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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Theory of warfare & military science
Military power needs to be financed and economic development is often shaped by military conflict, thus the interaction of military and economy, power and money is central to the modern world. This book provides an accessible introduction to the economics of the use of organized force, with a wide range of historical and current examples.
Between June 1812 and January 1815, US and British forces, notably the regular infantrymen of both sides (including the Canadian Fencibles Regiment), fought one another on a host of North American battlefields. This study examines the evolving role and combat performance of the two sides' regulars during the conflict, with particular reference to three revealing battles in successive years: Queenston Heights, Crysler's Farm, and Chippawa. Featuring full-color artwork and battle maps, this fully illustrated study investigates the US and British regular infantry's role, tactics, junior leadership, and combat performance on three battlefields of the War of 1812. The actions assessed here notably demonstrate the evolution of US regulars from their initial poor showing to an emerging professionalism that allowed them to face their British opponents on equal terms.
Eve of Destruction The Coming Age of Preventive War Thomas M. Nichols "Thomas Nichols transcends sterile debates about Iraq and the Bush Doctrine and points instead to the fundamental erosion in two long-standing international norms: the inviolability of state sovereignty and the unacceptability of preventive war. These profound changes are driven by the very real threat of mass casualty suicide terrorism as well as humanitarian disasters and the problem of failed states. This is a smart, incisive, and important book."--Robert J. Lieber, Georgetown University "Preventive war is here to stay. The question isn't whether but when and how force will be used preventively. That is the important message of this excellent book. Nichols provides the critical answers clearly and convincingly."--Ivo Daalder, Brookings Institution "Nichols provides a lively guide to the development of this issue after the Cold War."--"Foreign Affairs" In an age of new threats to international security, the old rules of war are rapidly being discarded. The great powers are moving toward norms less restrictive of intervention, preemption, and preventive war. This evolution is taking place not only in the United States but also in many of the world's most powerful nations, including Russia, France, and Japan, among others. As centuries of tradition and law are overturned, will preventive warfare push the world into chaos? "Eve of Destruction" is a provocative contribution to a growing international debate over the acceptance of preventive military action. In the first work to identify the trends that have led to a coming age of preventive war, Thomas M. Nichols uses historical analysis as well as interviews with military officials from around the world to trace the anticipatory use of force from the early 1990s--when the international community responded to a string of humanitarian crises in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo--to today's current and potential actions against rogue states and terrorists. He makes a case for a bold reform of U.S. foreign policy, and of the United Nations Security Council itself, in order to avert outright anarchy. Thomas M. Nichols is Professor of Strategy and Forrest Sherman Chair of Public Diplomacy at the United States Naval War College. His previous books include "The Russian Presidency" and "Winning the World: Lessons for America's Future from the Cold War." 2008 192 pages 6 x 9 ISBN 978-0-8122-4066-5 Cloth $45.00s 29.50 ISBN 978-0-8122-0294-6 Ebook $45.00s 29.50 World Rights Political Science, Public Policy Short copy: In an age of new threats to international security, the old rules of war are rapidly being discarded by the great powers. This study explores how and why states will exercise the preventive use of force in the twenty-first century, and how this violence might be contained and controlled.
Military organizations around the world are normally huge producers and consumers of data. Accordingly, they stand to gain from the many benefits associated with data analytics. However, for leaders in defense organizations-either government or industry-accessible use cases are not always available. This book presents a diverse collection of cases that explore the realm of possibilities in military data analytics. These use cases explore such topics as: Context for maritime situation awareness Data analytics for electric power and energy applications Environmental data analytics in military operations Data analytics and training effectiveness evaluation Harnessing single board computers for military data analytics Analytics for military training in virtual reality environments A chapter on using single board computers explores their application in a variety of domains, including wireless sensor networks, unmanned vehicles, and cluster computing. The investigation into a process for extracting and codifying expert knowledge provides a practical and useful model for soldiers that can support diagnostics, decision making, analysis of alternatives, and myriad other analytical processes. Data analytics is seen as having a role in military learning, and a chapter in the book describes the ongoing work with the United States Army Research Laboratory to apply data analytics techniques to the design of courses, evaluation of individual and group performances, and the ability to tailor the learning experience to achieve optimal learning outcomes in a minimum amount of time. Another chapter discusses how virtual reality and analytics are transforming training of military personnel. Virtual reality and analytics are also transforming monitoring, decision making, readiness, and operations. Military Applications of Data Analytics brings together a collection of technical and application-oriented use cases. It enables decision makers and technologists to make connections between data analytics and such fields as virtual reality and cognitive science that are driving military organizations around the world forward.
Some of the most brutal and long-lasting civil wars of our time those in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Lebanon, and Iraq, among others involve the rapid formation and disintegration of alliances among warring groups, as well as fractionalization within them. It would be natural to suppose that warring groups form alliances based on shared identity considerations such as Christian groups allying with Christian groups, or Muslim groups with their fellow co-religionists but this is not what we see. Two groups that identify themselves as bitter foes one day, on the basis of some identity narrative, might be allies the next day and vice versa. Nor is any group, however homogeneous, safe from internal fractionalization. Rather, looking closely at the civil wars in Afghanistan and Bosnia and testing against the broader universe of fifty-three cases of multiparty civil wars, Fotini Christia finds that the relative power distribution between and within various warring groups is the primary driving force behind alliance formation, alliance changes, group splits, and internal group takeovers.
Late modern wars are legitimised through invocations of humanity; variously the rescue and protection of populations, the re-shaping of entire societies, and the re-constitution of the sphere of the international into a pacified cosmopolitan arena. Drawing on critical social and political thought, this book explores the implications of this legitimisation. It argues that these wars, often referred to as 'liberal', extend forms of exclusion and domination that make war a tool of control now articulated in global terms. In highlighting the domination of contemporary politics by discourses and practices that blur distinctions between war and peace, the international and the human, Jabri points to the dangers that lie at the heart of such practices. These dangers have implications not only for the liberal democratic state, but for the emergence of a global sphere of interaction based on mutual recognition.
Over the last decade (and indeed ever since the Cold War), the rise of insurgents and non-state actors in war, and their readiness to use terror and other irregular methods of fighting, have led commentators to speak of 'new wars'. They have assumed that the 'old wars' were waged solely between states, and were accordingly fought between comparable and 'symmetrical' armed forces. Much of this commentary has lacked context or sophistication. It has been bounded by norms and theories more than the messiness of reality. Fed by the impact of the 9/11 attacks, it has privileged some wars and certain trends over others. Most obviously it has been historically unaware. But it has also failed to consider many of the other dimensions which help us to define what war is - legal, ethical, religious, and social. The Changing Character of War, the fruit of a five-year interdisciplinary programme at Oxford of the same name, draws together all these themes, in order to distinguish between what is really changing about war and what only seems to be changing. Self-evidently, as the product of its own times, the character of each war is always changing. But if war's character is in flux, its underlying nature contains its own internal consistency. Each war is an adversarial business, capable of generating its own dynamic, and therefore of spiralling in directions that are never totally predictable. War is both utilitarian, the tool of policy, and dysfunctional. This book brings together scholars with world-wide reputations, drawn from a clutch of different disciplines, but united by a common intellectual goal: that of understanding a problem of extraordinary importance for our times. This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.
Putting into question the conventional view that the military is
detrimental to democratic development, Dolman provides a
multifaceted examination of the institutional incentives of the
military and its relations with civilian authorities. Drawing on
classical political theory, a wide range of historical examples,
and statistical findings, " The Warrior State" argues that the
military can facilitate democracy as the result of specific norms
and conditions that focus on individual action. Ironically, this
may be best inculcated through a focus on the offensive, precisely
the military doctrine commonly seen as most likely to result in
international conflict. The paradox of offensive strategies
possibly increasing international conflict while also enhancing
democracy, which is supposed to decrease such conflict, form a core
of this provocative book.
The essays in this compelling collection examine the period between the two world wars of the twentieth century; one of the most exciting in the history of war. They explore the lingering consequences of World War I; the intellectual efforts to analyze this conflict's military significance; the attempts to plan for another general war; and several episodes in the 1930s that portended the war that erupted in 1939.
This definitive reference resource on cyber warfare covers all aspects of this headline topic, providing historical context of cyber warfare and an examination its rapid development into a potent technological weapon of the 21st century. Today, cyber warfare affects everyone-from governments that need to protect sensitive political and military information, to businesses small and large that stand to collectively lose trillions of dollars each year to cyber crime, to individuals whose privacy, assets, and identities are subject to intrusion and theft. The problem is monumental and growing exponentially. Encyclopedia of Cyber Warfare provides a complete overview of cyber warfare, which has been used with increasing frequency in recent years by such countries as China, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Russia, and the United States. Readers will gain an understanding of the origins and development of cyber warfare and of how it has become a major strategic element in warfare for countries throughout the world. The encyclopedia's entries cover all of the most significant cyber attacks to date, including the Stuxnet worm that successfully disabled centrifuges in Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment facility; the attack on Israel's internet infrastructure during its January 2009 military offensive in the Gaza Strip; the worldwide "Red October" cyber attack that stole information from embassies, research firms, military installations, and nuclear and other energy infrastructures; and cyber attacks on private corporations like Sony. Provides comprehensive coverage of the major individuals, organizations, impacts, and issues related to cyber warfare that enables readers to better understanding of the impact of cyber warfare on modern conflicts Includes a detailed chronology that documents the evolution and use of cyber warfare over the past few decades Supplies further readings and a lengthy bibliography that offer a wealth of options to students conducting extensive research on the subject
Operation Enduring Freedom Afghanistan has been the longest war in American history. Even after the drawdown of NATO/ISAF forces it has cast a shadow over Afghanistan's future and highlighted the U.S. failure to gradually wind down the conflict. Today, the resurgent Taliban hold more Afghan territory than before, the civilian toll is at a record high and Afghan military casualties are rising. From sanctuaries in Pakistan and from the Afghan areas they hold, the Taliban are carrying out increasingly daring attacks, including in the capital Kabul. In declaring war in Afghanistan,in 2001, after the world's worst terrorist attack in modern history, U.S. President George W. Bush had the sympathy and support of the world. Yet before he could accomplish his war objectives in Afghanistan, he invaded and occupied Iraq. The course of the war, in Afghanistan, is explained in great detail in this book. The changes of strategies, force levels and the circumstances which brought them about bear description as the U.S. searched for a viable strategy. President Barack Obama thought that he could end the war simply by declaring it over and by making the Afghan people responsible for their own security. The role of Pakistan in this conflict also merits a detailed explanation. The continuing conflict poses a threat to regional peace. This book will be of interest to military professionals as well as the lay reader. It describes an important era of the history of South Asia.
Keith B. Bickel challenges a host of military and strategic theories that treat particular bureaucratic structures, large organizations, and elites as the progenitors of doctrine. This timely study of how the military draws lessons from interventions focuses on the overlooked role that mid-level combat officers play in creating military doctrine. "Mars Learning" closely evaluates Marine civil and military pacification operations in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua, and illuminates the debates surrounding the development of Marine Corps' small wars doctrine between 1915 and 1940. The result is compelling evidence of how field experience obtained before 1940 played a role in shaping the "Marine Corps' Small Wars Manual" and elements of doctrine that exist today. How the Marines organized lessons at that time provides important insights into how doctrine is likely to be generated today in response to post-Cold War interventions around the globe.
One of the greatest and most terrible years in world history.'This war has now assumed the character', wrote Benito Mussolini, before 1941 was six months old, 'of a war between two worlds', and the Italian dictator had rarely predicted more truly. Before the year had ended, following Hitler's surprise assault on Russia and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, thirty-seven nations were engaged in an all-out war reminiscent of Armageddon, 'the battle of that great day of God Almighty'. Richard Collier's latest narrative spans both this entire, devastating year, as well as the events that led up to it. From the hunting of the Bismarck through the North Atlantic to the triumphs of Rommel's Afrika Korps, from the horror and heroism of besieged Leningrad to the debacles of Hong Kong, Malaya and the Far East, this is a panorama of truly world-wide proportions. An unputdownable narrative of the most extraordinary year in world history, perfect for readers of Max Hastings, James Holland and Antony Beevor.
"Virtual War and Magical Death" is a provocative examination of the relations between anthropology and contemporary global war. Several arguments unite the collected essays, which are based on ethnographic research in varied locations, including Guatemala, Uganda, and Tanzania, as well as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and the United States. Foremost is the contention that modern high-tech warfare--as it is practiced and represented by the military, the media, and civilians--is analogous to rituals of magic and sorcery. Technologies of "virtual warfare," such as high-altitude bombing, remote drone attacks, night-vision goggles, and even music videoes and computer games that simulate battle, reproduce the imaginative worlds and subjective experiences of witchcraft, magic, and assault sorcery long studied by cultural anthropologists. Another significant focus of the collection is the U.S.
military's exploitation of ethnographic research, particularly
through its controversial Human Terrain Systems (HTS) Program,
which embeds anthropologists as cultural experts in military units.
Several pieces address the ethical dilemmas that HTS and other
counterinsurgency projects pose for anthropologists. Other essays
reveal the relatively small scale of those programs in relation to
the military's broader use of, and ambitions for, social scientific
data.
Since the start of the Trump era, the United States and the Western world has finally begun to wake up to the threat of online warfare and the attacks from Russia, who flood social media with disinformation, and circulate false and misleading information to fuel fake narratives and make the case for illegal warfare. The question no one seems to be able to answer is: what can the West do about it? Central and Eastern European states, including Ukraine and Poland, however, have been aware of the threat for years. Nina Jankowicz has advised these governments on the front lines of the information war. The lessons she learnt from that fight, and from her attempts to get US congress to act, make for essential reading. How to Lose the Information War takes the reader on a journey through five Western governments' responses to Russian information warfare tactics - all of which have failed. She journeys into the campaigns the Russian operatives run, and shows how we can better understand the motivations behind these attacks and how to beat them. Above all, this book shows what is at stake: the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself.
Selected as a Financial Times Best Book of 2013 In Strategy: A History, Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the world's leading authorities on war and international politics, captures the vast history of strategic thinking, in a consistently engaging and insightful account of how strategy came to pervade every aspect of our lives. The range of Freedman's narrative is extraordinary, moving from the surprisingly advanced strategy practiced in primate groups, to the opposing strategies of Achilles and Odysseus in The Iliad, the strategic advice of Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, the great military innovations of Baron Henri de Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz, the grounding of revolutionary strategy in class struggles by Marx, the insights into corporate strategy found in Peter Drucker and Alfred Sloan, and the contributions of the leading social scientists working on strategy today. The core issue at the heart of strategy, the author notes, is whether it is possible to manipulate and shape our environment rather than simply become the victim of forces beyond one's control. Time and again, Freedman demonstrates that the inherent unpredictability of this environment-subject to chance events, the efforts of opponents, the missteps of friends-provides strategy with its challenge and its drama. Armies or corporations or nations rarely move from one predictable state of affairs to another, but instead feel their way through a series of states, each one not quite what was anticipated, requiring a reappraisal of the original strategy, including its ultimate objective. Thus the picture of strategy that emerges in this book is one that is fluid and flexible, governed by the starting point, not the end point. A brilliant overview of the most prominent strategic theories in history, from David's use of deception against Goliath, to the modern use of game theory in economics, this masterful volume sums up a lifetime of reflection on strategy.
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.
The violent use of armed, unmanned aircraft ('drones') is increasing worldwide, but uncertainty persists about the moral status of remote-control killing and why it should be restrained. Practitioners, observers and potential victims of such violence often struggle to reconcile it with traditional expectations about the nature of war and the risk to combatants. Addressing the ongoing policy concern that state use of drone violence is sometimes poorly understood and inadequately governed, the book's ethical assessments are not restricted to the application of traditional Just War principles, but also consider the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI), virtue ethics, and guiding principles for forceful law-enforcement. This edited collection brings together nine original contributions by established and emerging scholars, incorporating expertise in military ethics, critical military studies, gender, history, international law and international relations, in order to better assess the multi-faceted relationship between drone violence and justice.
This is the comprehensive account of the long and difficult road traveled to end the fifty-year armed conflict with the FARC, the oldest guerrilla army in the world; a long war that left more than eight million victims. The obstacles to peace were both large and dangerous. All previous attempts to negotiate with the FARC had failed, creating an environment where differences were irreconcilable and political will was scarce. The Battle for Peace is the story not only of the six years of negotiation and the peace process that transformed a country, its secret contacts, its international implications, and difficulties and achievements but also of the two previous decades in which Colombia oscillated between warlike confrontation and negotiated solution. In The Battle for Peace Juan Manuel Santos shares the lessons he learned about war and peace and how to build a successful negotiation process in the context of a nation which had all but resigned itself to war and the complexities of twenty-first-century international law and diplomacy. While Santos is clear that there is no handbook for making peace, he offers conflict-tested guidance on the critical parameters, conditions, and principles as well as rich detail on the innovations that made it possible for his nation to find common ground and a just solution.
Rebooting Clausewitz offers an entirely new take on the work of history's greatest theorist of war. Written for an undergraduate readership that often struggles with Clausewitz's master work On War--a book that is often considered too philosophical and impenetrably dense--it seeks to unpack some of Clausewitz's key insights on theory and strategy. In three fictional interludes Clausewitz attends a seminar at West Point; debates the War on Terror at a Washington think tank; and visits a Robotics Institute in Santa Fe where he discusses how scientists are reshaping the future of war. Three separate essays situate Clausewitz in the context of his times, discuss his understanding of the culture of war, and the extent to which two other giants--Thucydides and Sun Tzu--complement his work. Some years ago the philosopher W.B. Gallie argued that Clausewitz needed to be 'saved from the Clausewitzians'. Clausewitz doesn't need saving and his commentators have contributed a great deal to our understanding of On War's seminal status as a text. But too often they tend to conduct a conversation between themselves. This book is an attempt to let a wider audience into the conversation.
Aside from the occasional nod to epaulets or use of camouflage, war
and fashion seem to be strange partners. Not so, argue the
contributors to this book, who connect military industrial
practices as well as military dress to textile and clothing in new
ways. For instance, the book includes a series of commentaries on
the impact of military dress in the airline industry, in
illustrated wartime comics, and even considers today's muscled
soldier's body as a new type of uniform. Elsewhere, the impacts of
conquest introduce a new set of postcolonial aesthetics; this is
because military and colonial regimes disrupted local textile
production and garment making. In another chapter, it is argued
that textiles and fashion are important because they reflect a core
practice, one that bridges textile artists and designers in an
expressive, creative, and deeply physical way to matters of
cultural significance. And the book concludes by calling the very
mode of "military chic" into ethical question.
Today, artists are engaged in investigation. They probe corruption, state violence, environmental destruction and repressive technologies. At the same time, fields not usually associated with aesthetics make powerful use of it. Journalists and legal professionals pore over open source videos and satellite imagery to undertake visual investigations. This combination of diverse fields is what the authors call "investigative aesthetics": mobilising sensibilities often associated with art, architecture and other such practices to find new ways of speaking truth to power. This book draws on theories of knowledge, ecology and technology, evaluates the methods of citizen counter-forensics, micro-history and art, and examines radical practices such as those of Wikileaks, Bellingcat, and Forensic Architecture. Investigative Aesthetics takes place in the studio and the laboratory, the courtroom and the gallery, online and in the streets, as it strives towards the construction of a new 'common sensing'. The book is an inspiring introduction to a new field that brings together investigation and aesthetics to change how we understand and confront power today. To Nour Abuzaid for your brilliance, perseverance, and unshaken belief in the liberation of Palestine.
Peace, many would agree, is a goal that democratic nations should strive to achieve. Considering the question of whether democracy is dependent on war, two celebrated political scientists trace the ways in which governments have mobilised armies since antiquity. They find that our modern form of democracy not only evolved in a brutally competitive environment but also was quickly excised when the powerful no longer needed their citizenry to defend against existential threats. Bringing to life many of the battles that shaped our world, the authors show how centralised monarchies replaced feudalism, why dictatorships can mobilise large forces but often fail at long-term military campaigns and how drone warfare has weakened democracy. In the spirit of Francis Fukuyama and Niall Ferguson, Forged Through Fire has far-reaching implications and will become the centrepiece of the democratic debate.
As a concept, deterrence has launched a thousand books and
articles. It has dominated Western strategic thinking for more than
four decades. In this important and groundbreaking new book,
Lawrence Freedman develops a distinctive approach to the evaluation
of deterrence as both a state of mind and a strategic option. This
approach is applied to post-cold war crisis management, and the
utility and relevance of the concept is addressed in relation to US
strategic practice post-9/11, particularly in the light of the
apparent preference of the Bush Administration for the alternative
concept of pre-emption. The study of deterrence has been hampered by the weight of the intellectual baggage accumulated since the end of the Second World War. Exaggerated notions of what deterrence might achieve were developed, only to be to knocked down by academic critique. In this book, Freedman charts the evolution of the contemporary concept of deterrence, and discusses whether - and how - it still has relevance in today's world. He considers constructivist as well as realist approaches and draws on criminological as well as strategic studies literature to develop a concept of a norms-based, as opposed to an interest-based, deterrence. This book will be essential reading for students of politics and international relations as well as all those interested in contemporary strategic thought. |
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