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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > War & defence operations > General
Provides a definition of capabilities-based planning, puts it in the larger context of defense activities generally, and sketches an analytic architecture for carrying it out. Capabilities-based planning has become a central theme of defense planning. It is defined in broad terms in the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review, but opinions differ about its details and how to implement it. This book reviews and extends ideas developed over the last decade regarding capabilities-based planning. It puts capabilities-based planning in the larger context of defense activities generally, sketches an analytic architecture for carrying it out, and offers recommendations about how to proceed, including a suggested architecture that emphasizes mission-level work and such concepts as mission-system analysis, exploratory analysis, and hierarchical portfolio methods for integration and tradeoffs in an economical framework. Capabilities-based planning is related to the objective of transforming U.S. forces to deal effectively with the changes taking place in military affairs. The book also emphasizes that the new paradigm of capabilities-based planning is particularly apt given the objective of transforming U.S. forces to deal effectively with the changes taking place in military affairs.
The Classical Greeks are renowned for their achievements in literature, art and philosophy, but the events of the Peloponnesian War reveal the darker side of Greek civilization. From the horrific effects of overcrowding and the plague on the population of Athens, to the vicious civil strife that often erupted in cities allied with Athens or Sparta, this volume offers vivid and at times disturbing insights into the impact of warfare on the people who are celebrated as the founders of Western civilization. It is a testament to the fascination of the subject that even today the events of the Peloponnesian war are studied for what they can teach about diplomacy, strategy and tactics.
The Russo-Japanese war saw the first defeat of a major European imperialist power by an Asian country. When Japanese and Russian expansionist interests collided over Manchuria and Korea, the Tsar assumed Japan would never dare to fight. However, after years of planning, Japan launched a surprise attack on the Russian Port Arthur, on the Liaoyang Peninsula in 1904 and the war that followed saw Japan win major battles against Russia. This book explains the background and outbreak of the war, then follows the course of the fighting at Yalu River, Sha-ho, and finally Mukden, the largest battle anywhere in the world before the First World War.
More than three and a half centuries have passed since the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War (1618-48); but this most devastating of wars in the early modern period continues to capture the imagination of readers: this book reveals why. It was one of the first wars where contemporaries stressed the importance of atrocities, the horrors of the fighting and also the sufferings of the civilian population. The Thirty Years' War remains a conflict of key importance in the history of the development of warfare and the 'military revolution'. It marked a turning point in the extent to which states would involve themselves in large-scale military conflicts for the sake of religious and constitutional issues in addition to their normal strategic concerns.
This work is based on a conference whose objectives were to: explain the significance of urban areas in current and future military operations; and discuss methods and means of seizing, stabilizing, or controlling such areas in the 21st century, for example.
Aineias Tacticus (mid-fourth century BC) is not only the earliest but also one of the most historically interesting of ancient military writers. Important, too, as a social commentator, he sheds valuable light on the nature of life and the psychological and strategic preoccupations of a typical Greek city-state (polis) at a time dominated by two extraordinarily atypical ones, Athens and Sparta. In Aineias' work we see what conditions were like in a polis obliged to play a minor and much more passive role in the history of its age - not laying siege like the big players but suffering it. His practical recommendations derive clearly from accumulated personal experience in the first place; but at the same time he also draws copious illustrative material from both Herodotus and Thucydides. This edition has the Greekless reader firmly in mind, providing a fresh modern translation of "How to Survive Under Siege", a comprehensive introduction to Aineias and his work, and a full historical commentary.
Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Concise Edition The closest most of us will ever come to being inside the Oval Office at a moment of crisis.
The three Punic Wars lasted over 100 years, between 264 BC and 146 BC. They represented a struggle for supremacy in the Mediterranean between the bludgeoning land power of Rome, bent on imperial conquest, and the great maritime power of Carthage with its colonies and trading posts spread around the Mediterranean. This book reveals how the dramas and tragedies of the Punic Wars exemplify many political and military lessons which are as relevant today as when Hannibal and Scipio Africanus fought to determine the course of history in the Mediterranean.
"Montcalme and Wolfe" frames the war years through the lives of its two brilliant opposing generals. Weaving together the campaigns on both sides of the Atlantic. Parkman travels from opulent royal courts to muddy colonial fields, from Fort Necessity to the Plains of Abraham. He couples impeccable history with rich insightful narration, revealing the war as a deeply personal conflict between Louis de Montcalm and James Wolfe, the two ambitious leaders who ultimately died heroes' deaths on the frontlines. Accompanied by over forty detailed maps and illustrations--some selected specially for this edition--Parkman's timeless work shows how the enormous transfer of land from France to England at the war's end sowed the first seeds of colonialism--seeds that, in the due course, led America to its revolution, and eventually, its independence.
The United States is incrcasingly participating in coalition military operations. Coalition support may be required for successful military operations and in most such operations the United States desires to share the burden. U.S. allies recognize the increased security that coalition operations can bring. Because interoperability is a key element in coalitions, RAND undertook research to help the Air Force identify potential interoperability problems that may arise in coalition air operations and to suggest nonmateriel and technology-based solutions. The research focus is on command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C3ISR) systems in out-of-NATO-area operations. The authors' review of recent coalition air operations found that interoperability problems arose because of differences in doctrine, incompatible communications, different planning and execution systems, and different weapon system capabilities. For example, allies may lack sufficient all-weather, day and night precision-guided weapons. The authors suggest the following to increase interoperability in coalition operations: (1) common or harmonized doctrine for combined joint task force operations, from planning through assessment, (2) compatible or adaptable concepts of operation for airborne surveillance and control, (3) common information-sharing standards and compatible tactical communication systems, and (4) expert, experienced personnel who understand the capabilities of coalition partners. From a technology perspective and cost considerations, C3ISR initiatives appear to offer the best opportunities for interoperability enhancements.
Throughout its modern history, China has suffered from immensedestruction and loss of life from warfare. During its worst periodof warfare, the eight years of the Anti-Japanese War (1937-45),millions of civilians lost their lives. For China, the story of modernwar-related death and suffering has remained hidden. Hundreds ofmassacres are still unrecognized by the outside world and even by Chinaitself. The focus of this original hisotry is on the social andpsychological, not the economic, costs of war on the country.
When, where, how, and to what end American force will be applied in the new century has become a matter of intense debate and controversy. When America Fights attempts to come to grips with, analyze, and extrapolate trends in the use of American force in the future, exploring how the international environment has changed since the end of the Cold War.
NATO's war on Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999 was unleashed in the name of democracy and human rights. This view was challenged by the world's three largest countries, India, China and Russia, who saw the bombing of Serbia and Kosovo as a naked attempt to assert US dominance in an unstable world. In the West, media networks were joined by substantial sectors of left/liberal opinion in supporting the war. Nonetheless, a wide variety of figures emerged to challenge the prevailing consensus. Their work, gathered here for the first time, forms a collection of key statements and anti-war writings from some of democracy's most eloquent dissidents-Noam Chomsky, Harold Pinter, Edward Said and many others-who provide carefully researched examinations of the real motives for the US action, dissections and critiques of the ideology of 'humanitarian warfare', and chartings of the unnecessary tragedy of a region laid to waste in the pursuance of Great Power politics. This reader presents some of the most important texts on NATO's Balkan crusade and forms a major intervention in the debate on global geo-political strategy after the Cold War.
In 1853, the Crimean War began as an intensely romantic affair, with officers and soldiers alike taking to the fray with phrases like "death or glory" on their tongues and in their hearts. Nothing stands out more starkly than the toughness of the soldiers who fought so savagely, seldom complained, and only rarely collapsed under war's terrible and relentless stresses. Acts of astonishing bravery, many of them by doctors, women, and children, were commonplace. But so was callousness and brutality. The war soon became an impersonal, long-range killing match that resembled, far in advance, the trench warfare of World War I. It became a showcase for bad generalship and bureaucratic bungling. Men, women, and children died of hunger, cold, and disease many times more often than they were killed by rifles or the most massive artillery barrages the world have ever seen."Death or Glory" is not a mere battle chronology; rather, it is a narrative immersion into conditions during what became arguably the most tragically botched military campaign, from all sides, in modern European history--and the most immediate precedent to the American Civil War. Edgerton paints a vivid picture of the war, from the Charge of the Light Brigade and the heroics of Florence Nightingale to the British soldiers who, simply unable to take the misery, starvation, and cholera any longer, took their own lives. He describes how leaders failed their men again and again; how women and children became unseen heroes; how the universally despised Turks fought their own war; and, finally and perhaps most importantly, why so many fought so bravely in what seemed a futile cause. By comparing these experiences with those of Northernand Southern soldiers during the more well-documented American Civil War, Edgerton contributes a new perspective on how soldiers in the mid-19th century experienced war, death, and glory.
This year begins the centennial of the Philippine War, one of the most controversial and poorly understood events in American history. The war thrust the U.S. into the center of Pacific and Asian politics, with important and sometimes tragic consequences. It kept the Filipinos under colonial overlordship for another five decades and subjected them to American political, cultural, and economic domination. In the first comprehensive study in over six decades, Linn provides a definitive treatment of military operations in the Philippines. From the pitched battles of the early war to the final campaigns against guerrillas, Linn traces the entire course of the conflict. More than an overview of Filipino resistance and American pacification, this is a detailed study of the fighting in the "boondocks." In addition to presenting a detailed military history of the war, Linn challenges previous interpretations. Rather than being a clash of armies or societies, the war was a series of regional struggles that differed greatly from island to island. By shifting away from the narrow focus on one or two provinces to encompass the entire archipelago, Linn offers a more thorough understanding of the entire war. Linn also dispels many of the misunderstandings and historical inaccuracies surrounding the Philippine War. He repudiates the commonly held view of American soldiers "civilizing with a Krag" and clarifies such controversial incidents as the Balangiga Massacre and the Waller Affair. Exhaustively researched and engagingly written, "The Philippine War" will become the standard reference on America's forgotten conflict and a major contribution to the study of guerrilla warfare.
Drawing on nearly 40 years of news writing focused on military issues, George C. Wilson takes the reader through a fascinating, but little understood, process: how the Pentagon and Congress spend $500,000 a minute on guns and soldiers. Interweaving personal stories and insights from the major players throughout a fast-paced narrative, Wilson provides an inside look at how the 105th Congress and the Pentagon battled for a 250 billion dollar defense budget. Wilson demystifies the "realpolitik" among the individual armed forces and highly partisan members of Congress, as well as civilian and military leaders, thus giving a sense of the trade-offs involved on all sides. Exclusive interviews with major players-including Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, Rep. David R. Obey, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh H. Shelton-relate their distinctive perspectives on how Congress allocates and the Pentagon spends defense dollars. Wilson takes a look ahead-with a critical eye-to the wars of the next century and asks tough questions: Are we ready for future wars or are we still preparing for the last war, the Cold War? Does the Pentagon need more money? Or can it really do its job with less?
No country has worked harder to coerce others to adopt liberal institutions than the United States. This book examines the promotion of democracy during U.S. military interventions in the twentieth century, showing it to be one of the central ways in which the United States attempts to reconcile the potential contradictions involved in being a liberal great power. Examining interventions from the Spanish-American War through recent actions in Bosnia, Mark Peceny shows how the United States has encouraged the institution of free elections and other liberal reforms--often at the point of bayonets. Peceny applies statistical analysis to ninety-three cases of intervention and presents six case studies: Cuba and the Philippines after the Spanish-American War, Vietnam during the Kennedy administration, El Salvador during Reagan's first term, and Clinton's interventions in Haiti and Bosnia. By forging a synthesis of realist and domestic liberal approaches, Peceny illuminates the roles that both security concerns and liberal values play in the formulation and implementation of foreign policy. He shows how presidents often initially choose proliberalization policies to serve U.S. security interests and how Congress exerts pressure when presidents fail to take the initiative. Under these circumstances, he shows, presidents use the promotion of democracy to build domestic political consensus and to legitimize interventions. Although the United States has failed to promote democracy in most interventions, Peceny demonstrates that it has often had a profound and positive impact on the democratization of target states. His study offers new insight into the relationship between American power, the promotion of democracy, and prospects for the liberal peace in the decades to come.
By age 35, General George B. McClellan (1826-1885), designated the "Young Napoleon," was the commander of all the Northern armies. He forged the Army of the Potomac into a formidable battlefield foe, and fought the longest and largest campaign of the time as well as the single bloodiest battle in the nation's history. Yet, he also wasted two supreme opportunities to bring the Civil War to a decisive conclusion. In 1864 he challenged Abraham Lincoln as the Democratic candidate for the presidency. Neither an indictment nor an apologia, this biography draws entirely on primary sources to create a splendidly incisive portrait of this charismatic, controversial general who, for the first eighteen months of the conflict, held the fate of the union in his unsteady hands.
An official account of the crisis in the Persian Gulf that traces the Canadian Forces’ commitment to the Gulf region in response to Iraqi aggression in 1990-1991. This title includes text in French. |
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