Download or read book Multinational Operations and the National Security Strategy The Modern Melian Dialogue written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thucydides included the Melian Dialogue as part of his epic, The Peloponnesian War. Historians doubt the speeches between the Athenian generals and the Council of the Melians ever took place as written, but its substance has become a classic excerpt in the "Realist" versus "Idealist" debate over international relations. Its timeless treatment of national interests, balance of power, alliances, and the nature of leadership make it as relevant today as when it was written in 416 BC. It has been 10 years since the end of the Cold War, and the United States is still seeking to define a suitable, feasible, and acceptable national strategy to fit the geostrategic environment of the early 21st century. For over 40 years, NSC-68 established the requirements for an all-encompassing national strategy - political, economic, military, and informational - designed to contain communist expansion. Alliances and coalitions played a major role in successfully executing containment, but now that the Cold War is over, what are the roles the United States wants them to play? It is current national policy that when it is advantageous, the U.S. must always be prepared to act alone. However, it is also stated policy that the U.S. can only achieve many of its security objectives through alliances and other formal military structures. Today, the efficacy of multinational alliances in executing Operations Other Than War is dubious at best, and the U.S. military finds itself drawn into increasingly smaller scale contingency operations where vital national interests are not at stake. The resulting Operations and Personnel tempo are taking a toll on the force. Assuming that it is prudent for the U.S. to remain engaged in regions of political, economic, and military importance, this paper addresses the following question: what is the contribution of multinational alliances and coalitions in securing important United States national security objectives in the next fifteen year period?
Download or read book Multinational Operations and the National Security Strategy written by William H. Parry and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Anatomy of a Campaign written by John Kiszely and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The British campaign in Norway in 1940 was an ignominious and abject failure. It is perhaps best known as the fiasco which directly led to the fall of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his replacement by Winston Churchill. But what were the reasons for failure? Why did the decision makers, including Churchill, make such poor decisions and exercise such bad judgement? What other factors played a part? John Kiszely draws on his own experience of working at all levels in the military to assess the campaign as a whole, its context and evolution from strategic failures, intelligence blunders and German air superiority to the performance of the troops and the serious errors of judgement by those responsible for the higher direction of the war. The result helps us to understand not only the outcome of the Norwegian campaign but also why more recent military campaigns have found success so elusive.
Download or read book Restoring Thucydides written by Andrew R Novo and published by . This book was released on 2020-03-25 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the use and misuse of historic evidence. Standard conclusions are challenged based on the evidence within his work and the broader historical record. New lessons with modern relevance are drawn from a richer, fuller understanding of Thucydides.
Download or read book Security Strategy and Military Change in the 21st Century written by Jo Inge Bekkevold and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-05-22 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume explores and analyses strategic thinking, military reform and adaptation in an era of Asian growth, European austerity and US rebalancing. A significant shift in policy, strategy and military affairs is underway in both Asia and Europe, with the former gaining increasing prominence in the domain of global security. At the same time, the world’s powers are now faced with an array of diverse challenges. The resurgence of great power politics in both Europe and Asia, along with the long term threats of terrorism, piracy and sustained geopolitical instability has placed great strain on militaries and security institutions operating with constrained budgets and wary public support. The volume covers a wide range of case studies, including the transformation of China’s military in the 21st century, the internal and external challenges facing India, Russia’s military modernization program and the USA’s reassessment of its strategic interests. In doing so, the book provides the reader with the opportunity to conceptualize how strategic thinking, military reform, operational adaptation and technological integration have interacted with the challenges outlined above. With contributions by leading scholars and practitioners from Europe and Asia, this book provides a valuable contribution to the understanding of strategic and operational thinking and adjustment across the world. This book will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, security studies, defence studies, Asian politics, Russian politics, US foreign policy and IR in general.
Download or read book Thucydides Other Traps written by Alan Greeley Misenheimer and published by . This book was released on 2019-06-06 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of a "Thucydides Trap" that will ensnare China and the United States in a 21st century conflict-much as the rising power of Athens alarmed Sparta and made war "inevitable" between the Aegean superpowers of the 5th century BCE-has received global attention since entering the international relations lexicon 6 years ago. Scholars, journalists, bloggers, and politicians in many countries, notably China, have embraced this beguiling metaphor, coined by Harvard political science professor Graham Allison, as a framework for examining the likelihood of a Sino-American war. This case study examines the Thucydides Trap metaphor and the response it has elicited. Hewing closely to what the historian of the Peloponnesian War actually says about the causes and inevitability of war, it argues that, while Thucydides' text does not support Allison's normative assertion about the "inevitable" result of an encounter between "rising" and "ruling" powers, the History of the Peloponnesian War (hereafter, History) does identify elements of leadership and political dynamic that bear directly on whether a clash of interests between two states is resolved through peaceful means or escalates to war. It is precisely because war typically begins with a considered decision by a national command authority to reject other options and mobilize for conflict (and thus always entails an element of choice) that insight from Thucydides' History remains relevant and beneficial for the contemporary strategist, or citizen, concerned in such decisions.Accordingly, this case study concludes that the Thucydides Trap, as conceived and presented by Graham Allison, draws welcome attention both to Thucydides and to the pitfalls of great power competition, but fails as a heuristic device or predictive tool in the analysis of contemporary events. Allison's metaphor offers, at best, a potentially misleading over-simplification of Thucydides' nuanced and problematic account of the origins of the epochal conflict that defined his age. Moreover, it overlooks actual insights from the History that can help political decisionmakers-including, but not limited to, those of the United States and China-either avoid war or, if ignored, pose genuine policy "traps" that can make an avoidable war more likely, and a necessary war more costly.
Download or read book Nuclear Statecraft written by Francis J. Gavin and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are at a critical juncture in world politics. Nuclear strategy and policy have risen to the top of the global policy agenda, and issues ranging from a nuclear Iran to the global zero movement are generating sharp debate. The historical origins of our contemporary nuclear world are deeply consequential for contemporary policy, but it is crucial that decisions are made on the basis of fact rather than myth and misapprehension. In Nuclear Statecraft, Francis J. Gavin challenges key elements of the widely accepted narrative about the history of the atomic age and the consequences of the nuclear revolution. On the basis of recently declassified documents, Gavin reassesses the strategy of flexible response, the influence of nuclear weapons during the Berlin Crisis, the origins of and motivations for U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy, and how to assess the nuclear dangers we face today. In case after case, he finds that we know far less than we think we do about our nuclear history. Archival evidence makes it clear that decision makers were more concerned about underlying geopolitical questions than about the strategic dynamic between two nuclear superpowers. Gavin's rigorous historical work not only tells us what happened in the past but also offers a powerful tool to explain how nuclear weapons influence international relations. Nuclear Statecraft provides a solid foundation for future policymaking.
Download or read book The U S Army War College Guide to National Security Issues Volume II written by J. Boone, JBoone Bartholomees, Jr. and published by . This book was released on 2010-07-30 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both Henry Kissinger and Robert Art make it clear that the identification of national interests is crucial for the development of policy and strategy. Interests are essential to establishing the objectives or ends that serve as the goals for policy and strategy. "Interests are the foundation and starting point for policy prescriptions." They help answer questions concerning why a policy is important.4 National interests also help to determine the types and amounts of the national power employed as the means to implement a designated policy or strategy. The concept of interest is not new to the 21st century international system. It has always been a fundamental consideration of every actor in the system. Despite what many academics have maintained, national interests are not only a factor for nation-states. All actors in the international system possess interests. Using Barry Buzan, Ole Weaver, and Jaap de Wilde's units of analysis, the need to have interests is equally applicable to international subsystems (groups or units that can be distinguished from the overall system by the nature or intensity of their interactions with or independence on each other) like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, individual units (actors consisting of various subgroups, orga¬nizations, and communities) such as nations of people that transcend state boundaries and multi¬national corporations, subunits (organized groups of individuals within units that are able or try to affect the behavior of the unit as a whole) like bureaucracies and lobbies, and finally, individuals that all possess separate personal interests as they participate in the overall system.5 Some academ¬ics choose to distinguish between national interests (interests involved in the external relations of the actor) and public interests (interests related within the boundaries of the actor).6 For purposes of this essay, given the closing gap between the influence of external and internal issues in the 21st century international system brought about by the associated components of a rapidly globalized world, there will be no distinction made between external and internal interests. In effect, they all fall under the concept of the national interest. There is a generally accepted consensus among academics that interests are designed to be of value to the entity or actor responsible for determining the interest for itself. This could include 4 those interests that are intended to be "a standard of conduct or a state of affairs worthy of achieve¬ment by virtue of its universal moral value."7 However, there is less agreement over the question of whether all nation-state interests are enduring, politically bi-partisan, permanent conditions that represent core interests that transcend changes in government,8 in contrast to those interests that may be altered over time and or respond to change in the international system.
Download or read book Security and International Relations written by Edward A. Kolodziej and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-09 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents security studies as a branch of international relations theory, providing a valuable new survey of the subject.
Download or read book Paradigm Lost written by David Jablonsky and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sometime in the penultimate decade of the 20th century, the United States and its allies won the cold war. Once again in the current transition period, the primary questions revolve around the management of power and America's role in global politics. Once again there are the issues of change and continuity. In terms of change, the cold war set in train a blend of integrative and disintegrative forces and trends that are adding to the complex tensions of the current transition. The integrative force that increasingly linked global economies in the cold war, for instance, also holds out the spectral potential of global depression or, at the very least, nations more susceptible to disintegrative actions, as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait demonstrated. In a similar manner, the advances in communications and transportation that have spread the results of medical and scientific discoveries around the world are countered by the malign transnational results of nuclear technology, the drug trade, terrorism, AIDS and global warming.
Download or read book The United Nations Peace and Security written by Ramesh Thakur and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-06-08 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preventing humanitarian atrocities is becoming as important for the United Nations as dealing with inter-state war. In this book, Ramesh Thakur examines the transformation in UN operations, analysing its changing role and structure. He asks why, when and how force may be used and argues that the growing gulf between legality and legitimacy is evidence of an eroded sense of international community. He considers the tension between the US, with its capacity to use force and project power, and the UN, as the centre of the international law enforcement system. He asserts the central importance of the rule of law and of a rules-based order focused on the UN as the foundation of a civilised system of international relations. This book will be of interest to students of the UN and international organisations in politics, law and international relations departments, as well as policymakers in the UN and other NGOs.
Download or read book Gold Dollars and Power written by Francis J. Gavin and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2004 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Gavin demonstrates that Bretton Woods was in fact a highly politicized system that was prone to crisis and required constant intervention and controls to continue functioning. More important, postwar monetary relations were not a salve to political tensions, as is often contended.
Download or read book Reframing the International written by Richard Falk and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-08 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Re-Framing the International insists that, if we are to properly face the challenges of the coming century, we need to re-examine international politics and development through the prism of ethics and morality. International relations must now contend with a widening circle of participants reflecting the diversity and uneveness of status, memory, gender, race, culture and class.
Download or read book Neutrality and Small States written by Efraim Karsh and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1988, this book examines the experiences of neutral states in Europe during the Second World War and in the postwar peiod. It examines both the practical and the theoretical considerations and the interface between the two, and discusses the implications of the experience of these countries for small states generally
Download or read book Germany s New Security Demographics written by Wenke Apt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-12-04 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Military recruitment will become more difficult in times of demographic aging. The question arises whether demographic change will constrain the capacity of aging states like Germany to conduct foreign policy and pursue their national security interests. Since contemporary military operations still display a strong human element, particular scrutiny is given to the empirical analysis of the determinants of military propensity and military service among youth. An additional human capital projection until 2030 illustrates how the decline in the youth population will interact with trends in educational attainment and adolescent health to further complicate military recruitment in the future. A concluding review of recruiting practices in other NATO countries provides insight in best-practice policy options to reduce the military’s sensitivity to demographic change. Following this approach, the book gives prominence to a topic that has thus far been under-represented in the greater discussion of demographic change today, namely the demographic impact on international affairs and strategic calculations.
Download or read book Military Self Interest in Accountability for Core International Crimes written by Morten Bergsmo and published by Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher. This book was released on 2018-04-21 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Decision to Attack written by Aaron Franklin Brantly and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brantly investigates how states decide to employ cyber in military and intelligence operations against other states and how rational those decisions are. He contextualizes broader cyber decision-making processes into a systematic expected utility-rational choice approach to provide a mathematical understanding of the use of cyber weapons.
