This concise history examines the origins of the Korean War, the war itself and the major players.

The Korean War dramatically shaped the Cold War and provided a dress rehearsal for Vietnam ten years later. This book examines the social history of the conflict including material on the newly racially integrated US fighting forces, war and disease, women and the war, and life in the Prisoner of War camps. Unlike other Korean War books, Steven Hugh Lee carries the story through to the Geneva Conference in the spring of 1954 - the last major international effort before recent years to negotiate a permanent peace for the Korean peninsula.

The people of the Balkan Peninsula - Greeks, Turks, Slavs, Croats, Serbs - have struggled for centuries with a legacy of oppression and fractiousness. Divided by geography, language, religion, and above all, ethnic affiliation, they have embraced uncompromising nationalism in a perpetual, sometimes brutal drive to assert their rich cultural identities. Consequently, this tiny area has loomed large on the international landscape throughout the 20th century, destabilizing empires, sparking global war and ever threatening to upset the balance of power in Europe.

This is a wide-ranging and comprehensive survey of warfare from the outbreak of the American War of Independence to the British conquest of Egypt. Drawing on both primary and secondary sources this book offers an unrivalled account of civil and international conflicts involving Western powers, integrating both naval and land warfare. This book covers military capability as well as conflict, social and political contexts as well as weaponry, tactics and strategy. As well as examining such major conflicts as the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the American Civil War and the Wars of German Unification, this book redresses the imbalance of previous treatments by examining other important conflicts, for example, those in Latin America, as well as insurgency and counter-insurgency in Europe. This book's global perspective provides for a more reliable assessment of what constitutes military capability. In so doing, the author challenges the technological determinism and linear conceptions of developments in military science that continue to characterise much of military history. Instead the author reveals a much more complex dynamic, indeed going so far as to question the idea of 'modernity' itself. Bold in scope, and cutting-edge in its interpretations, this book offers much for the student, general reader and professional historian alike.

Although much has been written about the conduct of the war in South Africa, very little has been written about how it was regarded on the world stage by powers both great and small. This collection of specially commissioned essays seeks for the first time to put the Boer War (1899-1902) in its international context. Each of the core chapters focuses on the perspective of one country (France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, and the United States) and assesses the extent to which each national government tried to capitalize on Britain's embarrassment and distraction while often entangled in imperialist ventures of their own. The anglophobia of many of the nations' press, the activities of pro-Boer organizations, and the shaping of public and parliamentary opinion are examined alongside the real politics and diplomatic considerations that took precedence. In addition, there are summation chapters that examine both the origins of the war and its legacy for Britain's expansionist ambitions. Together these essays present the latest findings on a watershed in international relations that heralded substantive changes of attitude and policy on the part of national governments towards their dependencies and had far-reaching consequences for alliance systems and the international balance of power at the start of the twentieth century.

This account of the Gulf War reveals its importance from a military and political point of view, highlighting how modern military technology made possible, with relative ease, a victory that would have been nearly impossible by traditional means. It has become fashionable to trivialize the impressive military achievements of the Coatition victory over Iraq, but Bin, Hill, and Jones demonstrate that the Gulf War represents a defining moment in military and political history. The text includes numerous firsthand eyewitness accounts.

Readers will discover why a multinational coalition deployed 800,000 soldiers to the Middle East to challenge to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. They will find out the truth behind political maneuvering by nations involved in the conflict, as well as those on the sidelines, and they will learn the details of the various weapons systems employed. The authors analyze the aftermath of the war and draw important lessons from it. This book provides an authoritative and provocative review of what will surely be remembered as one of the key events of the last half century.

This compelling book provides the first global history of the evolution of combined operations since Antiquity. Beginning with amphibious warfare in the ancient world of the Romans, Vikings, and Mongols, Jeremy Black advances through the Gunpowder Revolution, the rise of maritime empires and the formation of nation-states, the early Industrial Revolution and the adaptation of modern technology to warfare, the twentieth-century world wars, the Cold War, and concluding with the modern age of irregular and asymmetric conflict. Black's informed and analytical narrative emphasizes conflicts around the world, focusing not only on leading powers but also regional combatants. His case studies include amphibious operations in the Mongol invasions of Japan, the War for American Independence, and the Gallipoli campaign of World War I. He also explores the development and effectiveness of airborne operations as a way to project military power inland. Offering a balanced assessment of strategic, operational, and technical developments over time, Black considers both the potential and limitations of amphibious and airborne warfare-past, present, and future.

This volume derives from an unprecedented seminar held at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in November 1990. At the seminar, leading Western diplomatic and military historians and Vietnam scholars met with prominent Vietnamese Communists to reflect on the Vietnam War. The book contains four parts: The Vietnamese Revolution and Political/Military strategy; the war from the American side; the war in the South and Cambodia; and retrospective and postwar issues. In addition to Jane Werner and Luu Doan Huynh, the contributors are Mark Bradley, William Duiker, David Elliott, Christine White, George Vickers, James Harrison, George Herring, Ronald Spector, Paul Joseph, Jeffrey Clarke, Ngo Vinh Long, Benedict Kiernan, Marilyn Young, Keith Taylor, and Tran Van Tra. General Tra was Commander of the People's Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam from 1963 to 1975. His eye-opening analysis of the Tet Offensive has never before been available in English.

Concerns for the lives of soldiers and innocent civilians have come to underpin Western, and particularly American, warfare. Yet this new mode of conflict faces a dilemma: these two norms have opened new areas of vulnerability that have been systematically exploited by non-state adversaries. This strategic behaviour creates a trade-off, forcing decision-makers to have to choose between saving soldiers and civilians in target states. Sebastian Kaempf examines the origin and nature of this dilemma, and in a detailed analysis of the US conflicts in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq, investigates the ways the US has responded, assessing the legal, moral, and strategic consequences. Scholars and students of military and strategic studies, international relations and peace and conflict studies will be interested to read Kaempf's analysis of whether the US or its adversaries have succeeded in responding to this central dilemma of contemporary warfare.

A distinguished group of specialists examine afresh issues of particular concern to historians of the Spanish Armada. In particular they look at the contemporary Spanish view of Philip II's imperialism (Watson); at the composition and equipping of the fleet (Martin, Thompson, O'Donnell); at the unpredictable influence of outside agents, notably the Dutch fleet and the appalling weather of 1588 and its consequences (Schokkenbroek, Daultrey, Hogueras and San Pio); and at the reflection of the Armada in the myths and literature of the time (Fernandez-Armesto, Calvar, the editors). The editors also translate and annotate de Cuellar's remarkable first-hand account of sailing with the Armada.

The epic story of a man born into Caribbean slavery, who defeated Napoleon's armies and crowned himself a free black king. How did a man born enslaved on a plantation triumph over Napoleon's invading troops and become king of the first free black nation in the Americas? This is the forgotten, remarkable story of Henry Christophe. Christophe fought as a child soldier in the American War of Independence, before serving in the Haitian Revolution as one of Toussaint Louverture's top generals. Following Haitian independence, Christophe crowned himself King Henry I. His attempts to build a modern black state won the support of leading British abolitionists-but his ambition helped to plunge his country into civil war. Christophe saw himself as an Enlightenment ruler, and his kingdom produced great literary works, epic fortresses and opulent palaces. He was a proud anti-imperialist and fought off French plots against him. Yet the Haitian people chafed under his authoritarian rule. Today, all that remains is Christophe's mountaintop Citadelle, Haiti's sole World Heritage site-a monument to a revolutionary black monarchy, in a world of empire and slavery.

A century ago Frederick Lanchester formulated a mathematical model of combat which suggested that the combat power of a military force was proportional to the product of the individual effectiveness of the units in the force and the square of the number of units deployed. This model reinforced a long-established faith in the importance of superior numbers. However, successive historical studies failed to identify any clear relationship between the numbers and losses in opposing forces. This Element analyses American Civil War battles, and shows that the ratio of losses incurred was inversely proportional to the ratio of numbers effectively engaged. This result demonstrates that the numbers of fighting units in a military force are less important than the ability of those units to get into action and inflict losses on the enemy. This result demonstrates the limitations of the Square Law, and should prevent it from being applied indiscriminately.

The six monarchies on the Arabian Peninsula have devoted enormous sums to defense in past decades. Nevertheless, the gap between their expensive armaments and their capacity to deter aggression and/or project military strength has narrowed but little in that time. This Element takes a political economy approach and argues that structural factors inherent in the Gulf states' political systems prohibit civilian oversight of the defense sector and are responsible for this outcome. Lax restraints on military outlays, in turn, enable widespread corruption, lead to large-scale waste, and account for the purchasing of unneeded, unsuitable, and incompatible weapons systems. The Element explores the challenges caused by plummeting oil prices and the resulting budget cuts and considers the development of domestic defense industries in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, intended as a part of their economic diversification program. The setbacks of the Saudi-led coalition's on-going war in Yemen starkly illustrate the narrative.

In this fascinating foray into the millennia-long relationship between science and military power, "the world's best science communicator" (Times Literary Supplement), astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and writer Avis Lang examine how the methods and tools of astrophysics have been enlisted in the service of war. "The overlap is strong, and it's a two- way street", say the authors, because the astrophysicists and military planners care about many of the same things: multi- spectral detection, ranging, tracking, imaging, high ground, nuclear fusion and access to space. Tyson and Lang call it a "curiously complicit" alliance. Spanning early celestial navigation to satellite-enabled warfare, Accessory to War is a richly researched and provocative examination of the intersection of science, technology, industry and power that will introduce Tyson's millions of fans to yet another dimension of how the universe has shaped our lives and our world.

The decision to mount an armed foreign intervention is one of the most consequential that a US president can take. This book sets out to explain why and when presidents choose to use force. The book examines decisions to use force throughout the post-Cold War period, via flashpoints including the Balkans, the 'War on Terror' and the Middle East. It develops new explanations for variation in the use of force in US foreign policy by theorizing and demonstrating the effects of the displacement and repression of ideas within and across different US presidential administrations, from George H.W. Bush to Donald Trump. For students, scholars and anyone with an interest in international relations and global security, this book is an original perspective on a defining issue of recent decades.

Military historian John Keegan's groundbreaking analysis of combat and warfare
The Face of Battle is military history from the battlefield: a look at the direct experience of individuals at the "point of maximum danger." Without the myth-making elements of rhetoric and xenophobia, and breaking away from the stylized format of battle descriptions, John Keegan has written what is probably the definitive model for military historians. And in his scrupulous reassessment of three battles representative of three different time periods, he manages to convey what the experience of combat meant for the participants, whether they were facing the arrow cloud at the battle of Agincourt, the musket balls at Waterloo, or the steel rain of the Somme.
"The best military historian of our generation." -Tom Clancy

Strategy and Defence Planning: Meeting the Challenge of Uncertainty explores and examines why and how security communities prepare purposefully for their future defence. The author explains that defence planning is the product of interplay among political process, historical experience, and the logic of strategy. The theory of strategy best reveals both the nature and the working of defence planning. Political 'ends', strategic 'ways', and military 'means' all fed by reigning, if not always recognized, assumptions, organize the subject well with a template that can serve any time, place, and circumstance. The book is designed to help understanding of what can appear to be a forbiddingly complex as well as technical subject. A good part of the problem for officials charged with defence planning duties is expressed in the second part of the book's title. The real difficulty, which rarely is admitted by those tasked with defence planning duty, is that defence planning can only be guesswork. But, because defence preparation is always expensive, not untypically is politically unpopular, yet obviously can be supremely important, claims to knowledge about the truly unknowable persist. In truth, we cannot do defence planning competently, because our ignorance of the future precludes understanding of what our society will be shown by future events to need. The challenge faced by the author was to identify ways in which our problems with the inability to know the future in any detail in advance-the laws of nature, in other words-may best be met and mitigated. Professor Gray argues that our understanding of human nature, of politics, and of strategic history, does allow us to make prudent choices in defence planning that hopefully will prove 'good enough'.

This book analyzes examples of strategic engagement in order to identify the factors which contribute to the success or failure of defence diplomacy in preventing interstate conflict. For more than a century, nations have engaged in defence diplomacy to cultivate mutual understanding and mitigate conflict. A subset of defence diplomacy is strategic engagement, defined as peacetime defence diplomacy between nations that are actual or potential adversaries. This book analyzes three cases of strategic engagement in order to elucidate the factors which contribute to the success or failure of this diplomacy in preventing conflict. It uses an inductive framework to compare strategic engagement in the following cases: Anglo- German defence diplomacy prior to World War I; U.S.-Soviet defence diplomacy during the Cold War; and post-Cold War U.S.-China defence diplomacy. Based upon archival, literature, and personal interview research, the book argues that defence diplomacy can mitigate the risk of interstate conflict between potential adversaries. The lessons learned from this book can be employed to discern the significant elements conducive to achieving a successful outcome of strategic engagement and averting conflict or even war. This book will be of much interest to students of defence studies, diplomacy studies, foreign policy and international relations.

In the early 2000s, the BBC launched its biggest oral history project, recording the lives and experiences of the ordinary people who lived through World War II. It amounted to 47,000 testimonies and over 400 diaries and letters, all of which have remained unexplored in the archives for twenty years – until now.

In The People's War, John Willis reveals untold stories of everyday bravery, moments of terror, and tales of life-affirming community, that guide us through the years of the World War II. From soldiers in North Africa and prisoners of war in East Asia, to evacuees in the British countryside and women in the factories, The People's War is a truly ambitious and comprehensive journey through a devastating and pivotal period of our history, as you've never read before.

Follow the remarkable stories of ordinary individuals who lived, fought, grieved, loved, and survived through the war.

The second volume of the Handbook of Defense Economics addresses defense needs, practices, threats, and policies in the modern era of globalization. This new era concerns the enhanced cross-border flows of all kinds (e.g., capital and labor flows, revolutionary rhetoric, guerrillas, and terrorists) including the spillovers of benefits and costs associated with public goods and transnational externalities (i.e., uncompensated interdependencies affecting two or more nations). These ever-increasing flows mean that military armaments and armies are less able to keep out security threats. Thus, novel defense and security barriers are needed to protect borders that are porous to terrorists, pollutants, political upheavals, and conflicts. Even increased trade and financial flows imply novel security challenges and defenses. Globalization also underscores the importance of a new set of institutions (e.g., the European Union and global governance networks) and agents (e.g., nongovernmental organizations and partnerships).
This volume addresses the security challenges in this age of globalization, where conflicts involve novel tactics, new technologies, asymmetric warfare, different venues, and frightening weapons. Volume 2 contains topics not covered in volume 1 - i.e., civil wars, peacekeeping, economic sanctions, the econometrics of arms races, conversion, peace economics, and the interface of trade, peace, and democracy. Volume 2 also revisits topics from volume 1, where there has been a significant advancement of knowledge - i.e., conflict analysis, terrorism, arms races, arms trade, military manpower, and arms industries. All of the main securities concerns of today are analyzed. Chapters are written by the leading contributors in the topic areas.
*Up-to-date surveys on the pressing defense issues: theoretical, empirical and policy issues.
*Coverage of theoretical and empirical studies of terrorism.
*Contributions by the leading researchers in the field of defense economics.

Artificial Intelligence and Global Security: Future Trends, Threats and Considerations brings a much-needed perspective on the impact of the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in military affairs. Experts forecast that AI will shape future military operations in ways that will revolutionize warfare. That is why there is an urgent need to consider the potential ethical and moral consequences related to enabling AI to make decisions that will shape the future world. This book masterfully presents a vision of a future that is replete with integrated networks of artificial intelligence that are designed to both defend and attack nations. Artificial Intelligence and Global Security: Future Trends, Threats and Considerations has rendered a major service to those interested in the impact of artificial intelligence technologies and its contribution to the evolution and revolution in military warfare. It also explores the implications of AI for the individual, for personal identity, for society, and for global security; it examines the impact of AI on Just War Theory; and it offers diverse perspectives on the consequences of the integration of AI in our daily lives and society.

Looking beyond the events of the second intifada and 9/11, this book reveals how targeted killing is intimately embedded in both Israeli and US statecraft, and in the problematic relationship between sovereign authority and lawful violence underpinning the modern state system. It details the legal and political issues raised in targeted killing as it has emerged in practice, including questions of domestic constitutional authority, the use of force in international law, the law of belligerent occupation, the law of targeting and human rights law. The distinctive nature of Israeli and US targeted killing is analysed in terms of the compulsion of legality characteristic of the liberal constitutional state, a compulsion that demands the ability to distinguish between legal 'targeted killing' and extra-legal 'political assassination'. The effect is a highly legalized framework for the extraterritorial killing of designated terrorists that may significantly affect the international law of force.

Philippa Garson worked for the brave and upstart Weekly Mail during the early 1990s, where she covered the civil war between Inkatha and the ANC/ANC-aligned forces. Undeniable is an account of that period of her life, where she and colleagues Mondli Makhanya, Kevin Carter, Anton Harber and others tracked and discovered the involvement of a ‘third force’, which was fuelling the killing frenzy.

Several times Philippa escaped with her life. Many others did not, and here Philippa tells of the casualties, victims of war and colleagues, who did not. Her relationship across the colour line, drinking and carousing during the off-hours in an effort to diminish the pain of what she had witnessed, are all part of this brilliant account of this period of South Africa’s history. A period that has not been investigated sufficiently, and which escaped much scrutiny from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Rogues, lovers, journalists, warlords and victims are all part of Philippa’s story, and what it was like to investigate crimes which arose from apartheid, at the same time as examining her and her family’s white privilege.

This book analyzes examples of strategic engagement in order to identify the factors which contribute to the success or failure of defence diplomacy in preventing interstate conflict. For more than a century, nations have engaged in defence diplomacy to cultivate mutual understanding and mitigate conflict. A subset of defence diplomacy is strategic engagement, defined as peacetime defence diplomacy between nations that are actual or potential adversaries. This book analyzes three cases of strategic engagement in order to elucidate the factors which contribute to the success or failure of this diplomacy in preventing conflict. It uses an inductive framework to compare strategic engagement in the following cases: Anglo- German defence diplomacy prior to World War I; U.S.-Soviet defence diplomacy during the Cold War; and post-Cold War U.S.-China defence diplomacy. Based upon archival, literature, and personal interview research, the book argues that defence diplomacy can mitigate the risk of interstate conflict between potential adversaries. The lessons learned from this book can be employed to discern the significant elements conducive to achieving a successful outcome of strategic engagement and averting conflict or even war. This book will be of much interest to students of defence studies, diplomacy studies, foreign policy and international relations.

The publication of The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road in 1972 marked the birth of the 'new military history', which emphasized military organization - mobilization, pay, supply, morale and, above all, logistics - rather than military 'events' such as sieges and battles. Geoffrey Parker studied one of the great logistical feats of early modern Europe: how Habsburg Spain managed to maintain and mobilize the largest army in Europe in an 80-year effort to suppress the Dutch Revolt, at 700 miles' distance. Using a unique combination of surviving records, he presented strikingly the logistical problems of fighting wars in early modern Europe, and demonstrated why Spain failed to suppress the Dutch Revolt. The book has been constantly cited since its first publication in English (with translations into Spanish and Dutch). This revised second edition includes some new sources and updates some references but otherwise remains faithful to the original version.

The infamous Rape of Nanjing looms like a dark shadow over the history of Asia in the 20th century, and is among the most widely recognized chapters of World War II in China. By contrast, the story of the month-long campaign before this notorious massacre has never been told in its entirety. Nanjing 1937 by Peter Harmsen fills this gap. This is the follow-up to Harmsen's best-selling Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze, and begins where that book left off. In stirring prose, it describes how the Japanese Army, having invaded the mainland and emerging victorious from the Battle of Shanghai, pushed on toward the capital Nanjing in a crushing advance that confirmed its reputation for bravery and savagery in equal measure. While much of the struggle over Shanghai had carried echoes of the grueling war in the trenches two decades earlier, the Nanjing campaign was a fast-paced mobile operation in which armor and air power played mayor roles. It was blitzkrieg two years before Hitler's invasion of Poland. Facing the full might of modern, mechanized warfare, China's resistance was heroic, but ultimately futile. As in Shanghai, the battle for Nanjing was more than a clash between Chinese and Japanese. Soldiers and citizens of a variety of nations witnessed or took part in the hostilities. German advisors, American journalists and British diplomats all played important parts in this vast drama. And a new power appeared on the scene: Soviet pilots dispatched by Stalin to challenge Japan's control of the skies. This epic tale is told with verve and attention to detail by Harmsen, a veteran East Asia correspondent who consolidates his status as the foremost chronicler of World War II in China with this path-breaking work of narrative history.