Download or read book Assessing War written by Leo J. Blanken and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-15 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today's protracted asymmetrical conflicts confuse efforts to measure progress, often inviting politics and wishful thinking to replace objective evaluation. In Assessing War, military historians, social scientists, and military officers explore how observers have analyzed the trajectory of war in American conflicts from the Seven Years’ War through the war in Afghanistan. Drawing on decades of acquired expertise, the contributors examine wartime assessment in both theory and practice and, through alternative dimensions of assessment such as justice and proportionality, the war of ideas and economics. This group of distinguished authors grapples with both conventional and irregular wars and emerging aspects of conflict—such as cyberwar and nation building—that add to the complexities of the modern threat environment. The volume ends with recommendations for practitioners on best approaches while offering sobering conclusions about the challenges of assessing war without politicization or self-delusion. Covering conflicts from the eighteenth century to today, Assessing War blends focused advice and a uniquely broad set of case studies to ponder vital questions about warfare's past—and its future. The book includes a foreword by Gen. George W. Casey Jr. (USA, Ret.), former chief of staff of the US Army and former commander, Multi-National Force–Iraq.
Download or read book The Challenge of Nation Building written by Rebecca Patterson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-09-17 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last decades, the United States Army has often been involved in missions other than conventional warfare. These include low-intensity conflicts, counterinsurgency operations, and nation-building efforts. Although non-conventional warfare represents the majority of missions executed in the past sixty years, the Army still primarily plans, organizes, and trains to fight conventional ground wars. Consequently, in the last ten years, there has been considerable criticism regarding the military’s inability to accomplish tasks other than conventional war. Failed states and the threat they represent cannot be ignored or solved with conventional military might. In order to adapt to this new reality, the U.S. Army must innovate. This text examines the conditions that have allowed or prevented the U.S. Army to innovate for nation-building effectively. By doing so, it shows how military leadership and civil-military relations have changed. Nation-building refers to a type of military occupation where the goal is regime change or survival, a large number of ground troops are deployed, and both military and civilian personnel are used in the political administration of an occupied country, with the goals of establishing a productive economy and a stable government. Such tasks have always been a challenge for the U.S. military, which is not normally equipped or trained to undertake them. Using military effectiveness as the measurement of innovative success, the book analyzes several U.S. nation-building cases, including post World War II Germany, South Korea from 1945-1950, the Vietnam War, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. By doing so, it reveals the conditions that enabled military innovation in one unique case (Germany) while explaining what prevented it in the others. This variation of effectiveness leads to examine prevailing military innovation theories, threat-based accounts, quality of military organizations, and civil-military relations. This text comes at a critical time as the U.S. military faces dwindling resources and tough choices about its force structure and mission orientation. It will add to the growing debate about the role of civilians, military reformers, and institutional factors in military innovation and effectiveness.
Download or read book The Cognitive Challenge of War written by Peter Paret and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-08 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The compelling story of the military campaign that changed how we think about war Responding to the enemy's innovation in war presents problems to soldiers and societies of all times. This book traces Napoleon's victory over Prussia in 1806 and Prussia's effort to recover from defeat to show how in one particular historical episode operational analyses together with institutional and political decisions eventually turned defeat to victory. The author moves from a comparative study of French and Prussian forces to campaign narrative and strategic analysis. He examines processes of change in institutions and doctrine, as well as their dependence on social and political developments, and interprets works of art and literature as indicators of popular and elite attitudes toward war, which influence the conduct of war and the kind and extent of military innovation. In the concluding chapter he addresses the impact of 1806 on two men who fought on opposing sides in the campaign and sought a new theoretical understanding of war—Henri Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz. Fields of history that are often kept separate are brought together in this book, which seeks to replicate the links between different areas of thought and action as they exist in reality and shape events.
Download or read book Global Challenges Peace and War written by Yih-Jye Hwang and published by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. This book was released on 2013-07-09 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the idea of ‘peace’? This textbook aims to offer a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to studies of peace and war, from both theoretical and empirical perspectives.
Download or read book Jobs After War written by Eugenia Date-Bah and published by International Labour Organization. This book was released on 2003 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication examines the critical role of employment in post-conflict reconstruction and considers effective practical approaches to help achieve sustainable peace building. It contains papers and country case studies which provide a broad picture of the key issues involved, including the nature of the labour market and other features of the post-conflict situation; the diversity of crisis-affected groups and their specific concerns, such as youth, women, refugees, internally displaced people and ex-combatants; skills training; local economic development; micro-finance; labour intensive infrastructure rebuilding; social protection; the roles of the private sector, co-operatives, workers and employers' associations, labour administration and international organisations.
Download or read book Clad in Iron written by Howard J. Fuller and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2007-12-30 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work addresses many persistent misconceptions of what the monitors were for, and why they failed in other roles associated with naval operations of the Civil War (such as the repulse at Charleston, April 7, 1863). Monitors were 'ironclads'- not fort-killers. Their ultimate success is to be measured not in terms of spearheading attacks on fortified Southern ports but in the quieter, much more profound, strategic deterrence of Lord Palmerston's ministry in London, and the British Royal Navy's potential intervention. The relatively unknown 'Cold War' of the American Civil War was a nevertheless crucial aspect of the survival, or not, of the United States in the mid 19th-century. Foreign intervention—explicitly in the form of British naval power—represented a far more serious threat to the success of the Union blockade, the safety of Yankee merchant shipping worldwide, and Union combined operations against the South than the Confederate States Navy. Whether or not the North or South would be 'clad in iron' thus depended on the ability of superior Union ironclads to deter the majority of mid-Victorian British leaders, otherwise tempted by their desire to see the American 'experiment' in democratic class-structures and popular government finally fail. Discussions of open European involvement in the Civil War were pointless as long as the coastline of the United States was virtually impregnable. Combining extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, this work offers an in-depth look at how the Union Navy achieved its greatest grand-strategic victory in the American Civil War. Through a combination of high-tech 'machines' armed with 'monster' guns, intensive coastal fortifications and a new fleet of high-speed Union commerce raiders, the North was able to turn the humiliation of the Trent Affair of late 1861 into a sobering challenge to British naval power and imperial defense worldwide.
Download or read book Global Challenges written by Iris Marion Young and published by Polity. This book was released on 2006-02-10 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late twentieth century many writers and activists envisioned new possibilities of transnational cooperation toward peace and global justice. In this book Iris Marion Young aims to revive such hopes by responding clearly to what are seen as the global challenges of the modern day. Inspired by claims of indigenous peoples, the book develops a concept of self-determination compatible with stronger institutions of global regulation. It theorizes new directions for thinking about federated relationships between peoples which assume that they need not be large or symmetrical. Young argues that the use of armed force to respond to oppression should be rare, genuinely multilateral, and follow a model of law enforcement more than war. She finds that neither cosmopolitan nor nationalist responses to questions of global justice are adequate and so offers a distinctive conception of responsibility, founded on participation in social structures, to describe the obligations that both individuals and organizations have in a world of global interdependence. Young applies clear analysis and cogent moral arguments to concrete cases, including the wars against Serbia and Iraq, the meaning of the US Patriot Act, the conflict in Palestine/Israel, and working conditions in sweat shops.
Download or read book Engineers of Victory written by Paul Kennedy and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Paul Kennedy, award-winning author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers and one of today’s most renowned historians, now provides a new and unique look at how World War II was won. Engineers of Victory is a fascinating nuts-and-bolts account of the strategic factors that led to Allied victory. Kennedy reveals how the leaders’ grand strategy was carried out by the ordinary soldiers, scientists, engineers, and businessmen responsible for realizing their commanders’ visions of success. In January 1943, FDR and Churchill convened in Casablanca and established the Allied objectives for the war: to defeat the Nazi blitzkrieg; to control the Atlantic sea lanes and the air over western and central Europe; to take the fight to the European mainland; and to end Japan’s imperialism. Astonishingly, a little over a year later, these ambitious goals had nearly all been accomplished. With riveting, tactical detail, Engineers of Victory reveals how. Kennedy recounts the inside stories of the invention of the cavity magnetron, a miniature radar “as small as a soup plate,” and the Hedgehog, a multi-headed grenade launcher that allowed the Allies to overcome the threat to their convoys crossing the Atlantic; the critical decision by engineers to install a super-charged Rolls-Royce engine in the P-51 Mustang, creating a fighter plane more powerful than the Luftwaffe’s; and the innovative use of pontoon bridges (made from rafts strung together) to help Russian troops cross rivers and elude the Nazi blitzkrieg. He takes readers behind the scenes, unveiling exactly how thousands of individual Allied planes and fighting ships were choreographed to collectively pull off the invasion of Normandy, and illuminating how crew chiefs perfected the high-flying and inaccessible B-29 Superfortress that would drop the atomic bombs on Japan. The story of World War II is often told as a grand narrative, as if it were fought by supermen or decided by fate. Here Kennedy uncovers the real heroes of the war, highlighting for the first time the creative strategies, tactics, and organizational decisions that made the lofty Allied objectives into a successful reality. In an even more significant way, Engineers of Victory has another claim to our attention, for it restores “the middle level of war” to its rightful place in history. Praise for Engineers of Victory “Superbly written and carefully documented . . . indispensable reading for anyone who seeks to understand how and why the Allies won.”—The Christian Science Monitor “An important contribution to our understanding of World War II . . . Like an engineer who pries open a pocket watch to reveal its inner mechanics, [Paul] Kennedy tells how little-known men and women at lower levels helped win the war.”—Michael Beschloss, The New York Times Book Review “Histories of World War II tend to concentrate on the leaders and generals at the top who make the big strategic decisions and on the lowly grunts at the bottom. . . . [Engineers of Victory] seeks to fill this gap in the historiography of World War II and does so triumphantly. . . . This book is a fine tribute.”—The Wall Street Journal “[Kennedy] colorfully and convincingly illustrates the ingenuity and persistence of a few men who made all the difference.”—The Washington Post “This superb book is Kennedy’s best.”—Foreign Affairs
Download or read book The Challenge of Change written by Harold R. Winton and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Also included are an introduction describing the intellectual and practical challenges facing the military reformer in peacetime and a concluding essay by Dennis Showalter drawing together the issues examined in the preceding studies and setting these themes in an interpretive, historiographical context. The Challenge of Change has been designed to meet the needs of historians, military professionals, and defense analysts."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Can War be Eliminated written by Christopher Coker and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history, war seems to have had an iron grip on humanity. In this short book, internationally renowned philosopher of war, Christopher Coker, challenges the view that war is an idea that we can cash in for an even better one - peace. War, he argues, is central to the human condition; it is part of the evolutionary inheritance which has allowed us to survive and thrive. New technologies and new geopolitical battles may transform the face and purpose of war in the 21st century, but our capacity for war remains undiminished. The inconvenient truth is that we will not see the end of war until it exhausts its own evolutionary possibilities.
Download or read book Hybrid War Or Gibridnaya Voina Getting Russia s Non Linear Military Challenge Right written by Mark Galeotti and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2016-11-27 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The West is at war. Not a war of the old sort, fought with the thunder of guns, but a new sort, fought with the rustle of money, the shrill mantras of propagandists, and the stealthy whispers of spies. Often described as 'hybrid war, ' a blend of the military and the political, it reflects both the way that war is changing in the modern world as well as Russia's attempt to divide, demoralize and distract the West as it asserts its claim to be a great power, with a sphere of influence and Ukraine and beyond. This study explores the two parallel forms of 'non-linear warfare' and provides recommendations as to how the West can best respond.
Download or read book Limited War written by Robert Endicott Osgood and published by . This book was released on 1957 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Militærhistorie. Om begrænsede krige, lokale krige, væbnede konflikter. En analyse af den amerikanske strategi og de udenrigspolitiske muligheder for at kunne gennemføre en "begrænset krig" som middel til at opnå politiske mål og uden at ende i en altødelæggende kernevåbenkrig.
Download or read book Honoring the Civil War Dead written by John R. Neff and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his estimation, Northerners were just as active as Southerners in myth-making after the war. Crafting a "Cause Victorious" myth that was every bit as resonant and powerful as the much better-known "Lost Cause" myth cherished by Southerners, the North asserted through commemorations the existence of a loyal and reunified nation long before it was actually a fact. Neff reveals that as Northerners and Southerners honored their separate dead, they did so in ways that underscore the limits of reconciliation between Union and Confederate veterans, whose mutual animosities lingered for many decades after the need of the war. Ultimately, Neff argues that the process of reunion and reconciliation that has been so much the focus of recent literature either neglects or dismisses the persistent reluctance of both Northerners and Southerners to "forgive and forget," especially where their dead were concerned.
Download or read book The Refugee Challenge in Post Cold War America written by María Cristina García and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over forty years, Cold War concerns about the threat of communism shaped the contours of refugee and asylum policy in the United States, and the majority of those admitted as refugees came from communist countries. In the post-Cold War period, a wider range of geopolitical and domestic interests influence which populations policymakers prioritize for admission. The Refugee Challenge in Post-Cold War America examines the actors and interests that have shaped refugee and asylum policy since 1989. Policymakers are now considering a wider range of populations as potentially eligible for protection: victims of civil unrest, genocide, trafficking, environmental upheaval, and gender-based discrimination, among others. Many of those granted protected status since 1989 would never have been considered for admission during the Cold War. Among the challenges of the post-Cold War era are the growing number of asylum seekers who have petitioned for protection at a port of entry and are backlogging the immigration courts. Concerns over national security have also resulted in deterrence policies that have raised important questions about the rights of refugees and the duties of nations. María Cristina García evaluates the challenges of reconciling international humanitarian obligations with domestic concerns for national security.
Download or read book The War for Kindness written by Jamil Zaki and published by Crown Publishing Group (NY). This book was released on 2019 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Stanford psychologist offers a bold new understanding of empathy, revealing it to be a skill, not a fixed trait, and showing, through science and stories, how we can all become more empathetic"--
Download or read book The Just War Tradition Applying Old Ethics to New Problems written by Davis Brown and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2024-10-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the new and ongoing dilemmas and challenges to world public order in an environment in which international law is more restrictive but state practice is more permissive. The chapters use criteria from the just war tradition to attempt to resolve the tensions posed by the challenges of anticipatory self-defense, human
Download or read book Rebuilding War Torn States written by Graciana del Castillo and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-09-25 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Post-conflict economic reconstruction is a critical part of the political economy of peacetime and one of the most important challenges in any peace-building or state-building strategy. After wars end, countries must negotiate a multi-pronged transition to peace: Violence must give way to public security; lawlessness, political exclusion, and violation of human rights must give way to the rule of law and participatory government; ethnic, religious, ideological, or class/caste confrontation must give way to national reconciliation; and ravaged and mismanaged war economies must be reconstructed and transformed into functioning market economies that enable people to earn a decent living. Yet, how can these vitally important tasks each be successfully managed? How should we go about rehabilitating basic services and physical and human infrastructure? Which policies and institutions are necessary to reactivate the economy in the short run and ensure sustainable development in the long run? What steps should countries take to bring about national reconciliation and the consolidation of peace? In all of these cases, unless the political objectives of peacetime prevail at all times, peace will be ephemeral, while policies that pursue purely economic objectives can have tragic consequences. This book argues that any strategy for post-conflict economic reconstruction must be based on five premises and examines specific post-conflict reconstruction experiences to identify not only where these premises have been disregarded, but also where policies have worked, and the specific conditions that have influenced their success and failure.
