China's rise to global economic and strategic eminence, with the potential for achieving pre-eminence in the greater-Asian region, is one of the defining characteristics of the post-Cold War period. This work offers a basic understanding of the military-strategic basis and trajectory of a rising China, provides background, and outlines current and future issues concerning China's rise in strategic-military influence.

The next decade may witness China's assertion of military or strategic pressure on Japan, the Korean Peninsula, India, the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, Central Asia, or even on behalf of future allies in Africa and Latin America. While conflict is not a foregone conclusion, as indicated by China's increasing participation in many benign international organizations, it is a fact that China's leadership will pursue its interests as it sees them, which may not always coincide with those of the United States, its friends, and allies.

Until now, no single volume has existed that provides an authoritative, comprehensive, and concise description of China's evolving geo-strategy or of how China is transforming its military to carry out this strategy. Fisher examines how China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) remains critical to the existence of the Chinese Communist government and looks at China's political and military actions designed to protect its expanded strategic interests in both the Asia-Pacific and Central to Near-Asian regions. Using open sources, including over a decade of unique interview sources, Fisher documents China's efforts to build a larger nuclear force that may soon be protected by missile defenses, modern high technology systems for space, air, and naval forces, and how China is now beginning to assemble naval, air, and ground forces for future power projection missions. His work also examines how the United States and other governments simultaneously seek greater engagement with China on strategic concerns, while hedging against its rising power. Although China faces both internal and external constraints on its rise to global eminence, it cannot be denied that China's government is pursuing a far-reaching strategic agenda.

This book fills an important gap in the literature of modern warfare by focusing on random elements in warfare often overlooked in both the planning and execution of military operations—factors that can turn certain success into devastating failure. By definition, the unforeseeable cannot be seen, but one way to bring more variables under consideration when planning a military action is to review those instances where the unforeseeable changed everything. For professionals and enthusiasts alike, Imponderable But Not Inevitable: Warfare in the 20th Century does just that, reviewing specific instances in 20th-century warfare when things did not go according to plan. Imponderable but Not Inevitable uses case studies to expose the "Inevitability Syndrome," exploring the role of luck, fate, and randomness in influencing both victory and defeat. In essays drawn from World War II, Konfrontasi, the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War, a distinguished set of military experts looks at real scenarios of inexplicable losses, illustrating why nothing—nothing—should be taken for granted in war.

In late 1775, a few months after the first shots of the Revolution were fired, Benedict Arnold led over 1,000 troops into Quebec to attack the British there. Departing from Massachusetts, by the time they reached Pittston, Maine, they were in desperate need of supplies and equipment to carry them the rest of the way. Many patriotic Mainers contributed, including Major Reuben Colburn, who constructed a flotilla of bateaux for the weary troops. Despite his service in the Continental Army, many blamed Colburn when several of the vessels did not withstand the harsh journey. In this narrative, the roles played by Colburn and his fellow Mainers in Arnold's march are re-examined and revealed.

John Medley s life took on new meaning on the day twenty-one trainee soldiers died. As a teenager, he embarked on the journey of his lifetime to become a fighting finance noncommissioned officer in the US Army. After infantry and paratrooper training, he showed early allegiance to the US Army Finance Corps. The loss of those twenty-one soldiers instilled in him a lifelong commitment to ensuring timely and accurate pay to soldiers and their dependents. Over his career, he learned to rely on his military training and education to help him face and resolve problematic conditions and situations. He also relied on the acquired, mission-related knowledge that he gleaned from one assignment to the next. His life and career were affected further by the urgency to respond to the families of 248 soldiers who had been killed in an air crash when returning from the Sinai. An encounter with a widow and her two toddlers would change his life again. After the death of her soldier husband, she came to John s office in search of condolence and relief from her unbearable strife. There, the two spoke of her emotional and financial concerns for her family s future without her husband. Fortunately, John and his team were prepared to help these families through their darkest days. Join Dr. Medley as he brings you inside the workings of military finance operations and life in the civilian worlds of business, civil service, and academia."

Galloping into danger-on and off the battlefield
Jean Baptiste Gazzola's memoir of his life in Napoleon's cavalry regiments is a remarkable and exhilarating one. He tells his story vividly-almost certainly with advantages-for it is one of passionate love affairs, attempted murder, duels, flight from retribution, hard campaigning and violent battles. This Italian centaur joined the Revolutionary French Army in the early days of Napoleon's career, for engagements in his home country before departing for Egypt-and thereafter many of the pivotal battles of the age culminating in the retreat from Moscow, where, left behind, wounded and frost-bitten, he ends his military career when taken into captivity by the Russians. Gazzola wins his first award as a member of the 'forlorn hope' at Mantua and then-donning the spurs of the horse soldier-he becomes a mounted grenadier of the Consular Guard. Service in Chasseurs a Cheval regiments follow before he once again joins the heavy cavalry of the Imperial Guard for the campaigns that closed the epoch of the First Empire. Whilst it is sometimes difficult to decide what may be fact and what fantastical-not an uncommon feature of the military memoir-there is no doubt that this is an absorbing and entertaining excursion into both the world and life of a cavalryman of the Grande Armee.

Exactly how did the Israelites cross the desert? How did Moses cross the Red Sea? How did Joshua take Jericho, and how did the sun appear to stand still at the Ayjllon Valley? No one has ever analyzed the Bible as a military history Gabriel provides the first attempt at a continuous historical narrative of the military history of ancient Israel. He begins with a military analysis of Exodus, an unprecedented and hugely significant contribution to Exodus Studies. This book includes collaborative findings from archaelogy, demography, ethnography, and other relevant disciplines. As a seasoned infantry officer and military historian, Gabriel brings a soldier's eye to the infantry combat described in the Bible. Seeking to make military sense of the Biblical narrative as preserved in Hebrew, he renders comprehensible some of the "mysterious" explanations for famous events.

In the summer of 1940, the German Luftwaffe was preparing to destroy London by bombing it for fifty-six consecutive days and nights.

To spare British children from witnessing the carnage and from possible death, millions of youth were evacuated from their London homes and sent away to safe locations. For many boys and girls, their lives would start over in new towns and often with unknown families. Historically, the idea of evacuating an entire generation of children, separating them from their parents, was unprecedented.

This is the story of one of those evacuee children, Jayne Jaffe, who at age nine, began witnessing the best and worst of humanity: war, love, death, separation, tears, euphoria, destruction and rebuilding.

For the first time, Jayne's remarkable journey is told with compelling narrative by author Jon Helminiak in "This Token of Freedom."

""This Token of Freedom" is an extraordinarily well written and heartwarming story about family courage in a time of historic global strife. It's important reminder of the upheavals wrought by WWII on British parents and their children." "The British Literary Society"

We are all acutely aware of the devastation and upheaval that result from war. Less obvious is the extent to which the military and war impact on the gender order. This book is the first to explore the intersections of the military, war and gender in twentieth-century Germany from a variety of different perspectives. Its authors investigate the relevance of the military and war for the formation of gender relations and their representation as well as for the construction of individual and social agency for both genders in civil society and the military. They inquire about the origins and development of gendered images as they were shaped by war. They expound on the multifarious mechanisms that served to reconstruct or newly form gender relations in the postwar periods. They analyze the participation of women and men in the creation of wars as well as the gender-specific meaning of their respective roles. Finally, they investigate the different ways of remembering and coming to terms with the two great military conflicts of the very violent twentieth century. The book focuses on the period before, during and after the two World Wars, closely linked 'total wars' that mobilized both the 'front' and the 'home-front' and increasingly blurred the boundaries between them. Drawing on sources ranging from forces newspapers to German pilot literature, police reports on women's food riots to oral history interviews with soldiers' wives, the richly documented case studies of Home/Front add the long-overdue gender dimension to the cultural and historical debates that surround these two great military conflicts.

When Vickie Spring promised her dad who had served in both WWII and the Korean War, that she would one day write his story and the others with whom he served, she never imagined the challenges that lay ahead of her. After months of searching, thirteen men were found that had fought in Korea alongside her dad. Vickie has compiled these brave and noble men's personal accounts of their experiences during the Korean War. Their stories are heartfelt and compelling. Each story will be given to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. for generations to experience each man's laughter, pain, and suffering. Here are their stories...