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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Defence strategy, planning & research > General
It is September 1987. The Angolan Army – with the support of Cuban troops and Soviet advisors – has built up a massive force on the Lomba River near Cuito Cuanavale in southern Angola. Their goal? To capture Jamba, the headquarters of the rebel group Unita, supported by the South African Defence Force (SADF) in the so-called Border War.
In the battles that followed, and shortly thereafter centred around the small town of Cuito Cuanavale, 3 000 SADF soldiers and 8 000 Unita fighters were up against a much bigger Angolan and Cuban force of over 50 000 men.
Thousands of soldiers died in the vicious fighting that is described in vivid detail in this book. Bridgland pieced together this account through scores of interviews with SADF men who were on the front line. This dramatic retelling takes the reader to the heart of the action.
The first definitive history of the Mossad, Shin Bet, and the IDF’s targeted killing programs, hailed by The New York Times as “an exceptional work, a humane book about an incendiary subject.”
The Talmud says: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” This instinct to take every measure, even the most aggressive, to defend the Jewish people is hardwired into Israel’s DNA. From the very beginning of its statehood in 1948, protecting the nation from harm has been the responsibility of its intelligence community and armed services, and there is one weapon in their vast arsenal that they have relied upon to thwart the most serious threats: Targeted assassinations have been used countless times, on enemies large and small, sometimes in response to attacks against the Israeli people and sometimes preemptively.
In this page-turning, eye-opening book, journalist and military analyst Ronen Bergman—praised by David Remnick as “arguably [Israel’s] best investigative reporter”—offers a riveting inside account of the targeted killing programs: their successes, their failures, and the moral and political price exacted on the men and women who approved and carried out the missions.
Bergman has gained the exceedingly rare cooperation of many current and former members of the Israeli government, including Prime Ministers Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as high-level figures in the country’s military and intelligence services: the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), the Mossad (the world’s most feared intelligence agency), Caesarea (a “Mossad within the Mossad” that carries out attacks on the highest-value targets), and the Shin Bet (an internal security service that implemented the largest targeted assassination campaign ever, in order to stop what had once appeared to be unstoppable: suicide terrorism).
Including never-before-reported, behind-the-curtain accounts of key operations, and based on hundreds of on-the-record interviews and thousands of files to which Bergman has gotten exclusive access over his decades of reporting, Rise and Kill First brings us deep into the heart of Israel’s most secret activities. Bergman traces, from statehood to the present, the gripping events and thorny ethical questions underlying Israel’s targeted killing campaign, which has shaped the Israeli nation, the Middle East, and the entire world.
Has any war in history gone according to plan? Monarchs, dictators and elected leaders alike have a dismal record on military decision-making, from over-ambitious goals to disregarding intelligence, terrain, or enemy capabilities. This not only wastes the lives of civilians, the enemy and one’s own soldiers, but also fails to achieve geopolitical objectives, and usually lays the seeds for more wars.
Conflict scholar and former soldier Mike Martin takes the reader through the hard logic to fighting a conclusive interstate war that solves geopolitical problems and reduces future conflict. He outlines how to orchestrate military forces, from infantry and information to strategy and tactics.
Martin explains the unavoidable art of using violence to force your enemies to do what you want. It should be read by everyone seeking to understand today’s wars, and those wishing to lead us through future conflicts.
If this book saves just one person’s life, Leo Prinsloo will be happy.
Leo became an internet sensation after footage of his reaction to an attempted high-value goods-in-transit heist went viral. Stunned by his cool attitude and focused action in a crisis situation, South Africans had an example of what can happen when good people take a stand. With decades of experience in security – first as a policeman, then in the South African Police Service’s Special Task Force, and now providing arms handling and security training in the private sector – Leo has a wealth of knowledge on how to manage life-threatening incidents.
Driven by a desire to empower South Africans and help them claim back their sense of safety, he offers advice for dealing with every risky situation, from how to handle hijackings and road rage, to how to keep your children safe, to the best way to secure your home and business. He also provides comprehensive information about handling firearms and basic first aid.
Leo’s Guide to Not Becoming a Statistic is a guide to living your safest life in South Africa – something which has become increasingly important as our crime statistics continue to rise. Straight-talking and honest – much like Leo himself – it is an easy to use manual that makes keeping safe accessible, with relatable information and easy to implement tips.
Leo says that taking the first step towards securing your safety is the most important, and his book will help you take that step.
Russian strategy today is often framed in terms of ‘hybridity’,
an approach characterised by interference in domestic politics
through cyber warfare and disinformation campaigns. Such asymmetric
measures are seen as part of a shift away from armed violence
towards political subversion and other non-military tools. Moving
beyond the concept of hybridity, this book looks more broadly at
Russian thinking about warfare. Drawing directly on Russian
sources, it reflects on a series of questions that are generally
overlooked in the existing Euro-Atlantic literature about Russia,
notably: what is the military leadership’s distinctive idea of
twenty-first-century blitzkrieg? How does it understand holistic
territorial defence? And how does it manage the shifting balance
between the offensive and defensive? Exploring key concepts and
terms used in Russian military thinking and action, Blitzkrieg and
the art of Russian war contributes to an active and lively debate
about Russia’s resurgent role in international affairs and the
challenge the country poses to the international order. -- .
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The Art of War
(Hardcover)
Sun Tzu; Translated by Lionel Giles
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R278
R254
Discovery Miles 2 540
Save R24 (9%)
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Ships in 9 - 17 working days
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Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and events
on the Eastern Front that same year were pivotal to the history of
World War II. It was during this year that the radicalization of
Nazi policy -- through both an all-encompassing approach to warfare
and the application of genocidal practices -- became most obvious.
Germany's military aggression and overtly ideological conduct,
culminating in genocide against Soviet Jewry and the decimation of
the Soviet population through planned starvation and brutal
antipartisan policies, distinguished Operation Barbarossa-the code
name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union-from all previous
military campaigns in modern European history. This collection of
essays, written by young scholars of seven different nationalities,
provides readers with the most current interpretations of Germany's
military, economic, racial, and diplomatic policies in 1941. With
its breadth and its thematic focus on total war, genocide, and
radicalization, this volume fills a considerable gap in
English-language literature on Germany's war of annihilation
against the Soviet Union and the radicalization of World War II
during this critical year. Alex J. Kay is the author of
Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder: Political and Economic
Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union,
1940-1941 and is an independent contractor for the Ludwig Boltzmann
Institute for Research on War Consequences. Jeff Rutherford is
assistant professor of history at Wheeling Jesuit University, where
he teaches modern European history. David Stahel is the author of
Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East and Kiev
1941: Hitler's Battle for Supremacy in the East.
This comprehensive Research Handbook examines the key drivers of
the arms trade, mapping the main trends in Asia, Europe, the Middle
East, Africa and Latin America. It also explores the principal
defence markets internationally, including the US, China, India,
Russia and the UK in greater detail. Across twenty-six chapters,
international experts assess the central drivers of the arms trade,
such as the insecurities of small states in an increasingly realist
world of power politics, the continued presence of conflict,
technological change and the presence of corruption. Analysing
critical issues from the future of air and naval power and their
implications for the trade to the impact of emerging technology and
the prospects for arms control, the chapters raise a number of
central issues as to the challenges and future direction of the
arms trade. The Research Handbook concludes that defence spending
and procurement have remained paramount and on a general upward
trend since the Cold War, particularly in Asia and the Middle East.
This Research Handbook will be a valuable resource for academics
and students of international relations, security studies and
political science. Its global approach will also be beneficial for
arms policy analysts and defence professionals.
The attempted Greek takeover of Cyprus, Turkey's military invasion
and occupation of that country, and the Turkish arms embargo that
followed during the summer of 1974 sparked a struggle over the
direction of American foreign policy. Paul Y. Watanabe explores the
American foreign policymaking process in general and the impact
ethnic group activism can have on foreign policy formulation in
particular in his two-part study Ethnic Groups, Congress, and
American Foreign Policy. In Part 1, he focuses on the rise of
ethnic consciousness and activism, organizational behavior and
interest group politics, lobbying, congressional-executive
relations, the foreign policymaking process, and national security
policy. Part 2 deals with a specific example of ethnic group
activity in the foreign policymaking arena--Greek American and
congressional attempts to ban further military shipments to Turkey.
Watanabe concludes that ethnic groups can and do make significant
contributions to the formulation of foreign policy by affecting the
perceptions and actions of officials in Congress and the executive
branch.
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On War
(Hardcover)
Carl Von Clausewitz
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R897
Discovery Miles 8 970
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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On War Volume III
(Hardcover)
Carl Von Clausewitz; Translated by Colonel J. J. Graham; Introduction by Colonel F M Maude
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R853
Discovery Miles 8 530
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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The Art of War
(Hardcover)
Sun Tzu; Translated by Lionel Giles; Edited by Damian Stevenson
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R775
Discovery Miles 7 750
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Ships in 12 - 19 working days
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On War Volume I
(Hardcover)
Carl Von Clausewitz; Translated by Colonel J. J. Graham; Introduction by Colonel F M Maude
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R852
Discovery Miles 8 520
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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On War Volume II
(Hardcover)
Carl Von Clausewitz; Translated by Colonel J. J. Graham; Introduction by Colonel F M Maude
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R761
Discovery Miles 7 610
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Security Strategies of Middle Powers in the Asia Pacific examines
what drives the different regional security strategies of four
middle powers in the Asia Pacific: Australia, Indonesia, South
Korea and Malaysia. Drawing on the extant middle power literature,
the authors argue that the regional security strategies of middle
powers could take two forms, namely, functional or normative. A
functional strategy means that the middle power targets its
resources to address a specific problem that it has a high level of
interest in, while a normative strategy refers to a focus on
promoting general behavioural standards and confidence building at
the multilateral level. This book argues that whether a middle
power ultimately employs a more functional or normative regional
security strategy depends on its resource availability and
strategic environment.
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