War, like death and taxes, seems eternal but is it inevitable? Do nations simply blunder into it? What is victory and how is it achieved? The author of this original and lively study answers these and other perennial questions about War and Warfare (not the same thing) that scholars often ignore. Pike explains how strategy fuses objectives and action, how war leaders invariably (and literally) lose the plot; how the relationship between generals and politicians is key. He looks at nuclear war and provides some provocative insights; he argues that Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) - while a hideous concept - provides strategic stability. He also highlights the absurdity and folly of past wars - football wars, wars about pigs or ears - but stresses that wars, a last resort once diplomacy has failed, are lost by those blinded by hubris, irresolution or simple strategic confusion. This is the first volume in a trilogy 'Making Sense of War'. 'War in Context' will be published in the spring/summer of 2022. 'Both learned and a joy to read, Pike synthesises 2,000 years of scholarship and cuts through the fog of war and history.' Antony Bird (writer and historian)

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.

When the cold war ended, many hoped it signified enhanced prospects for a more stable world. However, despite favorable political developments, the post-cold war period has been marked by turbulence, uncertainty, and challenge. The actions of rogue states such as Iraq and North Korea have made nuclear proliferation more unpredictable. Violence in Somalia and Bosnia has cast doubt on the viability of international peacekeeping arrangements. Hopes for expanding democratization have been dimmed by assertions that the values of liberal democracy and human rights are incompatible with non-Western cultures. The Adaptive Military describes how military security policies and practices have adapted to these new times and explains why such changes are necessary.
The central argument is that current conflicts have been shaped by long-term trends, which increased the number and complexity of threats that the developed world is supposed to meet, and correspondingly decreased the stock of social and political options available to meet them.
Although the authors differ in their assessments about the current prospects for peace and ways to maintain security, the issues they address are as critical as they were at the end of the Cold War. Mobilizing resources and political support for remote and difficult enterprises will always remain contentious, but if we recognize the hazard of letting violence run unopposed throughout the world, then we bear some responsibility to consider how it might be checked. This volume is an exercise of that responsibility. It will be of great interest to experts in military studies and international relations.
"James Burk" is professor of sociology at Texas A&M University and was formerly editor of "Armed Forces and Society." He is the author of many articles on civil-military relations and editor of "Morris Janowitz: On Social Organization and Social Control.

Military affairs have been affected by major changes in recent years. The bipolar world of two superpowers has gone. The Cold War and the global military confrontation that accompanied it have ended. A new military and political order has emerged in the world, but the world has not become more stable; indeed, wars and armed conflict have become much more common. Forecasting the contours of future armed conflict is no easy task at such times, but this is the primary objective of If War Comes Tomorrow? Focusing on the impact of new technologies, General Gareev considers whether war is still a continuation of politics by other means' or whether the political, ideological, and technical transformation have broken that connection. He explores the linkage between threats to Russian national interests and war as an instrument of policy in great detail and concludes that there is very little prospect either of nuclear war or widespread conventional war. However, he does see local armed conflicts and local wars increasing, with greater emphasis on subversion. He argues that coming decades will see a shift towards a reliance upon indirect means to accomplish limited political ends, and analyses both information warfare and the revolution in military affairs from this perspective.

Wars and conflicts have become a near constant presence today, brought to us on a real-time basis on myriad communication devices. A cursory scan of recent conflicts reveals the blurring lines between war and peace, state versus non-state, regular and irregular, and conventional vis-à-vis unconventional. Over the past decade or so, the prevailing security environment in many regions has changed radically. Simultaneously the probability of conventional conflict between states or groups of states has steadily declined while sub-conventional conflict has gained prominence. These small, niggling wars have been termed as hybrid, non-linear, grey zone, or unrestricted, among others. It thus becomes necessary to enquire ontologically and epistemologically into these terms to understand if they allude to the same phenomenon through different frames. Furthermore, are these an aberration or, increasingly, the convention? This book tries to address this crucial research gap related to the changing character of conflicts in the strategic discourse in India.

The book analyses the renewed importance of the North Atlantic for NATO in the face of new security challenges This Whitehall Paper explores the renewed importance of the North Atlantic Ocean to NATO's security through the lenses of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway in particular. These three NATO members form the territorial rim around the North Atlantic and its peripheral seas. All are maritime nations that have historically taken prime responsibility for security in the region and together with Iceland they form the front line to a resurgent Russian maritime capability. These three counties, with support from the rest of the northern region, must take the lead to ensure that NATO and its partners devote sufficient resources to this aspect of NATO's area of responsibility.

The only Latin art of war to survive, Vegetius' Epitome was for long a part of the medieval prince's military education. The core of his proposals, the maintenance of a professional standing army, was revolutionary for medieval Europe, while his theory of deterrence through strength remains the foundation of modern Western defence policy.

This book will help civilian and military leaders, opinion makers, scholars, and interested citizens come to grips with the realities of the 21st-century global security arena by dissecting lessons from both the past and the present. This book sets out to accomplish four tasks: first, to outline the evolution of the national and international security concept from the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) to the present; second, to examine the circular relationship of the elements that define contemporary security; third, to provide empirical examples to accompany the discussion of each element-security, development, governance, and sovereignty; and fourth, to argue that substantially more sophisticated stability-security concepts, policy structures, and policy-making precautions are required in order for the United States to play more effectively in the global security arena. Case studies provide the framework to join the various chapters of the book into a cohesive narrative, while the theoretical linear analytic method it employs defines its traditional approach to case studies. For each case study it discusses the issue in context, findings and outcomes of the issue, and conclusions and implications. Issue and Context sections outline the political-historical situation and answers the "What?" question; Findings and Outcome sections answer the "Who?", "Why?", "How?", and "So What?" questions; and Conclusions and Implications sections address Key Points and Lessons. Addresses the changing nature of the contemporary global security landscape in an illuminating introductory chapter Clearly demonstrates the evolving nature of global security through case studies Takes a linear analytic approach, with a vignette that examines an internal security situation accompanying each chapter Addresses the major gaps in the national and international security literature

In this scholarly and original study of military thought during the nineteenth century Azar Gat continues and expands the themes he explored in his previous book, The Origins of Military Thought from the Enlightenment to Clausewitz (Oxford Historical Monographs, 1989). The present volume spans the period from the aftermath of the Napoleonic era to the outbreak of the First World War. Encompassing Prussia/Germany, France, Great Britain, the United States of America and the Marxist theory later to gain sway in Russia, The Development of Military Thought focuses on the wider conceptions of war, strategy, and military theory which dominated the West in this period. Dr. Gat's penetrating analysis uncovers the intellectual assumptions and picture of the past which underlay military policy and practice.

Through an in-depth analysis of the multifaceted manifestations of gender and conflict, this book shows how cognition and behaviour, agency and victimization, are gendered beyond the popular stereotypes. Conflict not only reconfirms social hierarchies and power relations, but also motivates people to transgress cultural boundaries and redefine their self-images and identities. The contributions are a mix of classical ethnography, performance studies and embodiment studies, showing 'emotions and feelings' often denied in scientific social research. Strong in their constructivist approach and unorthodox in theory, the articles touch upon the dynamic relation between the discourses, embodiments and symbolic practices that constitute the gendered world of conflict. The localities and research sites vary from institutional settings such as a school, rebel movements, public toilets and the military to more artistic domains of gendered conflicts such as prison theatre classes and the capoeira ring. At the same time, these conflicts and domains appropriate wider discourses and practices of a global nature, demonstrating the globalised and institutionalised nature of the nexus gender-conflict. A first set of chapters deals with 'breaking the gender taboos' and renegotiating the stereotypical gender roles - masculinities or femininities - during conflict. A second set of chapters focuses more explicitly on the bodily experience of conflict either physically of symbolically, while the last set straddle body and narrative. The inductive quality of the work leads to unexpected insights and does give access to worlds that are new, and often surprising and unconventional.

This new textbook provides students with a multidisciplinary theoretical and methodological introduction to terrorism studies. The book identifies the main theories proposed in the field of terrorism studies as they relate to several issues: why and how individuals and organizations get involved in terrorism; the definition and concept of terrorism; state terrorism; leaving terrorism behind; counter-terrorism; manifestations of terrorism in time and space. Terrorism studies is a highly heterogeneous field with a broad range of theories and disciplines, marked by ample debates. Beyond individual contributions and unique perspectives, however, it is difficult for students and interested readers to have a broader and structured grasp of the theoretical landscape within and behind the study of terrorism. This textbook offers a valuable new teaching tool which aims to provide students with the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological toolbox necessary to understand and research terrorism. This book will be essential reading for students of terrorism studies, political violence, and counter-terrorism, and is highly recommended for students of security studies, criminology, politics, and international relations.

This book explores the issue of civilian devastation in modern warfare, focusing on the complex processes that effectively establish civilians' identity in times of war. Underpinning the physicality of war's tumult are structural forces that create landscapes of civilian vulnerability. Such forces operate in four sectors of modern warfare: nationalistic ideology, state-sponsored militaries, global media, and international institutions. Each sector promotes its own constructions of civilian identity in relation to militant combatants: constructions that prove lethal to the civilian noncombatant who lacks political power and decision-making capacity with regards to their own survival. Civilians and Modern War provides a critical overview of the plight of civilians in war, examining the political and normative underpinnings of the decisions, actions, policies, and practices of major sectors of war. The contributors seek to undermine the 'tunnelling effect' of the militaristic framework regarding the experiences of noncombatants. This book will be of much interest to students of war and conflict studies, ethics, conflict resolution, and IR/Security Studies.

Sun Tzu's The Art of War is a series of lessons in the applied art of problem solving. Sun (544 BC-496 BC), an experienced general from the Warring States period of Chinese history, saw war as an inevitable problem - indeed, the ultimate problem confronting the state. The Art of War summarises his lessons on how to solve the problems raised by conflict. The work comprises a series of pithy discussions of the different strategic situations that might arise, and the best responses for each. In many ways it is a masterclass in the application of critical thinking to practical affairs. Aspiring generals are advised to 'appraise the situation' according to five separate criteria, and to plan accordingly. 'The expert at battle seeks his victory from strategic advantage', Sun writes, so every general must assess their situation from every angle, and establish not only the best way to give themselves the strategic advantage - but also of preventing the other side from giving itself the advantage. Throughout the text, Sun epitomises the qualities of a good problem solver by focusing on the nature of the problem; asking productive questions about it; and making sound decisions.

This study discusses salient trends demonstrated by contemporary warfare of these first years of the 21st century. The authors reinforce previous notions of Fourth Generation Warfare, but most importantly explore the workings of new components and how these have modified the theory and practice of warfare beyond the basic divisions of conventional and unconventional warfare as witnessed in the preceding century. Throughout history there has been a close interaction between politics, communication and armed conflict and a main line of investigation of this book is to track changes that are presumed to have occurred in the way and manner in which armed conflicts are waged. Using cogent examples drawn variously from conflicts of the Arab Spring, the Islamic State and Russian adventurism in South Ossetia, Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, the authors demonstrate the application of Information Warfare, the practice of Hybrid Warfare, and offensive use of diplomacy, communications, economics and international law to obtain political and military advantages against the status quo states of the international community. The authors combine a theoretical framework with concrete empirical examples in order to create a better understanding and comprehension of the current events and processes that shape the character of contemporary armed conflicts and how they are informed and perceived in a highly mediatised and politicised world.

The book analyses the renewed importance of the North Atlantic for NATO in the face of new security challenges This Whitehall Paper explores the renewed importance of the North Atlantic Ocean to NATO's security through the lenses of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway in particular. These three NATO members form the territorial rim around the North Atlantic and its peripheral seas. All are maritime nations that have historically taken prime responsibility for security in the region and together with Iceland they form the front line to a resurgent Russian maritime capability. These three counties, with support from the rest of the northern region, must take the lead to ensure that NATO and its partners devote sufficient resources to this aspect of NATO's area of responsibility.

Warfare has long been central to a proper understanding of ancient Greece and Rome, worlds where war was, as the philosopher Heraclitus observed, 'both king and father of all'. More recently, however, the understanding of Classical antiquity solely in such terms has been challenged; it is recognised that while war was pervasive, and a key concern in the narratives of ancient historians, a concomitant desire for peace was also constant. This volume places peace in the prime position as a panel of scholars stresses the importance of 'peace' as a positive concept in the ancient world (and not just the absence of, or necessarily even related to, war), and considers examples of conflict resolution, conciliation, and concession from Homer to Augustine. Comparing and contrasting theories and practice across different periods and regions, this collection highlights, first, the open and dynamic nature of peace, and then seeks to review a wide variety of initiatives from across the Classical world.

Widely regarded as "The Oldest Military Treatise in the World," this compact little book, written more than 2,500 years ago, today retains much of its original authoritative merit. American officers during World War II read it closely. The Japanese army studied the work for decades, and many twentieth-century Chinese officers are said to have known the book by heart. Maintaining that "all warfare is based on deception" and that "in war . . . let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns," the author adds: "That general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack." Principles of strategy, tactics, maneuvering, communication, and supplies; the use of terrain, fire, and the seasons of the year; the classification and utilization of spies; the treatment of soldiers, including captives, all have a modern ring to them. The author even provides rules for the "blitzkrieg," prefacing them with the words that "rapidity is the essence of war." Still a valuable guide to the conduct of war, this volume will be indispensable to military students and of interest to all those fascinated by military history. Unabridged republication of the edition published by The Military Service Publishing Company, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 1944.

Critical thinkers like Foucault, Benjamin, Derrida and Zizek have long challenged the liberal separation of violence and politics by highlighting the implicit violence within political and economic structures. But in an era of international terrorism and counter-terrorism, should we not also reverse the question to ask 'what is political about violence?' Using interviews with ex-militants from Italian leftist struggle of the 1970s and the Cypriot anti-colonial militancy of the 1950s, Heath-Kelly explores the political utility of violence. Studies of conflict and international politics rarely address how killing and injuring function to win wars or overturn regimes. But by rejecting conceptions of violence as a means-to-an-end found in the works of Clausewitz and Arendt, this book draws upon studies of pain to explore the ways in which armed struggle produces new political subjects and regimes, and discredits others, through experiences of violence. Using Elaine Scarry's conception of pain as 'world-destroying' and Walter Benjamin's delineation of violence as either lawmaking or law-preserving to frame ex-militant discussions of participation in armed struggle, the book contributes a pathbreaking empirical exploration of violence to international politics literatures - moving the study of political violence away from an understanding of violence as just a means-to-an-end. Drawing out insights that have a far wider resonance and significance for the analysis of the 'politicality' of political violence, this work will be of interest to students and scholars in areas such as international relations, security studies and international relations theory.

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.

Iran is the only Middle Eastern state to have preserved its national identity through the upheavals of Arab, Turkish and Mongol invasions. It is heir to the richest culture in the Middle East: a culture that extends far beyond the state's political boundaries. This book, first published in 1987, traces elements of continuity in Iranian society from pre-Islamic times to the turmoil of the Islamic Republic. The author discusses the persistence of religion as a dominant force in Iran's politics and society; the attraction of unorthodox doctrines such as Mazdakism, Baha'ism, and revolutionary Shi'ism; the tradition of strong, charismatic leadership; and the constant problem of ruling peoples of diverse tribal, religious and linguistic affiliations. He finds explanations for recent political changes in conditions peculiarly Iranian and examines the emerging post-revolutionary society along with some of its new institutions, including the revolutionary guards, the assembly, the neighbourhood committees, and the Friday prayer leaders.

This book, first published in 1985, examines the whole problem of peacemaking in the Arab-Israel conflict. It considers the different countries involved, the changing positions they have adopted over time and the range of opinion within each country. It looks at the role of the superpowers and shows how their vacillations and their viewing of the conflict in simple terms as part of the global superpower rivalry have been unfortunate. It examines how a typical uncommitted medium power - Canada - can contribute to peace in very many ways though it may not achieve a breakthrough.

Conveniently structured into five sections, The Routledge Research Companion to Outsourcing Security offers an overview of the different ways in which states have come to rely on private contractors to support interventions. Part One puts into context the evolution of outsourcing in Western states that are actively involved in expeditionary operations as well as the rise of the commercial security sector in Afghanistan. To explain the various theoretical frameworks that students can use to study security/military outsourcing, Part Two outlines the theories behind security outsourcing. Part Three examines the law and ethics surrounding the outsourcing of security by focusing on how states might monitor contractor behaviour, hold them to account and prosecute them where their behaviour warrants such action. The drivers, politics and consequences of outsourcing foreign policy are covered in Part Four, which is divided into two sections: section one is concerned with armed contractors (providing the provision of private security with the main driver being a capability gap on the part of the military/law enforcement agencies), and section two looks at military contractors (supporting military operations right back to antiquity, less controversial politically and often technologically driven). The final Part takes into consideration emerging perspectives, exploring areas such as gender, feminist methodology, maritime security and the impact of private security on the military profession. This book will be of much interest to students of military and security studies, foreign policy and International Relations.

The Introduction of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315584225 The twentieth century has been a century of wars, genocides and violent political conflict; a century of militarization and massive destruction. It has simultaneously been a century of feminist creativity and struggle worldwide, witnessing fundamental changes in the conceptions and everyday practices of gender and sexuality. What are some of the connections between these two seemingly disparate characteristics of the past century? And how do collective memories figure into these connections? Exploring the ways in which wars and their memories are gendered, this book contributes to the feminist search for new words and new methods in understanding the intricacies of war and memory. From the Italian and Spanish Civil Wars to military regimes in Turkey and Greece, from the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust to the wars in Abhazia, East Asia, Iraq, Afghanistan, former Yugoslavia, Israel and Palestine, the chapters in this book address a rare selection of contexts and geographies from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. In recent years, feminist scholarship has fundamentally changed the ways in which pasts, particularly violent pasts, have been conceptualized and narrated. Discussing the participation of women in war, sexual violence in times of conflict, the use of visual and dramatic representations in memory research, and the creative challenges to research and writing posed by feminist scholarship, Gendered Wars, Gendered Memories will appeal to scholars working at the intersection of military/war, memory, and gender studies, seeking to chart this emerging territory with 'feminist curiosity'.

African writers and literary critics must account for the changing political terrain and how these contribute to creating new sources of conflicts and aggression toward women. This book brings insight and scholarly breadth to the growing research on women, war, and conflict in Africa. The aftermath of wars and conflicts initiates new forms of violence and related gender challenges. The contributors establish compelling evidence for the significance of gender in the analyses of contemporary warfare and conflict. Articulating war's consequences for women and children remains a major challenge for critics, policy makers, and human rights organizations. There is a need for deeper understanding of the new sources of violence and male aggression on women, the gendered challenges of reintegration in the aftermath, and the future consequences of gendered violence for the African continent. This book will be useful to scholars, researchers, instructors, students of literature in the humanities, women's studies, liberal studies, African studies, etc. at both undergraduate and graduate levels. It also offers interdisciplinary utility for readers interested in literary representations of women's experience in war and conflict.

This book is a judicial, military and political history of the period 1941 to 1954. As such, it is also a United States legal history of both World War II and the early Cold War. Civil liberties, mass conscription, expanded military jurisdiction, property rights, labor relations, and war crimes arising from the conflict were all issues to come before the federal judiciary during this period and well beyond since the Supreme Court and the lower courts heard appeals from the government's wartime decisions well into the 1970s. A detailed study of the judiciary during World War II evidences that while the majority of the justices and judges determined appeals partly on the basis of enabling a large, disciplined, and reliable military to either deter or fight a third world war, there was a recognition of the existence of a tension between civil rights and liberties on the one side and military necessity on the other. While the majority of the judiciary tilted toward national security and deference to the military establishment, the judiciary's recognition of this tension created a foundation for persons to challenge governmental narrowing of civil and individual rights after 1954. Kastenberg and Merriam present a clearer picture as to why the Court and the lower courts determined the issues before them in terms of external influences from both national and world-wide events. This book is also a study of civil-military relations in wartime so whilst legal scholars will find this study captivating, so will military and political historians, as well as political scientists and national security policy makers.