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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > Espionage & secret services
A wide-ranging rethinking of the many factors that comprise the making of American Grand Strategy. What is grand strategy? What does it aim to achieve? And what differentiates it from normal strategic thought-what, in other words, makes it "grand"? In answering these questions, most scholars have focused on diplomacy and warfare, so much so that "grand strategy" has become almost an equivalent of "military history." The traditional attention paid to military affairs is understandable, but in today's world it leaves out much else that could be considered political, and therefore strategic. It is in fact possible to consider, and even reach, a more capacious understanding of grand strategy, one that still includes the battlefield and the negotiating table while expanding beyond them. Just as contemporary world politics is driven by a wide range of non-military issues, the most thorough considerations of grand strategy must consider the bases of peace and security-including gender, race, the environment, and a wide range of cultural, social, political, and economic issues. Rethinking American Grand Strategy assembles a roster of leading historians to examine America's place in the world. Its innovative chapters re-examine familiar figures, such as John Quincy Adams, George Kennan, and Henry Kissinger, while also revealing the forgotten episodes and hidden voices of American grand strategy. They expand the scope of diplomatic and military history by placing the grand strategies of public health, race, gender, humanitarianism, and the law alongside military and diplomatic affairs to reveal hidden strategists as well as strategies.
This book examines how key developments in international relations in recent years have affected intelligence agencies and their oversight. Since the turn of the millennium, intelligence agencies have been operating in a tense and rapidly changing security environment. This book addresses the impact of three factors on intelligence oversight: the growth of more complex terror threats, such as those caused by the rise of Islamic State; the colder East-West climate following Russia's intervention in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea; and new challenges relating to the large-scale intelligence collection and intrusive surveillance practices revealed by Edward Snowden. This volume evaluates the impact these factors have had on security and intelligence services in a range of countries, together with the challenges that they present for intelligence oversight bodies to adapt in response. With chapters surveying developments in Norway, Romania, the UK, Belgium, France, the USA, Canada and Germany, the coverage is varied, wide and up-to-date. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, security studies and International Relations.
The second edition of Secret Intelligence: A Reader brings together key essays from the field of intelligence studies, blending classic works on concepts and approaches with more recent essays dealing with current issues and ongoing debates about the future of intelligence. Secret intelligence has never enjoyed a higher profile. The events of 9/11, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the missing WMD controversy, public debates over prisoner interrogation, together with the revelations of figures such as Edward Snowden, recent cyber attacks and the rise of 'hybrid warfare' have all contributed to make this a 'hot' subject over the past two decades. Aiming to be more comprehensive than existing books, and to achieve truly international coverage of the field, this book provides key readings and supporting material for students and course convenors. It is divided into four main sections, each of which includes full summaries of each article, further reading suggestions and student questions: * The intelligence cycle * Intelligence, counter-terrorism and security * Ethics, accountability and secrecy * Intelligence and the new warfare This new edition contains essays by leading scholars in the field and will be essential reading for students of intelligence studies, strategic studies, international security and political science in general, and of interest to anyone wishing to understand the current relationship between intelligence and policy-making.
Risk, Threats and the New Normal explains the new political and technological developments that created new domestic national security threats against the nation and the people of the United States.The book traces the development of and competition between national preparedness (focused on people and property), and civil defense / security (focused on the defense of systems and infrastructure) since the latter days of World War I. While Homeland Security was created to meet national security threats in the domestic arena, most of the duties have devolved to public safety personnel and organizations. The result is a clash of cultures, jurisdictions, and perspectives that produces “less than optimal” results from the many bureaucracies involved. The second of four volumes in McIntyre’s How to Think About Homeland Security series offers suggestions for how these issues might be addressed by Homeland Security.
Tells the fist person story of Verne Lyon, an Iowa farm boy away at college who is inducted into the CIA to spy on his professors and fellow student as part of MHCHAOS, the then largest domestic surveillance program in American history. Framed by his handlers for an airport bombing the young Lyon is dispatched to Cuba to subvert the Castro regime and, when he balks at increasingly nefarious dirty tricks and tries to quit, the CIA kidnaps him twice, finally returning him to American soil and Leavenworth Penitentiary. Today a free man, Lyon details his journey through CIA lies and deceit both to make amends and to reveal the secret workings of government all around us.
'Thrilling! The Hostage is an intense, white-knuckle ride from start to finish' LAURA GRIFFIN 'An action-packed, don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-something kind of novel, which makes it impossible to put down once you've started reading' reader review 'This was my first book by Melinda Di Lorenzo and I definitely will be looking out for her books in future, it was outstanding' reader review 'A captivating, action packed thriller that didn't let up from the beginning to the end and kept me riveted long into the night' reader review 'Riveting read - could not put it down!' reader review 'I read a ton of romantic suspense but this book was fantastic! This story had so many twists and turns! I didn't figure out any of them. Definitely worth the time to read!' reader review 'High energy, exciting and edge of your seat suspense' reader review 'An amazing story that sucks you in on the first page' reader review He was the last person she expected to save her life . . . Air Force One meets The Fugitive with a thrillingly romantic spin in Melinda Di Lorenzo's gripping suspense novel. Perfect for fans of Nora Roberts, Melinda Leigh and Debra Webb. ................................. Surviving the plane crash was the easy part. After losing someone close to her, nurse Joelle Diedrich needs a change of scene. But stepping in as a last-minute medical escort on a prisoner transfer flight results in a bigger one than she bargained for. Waking in the wreckage of a crash, Joelle swiftly gathers that no one else on the plane was what they seemed. And if she wants to make it out of this alive, she must place her trust in the only survivor who's not trying to kill her: Beck, the convicted murderer who was being transported. Fleeing with Beck presents more than one danger - not only that of simple survival across treacherous terrain, but by making Joelle a target in a ruthless plot. As the threats multiply and Beck and Joelle grow closer, Joelle has to ask herself just how much she's willing to risk for a man she's just met, and figure out whether Beck will risk the same for her . . . ................................. Readers are gripped by The Hostage! 'The anticipation is taut, the surprises are many, and the twists come to skew what one might think one has figured out. It is an exciting, romantic, suspenseful read with a very satisfying ending 'A captivating, action-packed thriller that didn't let up from the beginning to the end and kept me riveted long into the night . . . Highly recommend!' 'A good mystery romance with a twist I couldn't have predicted' 'All this book was missing was Nicolas Cage - it definitely gave me some serious Con Air vibes - but with way more romance . . . I highly recommend this as a action suspense romance' 'Fast-paced and entertaining' 'I enjoyed this book, particularly the relationship between Beck and Joelle and their amusing dialogue! It reminded me of a mix between Con Air and Romancing The Stone'
After Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, the Gestapo began silencing critics. Many were shipped to concentration camps; those deemed most dangerous to the Reich were executed. Yet a few slipped through the Gestapo's net and organized resistance cells. One group, codenamed CASSIA, became America's most effective spy ring in Austria during World War II. This first full-length account of CASSIA describes its contributions to the Allied war effort-including reports on the V-2 missile, Nazi death camps and advanced combat aircraft and tanks-before a catastrophic intelligence failure sent key members to the guillotine, firing squad or gas chamber.
The second edition of Secret Intelligence: A Reader brings together key essays from the field of intelligence studies, blending classic works on concepts and approaches with more recent essays dealing with current issues and ongoing debates about the future of intelligence. Secret intelligence has never enjoyed a higher profile. The events of 9/11, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the missing WMD controversy, public debates over prisoner interrogation, together with the revelations of figures such as Edward Snowden, recent cyber attacks and the rise of 'hybrid warfare' have all contributed to make this a 'hot' subject over the past two decades. Aiming to be more comprehensive than existing books, and to achieve truly international coverage of the field, this book provides key readings and supporting material for students and course convenors. It is divided into four main sections, each of which includes full summaries of each article, further reading suggestions and student questions: * The intelligence cycle * Intelligence, counter-terrorism and security * Ethics, accountability and secrecy * Intelligence and the new warfare This new edition contains essays by leading scholars in the field and will be essential reading for students of intelligence studies, strategic studies, international security and political science in general, and of interest to anyone wishing to understand the current relationship between intelligence and policy-making.
Moura Budberg: spy, adventurer, charismatic seductress and mistress of two of the century's greatest writers, the Russian aristocrat Baroness Moura Budberg was born in 1892 to indulgence, pleasure and selfishness. But after she met the British diplomat and secret agent Robert Bruce Lockhart, she sacrificed everything for love, only to be betrayed. When Lockhart arrived in Revolutionary Russia in 1918, his official mission was Britain's envoy to the new Bolshevik government, yet his real assignment was to create a network of agents and plot the downfall of Lenin. Lockhart soon got to know Moura and they began a passionate affair, even though Moura was spying on him for the Bolsheviks. But when Lockhart's plot unravelled, she would forsake everything in an attempt to protect him from Lenin's secret police. Fleeing to a life of exile in England and taking a string of new lovers, including Maxim Gorky and H. G. Wells, Moura later spied for Stalin and for Britain amidst the web of scandal surrounding the Cambridge spies. Through all this she clung to the hope that Lockhart would finally return to her. Grippingly narrated, this is the first biography of Moura Budberg to use the full range of previously unexamined letters, diaries and documents. An incredible true story of passion, espionage and double crossing that encircled the globe, A Very Dangerous Woman brings her extraordinary world vividly to life with dramatic resonances to rival the most sensational novel.
This book offers a vast conceptual and theoretical exploration of the ways intelligence analysis must change in order to succeed against today's most dangerous combatants and most complex irregular theatres of conflict. Intelligence Analysis: How to Think in Complex Environments fills a void in the existing literature on contemporary warfare by examining the theoretical and conceptual foundations of effective modern intelligence analysis—the type of analysis needed to support military operations in modern, complex operational environments. This volume is an expert guide for rethinking intelligence analysis and understanding the true nature of the operational environment, adversaries, and most importantly, the populace. Intelligence Analysis proposes substantive improvements in the way the U.S. national security system interprets intelligence, drawing on the groundbreaking work of theorists ranging from Carl von Clauswitz and Sun Tzu to M. Mitchell Waldrop, General David Petraeus, Richards Heuer, Jr., Orson Scott Card, and others. The new ideas presented here will help the nation to amass a formidable, cumulative intelligence power, with distinct advantages over any and all adversaries of the future regardless of the level of war or type of operational environment.
China's Security State describes the creation, evolution, and development of Chinese security and intelligence agencies as well as their role in influencing Chinese Communist Party politics throughout the party's history. Xuezhi Guo investigates patterns of leadership politics from the vantage point of security and intelligence organization and operation by providing new evidence and offering alternative interpretations of major events throughout Chinese Communist Party history. This analysis promotes a better understanding of the CCP's mechanisms for control over both Party members and the general population. This study specifies some of the broader implications for theory and research that can help clarify the nature of Chinese politics and potential future developments in the country's security and intelligence services.
In April of 2016, computer technicians at the Democratic National Committee discovered that someone had accessed the organization's computer servers. In the days and weeks that followed, they discovered that the cyber thieves had helped themselves to everything: sensitive documents, emails, donor information, even voice mails. It was the modern-day equivalent of the Watergate scandal, but this time, the culprit was Russia's spy service, and their method was a new hybrid cyber warfare: Kompromat. But why would Vladimir Putin want to tip the scales of an American election? New York Times bestseller Malcolm Nance follows the curious real life spy story through a labyrinth of cyber espionage, the history of Russia's spy services, and Vladimir Putin's rise through the KGB from junior officer to Spy-in-Chief. He also details Donald Trump's many disturbing personal associations with Putin and Russia's oligarchy and Trump's loose affiliation of advisors nicknamed the Kremlin Crew. We also learn how technicians discovered that Russia's spy agency was responsible for the hack; how the Russians have devastated individuals, political groups, and entire nations with their cyber crimes; and how they may have cultivated Donald Trump as an unwitting asset to facilitate their ultimate foreign policy goals: disband NATO, dominate eastern Europe, and replace America as the world s superpower.
This book is an in-depth examination of the relations between Ireland and the former East Germany between the end of the Second World War and the fall of the Berlin Wall. It explores political, diplomatic, economic, media and cultural issues. The long and tortuous process of establishing diplomatic relations is unique in the annals of diplomatic history. Central in this study are the activities of the Stasi. They show how and where East German intelligence obtained information on Ireland and Northern Ireland and also what kind of information was gathered. A particularly interesting aspect of the book is the monitoring of the activities of the Irish Republican Army and the Irish National Liberation Army and their campaigns against the British army in West Germany. The Stasi had infiltrated West German security services and knew about Irish suspects and their contacts with West German terrorist groups. East German Intelligence and Ireland, 1949-90 makes an original contribution to diplomatic, intelligence, terrorist and Cold War studies. -- .
This book analyses changes in intelligence governance and offers a comparative analysis of intelligence democratisation. Within the field of Security Sector Reform (SSR), academics have paid significant attention to both the police and military. The democratisation of intelligence structures that are at the very heart of authorit
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.
John Birch is a totemic figure in American life. The society named after him is one of the famous far-right organizations in American history. It was also a paradigmatic example of anti-communist hysteria during the Cold War, and its influence on the American far right to this day remains significant. Yet despite his posthumous fame, Birch himself remains an obscure figure. Terry Lautz, a longtime scholar of US-China relations, has spoken with all of Birch's remaining relatives, found shoeboxes filled with letters from one of his former lovers, and visited the various sites in China where he worked. The result is the first authoritative biography of this fascinating figure, who continues to haunt the political fringes of American life. Birch grew up in the rapidly growing Bible culture of the post-World War I period, and then became a missionary in China in the tumultuous period of its war against the Japanese and the escalating conflict between nationalists and communists. He fought with Claire Chennault's famed Flying Tigers and had a number of romantic relationships with women along the way. After the war ended, he committed himself to resuming his missionary activities in China, but was killed by communist guerrillas in an altercation a couple of weeks after the war ended in September 1945. A few years after his death, when China fell to the communists, anti-communists in Congress latched onto his life and promoted him as a martyr. Within a few years, Robert Welch, a candy manufacturer in New England, formed the John Birch Society, an extreme right-wing organization whose influence is still visible in the Tea Party movement. Lautz covers Birch's life and his afterlife, and also places him not merely in the context of the American far right, but in the revolutionary war that consumed China in the 1930s and 1940s. In this critical study of a figure who has reached near-legendary status, Lautz cuts through the mythology to expose John Birch-both the man and the political phenomenon.
In 1927, Chiang Kai-shek - the head of China's military academy and leader of the Kuomintang (KMT) - began the `northern expeditions' to bring China's northern territories back under the control of the state. It was during this period that the KMT purged communist activities, fractured the army and sparked the Chinese Civil War - which would rage for over twenty years. The communists, led by General Mao Tse-Tsung, were for much of the period forced underground and concentrated in the Chinese countryside. As the author argues, this resulted in China's war featuring unusually high levels of espionage and sabotage, and increased the military importance of information gathering. Based on newly declassified material, Panagiotis Dimitrakis charts the double-crossings, secret meetings and bloody assassinations which would come to define China's future. Uniquely, The Secret War for China gives equal weighting to the role of foreign actors: the role of British intelligence in unmasking Communist International (Comintern) agents in China, for example, and the allies' attempts to turn nationalist China against the Japanese. The Secret War for China also documents the clandestine confrontation between Mao and Chiang and the secret negotiations between Chiang and the Axis Powers, whose forces he employed against the CCP once the Second World War was over. In his turn, Mao employed nationalist forces who had defected - during the last three years of the civil war about 105 out of 869 KMT generals defected to the CCP. This book is an urgent and necessary guide to the intricacies of the Chinese Civil War, a war which decisively shaped the modern Asian world.
This collection, comprising key works by James J. Wirtz, explains how different threat perceptions can lead to strategic surprise attack, intelligence failure and the failure of deterrence. This volume adopts a strategist's view of the issue of surprise and intelligence failure by placing these phenomena in the context of conflict between strong and weak actors in world affairs. A two-level theory explains the incentives and perceptions of both parties when significant imbalances of military power exist between potential combatants, and how this situation sets the stage for strategic surprise and intelligence failure to occur. The volume illustrates this theory by applying it to the Kargil Crisis, attacks launched by non-state actors, and by offering a comparison of Pearl Harbor and the September 11, 2001 attacks. It explores the phenomenon of deterrence failure; specifically, how weaker parties in an enduring or nascent conflict come to believe that deterrent threats posed by militarily stronger antagonists will be undermined by various constraints, increasing the attractiveness of utilising surprise attack to achieve their objectives. This work also offers strategies that could mitigate the occurrence of intelligence failure, strategic surprise and the failure of deterrence. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, strategic studies, security studies and IR in general.
Since the end of the Cold War, the operations of secret police informers have come under the media spotlight and it is now common knowledge that vast internal networks of spies in the Soviet Union and East Germany were directed by the Communist Party. By contrast, very little historical information has been available on the covert operations of the security services in Mao Zedong's China. However, as Michael Schoenhals reveals in this intriguing and sometimes sinister account, public security was a top priority for the founders of the People's Republic and agents were recruited from all levels of society to ferret out 'counter-revolutionaries'. On the basis of hitherto classified archival records, the book tells the story of a vast surveillance and control apparatus through a detailed examination of the cultivation and recruitment of agents, their training and their operational activities across a twenty-year period from 1949 to 1967.
In 2013, former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden leaked secret documents revealing that state agencies like the NSA had spied on the communications of millions of innocent citizens. International outrage resulted, but the Snowden documents revealed only the tip of the surveillance iceberg. Apart from insisting on their rights to tap into communications, more and more states are placing citizens under surveillance, tracking their movements and transactions with public and private institutions. The state is becoming like a one-way mirror, where it can see more of what its citizens do and say, while citizens see less and less of what the state does, owing to high levels of secrecy around surveillance. In this book, Jane Duncan assesses the relevance of Snowden’s revelations for South Africa. In doing so she questions the extent to which South Africa is becoming a surveillance society governed by a surveillance state. Duncan challenges members of civil society to be concerned about and to act on the ever-expanding surveillance capacities of the South African state. Is surveillance used for the democratic purpose of making people safer, or is it being used for the repressive purpose of social control, especially of those considered to be politically threatening to ruling interests? She explores the forms of collective action needed to ensure that unaccountable surveillance does not take place and examines what does and does not work when it comes to developing organised responses. This book is aimed at South African citizens, academics as well as the general reader, who care about our democracy and the direction it is taking.
The Albanian Operation, carried out by British and American secret services from 1949 to 1953, was one of the first Western attempts to subvert a country behind the Iron Curtain. The British liaison officer for the project in Washington was Kim Philby, a Soviet double agent who sabotaged the whole venture. In all, about 300 agents and civilians are thought to have been killed in the disastrous operation. The story was first pieced together by Nicholas Bethell in his 1984 book The Great Betrayal: The Untold Story of Kim Philby's Biggest Coup, based on interviews and conversations with British and American officials and Albanian fighters who infiltrated the Stalinist Albanian regime and escaped alive. The present work presents the interviews throws new light on what actually took place.
The dramatic, untold story of the extraordinary women recruited by Britain's elite spy agency to help pave the way for Allied victory, for fans of A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE by Sonia Purnell 'Gripping: Spies, romance, Gestapo thugs, blown-up trains, courage, and treachery (lots of treachery) - and all of it true, all precisely documented' ERIK LARSON, author of THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY 'The mission is this: Read D-Day Girls today. Not just for the spy flair but also because this history feels more relevant than ever, as an army of women and girls again find themselves in a fight for the common good' LILY KOPPEL, author of THE ASTRONAUT WIVES CLUB 'Thoroughly researched and written as smoothly as a good thriller, this is a mesmerising story of creativity, perseverance, and astonishing heroism' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, Starred review * * * In 1942, the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was fighting. Believing that Britain was locked in an existential battle, Winston Churchill had already created a secret agency, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), whose spies were trained in everything from demolition to sharpshoot ing. Their job, he declared, was to 'set Europe ablaze'. But with most men on the front lines, the SOE was forced to do something unprecedented: recruit women. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France. In D-Day Girls, Sarah Rose draws on recently de classified files, diaries, and oral histories to tell the thrilling story of three of these remarkable women. There's Andree Borrel, a scrappy and streetwise Parisian who blew up power lines with the Gestapo hot on her heels; Odette Sansom, an unhappily married suburban mother who saw the SOE as her ticket out of domestic life and into a meaningful adventure; and Lise de Baissac, a fiercely independent member of French colonial high society and the SOE's unflap pable 'queen'. Together, they destroyed train lines, ambushed Nazis, plotted prison breaks, and gathered crucial intelligence-laying the groundwork for the D-Day invasion that proved to be the turning point in the war. Rigorously researched and written with razor-sharp wit, D-Day Girls is an inspiring story for our own moment of resistance: a reminder of what courage-and the energy of politically animated women-can accomplish when the stakes seem incalculably high. |
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