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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Defence strategy, planning & research > General
A long-time U.S. policy insider's scholarly and encyclopedic history with unprecedented analysis of the official documents of the Cold War explores its Marxist-Leninist totalitarian roots, faltering pre-Reagan U.S. strategies of Containment, MAD, and Detente, and the Reagan Revolution. This book details Reagan's integrated new strategies in defense, arms control, diplomacy, information and intelligence, and support for the faiths and forces of freedom that collapsed the Soviet ideology and empire.
During the Allied victory celebrations there were few who chose to raise a glass to the staff. The high cost of casualties endured by the British army tarnished the reputation of the military planners, which has yet to recover. This book examines the work and development of the staff of the British army during the First World War and its critical role in the military leadership team. Their effectiveness was germane to the outcome of events in the front line but not enough consideration has been paid to this level of command and control, which has largely been overshadowed by the debate over generalship. This has painted an incomplete picture of the command function. Characterised as arrogant, remote and out of touch with the realities of the front line, the staff have been held responsible for the mismanagement of the war effort and profligate loss of lives in futile offensives. This book takes a different view. By using their letters and diaries it reveals fresh insights into their experience of the war. It shows that the staff made frequent visits to the front line and were no strangers to combat or hostile fire. Their work is also compared with their counterparts in the French and German armies, highlighting differences in practice and approach. In so doing, this study throws new light upon the characteristics, careers and working lives of these officers, investigating the ways in which they both embraced and resisted change. This offers evidence both for those who wish to exonerate the British command system on the basis of the learning process but also for those critical of its performance, thus advancing understanding of British military history in the First World War.
Animals and War: Confronting the Military-Animal Industrial Complex is the first book to examine how nonhuman animals are used for war by military forces. Each chapter delves deeply into modes of nonhuman animal exploitation: as weapons, test subjects, and transportation, and as casualties of war leading to homelessness, starvation, and death. With leading scholar-activists writing each chapter, this is an important text in the fields of peace studies and critical animal studies. This is a must read for anyone interested in ending war and fostering peace and justice.
This book investigates how states in both the West and Asia have responded to multi-dimensional security challenges since the end of the Cold War, focusing on military transformation. Looking at a cross-section of different countries, this volume assesses how their armed forces have responded to a changing international security context. The book investigates two main themes. First, how the process of military 'transformation'- in terms of technological advances and new ways of conducting warfare - has impacted on the militaries of various countries. These technologies are hugely expensive and the extent to which different states can afford them, and the ability of these states to utilise these technologies, differs greatly. Second, the volume investigates the social dimensions of military transformation. It reveals the expanding breadth of tasks that contemporary armed forces have been required to address. This includes the need for military forces to work with other actors, such as non-governmental agencies and humanitarian organisations, and the ability of armed forces to fight asymmetric opponents and conduct post-conflict reconstruction tasks. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan exemplified how important the relationship between technological and social transformation has become. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, military innovation, Asian politics, security studies and International Relations.
“How did we move from the inspiring moments of Nelson Mandela’s release after 27 years of incarceration, and the euphoria of our first democratic elections in 1994, to State Capture and the disaster of Jacob Zuma’s reign – a controversial President with over 800 charges of corruption pending? More importantly, what can we as a nation do about it? These are big issues – but Neil Wright does not pull any punches in bringing them out in the open and is not shy to give his opinions and possible solutions. His core message is that for true transformation to happen, it has to happen from the inside out, not imposed from the top down. By embracing the concept of “One Race, the Human Race, Now!” South Africans have the chance to emerge from present challenges and finally shake off the shadow of our divided past.”
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.
A long-time U.S. policy insider's scholarly and encyclopedic history with unprecedented analysis of the official documents of the Cold War explores its Marxist-Leninist totalitarian roots, faltering pre-Reagan U.S. strategies of Containment, MAD, and Detente, and the Reagan Revolution. This book details Reagan's integrated new strategies in defense, arms control, diplomacy, information and intelligence, and support for the faiths and forces of freedom that collapsed the Soviet ideology and empire.
Throughout human history, scholars, statesmen and military leaders have attempted to define what constitutes the legitimate use of armed force by one community against another. Moreover, if force is to be used, what normative guidelines should govern the conduct of warfare? Based upon the assumption that armed conflict is a human enterprise and therefore subject to human limitations, the Western 'just war tradition' represents an attempt to provide these guidelines. Following on from the success of Hensel's earlier publication, The Law of Armed Conflict, this volume brings together an internationally recognized team of scholars to explore the philosophical and societal foundations of just war tradition. It relates the principles of jus ad bellum to contemporary issues confronting the global community and explores the relationship between the principles of jus in bello and the various principles embodied in the customary law of armed conflict. Applying an interdisciplinary approach to analyzing and assessing the links between just war and the norms of behaviour, the book provides a valuable contribution to international law, international relations and national security studies.
The tragic conclusion to the war in Afghanistan - America's longest and one of its most frustrating - serves as a reminder that the United States too often is at war, and sometimes fails to achieve its short-term or long-term aims. In this timely book, esteemed military expert Michael O'Hanlon examines America's major conflicts since the mid-1800s: the Civil War, the two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In this new, concise book, he addresses profound questions. How successful has the United States been when it waged these wars? Were the wars avoidable? Did America's leaders know what they were getting into when they committed to war? And what lessons does history offer for future leaders contemplating war -including the prospects for avoiding war in the first place. The book does not tell stories at the ground level -the day-to-day tactics and human bravery and perseverance that since ancient times have made warfare so tragically fascinating. Instead, the book presents America's major wars on a conceptual level, focusing on strategies, key decisions, innovative technologies and the dynamics that shaped their outcomes. O'Hanlon looks for overarching trends and themes, along with the lessons for the military strategists and political leaders of today and tomorrow. O'Hanlon's unique book - combining brevity and clarity with a broad conceptual approach -is an important one for students of security studies at universities and war colleges as well as generalist policymakers.
The human dimension of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) implies an alternative vision of security and co-operation in Europe, based on respect for human rights, democracy, the rule of law, minority rights and human contacts. Until recently the human dimension has been the main claim to perpetuity of the CSCE. It has been through the years the main point of controversy among its participating states, and has played an important role in the revolutionary events of 1989 which transformed Europe.
The South Asian security complex refers to security interdependencies between the states in the region, and also includes the effect that powerful external actors, such as China, the US and Russia, and geopolitical interests have on regional dynamics. This book focuses on the national securities of a number of South Asian countries in order to discuss a range of issues related to South Asian security. The book makes a distinction between traditional and non-traditional security. While state-centric approaches such as bilateral relations between India and Pakistan are considered to be traditional realist approaches to security, the promotion of economic, environmental and human security reflect global concerns, liberal theories and cosmopolitan values. The book goes beyond traditional security issues to reflect the changing security agenda in South Asia in the twenty-first century, and is a useful contribution to studies on South Asian Politics and Security Studies.
Since World War II, military intervention in developing world internal conflicts (DWIC) has become the primary form of U.S. military activity, and these interventions have proven unsuccessful in places like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. This book argues such failure was entirely predictable, even inevitable, due both to the nature and dynamics of foreign military intrusion in the affairs of other countries and especially the DWICs that provide the major contemporary form of potential U.S. military in the foreseeable future. Basing its analysis in both human nature (the adverse reaction to prolonged outsider intrusion) and historical analogy, the book argues strongly why military intervention should be avoided as a national security option and the implications of such a policy decision for national security strategy and policy.
Since World War II, military intervention in developing world internal conflicts (DWIC) has become the primary form of U.S. military activity, and these interventions have proven unsuccessful in places like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. This book argues such failure was entirely predictable, even inevitable, due both to the nature and dynamics of foreign military intrusion in the affairs of other countries and especially the DWICs that provide the major contemporary form of potential U.S. military in the foreseeable future. Basing its analysis in both human nature (the adverse reaction to prolonged outsider intrusion) and historical analogy, the book argues strongly why military intervention should be avoided as a national security option and the implications of such a policy decision for national security strategy and policy.
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2016 Perhaps the most basic national security question that U.S. leaders and the body politic continuously face is where and under what circumstances to consider and in some cases resort to the use of armed force to ensure the country's safety and well-being. The question is perpetual-but the answer is not. This insightful text helps students make sense of the ever-changing environment and factors that influence disagreement over national security risks and policy in the United States. The book takes shape through a focus on three considerations: strategy, policy, and issues. Snow explains the range of plans of action that are possible and resources available for achieving national security goals, as well as the courses of action for achieving those goals in the context of a broad range of security problems that must be dealt with. However, there is little agreement among policymakers on exactly what is the nature of the threats that the country faces. Snow helps readers frame the debate by suggesting some of the prior influences on risk-assessment, some of the current influences on national security debates, and suggestions for how future strategy and policy may be shaped.
The region encompassing Afghanistan and Pakistan (Af/Pak region) is undergoing a fundamental strategic change. This book analyses the nature of this strategic change, in ordre to seek possible future scenarios and to examine policy options. It also undertakes a critical review of the basic elements of the Western strategic approach towards dealing with regional conflicts in all parts of the world, with special emphasis on the Af/Pak region. Dealing with the political developments i one of the most volatile regions in the world - Afghanistan and Pakistan - the volume focuses on Western strategic concerns. The withdrawal of ISAF by 2014 will change the overall political setting and the work addresses the challenges that will result for Western policymakers thereafter. It examines the cases of Afghanistan and Pakistan separately, and also looks at the broader region and tries to identify different outcomes. This book will be of much interest to students of Central and South Asian politics, strategic studies, foreign policy and security studies generally.
The Citizen Soldiers explores the military reform movement that took its name from the famous Business Men's Military Training Camps at Plattsburg, New York. It also illuminates the story of two exceptional men: General Leonard Wood, the rambunctious and controversial former Rough Rider who galvanized the Plattsburg Idea with his magnetic personality; and Grenville Clark, a young Wall Street lawyer. The Plattsburg camps strove to advertise the lack of military preparation in the United States and stressed the military obligation every man owed to his country. Publicized by individuals who voluntarily underwent military training, the preparedness movement rapidly took shape in the years prior to America's entry into the First World War. Far from being war hawks, the Plattsburg men emphasized the need for a "citizen army" rather than a large professional establishment. Although they failed in their major objective -- universal military training -- their vision of a citizen army was largely realized in the National Defense Act of 1920, and their efforts helped to establish selective service as the United States' preferred recruitment method in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Featuring a new preface by the author, this new edition of a seminal study will hit shelves just in time for the World War I Centennial.
The origins of the First World War remain one of the greatest twentieth century historical controversies. In this debate the role of military planning in particular and of militarism in general, are a key focus of attention. Did the military wrest control from the civilians? Were the leaders of Europe eager for a conflict? What military commitments were made between the various alliance blocks? These questions are examined in detail here in eleven essays by distinguished historians and the editor's introduction provides a focus and draws out the comparative approach to the history of military policies and war plans of the great powers.
Web Programming for Business: PHP Object-Oriented Programming with Oracle focuses on fundamental PHP coding, giving students practical, enduring skills to solve data and technical problems in business. Using Oracle as the backend database, the book is version-neutral, teaching students code that will still work even with changes to PHP and Oracle. The code is clean, clearly explained and solutions-oriented, allowing students to understand how technologies such as XML, RSS or AJAX can be leveraged in business applications. The book is fully illustrated with examples, and includes chapters on:
Powerpoint slides, applied exam questions, and the raw code for all examples are available on a companion website. This book offers an innovative approach that allows anyone with basic SQL and HTML skills to learn PHP object-oriented programming.
In an age of mass camera surveillance people in the UK have become the most watched, catalogued and categorised people in the western world, all with little public debate or opposition. Nor has there been much more critical research that understands CCTV within the broader social relations out of which it has grown and consolidated. The aim of this book is to analyse the use of CCTV within this broader social, political and ideological context, focusing on relations between surveillance, power and social order, using Liverpool as a case study. At the same time the book provides a study of social control in Liverpool city centre, exploring the development of, and meaning attributed to, social control practices by those at the centre of the implementation and management of these practices. As such the book is a study of the 'locally powerful', their organisation through the local state, and their perceptions of order and disorder in the city centre. Liverpool's CCTV network is thus seen as emblematic of the developments in social control which the book explores. The book makes a key contribution to theoretical debates around social control in four respects: it places the analysis of CCTV within an understanding of the social relations in which the technology emerged; it analyses CCTV as a normative tool of social control and not merely as a piece of crime prevention technology; it considers how social scientists and criminologists think about and understand social control in the contemporary setting; and finally it seeks to draw lessons from the Liverpool case study and considers their applicability to the study of CCTV more generally.
With the rise of religiously motivated violence and terrorism, governments around the world need to develop their religious and ideological capabilities in parallel with strengthening their law enforcement, military and intelligence capabilities. Terrorist Rehabilitation: A New Frontier in Counter-terrorism aims to provide an understanding of the importance of the approach and strategy of terrorist rehabilitation in countering this threat.Comprising of nine chapters, this book provides case study assessments of terrorist rehabilitation practices set against the backdrop of their unique operational and geopolitical milieu in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. This will help the reader to form a foundational understanding of the concept of terrorist rehabilitation by combining the insights, successes and experience of senior government officials and counter-terrorism experts. In addition, the contributors provide discussions on religious concepts that have been manipulated by violent Islamists as a background to understanding religiously or ideologically motivated terrorism and the avenues open for countering it.
Despite the substantial output of revisionist scholarship over the last decade reappraising the performance of the British Army on the Western Front during the First World War, there still remains a stubborn perception that its commanders were incompetent, inflexible and unimaginative. Whilst much ink has been spilled vilifying or defending individual commanders, or looking for overarching trends and 'learning curves', this is the first work to examine systematically the vertical nature of command - that is the transmission of plans from the high-command down through the rank structure to the front line. Through such an investigation, a much more rounded measure of the effectiveness of British commanders can be gained; one moves the argument beyond the overly simplistic 'casualties to ground gained' equation that is usually offered. The Battle of Fromelles (19-20 July 1916) was selected as the case study as it was relatively small in scale, in the right period, and retains sufficient primary sources available to sustain the analysis. It also witnessed the first time Australian forces were used in offensive operations on the Western Front, and thus looms large in wider Commonwealth perceptions of 'Bumbling British Generals'. The book follows the progress of the battle plan from its inception in the strategic designs of the supreme commander down through the various intermediate level commands at operational and tactical headquarters until it became the orders that sent the infantry forward into the attack. In so doing it provides a unique insight into the strengths and weaknesses of British command structure, allowing a much more scholarly judgement of its overall effectiveness.
How have US economic defence policies promoted its security since 1933? US Policies of Economic Warfare, 1933-1991 concentrates on an important and neglected facet of America's fight for survival in the latter half of the twentieth century. It explains how US policy-makers crafted and used instruments of economic statecraft against states that posed vital threats to the survival of the USA. This study situates economic defence policy within the broad context of US foreign policy and explores its response to the totalitarianism of the 1930s, the Second World War and the complex strategic and political developments of the Cold War.
This book conducts a comprehensive study on China's maritime strategy. It discusses the lessons of maritime power history that must be learnt by Chinese today, the relations between China's maritime strategy and domestic developing problems of China, the status and influence of maritime strategy from China's overall development strategy perspective, and the geopolitical targets of Chinese navy in 2050.China's maritime strategy is one of the most important academic and realistic subjects in the present and future. This book is the first book to discuss China's maritime strategy comprehensively in and outside China. It will give readers a better sense of why China has to develop its sea power, why it lays so much emphasis on Taiwan and the South China sea, why the country can make friends with India but not Japan, and why China's maritime strategy will never challenge America but has to face the pressure from America's maritime hegemony, and so on.
In modern times, ten Americans rose to five-star rank: Pershing (who chose to wear only four stars), Leahy, Marshall, King, Arnold, MacArthur, Nimitz, Halsey, Eisenhower, and Bradley. In concert with the Roosevelts, Wilson, Truman, and Sir Winston Churchill, they were at the helm as the world transformed from the machinations of regional despots to an era of global war. With few exceptions, these men exercised their responsibilities with remarkable integrity and ability. The first part of this book reviews the biography and military highlights of each five-star; the second analyzes and compares the ten to identify common features of the elements of command and leadership. While studying the careers of these distinguished men, Hall also provides an insight into the analysis of war. He explains that war operates on five levels of perspective: heroism, tactics, operations, theaters, and national purpose. When these levels conflict, even the best leaders are fortunate to escape with their reputations intact. This volume details how these commanders achieved success by understanding and properly maintaining these different perspectives almost unfailingly. Consequently, they reached the pinnacle of power in the military profession.
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. |
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