Over the past 60 years, the U.S. armed forces have created a web of military bases all over the world, from Australia to Iceland to Saudi Arabia. This is the aspect of military service that the majority of soldiers know and remember. Interaction between U.S. personnel and local populations is almost a given, and it is inevitable that the American and host communities will influence each other in numerous ways. This book looks at the history and impact of American military communities overseas. It discusses how U.S. bases affected economic and political life in the host communities, how host societies shape the profile and activities of military communities, and what happens when relations break down. Through case studies of communities around the world, Baker shows that the U.S. armed forces have had a surprisingly large impact both positive and negative on the affairs of many (but not all) host societies, including economic revitalization, cultural change, and, sometimes, tragic social consequences. In not a few cases, the U.S. military presence has become politically controversial on a national level. On the other hand, many host nations have successfully circumscribed the activities of military communities, rendering their potentially disruptive presence almost invisible.

This volume offers a comprehensive history of warfare since 1648, covering conventional and unconventional operations and demonstrating how most modern wars have been hybrid affairs that involved both. The book uses a broad range of conflicts to explore the societal forces that have shaped wars. Written by noted military historian Thomas R. Mockaitis, this book explores conventional and unconventional conflicts and considers the relationships between them. It considers how epic struggles like the American Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the conflicts in the Middle East, among many others, shaped human history. The coverage serves to highlight four themes: the relationship between armed forces and the societies that create them; the impact of technology (not just armaments) on warfare; the role of ideas and attitudes towards violence in determining why and how wars are fought; and the relationship between conventional and unconventional operations. The book also covers the advent and evolution of unconventional warfare, including counterinsurgency, the War on Terror, and current conflicts in the Middle East. It concludes with consideration of the forms armed conflict will take in the future. The book includes valuable excerpts from the writings of military thinkers such as Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and supporting maps and diagrams.

As a Confederate Soldier, John Fulton Brown opposed all things pointing to a division of the United States. He felt he was helping to establish a cause that he did not want established. His heart was not in it and it didn't reflect his interests. He was half-starved all the time and was plagued by the horrid, hungry insects that sucked out what little beef and rice he didn't get at suppertime. Who wouldn't move, influenced by a variety of facts such as these?

In "The Bushwhackers," he recounts how, while traveling in the high, craggy mountains of Tennessee, they discovered the area had been overrun by both Yanks and Rebs. Barns and corncribs were empty with no men in sight, except every now and then a very old man would wander out of hiding. Women with long, peaked faces peeped out through cracks in their huts, looking as scared to death as they undoubtedly were. Children with woolly heads and prominent eyeballs, pale from lack of sufficient food-skedaddled in all directions. Real pretty girls, or those who would have been pretty if there were peace and plenty, looked as though they had never had a full meal in their lives.

Who defines defense policy in the North Atlantic Alliance? Is it NATO, the national government, or the national military? Dutch scholar Jan Willem Honig addresses this widely misunderstood issue. His conclusion--which runs counter to the conventional wisdom that NATO is highly influential--is that the decisive influence in defining defense policy lies neither with NATO nor the allied governments but with the individual national military establishments. He argues that the Alliance does not possess the powers or the institutional framework to effectively control or steer allied defense policies.

Honig's important and timely conclusion challenges conventional wisdom. He analyzes the issue in a detailed case study of the Netherlands' defense policy between 1949 and 1991. Because the fabric of Western security is undergoing its most radical transformation since NATO's inception, this study is especially valuable for its analysis of the changing parameters of European defense requirements. Policy makers and academics interested in NATO will find this work illuminating.

On September 10, 2001, the United States was the most open country in the world. But in the aftermath of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil, the U.S. government began to close its borders in an effort to fight terrorism. The Bush administration's goal was to build new lines of defense without stifling the flow of people and ideas from abroad that has helped build the world's most dynamic economy. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way.

Based on extensive interviews with the administration officials who were charged with securing the border after 9/11, and with many innocent people whose lives have been upended by the new security regulations, "The Closing of the American Border" is a striking and compelling assessment of the dangers faced by a nation that cuts itself off from the rest of the world.

This volume analyses several recent evolutions in global defence activities. Since the 1990s the industry has gradually repositioned because of geostrategic transformations, spatial reorganisation, budgetary trends, and evolutions within the production of defence per se, which have disrupted its economic and social fabric. These changes widen the scope of industrial activities and modify the organization of relations between armed forces, firms and local economies as well as society. They deeply affect the footprints of defence in several dimensions and its impacts on local communities, public/private boundaries and evolving requirements of armed forces. This volume analyses key features of recent and ongoing transformations of defence issues, from four perspectives. The first section considers those factors which are redefining the boundaries of defence, with a focus on defence economics; part two focuses on the spatial footprint of defence and its transformations and analyses the insertion of defence activities within urban landscapes; the third part analyses how armed forces manage their human resources; and the final section considers the international landscape of defence.

A multitude of literary and cinematic works were spawned by the Vietnam war, but this is a unique book, combining moving prose with powerful illustrations created by combat artists in the U.S. military. Dr. Noble has assembled a remarkable collection of 153 reproductions printed in black and white, arranged with oral histories, letters and other commentaries to give the reader a more intimate understanding of the combat soldier who served in Vietnam and what he had to endure. Forgotten Warriors is not intended to argue the merits of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. Rather, through the visual impact of the illustrations, the soldiers themselves express what the Vietnam experience was like in a way that is different and more profound than perhaps any other work on the subject.

The main focus of the book is on the way artists saw the world of the grunt: patrols, life in the rear, fighting the terrain and weather, tests of endurance, the machines of war and the effects of combat and its aftermath. The reader is also given a sense of how some writers and artists felt about the country and the people of South Vietnam. To date, our perceptions of the Vietnam war have been influenced largely by movies, television and novels. Recognizing this, Dr. Noble enlisted Professor William J. Palmer, a noted authority on the media and their reportage fo the war, to provide an essay that allows the reader to compare his or her past impressions with the art works contained in this book. A moving collection, "Forgotten WarriorS" offers the truest picture of the Vietnam war in human terms.

Why young men voluntarily go off to war has long defied understanding. Eagerly risking one's life seems contrary to the innate instinct for self-preservation. Are young males--notorious risk-takers--courting death out of some irresistible altruistic impulse to sacrifice their lives for a larger cause or, conversely, do they expect something in return? In this engrossing exploration of men's motives for war, the author argues persuasively that one important subconscious reason young men volunteer for battle is to enhance their status as marriage partners for the women on the home front. Especially for men from low socioeconomic backgrounds becoming a soldier offers a sexual and reproductive edge over their civilian male peers. The author also examines the subtle influence that women's expanding power in society has on male attitudes regarding conflict. Drawing upon extensive literary as well as historical sources, he demonstrates how tensions over gender roles affect men's willingness to go to war, and how the experience of war, in turn, changes the relations between the sexes. Until very recently, war has reaffirmed the central social importance of masculinity and demoted women to supportive, domestic roles. Reviewing the social circumstances leading up to conflicts from the American Civil War through the Viet Nam War and the current clash between the West and Islamic fundamentalists, he convincingly shows that gender-based pressures play a significant, if often unconscious, role in tipping a society toward the decision of war. Thoroughly researched, yet engagingly and accessibly written, this unique discussion of men and women's roles in a society contemplating war offers much food for thought.

Confronting Sukarno examines the regional and international implications of the Malaysian-Indonesian Confrontation, a crisis more popularly known as Konfrontasi. By doing so, fundamental themes concerning the Asian Cold War are discussed. In particular, the concern of western policy makers with an increasingly belligerent communist China, the importance of Konfrontasi to the war in Vietnam and the British 'role' east of Suez, are all examined in detail. Being a work of international history, the book draws extensively from recently de-classified documents in the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

From the invasion of Zululand & Isandhlwana to Rorke's Drift & Ulundi-the Zulu War freshly related. Zulu:1879 is an unusual book. It brings to life a war - nearly 130 years in the past - almost as though it was a modern conflict. We hear the voices of the time speaking with the immediacy of recent recollection. Here are officers, newspaper reporters, teamsters, ordinary soldiers and even the Zulu warriors themselves recounting their experiences of this remarkable conflict. D.C.F Moodie's selection has been refined and enhanced by the Leonaur Editors with 3 additional engaging accounts of Zulu Warfare together with a special bonus account from the ranks of the Buffs selected from Leonaur's book "Tommy Atkins' War Stories"

Twelve experts analyze existing threats to American security, problems of defense, the prospects of limited and total wars, and possible strategies to meet the crisis in light of the stresses and strengths of NATO.

George Luther Stearns became John Brown's single most important financial backer. He personally owned the 200 Sharps rifles Brown brought to Harper's Ferry. Massachusetts Governor John Andrew asked Stearns to recruit the first northern state African-American regiment, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, recently made famous by the Hollywood movie Glory. Stearns was made a major and made Assistant Adjutant General for the Recruitment of Coloured Troops. He recruited over 13,000 African-Americans and established schools for their children and found work for their families. After Emancipation, he worked tirelessly for African-American civil rights. Friends and associates included the Emersons and the Alcotts, Thoreau, Lydia Maria Child, Charles Sumner, Andrew Johnson, and Frederick Douglass.