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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Other warfare & defence issues
In recent years, the academic study of 'war' has gained renewed popularity in criminology. This book illustrates its long-standing engagement with this social phenomenon within the discipline. Foregrounding established criminological work addressing war and connecting it to a wide range of extant sociological literature, the authors present and further develop theoretical and conceptual ways of thinking critically about war. Providing a critique of mainstream criminology, the authors question whether a 'criminology of war' is possible, and if so, how this seemingly 'new horizon' of the discipline might be usefully informed by sociology.
Except for Soviet citizens, no people in this century have endured so much mass killing as have the Chinese. They have been murdered by rebels conniving with their own rulers, and then, after the defeat in war of the imperial dynasty, by soldiers of other lands. They have been killed by warlords who ruled one part of China or another. They have been executed by Nationalists or Communists because they had the wrong beliefs or attitudes or were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. In China's Bloody Century, R.J. Rummel's careful estimate of the total number of killings exceeds 5 million. How do we explain such killings, crossing ideological bounds and political conditions? According to Rummel, the one constant factor in all the Chinese mass murder, as it was in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, is arbitrary power. It was the factor that united warlords, Nationalists, Communists, and foreign armies. The author argues that whenever such undisciplined power is centralized and unchecked, the possibility exists that it will be used at the whim of dictators to kill for their own ends, whether the aim is ethnic-racial purity, national unity, development, or utopia. The book presents successive periods in modern Chinese history, with each chapter divided into three parts. Rummel first relates the history of the period within which the nature and the amount of killings are presented. He then provides a detailed statistical table giving the basic estimates with their sources and qualifications. The final part offers an appendix that explains and elaborates the statistical computations and estimates. While estimates are available in the literature on the number of Chinese killed in Communist land reform, or in Tibet, or by the Nationalists in one military campaign or another, until this book no one has tried to systematically accumulate, organize, add up, and analyze these diverse killings for all of China's governments in this century. For the first time in one place, hundreds of published estimates of Chinese genocide and mass murder are listed with sources, analyzed, and their historical context presented. This book will be of central interest to Sinologists, Sovietologists, and those interested in comparative politics and society.
On September 25, 1944, Hitler attempted to shore up his faltering forces by creating the Volkssturm or People's Army. His new draft called into service all remaining able-bodied men, including those whose civilian labor had previously been deemed indispensable. Among the latter was a Prussian farmer named Hans Thiel, who suddenly found himself on the Eastern front, fighting not to bring glory to the Nazi Party (for which he felt at best a troubled resignation) but to save his country from destruction. With the defeat of the Germans, Thiel was taken prisoner by the advancing Bolshevik forces. From the closing days of World War II through three years of postwar captivity, this memoir details the experiences of Hans Thiel. Beginning with the realities of agrarian life during World War II, it goes on to describe Thiel's conscription, his combat experiences, and his life as a postwar prisoner, held first by the Bolsheviks and then transferred to camps under Polish control. The atrocities these prisoners suffered at the hands of their captors - as retaliation for German military war crimes - are discussed in detail. The book includes two glossaries (general terms and geographical names), an appendix commenting on German agrarian policy under the Third Reich, and a second appendix discussing the difficulties of tracing Thiel's route through the war-torn countryside. Photographs and maps are also included.
"A compelling read." Richard J. Goldstone, former Chief Prosecutor of the UN tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda "A very important contribution." Princeton N. Lyman, Council on Foreign Relations "A powerful reminder that dealing with the legacy of wartime atrocities is not simply a matter of bringing perpetrators to justice. It also means overcoming the divisions within the society and healing the victims." Marina Ottaway, Senior Associate, Democracy and Rule of Law Project, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace In Amnesty after Atrocity? veteran journalist Helena Cobban examines the effectiveness of different ways of dealing with the aftermath of genocide and violence committed during intergroup conflicts. She traveled to Rwanda, Mozambique, and South Africa to assess the various ways those nations tried to come to grips with their violent past: from war crimes trials to truth commissions to outright amnesties for perpetrators. She discovered that in terms of both moving forward and satisfying the needs of survivors, war crimes trials are not the most effective path. This book provides historical context and includes interviews with a cross-section of people: community leaders, victims, policymakers, teachers, rights activists, and even some former abusers. These first-person accounts create a rich, readable text, and Cobban's overall conclusions will surprise many readers in the West.
Colonel Donald Gilbert Cook was the first U.S. Marine captured in Vietnam; the first and only Marine in history to earn the Medal of Honor while in captivity; and the first Marine POW to have a U.S. Navy ship named in his honor, the USS Donald Cook (DDG-75). On December 31, 1964, while serving as an observer with a South Vietnamese Marine Corps battalion on a combat operation against Viet Cong forces, he was captured near the village of Binh Gia in South Vietnam. Until his death in captivity in December 1967, Cook led ten POWs in a series of primitive jungle camps. His leadership and adherence to the U.S. Military Code of Conduct earned him the nation's highest military award, but Cook never received historical attention commensurate with his enormous accomplishments. This is the first book-length biography of Colonel Donald G. Cook. The book concentrates especially on his three years in captivity, and is the first book exclusively about a Marine POW held in South Vietnam.
Conflict resolution and promotion of regional cooperation in South Asia has assumed a new urgency in the aftermath of the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in 1998, and underlined by the outbreak of fighting in Kargil in 1999, full mobilization on the border during most of 2002, and continued low-intensity warfare and terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. The stability of nuclear deterrence between the two countries is therefore a matter of great urgency and has found a place on the scholarly agenda of security studies in South Asia. Several books have been written on Indiaa (TM)s nuclear programme, but these have been mostly analytical histories. The India-Pakistan Nuclear Relationship is a new departure in that it is the first time that a group of scholars from the South Asian subcontinent have collectively tried to apply deterrence theory and international relations theory to South Asia.
This work provides an in-depth and up-to-date examination of civil-military relations in China. It reflects the significant changes taking place in Chinese society and their impact on the civil-military dynamic, with particular attention to how the military will fit in with the new class of entrepreneurs. Rather than focusing exclusively on elite Party-Army relations, the book examines civil-military relations from various vantage points: at "the center" and in the provinces; between civilian leaders and military leaders; from a strictly military perspective and from a civilian perspective; and from the angle of specific issue areas. Chapters explore issues, such as the impact of AIDS, the defense budget, the emerging dynamic between the military and China's new leadership, resettling demobilized troops back into civilian life, and the role of the militia, reserve units, and other civilian groups. The contributors are highly respected specialists in China studies, including political scientists, historians, PLA specialists, and sociologists. They present a vibrant portrait of the new civil-military dynamic in the PRC within the complex social changes that China is exploring today.
In this highly controversial and original work, Damien Short systematically rethinks how genocide is and should be defined. Rather than focusing solely on a narrow conception of genocide as direct mass-killing, through close empirical analysis of a number of under-discussed case studies - including Palestine, Sri Lanka, Australia and Alberta, Canada - the book reveals the key role played by settler colonialism, capitalism, finite resources and the ecological crisis in driving genocidal social death on a global scale.
World War II was - and remains - one of the bloodiest wars in history. Not only did millions of soldiers die in combat but millions of civilians lost their lives - some for no greater crime than their religious heritage or their nationality. The Soviets, at first allied with the Germans, incarcerated thousands of Polish military officers and reservists in the pre-established Soviet camps of Ostashkov, Starobelsk and Kozelsk. On March 5, 1940, Joseph Stalin and his lieutenants signed an execution order for 25,700 Polish prisoners of war. After months of hardship and interrogation, 14,700 prisoners from these camps were taken to remote areas, murdered with a shot to the back of the head and buried in mass graves. Later, when Germany turned its sights on the Soviet Union, the USSR allied itself with the West. With the discovery of the first of the mass burials by the Germans in the Katyn Forest (the area from which the entire massacre gets its name), the Soviets attempted to place the blame for the atrocities on the Germans in spite of a plethora of evidence to the contrary. Only in 1990, with the fall of communism, did President Mikhail Gorbachev admit Soviet responsibility for the Katyn murders. Compiled from a series of interviews, this emotionally moving account records the stories and fates of 18 men and women, 16 of whom lost their fathers in the Katyn massacre. The author travelled to Poland, Lithuania, the Ukraine, Canada, the United States and Israel to talk extensively with the 18, recording their thoughts, feelings, memories and experiences of the hardships during and after the war. Photographs and maps are included.
In contrast to the plethora of works focusing on the tragic loss of human lives during the First World War, little is known about the more hopeful realities of thousands of prisoners of war from Britain, France, Germany and Belgium who were sent to Switzerland from 1916. This book explores the everyday lives of these prisoners and their impact on Switzerland. Internees were warmly welcomed by local people and given education, training and employment. Leading relatively free lives, they were able to engage in leisure activities and develop new relationships. However, they also contributed to the country's economy, helping to keep Swiss tourism alive at a time when businesses were struggling and alleviating Switzerland's labour shortage as Swiss men were called-up to defend their borders and preserve the country's neutrality. Drawing on a wide range of sources from official records to magazines and postcards, Susan Barton provides an absorbing account of the social and cultural history of internment in Switzerland.
World War I was a watershed, a defining moment, in Armenian history. Its effects were unprecedented in that it resulted in what no other war, invasion, or occupation had achieved in three thousand years of identifiable Armenian existence. This calamity was the physical elimination of the Armenian people and most of the evidence of their ever having lived on the great Armenian Plateau, to which the perpetrator side soon gave the new name of Eastern Anatolia. The bearers of an impressive martial and cultural history, the Armenians had also known repeated trials and tribulations, waves of massacre, captivity, and exile, but even in the darkest of times there had always been enough remaining to revive, rebuild, and go forward. This third volume in a series edited by Richard Hovannisian, the dean of Armenian historians, provides a unique fusion of the history, philosophy, literature, art, music, and educational aspects of the Armenian experience. It further provides a rich storehouse of information on comparative dimensions of the Armenian genocide in relation to the Assyrian, Greek and Jewish situations, and beyond that, paradoxes in American and French policy responses to the Armenian genocides. The volume concludes with a trio of essays concerning fundamental questions of historiography and politics that either make possible or can inhibit reconciliation of ancient truths and righting ancient wrongs.
This work provides an in-depth and up-to-date examination of civil-military relations in China. It reflects the significant changes taking place in Chinese society and their impact on the civil-military dynamic, with particular attention to how the military will fit in with the new class of entrepreneurs. Rather than focusing exclusively on elite Party-Army relations, the book examines civil-military relations from various vantage points: at "the center" and in the provinces; between civilian leaders and military leaders; from a strictly military perspective and from a civilian perspective; and from the angle of specific issue areas. Chapters explore issues, such as the impact of AIDS, the defense budget, the emerging dynamic between the military and China's new leadership, resettling demobilized troops back into civilian life, and the role of the militia, reserve units, and other civilian groups. The contributors are highly respected specialists in China studies, including political scientists, historians, PLA specialists, and sociologists. They present a vibrant portrait of the new civil-military dynamic in the PRC within the complex social changes that China is exploring today.
World War I was a watershed, a defining moment, in Armenian history. Its effects were unprecedented in that it resulted in what no other war, invasion, or occupation had achieved in three thousand years of identifiable Armenian existence. This calamity was the physical elimination of the Armenian people and most of the evidence of their ever having lived on the great Armenian Plateau, to which the perpetrator side soon gave the new name of Eastern Anatolia. The bearers of an impressive martial and cultural history, the Armenians had also known repeated trials and tribulations, waves of massacre, captivity, and exile, but even in the darkest of times there had always been enough remaining to revive, rebuild, and go forward. This third volume in a series edited by Richard Hovannisian, the dean of Armenian historians, provides a unique fusion of the history, philosophy, literature, art, music, and educational aspects of the Armenian experience. It further provides a rich storehouse of information on comparative dimensions of the Armenian genocide in relation to the Assyrian, Greek and Jewish situations, and beyond that, paradoxes in American and French policy responses to the Armenian genocides. The volume concludes with a trio of essays concerning fundamental questions of historiography and politics that either make possible or can inhibit reconciliation of ancient truths and righting ancient wrongs.
This volume provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary examination of the Multilateral Non-Proliferation Export Control system and the national and international context within which it functions. Key features: "
This book explores the memory and representation of genocide as they affect individuals, communities and families, and artistic representations. It brings together a variety of disciplines from public health to philosophy, anthropology to architecture, offering readers interdisciplinary and international insights into one of the most important challenges in the 21st century. The book begins by describing the definitions and concepts of genocide from historical and philosophical perspectives. Next, it reviews memories of genocide in bodies and in societies as well as genocide in memory through lives, mental health and transgenerational effects. The book also examines the ways genocide has affected artistic works. From poetry to film, photography to theatre, it explores a range of artistic approaches to help demonstrate the heterogeneity of representations. This book provides a comprehensive and wide-ranging assessment of the many ways genocide has been remembered and represented. It presents an ideal foundation for understanding genocide and possibly preventing it from occurring again.
'Marvellous.' A.S. Byatt 'Astonishing.' John Gray 'Luminous.' Rose Tremain I could take whichever I would of these paths. Sammy Mountjoy is an artist who has risen from poverty to see his pictures hung in the Tate Gallery. Swept into World War II, he is captured as a German prisoner of war, threatened with torture and locked in a cell of total darkness. He emerges transfigured by his ordeal, realising how his choices have made him the author of his life, interrogating religion and rationality, early loves and formative beliefs - and questioning freedom itself.
"A compelling read." Richard J. Goldstone, former Chief Prosecutor of the UN tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda "A very important contribution." Princeton N. Lyman, Council on Foreign Relations "A powerful reminder that dealing with the legacy of wartime atrocities is not simply a matter of bringing perpetrators to justice. It also means overcoming the divisions within the society and healing the victims." Marina Ottaway, Senior Associate, Democracy and Rule of Law Project, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace In Amnesty after Atrocity? veteran journalist Helena Cobban examines the effectiveness of different ways of dealing with the aftermath of genocide and violence committed during intergroup conflicts. She traveled to Rwanda, Mozambique, and South Africa to assess the various ways those nations tried to come to grips with their violent past: from war crimes trials to truth commissions to outright amnesties for perpetrators. She discovered that in terms of both moving forward and satisfying the needs of survivors, war crimes trials are not the most effective path. This book provides historical context and includes interviews with a cross-section of people: community leaders, victims, policymakers, teachers, rights activists, and even some former abusers. These first-person accounts create a rich, readable text, and Cobban's overall conclusions will surprise many readers in the West.
This book assesses the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia's (ICTY) legacy and examines the conflicting intersection of law and politics in the search for justice, both thematically and through close analysis of some of the major trials. It analyses the related case brought against Serbia and Montenegro by Bosnia and Herzegovina at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), as well as the Ganic case in London where the ICTY and ICJ findings were challenged. The book addresses the following questions: To what extent the political climate in which the ICTY was conceived, and continues to operate, has affected the declared aims of its founders? Have political considerations and political correctness, and the perceived need for political stability and democratic transition, at times proved an obstacle to the administration of justice? Are some of the acknowledged failings of international policy in the 1990s finding some resonance in more recent court proceedings? This highly relevant and comprehensive book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, international relations, transitional justice, Balkan area studies, human rights law, international criminal and peace and conflict studies.
With its unstable and intermittent nuclear weapon project, and the recent leadership succession issue, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has been a source of insecurity for the past decade in this region, in addition to the delicate international relations among the powerful China, United States, Japan, and Russia. The essence of DPRK issue lies in the instability and uncertainty of nuclear development that even the slightest miscalculation by any one power could disturb the sensitive balance of relationships, creating a butterfly effect with a catastrophic result. Drawing on various perspectives on the interaction over DPRK and other regional powers, this volume seeks to explore the role of DPRK in Northeast Asia, and its implication to regional security as a whole. The volume does not confirm a particular position over DPRK's nuclear showdown; rather it invites scholars to provide assessments from the viewpoints of neighbouring powers in order to present a more complete understanding of the leading issue in Northeast Asia. The volume will serve as an invaluable resource for policymakers, students and scholars of North Korean politics and international relations. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Comparative Asian Development.
The National Institute for Public Policy's new book, Minimum Deterrence: Examining the Evidence, is the first of its kind. Dr. Keith Payne, the late former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and an unparalleled bipartisan group of senior civilian and military experts critically examined eight basic assumptions of Minimum Deterrence against available evidence. In general, Minimum Deterrence does not fare well under the careful scrutiny. Proponents of a "Minimum Deterrent" US nuclear force posture believe that anywhere from a handful to a few hundred nuclear weapons are adequate to deter reliably and predictably any enemy from attacking the United States now and in the future. Because nuclear weapons are so destructive, their thinking goes, no foreign leader would dare challenge US capabilities. The benefits, advocates claim, of reducing US nuclear weapons to the "minimum" level needed are: better relations with Russia and China, reinforcement of the arms control and Nonproliferation Treaty, billions of defense dollars in savings, and greater international stability on the way to "nuclear zero." As political pressure builds to pursue this vision of minimum US deterrence, Minimum Deterrence: Examining the Evidence stands as the seminal study to address the many claims of great benefit against available empirical evidence. This book was published as a National Institute Press monograph, Keith B. Payne and James Schlesinger, Minimum Deterrence: Examining the Evidence (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, 2013) and as a special issue of Comparative Strategy.
The Cold War phrase "weapons of mass destruction" continues to be used despite significant changes in international political cultures, military concepts of operation, and technology advances. Today, the term "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) is used to address many things, from grams of ricin and barrels of industrial chemicals to megaton nuclear weapons. As a direct result of the decision to refer to all nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons as well as biological, chemical and radiological (CBR) hazards as "WMD," we have lost the ability to accurately develop, assess, and discuss policy concerns relating to the contemporary use of unconventional weapons on the battlefield and within the homeland. This book uses a public policy framework to examine how the U.S. government, and in particular the U.S. military, should address the potential use of unconventional weapons in the 21st century. It defines the problem, identifies the policy actors and reviews policy options. It discusses past policy efforts before offering a critical review of current strategies and how WMD issues are integrated into the current military Joint Operating Concepts (deterrence, cooperative security, major combat operations, irregular warfare, stability, and homeland security), and proposes new national framework for countering WMD. The aim is to answer such questions as what does counterproliferation mean and whether the U.S. government is adequately prepared to protect U.S. citizens and its armed forces from adversaries developing unconventional weapons.
Originally published in 1939, this book examined how to finance the war, including chapters on the methods of industrial mobilisation and government borrowing and the growth of money income. During the course of the year 1936, when the probability of another war with Germany became exceedingly great, a group of six persons interested in the problems of financial policy began to meet, and the results of the discussions that took place between them are embodied in the present work.
"Investigating Genocide: An Analysis of the Dafur Atrocities
Documentation Project" will be comprised of over 1,000 annotations
on a wide array of issues/ topics germane to the subject of the
intervention and prevention of genocide. Among the topics under
which annotations will be included are: key conventions,
international treaties, and covenants; early warning signals and
forecasting; key "risk data bases"; sanctions; peace-keeping forces
armed intervention; humanitarian intervention; conflict resolution;
genocide early-warning systems/monitoring; ad hoc tribunals; the
International Criminal Court; realpolitik vis-a-vis the issue of
genocide prevention and intervention; key non-governmental agencies
working on the issue of intervention and prevention of genocide;
and key governmental and U.N. bodies working on the issue of
genocide intervention and prevention.
This book examines the emergence of new international norms to govern the spread of small arms, and the extent to which these norms have been established in the policies and practices of states, regions and international organizations. It also attempts to establish criteria for assessing norm emergence, and to assess the process of norm development by comparing what actually happens at the multilateral level. If norm-making on small arms and related multilateral negotiations have mostly dealt with 'illicit arms', and most of the norms examined here fall on the arms supplier side of the arms equation, the author argues that the creation of international norms and the setting of widely agreed standards amongst states on all aspects of the demand for, availability, and spread of both legal and illegal small arms and light weapons must become central to the multilateral coordination of policy responses in order to tackle the growing violence associated with small arms availability. Small Arms and Security will be of interest to researchers and professionals in the fields of peace and conflict studies, global governance, international security and disarmament.
This book focuses the public debate on fundamental political problem by defining three approaches to arms control. The three approaches are (l) extend or modify the SALT II Treaty; (2) restructure the present or planned nuclear forces; and (3) establish overall equivalence. |
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