turing took his own life.
Why are democracies pursuing more military conflicts, but achieving worse results? Democratic Militarism shows that a combination of economic inequality and military technical change enables an average voter to pay very little of the costs of large militaries and armed conflict, in terms of both death and taxes. Jonathan Caverley provides an original statistical analysis of public opinion and international aggression, combined with historical evidence from the late Victorian British Empire, the US Vietnam War effort, and Israel's Second Lebanon War. This book undermines conventional wisdom regarding democracy's exceptional foreign policy characteristics, and challenges elite-centered explanations for poor foreign policy. This accessible and wide ranging book offers a new account of democratic warfare, and will help readers to understand the implications of the revolution in military affairs.
This book traces the activities of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI6) and the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) during the Suez Crisis, one of the most infamous episodes of British foreign policy. In doing so it identifies broader lessons not only about the events of 1956, but about the place of intelligence in strategy itself. It provides both an exploration of the relationship between intelligence and strategy at the conceptual level, and also a historical account, and strategic analysis of, the performance of the Joint Intelligence Committee and the Secret Intelligence Service during this time. Focusing on the period immediately before, during, and after the crisis, Danny Steed brings together a complete picture of intelligence story in Britain that has so far eluded comprehensive treatment in the Suez historiography. Through extensive consultation of declassified archival sources, a re-examination of often referred to sources, and the employment of oral history, this study identifies the most significant lessons about the use of intelligence revealed by the Suez Crisis.
This book is the first full-spectrum analysis of Russian and European norms of political action, ranging from international law, ethics, and strategy, to the specific norms for the use of force. It brings together leading scholars from these various fields, examining the differences in norm understanding between Russia and Europe. In light of the 2014 occupation and annexation of Crimea by Russia, and its subsequent covert participation in the internal affairs of Ukraine, including aggressive flying and major military exercises, Russia seems to be a classical revisionist power, intent on changing the balance of power in Europe in particular. It also reaches beyond Europe, inserting itself as the key actor in the Syrian war. The book therefore considers how we should understand Russia. It also questions whether or not the West, in particular Europe, responds adequately in this delicate and dangerous new situation. The book concludes that at present Russia acts strategically and with considerable success whereas Europe is reactive in its response.
Signals Intelligence, or SIGINT, is the interception and evaluation of coded enemy messages. From Enigma to Ultra, Purple to Lorenz, Room 40 to Bletchley, SIGINT has been instrumental in both victory and defeat during the First and Second World War. In the First World War, a vast network of signals rapidly expanded across the globe, spawning a new breed of spies and intelligence operatives to code, de-code and analyse thousands of messages. As a result, signallers and cryptographers in the Admiralty's famous Room 40 paved the way for the code breakers of Bletchley Park in the Second World War. In the ensuing war years the world battled against a web of signals intelligence that gave birth to Enigma and Ultra, and saw agents from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, America and Japan race to outwit each other through infinitely complex codes. For the first time, Peter Matthews reveals the secret history of global signals intelligence during the world wars through original interviews with German interceptors, British code breakers, and US and Russian cryptographers. "SIGINT is a fascinating account of what Allied investigators learned postwar about the Nazi equivalent of Bletchley Park. Turns out, 60,000 crptographers, analysts and linguists achieved considerable success in solving intercepted traffic, and even broke the Swiss Enigma! Based on recently declassifed NSA document, this is a great contribution to the literature." - The St Ermin's Hotel Intelligence Book of the Year Award 2014
This book examines the evolution, impact, and future prospects of the Security Sector Reform (SSR) model in conflict-affected countries in the context of the wider debate over the liberal peace project. Since its emergence as a concept in the late 1990s, SSR has represented a paradigm shift in security assistance, from the realist, regime-centric, train-and-equip approach of the Cold War to a new liberal, holistic and people-centred model. The rapid rise of this model, however, belied its rather meagre impact on the ground. This book critically examines the concept and its record of achievement over the past two decades, putting it into the broader context of peace-building and state-building theory and practice. It focuses attention on the most common, celebrated and complex setting for SSR, conflict-affected environments, and comparatively examines the application and impacts of donor-supported SSR programing in a series of conflict-affected countries over the past two decades, including Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The broader aim of the book is to better understand how the contemporary SSR model has coalesced over the past two decades and become mainstreamed in international development and security policy and practice. This provides a solid foundation to investigate the reasons for the poor performance of the model and to assess its prospects for the future. This book will be of much interest to students of international security, peacebuilding, statebuilding, development studies and IR in general.
Many armed-political movements such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) have their roots in insurrection and rebellion. In Armed Political Organizations, Benedetta Berti seeks to understand when and why violent actors in a political organization choose to vote rather than bomb their way to legitimacy. Berti argues that the classic theory of the democratization process, which sees violence and elections at opposite ends of the political spectrum, is too simplistic and wholly inadequate for understanding the negotiation and disarmament work that is necessary for peaceful resolution of armed conflicts and movement toward electoral options. In this comparative study, she develops an alternative cyclical model that clarifies why armed groups create a political wing and compete in elections, and how this organizational choice impacts subsequent decisions to relinquish armed struggle. In her conclusion, Berti draws out what the implications are for a government's ability to engage armed political groups to improve the chances of political integration. Berti's innovative framework and careful choice of case studies, presented in a jargon-free, accessible style, will make this book attractive to not only scholars and students of democratization processes but also policymakers interested in conflict resolution and peacekeeping efforts.
This book analyzes the multi-faceted phenomenon of Finnish military effectiveness in the Winter War (1939-40). Drawing on a wide array of primary and secondary sources, Pasi Tuunainen shows how by focusing on their own strengths and pitting these against the weaknesses of their adversary, the Finns were able to inflict heavy casualties on the Red Army whilst minimizing their own losses. The Finns were able to use their resources for effective operational purposes, and perform almost to their full potential. The Finnish small-unit tactics utilized the terrain and Arctic conditions for which they had prepared themselves, as well as forming cohesive units of well-motivated and qualitatively better professional leaders and citizen soldiers who could innovate and adapt. The Finnish Army had highly effective logistics, support and supply systems that kept the troops fighting.
This book examines the circumstances surrounding SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Karl Wolff's escape from prosecution for war crimes in 1945. Wolff avoided prosecution because of his role in 'Operation Sunrise', negotiations conducted by high-ranking American, Swiss and British officials - in violation of the Casablanca agreements with the Soviet Union - for the surrender of German forces in Italy that enabled the Anglo-American forces to take Trieste. After 1945, Allied officials, amongst them Allen Dulles, in a move that later helped him ascend to the head of the CIA, shielded Wolff from prosecution to maintain secrecy about the negotiations. 'Operation Sunrise' thus relates to the early origins of the Cold War in Europe and had wide-ranging implications, even in the field of justice: new evidence suggests that the Western Allies not only failed to ensure cooperation between their respective national war crimes prosecution organizations, but in certain cases even obstructed justice by withholding evidence from the prosecution.
Dietrich Heinrich von Bulow (1757 1807) served for sixteen years in the Prussian army, but for the remainder of his life lived a varied existence as a theatrical manager, preacher, writer, businessman, debtor and finally prisoner. It was not until after his death that this work, written in 1799 and reissued here in its 1806 English translation, began to find favour. He advocates the use of mathematical principles in devising swift and decisive tactics, and was one of the first theoreticians to regard tactics and strategy as separate concerns. At a time when Germany and Italy were yet to be unified, he writes that expansion to 'optimum' size would result in a Europe of only twelve states. The book's theories were criticised by Napoleon and Clausewitz, but had a considerable influence on the Prussian and Austrian armies of the late nineteenth century, and it is regarded as one of the founding texts of modern geopolitics.
First published in 1951, this book examines Hitler's strategy and how it developed during the Second World War. Hinsley, who had worked as a code breaker during the war, uses a variety of contemporary documents as sources, including records taken from the German Naval Archives after its capture by the Allies in 1945. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in military history in general or the Second World War in particular. |
You may like...
The Secret Life of Bletchley Park - The…
Sinclair McKay
Paperback
(1)
Chilcot Report - Executive Summary
John Chilcot, Lawrence Freedman, …
Paperback
|