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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Defence strategy, planning & research > General
This work provides a theoretical and historical examination of the relationship between provision of military assistance and success in achieving donor aims. Eight case studies, which include the American Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the Vietnam War, are examined to assess four prominent features of the donor-recipient relationship: the convergence of donor and recipient aims; donor control; commitment of donor military forces; and coherence of donor policies and strategies. As an essential part of the expanding body of multidisciplinary international scholarship, this book links history and theory to policy and narrows the gap between economics, political science, and military strategy. Each chapter refines the relevant features of the observed donor-recipient relationships into a pattern for comparison with other episodes. The final chapter collects the observations, compares them, and develops a set of uniformities that suggest a prototypical, successful donor-recipient relationship, suitable for direct application as a policy paradigm or for theoretical investigation. Mott suggests that both donor and recipient governments can use military assistance as a deliberate instrument of national policy and military strategy to achieve national aims.
In the spring of 2003, a stunned world watched the armed forces of the United States and Britain conduct a military campaign against Iraq. As a result, the Iraqi regime was dismantled, and much of the conventional wisdom about modern war was irrevocably altered. Yet as U.S. and British forces occupy Basra, Tikrit, and Mosul, the Iraqi nation has slipped into anarchy--and the phrase "shock and awe" has begun to sound more appropriate as a description of the war's aftermath, rather than its opening. Such has been the twisted trail of the Iraq War's dramatic events. But like so many other conflicts, the war ultimately seems to pose more questions than it solved. This book is the first in-depth analysis of the second war against Saddam Hussein's regime. What are the repercussions of the pre-war political fights in Washington, Paris, and the UN? Was meeting initial military goals really due to Anglo-American arms, or had Saddam's regime simply been too degraded to fight? Why didn't Baghdad become a second Stalingrad? Why weren't the occupying forces prepared to impose order? And then there is the significant question: Where are Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? Respected military analyst Anthony Cordesman incisively examines the key issues swirling around the most significant U.S. war since Vietnam. Beginning the search for answers is essential to understanding America's awesome power and its place in a new age of international terror and regional conflict.
Iran today is still struggling with the legacy of its own Islamic revolution, and is deeply divided between the moderates who enjoy broad public support and the conservatives who control the levers of power. The mixed policies that result are reflected in Iran's ambivalent military posture. In recent years, Iran has only conducted a limited build-up of its armed forces and has cut defense spending and arms imports. On the other hand, Iran has developed a carefully focused program that threatens shipping in the lower Gulf and the world's oil exports. It has strengthened its capability for unconventional warfare and continues to be a significant proliferator, setting up indigenous military industries and developing a greater ability to import weapons. In this authoritative analysis of interest to Middle Eastern specialists and military affairs experts alike, Anthony Cordesman concludes that the continuation of Iran's current defensive security posture depends as much on these economic factors as on the outcomes of domestic political rivalries. Iran may eventually limit any military expansion to a necessary defensive strength and set strategic goals for itself that are compatible with the legitimate interests of other nations, or it may choose a more aggressive course. Regardless of the ultimate outcome, argues Cordesman, it does no good to either demonize or excuse Iranian policies. Instead, the United States and other nations with interests in the Middle East and Central Asia need to deal realistically with Iran as a reemerging regional power.
This volume identifies groups of all political colorations from the establishmentarian Council on Foreign Relations to antiestablishment Greenpeace. Even the group Librarians for Nuclear Arms Control is included. Information on group activities and publications is provided, and on their finances when such information is available. Addresses and telephone numbers are listed. The research is thorough and careful. . . . The book will be of value for students, for faculty in pursuit of grants, and as a resource on public policy-making in the U.S. Choice This reference volume discusses the phenomenal expansion in the number of participatory organizations through which the public has taken a part in U.S. national security strategy formulation. The 135 groups selected for indepth coverage are organizations having a primary interest in national security and strategy. The majority are defined by the Internal Revenue Service as not-for-profit, educational, non-partisan organizations. Each entry follows a standard format and contains an extensive amount of the following information: a brief introduction designed to familiarize the researcher with the group's basic orientation; a history of the organization, including the reasons for its creation and the names of as many major founders as can be identified; organizational structure and sources of funding, as well as membership or contribution levels and number of members or contributors; electoral politics, when appropriate; specific policy concerns and tactics; and other information. The largest part of each entry is devoted to policy interests and specific actions of the organization. The section on other information provides bibliographical citations for publications about the organization prepared by outside writers. This unique reference tool provides a broad spectrum of information on the major public organizations that have impacted U.S. national security policy in the 1980s. It will be welcomed by scholars and students of political organizations and international affairs.
For the majority of the post-Cold War era, Russian maritime power has hardly featured in the Euro-Atlantic community’s thinking. But in the mid-2010s, the idea that the Russian navy poses a threat to NATO began to gain ground. It took very real form in February 2022, when Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine. This book presents the first sustained examination of Russian maritime power in the period since the Cold War. It brings together leading specialists from public policy and academia to reflect on historical and contemporary aspects of Russia's naval strategy and capacities. At a time of mounting tensions, which some observers have named the ‘Fourth Battle of the Atlantic’, the book offers an informed and nuanced discussion, taking into account the view from Moscow and how this differs from western perspectives. It sketches a trajectory of Russia’s power at sea and reflects on current capabilities and problems, as well as Moscow’s strategic planning for the future. -- .
This book analyses the way in which the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) defines the West after the end of the Cold War and the demise of its constitutive 'Other', the Soviet Union. The book offers a theoretical critique of liberal approaches to security, and focuses on NATO's construction of four geo-cultural spaces that are the sites of particular dangers or threats, which cause these spaces to be defined as the 'enemy' of the West. While this forges a collective Western identity, effectively achieved in the 1990s, the book also includes an analysis of NATO's involvement in the War on Terror - an involvement in which the Alliance fails to define a coherent West, thereby undermining the very source of its long-standing political cohesion. Contributing to theoretical development within Critical Security Studies, Behnke draws on a variety of approaches to provide an analytical framework that examines the political as well as philosophical problems associated with NATO's performance of security and identity, concluding that in the modern era of globalized, non-territorialized threats and dangers, NATO's traditional spatial understanding of security is no longer effective given the new dynamics of Western security. NATO's Security Discourse after the Cold War will be of great interest to students and researchers of International Relations, Critical Security Studies and International Organizations.
Since the Gulf War, Iraq has attempted to win through confrontation, diplomacy, and bluster what it could not achieve on the battlefield. Defense analyst Anthony Cordesman suggests that this "war of sanctions" may be a struggle that Iraq has begun to win. Saddam Hussein's regime remains aggressive and ambitious, and its military capabilities cannot be judged solely by the current state of Iraq's armed forces. Most dangerous of all is Iraq's continuing effort to build an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Cordesman analyzes Iraqi strategic intentions and diplomatic opportunities, and assesses the options available to the international community to counter the Iraqi threat. Iraq has effectively used diplomatic means to divide the United Nations and exploit Arab sympathies, while using its oil wealth as an incentive to win support for an easing of sanctions. The military potential of Iraq, and especially its development of weapons of mass destruction, must be considered as much for its intimidation value as for any actual utility in a possible war. A realistic assessment of Iraq's future capabilities, says Cordesman, must take into account these political and strategic factors as purely military considerations.
This book explores contemporary military innovation, with a particular focus on the balance between anticipation and adaption. The volume examines contemporary military thought and the doctrine that evolved around the thesis of a transformation in the character of war. Known as the Information-Technology Revolution in Military Affairs (IT-RMA), this innovation served as an intellectual foundation for the US defence transformation from the 1990s onwards. Since the mid-1990s, professional ideas generated within the American defence milieu have been further disseminated to military communities across the globe, with huge impact on the conduct of warfare. With chapters written by leading scholars in this field, this work sheds light on RMAs in general and the IT-RMA in the US, in particular. The authors analyse how military practice and doctrines were developed on the basis of the IT-RMA ideas, how they were disseminated, and the implications of them in several countries and conflicts around the world. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, defence studies, war and technology, and security studies in general.
This book examines the effectiveness of multilateralism in ensuring collective security and, in particular, the EU's role in this process. In 1992, shortly after the end of the Cold War, a Security Council Summit in New York reaffirmed the salience of the system of collective security and stated the determination of the Heads of State to maintain it as the prime international instrument for preserving peace. Twenty years later, however, the record of collective security as well as of multilateralism has not been very encouraging. The system of collective security, as enshrined in the United Nations (UN) Charter, failed repeatedly to accomplish its mandate in the 1990s and has led to controversial debates in the United States and Europe that reached a climax during the Iraq crisis in 2002/03. The volume draws upon both theoretical and empirical research to answer the following core questions: What are the reasons that have made multilateralism either effective or ineffective in the field of peacekeeping, peace preservation and peacebuilding? How can multilateralism be made more effective? How can attempts made by Europe to render UN multilateralism in the security area more efficient be assessed? This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding/peacekeeping, EU policy, the UN, security studies and IR in general.
This study brings together military history and intellectual history to provide a better understanding of the factors that influence military thinking and practice. In particular, Ramsay covers thought concerning the evolution of British minor tactics between 1870 and 1918, from the era of the black powder rifle wielded by a career soldier to the age of the citizen soldier in the Great War. The development of new military technologies in the last quarter of the 19th century led to novel tactical systems, which included new, decentralized methods of tactical command and control at a time when mass, citizen-based armies were becoming the norm in Europe. While the British Army's system of command and control evolved to meet these new combat conditions, its response was conditioned by the officers' assessment of the rank and file who served in its peacetime volunteer army as well as by the corporate interests of the professional officer corps. This development marked a watershed in military practice and theory, the transition from closely supervised small units under the immediate command of a career officer, to decentralized tactics under the direction of a junior officer or NCO who had been a civilian before the war. Using models such as those proposed by Thomas Kuhn in his "Structure of Scientific Revolutions," Ramsay treats military theory in the same manner as intellectual historians have regarded other areas of reasoning, to illustrate the forces that can shape military theory and to provide an explanation of those that may impede necessary changes in military thinking. To date, tactical studies have rarely looked below the battalion level of command; thus, the technology of the First World War has been extensively studied, but the psychology far less so. This is ironic given that armies of the First World War relied more than any earlier armies on conscripted civilians from a political and social culture that strove to suppress violence in civil society. As a result, this book will interest sociologists and psychologists who seek insight into the history of their disciplines, as well as cultural and social historians who study British history.
This book explores the ways in which non-state actors (NSAs) in South Asia are involved in securitizing non-traditional security challenges in the region at the sub-state level. South Asia is the epicentre of some of the most significant international security challenges today. Yet, the complexities of the region's security dynamics remain under-researched. While traditional security issues, such as inter-state war, border disputes and the threat of nuclear devastation in South Asia, remain high on the agendas of policy-makers and academics both within and beyond the region, scant attention has been paid to non-traditional or 'new' security challenges. Drawing on various case studies, this work offers an innovative analysis of how NSAs in South Asia are shaping security discourses in the region and tackling security challenges at the sub-state level. Through its critique of securitization theory, the book calls for a new approach to studying security practices in South Asia - one which considers NSAs as legitimate security actors. This book will be of much interest to students of security studies, Asian security, Asian politics, critical security studies, and IR in general.
This book examines the processes and factors shaping the development of homeland security policies in the European Union (EU), within the wider context of European integration. The EU functions in a complex security environment, with perceived security threats from Islamist terrorists, migration and border security issues, and environmental problems. In order to deal with these, the EU has undertaken a number of actions, including the adoption of the European Security Strategy in 2003, the Information Management Strategy of 2009, and the Internal Security Strategy of 2010. However, despite such efforts to achieve a more concerted European action in the field of security, there are still many questions to be answered about whether the European approach is really a strategic one. European Homeland Security addresses two major debates in relation to the development of homeland security in Europe. First, it reflects on the absence of homeland security in European political debate and its potential consequences. Second, it examines the significant policy developments in the EU that suggest the influence of homeland security ideas, notably through policy transfer from the United States. The book will be of great interest to students of European security and EU politics, terrorism and counter-terrorism, security studies and IR.
Inequity of control over food systems is a particularly insidious form of injustice. Collectively, the contributors to this volume posit that this inequity is rooted in power asymmetries in the U.S. food system and codified through U.S. food policies. This process puts the public at risk in the U.S. and, via trade and foreign aid policies, in the Global South. Inequities are manifest in the allocation of food and food-producing resources in favor of the wealthy, exploitation of the natural environment for short-term gain of private interests over long-term public ones, the framing of public discussion on food and food deprivation, and finally, the deflection of moral challenges posed by human rights to food.The contributors draw on long-term anthropological field research to examine these tensions and their on-the-ground outcomes in diverse cultural and national contexts. The authors' insightful analyses span a wide variety of topics including dietary change, food insecurity, livestock production, and organic farming in the light of U.S. trade, food, labor, and agricultural policies and food assistance programs. The collection highlights the obstacles to, and the dilemmas and inconsistencies in, shaping policy in the public interest. This book was originally published as a special issue of Food & Foodways.
This book seeks to understand the role of regions in the provision of security (and insecurity) practices across the globe. Specialists with expertise in the regions they examine present eight case studies and analyses of the Americas, Africa and the Middle East, South and East Asia, and Europe. Discussing both The State and people in the context of security, this book examines four categories; inter-state security, transnational criminal practices (the drugs trade, human trafficking migration), proliferation issues (both nuclear and non-nuclear), and issues of domestic/state collapse. The book uses an inclusive definition of security to include traditional and non-traditional conceptions, and incorporates the use of force and the threat of the use of force, as well as issues related to the integrity of peoples. The chapters weave theory and case studies to provide a rich description of a variety of regional governance forms; and, where applicable, the absence of them to move beyond regionalism to consider the key determining features of regional governance. Comparative Regional Security Governance will be of interest to students and scholars of international security, international relations and governance.
The 7th (Queen's Own) Hussars-in detail
This book argues that we can understand and explain the EU as a security and peace actor through a framework of an updated and deepened concept of security governance. It elaborates and develops on the current literature on security governance in order to provide a more theoretically driven analysis of the EU in security. Whilst the current literature on security governance in Europe is conceptually rich, there still remains a gap between those that do 'security governance' and those that focus on 'security' per se. A theoretical framework is constructed with the objective of creating a conversation between these two literatures and the utility of such a framework is demonstrated through its application to the geospatial dimensions of EU security as well as specific cases studies in varied fields of EU security. This book was originally published as a special issue of European Security.
The European Union (EU) is making strong inroads into areas of security traditionally reserved to states, especially into internal security, or Justice and Home Affairs. The Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ), as it has been renamed in the Amsterdam Treaty, has seen significant policy developments since the late 1990s. In fact, there has been no other example of a policy-making area making its way so quickly and comprehensively to the centre of the treaties and to the top of the EU's policy-making agenda. After major treaty revisions in Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice, and, finally the Lisbon Treaty, which entered into force on 1 December 2009, as well as an increased political impetus through the European Council Summits in Tampere (1999), the Hague (2004), and Stockholm (2009), the area appears as one of the most promising policy fields for integration in the EU in the foreseeable future. This process has deepened even more significantly after the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 in the United States, on 11 March 2004 in Madrid, and on 7 July 2005 in London. This book is the first to analyse these hugely topical developments in European internal security at both the treaty and policy levels, as well as its implementation at the national level, from various disciplinary perspectives (political science, law, criminology, etc). This book was published as a special edition of European Security.
The book is a timely investigation into the European security policy dynamic from the perspective of actors engaged in the contentious policy process. Instead of looking at security actors in isolation from one another, the book enquires into the practice of the policy process and maps out the constellations of formal and informal actors sponsoring concrete ideas on what European security should be about. The understandings of security shift and advocating a particular reading of security involves entering the political contest with actors advancing different conceptions. The contributors analyse these different modalities, overlapping scenes and shifting meanings that bring about EU security policies. Our case studies illustrate how these processes unfold both at the intra-EU level, where different institutions supply and endorse their security framings, and vis-a-vis the EU and its neighbours. The purpose of the book is to uncover, by pluralistic means, the rules of the game that structure the field of the EU's security making. That way, rather than impose a rigid theoretical model, the editors structure the inquiry around three concepts: security, politics, and policy. This book was published as a special issue of Perspectives on European Politics and Society.
As the UN celebrates its 50th anniversary, it has become embroiled in controversy sparked by its recent extensive involvement in operations which go beyond traditional peacekeeping. This book brings together leading scholars and practitioners who explicate the issues at the heart of the controversy and recommends changes for the organization and its member states. In dedicated analyses as well as case studies, the authors focus on issues of sovereignty and intervention, national commitments to non-traditional missions, and operational efficiency and effectiveness when undertaking such missions.
This book examines the major armed conflicts in South Asia. The articles study conflict management, look at the direction the armed conflict is likely to take and provide a set of alternative measures that could be pursued by the actors. Designed as an annual series, the articles provide a brief historical sketch of the emergence of armed conflict, outlining its various phases. This volume examines the various armed conflicts in South Asia in 2009 in Afghanistan, FATA and NWFP, J&K, North-East India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, and sectarian and Naxalite violence in Pakistan and India respectively. The volume also includes an exclusive chapter on the continuing story of suicide terrorism in Pakistan. This important collection discusses India 's geo-strategic importance and its common borders with its neighbours; the psychological and economic costs of violence and the problem of refugee migrants; treaties, memorandums and ceasefire agreements signed over the past several years across countries; the role of the United Nations and other peacekeeping forces; and the future of failed and failing states.
A major new history of one of World War II's most crucial campaigns--the first Allied attack on European soil--by the acclaimed author of Normandy '44 and a rising star in military history On July 10, 1943, the largest amphibious invasion ever mounted took place, larger even than the Normandy invasion eleven months later: 160,000 American, British, and Canadian troops came ashore or were parachuted onto Sicily, signaling the start of the campaign to defeat Nazi Germany on European soil. Operation HUSKY, as it was known, was enormously complex, involving dramatic battles on land, in the air, and at sea. Yet, despite its paramount importance to ultimate Allied victory, and its drama, very little has been written about the 38-day Battle for Sicily. Based on his own battlefield studies in Sicily and on much new research, James Holland's Sicily '43 offers a vital new perspective on a major turning point in World War II and a chronicle of a multi-pronged campaign in a uniquely diverse and contained geographical location. The characters involved--Generals George Patton and Bernard Montgomery among many--were as colorful as the air and naval battles and the fighting on the ground across the scorching plains and mountaintop of Sicily were brutal. But among Holland's great skills is incorporating the experience of on-the-ground participants on all sides--from American privates Tom and Dee Bowles and Tuskegee fighter pilot Charlie Dryden to British major Hedley Verity and Canadian lieutenant Farley Mowat (later a celebrated author), to German and Italian participants such as Wilhelm Schmalz, brigade commander in the Hermann Goering Division, or Luftwaffe fighter pilot major Johannes "Macky" Steinhoff and to Italian combatants, civilians and mafiosi alike--which gives readers an intimate sense of what occurred in July and August 1943. Emphasizing the significance of Allied air superiority, Holland overturns conventional narratives that have criticized the Sicily campaign for the vacillations over the plan, the slowness of the Allied advance and that so many German and Italian soldiers escaped to the mainland; rather, he shows that clearing the island in 38 days against geographical challenges and fierce resistance was an impressive achievement. A powerful and dramatic account by a master military historian, Sicily '43 fills a major gap in the narrative history of World War II.
The Persian Gulf, important because of its vast energy resources, emerged into the limelight of geopolitics at the time of the British Labour government's policy of withdrawal from East of Suez in 1968. Before 1968 it had been recognised that the Gulf lay in the legitimate sphere of influence of Britain, while the United States exerted its influence in the two pivotal littoral states of Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Soviets had been gaining influence in Iraq ever since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958 and the Chinese were also fishing for influence by their support of the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Arabian Gulf. This book examines the political axes of the various super-powers with Iran and the Persian Gulf and discusses the implications of these problems for the issue of security in the region.
While critical security studies largely concentrates on objects of security, this book focuses on the subject position from which securitization' and other security practices take place. First, it argues that the modern subject itself emerges and is sustained as a function of security and insecurity. It suggests, consequently, that no analytic frame can produce or reproduce the subject in some original or primordial form that does not already reproduce a fundamental or structural insecurity. It critically returns, through a variety of studies, to traditionally held conceptions of security and insecurity as simple predicates or properties that can be associated or not to some more essential, more primeval, more true or real subject. It thus opens and explores the question of the security of the subject itself, locating, through a reconstruction of the foundations of the concept of security, in the modern conception of the subject, an irreducible insecurity. Second, it argues that practices of security can only be carried out as a certain kind of negotiation about values. The analyses in this book find security expressed again and again as a function of value cast in terms of an explicit or implicit philosophy of life, of culture, of individual and collective anxieties and aspirations, of expectations about what may be sacrificed and what is worth preserving. By way of a critical examination of the value function of security, this book discovers the foundation of values as dependent on a certain management of their own vulnerability, continuously under threat, and thus fundamentally and necessarily insecure. This book will be an indispensible resource for students of Critical Security Studies, Political Theory, Philosophy, Ethics and International Relations in general.
First published in 1982, this study traces the development of Soviet military thinking on the Third World and assesses its importance for the conduct of Soviet foreign policy. Changes in Soviet military thought often reflect changes in Soviet attitudes towards and expectations from involvement in Third World conflicts. This work from Dr. Katz meditates upon the changing role of the USSR in post-war Third World conflicts, with particular emphasis upon the Brezhnev era and the way in which US setbacks in the Third World impacted upon Soviet foreign policy and changing attitudes to the Third World. |
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