The Practice of Strategy focuses on grand strategy and military strategy as practiced over an extended period of time and under very different circumstances, from the campaigns of Alexander the Great to insurgencies and counter-insurgencies in present-day Afghanistan and Iraq. It presents strategy as it pertained not only to wars, campaigns, and battles, but also to times of peace that were over-shadowed by the threat of war. The book is intended to deepen understanding of the phenomena and logic of strategy by reconstructing the considerations and factors that shaped imperial and nation-state policies.
Through historical case studies, the book sheds light on a fundamental question: is there a unity to all strategic experience? Adopting the working definition of strategy as 'the art of winning by purposely matching ends, ways and means, ' these chapters deal with the intrinsic nature of war and strategy and the characteristics of a particular strategy in a given conflict. They show that a specific convergence of political objectives, operational schemes of manoeuvre, tactical moves and countermoves, technological innovations and limitations, geographic settings, transient emotions and more made each conflict studied unique. Yet, despite the extraordinary variety of the people, circumstances, and motives discussed in this book, there is a strong case for continuity in the application of strategy from the olden days to the present.
Together, these chapters reveal that grand strategy and military strategy have elements of continuity and change, art and science. They further suggest that the element of continuity lies in the essential nature of strategy and war, while the element of change lies in the character of individual strategies and wars.

This timely and accessible book traces the evolution of the nuclear arms race from its origin in Roosevelt's decision to develop an atomic bomb to Reagan's decision to continue its expansion in the 1980s. As Powaski explains, the United States and the Soviet Union have a combined total of almost 50,000 nuclear weapons. Nuclear arms treaties and agreements are threatening to collapse, he argues, while the proliferation of nuclear materials and weapons throughout the world has given many countries the capability to produce nuclear weapons. Powaski shows how one President after another has promised to do his utmost to end the nuclear weapons competition, yet each one has actually increased the quantity of these weapons in the American arsenal, revealing a startling discrepancy between Presidential words and actions.

This book examines US naval strategy and the role of American seapower over three decades, from the late 20th century to the early 21st century. This study uses the concept of seapower as a framework to explain the military and political application of sea power and naval force for the United States of America. It addresses the context in which strategy, and in particular US naval strategy and naval power, evolves and how US naval strategy was developed and framed in the international and national security contexts. It explains what drove and what constrained US naval strategy and examines selected instances where American sea power was directed in support of US defense and security policy ends - and whether that could be tied to what a given strategy proposed. The work utilizes naval capstone documents in the framework of broader maritime conceptual and geopolitical thinking, and discusses whether these documents had lasting influences in the strategic mind-set, the force structure, and other areas of American sea power. Overall, this work provides a deeper understanding of the crafting of US naval strategy since the final decade of the Cold War, its contextual and structural framework setting, and its application. To that end, the work bridges the gap between the thinking of American naval officers and planners on the one hand and academic analyses of Navy strategy on the other hand. It also presents the trends in the use of naval force for foreign policy objectives and into strategy-making in the American policy context. This book will be of much interest to students of naval power, maritime strategy, US national security and international relations in general.

To understand wars and armed conflicts, we need to understand the inner logic of military institutions and warrior culture. Making Warriors in a Global Era provides ethnography, analyses, and discussions to infuse new debates among both military personnel and academics about the rise of special operations forces (SOF) and the ways they impact how armed conflicts are dealt with and how wars are fought. Based on a decade of research and her unprecedented access inside a Norwegian Naval Special Operations Commando, Tone Danielsen describes the culture, experiences, and skill sets, of small state special operations unit as well as exploring the historical and political implications these types of units have, not just on modern warfare but on society as a whole.

The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice is an original contribution to the general theory of strategy. While heavily indebted to Carl von Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and the very few other classic authors, this book presents the theory, rather than merely comments on the theory as developed by others. The author explains that the purpose of strategy is to connect purposefully politics and policy with the instruments they must use. The primary focus of attention is on military strategy, but this focus is well nested in discussion of grand strategy, for which military strategy is only one strand. The book presents the general theory of strategy comprehensively and explains the utility of this general theory for the particular strategies that strategists need to develop in order to meet their historically unique challenges. The book argues that strategy's general theory provides essential education for practicing strategists at all times and in all circumstances. As general theory, The Strategy Bridge is as relevant to understanding strategic behaviour in the Peloponnesian War as it is for the conflicts of the twenty-first century. The book proceeds from exposition of general strategic theory, to address three basic issue areas that are not at all well explained, let alone understood with a view to advancing better practice, in the extant literature. Specifically, the book tackles the problems that harass and imperil strategic performance; it probes deeply into the hugely underexamined subject of just what it is that the strategist produces-strategic effect; and it 'joins up the dots' from theory through practice to consequences by means of a close examination of command performance. The author takes a holistic view of strategy, and it is rigorously attentive to the significance of the contexts within which and for which strategies are developed and applied. The book regards the strategist as a hero, charged with the feasible, but awesomely difficult, task of converting the threat and use of force (for military strategy) into desired political consequences. He seeks some control over the rival or enemy via strategic effect, the instrumental produce of his instrumental labours. In order to maximise his prospects for success, the practicing strategist requires all the educational assistance that strategic theory can provide.

On April 4, 1945, United States Army units from the 89th Infantry Division and the 4th Armored Division seized Ohrdruf, the first of many Nazi concentration camps to be liberated in Germany. In the weeks that followed, as more camps were discovered, thousands of soldiers came face to face with the monstrous reality of Hitler's Germany. These men discovered the very depths of human - imposed cruelty and depravity: rail road cars stacked with emaciated, lifeless bodies; ovens full of incinerated human remains; warehouses filled with stolen shoes, clothes, luggage, and even eyeglasses; prison yards littered with implements of torture and dead bodies; and-perhaps most disturbing of all - the half-dead survivors of the camps. For the American soldiers of all ranks who witnessed such powerful evidence of Nazi crimes, the experience was life altering. Almost all were haunted for the rest of their lives by what they had seen, horrified that humans from ostensibly civilized societies were capable of such crimes. Military historian John C. McManus sheds new light on this often overlooked aspect of the Holocaust. Drawing on a rich blend of archival sources and thousands of first hand accounts-including unit journals, interviews, oral histories, memoirs, diaries, letters, and published recollections - Hell Before Their Very Eyes focuses on the experiences of the soldiers who liberated Ohrdruf, Buchenwald, and Dachau and their determination to bear witness to this horrific history.

Pentagon spending has been the target of decades of criticism and reform efforts. Billions of dollars are spent on weapons programs that are later abandoned. State-of-the-art data centers are underutilized and overstaffed. New business systems are built at great expense but fail to meet the needs of their users. Every Secretary of Defense for the last five Administrations has made it a priority to address perceived bloat and inefficiency by making management reform a major priority. The congressional defense committees have been just as active, enacting hundreds of legislative provisions. Yet few of these initiatives produce significant results, and the Pentagon appears to go on, as wasteful as ever. In this book, Peter Levine addresses why, despite a long history of attempted reform, the Pentagon continues to struggle to reduce waste and inefficiency. The heart of Defense Management Reform is three case studies covering civilian personnel, acquisitions, and financial management. Narrated with the insight of an insider, the result is a clear understanding of what went wrong in the past and a set of concrete guidelines to plot a better future.

This book examines the evolution, impact, and future prospects of the Security Sector Reform (SSR) model in conflict-affected countries in the context of the wider debate over the liberal peace project. Since its emergence as a concept in the late 1990s, SSR has represented a paradigm shift in security assistance, from the realist, regime-centric, train-and-equip approach of the Cold War to a new liberal, holistic and people-centred model. The rapid rise of this model, however, belied its rather meagre impact on the ground. This book critically examines the concept and its record of achievement over the past two decades, putting it into the broader context of peace-building and state-building theory and practice. It focuses attention on the most common, celebrated and complex setting for SSR, conflict-affected environments, and comparatively examines the application and impacts of donor-supported SSR programing in a series of conflict-affected countries over the past two decades, including Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The broader aim of the book is to better understand how the contemporary SSR model has coalesced over the past two decades and become mainstreamed in international development and security policy and practice. This provides a solid foundation to investigate the reasons for the poor performance of the model and to assess its prospects for the future. This book will be of much interest to students of international security, peacebuilding, statebuilding, development studies and IR in general.

"The response of an autocratic nation's armed forces is crucial to the outcome of democratization movements throughout the world. But how can military officers and defense officials in democratic nations persuade their counterparts in autocratic regimes to favor democratic transitions? Here, Admiral Dennis Blair confronts this hard-edged challenge with a primer on the factors that affect military behavior during democratic transitions. Military Engagement makes the strong case for why the armed forces of any country should favor democracy and why, contrary to conventional wisdom, many military leaders have supported democratic transitions in different regions of the world. Further, it explains why military support, active or tacit, is essential to the success of any demo cratic transition. Blair provides incisive commentary on civil-military relations and outlines the foundational elements of armed forces in a democratic country. He presents sound advice to defense officials and military leaders in established democracies that can be put into practice when interacting with colleagues in both autocratic regimes and those that have made the break with dictatorship. This succinct handbook analyzes democratic transitions in five major regions and surveys the internal power dynamics in countries such as Iran and North Korea, dictatorships that are hostile toward and fearful of democratic influences. Blair juxtaposes the roles, values, and objectives of military leaders in autocratic nations with those in democracies. In turn, Military Engagement highlights how crossnetworking with international military delegations can put external pressure on autocratic countries and persuade them that democracies are best not only for the country itself, but also for the armed forces. Volume one of this two-volume project provides the educational foundation necessary so that military officers from established democracies can raise their game in achieving effective dialogue on democratic development. "

Sun Tzu's book of strategy and psychology has as much to tell us today as when it was written 2,500 years ago. Michael Nylan, in her provocative introduction, sees new and unexpected lessons to be learned from The Art of War-in business, relationships, games of skill, academic careers and medical practices. Strategy, like conflict, is woven into society's very roots. Nylan's crisp translation "offers a masterly new evaluation of this classic work, which balances the overtly military content with a profound and thought-provoking analysis" (Olivia Milburn). It proves that Sun Tzu is more relevant than ever, helping us navigate the conflicts we know and those we have yet to endure.

This book outlines how to reorganize the U.S. Army into a fully 2 and 3-Dimensional maneuver capable, ground force with terrain-agile, armored fighting vehicles sized to rapidly deploy by fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft to the scene of world conflicts and strike at the heart of freedom‚s enemies. The plan to build the Army into Air-Mech-Strike Forces, exploiting emerging information-age technologies, as well as America‚s supremacy in aircraft and helicopter delivery systems---at the lowest cost to the taxpayers, is described in detail. These Army warfighting organizations, using existing and some newly purchased equipment, will shape the battlefield to America‚s advantage, preserving the peace before it is lost; if not, then winning fights that must be fought quickly. The dangerous world we live in moves by the speed of the AIR, and the 21st Century U.S. Army 2D/3D combat team will dominate this medium by Air-Mech-Strike!

Britain is at a crossroads. As we leave the EU, we face a great challenge and also the opportunity to forge a new identity in an increasingly uncertain world. Our Armed Forces will be critical to our power and prosperity. For centuries, they have been the envy of the world. Now barely a day passes without reports of diminishing prowess. The number of Navy workhorse ships has been halved and the Army reduced to its smallest size since the Napoleonic war. Our spectacular new aircraft carriers and the F-35 fighter jet programme are mired in controversy. Meanwhile, the Armed Forces face questions about their purpose. The bitter experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan have undermined the concept of the military as a `force for good.' Voters are now sceptical of discretionary wars in faraway places. Aside from sporadic jihadi attacks, few believe there is any real threat to our way of life. Thus defence spending is no longer a public priority. Politicians know that there are more votes in schools and hospitals, even while they are deploy our troops onto the streets after suicide bombings or, more recently, a nerve agent attack. In what feels like peacetime, no wonder top brass have to justify big budgets. Yet this country faces an array of new and escalating threats, while Brexit and Donald Trump raise difficult questions over the future of our most important alliances. Have we become dangerously complacent? Are we still masters of our own destiny, or have we run up the white flag?

Japan is the third-largest economy in the world and a key ally of the United States. Yet the determinants of Japanese security policy are not well understood. The question of why Japan never sought the independent military capabilities that would be commensurate with its economic power has puzzled scholars of international relations for decades. Applying new tools for the quantitative analysis of text to a new collection of 7,497 Japanese-language election manifestos used in elections between 1986 and 2009, this book argues that the electoral strategies politicians in the ruling party were forced to adopt under Japan's old electoral system made it extraordinarily difficult for them to focus on security issues and to change security policy. It was only when their electoral strategies shifted after electoral reform in 1994 that these same politicians became able to pay attention and change security policy.

Whilst maritime studies tend to reflect the dominance of large navies, history shows how relatively small naval forces can have a disproportionately large impact on global events. From Confederate commerce raiders in the nineteenth century, to Somali pirates today, even the most minor of maritime forces can become a key player on a global stage. Examining a broad range of examples, this volume addresses the roles and activities of small navies in the past and the present at the national, regional and international level. In particular, it focusses on the different ways in which such forces have identified and addressed national and international security challenges and the way in which they interact with other navies and security agencies. In addition the collection also investigates the relationship of such navies with non-governmental organisations, institutions and bodies in pursuit of broader maritime goals, be they political, financial or environmental. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach drawing on the best new research from the fields of international relations, security studies, strategic studies and maritime history, the book examines the diversity of experience amongst different smaller navies and also establishes areas of similarity. Divided into two sections, part one begins with a number of chapters that are theoretical in nature, whilst part two provides case studies that offer a more regional focus, including analysis of the challenges facing contemporary navies and historical case studies designed to reveal the experience of small navies over time. By adopting an approach that combines historical considerations with analysis of current events, the collection offers a unique perspective on the role that small navies have played in wider nautical affairs and their continued impact upon global maritime strategies.

David Glantz examines the Soviet study of war, the re-emergence of the operation level and its connection with deep battle, the evolution of the Soviet theory of operations in depth before 1941, and its refinement and application in the European theatre and the Far East between 1941 and 1945.

From the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations to the NATO International Staff and the European External Action Service, international bureaucrats make decisions that affect life and death. In carrying out their functions, these officials not only facilitate the work of the member states, but also pursue their own distinct agendas. This book analyzes how states seek to control secretariats when it comes to military operations by international organizations. It introduces an innovative theoretical framework that identifies different types of control mechanisms. The book presents six empirical chapters on the UN, NATO, and EU secretariats. It provides new data from a unique dataset and in-depth interviews. It shows that member states employ a wide range of control mechanisms to reduce the potential loss of influence. They frequently forfeit the gains of delegation to avoid becoming dependent on the work of secretariats. Yet while states invest heavily in control, this book also argues that they cannot benefit from the services of secretariats and keep full control over outcomes in international organizations. In their delegation and control decisions, states face trade-offs and have to weigh different cost categories: the costs of policy, administrative capacity, and agency loss. This book will be of interest to scholars, postgraduates, and officials in international organizations and national governments, dealing with questions of international political economy, security studies, and military affairs.

Much of the literature on the African philosophy of education juxtaposes two philosophical strands as mutually exclusive entities; traditional ethnophilosophy on the one hand, and 'scientific' African philosophy on the other. While traditional ethnophilosophy is associated with the cultural artefacts, narratives, folklore and music of Africa's people, 'scientific' African philosophy is primarily concerned with the explanations, interpretations and justifications of African thought and practice along the lines of critical and transformative reasoning. These two alternative strands of African philosophy invariably impact understandings of education in different ways: education constituted by cultural action is perceived to be mutually independent from education constituted by reasoned action. Yusef Waghid argues for an African philosophy of education guided by communitarian, reasonable and culture dependent action in order to bridge the conceptual and practical divide between African ethnophilosophy and 'scientific' African philosophy. Unlike those who argue that African philosophy of education cannot exist because it does not invoke reason, or that reasoned African philosophy of education is just not possible, Waghid suggests an African philosophy of education constituted by reasoned, culture-dependent action. This book provides an African philosophy aimed at developing a conception of education that can contribute towards imagination, deliberation, and responsibility - actions that can help to enhance justice in educative relations, both in Africa and throughout the world. This book will be essential reading for researchers and academics in the field of the philosophy of education, especially those wanting to learn from the African tradition.

Military coalitions are ubiquitous. The United States builds them regularly, yet they are associated with the largest, most destructive, and consequential wars in history. When do states build them, and what partners do they choose? Are coalitions a recipe for war, or can they facilitate peace? Finally, when do coalitions affect the expansion of conflict beyond its original participants? The Politics of Military Coalitions introduces newly collected data designed to answer these very questions, showing that coalitions - expensive to build but attractive from a military standpoint - are very often more (if sometimes less) than the sum of their parts, at times encouraging war while discouraging it at others, at times touching off wider wars while at others keeping their targets isolated. The combination of new data, new formal theories, and new quantitative analysis will be of interest to scholars, students, and policymakers alike.

This work argues that logistics in warfare is crucial to achieving strategic success. The author identifies logistical capabilities as an arbiter of opportunity, which plays a critical role in determining which side will hold the strategic iniative in war. Armies which have secured reliable resources of supply have a great advantage in determining the time and manner in which engagements take place. Often, they can fight in ways their opponents cannot. The author illustrates this point with case studies of British logistics during the Burma campaign in the World War II, American logistical innovations during the Pacific War, Communist supply methods during the American phase of the Vietnam War and the competing logistical systems of both NATO and Warsaw Pact conventional forces during the Cold War.

This book explores the question of why a significant difference in the frequency and intensity with which Great Britain and Germany used military force since 1990 persists despite reunification and the end of the Cold War. Based on the theoretical framework of moderate constructivism, this thesis argues that differences in strategic culture can explain this puzzle. To this end, it analyses opinion polls and military interventions abroad and then compares decision processes and debates leading to military interventions in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Afghanistan.

Conflict in the last century was defined by the horrific potential of physical and especially nuclear war. Now we are in a new technological era-a world of more subtle, yet no less grave, threats, an environment in which various actors can deeply penetrate vital infrastructures and instigate diplomatic and military crises. Today, computer code is the weapon of choice. Can anything be done beyond shoring up our defenses in a state of permanent insecurity? Lucas Kello delves into recent history to reveal the failures of the present policy in preventing and punishing cyberattacks and other forms of technological aggression. Drawing upon case studies and interviews, Kello develops a bold new solution-a coordinated retaliation strategy that justly and effectively responds to attacks and deters further antagonism. This book provides an approachable yet nuanced exploration of national security and survival in the twenty-first century.

Arms Procurement Decision-Making Processes is a comparative analysis of the arms procurement decision-making processes in five countries China, India, Israel, Japan, and South Korea. It examines whether or not national arms procurement processes, even as they involve sensitive security issues and complex systems, can become more responsive to the broader objectives of security and public accountability. The country case studies are based to a large extent on original research papers written by experts from the respective national academic and defence procurement communities.