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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Theory of warfare & military science
The end of the Cold War has brought about significant changes in the political, economic, social, and cultural structure of the international system. Absent a distinct enemy and the threat of global thermonuclear war, the United States today faces a host of new security challenges that require policymakers to make difficult decisions with significant domestic and international implications. The range of conflicting goals, expectations, and capabilities demands fresh solutions to international conflicts and civil unrest, new strategies for conducting peace support operations, and the preparation of America's forces for completing operational assignments under increasingly uncertain conditions. The case studies and exercises constructed for this book examine some of the most pertinent management, leadership, and accountability issues related to U.S. national security. Each case places readers at the center of difficult decisions, illustrates more general policy dilemmas, and is designed to stimulate discussion of those issues beyond the classroom. Cases highlight dilemmas at two levels: pertaining specifically to the case and pertaining to its larger policy implications. The absence of a one-sided argument, specific policy recommendations, or logical conclusions, enables readers to recognize the importance of the issues at hand and their greater policy implications and to discern lessons that might apply more generally to public policy, administration, and management. Particularly useful in courses dealing with national security, international relations, public/policy administration, civil-military relations, and organizational management. An instructor's manual is available upon request.
Over recent decades, John W. Dower, one of America's preeminent historians, has addressed the roots and consequences of war from multiple perspectives. In War Without Mercy (1986), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, he described and analyzed the brutality that attended World War II in the Pacific, as seen from both the Japanese and the American sides. Embracing Defeat (1999), winner of numerous honors including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, dealt with Japan's struggle to start over in a shattered land in the immediate aftermath of the Pacific War, when the defeated country was occupied by the U.S.-led Allied powers. Turning to an even larger canvas, Dower now examines the cultures of war revealed by four powerful events-Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, and the invasion of Iraq in the name of a war on terror. The list of issues examined and themes explored is wide-ranging: failures of intelligence and imagination, wars of choice and "strategic imbecilities," faith-based secular thinking as well as more overtly holy wars, the targeting of noncombatants, and the almost irresistible logic-and allure-of mass destruction. Dower's new work also sets the U.S. occupations of Japan and Iraq side by side in strikingly original ways. One of the most important books of this decade, Cultures of War offers comparative insights into individual and institutional behavior and pathologies that transcend "cultures" in the more traditional sense, and that ultimately go beyond war-making alone.
When is the use of military force by a nation morally justified? Why has the long accepted moral requirement to protect civilians from intentional attack eroded in recent years? How can the tendency toward unrestrained warfare between parties with major cultural differences be controlled? In this thought-provoking book, James Turner Johnson refocuses the moral analysis of war on the real problems of today's armed conflicts. Moral debates about nuclear war and annihilation fail to address the problems of actual contemporary uses of military force, Johnson argues. We must address the type of armed conflict that has emerged at the end of the twentieth century: local wars--often inflamed by historical, ethnic, or religious animosities and usually fought with conventional weapons that can be carried by individual fighters. Johnson sets out a moral basis for understanding when armed force can be justified. He analyzes specific problems posed by contemporary warfare: the question of military intervention to ameliorate or end conflicts, the question of warfare against noncombatants, the problem of cultural differences inflaming conflict, and the tension between those who would punish war crimes and those hoping to reconcile adversaries. The author concludes with a discussion of how to reshape and renew an international consensus on the proper purposes and limits to war.
In the capstone work of his career, distinguished military historian Jay Luvaas brings together in one volume the military genius of Napoleon. Unlike Sun Tzu or Carl von Clausewitz, Napoleon never wrote a unified essay on his military philosophy. Yet, as one of the world's great strategists and tacticians, he sprinkled wisdom throughout his many and varied writings. Jay Luvaas spent over three decades poring through the thirty-two volumes of Napoleon's correspondence, carefully translating and editing all of his writings on the art of war, and arranging them into seamless essays. The resulting book captures the brilliant commander's thoughts on everything from the preparation of his forces to the organization, planning, and execution of his battles -- all buttressing Napoleon's view that "in war there is but one favorable moment; the great art is to seize it." Napoleon on the Art of War will be essential reading for military buffs, students of history, and any business leader looking for timeless insights on strategy.
Full title: 'Historical Records of the 14th Regiment Now The Prince of Wales Own (West Yorkshire Regiment) from Its Formation in 1689 to 1892'.
This book treats the critical theory of religion of Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, Friedrich Pollock, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, J rgen Habermas and other critical theorists who tried to make sense out of the senseless war experience by exploring the writings of Immanuel Kant, Friedrich W.J. Schelling, Georg W.F. Hegel, Artur Schopenhauer, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud.
Well-researched and welcome work on the German efforts to train the Chilean army during the Parliamentary Regime (1891-1924). Argues convincingly that what appeared outwardly to be a Prussian-style military was in reality an ill-fed, poorly equipped military force rife with corruption and low on morale. Many of the German trainers, themselves, contributed to the malaise by seeking profits from weapons sales and land deals. Oddly, perhaps, the Chilean army continues to display the influences of the German era"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.
For many years, scholars and non-scholars have debated the ethics of dropping the atomic bomb, but have rarely studied American plans to invade Japan - the alternative to using the bomb to end World War II. Widely held beliefs about Japanese forces and the projected loss of American lives have been invoked to justify the decision to drop the bomb. This examination argues that the invasion plan, code-named ""Operation Downfall"", has not until now been sufficiently studied to allow such a justification.
Warfare is the most dangerous threat faced by modern humanity. It is also one of the key influences that has shaped the politics, economics, and society of the modern period. But what do we mean by modern war? What causes modern wars to begin? Why do people fight in them, why do they end, and what have they achieved? In this accessible and compelling Very Short Introduction, Richard English explores the assumptions we make about modern warfare and considers them against the backdrop of their historical reality. Drawing on the wide literature available, including direct accounts of the experience of war, English provides an authoritative account of modern war: its origins, evolution, dynamics, and current trends. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
The history of American military operations in the post-Vietnam era has been marked by failure and near-disaster. Since 1970, American forces have been committed in five operations--in Sontay to rescue prisoners, in Cambodia on behalf of the crew of the "Mayaguez," in Iran to rescue the American hostages, in Beirut, and in Grenada--and in each case they have failed. Gabriel tells how and why each was crippled by faulty intelligence, clumsy execution, or poor planning by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Much of his information is still classified by the Pentagon and is revealed here for the first time. Finally, Gabriel offers a prescription for reform based on his twenty-one years of military experience.
A social history of the ordinary British soldier during World War II "Reflects impressively wide reading, and commands respect for its shrewd judgments and lack of sentimentality."-Max Hastings, New York Review of Books "The stories of these brave but bewildered civilians in uniform are as illuminating as searchlights in a dark age of traumatic war."-Iain Finlayson, Times (London) More than three million men served in the British Army during the Second World War, the vast majority of them civilians who had never expected to become soldiers and had little idea what military life, with all its strange rituals, discomforts, and dangers, was going to be like. Alan Allport's rich and luminous social history examines the experience of the greatest and most terrible war in history from the perspective of these ordinary, extraordinary men, who were plucked from their peacetime families and workplaces and sent to fight for King and Country. Allport chronicles the huge diversity of their wartime trajectories, tracing how soldiers responded to and were shaped by their years with the British Army, and how that army, however reluctantly, had to accommodate itself to them. Touching on issues of class, sex, crime, trauma, and national identity, through a colorful multitude of fresh individual perspectives, the book provides an enlightening, deeply moving perspective on how a generation of very modern-minded young men responded to the challenges of a brutal and disorienting conflict.
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.
In this sobering book, Barry R. Posen demonstrates how the interplay between conventional military operations and nuclear forces could, in conflicts among states armed with both conventional and nuclear weaponry, inadvertently produce pressures for nuclear escalation. Knowledge of these hidden pressures, he believes, may help some future decision maker avoid catastrophe. Building a formidable argument that moves with cumulative force, he details the way in which escalation could occur not by mindless accident, or by deliberate preference for nuclear escalation, but rather as a natural accompaniment of land, naval, or air warfare at the conventional level. Posen bases his analysis on an empirical study of the east-west military competition in Europe during the 1980s, using a conceptual framework drawn from international relations theory, organization theory, and strategic theory. The lessons of his book, however, go well beyond the east-west competition. Since his observations are relevant to all military competitions between states armed with both conventional and nuclear weaponry, his book speaks to some of the problems that attend the proliferation of nuclear weapons in longstanding regional conflicts. Optimism that small and medium nuclear powers can easily achieve "stable" nuclear balances is, he believes, unwarranted.
Useful Captives: The Role of POWs in American Military Conflicts is a wide-ranging investigation of the integral role prisoners of war (POWs) have played in the economic, cultural, political, and military aspects of American warfare. In Useful Captives volume editors Daniel Krebs and Lorien Foote and their contributors explore the wide range of roles that captives play in times of conflict: hostages used to negotiate vital points of contention between combatants, consumers, laborers, propaganda tools, objects of indoctrination, proof of military success, symbols, political instruments, exemplars of manhood ideals, loyal and disloyal soldiers, and agents of change in society. The book's eleven chapters cover conflicts involving Americans, ranging from colonial warfare on the Creek-Georgia border in the late eighteenth century, the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great War, World War II, to twenty-first century U.S. drone warfare. This long historical horizon enables the reader to go beyond the prison camp experience of POWs to better understand the many ways they influence the nature and course of military conflict. Useful Captives shows the vital role that prisoners of war play in American warfare and reveals the cultural contexts of warfare, the shaping and altering of military policies, the process of state-building, the impacts upon the economy and environment of the conflict zone, their special place in propaganda and political symbolism, and the importance of public history in shaping national memory.
Contemporary Western war is represented as enacting the West's ability and responsibility to help make the world a better place for others, in particular to protect them from oppression and serious human rights abuses. That is, war has become permissible again, indeed even required, as ethical war. At the same time, however, Western war kills and destroys. This creates a paradox: Western war risks killing those it proposes to protect. This book examines how we have responded to this dilemma and challenges the vision of ethical war itself, exploring how the commitment to ethics shapes the practice of war and indeed how practices come, in turn, to shape what is considered ethical in war. The book closely examines particular practices of warfare, such as targeting, the use of cultural knowledge, and ethics training for soldiers. What emerges is that instead of constraining violence, the commitment to ethics enables and enhances it. The book argues that the production of ethical war relies on an impossible but obscured separation between ethics and politics, that is, the problematic politics of ethics, and reflects on the need to make decisions at the limit of ethics.
This book is about the most elite unit in the Israeli army, Talpiot. Instead of only being trained to fight the soldiers brought into this unit are taught how to think. The book details how this unit which specialises in teaching young cadets the military applications for computer science, physics and maths (properties needed for research and development) was conceived and developed in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, how the program came of age and how it surpassed even air force pilot training in terms of priority for the IDF. Instead of signing up for three years like most Israeli soldiers, if you are selected for Talpiot you must sign up for ten years. Graduates of this tiny unit, sometimes as few as 20 people a year are invited to enlist, have had a huge influence on the weapons Israel has developed through research and development and through the businesses they have founded after leaving the army, often using many of the technologies they developed in the IDF. The book contains dozens of interviews with Talpiot graduates and some of the early founders of the program. It explains Talpiot's ultra-successful methods of recruiting and it explains many of the secrets of the program's success. The book also profiles some of the most successful businesses founded by Talpiot graduates including Compugen, CheckPoint Software, Anobit which was recently bought by Apple and XIV recently bought by IBM. The soldiers of this unit are truly unsung heroes. No other military unit has had more of an impact on the State of Israel.
This volume offers a set of concise and accessible introductions to the seminal figures in the historical development of the just war tradition. In what, if any, circumstances are political communities justified in going to war? And what limits should apply to the conduct of any such war? The just war tradition is a body of thought that helps us think through these very questions. Its core ideas have been subject to fierce debate for over 2,000 years. Yet they continue to play a prominent role in how political and military leaders address the challenges posed by the use of force in international society. Until now there has been no text that offers concise and accessible introductions to the key figures associated with the tradition. Stepping into this breach, Just War Thinkers provides a set of clear but detailed essays by leading experts on nineteen seminal thinkers, from Cicero to Jeff McMahan. This volume challenges the reader to think about how traditions are constituted-who is included and excluded, and how that is determined-and how they serve to enable, constrain, and indeed channel subsequent thought, debate, and exchange. This book will be of much interest to students of just war tradition and theory, ethics and war, philosophy, security studies and IR.
A ground-breaking approach to history where YOU choose the fate of WWII - perfect for readers of Bletchley Park Brainteasers and The GCHQ Puzzle Book. ''An original and exciting approach . . . Buckley is one of our very finest historians.' JAMES HOLLAND ________________________ TAKE THE HOTSEAT Assume the role of real Generals, Leaders, Soldiers and Intelligence Officers in the Allied Forces during WWII, including Winston Churchill and President Eisenhower. EXAMINE THE INTELLIGENCE Explore eight key moments of the war with real contemporaneous intelligence: Britain's Darkest Hour, 1940; The War in North Africa; Stalin's War on the Eastern Front; The Pacific Battle of Midway; The Dresden Bomber Offensive; Casablanca; Arnhem and Operation Market Garden; The Bomb and Hiroshima. CONSIDER THE SCENARIO & MAKE YOUR DECISION From battlefields to war cabinets, each tactical and strategic decision you make leads to a different outcome. Will you follow the path of the past - or shape a new history? ________________________ 'Wonderfully original . . . putting readers at the heart of the decision-making process and allowing them, literally, to change the course of history. This is counterfactual history at its best.' SAUL DAVID 'A reminder that history is a never ending now, a relentless and endless present that comes without the luxury of hindsight.' AL MURRAY 'An original and exciting approach . . . Buckley is one of our very finest historians. The Armchair General adds enormously to our understanding of the conflicts.' JAMES HOLLAND 'A unique, enjoyable approach to evaluating military decision-making.' HISTORY OF WAR
Thirty years after its enactment, Congress has undertaken a review of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act (GNA) as well as the broader organisation and structure of the contemporary Department of Defense (DOD) more broadly. Most observers agree that in principle a comprehensive review of the Goldwater-Nichols legislation is warranted at this juncture. Further, a broad consensus appears to exist among observers that DOD must become considerably more agile while retaining its strength in order to enable the United States to meet a variety of critical emerging national security challenges. Agreement seemingly ends there. There appears to be little consensus on what should be changed within DOD and what specific direction reform ought to take. Discussions have begun to coalesce around a number of proposals, including reforming defense acquisition processes, further strengthening the Joint Staff, reducing Pentagon staffs, and better empowering the services in the joint arena. Ideas vary, however, on how, specifically, to achieve those outcomes. Disagreement also exists as to whether or not reorganising DOD alone will be sufficient. Some observers maintain that a reform of the broader interagency system on national security matters is needed. This book is intended to assist Congress as it evaluates the variety of reform proposals currently under discussion around Washington.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) is the worlds largest public engineering, design, and construction management agency, with water resources infrastructure in every state, authorized for various purposes including navigation, flood and coastal storm damage reduction, hydropower, and water supply. The Corps plans, designs, and operates water resources infrastructure projects, such as dams, levees, hurricane barriers, floodwalls, and floodgates, that may be affected by extreme weather events. This book discusses the Army Corps of Engineers and their water resource work in the areas of extreme weather events; levee safety; dam safety (cost sharing of repairs); and operations/water control manuals. |
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