War and landpower's role in the twenty-first century is not just about military organizations, tactics, operations, and technology; it is also about strategy, policy, and social and political contexts. After fourteen years of war in the Middle East with dubious results, a diminished national reputation, and a continuing drawdown of troops with perhaps a future force increase proposed by the Trump administration, the role of landpower in US grand strategy will continue to evolve with changing geopolitical situations. Landpower in the Long War: Projecting Force After 9/11, edited by Jason W. Warren , is the first holistic academic analysis of American strategic landpower. Divided into thematic sections, this study presents a comprehensive approach to a critical aspect of US foreign policy as the threat or ability to use force underpins diplomacy. The text begins with more traditional issues, such as strategy and civilian-military relations, and works its way to more contemporary topics, such as how socio-cultural considerations effect the landpower force. It also includes a synopsis of the suppressed Iraq report from one of the now retired leaders of that effort. The contributors -- made up of an interdisciplinary team of political scientists, historians, and military practitioners -- demonstrate that the conceptualization of landpower must move beyond the limited operational definition offered by Army doctrine in order to encompass social changes, trauma, the rule of law, acquisition of needed equipment, civil-military relationships, and bureaucratic decision-making, and argue that landpower should be a useful concept for warfighters and government agencies.

The first dedicated examination of Alexander the Great’s final battle and acknowledged tactical masterpiece.

In the years that followed Alexander the Great’s victory at Gaugamela on 1 October 331 BC, his Macedonian and Greek army fought a truly ‘Herculean’ series of campaigns in what is today Iran, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. But it was in the Indus Valley, on the banks of the Hydaspes River (known today as the Jhelum) in 326 BC that Alexander would fight his last major battle against King Poros.

Using detailed maps and 3D diagrams, this beautifully illustrated work shows how Alexander used feints and deception to transport a select force from his army across the swollen River Hydaspes without attracting the enemy’s attention, allowing his troops the crucial element of surprise. Battlescene artworks and photographs reveal the fascinating array of forces that clashed in the battle, including Indian war elephants and chariots, and horse archers and phalanx formations. Also examined are the differences in weaponry and armour between the opposing sides, which would prove crucial to the outcome. Although a tactical masterpiece, the Hydaspes was the closest that Alexander the Great came to defeat, and was one of the costliest battles fought by his near-exhausted army.

Fully illustrated, this enthralling study explores how the Vandals in North Africa attempted to defend their kingdom against the resurgent Byzantine Empire during 533-36. In AD 533, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I launched the first of his campaigns to reconquer the Western Roman Empire. This effort began in North Africa (modern Algeria and Tunisia), targeting the Vandal kingdom established there a century earlier, which also included Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearic Islands. Featuring full-colour artwork and mapping alongside carefully chosen archive illustrations, this book shows how the Byzantine general Belisarius established his formidable reputation in the lightning-fast campaign that ensued, exploring the origins, tactics and reputation of the two sides' forces as they fought for control of North Africa. The landing of Belisarius' forces took the Vandal king, Gelimer, completely by surprise; in September 533 the two sides met in battle near Carthage in an encounter known to posterity as Ad Decimum, with Gelimer ambitiously attempting to trap Belisarius' forces as they advanced. In December, the two sides fought again in a momentous clash at Tricamarum, where the fate of Gelimer's regime would be determined. A third battle ensued in 536, when the rebel Stotzas' Byzantine and Vandal troops confronted Belisarius' forces, the outcome sealing the Byzantine general's standing as the foremost soldier of his age. Featuring specially commissioned artwork and mapping alongside archive illustrations and photographs, this vivid account compares and assesses the two sides' fighting men as they vied for supremacy in North Africa.

Born in Cornwall, John Davy (1790 1868) physiologist and anatomist, and the younger brother of the distinguished chemist Sir Humphry Davy (1778 1829), was one of the most prolific medical experts of his day. After taking a medical degree from Edinburgh in 1814 he became an army surgeon. He later became a hospital inspector and spent time living in overseas territories including India, Sri Lanka, and Barbados. First published in 1862, Davy's book discusses the prominence of fever, dysentery, cholera, liver disease, pneumonia, and other diseases common to the army, estimating that 45% of deaths in the British army serving abroad were caused by disease rather than by conflict. Davy also records his observations on putrefaction of bodies, particularly the vital organs, emphasising the need to determine the normal condition of human organs so that abnormal, diseased organs can be easily identified.

Keenie Meenie Services - the most powerful mercenary company you've never heard of - was involved in war crimes around the world from Sri Lanka to Nicaragua for which its shadowy directors have never been held accountable. Like its mysterious name, Keenie Meenie Services escaped definition and to this day has evaded sanctions. Now explosive new evidence - only recently declassified - exposes the extent of these war crimes, and the British government's tacit support for the company's operations. Including testimonies from SAS veterans, spy chiefs and diplomats, we hear from key figures battle-hardened by the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the Iranian Embassy siege. Investigative journalist Phil Miller asks, who were these mercenaries: heroes, terrorists, freedom fighters or war criminals? This book presents the first ever comprehensive case against Keenie Meenie Services, providing long overdue evidence on the crimes of the people who make a killing from killing.

This cogent global history traces the evolution of land warfare since the start of the Crimean War. Jeremy Black argues that although it has always been critical to the outcome of conflicts worldwide, land warfare has become undervalued in comparison to air power in modern military thinking. In practice, land warfare was crucial during the American Civil War, the two world wars, and the conflicts of the Cold War. Indeed, the revival of great power confrontation has led to an urgent need to re-examine the entire contemporary period. Looking to the future, the book shows convincingly that we must consider the nature of the military for non-state actors as well for as the major powers. Ultimately, Black contends, there is no substitute for the control over territory provided by boots on the ground.

Dramatic innovations in modern Japan include a mass army, overseas empire, and constitutional polity. This study links these changes in the Meiji era (1868-1912). It focuses on the life of General Katsura Taro, one of the architects of the modern military, a leading figure in Japanese colonialism, and prime minister through the 1900s. Challenging the received wisdom about Japanese militarism and imperialism, it exposes the army's ambivalence about empire but also its positive role in political change.

What is it like to be in the I.R.A. - or at their mercy? This fascinating study explores the lives and deaths of the enemies and victims of the County Cork I.R.A. between 1916 and 1923 - the most powerful and deadly branch of the I.R.A. during one of the most turbulent periods in twentieth-century Ireland. These years saw the breakdown of the British legal system and police authority, the rise of republican violence, and the escalation of the conflict into a full-scale guerilla war, leading to a wave of riots, ambushes, lootings, and reprisal killings, with civilians forming the majority of victims in this unacknowledged civil war. Religion may have provided the starting point for the conflict, but class prejudice, patriotism, and personal grudges all fuelled the development and continuation of widespread violence. Using an unprecedented range of sources - many of them only recently made public - Peter Hart explores the motivation behind such activity. His conclusions not only reveal a hidden episode of Ireland's troubled past but provide valuable insights into the operation of similar terrorist groups today.

Invented during World War I to break the grim deadlock of the Western Front trenches, tanks went on to revolutionize warfare. From the lightning Blitzkrieg assaults of World War II, to the great battles in the Middle Eastern desert, tanks have become one of the key components of the 'combined arms' philosophy of the modern battlefield. This pocket guide makes accessible to 'rivetheads' everywhere essential information to identify 40 of history's most fearsome tanks, including Germany's Tiger, Russia's T-34, America's Sherman and Panther, and France's FT-17. Each tank is presented with a detailed drawing to aid recognition.

This edited volume critically assesses emerging trends in contemporary warfare and international interventionism as exemplified by the 'local turn' in counterinsurgent warfare. It asks how contemporary counterinsurgency approaches work and are legitimized; what concrete effects they have within local settings, and what the implications are for how we can understand the means and ends of war and peace in our post 9/11 world. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding recent changes in global liberal governance as well as the growing convergence of military and seemingly non-military domains, discourses and practices in the contemporary making of global political order.

This book, first published in 1944, stresses the point that there is no shortcut to successful wartime leadership, and pays a close analysis to the attributes that contribute to being a sound leader of soldiers. Written in the middle of the Second World War, this book gives us valuable insights into the values and training of the British Army in the second half of the war.

For over 20 years France was the dominating, controlling and conquering power of the western world, a result not only of Napoleon's inspired leadership, but of the efforts of almost an entire generation of Frenchmen under arms. The French Revolution heralded both social change and a seismic shift in how armies were organized, trained and deployed.
This book provides an analysis of the preparation of French troops from manual regulations to the training ground, studying the changing quality of command and control within the army, which initially ensured that the French infantry were virtually unstoppable. Paddy Griffith not only explores the role of the French infantry at the apex of their powers and their actions in key battles, but also provides a detailed explanation of their eventual decline leading to defeat at Waterloo, providing a critical overview of French Napoleonic infantry tactics.

Enjoy a detailed examination of Operation Olive as US, British, Commonwealth and Allied forces seek to smash through the last German defensive line in Italy.

The Italian theatre of operations post-summer 1944 was often (and incorrectly) surmised at the time as a quiet sector of World War II, populated with troops who were relieved not to find themselves fighting in North-West Europe. Yet the true nature of the hard fighting that took place here was soon revealed when the Allies began their assault on the Axis Gothic Line defences, known as Operation Olive.

In this book, Italian military historian Pier Paolo Battistelli documents the dual Allied offensive spearheaded by American and British units to smash through what was supposed to be the final Axis defensive line in Italy before the Alps. The overall strategic aims of both the Axis and Allied leaders are explored, together with the organization of the forces committed.

The expertly researched maps and 3D diagrams guide the reader through the progress of the phased battles in challenging terrain. Photographs and specially commissioned artworks show the soldiers that fought on both sides, including American, Canadian, Indian, Brazilian, Polish, New Zealander, British, German and Italian troops, as well as the materiel they employed. The result is an essential illustrated guide to a fascinating and complex late-war campaign.

In the summer of 1969, as the Vietnam War was being turned over to the South Vietnamese, Lieutenant John Raschke arrived in Chuong Thien Province deep in the Mekong Delta, eager to have a positive impact. Recounting his assignment to a provincial advisory team of military and civilian personnel, this memoir depicts the ordinary and the extraordinary of life both inside and outside the wire--mortar attacks, firefights and snipers, hot showers, good meals and comradery, the life and death struggles of the Vietnamese people and the bonds he formed with them.

When the Allied armies landed on the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944 the backbone of the armoured reaction force awaiting them was made up of 758 Pzkpfw IV tanks, a number which represents almost half the fully-tracked vehicles available for the defence of the West. The first models of these tanks had entered service in November 1937 and although replacements had been considered, the original design was continually up-gunned and up-armoured. Perhaps lacking the glamour of the Panther and Tiger, the most recent variant, the Pzkpfw IV ausf H, was at least the equal of the best British and American tanks. Drawing on official documentation and unit histories Dennis Oliver investigates the formations that operated these deservedly famous vehicles and uses archive photos and extensively researched colour illustrations to examine the markings, camouflage and technical aspects of the Pzkpfw IV tanks that served on the Western Front during the critical summer of 1944. A key section of his book displays available model kits and aftermarket products, complemented by a gallery of beautifully constructed and painted models in various scales. Technical details as well as modifications introduced during production and in the field are also examined, providing everything the modeller needs to recreate an accurate representation of these historic vehicles.

Charles Young served as the highest-ranking African American officer in the U.S. Army until 1917. During his career, he served on the western frontier, in the Philippines, and in Mexico, and as military attache to both Haiti and Liberia. Young was also an accomplished linguist, a musician and composer, a published author, and an active member of the black intelligentsia. A history of Young's life transcends the fields of military, diplomatic, and African American history. For those interested in the history of the United States between Reconstruction and World War I, his life offers a guided tour through one of the most important epochs in the American experience. Charles Young's career was shaped by race. The army regarded him as an anomaly and sought to limit his visibility. He, on the other hand, used his profile to promote the cause of racial equality. As a soldier, he was diligent in his observance of duty. As a citizen, he was committed to the cause of black civil rights. For Charles Young, success was more than a personal dream, it was an obligation to his people. Young's ultimate goal was to attain the rank of general. Thus, his forced retirement on medical grounds in 1917 was a crushing blow, and, for him and his supporters, bore testament to the racism that permeated the armed forces and America.

Drawing on unique first-hand data from Russia's North Caucasus, this study is the first of its kind to detail the causes and contexts of individual disengagement of various types of militants: avengers, nationalists, and jihadists. It aims to considerably enhance our theoretical understanding of individual militants' incentives to abandon violence.

Civil wars are among the most difficult problems in world politics. While mediation, intervention, and peacekeeping have produced some positive results in helping to end civil wars, they fall short in preventing them in the first place. In Incentivizing Peace, Jaroslav Tir and Johannes Karreth show that considering civil wars from a developmental perspective presents opportunities to prevent the escalation of nascent armed conflicts into full-scale civil wars. The authors demonstrate that highly-structured intergovernmental organizations (IGOs such as the World Bank, IMF, or regional development banks) are particularly well-positioned to engage in civil war prevention. When such IGOs have been actively engaged in nations on the edge, their potent economic tools have helped to steer rebel-government interactions away from escalation and toward peaceful settlement. Incentivizing Peace provides enlightening case evidence that IGO participation is a key to better predicting, and thus preventing, the outbreak of civil war.

This is the first scholarly study of soldiers and guerrillas demobilized after the civil war in Mozambique (1979-1992). Based on extensive field-work with former combatants from both sides of the civil war in Mozambique and the communities in which they have settled, this takes a critical and empirical look at prevailing stereotypes about this extremely influential, yet poorly researched, social group in war-torn societies throughout Africa and worldwide. Jessica Schafer advances a wholesale re-evaluation of their roles and impact on post-war society. Combatants are "humanized" by examining, rather than assuming, the way war experiences shaped them both as social beings and as political actors. Schafer presents evidence of striking similarities between the social and political discourses of veterans from a wide range of war and post-war contexts, and makes a strong case for a comparative approach to studying veterans rather than the "new war" theories that have become popular in recent scholarly and media analyses.

Black Ops is a skirmish wargame of tactical espionage combat that recreates the tension and excitement of modern action-thrillers such as the Bond and Bourne films. The fast-play rules keep all the players in the thick of the action, while the mission generator provides a wide range of options for scenarios - from stealthy extraction or surveillance missions to more overt raids and assaults. Stealth, combat, and technical expertise all have a role to play, and players may recruit a number of different operative types - spies, mercenaries, criminals, hackers, special forces, and many more - to recruit the best possible team for the job. Players may also choose to join a faction - powerful organizations, intelligence agencies, criminal syndicates, militaries, or rebel groups, each with a stake in international affairs. By doing so, their team may receive certain benefits, but may also find itself limited at a crucial time. With the variety offered by the characters, factions, and scenarios, no two games of Black Ops should ever be the same!

When Joint Special Operations Command deployed Task Force 714 to Iraq in 2003, it faced an adversary unlike any it had previously encountered: al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). AQI's organization into multiple, independent networks and its application of Information Age technologies allowed it to wage war across a vast landscape. To meet this unique threat, TF 714 developed the intelligence capacity to operate inside those networks, and in the words of commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal, USA (Ret.) "claw the guts out of AQI." In Transforming US Intelligence for Irregular War, Richard H. Shultz Jr. provides a broad discussion of the role of intelligence in combatting nonstate militants and revisits this moment of innovation during the Iraq War, showing how the defense and intelligence communities can adapt to new and evolving foes. Shultz tells the story of how TF 714 partnered with US intelligence agencies to dismantle AQI's secret networks by eliminating many of its key leaders. He also reveals how TF 714 altered its methods and practices of intelligence collection, intelligence analysis, and covert paramilitary operations to suppress AQI's growing insurgency and, ultimately, destroy its networked infrastructure. TF 714 remains an exemplar of successful organizational learning and adaptation in the midst of modern warfare. By examining its innovations, Shultz makes a compelling case for intelligence leading the way in future campaigns against nonstate armed groups.

The Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), waged between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies, involved some of the most important developments in ancient warfare. A life-and-death struggle between the two most powerful Greek city-states in the wake of their combined successes against the Persian invasion of Xerxes in 480-479 BC, the conflict dragged in communities from all over the Greek world on one side or the other. Ranging from the Black Sea to Sicily, the war saw the first recorded widespread use of light-armed troops, reserves, the deep phalanx, and other ideas important for the development of Western warfare into the 4th century BC, such as strategic thinking. It also revealed lessons (some learned and some not) with respect to the strengths and weaknesses of hoplite warfare and the various states in Greece. Featuring full-color artwork and drawing upon an array of sources, this study of three pivotal clashes between Spartan and Athenian hoplite forces during the Peloponnesian War highlights all of these developments and lessons.

Alarming levels of fear and suspicion developed in Australia following the German victories in Europe of 1940. It was believed the Nazis had prepared an army of subversives a Fifth Column to undermine the war effort. These suspicions plagued the Australian home front for much of the war.

Fully illustrated, this is the second volume in a detailed study of the German auxiliary troops who fought for Britain in the American Revolutionary War. During the American Revolutionary War (1775–83), German auxiliary troops provided a vital element of the British war effort. While the largest body of German troops was from Hessen-Cassel (see the first volume of this study), the British also fielded troops from Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, Hessen-Hanau, Waldeck and Pyrmont, Brandenburg Ansbach and Brandenburg-Bayreuth, and Anhalt-Zerbst. Fighting on a host of battlefields from Saratoga to Yorktown, these hired soldiers provided the Crown Forces with much-needed manpower and contributed crucial combat skills in the form of the Jäger, renowned specialists in open-order warfare. Featuring eight specially commissioned artwork plates and an array of carefully chosen illustrations, many in colour, this lively study examines the organization, uniforms, weapons and equipment of these troops who fought for King George in the New World.

This book explores the ways in which democracies can win counterinsurgencies when they implement a proper strategy. At a time when the USA is retrenching from two bungled foreign wars that involved deadly insurgent uprisings, this is a particularly important argument. Succumbing to the trauma of those engagements and drawing the wrong conclusions about counterinsurgency can only lead to further defeat in the future. Rather than assuming that counterinsurgency is ineffective, it is crucial to understand that a conventional response to an insurgent challenge is likely to fail. Counterinsurgency must be applied from the beginning, and if done properly can be highly effective, even when used by democratic regimes. In fact, because such regimes are often wealthier; have more experience at institution-building and functional governance; are more pluralistic in nature and therefore enjoy higher levels of legitimacy than do autocracies, democracies may have considerable advantages in counterinsurgency warfare. Rather than give up in despair, democracies should learn to leverage these advantages and implement them against future insurgencies.