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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Defence strategy, planning & research > General
This book applies the concept of mediatization to the contemporary dynamic between war, media and society, with a focus on the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Since the beginning of the 21st century the IDF has undergone an intensive process of mediatization that has transformed the media into an interpretative grid for many of its military activities and increasingly utilized media to garner public support and construct civilian perceptions of conflict and security through media activity and strategy. This process can be divided into four distinct chronological phases in accordance with the operational challenges confronted by the IDF during this period, from the Al-Aqsa Intifada of 2000, through Israeli unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2005, and the second Lebanon war of 2006, to the series of Gaza confrontations of 2008-2014. The work shows how the IDF's media policy evolved from a narrow perception of its role, and separation between operational and media actions to a cohesive and coherently articulated media strategy that is increasingly intertwined with military action and operational strategy and a vital component of strategic military aims and objectives. This strategic stance has led the IDF to adopt a global media perspective using the most advanced new media platforms, designed to influence public opinion and improve national narratives, both in Israel and the international community. By applying the concept of mediatization to the Israeli case, this book fills a research lacuna and offers a new prism for the study of media-military relations in contemporary conflicts. The book will be of much interest to students of civil-military relations, strategic studies, Middle Eastern Studies, media and communication studies, sociology and IR, in general.
Britain's Anti-Submarine Capability, 1919-1939 is the first unified study of the development of Britain's anti-submarine capability between the armistice in 1919 and the onset of the second world German submarine attack on Britain's maritime trade in 1939. Well researched and yet accessibly written, this book challenges the widespread belief that the Royal Navy failed to anticipate the threat of the U-boat in the Second World War.
This book analyses the American way of war within the context of Clausewitzian theory. In doing so, it draws conclusions about the origins, viability, and technical feasibility of America's current strategic approach. The author argues that the situation in which America has found itself in Iraq is the direct result of a culturally predisposed inclination to substitute technology for strategy. This habit manifests most extremely in the form of the Network-Centric Warfare/Effects-Based Operations (NCW/EBO) construct, which by and large has failed to deliver on its many promises. This book argues that the fundamental problem with the NCW/EBO - and with US defence transformation, generally - is that it centres on technology at the expense of other dynamics, notably the human one. Taking a fresh perspective on US strategic cultural predispositions in an era of persistent military conflict, the author argues for the necessity of America's revising its strategic paradigm in favour of a more holistic brand of strategy. This book will be of much interest to students of Clausewitz, Strategic Studies, International Security and US foreign policy.
This new handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the issues facing naval strategy and security in the twenty-first century. Featuring contributions from some of the world's premier researchers and practitioners in the field of naval strategy and security, this handbook covers naval security issues in diverse regions of the world, from the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean to the Arctic and the piracy-prone waters off East Africa's coast. It outlines major policy challenges arising from competing claims, transnational organized crime and maritime terrorism, and details national and alliance reactions to these problems. While this volume provides detailed analyses on operational, judicial, and legislative consequences that contemporary maritime security threats pose, it also places a specific emphasis on naval strategy. With a public very much focused on the softer constabulary roles naval forces play (such as humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, naval diplomacy, maintenance of good order at sea), the overarching hard-power role of navies has been pushed into the background. In fact, navies and seapower have been notably absent from many recent academic discussions and deliberations of maritime security. This handbook provides a much-desired addition to the literature for researchers and analysts in the social sciences on the relationship between security policy and military means on, under, and from the sea. It comprehensively explains the state of naval security in this maritime century and the role of naval forces in it. This book will be of much interest to students of naval security and naval strategy, security studies and IR, as well as practitioners in the field.
In this remarkable survey of "the communicative repertory of humans," John Gedo demonstrates the central importance to theory and therapeutics of the communication of information. He begins by surveying those modes of communication encountered in psychoanalysis that go beyond the lexical meaning of verbal dialogue, including "the music of speech," various protolinguistic phenomena, and the language of the body. Then, turning to the analytic dialogue, Gedo explores the implications of these alternative modes of communication for psychoanalytic technique. Individual chapters focus, in turn, on the creation of a "shared language" between analyst and analysand, the consequences of the analytic setting, the form in which the analyst casts particular interventions, the curative limits of empathy, the analyst's affectivity and its communication to the patient, and the semiotic significance of countertransference and projective identification. Gedo does not proffer semiotics as a substitute for metapsychology. He is explicit that communicative skill is always dependdent on somatic events within the central nervous system. Indeed, it is because Gedo's hierarchical approach to communication builds on our current understanding of a hierarchically organized central nervous system that his clincal observations become insights into basic psychobiological functioning. Grounded in Gedo's four decades of clinical experience, The Languages of Psychoanalysis points to a new venue of clinical research and conceptualization, one in which attentiveness to issues of communication will not only foster linkages with contemporary neuroscience, but also clarify and enlarge the therapeutic possibilities of psychoanalytic treatment.
This volume in the Weapons of Mass Destruction series makes the case that the United States' expansive missile defence policy has eroded both its own security and that of its allies. These findings are based on an examination of the response of a number of key states to U.S. policy, including Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. Situating their argument in the theoretical debate on balancing in unipolarity, the authors contrast their view to influential perspectives that see little evidence of hard balancing against the U.S. in the post-Cold War era. Adopting a neorealist perspective, the authors demonstrate the clear presence of this inter-state practice, providing insight into the international politics of unipolarity, showing how hard balancing and security dilemma-related dynamics operate in the contemporary strategic environment.
This book offers an analysis of key individuals who have contributed to both the theory and the practice of counterinsurgency (COIN). Insurgencies have become the dominant form of armed conflict around the world today. The perceptible degeneration of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan into insurgent quagmires has sparked a renewal of academic and military interest in the theory and practice of counterinsurgency. In light of this, this book provides a rigorous analysis of those individuals who have contributed to both the theory and practice of counterinsurgency: 'warrior-scholars'. These are soldiers who have bridged the academic-military divide by influencing doctrinal and intellectual debates about irregular warfare. Irregular warfare is notoriously difficult for the military, and scholarly understanding about this type of warfare is also problematic; especially given the residual anti-intellectualism within Western militaries. Thus, The Theory and Practice of Irregular Warfare is dedicated to analysing the best perceivable bridge between these two worlds. The authors explore the theoretical and practical contributions made by a selection of warrior-scholars of different nationalities, from periods ranging from the French colonial wars of the mid-twentieth century to the Israeli experiences in the Middle East; from contributions to American counter-insurgency made during the Iraq War, to the thinkers who shaped the US war in Vietnam. This book will be of much interest to students of counterinsurgency, strategic studies, defence studies, war studies and security studies in general.
This work utilizes a key security concept to examine one of the most dramatic regions of the world. Focusing on ethnic tensions, intra-ASEAN rivalries and the emergence of Chinese hegemony, the security dilemma is used to provide insights into a wide range of the region's contemporary security issues. In addition, the book expounds upon some of the uses of the security dilemma, exploring both its applicability to ethnic tensions and a new variant: a state induced security dilemma.
First published in 1979. The report of the Labour Party Defence Study Group, which met from early 1975 to mid-1977, represents a unique attempt to portray defence policy in the context of disarmament and the need to restructure and control the institutions of defence - in particular the defence industry. The report presented the fullest study made by any British political party concerning the implications and consequences of its stated defence policy, and embodied an examination of defence from the perspective of approaches of disarmament. At the same time, the search for a new policy in international relations was harmonised with the further development of a new industrial strategy, concentrating upon the potential for converting part of military industry to civil work. This work which presents a distinctive intervention in the general debate concerning defence policy, industrial and technological planning, economic priorities and public policy, will be of considerable relevance to both specialists in each of these fields as well as the general reader.
The book explores how small states adjust their military strategies in response to external shocks. Using primary sources from four Nordic countries, (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden), this volume explores how small states have adjusted their military strategies in response to external shocks of the 21st century. The 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Russian interventions in Georgia and Ukraine, and the rise of the Islamic State have all forced the Nordic states to adopt new strategies. While the responses have not been uniform, their differing relations to the EU and NATO have not prevented these countries from behaving similarly in military affairs. Limitations in military capacity has led all four countries to pursue strategies that include cooperation with more resourceful partners. It is necessary for them to cooperate with others to protect and promote their national interests. Moreover, the Nordic cosmopolitan outlook expresses milieu-shaping ambitions that we generally would not expect small states to pursue against a potential great power aggressor. This book will be of much interest to students of military strategy, defense studies, security studies, and international relations.
This book explores the idea of a 'revolution in military affairs' (RMA), which underpins the transformational agenda of the US military, and examines its implications for smaller states. The strategic studies literature on the RMA tends to be American-centric and directed towards the strategic problems of the US military. This volume seeks to fill the gap in the literature and establish an intellectual framework that can assist other, smaller powers in their respective approaches to this issue. The book does so in three main sections; Part I focuses on questions of transformations in strategy and war; Part II explores transformations in operations; while Part III examines possible impediments to an RMA. This book will be of much interest to students of Military Studies, Asian Studies, Strategic Studies and International Relations in general.
This book provides a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of India's strategic culture in the era of globalization. It examines dominant themes that have governed India's foreign and security policy and events which have shaped India's role in global politics. The author Examines the traditional and new approaches to diplomacy and the state's response to internal and external conflicts; Delineates policy pillars which are required to protect the state's strategic interests and forge new relationships in the current geopolitical climate; Compares the domestic and international security policies followed during the tenures of Narsimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh; and Analyzes how the Narendra Modi era has brought on changes in India's security strategy and the use of soft power and diplomacy. With extensive additions, drawing on recent developments, this edition of the book will be a key text for scholars, teachers and students of defence and strategic studies, international relations, history, political science and South Asian studies.
This volume examines civil-military relations in general and nonmilitary functions in the service of society and democracy in particular in six different nations, against the backdrop of the Israeli experience with a dual-role military. Since its inception, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has functioned as a very effective fighting force while also fulfilling many core nonmilitary roles as a powerful, educational, and remedial agent engaged in strengthening the fabric of Israeli society. The inner workings of the IDF in this area--the subject and dynamics of its broad social agenda, including the dilemmas inherent in education toward broad intellectual autonomy within a regimented system such as the military--are presented, for the first time before a non-Israeli audience, in detail (and with much candor) by both high echelon IDF personnel and junior officers in conscript service directly responsible for carrying out these missions.
Marvin Kalb, former CBS Moscow bureau chief, traces how the Crimea of Catherine the Great became a global tinder box. The world was stunned when Vladimir Putin invaded and seized the seaport region of Crimea in March 2014. In the weeks that followed, separatist rebels aided by Russia took over territory in the area surrounding Crimea in eastern Ukraine. The United States and its Western allies immediately imposed strict sanctions on Russia and have continued to tighten those sanctions. This sharp deterioration in East-West relations has raised basic questions about the policies of Vladimir Putin and the future of Russia. Marvin Kalb, who reported from Russia in the 1950s for Edward R. Murrow and served as the CBS Moscow bureau chief in the early 1960s, argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Putin did not "suddenly" decide to invade Crimea and then instigate a pro-Russian rebellion in eastern Ukraine. He had been waiting for the right moment in the months after Ukrainians rose up in bloody protests against the pro-Russian president in Kiev's Maidan Square. Those demonstrations had led Putin to the conclusion that Ukraine's opposition constituted an existential threat to Russia. Imperial Gamble examines how Putin reached that conclusion by taking a critical look at the recent political history of post-Soviet Russia. It also journeys deeper into the Russian past to more fully explain the roots of Russian nationalism that drives both Putin and the Russian people who support his actions in Ukraine. Kalb argues that the post-cold war world today hangs on the resolution of the Ukraine crisis. So long as it is treated as a problem to be resolved by Russia, on the one side, and the United States and Europe, on the other, it will remain a danger zone with global consequences. The only sensible solution lies in both Russia and Ukraine recognizing that their futures are irrevocably linked by the geography, power, politics, and history that Kalb brings to life in Imperial Gamble.
Britain is often revered for its extensive experience of waging 'small wars'. Its long imperial history is littered with high profile counter-insurgency campaigns, thus marking it out as the world's most seasoned practitioner of this type of warfare. This is the first book to detail the tactical and operational dynamics of Britain's small wars, arguing that the military's use of force was more heavily constrained by wider strategic and political considerations than previously admitted. Outlining the civil-military strategy followed by the British in Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, Aden, Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan, Defending the realm?, available for the first time in paperback, argues that Britain's small wars since 1945 were fought against the backdrop of an irrevocable decline in British power. Written from a theoretically-informed perspective, grounded in rich archival sources, oral testimonies and a revisionist reading of the literature on counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism, this is the definitive account of the politics of Britain's small wars. -- .
This book assesses the strategic linkages that the Korean Peninsula shares with the Indo-Pacific and provides a succinct picture of issues which will shape the trajectory of the Korean Peninsula in the future. This book analyses how critical actors such as the United States, China, Russia and Japan are caught in a tightly balanced power struggle affecting the Korean Peninsula. It shows how these countries are exerting control over the Korean Peninsula while also holding on to their status as critical actors in the broader Indo-Pacific. The prospects of peace, stability and unity in the Korean Peninsula and the impact of this on Indo-Pacific power politics are explored as well as the contending and competing interests in the region. Chapters present country-specific positions and approaches as case studies and review the impact of power politics on stakeholders' relationships in the Indo-Pacific. The book also argues that the Korean Peninsula and the issue of denuclearization is of primary importance to any direction an Indo-Pacific Partnership may take. Bringing together scholars, journalists and ex-diplomats, this book will be of interest to academics working in the field of international relations, foreign policy, security studies and Asian studies as well as audiences interested
With contributions from leading experts, Culture and National Security in the Americas examines the most influential historical, geographic, cultural, political, economic, and military considerations shaping national security policies throughout the Americas. In this volume, contributors explore the actors and institutions responsible for perpetuating security cultures over time and the changes and continuities in contemporary national security policies.
The key roles played by the Royal Observer Corps in the Second World War have, all too often, been overshadowed by more glamourous arms of the defence forces. The teams in the Sector Stations, plotting the battles raging above, and the Spitfires and Hurricanes swooping upon the formations of enemy fighters and bombers, present easily-imagined and dramatic scenes. Yet between the radar stations, detecting the German aircraft approaching over the Channel, and the Sector Controls were the little sand-bagged posts of the Observer Corps that provided over-land tracking of the enemy formations. The Royal Observer Corps (the Royal' prefix being approved in 1941) proved a vital link in the communication chain in the defence of the UK, particularly in the Battle of Britain, as it provided the only means of tracking enemy aircraft once they had crossed the coastline. The highly-skilled Observers were also able to identify and count the enemy aircraft, turning blips on a screen into actual types and numbers of German machines. Even after the threat from the Luftwaffe receded after the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, the ROC again came to the fore when the V1s opened a new reign of terror in 1944. Because these small, fast weapons were so hard to detect the RAF's fighter controllers moved into the ROC's operations rooms so that they could respond to the V-1 threat more rapidly. In this official history of the ROC written shortly after the war, the corps' operations throughout the conflict are set out in great detail. This includes a section on the last flight of Rudolf Hess, as well as one detailing the work of those who were selected for employment as Seaborne Observers on ships during the D-Day landings, where their specialist identification skills were used to prevent the all-too prevalent instances of friendly fire'.
This book presents a theory and empirical evidence for how security forces can identify militant suspects during counterinsurgency operations. A major oversight on the part of academics and practitioners has been to ignore the critical antecedent issue common to persuasion and coercion counterinsurgency (COIN) approaches: distinguishing friend from foe. This book proposes that the behaviour of security forces influences the likelihood of militant identification during a COIN campaign, and argues that security forces must respect civilian safety in order to create a credible commitment to facilitate collaboration with a population. This distinction is important as conventional wisdom has wrongly assumed that the presence of security forces confers control over terrain or influence over a population. Collaboration between civilian and government actors is the key observable indicator of support in COIN. Paradoxically, this theory accounts for why and how increased risk to government forces in the short term actually improves civilian security in the long run. Counterinsurgency, Security Forces, and the Identification Problem draws on three case studies: the Huk Rebellion in the Philippines post-World War II; Marines Corps' experiences in Vietnam through the Combined Action Program; and Special Operations activities in Iraq after 2003. For military practitioners, the work illustrates the critical precursor to establishing "security" during counterinsurgency operations. The book also examines the role and limits of modern technology in solving the identification problem. This book will be of interest to students of counterinsurgency, military history, strategic studies, US foreign policy, and security studies in general.
This book comprises the journey of the Indian nation state and its tryst with destiny, where successive political leaderships, while governing India, contributed to a better understanding of the idea of India, its political and strategic culture, and the role that its military has had to play to develop that culture. Hence, the journey has been from the backwaters of 'defensive defence' to create a credible deterrence capacity as well as a doctrine to implement the same through political will and enter the domain of global involvement in the strategic, non-strategic as well as non-traditional areas of security. Thus, the title of the book The Purpose of India's Security Strategy: Defence, Deterrence and Global Involvement. It is hoped that this book will serve as a referral document to understand the polemics of the development of a strategic culture in India for an era which will be dominated by the information age and artificial intelligence, without forgetting that the Indian political leadership has come of age to understand the role of the military in the process of nation building.
This book presents a comprehensive history of the Royal Indian Navy (RIN). It traces the origins of the RIN to the East India Company, as early as 1612, and untangles the institution's complex history. Capturing various transitional phases of the RIN, especially during the crucial period of 1920-1950, it concludes with the final transfer of the RIN from under the British Raj to independent India. Drawn from a host of primary sources-personal diaries and logs, official reports and documents-the author presents a previously unexplored history of colonial and imperial defence policy, and the contribution of the RIN during the World Wars. This book explores several aspects in RIN's history such as its involvement in the First World War; its status in policies of the British Raj; the martial race theory in the RIN; and the development of the RIN from a non-combat force to a full-fledged combat defence force during the Second World War. It also studies the hitherto unexplored causes, nature and impact of the 1946 RIN Revolt on the eve of India's independence from a fresh perspective. An important intervention in the study of military and defence history, this will be an essential read for students, researchers, defence personnel, military academy cadets, as well as general readers.
This book brings together non-Western viewpoints on military pedagogy and professional military education (PME). In doing so, it seeks to provide a counterbalance to the predominantly European and North American bias found within the research field, as well as generating new insights on Latin American, African and Asian pedagogical commentaries and critiques. The collection contains essays from PME researchers and practitioners across fourteen countries, on subjects including large-scale educational reform, civil-military and academic influences on military pedagogy, internationalisation, cross-cultural collaboration, and interoperability within military education.
This book deals with the crucially important NATO crisis of 1966-67, and the intensive reorientation of NATO strategy following the departure of France from integrated military command. It includes four detailed case studies and draws on previously unavailable documents.
Security in Africa: A Critical Approach to Western Indicators of Threat questions the dominant Western narrative of security threats in Africa. Based on an analysis traditional security studies and Western security policy, it argues that commonly used indicators are based on mainstream security studies and provide only circumscribed analyses of threats to international security. By assessing the origins of this traditional approach to security and problematizing failed states, political instability, Muslim populations, and poverty among others, it makes the case for a critical approach to framing security challenges in Africa. |
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