An exciting trip back in time to the American Revolution, "a reminder of what history can be when written by a master."--Publishers Weekly

Some of the most active debate about the Vietnam War today is prompted by those who believe that the United States could have won the war either through an improved military strategy or through more enlightened social policies. Eric Bergerud takes issue with both of these positions. Carefully analyzing the entire course of the war in a single key province, "The Dynamics of Defeat" shows that the Vietnam War was a tragedy in the true sense of the word: American policy could not have been much different than it was and could only have led to failure.Examining the war at the operational level, where political policy is translated into military action, "The Dynamics of Defeat "provides a case study of the efficacy on the ground of policies emanating from Washington. Many of the policy alternatives now proposed in hindsight were actually attempted in Hau Nghia to one degree or another. Bergerud is able on that basis to critique these policies and to offer his own conclusions in a thought-provoking but utterly unpolemical fashion.Based on extensive research in U.S. Army archives and many personal interviews with those who experienced the war in Hau Nghia, "The Dynamics of Defeat" is a story full of violence, frustration, and numbing despair, but also one rich with lessons for American foreign policy.

An assessment of the prospects for building down the NATO/Warsaw Pact military confrontation in Europe by negotiated and unilateral measures. The book also gives a far-sighted view of an organization of defence in Europe that will be set up to replace the existing security organizations.

The book focuses on peacekeeping as a device for maintaining international stability, and for remedying situations in which states are in conflict with each other. Alan James examines around fifty cases, explaining the background to each one, and analysing its political significance. There is also a detailed examination of the concept of peacemaking, and a look into its increasing importance in international affairs, emphasised by the fact that the United Nations won the Nobel Peace Prize for its peacekeeping activities.

The story of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's life, begun in Bring Me a Unicorn, continues in this fifth and final published volume of her diaries and letters. This record of the Lindberghs' wartime years is emotionally charged by the struggle between the American isolationists, who counted among their membership Charles Lindbergh, and the interventionists, who included Anne's mother and sister. In her introduction, the author sets the historical record of these years straight, fairly and equitably, before letting the diaries and letters speak with the voice of anguished immediacy. A gentle, intensely responsive woman and a pacifist, Anne experienced the conflicts of the war years -- within her own family as well as in the world -- with excruciated sensitivity. She speaks here of the many aspects of her life -- supporting an embattled husband, creating several new homes, bearing and raising children, pursuing her writing career -- and the reader sees her as she was, valiant and vulnerable, loving and beloved. What emerges from these pages is the story of the bond between Charles and Anne: two extraordinary people, tested in stress and found not wanting.

A comprehensive analysis of the relationship between political judgement, bureaucratic advice and military intelligence in the mismanagement of Britain's Falklands policy. The author argues that the Junta's responsibility for the invasion does not exonerate British decision-makers.

For the romantic generation of Americans in the mid-nineteenth century, the Mexican war was a grand exercise in self-identity: it legitimized the young republic's convictions of mission and destiny to a doubting world. This book examines the war's place in the popular imagination of the era. The Mexican War was the first American conflict to be widely reported in the press, as well as the first to be waged against an alien in a distant, strange, and exotic land. For mid-century Americans, the author shows, the war provided a window onto the outside world, promoting an awareness - if not an understanding - of a people and a land unlike any they had known before. Drawing on military and travel accounts, newspaper dispatches, and a host of other sources, the author recreates the mood and feeling of the period - its unbounded optimism and its patriotic pride.

The seventh edition of this highly successful textbook analyzes the history, evolution, and processes of national security policies. It examines national security from two fundamental fault lines - the end of the Cold War and the evolution of contemporary terrorism dating from the 9/11 terrorist attacks - and traces their path up to ISIS and beyond. The book considers how the resulting era of globalization and geopolitics guides policy. Placing these trends in conceptual and historical context and following them through military, semimilitary, and nonmilitary concerns, National Security treats its subject as a nuanced and subtle phenomenon that encompasses everything from the global to the individual with the nation at its core. New to the Seventh Edition An assessment of the impact of the Trump presidency on national security and relevant domestic policies, including border security and energy security matters. The continuing impact and evolution of terrorism as a security problem, with notable emphasis on the decline of the Islamic State (IS) and what terrorist threats are likely to succeed it. A description of the cyber security problem with an emphasis on Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election and beyond. A revised delineation of the geographic and substantive challenges facing the United States in the form of a chapter on "lethal landscapes," emphasizing the rise of China as a global rival and opponent in Asia and an attempt to deal with state aspirants like the Kurds. This book will continue to be highly beneficial to students and scholars working and studying in security studies, military and strategic studies, defense studies, foreign policy, US politics and international relations.

The memoirs of the legendary Skorzeny appear here in its first unabridged English edition. Skorzeny's fame began with the successful raid to free Benito Mussolini from the Gran Sasso, Italy in 1943. His elite commandos surprised Italian guards in a daring daytime raid. Hitler presented Skorzeny with the Knight's Cross for this operation. Not only is this raid explained in minute detail, many of Skorzeny's previously unknown operations in all European and Russian theatres of World War II are given in detailed accounts. Operation Griffin - the innovative use of German Kommandos dressed as American soldiers working behind enemy lines - during the Ardennes Offensive in 1944 is given in-depth coverage, as is Skorzeny's rememberances on the Malmedy massacre. Skorzeny also offers his insights into the mysterious Rudolf Hess mission to England in May 1941, and offers a behind the scenes look at German and Russian secret military intelligence, and the workings of Canaris and Gehlen.

After recounting his early days as a naval cadet, including a voyage to the Far East aboard the cruiser _K ln_, and as the navigator/observer of the floatplane carried by the pocket battleship _Admiral Scheer_ during the Spanish Civil War, the author describes his flying training as a Stuka pilot. The author's naval dive-bomber Gruppe was incorporated into the Luftwaffe upon the outbreak of war. What follows is a fascinating Stuka pilot's-eye-view of some of the most famous and historic battles and campaigns of the early war years: the Blitzkrieg in France, the Dunkirk Evacuation, the Battle of Britain, the bombing of Malta, North Africa, Tobruk, Crete and, finally, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The author also takes the reader behind the scenes into the day-to-day life of his unit and brings the members of his Gruppe to vivid life; describing their off-duty antics and mourning their loss in action. The story ends when he himself is shot down in flames by a Soviet fighter and severely burned. He was to spend the remainder of the war in various staff appointments.

Use of military force without a declaration of war has been a weapon in the arsenal of U.S. presidents for the last 200 years. Force has become an increasingly more (relevant) foreign policy action in the post-Cold War world. This comprehensive resource approaches the study of the use of force from several theoretical approaches: the "historical record," which includes regional analyses of Latin America/the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, the Middle East/North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa; the "data setS" that focus on the use of force; the "international level," which includes democratic peace, multilateralism, and Yugoslavia; "domestic politicS," which includes Congress, the media, and public opinion; "executive-congressional" relations, including political and constitutional issues; "ethicS"; and "theories of decision making" on the use of force.

The volume includes a list of important concepts and terms and a selected bibliography, as well as suggested readings following each entry, and an index. It will be of interest to students and scholars in political science, U.S. history, international relations, and foreign policy. Academic libraries and selected public libraries will also be interested in this comprehensive volume.

In this razor-sharp analysis, TomDispatch.com commentator Michael Schwartz shows how the US occupation is fuelling civil war in Iraq and beyond. He punctures all the myths used to sell the idea of an endless war in this incisive and hard-hitting argument.

Only three short years after the end of the Japanese occupation, war came again to Malaya. The Chinese-backed guerrillas called it the War of the Running Dogs - their contemptuous term for those in Malaya who remained loyal to the British.

The British Government referred to this bloody and costly struggle as the 'Malayan Emergency'. Yet it was a war that lasted twelve years and cost thousands of lives. By the time it was over Malaya had obtained its independence - but on British, not on Chinese or Communist terms.

Here is the war as it was. Here are the planters and their wives on their remote rubber estates, the policemen, the generals and the soldiers, the Malays, Chinese and Indians of a polyglot country, all fighting an astute, ruthless, and well organized enemy.

In this study Brian Bosworth looks at the critical period between 329 and 325 BC, when Alexander the Great was active in Central Asia and what is now Pakistan. He documents Alexander's relations with the peoples he conquered, and addresses the question of what it meant to be on the receiving end of the conquest, drawing a bleak picture of massacre and repression. At the same time Alexander's views of empire are investigated, his attitude to his subjects, and the development of his concepts of personal divinity and universal monarchy. Analogies are thus drawn with the Spanish conquest of Mexico, which has a comparable historiographical tradition and parallels many of Alexander's dealings with his subjects. Although of concern to the specialist, this book is equally directed at the general reader interested in the history of Alexander and the morality of empire.

The Allied invasion of Northern France was the greatest combined operation in the history of warfare. Up until now it has been recorded from the attackers' point of view whereas the defenders' angle has been largely ignored. While the Germans knew an invasion was inevitable, no-one knew where or when it would fall. Those manning Hitler's mighty Atlantic Wall may have felt secure in their bunkers but they had no conception of the fury and fire that was about to break. After the initial assaults of June established an Allied bridgehead, a state of stale-mate prevailed. The Germans fought with great courage hindered by lack of supplies and overwhelming Allied control of the air. When the Allies finally broke out the collapse was catastrophic with Patton's army in the East sweeping round and Monty's in the West putting remorseless pressure on the hard pressed defenders. The Falaise Gap became a graveyard of German men and equipment. To read the war from the losing side is a sobering and informative experience.

A highly readable history of the military and political events of World War One, this wide-ranging book begins with the state of Europe before the war then embarks on major chapters chronicling the war a year at a time. Major battles are interspersed with sections detailing the weapons used from dreadnoughts and anti-aircraft guns to U-boats and heavy field artillery, with specification boxes providing key technical details on each weapon. A final chapter looks at the aftermath of war and the newly emerging European states. All aspects of the conflict are covered, from common illnesses through to the use of propaganda and atrocities on all sides. Key fact boxes delve into the lives of the political leaders, generals and fighters, and also discuss the political movements which flourished. The first battle of Ypres, battles in Champagne and Artois, the winter offensive against Russia, and the breaking of the Hindenburg line are all discussed in detail. It chronicles the course of each year of the war, and details the major events, including the battle of the Marne, the first day of the Somme, the race to the sea, and the stalemate on the Italian front. Fascinating fact boxes highlight the lives of important political leaders and generals, such as Alexei Brusilov, Henri-Philippe Petain, Douglas Haig, David Lloyd George and President Woodrow Wilson. Illustrated with compelling and evocative photographs taken during World War One, and featuring informative maps and battleplans.

V K Triandafillov was an outstanding young commander who shaped the military theory and doctrine of the Red Army as it came to grips with the problem of future war. A conscript soldier who rose through the ranks to become an officer in the Tsarist Army, he saw combat in both the First World War and the Russian Civil War. A student of some of the finest military specialists teaching the first generation of young Red commanders, he sought to link theory and practice by using past experience to comprehend future combat.

2004 Washington State Book Award Finalist Judgment without Trial reveals that long before the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government began making plans for the eventual internment and later incarceration of the Japanese American population. Tetsuden Kashima uses newly obtained records to trace this process back to the 1920s, when a nascent imprisonment organization was developed to prepare for a possible war with Japan, and follows it in detail through the war years. Along with coverage of the well-known incarceration camps, the author discusses the less familiar and very different experiences of people of Japanese descent in the Justice and War Departments' internment camps that held internees from the continental U.S. and from Alaska, Hawaii, and Latin America. Utilizing extracts from diaries, contemporary sources, official communications, and interviews, Kashima brings an array of personalities to life on the pages of his book - those whose unbiased assessments of America's Japanese ancestry population were discounted or ignored, those whose works and actions were based on misinformed fears and racial animosities, those who tried to remedy the inequities of the system, and, by no means least, the prisoners themselves. Kashima's interest in this episode began with his own unanswered questions about his father's wartime experiences. From this very personal motivation, he has produced a panoramic and detailed picture - without rhetoric and emotionalism and supported at every step by documented fact - of a government that failed to protect a group of people for whom it had forcibly assumed total responsibility.

Imagine standing over a bomb - you need to make a choice. Remember, your life depends on it. In this extraordinary memoir, Lucy Lewis reveals the hidden world of bomb disposal training and how she came to be the UK's first female bomb disposal expert. From joining Sandhurst to rushing to her first bomb disposal call-out, Lucy's story is full of high stakes and tense situations that for most of us, are beyond comprehension. Lucy's story however is also a deeply inspirational one - joining the military in the 1980s just as women were taking on more dangerous roles, Lucy's every move was watched and scrutinised. This didn't hold her back however, and this is how she broke through the ceiling, fought against sexism and achieved something no woman had ever done before. Lighting the Fuse is an eye-opening memoir, that reveals the hidden world of being a woman in the military and how a young woman with an ordinary background, made history - not just once, but twice.

This work is one of the most widley known military campaigns of the Victorian era. The story is presented through the "After the Battle" series "then and now" photographic theme and contains graphic eyewitness accounts from both sides which aim to convey what it was like to give battle in the 1870s. Additional chapters cover what remains to be seen today, both on the battlefields and in museums; the lonely and sometimes unmarked and forgotten graves of the participants; the British forts and their ruins; plus accounts of those film productions that have since been made of the 1879 war.

On June 23, 1812, Napoleon's Grande Armee, over 500,000 men strong, poured over the Russian border. An equally massive Russian army faced them. The ensuing campaign was a catastrophe for Napoleon. Although the battle of Borodino, which resulted in heavy losses on both sides, allowed Napoleon to enter Moscow, his stay in that empty and decimated city was disastrous. By the time Napoleon had retreated to the Berezina river in late November, his Grande Armee was only a fifth of its original strength. His retreat had become a rout, and his allies began to desert him. In this book, Clausewitz analyzes all the significant players with sharp and enlightening characterizations, and provides perhaps the best eyewitness accounts of the battle of Borodino and the Convention of Tauroggen. The Campaign of 1812 in Russia is a brilliantly observed study of one of the major turning points of history.

This authoritative book begins with the aftermath of World War I, when new political movements and grievances took shape. The main section of the book then covers the war in detail from the advance of Nazi forces across Europe to Operation Barbarossa, and from the battles in North Africa to the war in the Pacific. Life during this time for civilians and prisoners of war is also considered, as is the genocide of these years and the creation of weapons of mass destruction. The final chapter covers the themes which shaped the second half of the 20th century – the establishment of the Iron Curtain, decolonization and the reconstruction of Europe. The brutal history and sheer scope of World War II is well- served by this intelligent and wide-ranging illustrated account of the conflict, told in an accessible style that is perfect for both the general and specialist reader.

In August 334 BC, Alexander the Great invaded the Persian Empire and systematically set about its conquest. At the core of Alexander's army were 10,000 members of the phalanx, the phalangites. Armed with a long pike and fighting in formations up to 16 ranks deep, these grizzled veterans were the mainstay of the Macedonian army.

Facing them were the myriad armies of the peoples that made up the Persian Empire. At the centre of these forces was the formation known as the Immortals: 10,000 elite infantry, armed with spears and bows.

In this study, a noted authority assesses the origins, combat role and battlefield performance of Alexander's phalangites and their Persian opponents in three key battles of the era - the Granicus River, Issus and Gaugamela - at the dawn of a new way of waging war.

In Killer Apps Jeremy Packer and Joshua Reeves provide a detailed account of the rise of automation in warfare, showing how media systems are central to building weapons systems with artificial intelligence in order to more efficiently select and eliminate military targets. Drawing on the insights of a wide range of political and media theorists, Packer and Reeves develop a new theory for understanding how the intersection of media and military strategy drives today's AI arms race. They address the use of media to search for enemies in their analyses of the history of automated radar systems, the search for extraterrestrial life, and the development of military climate science, which treats the changing earth as an enemy. As the authors demonstrate, contemporary military strategy demands perfect communication in an evolving battlespace that is increasingly inhospitable to human frailties, necessitating humans' replacement by advanced robotics, machine intelligence, and media systems.

This is a collection of vignettes written by Soviet junior officers describing their experiences fighting the Mujahideen guerillas. The material was originally collected and published - for internal use only - by the Frunze Combined Arms Staff College to serve as a text on combat against a guerilla force in mountain-desert terrain. It provides examples of good and bad military practice. The lessons are not specific to the Russian forces, and the knowledge gained could apply to future conflicts.