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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Theory of warfare & military science
Since the end of the Cold War, competition among states has been
waged along economic rather than ideological or military lines. In
Canada, as elsewhere, this shift has forced a rethinking of the
role of intelligence services in protecting and promoting national
economic security. The scholars and practitioners featured here
explore the aim, existing mandate, and practical applications of
economic espionage from a Canadian and comparative perspective, and
present a range of options for policy-makers. Economic Intelligence
& National Security examines the laws in place to thwart
economic spying, and the challenges and ethical problems faced by
agencies working clandestinely to support their national private
sectors.
Common and destructive, limited wars are significant international
events that pose a number of challenges to the states involved
beyond simple victory or defeat. Chief among these challenges is
the risk of escalation - be it in the scale, scope, cost, or
duration of the conflict. In this book, Spencer D. Bakich
investigates a crucial and heretofore ignored factor in determining
the nature and direction of limited war: information institutions.
Traditional assessments of wartime strategy focus on the
relationship between the military and civilians, but Bakich argues
that we must also take into account the information flow patterns
among top policy makers and all national security organizations. By
examining the fate of American military and diplomatic strategy in
four limited wars, Bakich demonstrates how not only the
availability and quality of information, but also the ways in which
information is gathered, managed, analyzed, and used, shape a
state's ability to wield power effectively in dynamic and complex
international systems. Utilizing a range of primary and secondary
source materials, Success and Failure in Limited War makes a timely
case for the power of information in war, with crucial implications
for international relations theory and statecraft.
Carl von Clausewitz has long been interpreted as the paradigmatic
thinker of major interstate war. This book challenges this
assumption by showing that Clausewitz was an ardent analyst of
small war and integrated many aspects of his early writings on
partisan warfare and people's war into his magnum opus, On War. It
reconstructs Clausewitz's intellectual development by placing it in
the context of his engagement with the political and philosophical
currents of his own times - German Idealism, Romanticism, and
Humanism. The central question that Clausewitz and his
contemporaries faced was how to defend Prussia and Europe against
Napoleon's expansionist strategy. On the one hand, the
nationalization of war that had occurred as a result of the French
Revolution could only be countered by drawing the people into the
defence of their own countries. On the other, this risked a descent
into anarchy and unchecked terror, as the years 1793 and 1794 in
France had shown. Throughout his life Clausewitz remained
optimistic that the institution of the Prussian Landwehr could
achieve both an effective defence of Prussia and a social and
political integration of its citizens. Far from leaving behind his
early advocacy of people's war, Clausewitz integrated it
systematically into his mature theory of war. People's war was war
in its existential form; it risked escalating into 'absolute war'.
However, if the threat of defensive people's war had become a
standard option of last resort in early-nineteenth century Europe,
it could also function as a safeguard of the balance of power.
What essential leadership lessons do we learn by distilling the
actions and ideas of great military commanders such as George
Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Colin Powell? The Art of
Command demonstrates that great leaders become great through a
commitment not only to develop vital skills but also to surmount
personal shortcomings. In the second edition of this classic
resource, Harry S. Laver, Jeffrey J. Matthews, and the other
contributing authors identify eleven core characteristics of highly
effective leaders, such as integrity, determination, vision, and
charisma, and eleven significant figures in American military
history who embody those qualities. Featuring new chapters on
transitional leadership, innovative leadership, and authentic
leadership, this insightful book offers valuable perspectives on
the art of military command in American history.
For both the United States and United Kingdom counterinsurgency was
a serious component of security policy during the Cold War and,
along with counterterrorism, has been the greatest security
challenge after September 11, 2001. In The Soul of Armies Austin
Long compares and contrasts counterinsurgency operations during the
Cold War and in recent years by three organizations: the US Army,
the US Marine Corps, and the British Army.Long argues that the
formative experiences of these three organizations as they
professionalized in the nineteenth century has produced distinctive
organizational cultures that shape operations. Combining archival
research on counterinsurgency campaigns in Vietnam and Kenya with
the author's personal experience as a civilian advisor to the
military in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Soul of Armies demonstrates
that the US Army has persistently conducted counterinsurgency
operations in a very different way from either the US Marine Corps
or the British Army. These differences in conduct have serious
consequences, affecting the likelihood of success, the potential
for civilian casualties and collateral damage, and the ability to
effectively support host nation governments. Long concludes
counterinsurgency operations are at best only a partial explanation
for success or failure.
No modern intervention is intended to endure indefinitely; indeed
some fashion of exit is always envisioned from the outset. This
commitment to an exit is normally informed by an exit strategy.
Whilst strategies of closure have been scrutinised recently, not
least in light of charges of defective intentions and planning, the
relations between the strategies, operations and tactics of exit
have not been contextualised. Focus on the local, specific and
bottom-up manifestations of transitions offers significant enhances
to historical, theoretical and applied understandings. This book is
an introduction not just to the issues of transition, handover and
withdrawal, but to exit as a package of theoretical concepts and
how these have been understood, shaped and employed in historic and
contemporary perspective. Drawing on a wide range of post-1945
examples derived from a variety of regions and periods, At the End
of Military Intervention provides researchers and practitioners
with a source book on what forms a crucial and often overlooked
element of past and present interventions.
This broad-ranging new text introduces a wide range of theoretical
perspectives with a central focus on their application to
understanding key issues in global, state and human security in the
contemporary world.
Warrior Geeks examines how technology is transforming the way we
think about and fight war, taking three major changes that are
driving this process: cybernetic technologies that are folding
soldiers into a cybernetic system that will allow the military to
read their thoughts and emotions and mould them accordingly; the
coexistence of men and robots in the battle-spaces of tomorrow; and
the extent to which we may be able to re-engineer warriors through
pharmacological manipulation. By referring back to the Greeks who
defined the contours of war for us, Coker shows how we are in
danger of losing touch with our humanity - the name we give not
only to a species but the virtues we deem it to embody. The journey
from Greeks to Geeks may be a painful one. War can only be rendered
more humane if we stay in touch with the ancestors, yet
unfortunately we are planning to subcontract our ethical choices to
machines. In revaluing technology, are we devaluing our humanity,
or the post-human condition, changing our subjectivity and thus the
existential dimension of war by changing our relationship with
technology both functionally and performatively?
Colin Gray presents an inventive treatise on the nature of
strategy, war, and peace, organized around forty maxims. This
collection of mini essays will forearm politicians, soldiers, and
the attentive general public against many-probably most- fallacies
that abound in contemporary debates about war, peace, and security.
While one can never guarantee strategic success, which depends on
policy, military prowess, and the quality of the dialogue between
the two, a strategic education led by the judgments in these maxims
increases the chances that one's errors will be small rather than
catastrophic. The maxims are grouped according to five
clusters."War and Peace" tackles the larger issues of strategic
history that drive the demand for the services of strategic thought
and practice. "Strategy" presses further, into the realm of
strategic behavior, and serves as a bridge between the political
focus of part one and the military concerns that follow. "Military
Power and Warfare" turns to the pragmatic business of military
performance: operations, tactics, and logistics. Part four,
"Security and Insecurity," examines why strategy is important,
including a discussion of the nature, dynamic character, and
functioning of world politics. Finally, "History and the Future" is
meant to help strategists better understand the processes of
historical change.
Will international wars where energy resources play a central role
continue to hold sway over life and death for industrialized
nations, or is this a transient phase in the evolution of
industrial societies? This book answers this question by tracing
the history of energy and conflict from antiquity, through the epic
hot and cold wars of the twentieth century, to expected outcome of
the war in Iraq. It points the way to the end of wars over control
of fossil fuels, and demonstrates why these may be the last major
international wars over other resources as well.This book is a
must-read for anyone interested in the future of energy use or
international conflict. Readers will find in it an illuminating
overview of the sweep of historical events. The book further
provides a compelling explanation of how a thorough understanding
of the evolutionary direction of these events challenges the
conventional wisdom that resource wars are endemic to the nature of
industrial society, thus offering a fresh view on one of the most
important challenges of our time.
The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 prompted unprecedented public
interest in the ethics of war, a debate that has raged furiously in
the media, in politics and in the public consciousness ever since.
In this fascinating and informative book, Nicholas Fotion, an
expert on the ethics of military action, explores the notion of
developing an ethical theory that guides the behaviour of those who
are at war. Fotion gives a clear account of just war theory,
presenting it as a useful device in helping us make decisions about
what we should do when war appears on the horizon. Examining
conflicts such as Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Israel, the Falklands and
Afghanistan, the book interrogates the roles of the various parties
involved in military action - the military, government officials,
and the side-line judges (journalists, citizens, scholars, neutral
nations) - and the role just war theory should play as a direct
guide to behaviour. Articulate, provocative and stimulating, War
and Ethics is an ideal introduction to this hugely important
debate.
Military rule and the martial tradition of the samurai dominated
Japanese culture for more than eight hundred years. According to
Thomas Cleary--translator of more than thirty-five classics of
Asian philosophy--the Japanese people have been so steeped in the
way of the warrior that some of the manners and mentality of this
outlook remain embedded in their individual and collective
consciousness. Cleary shows how well-known attributes such as the
reserve and mystery of formal Japanese behavior are deeply rooted
in the ancient strategies of the traditional arts of war. Citing
original Japanese sources that are popular among Japanese readers
today, he reveals the hidden forces behind Japanese attitudes and
conduct in political, business, social, and personal life.
When is it right to go to war? The most persuasive answer to this
question has always been 'in self-defense'. In a penetrating new
analysis, bringing together moral philosophy, political science,
and law, David Rodin shows what's wrong with this answer. He
proposes a comprehensive new theory of the right of self-defense
which resolves many of the perplexing questions that have dogged
both jurists and moral philosophers. By applying the theory of
self-defense to international relations, Rodin produces a
far-reaching critique of the canonical Just War theory. The simple
analogy between self-defense and national defense - between the
individual and the state - needs to be fundamentally rethought, and
with it many of the basic elements of international law and the
ethics of international relations.
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. Crucial to the level of violence in each of
these conflicts was the perception of the enemy as either a brother
(a fellow countryman) or a barbarian. But Lee goes beyond issues of
ethnicity and race to explore how culture, strategy, and logistics
also determined the nature of the fighting. Each conflict
contributed to the development of American attitudes toward war.
The brutal nature of English warfare in Ireland helped shape the
military methods the English employed in North America, just as the
legacy of the English Civil War cautioned American colonists about
the need to restrain soldiers' behavior. Nonetheless,
Anglo-Americans waged war against Indians with terrifying violence,
in part because Native Americans' system of restraints on warfare
diverged from European traditions. The Americans then struggled
during the Revolution to reconcile these two different trends of
restraint and violence when fighting various enemies. Through
compelling campaign narratives, Lee explores the lives and fears of
soldiers, as well as the strategies of their commanders, while
showing how their collective choices determined the nature of
wartime violence. In the end, the repeated experience of wars with
barbarians or brothers created an American culture of war that
demanded absolute solutions: enemies were either to be incorporated
or rejected. And that determination played a major role in defining
the violence used against them.
How do people decide which country came out ahead in a war or a
crisis? Why, for instance, was the Mayaguez Incident in May
1975--where 41 U.S. soldiers were killed and dozens more wounded in
a botched hostage rescue mission--perceived as a triumph and the
1992-94 U.S. humanitarian intervention in Somalia, which saved
thousands of lives, viewed as a disaster? In "Failing to Win,"
Dominic Johnson and Dominic Tierney dissect the psychological
factors that predispose leaders, media, and the public to perceive
outcomes as victories or defeats--often creating wide gaps between
perceptions and reality.
To make their case, Johnson and Tierney employ two frameworks:
"Scorekeeping," which focuses on actual material gains and losses;
and "Match-fixing," where evaluations become skewed by mindsets,
symbolic events, and media and elite spin. In case studies ranging
from the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the current War on Terror,
the authors show that much of what we accept about international
politics and world history is not what it seems--and why, in a time
when citizens offer or withdraw support based on an imagined view
of the outcome rather than the result on the ground, perceptions of
success or failure can shape the results of wars, the fate of
leaders, and the "lessons" we draw from history.
In the post 9/11 world, the emotionally charged concepts of
identity and ideology, enmity and political violence have once
again become household words. Contrary to the serene assumptions of
the early 1990s, history did not end. Civilisations are busy
clashing against one another, and the self-proclaimed pacified
humanity is once again showing its barbaric roots.Religion mixes
with politics to produce governments that abuse even their own
citizens, and victorious insurgents too often fail to carry out the
promised reforms. Terrorists blow up unsuspecting pedestrians, and
allegedly democratic nations threaten to bomb allegedly less
democratic ones back to the Stone Age. Mass demonstrations
materialise like flash mobs out of nowhere, prepared to hold their
ground until the bitter end.Where does all this passionate
intensity come from? To better understand how the ideological
enmity of today is moulded, spread and managed, this book
investigates the propaganda operations of the past. Its topics
range from the ruthless portrayal of female enemy soldiers in an
early-20th-century civil war setting to the multiple enemy images
cherished by Adolf Hitler, and onwards, to the WWII Soviet Russians
as a subtype of a more ancient notion of the Eastern Hordes. Of
more recent events, the book covers the Rwandan genocide of 1994
and the still ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict. The closing
chapter on cyber warfare introduces the reader to the invisible
enemies of the future.
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