![]() |
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
||
|
Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Theory of warfare & military science
Negotiating a peaceful end to civil wars, which often includes an attempt to bring together former rival military or insurgent factions into a new national army, has been a frequent goal of conflict resolution practitioners since the Cold War. In practice, however, very little is known about what works, and what doesn't work, in bringing together former opponents to build a lasting peace. Contributors to this volume assess why some civil wars result in successful military integration while others dissolve into further strife, factionalism, and even renewed civil war. Eleven cases are studied in detail-Sudan, Zimbabwe, Lebanon, Rwanda, the Philippines, South Africa, Mozambique, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Burundi-while other chapters compare military integration with corporate mergers and discuss some of the hidden costs and risks of merging military forces. New Armies from Old fills a serious gap in our understanding of civil wars, their possible resolution, and how to promote lasting peace, and will be of interest to scholars and students of conflict resolution, international affairs, and peace and security studies.
Legality and Legitimacy in Global Affairs focuses on the problematic relationship between legality and legitimacy when a nation (or nations) intervene in the work of other nations. Edited by Mark Juergensmeyer, Richard Falk, and Vesselin Popovski, this volume brings together a wide range of contributors with a broad set of cases that consider when such intervention is legitimate even if it isn't legal--and vice versa. Chapters cover humanitarian intervention, nuclear nonproliferation, military intervention, international criminal tribunals, interventions driven by environmental concerns, and the export of democracy. The book argues that while some interventions may not be technically legal, they may well be legitimate (e.g. Kosovo), and also concentrates on establishing the grounds for legitimate intervention. Some cases, like Iraq, fail the test. Transnational intervention by states and international institutions has increased since the globalization wave of the of the 1990's and especially since 9/11. This book, by focusing on a diverse array of cases, establishes a clear framework for judging the legitimacy of such actions.
Commanding Military Power offers a new explanation of why some armed forces are stronger than others. Ryan Grauer advances a 'command structure theory' which combines insights from organization theory, international relations, and security studies literatures to provide a unique perspective on military power. Specifically, armed forces organized to facilitate swift and accurate perception of and response to battlefield developments will cope better with war's inherent uncertainty, use resources effectively, and, quite often, win. Case studies of battles from the Russo-Japanese War, Chinese Civil War and Korean War, based on new archival research, underscore the argument, showing that even smaller and materially weaker militaries can fight effectively against and defeat larger and better endowed adversaries when they are organizationally prepared to manage uncertainty. That organization often matters more than numbers and specific tools of war has crucial implications for both contemporary and future thinking about and efforts to improve martial strength.
'War is the most important thing in the world', writes Martin van Creveld, one of the world's best-known experts on military history and strategy. The survival of every country, government, and individual is ultimately dependent on war - or the ability to wage it in self-defence. That is why, though it may come but once in a hundred years, it must be prepared for every day. When it is too late-when the bodies lie stiff and people weep over them-those in charge have failed in their duty. Nevertheless, in spite of the centrality of war to human history and culture, there has for long been no modern attempt to provide a replacement for the classics on war and strategy, Sun Tzu's The Art of War, dating from the 5th or 6th century BC, and Carl von Clausewitz's On War, written in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. What is needed is a modern, comprehensive, easy to read and understand theory of war for the 21st century that could serve as a replacement for these classic texts. The purpose of the present book is to provide just such a theory.
How do armies fight and what makes them victorious on the modern battlefield? In Divided Armies, Jason Lyall challenges long-standing answers to this classic question by linking the fate of armies to their levels of inequality. Introducing the concept of military inequality, Lyall demonstrates how a state's prewar choices about the citizenship status of ethnic groups within its population determine subsequent battlefield performance. Treating certain ethnic groups as second-class citizens, either by subjecting them to state-sanctioned discrimination or, worse, violence, undermines interethnic trust, fuels grievances, and leads victimized soldiers to subvert military authorities once war begins. The higher an army's inequality, Lyall finds, the greater its rates of desertion, side-switching, casualties, and use of coercion to force soldiers to fight. In a sweeping historical investigation, Lyall draws on Project Mars, a new dataset of 250 conventional wars fought since 1800, to test this argument. Project Mars breaks with prior efforts by including overlooked non-Western wars while cataloguing new patterns of inequality and wartime conduct across hundreds of belligerents. Combining historical comparisons and statistical analysis, Lyall also marshals evidence from nine wars, ranging from the Eastern Fronts of World Wars I and II to less familiar wars in Africa and Central Asia, to illustrate inequality's effects. Sounding the alarm on the dangers of inequality for battlefield performance, Divided Armies offers important lessons about warfare over the past two centuries-and for wars still to come.
Buddhism has played a significant role in the current global rise in religious nationalism and violence, but the violent aspects of Buddhist tradition have been neglected in the outpouring of academic analyses and case studies of this disturbing trend. This book offers eight essays examining the dark side of a tradition often regarded as the religion of peace. The authors note the conflict between the Buddhist norms of non-violence and the prohibition of the killing of sentient beings and acts of state violence supported by the Buddhist community (sangha), acts of civil violence in which monks participate, and Buddhist intersectarian violence. They consider contemporary and historical cases of Buddhist warfare from a wide range of traditions - Tibetan, Mongolian, Japanese, Chinese, Sri Lankan, and Thai - critically examining both Buddhist textual sources justifying violence and Buddhist actors currently engaged in violence. They draw not only on archival material but interviews with those living and involved in war zones around the world. The book enriches our understanding both of the complexities of the Buddhist tradition and of the violence that is found in virtually all of the world's religious traditions.
In this gripping collection of first-hand accounts, Ian Knight presents the adventure of nineteenth-century warfare - from the thrill of the cavalry charges at Balaklava and Omdurman, to the terror of battle against an overwhelming odds such as Rorke's Drift - in the words of the men actually there. These eyewitness accounts provide a vivid and sometimes shocking insight into the brutal realities of warfare for the British imperial soldier, who fought against enemies from massed ranks of Russians and assegai-armed natives to sharp-shooting Boers, in often the most terrible conditions imaginable. These stirring tales of military adventure have been edited by Ian Knight and brought together and published in book form. Originally featured in turn-of-the-century magazine, popular during the heyday of empire, these historically valuable accounts throw considerable light on campaign conditions during Queen Victoria's colonial wars. Marching to the Drums includes accounts focusing on the experience of battle during such pivotal conflicts as the Sikh Wars, the Crimean War, the Afghan Wars, the Anglo-Zulu War, and those in China, the Sudan and South Africa.
In The Dictator's Army, Caitlin Talmadge presents a compelling new argument to help us understand why authoritarian militaries sometimes fight very well—and sometimes very poorly. Talmadge's framework for understanding battlefield effectiveness focuses on four key sets of military organizational practices: promotion patterns, training regimens, command arrangements, and information management. Different regimes face different domestic and international threat environments, leading their militaries to adopt different policies in these key areas of organizational behavior.Authoritarian regimes facing significant coup threats are likely to adopt practices that squander the state's military power, while regimes lacking such threats and possessing ambitious foreign policy goals are likely to adopt the effective practices often associated with democracies. Talmadge shows the importance of threat conditions and military organizational practices for battlefield performance in two paired comparisons of states at war: North and South Vietnam (1963–1975) and Iran and Iraq (1980–1988). Drawing on extensive documentary sources, her analysis demonstrates that threats and practices can vary not only between authoritarian regimes but also within them, either over time or across different military units. The result is a persuasive explanation of otherwise puzzling behavior by authoritarian militaries. The Dictator's Army offers a vital practical tool for those seeking to assess the likely course, costs, and outcomes of future conflicts involving nondemocratic adversaries, allies, or coalition partners.
If pacifists are correct in thinking that war is always unjust, then it follows that we ought to eliminate the possibility and temptation of ever engaging in it; we should not build war-making capacity, and if we already have, then demilitarization-or military abolition-would seem to be the appropriate course to take. On the other hand, if war is sometimes justified, as many believe, then it must be permissible to prepare for it by creating and maintaining a military establishment. Yet this view that the justifiability of war-making is also sufficient to justify war-building is mistaken. This book addresses questions of jus ante bellum, or justice before war. Under what circumstances is it justifiable for a polity to prepare for war by militarizing? When (if ever) and why (if at all) is it morally permissible to create and maintain the potential to wage war? In doing so it highlights the ways in which a civilian population compromises its own security in maintaining a permanent military establishment, explores the moral and social costs of militarization, and evaluates whether or not these costs are worth bearing.
With the ending of the strategic certainties of the Cold War, the need for moral clarity over when, where and how to start, conduct and conclude war has never been greater. There has been a recent revival of interest in the just war tradition. But can a medieval theory help us answer twenty-first century security concerns? David Fisher explores how just war thinking can and should be developed to provide such guidance. His in-depth study examines philosophical challenges to just war thinking, including those posed by moral scepticism and relativism. It explores the nature and grounds of moral reasoning; the relation between public and private morality; and how just war teaching needs to be refashioned to provide practical guidance not just to politicians and generals but to ordinary service people. The complexity and difficulty of moral decision-making requires a new ethical approach - here characterised as virtuous consequentialism - that recognises the importance of both the internal quality and external effects of agency; and of the moral principles and virtues needed to enact them. Having reinforced the key tenets of just war thinking, Fisher uses these to address contemporary security issues, including the changing nature of war, military pre-emption and torture, the morality of the Iraq war, and humanitarian intervention. He concludes that the just war tradition provides not only a robust but an indispensable guide to resolve the security challenges of the twenty-first century.
Limited force is different than war: different in scope, strategic purpose, and ethical permissions and restraints. No-fly zones, limited strikes, Special Forces raids, and drone strikes outside 'hot' battlefield have been at the nexus of the moral and strategic debates about just war since the fall of the Berlin Wall but, with the exception of drones, these aspects of the modern arsenal have remained largely undertheorized. Just and Unjust Uses of Limited Force fills that gap by revisiting the major wars animating contemporary just war scholarship (Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, the drone 'wars', and Libya) through the lens of limited force and drawing insights from the just war tradition. Looking at these contemporary examples, the book teases out an ethical account of force-short-of-war. It covers the deliberation about whether to use limited force (jus ad vim), restraints that govern its use (jus in vi), when to stop (jus ex vi), and the after-use context (jus post vim). While these moral categories parallel to some extent their just war counterparts of jus ad bellum, jus in bello, jus post bellum, and jus ex bello, the book illustrates how they can be reimagined and recalibrated in a limited force context, while also introducing new principles specific to the dilemmas associated with escalation and risk. As the argument unfolds, the reader will be presented with a view of limited force as a moral alternative to war, exposed to a series of dilemmas regarding when and how limited force is used, and provided with a more precise and morally enriched vocabulary to talk about limited force and the responsibilities its use entails.
The U.S. military is one of the largest and most complex organizations in the world. How it spends its money, chooses tactics, and allocates its resources have enormous implications for national defense and the economy. "The Science of War" is the only comprehensive textbook on how to analyze and understand these and other essential problems in modern defense policy. Michael O'Hanlon provides undergraduate and graduate students with an accessible yet rigorous introduction to the subject. Drawing on a broad range of sources and his own considerable expertise as a defense analyst and teacher, he describes the analytic techniques the military uses in every crucial area of military science. O'Hanlon explains how the military budget works, how the military assesses and deploys new technology, develops strategy and fights wars, handles the logistics of stationing and moving troops and equipment around the world, and models and evaluates battlefield outcomes. His modeling techniques have been tested in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the methods he used to predict higher-than-anticipated troop fatalities in Iraq--controversial predictions that have since been vindicated. "The Science of War" is the definitive resource on warfare in the twenty-first century.Gives the best introduction to defense analysis available Covers defense budgeting Shows how to model and predict outcomes in war Explains military logistics, including overseas basing Examines key issues in military technology, including missile defense, space warfare, and nuclear-weapons testing Based on the author's graduate-level courses at Princeton, Columbia, and Georgetown universities
In September 2018, the 73rd General Assembly of the United Nations acknowledged that international instability is increasing and that improving global security is among the most important tasks facing the world today. The Assembly concluded that it is extremely important to develop new, effective frameworks and technologies to understand and confront increasingly complex networks of actors, interests, and contexts. Leading international security expert Peter Sapaty meets this challenge head-on and introduces a new, high-level distributed processing and control approach capable of finding real-time solutions for irregularities, crises, and security problems emerging any time and in any part of the world. Drawing upon the principles of Gestalt psychology, this book develops a radically new model of technology, Spatial Grasp Technology (SGT), a self-navigating, self-replicating, self-modifying spatial pattern technology expressed in a special high-level recursive language. Through rigorous theoretical argument and many practical examples, Sapaty shows how SGT can account for millions to billions of nodes distributed worldwide without vulnerable central resources; explains why SGT is hundreds of times shorter, simpler, and faster than other models and languages; and shows that SGT's technology basics are so simple that they can be effectively implemented even in a short time by a small group of system programmers within traditional university environments. Perhaps most importantly, Sapaty demonstrates how SGT is capable of implementing security scenarios not only at run time, but also conceivably ahead of it, allowing in some cases for the prediction and even prevention of local or global crises. For the novelty, simplicity, and wide applicability of its approach, Complexity in International Security is essential reading for system scientists, application programmers, industry managers, security and defence personnel, and university students interested in advanced MSc and PhD projects in the area of holistic and distributed management.
The 'Taktika', ascribed to the hand of the Byzantine emperor Leo VI 'the Wise' (886-912), is perhaps one of the best-known middle Byzantine texts of an official of semi-official genre. Presented in the form of a book of guidance for provincial generals, it served as both a statement of imperial authority and power, as well as a reminder of earlier 'good practice' and the centrality of the values of a Christian society in the struggle against its enemies. Here, John Haldon offers a critical commentary which addresses in detail the many varied subjects touched on in the treatise and examines the context, sources, language, structure, and content of the text, as well as the military administration of the empire in Leo's time.
Winner of the Jefferson Davis Award Winner of the Johns Family Book Award Winner of the Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award "A work of deep intellectual seriousness, sweeping and yet also delicately measured, this book promises to resolve longstanding debates about the nature of the Civil War." -Gregory P. Downs, author of After Appomattox Shiloh, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg-tens of thousands of soldiers died on these iconic Civil War battlefields, and throughout the South civilians suffered terrible cruelty. At least three-quarters of a million lives were lost during the American Civil War. Given its seemingly indiscriminate mass destruction, this conflict is often thought of as the first "total war." But Aaron Sheehan-Dean argues for another interpretation. The Calculus of Violence demonstrates that this notoriously bloody war could have been much worse. Military forces on both sides sought to contain casualties inflicted on soldiers and civilians. In Congress, in church pews, and in letters home, Americans debated the conditions under which lethal violence was legitimate, and their arguments differentiated carefully among victims-women and men, black and white, enslaved and free. Sometimes, as Sheehan-Dean shows, these well-meaning restraints led to more carnage by implicitly justifying the killing of people who were not protected by the laws of war. As the Civil War raged on, the Union's confrontations with guerrillas and the Confederacy's confrontations with black soldiers forced a new reckoning with traditional categories of lawful combatants and raised legal disputes that still hang over military operations around the world today. In examining the agonizing debates about the meaning of a just war in the Civil War era, Sheehan-Dean discards conventional abstractions-total, soft, limited-as too tidy to contain what actually happened on the ground.
Today more than one hundred small, asymmetric, and revolutionary wars are being waged around the world. This book provides invaluable tools for fighting such wars by taking enemy perspectives into consideration. The third volume of a trilogy by Max G. Manwaring, it continues the arguments the author presented in Insurgency, Terrorism, and Crime and Gangs, Pseudo-Militaries, and Other Modern Mercenaries. Using case studies, Manwaring outlines vital survival lessons for leaders and organizations concerned with national security in our contemporary world. The insurgencies Manwaring describes span the globe. Beginning with conflicts in Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s and El Salvador in the 1980s, he goes on to cover the Shining Path and its resurgence in Peru, Al Qaeda in Spain, popular militias in Cuba, Haiti, and Brazil, the Russian youth group Nashi, and drugs and politics in Guatemala, as well as cyber warfare. Large, wealthy, well-armed nations such as the United States have learned from experience that these small wars and insurgencies do not resemble traditional wars fought between geographically distinct nation-state adversaries by easily identified military forces. Twenty-first-century irregular conflicts blur traditional distinctions among crime, terrorism, subversion, insurgency, militia, mercenary and gang activity, and warfare. Manwaring's multidimensional paradigm offers military and civilian leaders a much needed blueprint for achieving strategic victories and ensuring global security now and in the future. It combines military and police efforts with politics, diplomacy, economics, psychology, and ethics. The challenge he presents to civilian and military leaders is to take probable enemy perspectives into consideration, and turn resultant conceptions into strategic victories.
Professor Thomas relates security policy to the country's economy and technological capacity, discusses the capabilities of each of the armed services, and considers the issue of arms importation vs. indigenous production. He also explores the prospects for the future under Rajiv Gandhi Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Professor Thomas relates security policy to the country's economy and technological capacity, discusses the capabilities of each of the armed services, and considers the issue of arms importation vs. indigenous production. He also explores the prospects for the future under Rajiv Gandhi Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Still in the early stages of development, conflict theory presents a growing interest in understanding the economic costs and benefits of conflicts. In this book, Mehrdad Vahabi analyses one type of conflict in particular: manhunting, or predation, in which a dominant power hunts down its prey and the goal of the prey is to escape and thus survive. This contrasts with traditional warfare, in which two (or more) powers enter into a conflict and the goal is to fight to win domination. The economics of escape casts light on costs and benefits of predatory activities, and explores the impact of violence as an impediment to developing countries with respect to assets structure. This book is unprecedented in its research and thought, and develops a new theory of predation in economics that makes a significant contribution to the field.
There are strong moral and legal pressures against harming civilians in times of conflict, yet neither just war theory nor international law is clear about what responsibilities belligerents have to correct harm once it has been inflicted. In this book, Marcus Schulzke argues that military powers have a duty to provide assistance to the civilians they attack during wars, and that this duty is entailed by civilians' right to life. Schulzke develops new just war principles requiring belligerents to provide medical treatment and financial compensation to civilian victims, and then shows how these principles can be implemented in governmental, military, and international practice. He calls for a more individual-focused conception of international law and post-war justice for victims - as opposed to current state- or group-based reconstruction and reparation programs - which will provide a framework for protecting civilian rights.
Jai Galliott explores the overarching phenomenon of how force short of war is being used in modern conflict, and how it impacts just war theory. He shows that we need to bring the rules of war into alignment with increasingly digital means of conducting kinetic warfare through the force short of war paradigm. The use of force short of war is now commonplace, in large part owing to casualty averseness and the explosion of emerging technologies, most notably drones, autonomous robotics and cyberwarfare. It often involves the selective or limited use of military force to achieve political objectives and assumes many forms. These include targeted killing, assassination, special-forces raids, limited duration bombing campaigns or missile strikes, and 'low intensity' counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations.
Conflict: How Soldiers Make Impossible Decisions is about making hard choices-where all outcomes are potentially negative. The authors draw on interviews conducted with soldiers about the situations they faced and the decisions they made at war. These are vivid and sometimes distressing stories. They form the data from which the authors explore the cognitive processes associated with choice, commitment to action and (sometimes) error, as well as goal directed thinking, innovation and courage. By referring to real cases, Conflict invites readers to consider their own responses under extreme circumstances and ask themselves how they would choose between difficult options. In doing so this book will go some way to helping readers understand what it feels like when choosing between least-worst decisions.
Despite the strong influence of just war theory in military law and practice, warfare is commonly considered devoid of morality. Yet even in the most horrific of human activities, there is frequent communication and cooperation between enemies. One remarkable example is the Christmas truce-unofficial ceasefires between German and English trenches in December 1914 in which soldiers even mingled in No Man's Land. In Conspiring with the Enemy, Yvonne Chiu offers a new understanding of why and how enemies work together to constrain violence in warfare. Chiu argues that what she calls an ethic of cooperation is found in modern warfare to such an extent that it is often taken for granted. The importance of cooperation becomes especially clear when wartime ethics reach a gray area: To whom should the laws of war apply? Who qualifies as a combatant? Should guerrillas or terrorists receive protections? Fundamentally, Chiu shows, the norms of war rely on consensus on the existence and content of the laws of war. In a wide-ranging consideration of pivotal instances of cooperation, Chiu examines weapons bans, treatment of prisoners of war, and the Geneva Conventions, as well as the tensions between the ethic of cooperation and the pillars of just war theory. An original exploration of a crucial but overlooked phenomenon, Conspiring with the Enemy is a significant contribution to military ethics and political philosophy.
"American Civil-Military Relations" offers the first comprehensive assessment of the subject since the publication of Samuel P. Huntington's field-defining book, "The Soldier and the State." Using this seminal work as a point of departure, experts in the fields of political science, history, and sociology ask what has been learned and what more needs to be investigated in the relationship between civilian and military sectors in the 21st century. Leading scholars--such as Richard Betts, Risa Brooks, James Burk, Michael Desch, Peter Feaver, Richard Kohn, Williamson Murray, and David Segal--discuss key issues, including: - changes in officer education since the end of the Cold War;- shifting conceptions of military expertise in response to evolving operational and strategic requirements;- increased military involvement in high-level politics; and- the domestic and international contexts of U.S. civil-military relations. The first section of the book provides contrasting perspectives of American civil-military relations within the last five decades. The next section addresses Huntington's conception of societal and functional imperatives and their influence on the civil-military relationship. Following sections examine relationships between military and civilian leaders and describe the norms and practices that should guide those interactions. The editors frame these original essays with introductory and concluding chapters that synthesize the key arguments of the book. What is clear from the essays in this volume is that the line between civil and military expertise and responsibility is not that sharply drawn, and perhaps given the increasing complexity of international security issues, it should not be. When forming national security policy, the editors conclude, civilian and military leaders need to maintain a respectful and engaged dialogue. "American Civil-Military Relations" is essential reading for students and scholars interested in civil-military relations, U.S. politics, and national security policy.
Laura Sjoberg positions gender and gender subordination as key factors in the making and fighting of global conflict. Through the lens ofgender, she examines the meaning, causes, practices, and experiences of war, building a more inclusive approach to the analysis of violent conflict between states. Considering war at the international, state, substate, and individual levels, Sjoberg's feminist perspective elevates a number of causal variables in war decision-making. These include structural gender inequality, cycles of gendered violence, state masculine posturing, the often overlooked role of emotion in political interactions, gendered understandings of power, and states' mistaken perception of their own autonomy and unitary nature. "Gendering Global Conflict" also calls attention to understudied spaces that can be sites of war, such as the workplace, the household, and even the bedroom. Her findings show gender to be a linchpin of even the most tedious and seemingly bland tactical and logistical decisions in violent conflict. Armed with that information, Sjoberg undertakes the task of redefining and reintroducing critical readings of war's political, economic, and humanitarian dimensions, developing the beginnings of a feminist theory of war. |
You may like...
Photoacoustic and Photothermal…
Surya N. Thakur, Virendra N. Rai, …
Paperback
R4,417
Discovery Miles 44 170
Collaborative Dialogue Technologies in…
M. Felisa Verdejo, Stefano A Cerri
Hardcover
R4,177
Discovery Miles 41 770
Public Procurement and Supply Chain…
I.M. Ambe, J.A. Badenhorst-Weiss
Paperback
R855
Discovery Miles 8 550
Oceans and Human Health - Opportunities…
Lora Fleming, Lota B Alcantara Creencia, …
Hardcover
R4,909
Discovery Miles 49 090
|