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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > General
Does the EU matter in international security? The authors identify and explain the drivers of and brakes to EU foreign security action, offer methods of assessment to ascertain influence, and conclude that the union has become a niche international security provider that has in turn strengthened EU foreign policy.
This volume takes readers beneath the surface of the South China Sea by exploring critical but under-researched issues related to the maritime territorial disputes. It draws attention to the importance of private sector, civil society, and subnational actors' roles in the disputes and sheds light on key policy issues that are addressed less often in the literature. By going beyond mainstream analyses focused solely on issues of traditional security, resource economics, and international law, it offers a fresh and engaging look at the South China Sea disputes. The book is divided into five parts - historical foundations, enterprises, localities, people, and policy - and its chapters investigate historiography in the region, the global defense industry's role as beneficiary of the disputes, tourism as a territorial strategy, the roles of provinces and local governments, disaster management, confidence-building measures, environmental and science diplomacy, and other topics seldom discussed in other analyses of the South China Sea disputes. The book's diverse content and fresh perspectives make it an essential read not only for policymakers and those in the international relations community but also for all others interested in gaining a more well-rounded understanding of the many issues at stake in the South China Sea maritime territorial disputes.
The Middle Eastern problem is suffused with emotion and ignorance. It is both good and important to have Cobban's perceptive and cool dissection of a truly complex issue. Zbigniew Brezezinski Counselor, Center for Strategic and International Studies Former National Security Adviser Middle East analyst Cobban's 'historical case study of how things were in the Israel-Syria theater during the years 1978-1989' was largely completed before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, but the events of the past year make this book more, rather than less, relevant. . . . Cobban's focus, then, on these two heavily armed nations and their superpower relationships could hardly be more timely. Booklist In the coalition war against Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait, the participation of Syria in the U.S.-led coalition and the restraint of Israel were important elements in the quick and successful conclusion of the war. The United States' diplomatic and military resolve, as well as the withdrawal of the Soviet Union from the international arena, helped put Syria and Israel on the same side in this effort. This was a surprising development in light of the strained state of Syrian-Israeli relations in the years leading up to 1990. Helena Cobban investigates the evolution of the military balance between Israel and Syria from 1978 through 1990, focusing on the effects of the close strategic ties that developed between these states and their respective superpower partners. The fighting in Lebanon in 1982 is closely examined, since it proved to be a key turning point for Israel and Syria--and for the superpowers parrying for influence in the Middle East region. After an up-to-the-minute preface analyzing the effects of the Persian Gulf War on the Syrian-Israeli relationship, Cobban explores the immunity this area showed in the late 1980s to diplomatic efforts that were resolving regional conflicts elsewhere in the world, as well as the surprising overall stability of this theatre even in the absence of effective diplomacy. The arsenals of Israel and Syria, now the preeminent military powers in the Middle East after the defanging of Iraq, are still formidable. Cobban presents a formula for careful diplomacy in the 1990s that could lead to a lasting peace. This book is essential reading for political scientists, students of military engagements, and others who have an interest in the worldwide consequences of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The monograph considers the relationships of ethical systems in the ancient Near East through a study of warfare in Judah, Israel and Assyria in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. It argues that a common cosmological and ideological outlook generated similarities in ethical thinking. In all three societies, the mythological traditions surrounding creation reflect a strong connection between war, kingship and the establishment of order. Human kings' military activities are legitimated through their identification with this cosmic struggle against chaos, begun by the divine king at creation. Military violence is thereby cast not only as morally tolerable but as morally imperative. Deviations from this point of view reflect two phenomena: the preservation of variable social perspectives and the impact of historical changes on ethical thinking. The research begins the discussion of ancient Near Eastern ethics outside of Israel and Judah and fills a scholarly void by placing Israelite and Judahite ethics within this context, as well as contributing methodologically to future research in historical and comparative ethics.
Gray presents an inventive treatise on the nature of strategy, war, and peace, organized around forty maxims. This collection of mini-essays will forearm politicians, soldiers, and the attentive general public against many--probably most--fallacies that abound in contemporary debates about war, peace, and security. While one can never guarantee strategic success, which depends on policy, military prowess, and the quality of the dialogue between the two, a strategic education led by the judgments in these maxims increases the chances that one's errors will be small rather than catastrophic. The maxims are grouped according to five clusters. War and Peace tackles the larger issues of strategic history that drive the demand for the services of strategic thought and practice. Strategy presses further, into the realm of strategic behavior, and serves as a bridge between the political focus of part one and the military concerns that follow. In Military Power and Warfare turns to the pragmatic business of military performance: operations, tactics, and logistics. Part four, Security and Insecurity examines why strategy is important, including a discussion of the nature, dynamic character, and functioning of world politics. Finally, History and the Future is meant to help strategists better understand the processes of historical change.
By applying the nodality, authority, treasure and organisation public policy framework and neo-institutional theory to the dictatorship of Salazar and Franco respectively, this study explores the instruments that governments used to control the military and explains the divergent paths of civil-military relations in 20th Century Portugal and Spain.
Due to the increase of security challenges in the proximity of Europe, the prominence of the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) has augmented. This book is a systematic effort to empirically approach the democratic deficit of CSDP, to understand its social construction and propose ways to remedy it. The book uses Foucault's approach of governmentality to unravel the social construction of this deficit and to illuminate the power relations between the different actors participating in CSDP governance and the constraints upon them. Finally, applying the normative reading of agonistic democracy, the author suggests concrete ways for EU citizens to have a say in the political choices of statesmanship in CSDP governance. The Democratic Quality of European Security and Defence Policy will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of EU foreign and security policy and more broadly of European governance, European Politics and democracy.
This book is a firsthand account of the Vietnam conflict as it unfolded before a midlevel-career military officer. In a first-person account, it does not portend to be a microcosm of that war but, rather, what it was like for one year, at one place to participate and ultimately lead an attack squadron in combat. This an upbeat, anecdote-filled, historically accurate but nonscholarly tale of events seen or taken part in by the author. The book aims for a wide audience that likes aviation, adventure, and insight into leadership. It forcefully brings home the lessons we as a country should learn from such turmoil. This is no "memoir" to justify the action or inaction of a midlevel manager, but a month-by-month account of controlled mayhem and high humor among professionals in the maelstrom of battle.
Yemen’ s inhospitable mountain ranges and fiercely independent
people have kept all but the most determined invader at bay; and
even the Ottomans, when they entered the region in the 16th
century, were hard put to achieve more than a tenuous occupation of
its highlands. Their military campaign was chronicled by Qutb
al-Din al-Nahrawali, a scholar charged by an Ottoman general to
document his army’ s progress. "Lightning Over Yemen" makes an
invaluable 16th century Ottoman source document available in
English for the first time. Al-Nahrawali’ s work vividly brings to
life a vital period in the history of this far-flung province of
the Ottoman empire, which Clive Smith’ s exemplary translation
fully conveys.
The Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), unleashed by the integration of information technologies into weapons systems, military units, and operations is a phenomenon whose impacts have been felt well beyond the Gulf in 1991 or the Balkans in 1999. Technological developments lie at the center of these changes; however, the RMA is about more than technology. It includes the consequences of technological changes for defense and security. This study provides an assessment of the RMA that goes beyond a mere description of new defense-related technologies to deal with deeper, more fundamental issues. Through the contributions of American, Canadian, Chinese, and French experts, this book surveys the RMA from various perspectives and evaluates it from the standpoints of military history and military science. The authors conclude that, while the RMA represents a significant challenge for defense establishments, it may fall short of being truly revolutionary. Whether one looks at power projection or information warfare, it appears that emerging technologies will translate into significant improvements in capabilities, but not necessarily a revolution in warfare. From a comparative perspective, the United States remains well ahead in thinking of and implementing changes that stem from the RMA, although other nations may make selective use of the RMA to promote regional security goals.
Since the suicide terrorist attacks of September Eleven security
issues have become more prominent again. There is also an increased
interest in the military since the military was and still is seen
as a major instrument in the so-called, 'war on terror'. The
anthology focuses on the most recent developments in the military
sphere and tries to assess the impact of September Eleven and the
'new military missions' on the armed forces in terms of, inter
alia, conflict management capabilities, social and psychological
developments inside military units, recruitment and civil-military
relations of the armed forces in the wake of September 11th.
From soldier to wagon master to scalp hunter
Security has long been a central organizing concept of international relations. Until the 1980s, students of the discipline understood its simple essence in terms of arms races and balances of power. However, the issues have changed considerably in the 1990s, and this text aims to help students understand these changes. Many attempts have been made to redefine the concept, leading to a proliferation of terms such as true security, global security, common security and environmental security, but there has been little precision associated with the use of these terms which have often been used in confusing and contradictory ways. In attempting to help students deal with the confusion, this book seeks to outline the theoretical tools at the disposal of students for their own rethinking of security. These tools offer innovative ways of looking at a central concept of the discipline. It outlines some of these alternatives in the context of the third world, which, it is argued, has been neglected by the traditional conceptualization of security.
This book explains the history and development of the military design movement, featuring case studies from key modern militaries. Written by a practitioner, the work shows how modern militaries think and arrange actions in time and space for security affairs, and why designers are disrupting, challenging, and reconceptualizing everything previously upheld as sacred on the battlefield. It is the first book to thoroughly explain what military design is, where it came from, and how it works at deep, philosophically grounded levels, and why it is potentially the most controversial development in generations of war fighters. The work explains the tangled origins of commercial design and that of designing modern warfare, the rise of various design movements, and how today's military forces largely hold to a Newtonian stylization built upon mimicry of natural science infused with earlier medieval and religious inspirations. Why does our species conceptualize war as such, and how do military institutions erect barriers that become so powerful that efforts to design further innovation require entirely novel constructs outside the orthodoxy? The book explains design stories from the Israel Defense Force, the US Army, the US Marine Corps, the Canadian Armed Forces, and the Australian Defence Force for the first time, and includes the theory, doctrine, organizational culture, and key actors involved. Ultimately, this book is about how small communities of practice are challenging the foundations of modern defence thinking. This book will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, defence studies, and security studies, as well as design educators and military professionals.
The book is an up-to-date and comprehensive description of the institutions involved in the aerospace field. It discusses the activities of the main space powers, the United Nations and other international organizations. Without listing figures and budgets, the author conveys a clear idea of the relative importance of those institutions. The novelty of this work is that, in bringing together national and international entities, it explains how those organizations interrelate and coordinate their programs. A complete picture emerges which is more than the sum of its parts. The field of aerospace, which depends heavily on government funding and direction, has been particularly effected by the shifting alliances and recent financial troubles of the space powers. In a book which is both comprehensive and simple to understand, d'Angelo has collected the many pieces of a complex institutional mosaic to draw a clear picture of the entire framework. In addition to being up-to-date, the book is also a novelty in the sense that it describes the work of both national and international entities and explains how those organizations interrelate and coordinate their programs. Without making a list of figures and budgets, d'Angelo gives a clear idea of the relative weight of the various government activities. From the discussion of those activities the reader gains an understanding of the current state of affairs as well as future trends.
Tracking the evolution of the Red Army through the war against Japan and the Chinese civil war, Wortzel's book provides a comprehensive basic reference focusing on the major events, people, and issues that have produced the historical legacy of the People's Liberation Army. Placing contemporary Chinese military history in the context of China's 19th century clashes with the West and Japan, Wortzel illustrates how the imposition of unequal treaties by foreign powers conditioned China's 20th century defense forces and actions and explains how the Communist military forces developed. It also shows how fractionalization in the Communist military leadership led to the Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong's purges. Drawing on a substantial number of sources available only in Chinese as well as on English-language secondary sources, the book provides a basic reference aimed at orienting the nonspecialist to the significant events and people in China's recent military history. The book will also provide a quick reference for the specialist in Chinese history.
"Often crosses paths with Kenneth Roberts's historical novels
"Arundel" and "Rabble in Arms" and it makes a fine successor to
those splendid books." "Both a biography and an extended meditation on the ironies of
the Revolution, "Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero" is in many
ways a remarkable example of the historian's craft. . . . .[an]
indispensable guide." "Restores Arnold to the pantheon of American war heroes." "Martin discloses a new and entirely credible Benedict
Arnold." "Martin's thorough primary-source research--the best in any
biography of Arnold to date--underpins convincing explanations for
both Arnold's intense revolutionary zeal and his subsequent
betrayal. The book offers essential lessons to modern military
officers." Benedict Arnold stands as one of the most vilified figures in American history. Stories of his treason have so come to define him that his name, like that of Judas, is virtually synonymous with treason. Yet Arnold was one of the most heroic and remarkable men of his time, indeed in all of American history. A brilliant military leader of uncommon bravery, Arnold dedicated himself to the Revolutionary cause, sacrificing family life, health, and financial well-being for a conflict that left him physically crippled, sullied by false accusations, and profoundly alienated from the American cause of liberty. By viewing Arnold's life backward through the prism of his treason, we invariably succumb to the demonizations that arose only after his abandonment of the rebelforces. We thereby overlook his critical role as one of the influential actors in the American Revolution. Distinguished historian James Kirby Martin's landmark biography, the result of a decade's labor, stands as an invaluable antidote to this historical distortion. Careful not to endow the Revolutionary generation with mythical proportions of virtue, Martin shows how self-serving, venal behavior was just as common in the Revolutionary era as in our own time. Arnold, a deeply committed patriot, suffered acutely because of his lack of political savvy in dealing with those who attacked his honor and reputation. Tracing Arnold's life, from his difficult childhood through his grueling winter trek across the howling Maine wilderness, his valiant defense of Lake Champlain, and his crucial role in the Quebec and Saratoga campaigns, Martin has given us an entirely new perspective on this dramatic and exceptional life, set against the tumultuous background of the American Revolution.
The 1640s were one of the most exciting and bloody decades in British and Irish history. This book interweaves the narrative threads in each theater of conflict to provide an "holistic" account and analysis of the wars in and between England, Scotland, and Ireland from the Covenanter Rebellion to the execution of Charles I. Using a wide range of original and secondary sources, the author offers a challenging new interpretation of political structure and dynamics in the warring Stuart kingdoms.
"This book represents a laudable contribution to American ethnic studies. . . . [It] provides an excellent guide to some seventy bodies." Special Libraries |
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