America has been at war for most of the 20th and 21st centuries and during that time has progressively moved towards a vicarious form of warfare, where key tasks are delegated to proxies, the military's exposure to danger is limited, and special forces and covert instruments are on the increase. Important strategic decisions are taken with minimal scrutiny or public engagement. This compelling account charts the historical emergence of this distinctive tradition of war and explains the factors driving its contemporary prominence. It contrasts the tactical advantages of vicarious warfare with its hidden costs and potential to cause significant strategic harm.

Retrieving the older but surprisingly neglected language of household governance, Economy of Force offers a radical new account of the historical rise of the social realm and distinctly social theory as modern forms of oikonomikos - the art and science of household rule. The techniques and domestic ideologies of household administration are highly portable and play a remarkably central role in international and imperial relations. In two late-colonial British 'emergencies' in Malaya and Kenya, and US counterinsurgencies in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, armed social work was the continuation of oikonomia - not politics - by other means. This is a provocative new history of counterinsurgency with major implications for social, political and international theory. Historically rich and theoretically innovative, this book will interest scholars and students across the humanities and social sciences, especially politics and international relations, history of social and political thought, history of war, social theory and sociology.

Gardner examines the causes and consequences of Russia's annexation of Crimea. By analyzing alliance formations and the consequences of other annexations in world history, the book urges an alternative US-NATO-European-Japanese strategy toward both Russia and China in the effort to prevent a renewed arms race, if not global war.

'Soft' Counterinsurgency reviews the promise and actual achievement of Human Terrain Teams, the small groups of social scientists that were eventually embedded in every combat brigade in Iraq and Afghanistan. The book, based on interviews with both HTT personnel and their military commanders, examines the military's need for sociocultural information, the ethical issues surrounding research carried out in combat zones, and the tensions between military and social science organizational cultures. The account provides a close, detailed account of HTT activities, a critical reflection on the possibilities of creating a 'softer, ' less violent counterinsurgency, and the difficulty of attempting to make war more 'intelligent' and discriminating.

This book offers a multidisciplinary treatment of targeting. It is intended for use by the military, government legal advisers and academics. The book is suitable for use in both military training and educational programs and in Bachelor and Master degree level courses on such topics as War Studies and Strategic Studies. The book first explores the context of targeting, its evolution and the current targeting process and characteristics. An overview of the legal and ethical constraints on targeting as an operational process follows. It concludes by surveying contemporary issues in targeting such as the potential advent of autonomous weapon systems, 'non-kinetic' targeting, targeting in multinational military operations and leadership decapitation in counter-terrorism operations. The deep practical experience and academic background of the contributors ensures comprehensive treatment of current targeting and use of force issues. Paul Ducheine is Professor for Cyber Operations and Cyber Security, Netherlands Defence Academy, Breda, The Netherlands; and Professor of Law of Military Cyber Operations and Cyber Security at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Michael Schmitt is Charles H. Stockton Professor & Director, Stockton Center for the Study of International Law, U.S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, and Professor of Public International Law, University of Exeter, UK. Frans Osinga is Chair of the War Studies Department, Netherlands Defence Academy, Breda, The Netherlands, and Professor of Military Operational Art and Sciences.

This study explores the roles played by magic in contemporary African warfare, specifically through the case of Sierra Leone, to assess its impact on behaviour in conflict. In the last two decades, rituals designed to imbue people with supernatural power and make them immune to enemy fire have been seen on post-Cold War battlefields across Africa. Wlodarczyk argues that the use of magic in warfare can be understood, not as an illustration of how Africa's reality is qualitatively different from the West's, but as appropriate and logical. Here, a conceptual framework is suggested for analysing culturally alien practices more broadly, to inform approaches to civilian and military intervention not only in Africa but in conflict theatres around the world.

This book begins discussion at a point where many civil-military conversations end. Hartwell identifies underlying dynamics, key issues, and challenges that civilian and military organizations encounter when negotiating their roles in real and virtual volatile environments. These include managing expectations, understanding organizational missions and cultures, building trust, and exploring different approaches to violence. The impact of applied technologies on decision making processes and interventions is discussed in terms of recent and future complex crises. Linking earlier history to current discussions, this study makes an important contribution by reframing issues and outlining strategies to avoid unintended consequences and more effectively protect civilians in future operations. While geographic focus is on the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, and Asia-Pacific, the core issues are applicable to negotiating civil-military relationships in a wide range of environments.

This book offers a comprehensive moral theory of privatization in war. It examines the kind of wars that private actors might wage separate from the state and the kind of wars that private actors might wage as functionaries of the state. The first type of war serves to probe the ad bellum question of whether private actors can justifiably authorize war, while the second type of war serves to probe the in bello question of whether private actors can justifiably participate in war. The cases that drive the analysis are drawn from the rich and complicated history of private military action, stretching back centuries to the Italian city-states whose mercenaries were reviled by Machiavelli. The book also takes up the hypothetical examples conjured by philosophers-the private protective agencies of Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia, for example, and the private armies of Thomas More's Utopia. The aim of this book is to propose a theory of privatization that retains currency not only in assessing current military engagements, but past and future ones as well. In doing so, it also raises a set of important questions about the very enterprise of war. This book will be of much interest to students of ethics, political philosophy, military studies, international relations, war and conflict studies, and security studies.

In recent years questions of ethical responsibility and justice in war have become increasingly significant in international relations. This focus has been precipitated by United States (U.S.) led invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq. In turn, Western conceptions of ethical responsibility have been largely informed by human rights based understandings of morality. This book directly addresses the question of what it means to act ethically in times of war by drawing upon first-hand accounts of U.S. war fighting in Iraq during the 2003 invasion and occupation. The book focuses upon the prominent rights based justification of war of Michael Walzer. Through an in-depth critical reading of Walzer's work, this title demonstrates the broader problems implicit to human rights based justifications of war and elucidates an alternative account of ethical responsibility: ethics as response. Putting forward a compelling case for people to remain troubled and engaged with questions of ethical responsibility in war, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars in a range of areas including international relations theory, ethics and security studies.

This interdisciplinary study examines the relationships between the provision of military assistance and success in achieving donor aims in history and theory, based upon an initial proposition that the relationship between donor and recipient is a critical determinant of success or failure. Mott builds upon his previous research of general historical and Soviet case studies which focuses on four initial features of the wartime donor-recipient relationship: convergence of aims; donor control, commitment of donor military forces, and coherence of donor policies and strategies. To this foundation, he adds additional variables, recipient success, and regional efforts. The study presents a pattern for policy development and theoretical analysis in which military assistance is a viable, robust policy option and bilateral relationship with clear set of requirements, features, processes, and predictable results.

Mott's primary methodology is the search for uniformities across historical observations through low-level, ordinary, multivariate regressions. He examines a set of 25 discrete and significant U.S. donor-recipient relationships, and analyzes the features of wartime and Soviet relationships in each. Each chapter focuses on U.S. military assistance in a region and refines the relevant features of the observed relationships into a common profile for comparison with other regions. Mott's conclusions about the donor-recipient relationship narrow the gap between economics, political science, and military strategy; link history and theory to policy; and offer new insights into a complex feature of international relationships and foreign policy.

Examines the recent rise in the United States' use of preventive force More so than in the past, the US is now embracing the logic of preventive force: using military force to counter potential threats around the globe before they have fully materialized. While popular with individuals who seek to avoid too many "boots on the ground," preventive force is controversial because of its potential for unnecessary collateral damage. Who decides what threats are 'imminent'? Is there an international legal basis to kill or harm individuals who have a connection to that threat? Do the benefits of preventive force justify the costs? And, perhaps most importantly, is the US setting a dangerous international precedent? In Preventive Force, editors Kerstin Fisk and Jennifer Ramos bring together legal scholars, political scientists, international relations scholars, and prominent defense specialists to examine these questions, whether in the context of full-scale preventive war or preventive drone strikes. In particular, the volume highlights preventive drones strikes, as they mark a complete transformation of how the US understands international norms regarding the use of force, and could potentially lead to a 'slippery slope' for the US and other nations in terms of engaging in preventive warfare as a matter of course. A comprehensive resource that speaks to the contours of preventive force as a security strategy as well as to the practical, legal, and ethical considerations of its implementation, Preventive Force is a useful guide for political scientists, international relations scholars, and policymakers who seek a thorough and current overview of this essential topic.

Peimani challenges the practical indifference of many Western and non-Western countries with interests in Central Asia and the Caucasus to their plight. Independence in 1991 suddenly worsened all the economic and social problems of the countries of the Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan). Their failure to address their numerous economic problems and to develop their economies has created a suitable ground for the rise of social and political popular dissent, including ethnic conflicts, in all these multi-ethnic countries.

Concerned about the stability of their political systems, their ruling elites have all opted for authoritarianism. The prevailing intolerance of dissent and the suppression of opposition, political parties have paved the way for the emergence of anti-government extremist ideologies and political groups. The domestic situation has become ripe for the rise of violent political activities and ethnic conflicts, with a great possibility for their escalation to civil wars. The ethnic structure of both the Caucasus and Central Asia makes their development into inter-state wars a strong possibility. The unsettled ethnic and territorial conflicts within and between countries, which turned into wars in the early 1990s, could easily re-emerge. There is a potential for the further escalation of military conflicts in those regions because of the intentional or unintentional intervention of Iran, China, Turkey, Russia, and the United States, which have long-term interests in the two regions. Given the geographical characteristics of the Caucasus and Central Asia as a link between Asia and Europe, war and instability in those regions could destabilize the two continents hosting six declared nuclear powers. Of particular interest to scholars and other researchers involved with Eurasian, Central Asian, and Caucasian countries.

Humankind has always sought out innovative and new ways of waging war, establishing new forms of warfare. Set against a background of global strategic instability this process of innovation has, over the last two decades, produced a new and complex phenomenon, hybrid warfare. Distinct from other forms of modern warfare in several key aspects, it presents a unique challenge that appears to baffle policymakers and security experts, while giving the actors that employ it a new way of achieving their goals in the face of long-standing Western conventional, doctrinal, and strategic superiority. The Hybrid Age analyses the phenomenon of hybrid warfare through theoretical frameworks and a range global case studies from the 2006 Lebanon War to the Russian intervention in Ukraine in 2014. This book aims to establish a unified theory of hybrid warfare, which not only outlines what the term means, but also places it in its context, and provides the tools which enable an observer to identify and react to a future instance of hybrid warfare.

This book is amongst the first academic treatments of the emerging debate on autonomous weapons. Autonomous weapons are capable, once programmed, of searching for and engaging a target without direct intervention by a human operator. Critics of these weapons claim that 'taking the human out-of-the-loop' represents a further step towards the de-humanisation of warfare, while advocates of this type of technology contend that the power of machine autonomy can potentially be harnessed in order to prevent war crimes. This book provides a thorough and critical assessment of these two positions. Written by a political philosopher at the forefront of the autonomous weapons debate, the book clearly assesses the ethical and legal ramifications of autonomous weapons, and presents a novel ethical argument against fully autonomous weapons.

This important new book deals with the changing nature of war in the post-Cold War era and the emergence of new forms of warfare in which warlords, mercenaries and terrorists play an increasingly important role.

In the modern era, warfare came to play a crucial role in the formation of states, whereas the new wars emerging at the beginning of the 21st century have mostly gone together with the failure or collapse of states. The author draws out the key shifts involved in this process: from symmetrical conflicts between states to asymmetrical global relationships of force; from national armies to increasingly private or commercial bands of warlords, child soldiers and mercenaries; from pitched battles to protracted conflicts in which there is often little fighting and most of the violence is directed against civilians. Changes in weapons technology have combined with complex economic factors to make the prospect of endlessly simmering wars a real danger in the years to come.

Against this background, the author outlines the rise of a novel form of international terrorism, conceived more as a political method of communication than as an element in a military strategy. The resulting challenges faced by Western governments, and the costs and benefits associated with any response, are taken up in a concluding section that contrasts the characteristic European and American approaches and examines the implications for the future of international law.

This book will be of important to students of political science, international relations, war and peace studies, conflict studies and peace studies. It will also appeal to the general reader with an interest inthis topical subject.

In response to the September 11th terrorist attacks, Congress authorized "war" against al Qaeda in the statute known as the 2001 AUMF (Authorization for the Use of Military Force). Meant to be a temporary grant of powers to allow the President to retaliate against the perpetrators of the attack, two administrations have used the 2001 AUMF to justify controversial policies such as the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, domestic surveillance without a warrant by the National Security Agency, and the lethal targeting of terrorist suspects using drone strikes in countries with which the United States is not at war. Shoon Murray explores the debate that has emerged about whether it is time to repeal the 2001 AUMF. She documents how the Bush and Obama administrations have used this "war" authority and warns against the sources of inertia--organizational interests, psychological biases, and political incentives--that could make it permanent.

Contemporary security has expanded its meaning, content and structure in response to globalisation and the emergence of greatly improved world-wide communication. The protocols of modern warfare, including targeted killing, enhanced interrogations, mass electronic surveillance and the virtualisation of war have changed the moral landscape and brought diverse new interactions with politics, law, religion, ethics and technology. This book addresses how and why the nature of security has changed and what this means for the security actors involved and the wider society. Offering a crossdisciplinary perspective on concepts, meanings and categories of security, the book brings together scholars and experts from a range of disciplines including political, military studies and security studies, political economy and international relations. Contributors reflect upon new communication methods, postmodern concepts of warfare, technological determinants and cultural preferences to provide new theoretical and analytical insights into a changing security environment and the protocols of war in the 21st century. A useful text for scholars and students of security studies, international relations, global governance, international law and ethics, foreign policy, comparative studies and contemporary world history.

The U.S. military spends more than 14 countries combined and possesses state-of-the art weapons and equipment, yet after 13 years of effort, $1.4 trillion, and some 6,000 casualties, it still has been unable to defeat its enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq. The book explains why and how it can be remedied. It first demonstrates the negative effects of four factors that are prerequisites for military success and that have undermined U.S. military performance since the end of the Cold War. These include uneven civil-military relations; an inability to formulate and execute sound campaign plans; a mistaken approach to counter-insurgency, irregular warfare, and stability operations; and inattention to military options other than regime change. It also acknowledges that other factors often also intervene, and that the enemy plays a decisive role in military outcomes. Still, if the United States is to preserve the use of military force as a reasonable (albeit last resort) policy option, it must develop the means to maintain healthy, reliable civil-military relations, design and execute sound campaign plans appropriate to the adversary in question and the threat it poses to U.S. interests, conduct effective counter-insurgency and irregular warfare campaigns suitable given the size and capabilities of today's all volunteer armed forces, and develop a menu of military options beyond regime change. The intent is to bring attention to the under-performance of the U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere and prescribe remedies. These solutions cannot be left solely in the hands of the Department of Defense and congressional action and oversight will be essential to favorable outcomes. This is a timely survey as the military is facing downsizing in response to budget pressure that will constrain defense and counter-terrorism spending.

This interdisciplinary study provides an original account of the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to show how, why and with what consequences, twenty-first century wars became seen as policing wars.
Holmqvist starts from the assumption that wars always reflect the societies that wage them and combines the analysis of western strategic thinking with a philosophical examination of the core ideas that structure the contemporary liberal imagination. She argues that the US-led interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq were characterised by a widespread understanding of war as 'policing' - that is, waged against opponents deemed 'criminal' rather than political, and directed at the creation and maintenance of a certain type of 'order'. Holmqvist turns to themes of social theory and philosophy to offer new perspectives on why the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were waged in the way they were, and why the fantasy of policing wars came to resonate so widely amongst policy makers and academics alike.
This unique contribution to the study of war and international politics will appeal to scholars of the philosophy and sociology of war, military strategy and international relations.

In 1894-1895, after suffering defeat against Japan in a war primarily fought over the control of Korea, the Qing government initiated fundamental military reforms and established "New Armies" modeled after the German and Japanese military. Besides reorganizing the structure of the army and improving military training, the goal was to overcome the alleged physical weakness and lack of martial spirit attributed to Chinese soldiers in particular and to Chinese men in general. Intellectuals, government officials, and military circles criticized the pacifist and civil orientation of Chinese culture, which had resulted in a negative attitude towards its armed forces and martial values throughout society and a lack of interest in martial deeds, glory on the battlefield, and military achievements among men. The book examines the cultivation of new soldiers, officers, and civilians through new techniques intended to discipline their bodies and reconfigure their identities as military men and citizens. The book shows how the establishment of German-style "New Armies" in China between 1895 and 1916 led to the re-creation of a militarized version of masculinity that stressed physical strength, discipline, professionalism, martial spirit, and "Western" military appearance and conduct. Although the military reforms did not prevent the downfall of the Qing Dynasty or provide stable military clout to subsequent regimes, they left a lasting legacy by reconfiguring Chinese military culture and re-creating military masculinity and the image of men in China.

The International Society for First World War Studies' ninth conference, 'War Time', drew together emerging and leading scholars to discuss, reflect upon, and consider the ways that time has been conceptualised both during the war itself and in subsequent scholarship. War Time: First World War Perspectives on Temporality, stemming from this 2016 conference, offers its readers a collection of the conference's most inspiring and thought-provoking papers from the next generation of First World War scholars. In its varied yet thematically-related chapters, the book aims to examine new chronologies of the Great War and bring together its military and social history. Its cohesive theme creates opportunities to find common ground and connections between these sub-disciplines of history, and prompts students and academics alike to seriously consider time as alternately a unifying, divisive, and ultimately shaping force in the conflict and its historiography. With content spanning land and air, the home and fighting fronts, multiple nations, and stretching to both pre-1914 and post-1918, these ten chapters by emerging researchers (plus an introductory chapter by the conference organisers, and a foreword by John Horne) offer an irreplaceable and invaluable snapshot of how the next generation of First World War scholars from eight countries were innovatively conceptualising the conflict and its legacy at the midpoint of its centenary.

This book investigates the uses of crusader medievalism - the memory of the crusades and crusading rhetoric and imagery - in Britain, from Walter Scott's The Talisman (1825) to the end of the Second World War. It seeks to understand why and when the crusades and crusading were popular, how they fitted with other cultural trends of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, how their use was affected by the turmoil of the First World War and whether they were differently employed in the interwar years and in the 1939-45 conflict. Building on existing studies and contributing the fruits of fresh research, it brings together examples of the uses of the crusades from disparate contexts and integrates them into the story of the rise and fall crusader medievalism in Britain.

"Islam in the Balance: Ideational Threats in Arab Politics" is an analysis of how ideas, or political ideology, can threaten states and how states react to ideational threats. It examines the threat perception and policies of two Arab, Muslim majority states, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in response to the rise and activities of two revolutionary "Islamic states," established in Iran (1979) and Sudan (1989).
Using these comparative case studies the book provides important insight about the role of religious ideology for the international and domestic politics of the Middle East and, in doing so, advances our understanding of how, why, and when ideology affects threat perception and state policy.
Rubin makes clear that transnational ideologies may present a greater and more immediate national security threat than shifts in the military balance of power: first because ideology, or ideational power, triggers threat perception and affects state policy; second because states engage in ideational balancing in response to an ideological threat.
The book has significant implications for international relations theory and engages important debates in comparative politics about authoritarianism and Islamic activism. Its findings about how an Islamist regime or state behaves will provide vital insight for policy creation by the US and its Middle East allies should another such regime or state emerge.

This book provides a novel analysis of the military campaign of Rafael Carrera during the popular insurrection of 1837-1840 in Guatemala. Over the course of three years Carrera, a semi-literate farmer, and his army of peasants established Conservative control over Guatemala and accelerated the disintegration of the Central American Federation. Although Carrera's rise has been analyzed from a political and socio-economic perspective, the present work shows that Carrera's vertiginous success is the product of a peculiar and misunderstood approach to warfare that combines guerrilla recruiting practices and rural insurgency logistics with conventional combat tactics and operations. Gilmar Visoni-Alonzo argues that Carrera's hybrid warfare was made possible because of the conditions created by the militarization of Latin American society following the administrative reforms of the Bourbon monarchy in the late eighteenth century. The concept of hybrid warfare is offered as an alternative model to understand the success of other insurgencies.