Download or read book Power Wars written by Charlie Savage and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 1161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage's penetrating investigation of the Obama presidency and the national security state. Barack Obama campaigned on changing George W. Bush's "global war on terror" but ended up entrenching extraordinary executive powers, from warrantless surveillance and indefinite detention to military commissions and targeted killings. Then Obama found himself bequeathing those authorities to Donald Trump. How did the United States get here? In Power Wars, Charlie Savage reveals high-level national security legal and policy deliberations in a way no one has done before. He tells inside stories of how Obama came to order the drone killing of an American citizen, preside over an unprecendented crackdown on leaks, and keep a then-secret program that logged every American's phone calls. Encompassing the first comprehensive history of NSA surveillance over the past forty years as well as new information about the Osama bin Laden raid, Power Wars equips readers to understand the legacy of Bush's and Obama's post-9/11 presidencies in the Trump era.
Download or read book The Savage Wars Of Peace written by Max Boot and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's "small wars," "imperial wars," or, as the Pentagon now terms them, "low-intensity conflicts," have played an essential but little-appreciated role in its growth as a world power. Beginning with Jefferson's expedition against the Barbary Pirates, Max Boot tells the exciting stories of our sometimes minor but often bloody landings in Samoa, the Philippines, China, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Mexico, Russia, and elsewhere. Along the way he sketches colorful portraits of little-known military heroes such as Stephen Decatur, "Fighting Fred" Funston, and Smedley Butler. From 1800 to the present day, such undeclared wars have made up the vast majority of our military engagements. Yet the military has often resisted preparing itself for small wars, preferring instead to train for big conflicts that seldom come. Boot re-examines the tragedy of Vietnam through a "small war" prism. He concludes with a devastating critique of the Powell Doctrine and a convincing argument that the armed forces must reorient themselves to better handle small-war missions, because such clashes are an inevitable result of America's far-flung imperial responsibilities.
Download or read book Banana Wars written by Steve Striffler and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2003-11-20 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVThe history of banana cultivation and its huge impact on Latin American, history, politics, and culture./div
Download or read book War without Mercy written by John Dower and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2012-03-28 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • AN AMERICAN BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A monumental history that has been hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most original and important books to be written about the war between Japan and the United States.” In this monumental history, Professor John Dower reveals a hidden, explosive dimension of the Pacific War—race—while writing what John Toland has called “a landmark book ... a powerful, moving, and evenhanded history that is sorely needed in both America and Japan.” Drawing on American and Japanese songs, slogans, cartoons, propaganda films, secret reports, and a wealth of other documents of the time, Dower opens up a whole new way of looking at that bitter struggle of four and a half decades ago and its ramifications in our lives today. As Edwin O. Reischauer, former ambassador to Japan, has pointed out, this book offers “a lesson that the postwar generations need most ... with eloquence, crushing detail, and power.”
Download or read book Oil Power and War written by Matthieu Auzanneau and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of oil is one of hubris, fortune, betrayal, and destruction. It is the story of a resource that has been undeniably central to the creation of our modern culture, and ever-present during the darkest exploits of empire the world over. For the past 150 years, oil has become the most essential ingredient for economic, military, and political power. And it has brought us to our present moment in which political leaders and the fossil-fuel industry consider extraordinary, and extraordinarily dangerous, policy on a world stage marked by shifting power bases. Upending the conventional wisdom by crafting a “people’s history,” award-winning journalist Matthieu Auzanneau deftly traces how oil became a national and then global addiction, outlines the enormous consequences of that addiction, sheds new light on major historical and contemporary figures, and raises new questions about stories we thought we knew well: What really sparked the oil crises in the 1970s, the shift away from the gold standard at Bretton Woods, or even the financial crash of 2008? How has oil shaped the events that have defined our times: two world wars, the Cold War, the Great Depression, ongoing wars in the Middle East, the advent of neoliberalism, and the Great Recession, among them? With brutal clarity, Oil, Power, and War exposes the heavy hand oil has had in all of our lives—and illustrates how much heavier that hand could get during the increasingly desperate race to control the last of the world’s easily and cheaply extractable reserves.
Download or read book Rumsfeld s Wars written by Dale Roy Herspring and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly critical but nonpartisan assessment of the controversial former Defense Secretary as told by one of the leading experts on civil-military relations. Focuses on Rumsfeld's notoriously domineering leadership style, flawed vision for transforming the military, and failures in the Iraq War.
Download or read book Water Wars written by Honey Rand and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2003 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Retired Green Beret Steve Monsees stood before the Governing Board. He represented neighbors and neighborhoods that believed their lakes were diminished or destroyed because cheap water was needed to fuel growth. He was nervous. They had all the power. He was angry. They refused to use their power to protect the environment. When he spoke, his voice cracked, his hands shook, but he was determined that they would hear him, really hear him, and that things would change. Water wars are being fought in communities around the United States and world. Driven by drought, economics, and the ongoing pressure of growth, the battle for control and protection of water resources will be with us forever. This is the story of a dispute over public water supply development and use in west central Florida. It's about politics and policy development, but it's also about people. After years of bitter dispute, the local governments and the regional regulator sought a means to move beyond conflict to collaboration. The story describes what people said and did, how policy was made, and what happens to the people who are trying to make it work.
Download or read book Shadows of War written by Carolyn Nordstrom and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation This book captures the human face of the frontlines, revealing both the visible and the hidden realities of contemporary war, power, and international profiteering in the 21st century.
Download or read book Sky Wars written by David Gates and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2003 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Sky Wars, David Gates examines the history of military aerospace power, discussing technical developments between both World Wars and the use of air power in specific wars in the latter part of the 20th century, including the recent conflict with Iraq.
Download or read book On War written by Carl von Clausewitz and published by . This book was released on 1908 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Civil Wars and Foreign Powers written by Patrick M. Regan and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how outside intervention affects the course of civil wars
Download or read book Wars and Betweenness written by Bojan Aleksov and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The region between the Baltic and the Black Sea was marked by a set of crises and conflicts in the 1920s and 1930s, demonstrating the diplomatic, military, economic or cultural engagement of France, Germany, Russia, Britain, Italy and Japan in this highly volatile region, and critically damaging the fragile post-Versailles political arrangement. The editors, in naming this region as "Middle Europe" seek to revive the symbolic geography of the time and accentuate its position, situated between Big Powers and two World Wars. The ten case studies in this book combine traditional diplomatic history with a broader emphasis on the geopolitical aspects of Big-Power rivalry to understand the interwar period. The essays claim that the European Big Powers played a key role in regional affairs by keeping the local conflicts and national movements under control and by exploiting the region's natural resources and military dependencies, while at the same time strengthening their prestige through cultural penetration and the cultivation of client networks. The authors, however, want to avoid the simplistic view that the Big Powers fully dominated the lesser players on the European stage. The relationship was indeed hierarchical, but the essays also reveal how the "small states" manipulated Big-Power disagreements, highlighting the limits of the latters' leverage throughout the 1920s and the 1930s.
Download or read book National Security and Double Government written by Michael J. Glennon and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why has U.S. national security policy scarcely changed from the Bush to the Obama administration? And why does it matter? The theory of 'double government' posed by the 19th century English scholar Walter Bagehot suggests a disquieting answer. The public is encouraged to believe that the presidency, Congress, and the courts make security policy. That belief sustains these institutions' legitimacy. Yet their authority is largely illusory. National security policy is made, instead, by a 'Trumanite network' of several hundred members that is largely concealed from public view.
Download or read book Coal Wars written by Richard Martin and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the late 18th century, when it emerged as a source of heating and, later, steam power, coal has brought untold benefits to mankind. Even today, coal generates almost 45 percent of the world's power. Our modern technological society would be inconceivable without coal and the energy it provides. Unfortunately, that society will not survive unless we wean ourselves off coal. The largest single source of greenhouse gases, coal is responsible for 43 percent of the world's carbon emissions. Richard Martin, author of SuperFuel, argues that to limit catastrophic climate change, we must find a way to power our world with less polluting energy sources, and we must do it in the next couple of decades—or else it is "game over." It won't be easy: as coal plants shut down across the United States, and much of Europe turns to natural gas, coal use is growing in the booming economies of Asia— particularly China and India. Even in Germany, where nuclear power stations are being phased out in the wake of the Fukushima accident, coal use is growing. Led by the Sierra Club and its ambitious "Beyond Coal" campaign, environmentalists hope to drastically reduce our dependence on coal in the next decade. But doing so will require an unprecedented contraction of an established, lucrative, and politically influential worldwide industry. Big Coal will not go gently. And its decline will dramatically change lives everywhere—from Appalachian coal miners and coal company executives to activists in China's nascent environmental movement. Based on a series of journeys into the heart of coal land, from Wyoming to West Virginia to China's remote Shanxi Province, hundreds of interviews with people involved in, or affected by, the effort to shrink the industry, and deep research into the science, technology, and economics of the coal industry, Coal Wars chronicles the dramatic stories behind coal's big shutdown—and the industry's desperate attempts to remain a global behemoth. A tour de force of literary journalism, Coal Wars will be a milestone in the climate change battle.
Download or read book Military Power written by Stephen Biddle and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-16 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In war, do mass and materiel matter most? Will states with the largest, best equipped, information-technology-rich militaries invariably win? The prevailing answer today among both scholars and policymakers is yes. But this is to overlook force employment, or the doctrine and tactics by which materiel is actually used. In a landmark reconception of battle and war, this book provides a systematic account of how force employment interacts with materiel to produce real combat outcomes. Stephen Biddle argues that force employment is central to modern war, becoming increasingly important since 1900 as the key to surviving ever more lethal weaponry. Technological change produces opposite effects depending on how forces are employed; to focus only on materiel is thus to risk major error--with serious consequences for both policy and scholarship. In clear, fluent prose, Biddle provides a systematic account of force employment's role and shows how this account holds up under rigorous, multimethod testing. The results challenge a wide variety of standard views, from current expectations for a revolution in military affairs to mainstream scholarship in international relations and orthodox interpretations of modern military history. Military Power will have a resounding impact on both scholarship in the field and on policy debates over the future of warfare, the size of the military, and the makeup of the defense budget.
Download or read book Information Technology and Military Power written by Jon R. Lindsay and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Militaries with state-of-the-art information technology sometimes bog down in confusing conflicts. To understand why, it is important to understand the micro-foundations of military power in the information age, and this is exactly what Jon R. Lindsay's Information Technology and Military Power gives us. As Lindsay shows, digital systems now mediate almost every effort to gather, store, display, analyze, and communicate information in military organizations. He highlights how personnel now struggle with their own information systems as much as with the enemy. Throughout this foray into networked technology in military operations, we see how information practice—the ways in which practitioners use technology in actual operations—shapes the effectiveness of military performance. The quality of information practice depends on the interaction between strategic problems and organizational solutions. Information Technology and Military Power explores information practice through a series of detailed historical cases and ethnographic studies of military organizations at war. Lindsay explains why the US military, despite all its technological advantages, has struggled for so long in unconventional conflicts against weaker adversaries. This same perspective suggests that the US retains important advantages against advanced competitors like China that are less prepared to cope with the complexity of information systems in wartime. Lindsay argues convincingly that a better understanding of how personnel actually use technology can inform the design of command and control, improve the net assessment of military power, and promote reforms to improve military performance. Warfighting problems and technical solutions keep on changing, but information practice is always stuck in between.
Download or read book Bombing to Win written by Robert A. Pape and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-11 with total page 547 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Iraq to Bosnia to North Korea, the first question in American foreign policy debates is increasingly: Can air power alone do the job? Robert A. Pape provides a systematic answer. Analyzing the results of over thirty air campaigns, including a detailed reconstruction of the Gulf War, he argues that the key to success is attacking the enemy's military strategy, not its economy, people, or leaders. Coercive air power can succeed, but not as cheaply as air enthusiasts would like to believe.Pape examines the air raids on Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq as well as those of Israel versus Egypt, providing details of bombing and governmental decision making. His detailed narratives of the strategic effectiveness of bombing range from the classical cases of World War II to an extraordinary reconstruction of airpower use in the Gulf War, based on recently declassified documents. In this now-classic work of the theory and practice of airpower and its political effects, Robert A. Pape helps military strategists and policy makers judge the purpose of various air strategies, and helps general readers understand the policy debates.
