Download or read book Pathways to Disaster written by Paul van Hooft and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The brief’s main conclusions are concerning: there are an increasing number of pathways that could lead to inadvertent escalation. Russia’s expenditure of dual-capable missile stocks, the shifting balance of power in Europe to the advantage of NATO, and NATO’s enlargement bringing it closer to the Kola Peninsula increases the likelihood that Russia faces “use-it-or-lose-it” choices. The Russian armed forces have been overburdened and one could expect civil-military relations to be disturbed. The Russian military is offensively minded, with the nuclear class developing its own parochial ideology. Russian C3I systems are degraded through sanctions and direct attacks. Finally, Russia has launched attacks on Ukraine, and used dual-capable delivery systems, from the same locations as its nuclear arsenal. As NATO-Europe continues to support Ukraine, we suggest a series of measures to avoid inadvertent escalation. Among others, we stress that caution be taken with NATO’s nuclear and conventional posture, including the placement of conventional missiles within range of threatening Russia’s nuclear capabilities. The authors also argue that positive measures, such as military-to-military contacts, should be maintained.

Download or read book Pathways to Disaster Russia s War Against Ukraine and the Risks of Inadvertent Nuclear Escalation written by Paul van Hooft and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Escalation in the War in Ukraine written by Bryan Frederick and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2023-09-21 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report evaluates the potential for further escalation in the war in Ukraine, including possible escalation to Russian nuclear use, to better inform U.S. and allied decisions and the public debate.

Download or read book Inadvertent Escalation written by Barry R. Posen and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-13 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this sobering book, Barry R. Posen demonstrates how the interplay between conventional military operations and nuclear forces could, in conflicts among states armed with both conventional and nuclear weaponry, inadvertently produce pressures for nuclear escalation. Knowledge of these hidden pressures, he believes, may help some future decision maker avoid catastrophe.Building a formidable argument that moves with cumulative force, he details the way in which escalation could occur not by mindless accident, or by deliberate preference for nuclear escalation, but rather as a natural accompaniment of land, naval, or air warfare at the conventional level. Posen bases his analysis on an empirical study of the east-west military competition in Europe during the 1980s, using a conceptual framework drawn from international relations theory, organization theory, and strategic theory.The lessons of his book, however, go well beyond the east-west competition. Since his observations are relevant to all military competitions between states armed with both conventional and nuclear weaponry, his book speaks to some of the problems that attend the proliferation of nuclear weapons in longstanding regional conflicts. Optimism that small and medium nuclear powers can easily achieve "stable" nuclear balances is, he believes, unwarranted.

Download or read book The Russian Way of War written by Lester W. Grau and published by Mentor Military. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Force Structure, Tactics, and Modernization of the Russian Ground Forces The mighty Soviet Army is no more. The feckless Russian Army that stumbled into Chechnya is no more. Today's Russian Army is modern, better manned, better equipped and designed for maneuver combat under nuclear-threatened conditions. This is your source for the tactics, equipment, force structure and theoretical underpinnings of a major Eurasian power. Here's what the experts are saying: "A superb baseline study for understanding how and why the modern Russian Army functions as it does. Essential for specialist and generalist alike." -Colonel (Ret) David M. Glantz, foremost Western author on the Soviet Union in World War II and Editor of The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. "Congratulations to Les Grau and Chuck Bartles on filling a gap which has yawned steadily wider since the end of the USSR. Their book addresses evolving Russian views on war, including the blurring of its nature and levels, and the consequent Russian approaches to the Ground Forces' force structuring, manning, equipping, and tactics. Confidence is conferred on the validity of their arguments and conclusions by copious footnoting, mostly from an impressive array of primary sources. It is this firm grounding in Russian military writings, coupled with the authors' understanding of war and the Russian way of thinking about it, that imparts such an authoritative tone to this impressive work." -Charles Dick, former Director of the Combat Studies Research Centre, Senior Fellow at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, author of the 1991 British Army Field Manual, Volume 2, A Treatise on Soviet Operational Art and author of From Victory to Stalemate The Western Front, Summer 1944 and From Defeat to Victory, The Eastern Front, Summer 1944. "Dr. Lester Grau's and Chuck Bartles' professional research on the Russian Armed Forces is widely read throughout the world and especially in Russia. Russia's Armed Forces have changed much since the large-scale reforms of 2008, which brought the Russian Army to the level of the world's other leading armies. The speed of reform combined with limited information about their core mechanisms represented a difficult challenge to the authors. They have done a great job and created a book which could be called an encyclopedia of the modern armed forces of Russia. They used their wisdom and talents to explore vital elements of the Russian military machine: the system of recruitment and training, structure of units of different levels, methods and tactics in defense and offence and even such little-known fields as the Arctic forces and the latest Russian combat robotics." -Dr. Vadim Kozyulin, Professor of Military Science and Project Director, Project on Asian Security, Emerging Technologies and Global Security Project PIR Center, Moscow. "Probably the best book on the Russian Armed Forces published in North America during the past ten years. A must read for all analysts and professionals following Russian affairs. A reliable account of the strong and weak aspects of the Russian Army. Provides the first look on what the Russian Ministry of Defense learned from best Western practices and then applied them on Russian soil." -Ruslan Pukhov, Director of the Moscow-based Centre for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST) and member of the Public Council of the Russian Federation Ministry of Defense. Author of Brothers Armed: Military Aspects of the Crisis in Ukraine, Russia's New Army, and The Tanks of August.

Download or read book Kim Jong Un and the Bomb written by Ankit Panda and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In September 2017, North Korea shocked the world by exploding the most powerful nuclear device tested anywhere in 25 years. Months earlier, it had conducted the first test flight of a missile capable of ranging much of the United States. By the end of that year, Kim Jong Un, the reclusive state's ruler, declared that his nuclear deterrent was complete. Today, North Korea's nuclear weapons stockpile and ballistic missile arsenal continues to grow, presenting one of the most serious challenges to international security to date. Internal regime propaganda has called North Korea's nuclear forces the country's "treasured sword," underscoring the cherished place of these weapons in national strategy. Fiercely committed to self-reliance, Kim remains determined to avoid unilateral disarmament. Kim Jong Un and the Bomb tells the story of how North Korea-once derided in the 1970s as a "fourth-rate pipsqueak" of a country by President Richard Nixon-came to credibly threaten the American homeland by November 2017. Ankit Panda explores the contours of North Korea's nuclear capabilities, the developmental history of its weapons programs, and the prospects for disarming or constraining Kim's arsenal. With no signs that North Korea's total disarmament is imminent over the next years or even decade, Panda explores the consequences of a nuclear-armed North Korea for the United States, South Korea, and the world.

Download or read book Getting MAD Nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction Its Origins and Practice written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly 40 years after the concept of finite deterrence was popularized by the Johnson administration, nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) thinking appears to be in decline. The United States has rejected the notion that threatening population centers with nuclear attacks is a legitimate way to assure deterrence. Most recently, it withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, an agreement based on MAD. American opposition to MAD also is reflected in the Bush administration's desire to develop smaller, more accurate nuclear weapons that would reduce the number of innocent civilians killed in a nuclear strike. Still, MAD is influential in a number of ways. First, other countries, like China, have not abandoned the idea that holding their adversaries' cities at risk is necessary to assure their own strategic security. Nor have U.S. and allied security officials and experts fully abandoned the idea. At a minimum, acquiring nuclear weapons is still viewed as being sensible to face off a hostile neighbor that might strike one's own cities. Thus, our diplomats have been warning China that Japan would be under tremendous pressure to go nuclear if North Korea persisted in acquiring a few crude weapons of its own. Similarly, Israeli officials have long argued, without criticism, that they would not be second in acquiring nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Indeed, given that Israelis surrounded by enemies that would not hesitate to destroy its population if they could, Washington finds Israel's retention of a significant nuclear capability totally "understandable."

Download or read book Conventional Deterrence written by John J. Mearsheimer and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1985-08-21 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional Deterrence is a book about the origins of war. Why do nations faced with the prospect of large-scale conventional war opt for or against an offensive strategy? John J. Mearsheimer examines a number of crises that led to major conventional wars to explain why deterrence failed. He focuses first on Allied and German decision making in the years 1939–1940, analyzing why the Allies did not strike first against Germany after declaring war and, conversely, why the Germans did attack the West. Turning to the Middle East, he examines the differences in Israeli and Egyptian strategic doctrines prior to the start of the major conventional conflicts in that region. Mearsheimer then critically assays the relative strengths and weaknesses of NATO and the Warsaw Pact to determine the prospects for conventional deterrence in any future crisis. He is also concerned with examining such relatively technical issues as the impact of precision-guided munitions (PGM) on conventional deterrence and the debate over maneuver versus attrition warfare.Mearsheimer pays considerable attention to questions of military strategy and tactics. Challenging the claim that conventional detrrence is largely a function of the numerical balance of forces, he also takes issue with the school of thought that ascribes deterrence failures to the dominance of "offensive" weaponry. In addition to examining the military consideration underlying deterrence, he also analyzes the interaction between those military factors and the broader political considerations that move a nation to war.

Download or read book Beyond NATO written by Michael E. O'Hanlon and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new Brookings Marshall Paper, Michael O'Hanlon argues that now is the time for Western nations to negotiate a new security architecture for neutral countries in eastern Europe to stabilize the region and reduce the risks of war with Russia. He believes NATO expansion has gone far enough. The core concept of this new security architecture would be one of permanent neutrality. The countries in question collectively make a broken-up arc, from Europe's far north to its south: Finland and Sweden; Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus; Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan; and finally Cyprus plus Serbia, as well as possibly several other Balkan states. Discussion on the new framework should begin within NATO, followed by deliberation with the neutral countries themselves, and then formal negotiations with Russia. The new security architecture would require that Russia, like NATO, commit to help uphold the security of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and other states in the region. Russia would have to withdraw its troops from those countries in a verifiable manner; after that, corresponding sanctions on Russia would be lifted. The neutral countries would retain their rights to participate in multilateral security operations on a scale comparable to what has been the case in the past, including even those operations that might be led by NATO. They could think of and describe themselves as Western states (or anything else, for that matter). If the European Union and they so wished in the future, they could join the EU. They would have complete sovereignty and self-determination in every sense of the word. But NATO would decide not to invite them into the alliance as members. Ideally, these nations would endorse and promote this concept themselves as a more practical way to ensure their security than the current situation or any other plausible alternative.

Download or read book War with China written by David C. Gompert and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2016-07-05 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Sino-U.S. war could take various, and unintended, paths. Because intense, reciprocal conventional counterforce attacks could inflict heavy losses and costs on both sides, leaders need options and channels to contain and terminate fighting.

Download or read book Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy written by Todd S. Sechser and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-02 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are nuclear weapons useful for coercive diplomacy? This book argues that they are useful for deterrence but not for offensive purposes.

Download or read book On Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century written by Jeffrey A Larsen and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-02 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays by nuclear policy experts provide “a speculative but serious and well-informed journey through a variety of scenarios and contingencies” (Foreign Affairs). Recent decades have seen a slow but steady increase in nuclear armed states, and in the seemingly less constrained policy goals of some of the newer “rogue” states in the international system. The authors of On Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century argue that a time may come when one of these states makes the conscious decision that using a nuclear weapon against the United States, its allies, or forward deployed forces in the context of a crisis or a regional conventional conflict may be in its interests. They assert that we are unprepared for these types of limited nuclear wars and that it is urgent we rethink the theory, policy, and implementation of force related to our approaches to this type of engagement. Together they critique Cold War doctrine on limited nuclear war and consider a number of the key concepts that should govern our approach to limited nuclear conflict in the future. These include identifying the factors likely to lead to limited nuclear war; examining the geopolitics of future conflict scenarios that might lead to small-scale nuclear use; and assessing strategies for crisis management and escalation control. Finally, they consider a range of strategies and operational concepts for countering, controlling, or containing limited nuclear war. “A series of trenchant essays that deconstruct a critical national security challenge that most of us wish did not exist. Assembling a star-studded cast of scholars, analysts, and policy practitioners, Larsen and Kartchner have produced some of the most important new thinking on an old topic.” —H-Diplo

Download or read book The Paradox of Power written by David C. Gompert and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2020 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second half of the 20th century featured a strategic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. That competition avoided World War III in part because during the 1950s, scholars like Henry Kissinger, Thomas Schelling, Herman Kahn, and Albert Wohlstetter analyzed the fundamental nature of nuclear deterrence. Decades of arms control negotiations reinforced these early notions of stability and created a mutual understanding that allowed U.S.-Soviet competition to proceed without armed conflict. The first half of the 21st century will be dominated by the relationship between the United States and China. That relationship is likely to contain elements of both cooperation and competition. Territorial disputes such as those over Taiwan and the South China Sea will be an important feature of this competition, but both are traditional disputes, and traditional solutions suggest themselves. A more difficult set of issues relates to U.S.-Chinese competition and cooperation in three domains in which real strategic harm can be inflicted in the current era: nuclear, space, and cyber. Just as a clearer understanding of the fundamental principles of nuclear deterrence maintained adequate stability during the Cold War, a clearer understanding of the characteristics of these three domains can provide the underpinnings of strategic stability between the United States and China in the decades ahead. That is what this book is about.

Download or read book War and Public Health written by Barry S. Levy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive examination of the relationship between war and public health, this book documents the public health consequences of war and describes what health professionals can do to minimize these consequences and even help prevent war altogether. It explores the effects of war on health, human rights, and the environment. The health and environmental impact of both conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction--nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons--is described in chapters that cover the consequences of their production, testing, maintenance, use, and disposal. Separate chapters cover especially vulnerable populations, such as women, children, and refugees. In-depth descriptions of specific military conflicts, including the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, and wars in Central America provide striking illustrations of the issues covered in other chapters. A series of chapters explores the roles of health professionals and of organizations during war, and in preventing war and its consequences. This revised second edition includes seven new chapters, including one on landmines by the Nobel Prize-winning founding director of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.A wide range of individuals, including physicians, nurses, and other health professionals, will find this book enlightening and useful in their work. The book will be valuable for faculty and students in schools of public health, medicine, nursing, and other health professions. In addition, it will be useful to those working in the fields of law, economics, international studies, peace and conflict resolution, military studies, diplomacy, and sociology, and in related disciplines.

Download or read book Global Trends 2040 written by National Intelligence Council and published by Cosimo Reports. This book was released on 2021-03 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

Download or read book West Russia Relations in Light of the Ukraine Crisis written by Riccardo Alcaro and published by Edizioni Nuova Cultura. This book was released on 2015 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In light of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and destabilization of Ukraine, West-Russia relations have so dramatically deteriorated that talk of a new Cold War has become routine. NATO’s role in Europe is again in the spotlight, with experts and policymakers pondering whether the Alliance needs to go back to its historical roots and re-calibrate itself as an instrument of defence from and containment of Russia. At the same time, cooperation between Russia and the West has not collapsed altogether coordinate on issues such as Iran’s nuclear programme. Clearly, tensions over Ukraine are so strong that the risk of a breakdown in relations cannot be ruled out. The contributions to this volume, the result of an international conference jointly organized by the Istituto Affari Internazionali and the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings, analyze the dramatic shift in Europe’s strategic context and explore the question of whether Russia and the West can contain tensions, manage competition, and keep cooperating on issues of mutual concern.

Download or read book War and Escalation in South Asia written by John E. Peters and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2006-05-01 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph highlights key factors in South Asia imperiling U.S. interests, and suggests how and where the U.S. military might play an expanded, influential role. It suggests seven steps the military might take to better advance and defend U.S. interests in South Asia, the Middle East, and Asia at large. Washington should intensify involvement in South Asia and become more influential with the governments there. Given the area's potential for violence, it should also shape part of the U.S. military to meet potential crises.