In a period that began with Britain controlling a world-wide empire and included two world wars, followed by the Cold War and massive expenditure on nuclear armaments, the relationship between the politicians and the generals has been central to British history. While it is correctly assumed that the Armed Forces have never threatened British political stability in modern times, the relationship between the military and their political masters is a major, if under-emphasised, theme of British history. While in theory the politicians decided strategy and the military implemented it, in practice decisions often depended on the personalities and experience of those involved. Asquith, the epitome of the civilian, left major strategic decisions in the hands of the military; while Churchill, an ex-soldier and ex-First Lord of the Admiralty, rode roughshod over professional military advice. In a period when arms before ever more technologically sophisticated, there was also the problem of how far politicians could decide on strategies proposed by the military other than by the crude yardstick of cost. The essays in Government and the Armed Forces in Britain, 1856--1990 provide a coherent account not only of the major decision-making of warfare but also of the changes in the organisation and control of the Armed Forces.

Since its partition in the 1950s, the Korean peninsula has directly or indirectly shaped the broader security relations between regional powerhouses, and the recent test of a nuclear weapon by the North Korean regime has heightened tensions across the world. This study draws upon contributions from a diverse array of experts who offer their perspectives on the region's complex network of alliances and hostilities. The authors discuss the future of the region, the potential for military conflict and a new arms race, and the ways to maintain peace and stability. Since its partition in the 1950s, the Korean peninsula has directly or indirectly shaped the broader security relations between regional powerhouses, while the recent test of a nuclear weapon by the North Korean regime has heightened tensions across the world. Japan, feeling increasingly threatened by the North Korean regime and China's extravagant military expenditures, has begun questioning Article IX in its Constitution that renounces war and the maintenance of armed forces. Its neighbors, still haunted by Japanese atrocities during World War II, are fearful of a new nuclear arms race in the region. The United States, for its part, has adopted unprecedented hard-line policies in response to 9/11, going so far as to condemn North Korea as part of an axis of evil. It has strengthened its alliance with Japan and alienated its long-time strategic partner South Korea. Add to this the economic entanglements of each of these countries both with each other and with the rest of the world, and the regional security issues become even more paramount. This study makes sense of these complex alliances and frictions and offers an array of perspectives on the future of the region, the potential for military conflict and a new arms race, and the ways to maintain peace and stability. Topics include big power rivalries, South Korea's sunshine policy, anti-Americanism, and emerging nationalisms.

This book analyzes the evolution of Russian military thought and how Russia's current thinking about war is reflected in recent crises. While other books describe current Russian practice, Oscar Jonsson provides the long view to show how Russian military strategic thinking has developed from the Bolshevik Revolution to the present. He closely examines Russian primary sources including security doctrines and the writings and statements of Russian military theorists and political elites. What Jonsson reveals is that Russia's conception of the very nature of war is now changing, as Russian elites see information warfare and political subversion as the most important ways to conduct contemporary war. Since information warfare and political subversion are below the traditional threshold of armed violence, this has blurred the boundaries between war and peace. Jonsson also finds that Russian leaders have, particularly since 2011/12, considered themselves to be at war with the United States and its allies, albeit with non-violent means. This book provides much needed context and analysis to be able to understand recent Russian interventions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, how to deter Russia on the eastern borders of NATO, and how the West must also learn to avoid inadvertent escalation.

Ideal for student research, this book provides a reference guide to the war as well as seven essays analyzing a variety of aspects of the war and its consequences. The essays address questions such as: How did Saddam Hussein become such a major threat and how has he survived the war? How critical was George Bush in driving U.S. and global foreign policy during the crisis? How were key decisions made? Did the war fail or succeed in retrospect? What were its long-run political, economic, strategic and cultural effects? Can collective security work? Is the United Nations likely to be effective in future crises? What lessons can be learned from the crisis? Yetiv draws on primary documents and extensive interviews with many key players such as Colin Powell, James Baker, and Brent Scowcroft, and Arab and European leaders which cast new light on the event.

Following a list of key players and a complete chronology of events, seven essays offer a contemporary perspective on the war: Drama in the Desert; War Erupts in a Storm: The Continuation of Diplomacy by Air and on the Ground; From Truman to Desert Storm: The Rising Eagle in the Persian Gulf; President Bush and Saddam Hussein: A Classic Case of Individuals Driving History; The West Arms a Brutal Dictator: Can Proliferation Be Controlled in the Post-Cold War World?; The United Nations and Collective Security: Was the Gulf War a Model for the Future?; The Impact of the Persian Gulf War. Reference components include a narrative historical overview of the war and biographical profiles of each of the major players in the war. Twelve primary documents include speeches and UN resolutions. A glossary of terms particular to the war and an annotated bibliography complete the work. A selection of photos complements the text. This readable guide is a one-stop source for reference material and in-depth analysis of the key foreign policy event of the 1990s, and should appeal to a broad readership.

"Tragedy at Graignes" tells the story of Captain Bud Sophian, the only US Army officer who did not flee Graignes, France, as the Waffen SS overran the American positions and stormed the village. Sophian was a surgeon, and he refused to abandon the fourteen wounded paratroopers in his care. He surrendered by waving a white flag at the door of the badly shelled Norman church where his aid station was located. He hoped for fair prisoner treatment in accordance with the Geneva Convention of 1929. The German troops instead committed unspeakable atrocities, leaving many of the American prisoners mutilated in grotesque heaps. All of the American prisoners, including Sophian, were killed.

Captain Sophian's judgment and actions in the US Army were the culmination of the rich and challenging life he led prior to the Second World War. Bud's correspondence with his sister and other Sophian archival materials tell the story of this compelling life. These letters are reproduced verbatim in "Tragedy at Graignes: The Bud Sophian Story" so that Bud and other authors may speak directly to you and to the historical record.

As seen in military documents, medical journals, novels, films, television shows, and memoirs, soldiers' invisible wounds are not innate cracks in individual psyches that break under the stress of war. Instead, the generation of weary warriors is caught up in wider social and political networks and institutions-families, activist groups, government bureaucracies, welfare state programs-mediated through a military hierarchy, psychiatry rooted in mind-body sciences, and various cultural constructs of masculinity. This book offers a history of military psychiatry from the American Civil War to the latest Afghanistan conflict. The authors trace the effects of power and knowledge in relation to the emotional and psychological trauma that shapes soldiers' bodies, minds, and souls, developing an extensive account of the emergence, diagnosis, and treatment of soldiers' invisible wounds.

This book explores how transnational politics, modern communications, and access to weapons give political movements the ability to wage global war. Transnational politics, modern communications, and access to the tools of warfare have combined to give political movements the ability to wage global war to promote their own agendas, a development that has changed the face of both politics and warfare. Fowler examines current aspects of conducting war, including mobilization, funding, training, fighting, and intelligence to demonstrate how they are accessible to anyone and are well-suited to waging insurgency efforts in many places around the world. Such efforts force governments to deal with unforeseen enemies who violently advance their agendas in a quest for increased power and authority. Because global insurgents, such as Al-Qaeda, build more direct connections between politics and the use of force, confronting them requires solutions that emphasize politics as much as the use of force. National governments must unite to seek cooperative solutions to issues that affect them. agendas will undoubtedly change foreign policy planning for decades to come. Published under the new Praeger Security International imprint, it explores what allows insurgency to be accessible and effective and deals with more than just terrorism, but insurgency strategy as part of a global war. It argues that solutions require use of politics, not just the use of force

After his four-year hitch in the marines was up in 1957, Richard Sanderlin met another Norfolk, Virginia native, Frank Sturgis, Marine Corps veteran, Army Intelligence Officer, and future Watergate burglar. Richard, and Frank relocated to Miami, Florida where they ran an arms and munition smuggling operation into Cuba, bound for the rebels of Fidel Castro. During the summer of 1958, Richard Sanderlin traveled to the Sierra Maestra Mountains in Oriente Province Cuba, where he trained the rebels of Fidel, and Raul Castro, in military strategy, tactics, weapon handling, and hand to hand fighting. After completing the training of Raul Castro's Second Front, Richard led a guerrilla band into ten combat operations against the Batista army. This is the story an idealistic young warrior who fought against the tyranny of dictatorship only to be betrayed by a communist conspiracy led by Fidel Castro.

Since World War II, America's economic landscape has undergone a profound transformation. The effects of this change can be seen in the decline of the traditional industrial heartland and the emergence of new high tech industrial complexes in California, Texas, Boston, and Florida. The Rise ofthe Gunbelt demonstrates that this economic restructuring is a direct result of the rise of the military industrial complex (MIC) and a wholly new industry based on defense spending and Pentagon contacts. Chronicling the dramatic growth of this vast complex, the authors analyze the roles played by the shift from land and sea warfare to aerial combat in World War II, the Cold War, the birth of aerospace and the consequent radical transformation of the airplane industry, and labor and major defense corporations such as Boeing, Lockheed, and McDonnell Douglas. Exploring the reasons for the shifts in defense spending--including the role of lobbyists and the Department of Defense in awarding contracts--and the effects on regional and national economic development, this comprehensive study reveals the complexities of the MIC.

A study of operational warfare in the Habsburg old regime, 1683-1740, which recreates everyday warfare and the lives of the generals conducting it, this book goes beyond the battlefield to examine the practical skills of war needed in an agricultural landscape of pastures, woods, and water. Although sieges, forages, marches, and raids are universally considered crucial aspects of old regime warfare, no study of operational or maneuver warfare in this period has ever been published. Early modern warfare had an operational component which required that soldiers possess or learn many skills grounded in the agricultural economy, and this requirement led to an "economy of knowledge" in which the civil and military sectors exchanged skilled labor. Many features of "scientific warfare" thought to be initiated by Enlightenment reformers were actually implicit in the informal structures of armies of the late 1680-1740 period. In this period, the Habsburg dynasty maintained an army of more than 100,000 men, and hundreds of generals. This book might be called a "labor history" of these generals, revealing their regional, social, and educational backgrounds. It also details the careerist dimensions of another neglected aspect of the early modern general's work, the creation of "military theory." Theory arose naturally from staff work and commanded wide interest among both high-ranking officers for professional reasons, and for its significant impact on service politics.

This is an interdisciplinary study of how power, security, polarity and the primacy of sovereign states play out in an international context that has witnessed the rise of non-state actors. It provides an updated analysis of the complex relationship of anarchy, power and politics by addressing issues of self-defense in a unipolar order.

The existence of a national style of warfare, an American Way of War, has been used to characterize fundamental elements of American military strategy. During his tenure as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell became the proponent for a strategic framework to guide the consideration of how military forces should be used to support national policy objectives. His framework was reflected in the Chairman's National Military Strategy published in early 1992 after Desert Storm under a concept titled Decisive Force. This book traces the development and evaluates the merits of a New American Way of War embodied in the Decisive Force concept. Military attitudes and lessons about the utility of force are drawn from four recent conflicts.

SAS Great Escapes Two recounts the hitherto untold stories of six of the most dramatic and daring escapes executed by the world's most famous fighting force during WWII. From the very earliest SAS missions to the push into Nazi-occupied Europe, they cover some of the key figures in the Regiment, including its founder, David Stirling, plus other lesser-known heroes.

With each story comes an edge-of-the-seat, rollercoaster ride in classic Damien Lewis fashion, as readers are plunged into the escapees' experiences - sharing their most terrifying yet inspiring moments. These stunning accounts of survival beggar belief, revealing nerve-racking bluff and deception, knife-edge encounters with enemy hunter forces hellbent on wreaking vengeance and murder, but also incredible acts of mercy and kindness from those who risk all to help the escapees on their way.

Each tale of breath-taking derring-do reveals how necessity really is the mother of all invention, as with every step and at every juncture these fugitives defied fate, snatching survival and freedom from the jaws of the enemy, and all the horrors that would have followed capture.

Damien Lewis has worked closely with the families of those portrayed, accessing wartime diaries, letters, mission reports, interrogation transcripts and more, to relate how the men of the SAS crossed blazing deserts, evaded enemy hunter forces and escaped through hostile lands, battling against seemingly insurmountable odds. But most of all, these uplifting tales of endurance beyond measure showcase the triumph of the human spirit and the will to survive.

The rapid and energetic resurgence of the Islamic religion and the expanded international role played by Islamic nations and political movements provided the impetus for a collaborative examination by scholars of religion and culture intent on bridging the gap of knowledge and understanding between the study of the West and the study of Islam. This book, together with its companion volume, Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions (Greenwood Press, forthcoming 1991), examines the topics of the relationship between Western and Islamic religious and cultural traditions on war, peace, and the conduct of statecraft. The ten essays contained here provide scholarly analyses and interpretations of Islamic traditions and of areas of relationship and commonality between these traditions and those of the West. The difficulties inherent in such analysis are compounded by the lack of correspondence between the two religious and cultural traditions, particularly those concerned with defining when war is justified and what limits ought to be observed in justified warfare. The volume is divided into three parts: "When is War Justified? What are Its Limits?," "Irregular Warfare and Terrorism," and "Combatancy, Noncombatancy, and Noncombatant Immunity." Within each of these perspectives two groups of scholars, one whose field of work is the just war tradition of Western culture and one whose area of study is Islamic religion and culture, examine issues that relate to the justification and limitation of war. The first four essays assess justifications for war and restraints on its conduct, including a discussion of the concept of jihad.Two additional groups of essays address specific questions that are especially pressing in the current historical context. The nine chapters range broadly over the historical development of the two traditions, seeking individually and collectively to open up the unfamiliar and to bring elements of the two traditions to bear on contemporary moral problems of armed violence and war. For students of Western and Islamic religion and culture, the volume provides a beginning for cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural dialogue as well as for intensive and systematic study. Scholars of both Western and Islamic traditions will find their understandings of the tradition of jihad and the constellation of ideas and attitudes on war, peace, and politics that are normative in Islamic religion enhanced by Cross, Crescent and Sword, which also provides a means to assess how these ideas and attitudes should be placed in relationship to those of Western culture.

The imperatives of sovereignty, human rights and national security very often pull in different directions, yet the relations between these three different notions are considerably more subtle than those of simple opposition. Rather, their interaction may at times be contradictory, at others tense, and at others even complementary. This collection presents an analysis of the irreducible dilemmas posed by the foundational challenges of sovereignty, human rights and security, not merely in terms of the formal doctrine of their disciplines, but also of the manner in which they can be configured in order to achieve persuasive legitimacy as to both methods and results. The chapters in this volume represent an attempt to face up to these dilemmas in all of their complexity, and to suggest ways in which they can be confronted productively both in the abstract and in the concrete circumstances of particular cases.