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.

Over the last decade (and indeed ever since the Cold War), the rise of insurgents and non-state actors in war, and their readiness to use terror and other irregular methods of fighting, have led commentators to speak of 'new wars'. They have assumed that the 'old wars' were waged solely between states, and were accordingly fought between comparable and 'symmetrical' armed forces. Much of this commentary has lacked context or sophistication. It has been bounded by norms and theories more than the messiness of reality. Fed by the impact of the 9/11 attacks, it has privileged some wars and certain trends over others. Most obviously it has been historically unaware. But it has also failed to consider many of the other dimensions which help us to define what war is - legal, ethical, religious, and social. The Changing Character of War, the fruit of a five-year interdisciplinary programme at Oxford of the same name, draws together all these themes, in order to distinguish between what is really changing about war and what only seems to be changing. Self-evidently, as the product of its own times, the character of each war is always changing. But if war's character is in flux, its underlying nature contains its own internal consistency. Each war is an adversarial business, capable of generating its own dynamic, and therefore of spiralling in directions that are never totally predictable. War is both utilitarian, the tool of policy, and dysfunctional. This book brings together scholars with world-wide reputations, drawn from a clutch of different disciplines, but united by a common intellectual goal: that of understanding a problem of extraordinary importance for our times. This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.

Erwin Rommel is the arguably the most well-known German general of the Second World War. Revered by his troops and applauded by his enemies, the so-called Desert Fox achieved legendary status for his daring exploits and bold manoeuvres during the North African campaign. In this book, richly illustrated with over 400 images, the author examines the privations and challenges Rommel faced in leading his coalition force. Endeavouring to reach the Nile Delta, we find Rommel's Axis soldiers poorly-prepared to undertake such an audacious operation. Much-admired by his men in the front lines, we discover a demanding and intolerant leader, censured by subordinate officers and mistrusted by his superiors in Berlin. Certainly no diplomat, we observe posed interactions with Italian and junior German officers through an official lens. We note Rommels readiness to take advantage of his enemys weakness and study his extraordinary instinct for waging mobile warfare. We consider his disregard for the decisive factor of supply and view his armys reliance on captured equipment. We learn how this brave and ambitious commander was celebrated by German propaganda when the Wehrmachts fortunes in the East were waning. Conversely, analyse why Winston Churchill honoured him as a daring and skillful opponent. Finally, we picture this energetic, ambitious, at times reckless, commander as he roamed the vast Western Desert battlefield. This is the story of Rommel in North Africa.

The blow to British pride and confidence caused by the crushing defeat of their army in Afghanistan during the winter of 1841/2 compares in its impact to the disaster in New York on 11 September 2001. The British had replaced a popular and effective monarch with a weak one in the mistaken belief that he would keep the Russians at bay. Two years later, nearly all the British and Indian soldiers in the region were killed in a popular uprising. Margaret Kekewichs perceptive new study of the conflict describes the British defeat, their re-occupation of Afghanistan in the spring of 1842, then their final withdrawal at the end of the year. Her account, which is based on the graphic diaries written by two British eyewitnesses, gives a fascinating insight into the conflict in Afghanistan 150 years ago. The story is told by, first, Lady Sale who together with over 100 women, children and soldiers was captured and imprisoned by the Afghans. The second account comes from the Reverend Allen, a young chaplain to the army that invaded Afghanistan in April 1842 to avenge British humiliation and rescue the prisoners. Both these eyewitnesses deplored the follies that had led to war and defeat and also the suffering that was inflicted on many innocent Afghans. At a time when British forces are deeply engaged in another war in Afghanistan, Margaret Kekewich offers a balanced and thought-provoking new perspective on a previous conflict in the region.

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.

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.

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.

The first of two ground-breaking, prize-winning volumes on the Waterloo campaign, this book is based upon a detailed analysis of sources old and new in four languages. It highlights the political stresses between the Allies and their resolution, examining the problems of feeding and paying for 250,000 Allied forces assembling in Belgium during the undeclared war', and how a strategy was thrashed out. Hussey investigates the neglected topic of how the slow and discordant Allies beyond the Rhine hampered the plans of Bl cher and Wellington, thus allowing Napoleon to snatch the initiative from them. Napoleon's operational plan is analysed (and Soult's mistakes in executing it) and accounts from both sides help provide a vivid impression of the fighting on the first day, 15 June. The volume ends with the joint battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras the next day.

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.

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.

This comprehensive introduction to the study of war and genocide presents a disturbing case that the potential for slaughter is deeply rooted in the political, economic, social and ideological relations of the modern world.

Most accounts of war and genocide treat them as separate phenomena. This book thoroughly examines the links between these two most inhuman of human activities. It shows that the generally legitimate business of war and the monstrous crime of genocide are closely related. This is not just because genocide usually occurs in the midst of war, but because genocide is a form of war directed against civilian populations. The book shows how fine the line has been, in modern history, between 'degenerate war' involving the mass destruction of civilian populations, and 'genocide', the deliberate destruction of civilian groups as such.

Written by one of the foremost sociological writers on war, "War and Genocide" has four main features:

- an original argument about the meaning and causes of mass killing in the modern world;

- a guide to the main intellectual resources - military, political and social theories - necessary to understand war and genocide;

- summaries of the main historical episodes of slaughter, from the trenches of the First World War to the Nazi Holocaust and the killing fields of Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda;

- practical guides to further reading, courses and websites.

This book examines war and genocide together with their opposites, peace and justice. It looks at them from the standpoint of victims as well as perpetrators. It is an important book for anyone wanting to understand - and overcome - thecontinuing salience of destructive forces in modern society.

The SIPRI Yearbook is an authoritative and independent source of data and analysis on armaments, disarmament and international security. It provides an overview of developments in international security, military expenditure, weapons and technology, arms production and the arms trade, armed conflict and conflict management, and efforts to control conventional, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. This 53rd edition of the SIPRI Yearbook covers developments during 2021, including: US BLArmed conflict and conflict management, with an overview of armed conflict and peace processes across the Americas, Asia and Oceania, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa, as well as a focus on global and regional trends in peace operationsBE UE US BLMilitary expenditure, international arms transfers and developments in arms productionBE UE US BLWorld nuclear forces, with an overview of each of the nine nuclear-armed states and their nuclear modernization programmesBE UE US BLNuclear arms control, featuring developments in the Russian-United States strategic dialogue, Iran's nuclear deal and the multilateral nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties, including the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear WeaponsBE UE US BLChemical, biological and health security threats, including the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the investigation of allegations of chemical weapon use in Syria and developments in the international legal instruments against chemical and biological warfare BE UE US BLConventional arms control and regulation of new weapon technologies, with a focus on inhumane weapons and other conventional weapons of humanitarian concern, including efforts to regulate autonomous weapon systems, state behaviour in cyberspace and space, and developments in the Open Skies TreatyBE UE US BLDual use and arms trade controls, including developments in the Arms Trade Treaty, multilateral arms embargoes and export control regimes, and review processes in the legal framework of the European Union for such controls as well as annexes listing arms control and disarmament agreements, international security cooperation bodies, and key events in 2021.BE UE

DeVries has focused on an intriguing problem, and his detailed analysis of battles provides an important reassessment of the way in which infantry and dismounted cavalry achieved such striking successes. HISTORY His detailed analysis of battles provides an important reassessment of the way in which infantry and dismounted cavalry achieved such striking successes. HISTORY This remarkable study confirms [DeVries's] emergence as one of themajor scholars of his generation. JOURNAL OF MILITARY HISTORY This study departs from the conventional view of the dominance of cavalry in medieval warfare: its objective is to establish the often decisive importance of infantry. Kelly DeVries employs evidence from first-hand accounts - a major feature of this study - to examine the role of the infantry, and the nature of infantry tactics, in nineteen battles fought in England and Europe between 1302 and 1347, in most of which it was the infantry which secured victory. The battles analysed in detail are: Courtrai Arques Mons-en-Pevele Loudon Hill Kephissos Bannockburn Boroughbridge Cassel Dupplin Moor Halidon Hill Laupen Morlaix Staveren Vottem Crecy Neville's Cross, and the infantry ambushes: Morgarten Auberoche La Roche-Derrien.

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.

Master Sun's "The Art of War" is by no means the only ancient Chinese treatise on military affairs. One chapter in the "Huainanzi," an important compendium of philosophy and political theory written in the second century B.C.E., synthesizes the entire corpus of military literature inherited from the Chinese classical era. Drawing on all major, existing military writings, as well as other lost sources, it assesses tactics and strategy, logistics, organization, and political economy, as well as cosmology and the fundamental morality of warfare.

This powerful work set out to become the last word on military matters, subsuming and replacing all preceding literature. Written under the sponsorship of Liu An, king of Huainan, the "Huainanzi"'s "military methods" emphasize the preservation of peace as the ultimate value to be served by the military, insisting that the army can be effectively and rightly used only when defending the sacred hereditary position of the emperor and his vassals. This position stands in stark contrast to that of "The Art of War," which prioritizes the enrichment and empowerment of the state. Liu An's philosophy also argues that military success depends on the personal cultivation of the commander and that deception is not enough to secure victory. Only a commander with the exceptional qualities of insight and cognition, developed through a program of meditative practice and yogic refinement, can effectively control and interpret the strategic situation. Andrew Seth Meyer offers both a full translation of this text and an extensive analysis of its historical context. His thorough treatment relates Liu An's teachings to issues in Chinese philosophy, culture, religion, and history, helping to interpret their uncommon message.

Series Information:
Warfare and History

WRITTEN WITH UNPRECEDENTED ACCESS, THIS IS THE FIRST INSIDE, INTIMATE ACCOUNT OF THE RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF PRESIDENT ZELENSKY AND HIS TEAM.

Based on four years of reporting; extensive travels with President Zelensky to the front; and dozens of interviews with him, his wife, his friends and enemies, his advisers, ministers and military commanders, The Showman tells an intimate and eye-opening story of the President’s evolution from a slapstick actor to a symbol of resilience, revealing how he managed to rally the world’s democracies behind his cause.

Clear-eyed about the President’s early failures as a peacemaker and his willingness to silence political dissent, the book offers a complex picture of a man struggling to break what he sees as a historical cycle of oppression that began generations before he was born. Even as the war drags on, Zelensky lays out his vision for its future course and, through his actions, demonstrates his strategy for countering the Russians and keeping the West on his side. The result is a riveting, up-close picture of the invasion as experienced by its number one target and improbable hero.

The Showman, as a work of eyewitness journalism, provides an essential perspective on the war defining our age. As a study in leadership and human resolve, its appeal is timeless and universal.

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.

Why did Napoleon succeed in 1805 but fail in 1812? Could the European half of World War II have been ended in 1944? These are only two of the many questions that form the subject-matter of this meticulously researched, lively book. Drawing on a very wide range of unpublished sources, van Creveld examines the specifics of war: namely, those formidable problems of movement and supply, transportation and administration, so often mentioned - but rarely explored - by the vast majority of books on military history. In doing so he casts his net far and wide, from Gustavus Adolphus to Rommel, from Marlborough to Patton, subjecting the operations of each to a thorough analysis from a fresh and unusual point of view. In this new edition with a new introduction, van Creveld revisits his now-classic text, and comments in a new afterword on the role of logistics in high-tech, modern warfare.

For decades, the CIA's top secret postmortem on the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion has been the holy grail of historians, students, and survivors of the failed invasion of Cuba. But the scathing internal report on the worst foreign policy debacle of the Kennedy administration, written by the CIA's then–inspector general Lyman Kirkpatrick, has remained tightly guarded—until now. Dislodged from the government through the Freedom of Information Act, here is an uncompromising look at high officials' arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence, as displayed in their attitude toward Castro's revolution and toward the Cuban exiles the CIA had organized to invade the island. Including the complete report and a wealth of supplementary materials, Bay of Pigs Declassified provides a fascinating picture of the operation and of the secret world of the espionage establishment, with stories of plots, counterplots, and intra-agency power struggles worthy of a Le Carré novel. Includes: the complete text of the CIA report; a critical introduction; the newly declassified response to the report from Richard Bissell, who masterminded the operation; the first joint interview with the managers of the invasion, Jacob Esterline and Colonel Jack Hawkins; a comprehensive chronology; and biographies of the key participants.

Ever since Thucydides pondered reasons for the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, writers, philosophers, and social scientists have all tried to identify and catalog factors that promote conflict escalation. Historians emphasize path-dependencies: the future grows out of the past, hence tomorrow's wars are rooted in yesterday's conflicts. Political scientists attend to changes in power balance or domestic political forces. All of these causes, however, are constructed by human beings and involve the memories, emotions, and motives of both the leaders and the led. In July 1914, the long peace of the great European powers was shattered when the Sarajevo assassinations quickly escalated to a world war that few ever anticipated. In contrast, at the height of the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis could have easily plunged us into a thermonuclear world war, but was ultimately peacefully resolved. Why? In Roots of War: Wanting Power, Seeing Threat, Justifying Force, author David G. Winter identifies the three psychological factors that contributed to the differences in these historical outcomes: the desire for power (power motivation), exaggerated perception of the opponent's threat, and justification for using military power and force. As Winter illustrates, several different lines of research establish how these three factors lead to escalation and war: the role of power motivation is demonstrated by comparative content analysis of documents (i.e. diplomatic communications, leaders' speeches, and media coverage) from crises that escalated to war versus similar events that did not; case studies of several American and British wars; and analysis of "new wars" (i.e. civil unrest, state-sponsored violence, and terrorism). Drawing on this research, Roots of War is a powerful testament to the roles of power and the preservation of peace, and demonstrates their enormous influence in diplomatic interventions in the past and present-day.

The SIPRI Yearbook is an authoritative and independent source of data and analysis on armaments, disarmament and international security. It provides an overview of developments in international security, weapons and technology, military expenditure, arms production and the arms trade, and armed conflicts and conflict management, along with efforts to control conventional, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. This 52nd edition of the SIPRI Yearbook covers developments during 2020, including BL Armed conflicts and conflict management, with an overview of armed conflicts and peace processes across the Americas, Asia and Oceania, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa, as well as a focus on global and regional trends in peace operations and the United Nations appeal for a global ceasefire to address the Covid-19 pandemic BL Military expenditure, international arms transfers and developments in arms production BL World nuclear forces, with an overview of each of the nine nuclear-armed states and their nuclear modernization programmes BL Nuclear arms control, featuring developments in Russian-United States strategic dialogue, Iran's nuclear deal and the multilateral nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties, including the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons BL Chemical and biological security threats, including the impact of the unfolding Covid-19 pandemic, the investigation of allegations of chemical weapon use in Syria and developments in the international legal instruments against chemical and biological warfare BL Conventional arms control, with a focus on global instruments, including efforts to regulate lethal autonomous weapon systems, state behaviour in cyberspace and space, and developments in the Open Skies Treaty BL Dual-use and arms trade controls, including developments in the Arms Trade Treaty, multilateral arms embargoes and export control regimes, and review processes in the legal framework of the European Union for such controls as well as annexes listing arms control and disarmament agreements, international security cooperation bodies, and key events in 2020.

At the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, despite many difficulties and falling manpower, coalmining was the most important industry in Great Britain. It employed around a million persons in well over 3,000 pits ranging from small hillside drift mines with a few hands to substantial collieries with workforces and pit communities the size of villages and small towns. A few months into the conflict, Lloyd George in a patriotic speech to a coal conference proclaimed that coal was 'everything for us, the country's life and blood, its international coinage'. As well as digging coal for the war effort, often in dreadful and dangerous conditions, miners demonstrated 'their old work in a new guise' when serving in huge numbers during the Great War. Thousands voluntarily swapped the pit for what many thought would be a better and safer option, around a quarter of a million enlisting by 1915; and about one in five of all military volunteers came from the coalfields of England, Scotland and Wales, an astonishing proportion. The massive response to the Call for Arms was most obvious in industrial areas where the so-called 'Pals battalions' were established and it was these recruits who suffered so heavily during the disastrous Somme offensive of 1916. The sheer number and range of gallantry awards including several VCs - also testify to the immense contribution of former miners. The many thousands of pitmen who paid the ultimate price are inscribed on public war memorials in coalfield communities, often dominating the listings. Such was the response from large pits that many others are commemorated on memorials specially erected by colliery and coal companies, one the earliest in the village of Brampton in South Yorkshire on behalf of Cortonwood Colliery. Whether working below and above ground at collieries or as part of the armed forces, miners played a very significant role during the Great War of 1914-18, a total contribution that deserves to be told.