This book, first published in 1981, examines the influences affecting Soviet military thinking planning and theory in the later Cold War. It offers for the first time an insight into the range of premises and calculations surrounding the Soviet conception of power, and makes the connection between Soviet studies and military strategy, a link often missed in the West. It discusses comparative doctrines, cultural differences, arms control and specific security challenges between East and West.

This book, first published in 1981, examines the influences affecting Soviet military thinking planning and theory in the later Cold War. It offers for the first time an insight into the range of premises and calculations surrounding the Soviet conception of power, and makes the connection between Soviet studies and military strategy, a link often missed in the West. It discusses comparative doctrines, cultural differences, arms control and specific security challenges between East and West.

This book demonstrates that under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan and through the mechanism of his National Security Council staff, the United States developed and executed a comprehensive grand strategy, involving the coordinated use of the diplomatic, informational, military, and economic instruments of national power, and that grand strategy led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. In doing so, it refutes three orthodoxies: that Reagan and his administration deserve little credit for the end of the Cold War, with most of credit going to Mikhail Gorbachev; that Reagan's management of the National Security Council staff was singularly inept; and that the United States is incapable of generating and implementing a grand strategy that employs all the instruments of national power and coordinates the work of all executive agencies. The Reagan years were hardly a time of interagency concord, but the National Security Council staff managed the successful implementation of its program nonetheless.

This book demonstrates that under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan and through the mechanism of his National Security Council staff, the United States developed and executed a comprehensive grand strategy, involving the coordinated use of the diplomatic, informational, military, and economic instruments of national power, and that grand strategy led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. In doing so, it refutes three orthodoxies: that Reagan and his administration deserve little credit for the end of the Cold War, with most of credit going to Mikhail Gorbachev; that Reagan's management of the National Security Council staff was singularly inept; and that the United States is incapable of generating and implementing a grand strategy that employs all the instruments of national power and coordinates the work of all executive agencies. The Reagan years were hardly a time of interagency concord, but the National Security Council staff managed the successful implementation of its program nonetheless.

One of the great myths of the twentieth century is that after the Second World War Britain simply relinquished its power and America quickly embraced its worldwide political and military commitments.

Instead the two allies improvised an uneasy, shifting partnership for twelve long years while most of western Europe lay in turmoil and Russia grew more aggressive. But in 1957 Washington issued a 'declaration of independence' from British authority. It was then that everything changed, and America assumed leadership of the new world order just taking shape. Derek Leebaert spins a riveting global narrative of Britain as the original superpower and shows why the Americans kept believing it to be indispensable. It's the story of secret ties, diplomatic quarrels and military interventions that casts political giants Churchill, Truman, Eisenhower and Johnson in a new light. In a volatile world of decolonisation, a uniting Europe and the Suez Crisis, shrewd men in London were leveraging the empire's long-established resources and influence to maintain their grip on power. The enduring notion of a special relationship, rising tensions with Russia and China, and the sources of much of the world's turmoil can't be understood without knowing what really occurred.

What did the Cold War, that ongoing near-apocalypse, do to America? To the rest of the shaken world? What was meanly lost, what was nobly gained? How does all this prepare us for what lies ahead? It is difficult to think of questions that are more important to ask and more difficult to answer. Indeed, until now, nobody has truly addressed the real cost of America's Cold War, and how that long struggle set the stage for the tumultuous world we find ourselves living in at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The Fifty-Year Wound is the first book to show how an immediate regional crisis in the 1940s turned into a decades-long way of life for hundreds of millions of people across the globe. What emerged from all this shaped endings unthinkable when the challenge was set, raising unimagined issues that will not be settled for many years to come.

In Derek Leebaert's sweeping account, we follow the Cold War from start to finish, from suspicion to terror, from Berlin to Saigon to Beirut—and, more comically, from senatorial rhetoric to bureaucratic bungling. Leebaert explains how a struggle begun amid the ruins of Hitlerism was won an epoch later in its last, most dangerous moments and how the victory so gained nourishes great opportunities and terrible new dangers today.

Drawing upon U.S. and Russian sources only now coming to light, Leebaert challenges a range of widely believed "truths": from the assumptions Americans formed at the disordered start, to the origins and outcomes of the bloodletting of Korea and Vietnam, to the Cuban missile crisis, to the noisily acclaimed "détentes" with Russia and China, through arms race after arms race, to the dreamlike end. Spanning Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa, The Fifty-Year Wound spectacularly illuminates the reality behind our commitments and entanglements. Leebaert takes us through trade wars and trade lies; high-tech marvels and fuzzy finance; poignant sacrifices and dirty compromises; and ceaseless face-off with the most powerful tyranny in all history. Many of the reputations of the most famous figures of this shadow age are reassessed; the often too passively accepted roles of elites and governments reexamined; and much of the ability of U.S. intelligence exposed to serious consideration. The result is the very best kind of history: a brilliant, innovative look backward that is also a vital roadmap to a startlingly different world.

The electronic marketplace is a global one, and it's changing every aspect of the consumer-vendor relathionship. The marketplace is the place of exchange between buyer and seller. Once one rode a mule to get there; now one rides the Internet. An electronic marketplace can span two rooms in the same building, or two continents. How individuals, firms, and organizations approach and define the electronic marketplace of the future depends on people's ability to ask the right questions now and to take advantage of the opportunities that will arise over the next few years. The contributors to this volume are prime movers in major industries that are remaking themselves in order to shape the global marketplace. They examine the consumers' new powers to assess and exchange goods and services over unparalleled distances. They discuss the opportunities and risks posed by the new integration between manufacturer and consumer, by the erosion of centralized authority, by real-time choice in every financial contingency, and by the fact that travel and transportation have been delegated to the machine processes that can best handle them. They also reflect on how to set an intelligent value on the coming changes, on the tools and procedures required to create this new marketplace of marketplaces. Contributors Les Alberthal, William D. Bandt, Robert J. Bonometti, David Braunschvig, Stephen D. Crocker, Walter Forbes, Denos Gazis, Daniel E. Geer, Jr., Irving Goldstein, Edward D. Horowitz, Daniel P. Keegan, Raymond W. Smith, Russel B. Stevenson, Jr., Patrick E. White

In the tradition of "Guns, Germs, and Steel," Leebaert tells the stories of small forces that have triumphed over vastly larger ones and changed the course of history--from the Trojan Horse to Al Qaeda. Maps & charts.

The Soviet Union remains a superpower with global security interests and ambitions. The doctrines, practices, and capabilities of its still formidable armed forces are shaping world politics just at the same time that the future of the country that created them is in doubt. This book, first published in 1991, analyses the unprecedented changes, as well as the troubling continuities, that characterized Soviet military thinking during the early 1990s. The authors - a group of leading analysts in the US national security community - confront the range of Soviet military strengths, including intercontinental nuclear power, conventional ground, and naval forces and special operations. They address questions of Soviet weapons research and development, military planning and policy making, and the role of civilian critics on Soviet military objectives. Other chapters explore the Red Army's erosion in Eastern Europe as well as the lessons of Afghanistan.

The Soviet Union remains a superpower with global security interests and ambitions. The doctrines, practices, and capabilities of its still formidable armed forces are shaping world politics just at the same time that the future of the country that created them is in doubt. This book, first published in 1991, analyses the unprecedented changes, as well as the troubling continuities, that characterized Soviet military thinking during the early 1990s. The authors - a group of leading analysts in the US national security community - confront the range of Soviet military strengths, including intercontinental nuclear power, conventional ground, and naval forces and special operations. They address questions of Soviet weapons research and development, military planning and policy making, and the role of civilian critics on Soviet military objectives. Other chapters explore the Red Army's erosion in Eastern Europe as well as the lessons of Afghanistan.