Download or read book Paradoxes of War written by Zeev Maoz and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2020-12-22 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do reasonable people lead their nations into the tremendously destructive traps of international conflict? Why do nations then deepen their involvement and make it harder to escape from these traps? In Paradoxes of War, originally published in 1990, Zeev Maoz addresses these and other paradoxical questions about the war process. Using a unique approach to the study of war, he demonstrates that wars may often break out because states wish to prevent them, and continue despite the desperate efforts of the combatants to end them. Paradoxes of War is organized around the various stages of war. The first part discusses the causes of war, the second the management of war, and the third the short- and long-term implications of war. In each chapter Maoz explores a different paradox as a contradiction between reasonable expectations and the outcomes of motivated behaviour based on those expectations. He documents these paradoxes in twentieth century wars, including the Korean War, the Six Day War, and the Vietnam War. Maoz then invokes cognitive and rational choice theories to explain why these paradoxes arise. Paradoxes of War is essential reading for students and scholars of international politics, war and peace studies, international relations theory, and political science in general.
Download or read book War as Paradox written by Youri Cormier and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two centuries after Carl von Clausewitz wrote On War, it lines the shelves of military colleges around the world and even showed up in an Al Qaeda hideout. Though it has shaped much of the common parlance on the subject, On War is perceived by many as a “metaphysical fog,” widely known but hardly read. In War as Paradox, Youri Cormier lifts the fog on this iconic work by explaining its philosophical underpinnings. Building up a genealogy of dialectical war theory and integrating Hegel with Clausewitz as a co-founders of the method, Cormier uncovers a common logic that shaped the fighting doctrines and ethics of modern war. He explains how Hegel and Clausewitz converged on method, but nonetheless arrived at opposite ethics and military doctrines. Ultimately, Cormier seeks out the limits to dialectical war theory and explores the greater paradoxes the method reveals: can so-called “rational” theories of war hold up under the pressures of irrational propositions, such as lone-wolf attacks, the circular logic of a “war to end all wars,” or the apparent folly of mutually assured destruction? Since the Second World War, commentators have described war as obsolete. War as Paradox argues that dialectical war theory may be the key to understanding why, despite this, it continues.
Download or read book Paradoxes of War written by Zeev Maoz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-22 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do reasonable people lead their nations into the tremendously destructive traps of international conflict? Why do nations then deepen their involvement and make it harder to escape from these traps? In Paradoxes of War, originally published in 1990, Zeev Maoz addresses these and other paradoxical questions about the war process. Using a unique approach to the study of war, he demonstrates that wars may often break out because states wish to prevent them, and continue despite the desperate efforts of the combatants to end them. Paradoxes of War is organized around the various stages of war. The first part discusses the causes of war, the second the management of war, and the third the short- and long-term implications of war. In each chapter Maoz explores a different paradox as a contradiction between reasonable expectations and the outcomes of motivated behaviour based on those expectations. He documents these paradoxes in twentieth century wars, including the Korean War, the Six Day War, and the Vietnam War. Maoz then invokes cognitive and rational choice theories to explain why these paradoxes arise. Paradoxes of War is essential reading for students and scholars of international politics, war and peace studies, international relations theory, and political science in general.
Download or read book Playing War written by Sabine Frühstück and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-07-18 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Playing War: Field games. Paper battles -- Picturing war: The moral authority of innocence. Queering war -- Epilogue: the rule of babies in pink
Download or read book Paradoxes of Strategic Intelligence written by Richard K. Betts and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of a three part collection in honour of the teachings of Michael I. Handel, one of the foremost strategists of the late 20th century, this collection explores the paradoxes of intelligence analysis, surprise and deception from both historical and theoretical perspectives.
Download or read book Stalin written by Stephen Kotkin and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 975 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his biography of Stalin, Kotkin rejects the inherited wisdom about Stalin's psychological makeup, showing us instead how Stalin's near paranoia was fundamentally political and closely tracks the Bolshevik revolution's structural paranoia, the predicament of a Communist regime in an overwhelmingly capitalist world, surrounded and penetrated by enemies. At the same time, Kotkin posits the impossibility of understanding Stalin's momentous decisions outside of the context of the history of imperial Russia.
Download or read book Paradoxes of Peace written by Alice Holmes Cooper and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thoughtfully examines the paradox of peace activism in postwar Germany
Download or read book War and Society written by Miguel A. Centeno and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-03-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: War is a paradox. On the one hand, it destroys bodies and destroys communities. On the other hand, it is responsible for some of the strongest human bonds and has been the genesis of many of our most fundamental institutions. War and Society addresses these paradoxes while providing a sociological exploration of this enigmatic phenomenon which has played a central role in human history, wielded an incredible power over human lives, and commanded intellectual questioning for countless generations. The authors offer an analytical account of the origins of war, its historical development, and its consequences for individuals and societies, adopting a comparative approach throughout. It ends with an appraisal of the contemporary role of war, looking to the future of warfare and the fundamental changes in the nature of violent conflict which we are starting to witness. This short, readable and engaging book will be an ideal reading for upper-level students of political sociology, military sociology, and related subjects.
Download or read book The Paradoxes of Unintended Consequences written by Ralf Dahrendorf and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This volume of essays is dedicated to George Soros in honor of his seventieth birthday. In their various fields of work the authors, who come from the interconnected worlds of academe, politics, and business, have each made an active contribution to the growth of the huge philanthropic empire built by Soros." "The editors chose the title The Paradoxes of Unintended Consequences to encourage contributors to adopt a dialogical approach. The title also refers to the case of Giordano Bruno, itself a telling example of paradox. Burnt at the stake 400 years ago for heresy, Bruno's views were probably far more illiberal and undemocratic than the views of those who condemned him. The editors' aim was to show that any complex social process or political attempt to change people's lives will inevitably have unintended consequences, usually of a paradoxical nature. These consequences should force us to reconsider our original theory."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book War How Conflict Shaped Us written by Margaret MacMillan and published by Random House. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is peace an aberration? The New York Times bestselling author of Paris 1919 offers a provocative view of war as an essential component of humanity. NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW “Margaret MacMillan has produced another seminal work. . . . She is right that we must, more than ever, think about war. And she has shown us how in this brilliant, elegantly written book.”—H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World The instinct to fight may be innate in human nature, but war—organized violence—comes with organized society. War has shaped humanity’s history, its social and political institutions, its values and ideas. Our very language, our public spaces, our private memories, and some of our greatest cultural treasures reflect the glory and the misery of war. War is an uncomfortable and challenging subject not least because it brings out both the vilest and the noblest aspects of humanity. Margaret MacMillan looks at the ways in which war has influenced human society and how, in turn, changes in political organization, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight. War: How Conflict Shaped Us explores such much-debated and controversial questions as: When did war first start? Does human nature doom us to fight one another? Why has war been described as the most organized of all human activities? Why are warriors almost always men? Is war ever within our control? Drawing on lessons from wars throughout the past, from classical history to the present day, MacMillan reveals the many faces of war—the way it has determined our past, our future, our views of the world, and our very conception of ourselves.
Download or read book In visible War written by Jon Simons and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-14 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In/Visible War addresses a paradox of twenty-first century American warfare. The contemporary visual American experience of war is ubiquitous, and yet war is simultaneously invisible or absent; we lack a lived sense that “America” is at war. This paradox of in/visibility concerns the gap between the experiences of war zones and the visual, mediated experience of war in public, popular culture, which absents and renders invisible the former. Large portions of the domestic public experience war only at a distance. For these citizens, war seems abstract, or may even seem to have disappeared altogether due to a relative absence of visual images of casualties. Perhaps even more significantly, wars can be fought without sacrifice by the vast majority of Americans. Yet, the normalization of twenty-first century war also renders it highly visible. War is made visible through popular, commercial, mediated culture. The spectacle of war occupies the contemporary public sphere in the forms of celebrations at athletic events and in films, video games, and other media, coming together as MIME, the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network.
Download or read book War and the Politics of Ethics written by Maja Zehfuss and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary Western war is represented as enacting the West's ability and responsibility to help make the world a better place for others, in particular to protect them from oppression and serious human rights abuses. That is, war has become permissible again, indeed even required, as ethical war. At the same time, however, Western war kills and destroys. This creates a paradox: Western war risks killing those it proposes to protect. This book examines how we have responded to this dilemma and challenges the vision of ethical war itself, exploring how the commitment to ethics shapes the practice of war and indeed how practices come, in turn, to shape what is considered ethical in war. The book closely examines particular practices of warfare, such as targeting, the use of cultural knowledge, and ethics training for soldiers. What emerges is that instead of constraining violence, the commitment to ethics enables and enhances it. The book argues that the production of ethical war relies on an impossible but obscured separation between ethics and politics, that is, the problematic politics of ethics, and reflects on the need to make decisions at the limit of ethics.
Download or read book Brother Enemy written by James A. Perkins and published by White Pine Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bitter realities of a war that pitted brother against brother and lingers on to this day.
Download or read book The Book of the War written by Lawrence Miles and published by . This book was released on 2002-09-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marking the first five decades of the conflict, THE BOOK OF THE WAR is an A to Z of a self-contained continuum and a complete guide to the Spiral Politic, from the beginning of recordable time to the fall of humanity.
Download or read book The Paradoxes of Nationalism written by Chimene I. Keitner and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2008-01-03 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An interdisciplinary study of nationalism drawing on the events of the French Revolution.
Download or read book Aid Paradoxes in Afghanistan written by Nematullah Bizhan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-14 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between aid and state building is highly complex and the effects of aid on weak states depend on donors’ interests, aid modalities and the recipient’s pre-existing institutional and socio-political conditions. This book argues that, in the case of Afghanistan, the country inherited conditions that were not favourable for effective state building. Although some of the problems that emerged in the post-2001 state building process were predictable, the types of interventions that occurred—including an aid architecture which largely bypassed the state, the subordination of state building to the war on terror, and the short horizon policy choices of donors and the Afghan government—reduced the effectiveness of the aid and undermined effective state building. By examining how foreign aid affected state building in Afghanistan since the US militarily intervened in Afghanistan in late 2001 until the end of President Hamid Karzai’s first term in 2009, this book reveals the dynamic and complex relations between the Afghan government and foreign donors in their efforts to rebuild state institutions. The work explores three key areas: how donors supported government reforms to improve the taxation system, how government reorganized the state’s fiscal management system, and how aid dependency and aid distribution outside the government budget affected interactions between state and society. Given that external revenue in the form of tribute, subsidies and aid has shaped the characteristics of the state in Afghanistan since the mid-eighteenth century, this book situates state building in a historical context. This book will be invaluable for practitioners and anyone studying political economy, state building, international development and the politics of foreign aid.
Download or read book Condemned to Repeat written by Fiona Terry and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-12 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanitarian groups have failed, Fiona Terry believes, to face up to the core paradox of their activity: humanitarian action aims to alleviate suffering, but by inadvertently sustaining conflict it potentially prolongs suffering. In Condemned to Repeat?, Terry examines the side-effects of intervention by aid organizations and points out the need to acknowledge the political consequences of the choice to give aid. The author makes the controversial claim that aid agencies act as though the initial decision to supply aid satisfies any need for ethical discussion and are often blind to the moral quandaries of aid. Terry focuses on four historically relevant cases: Rwandan camps in Zaire, Afghan camps in Pakistan, Salvadoran and Nicaraguan camps in Honduras, and Cambodian camps in Thailand. Terry was the head of the French section of Medecins sans frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) when it withdrew from the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire because aid intended for refugees actually strengthened those responsible for perpetrating genocide. This book contains documents from the former Rwandan army and government that were found in the refugee camps after they were attacked in late 1996. This material illustrates how combatants manipulate humanitarian action to their benefit. Condemned to Repeat? makes clear that the paradox of aid demands immediate attention by organizations and governments around the world. The author stresses that, if international agencies are to meet the needs of populations in crisis, their organizational behavior must adjust to the wider political and socioeconomic contexts in which aid occurs.
