The rise and fall of the Cold War coincided with the universalization and consolidation of the modern nation-state as the key unit of the wider international system. A key characteristic of the post-Cold War era, in which the US has emerged as the sole superpower, is the growing number of collapsing or collapsed states. A growing number of states are, or have become, mired in conflict or civil war, the antecedents of which are often to be found in the late-colonial and Cold War era. At the same time, US foreign policy (and the actions of other organizations such as the United Nations) may well be compounding state failure in the context of the post-9/11 Global War on Terror (GWOT) or what is also increasingly referred to as the 'Long War'. The Long War is often represented as a 'new' era in warfare and geopolitics. This book acknowledges that the Long War is new in important respects, but it also emphasizes that the Long War bears many similarities to the Cold War. A key similarity is the way in which insurgency and counterinsurgency were and continue to be seen primarily in the context of inter-state rivalry in which the critical local or regional dynamics of revolution and counter-revolution are marginalized or neglected. In this context American policy-makers and their allies have again erroneously applied a 'grand strategy' that suits the imperatives of conventional military and geo-political thinking rather than engaging with what are a much more variegated array of problems facing the changing global order. This book provides a collection of well-integrated studies that shed light on the history and future of insurgency, counterinsurgency and collapsing states in the context of the Long War. This book was previously published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

This volume develops information strategy as a construct equal in importance to military strategy as an influential tool of statecraft.

John Arquilla and Douglas A. Borer explore three principal themes:

• the rise of the a ~information domaina (TM) and information strategy as an equal partner alongside traditional military strategy
• the need to consider the organizational implications of information strategy
• the realm of what has been called a ~information operationsa (TM) (IO) - the building blocks of information strategy - has been too narrowly depicted and must be both broadened and deepened.

Information Strategy and Warfare will be essential reading for students and practitioners of information strategy, as well as scholars of security studies and military strategy in general.

Was Afghanistan the Soviet Vietnam? Was Vietnam the American Afghanistan? During the Cold War, military conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan validated the crucial importance of war in global power dynamics. After approximately a decade of intense effort, military intervention proved too costly in human and material terms to be politically sustainable for the USA and USSR. In the end, both superpowers were thwarted in obtaining their original war goals and withdrew in disgrace. As a result, the parallelism between the US experience in Vietnam and the Soviet experience in Afghanistan is now a widely accepted truism. But is it so?

Was Afghanistan the Soviet Vietnam? Was Vietnam the American Afghanistan? During the Cold War, military conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan validated the crucial importance of war in global power dynamics. After approximately a decade of intense effort, military intervention proved too costly in human and material terms to be politically sustainable for the USA and USSR. In the end, both superpowers were thwarted in obtaining their original war goals and withdrew in disgrace. As a result, the parallelism between the US experience in Vietnam and the Soviet experience in Afghanistan is now a widely accepted truism. But is it so?

The rise and fall of the Cold War coincided with the universalization and consolidation of the modern nation-state as the key unit of the wider international system. A key characteristic of the post-Cold War era, in which the US has emerged as the sole superpower, is the growing number of collapsing or collapsed states. A growing number of states are, or have become, mired in conflict or civil war, the antecedents of which are often to be found in the late-colonial and Cold War era. At the same time, US foreign policy (and the actions of other organizations such as the United Nations) may well be compounding state failure in the context of the post-9/11 Global War on Terror (GWOT) or what is also increasingly referred to as the 'Long War'. The Long War is often represented as a 'new' era in warfare and geopolitics. This book acknowledges that the Long War is new in important respects, but it also emphasizes that the Long War bears many similarities to the Cold War. A key similarity is the way in which insurgency and counterinsurgency were and continue to be seen primarily in the context of inter-state rivalry in which the critical local or regional dynamics of revolution and counter-revolution are marginalized or neglected. In this context American policy-makers and their allies have again erroneously applied a 'grand strategy' that suits the imperatives of conventional military and geo-political thinking rather than engaging with what are a much more variegated array of problems facing the changing global order. This book provides a collection of well-integrated studies that shed light on the history and future of insurgency, counterinsurgency and collapsing states in the context of the Long War. This book was previously published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

This volume develops information strategy as a construct equal in importance to military strategy as an influential tool of statecraft.

John Arquilla and Douglas A. Borer explore three principal themes:

• 
  

  
  

• the rise of the 'information domain' and information strategy as an equal partner alongside traditional military strategy
• 
  

  
  

  
  

• the need to consider the organizational implications of information strategy
• 
  

  
  

  
  

• the realm of what has been called 'information operations' (IO) - the building blocks of information strategy - has been too narrowly depicted and must be both broadened and deepened.
• 
  

Information Strategy and Warfare will be essential reading for students and practitioners of information strategy, as well as scholars of security studies and military strategy in general.