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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Theory of warfare & military science
China is modernizing her military very rapidly and as her economy strengthens, the pace of military modernization is going to touch higher trajectories. This modernization would impact and alter the existing strategic environment in the world. In the region the impact will be more profound and will force her neighbors to rework their own military modernization programs, war fighting doctrines and their present position on relations with China and other regional powers and the US. Today, in addition to issues relating to human resource development, the biggest impediment is the availability of technology to develop new modern weapon systems and equipment. Will the drivers and trends of Chinese military modernization continue to be same or will there be changes? How will the modernization impact the PLA behavior, especially in its neighborhood? How will the neighbors react to this stupendous pace of militarization in the East Asia? What will be the role of Japan, Vietnam, India, Russia and US? How will china's restive periphery and PLA respond to the spread of Islamic fundamentalism? To correctly appreciate these changes, an in-depth understanding of Chinese military modernization is essential. This book is an effort in this direction and attempts to find some answers to the questions posed. The trends of modernization of the four services of the PLA have been analyzed and a capability suggested that the PLA is likely to have by 2025.
There is now a major new interest in ethical issues about warfare emerging from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, conflict in Syria and Libya, the war on terror, and the introduction of new weapon systems, such as unmanned drones. In this re-written version of the author's classic text, Waging War, Ian Clark asks probing questions about how we think about war, the changes it is undergoing, and what exactly it is we wage when we wage war. Waging War argues that much of what passes for ethical debate is actually a set of disagreements about what counts as war or not. This philosophical introduction provides a critical review of the various different ways in which the ethical debates are already framed, the questions that arise from these debates, and seeks to bring greater clarity and precision to the important moral arguments about political violence.
This book focuses on the relevance of space as a new domain towards enhancing war fighting capabilities. The Cold War saw rapid development of space technologies, which in turn spurred the growth of satellites. Slowly the traditional military capabilities for C4ISR were transferred to the space, the 'Ultimate High Ground.' The use of navigation and communication satellites in direct support to the US war efforts was visible during Gulf War I, which is aptly referred as "First Space War." The book delves at length about the Chinese Space Programme and their military exploits. Apart from militarization, the Chinese went ahead with weaponization of space, in order to gain asymmetric advantages over the much stronger and technologically advance US capabilities. The existing and futuristic military exploits of space assets by India has also been discussed in this book. A case for an "Indian Space Security Architecture" has been proposed, which shall secure the Indian space assets and provide comprehensive National Security. This book also highlights the necessity and urgency of Indian ASAT, as a strategic deterrence, to counter the threat to our space assets from the Chinese ASATs.
The text for the NEW SOLDIER deals with the causes, symptoms and solutions to global terrorism, particularly Jihadist Islamic-based terrorism. The book is an expanded version of the essay "A Fearful Symmetry: A New Global Balance of Power?" for which the author was awarded the 2007 Grand Prize by the St Cyr Foundation, which supports the St. Cyr military academy established by Napoleon Bonaparte - in effect, France's West Point. The work was unanimously awarded the First (Grand) Prize by a jury of four distinguished panelists, and later translated and published in French under the title, "Une Symetrie de la Peur : Vers un Nouvel Equilibre Mondial Des Puissances ? " (Paul Wormser, trans.)(CLD Editions, November 2008). The New Soldier is, in essence, a traditional soldier but one who is endowed with compassion, empathy and cultural understanding. This soldier is better able to navigate through the unknown terrain of ideological, emotional and psychological conflicts within the realm of global terrorism. The New Soldier is a strategic tool in combating global terrorism, and may be immediately deployed in multilateral forces. The practical uses of the New Soldier in the context of fragile states, particularly in terms of stabilizing and reconstructing war-torn or collapsed states by multilateral forces is analyzed in great depth in the book.
As Freud has suggested, the "good life," which is characterized by deep and wide love and creative and productive work, that is also guided by reason and ethics and is aesthetically pleasing, has been the quest of philosophers, psychologists, and all "deep thinkers" from time immemorial. The central premise of this book is that there is an intimate, dynamic, and animating analogy between the art and science of war, as practiced by the great classical military strategists and generals, and the art and science of living the "good life." Indeed, the masterful strategic, operational, and tactical formulations developed by the two greatest philosophers of war, the Chinese sage and military thinker, Sun Tzu, author of the timeless work The Art of War, and the Prussian military officer Carl von Clausewitz, author of the magisterial On War, each maintain a direct relevance and application to the art of living the "good life." By mining some of the key insights from Sun Tzu and Clausewitz, and drawing from the writings of the great strategists and generals from history including Thucydides, Machiavelli and Napoleon, this book will illuminate some of the underappreciated practical wisdom that is immensely pertinent to the average person's everyday personal struggle to live the "good life." It also incorporates useful insights from more recent "master" military strategists like Alfred Thayer Mahan, Julian Corbett and Mao TseTung, and contemporary soldierscholars who have written on the nature of war, counterinsurgency, and terrorism, including John Nagl, David Kilcullen, and Rupert Smith. Military strategic theory, especially when combined with a psychoanalytic sensibility, has much to offer by way of guidance to leading the "good life," such as becoming a better partner in a love relationship, being more efficient and effective at work, prevailing in the face of adversity, making good decisions when confronted with tough choices, as well as offering insights for those working with challenging psychotherapy patients. As General Omar N. Bradley aptly noted during the Second World War, "This is as true in everyday life as it is in battle: we are given one life and the decision is ours, whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind, or whether to act, and in acting, to live."
Fresh from successful flights before royalty in Europe, and soon after thrilling hundreds of thousands of people by flying around the Statue of Liberty, in the fall of 1909 Wilbur and Orville Wright decided the time was right to begin manufacturing their airplanes for sale. Backed by Wall Street tycoons, including August Belmont, Cornelius Vanderbilt III, and Andrew Freedman, the brothers formed the Wright Company. The Wright Company trained hundreds of early aviators at its flight schools, including Roy Brown, the Canadian pilot credited with shooting down Manfred von Richtofen - the \u201cRed Baron\u201d- during the First World War; and Hap Arnold, the commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces during the Second World War. Pilots with the company's exhibition department thrilled crowds at events from Winnipeg to Boston, Corpus Christi to Colorado Springs. Cal Rodgers flew a Wright Company airplane in pursuit of the $50,000 Hearst Aviation Prize in 1911. But all was not well in Dayton, a city that hummed with industry, producing cash registers, railroad cars, and many other products. The brothers found it hard to transition from running their own bicycle business to being corporate executives responsible for other people's money. Their dogged pursuit of enforcement of their 1906 patent - especially against Glenn Curtiss and his company - helped hold back the development of the U.S. aviation industry. When Orville Wright sold the company in 1915, more than three years after his brother's death, he was a comfortable man - but his company had built only 120 airplanes at its Dayton factory and Wright Company products were not in the U.S. arsenal as war continued in Europe. Edward Roach provides a fascinating window into the legendary Wright Company, its place in Dayton, its management struggles, and its effects on early U.S. aviation.
Now in a thoroughly revised and updated edition, this classic text presents a comprehensive survey of the many alternative theories that attempt to explain the causes of interstate war. For each theory, Greg Cashman examines the arguments and counterarguments, considers the empirical evidence and counterevidence generated by social-science research, looks at historical applications of the theory, and discusses the theory s implications for restraining international violence. Among the questions he explores are: Are humans aggressive by nature? Do individual differences among leaders matter? How might poor decision making procedures lead to war? Why do leaders engage in seemingly risky and irrational policies that end in war? Why do states with internal conflicts seem to become entangled in wars with their neighbors? What roles do nationalism and ethnicity play in international conflict? What kinds of countries are most likely to become involved in war? Why have certain pairs of countries been particularly war-prone over the centuries? Can strong states deter war? Can we find any patterns in the way that war breaks out? How do balances of power or changes in balances of power make war more likely? Do social scientists currently have an answer to the question of what causes war? Cashman examines theories of war at the individual, substate, nation-state, dyadic, and international systems level of analysis. Written in a clear and accessible style, this interdisciplinary text will be essential reading for all students of international relations."
The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 deals with cyber warfare in general bringing out the unique characteristics of cyber space, the recent cyber attack on Estonia and the Stuxnet attack on Iranian Nuclear facilities, how the established Principles of War can be applied in cyberspace, cyber strategy of US and China, offensive and defensive aspects of cyber warfare cyber deterrence and the new challenge facing the militaries the world over- leadership in cyber domain. Part 2 is devoted to the Indian context. It discusses in detail the impact of ICT on the life of an ordinary Indian citizen, the cyber challenges facing the country and the implications for the Indian Armed Forces. A few recommendations have been summarised in the end.
Immortal is the only single-volume English-language survey of Iran's military history. CIA analyst Steven R. Ward shows that Iran's soldiers, from the famed "Immortals" of ancient Persia to today's Revolutionary Guard, have demonstrated through the centuries that they should not be underestimated. This history also provides background on the nationalist, tribal, and religious heritages of the country to help readers better understand Iran and its security outlook. Immortal begins with the founding of ancient Persia's empire under Cyrus the Great and continues through the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) and up to the present. Drawing on a wide range of sources including declassified documents, the author gives primary focus to the modern era to relate the build-up of the military under the last Shah, its collapse during the Islamic revolution, its fortunes in the Iran-Iraq War, and its rise from the ashes to help Iran become once again a major regional military power. He shows that, despite command and supply problems, Iranian soldiers demonstrate high levels of bravery and perseverance and have enjoyed surprising tactical successes even when victory has been elusive. These qualities and the Iranians' ability to impose high costs on their enemies by exploiting Iran's imposing geography bear careful consideration today by potential opponents.
Policy-makers generally believe that science and technology can and will play significant roles in improving homeland security. When Congress established the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), through the Homeland Security Act of 2002, it included the Directorate of Science and Technology (S&T) to ensure that the new department had access to science and technology advice and capabilities for research and development (R&D). The S&T Directorate is the primary organisation for R&D in the DHS. It conducts R&D in several DHS laboratories and funds R&D conducted by other government agencies, the Department of Energy national laboratories, academia, and the private sector. Additionally, the directorate supports the development of operational requirements and oversees the operational testing and evaluation of homeland security systems for the DHS. This book provides a brief overview of the S&T Directorate's mission, organisation, and budgetary structure; a discussion of selected critiques of the S&T Directorate; and an analysis of selected issues facing congressional policy-makers.
Transforming NATO: New Allies, Missions, and Capabilities, by Ivan Dinev Ivanov, examines the three dimensions of NATO's transformation since the end of the Cold War: the addition of a dozen new allies; the undertaking of new missions such as peacekeeping, crisis response, and stabilization; and the development of new capabilities to implement these missions. The book explains these processes through two mutually reinforcing frameworks: club goods theory and the concept of complementarities. NATO can be viewed as a diverse, heterogeneous club of nations providing collective defense to its members, who, in turn, combine their military resources in a way that enables them to optimize the Alliance's capabilities needed for overseas operations. Transforming NATO makes a number of theoretical contributions. First, it offers new insights into understanding how heterogeneous clubs operate. Second, it introduces a novel concept, that of complementarities. Finally, it re-evaluates the relevance of club goods theory as a framework for studying contemporary international security. These conceptual foundations apply to areas well beyond NATO. They provide useful insights into understanding the operation of transatlantic relations, alliance politics, and a broader set of international coalitions and partnerships. This update in April 2013 covers new developments related to NATO's transformation after this book was originally published: http://homepages.uc.edu/~ivanovid/pdfs/book_update.pdf
"Torture and the Twilight of Empire" looks at the intimate relationship between torture and colonial domination through a close examination of the French army's coercive tactics during the Algerian war from 1954 to 1962. By tracing the psychological, cultural, and political meanings of torture at the end of the French empire, Marnia Lazreg also sheds new light on the United States and its recourse to torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. This book is nothing less than an anatomy of torture--its methods, justifications, functions, and consequences. Drawing extensively from archives, confessions by former torturers, interviews with former soldiers, and war diaries, as well as writings by Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and others, Lazreg argues that occupying nations justify their systematic use of torture as a regrettable but necessary means of saving Western civilization from those who challenge their rule. She shows how torture was central to "guerre revolutionnaire," a French theory of modern warfare that called for total war against the subject population and which informed a pacification strategy founded on brutal psychological techniques borrowed from totalitarian movements. Lazreg seeks to understand torture's impact on the Algerian population--especially women--and also on the French troops who became their torturers. She explores the roles Christianity and Islam played in rationalizing these acts, and the ways in which torture became not only routine but even acceptable. Written by a preeminent historical sociologist, "Torture and the Twilight of Empire" holds particularly disturbing lessons for us today as we carry out the War on Terror."
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.
With a distinguished career spanning more than four decades, Professor Desmond Ball is one of the world's greatest scholars of strategy and defence, Australia's home-grown giant. In this collection of essays, leading political, media and academic figures, including former United States President Jimmy Carter, pay tribute to his remarkable contributions. From a base at the Australian National University in Canberra, Professor Ball has unflinchingly researched topics from Cold War nuclear strategy and the defence of Australia to spy scandals and Southeast Asian paramilitaries. His roaming intellect, appetite for getting the facts and commitment to publishing on sensitive topics ensure he is a towering figure who has provided impeccable service to Strategic Studies, the Asia-Pacific region and the Australian community.
Military Resilience in a Low-Intensity Conflict: A Comparative Study of New Directions Worldwide, by Rachel Suissa, offers a prognosis for the dilemma of army resilience in the post-modern era. She clarifies the concept of military resilience among the challenges of the twenty-first century, examining how the military model affects resilience, and how those effects are expressed during the management of a given conflict. She investigates the issue through a comparative study of armies and states which have been involved or are currently involved in low intensity conflicts the countries discussed include France and Algeria, Great Britain and Ireland, Russia and Chechnya, and Israel and the Palestinian authority. Another challenge that Suissa addresses is that of peace coalitions and their organizational resilience. She further discusses the connection between political and military ranks, and under which conditions the former affects the latter. Military Resilience in a Low-Intensity Conflict makes the issues associated with resilience and conflict accessible to both academics and those who might translate its findings into practicable insights.
Despite their immense war-fighting capacity, the five most powerful
states in the international system have failed to attain their
primary political objective in almost 40% of their military
operations against weak state and non-state targets since 1945. Why
are states with tremendous military might so often unable to attain
their objectives when they use force against weaker adversaries?
More broadly, under what conditions can states use military force
to attain their political objectives and what conditions limit the
utility of military force as a policy instrument? Can we predict
the outcome of a war before the fighting begins?
There are many histories of how wars have begun, but very few which discuss how they have ended. This book fills that gap. Beginning with the Stone Age and ending with globalized terrorism, it addresses the specific issue of surrender, rather than the subsequent establishment of peace. At its heart is the individual warrior or soldier, and his or her decision to lay down arms. In the ancient world surrender led in most cases to slavery, but a slave still lived rather than died. In the modern world international law gives the soldiers rights as prisoners of war, and those rights include the prospect of their eventual return home. But individuals can surrender at any point in a war, and without having such an effect that they end the war. The termination of hostilities depends on a collective act for its consequences to be decisive. It also requires the enemy to accept the offer to surrender in the midst of combat. In other words, like so much else in war, surrender depends on reciprocity - on the readiness of one side to stop fighting and of the other to accept that readiness. This volume argues that surrender is the single biggest contributor to the containment of violence in warfare, offering the vanquished the opportunity to survive and the victor the chance to show moderation and magnanimity. Since the rules of surrender have developed over time, they form a key element in understanding the cultural history of warfare.
Though scholars of political science and moral philosophy have long analyzed the justifications for and against waging war as well as the ethics of warfare itself, the problem of "ending" wars has received less attention. In the first book to apply just war theory to this phase of conflict, Eric Patterson presents a three-part view of justice in end-of-war settings involving order, justice, and reconciliation. Patterson's case studies range from successful applications of "jus post bellum, " such as the U.S. Civil War or Kosovo, to challenges such as present-day Iraq.
A new translation for the 21st century. The Art of War by Sun Tzu is one of the most influential political and business books of our era. This gateway edition for the 21st century reader rediscovers the essential clarity of the ancient masterpiece, cited by generals from a dozen Chinese dynasties, international business leaders, and modern military field manuals. This edition also contains a full commentary on Sun Tzu, the man and his ideas, contemporary of Confucius and Buddha; and a critical guide to further reading. This is the perfect introduction to one of the world's best-known classics.
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.
Warfare is hugely important. The fates of nations, and even continents, often rests on the outcome of war and thus on how its practitioners consider war. The Human Face of War is a new exploration of military thought. It starts with the observation that much military thought is poorly developed - often incoherent and riddled with paradox. The author contends that what is missing from British and American writing on warfare is any underpinning mental approach or philosophy. Why are some tank commanders, snipers, fighter pilots or submarine commanders far more effective than others? Why are many generals sacked at the outbreak of war? The Human Face of War examines such phenomena and seeks to explain them. The author argues that military thought should be based on an approach which reflects the nature of combat. Combat - fighting - is primarily a human phenomenon dominated by human behaviour. The book explores some of those human issues and their practical consequences. The Human Face of War calls for, and suggests, a new way of considering war and warfare.
The most important conflicts in the founding of the English
colonies and the American republic were fought against enemies
either totally outside of their society or within it: barbarians or
brothers. In this work, Wayne E. Lee presents a searching
exploration of early modern English and American warfare, looking
at the sixteenth-century wars in Ireland, the English Civil War,
the colonial Anglo-Indian wars, the American Revolution, and the
American Civil War.
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?
This book studies the impact of cultural factors on the course of
military innovations. One would expect that countries accustomed to
similar technologies would undergo analogous changes in their
perception of and approach to warfare. However, the intellectual
history of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) in Russia, the
US, and Israel indicates the opposite. The US developed technology
and weaponry for about a decade without reconceptualizing the
existing paradigm about the nature of warfare. Soviet 'new theory
of victory' represented a conceptualization which chronologically
preceded technological procurement. Israel was the first to utilize
the weaponry on the battlefield, but was the last to develop a
conceptual framework that acknowledged its revolutionary
implications.
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. |
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