Download or read book The Logic of Violence in Civil War written by Stathis N. Kalyvas and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-05-01 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By analytically decoupling war and violence, this book explores the causes and dynamics of violence in civil war. Against the prevailing view that such violence is an instance of impenetrable madness, the book demonstrates that there is logic to it and that it has much less to do with collective emotions, ideologies, and cultures than currently believed. Kalyvas specifies a novel theory of selective violence: it is jointly produced by political actors seeking information and individual civilians trying to avoid the worst but also grabbing what opportunities their predicament affords them. Violence, he finds, is never a simple reflection of the optimal strategy of its users; its profoundly interactive character defeats simple maximization logics while producing surprising outcomes, such as relative nonviolence in the 'frontlines' of civil war.

Download or read book War s Logic written by Antulio J. Echevarria II and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-18 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveys how American strategic theorists have understood the nature and character of war in the twentieth century.

Download or read book Why War written by Philip Smith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-03-15 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did America invade Iraq? Why do nations choose to fight certain wars and not others? How do we bring ourselves to believe that the sacrifice of our troops is acceptable? For most, the answers to these questions are tied to struggles for power or resources and the machinations of particular interest groups. Philip Smith argues that this realist answer to the age-old "why war?" question is insufficient. Instead, Smith suggests that every war has its roots in the ways we tell and interpret stories. Comprised of case studies of the War in Iraq, the Gulf War, and the Suez Crisis, Why War? decodes the cultural logic of the narratives that justify military action. Each nation, Smith argues, makes use of binary codes—good and evil, sacred and profane, rational and irrational, to name a few. These codes, in the hands of political leaders, activists, and the media, are deployed within four different types of narratives—mundane, tragic, romantic, or apocalyptic. With this cultural system, Smith is able to radically recast our "war stories" and show how nations can have vastly different understandings of crises as each identifies the relevant protagonists and antagonists, objects of struggle, and threats and dangers. The large-scale sacrifice of human lives necessary in modern war, according to Smith, requires an apocalyptic vision of world events. In the case of the War in Iraq, for example, he argues that the United States and Britain replicated a narrative of impending global doom from the Gulf War. But in their apocalyptic account they mistakenly made the now seemingly toothless Saddam Hussein once again a symbol of evil by writing him into the story alongside al Qaeda, resulting in the war's contestation in the United States, Britain, and abroad. Offering an innovative approach to understanding how major wars are packaged, sold, and understood, Why War? will be applauded by anyone with an interest in military history, political science, cultural studies, and communication.

Download or read book Strategy written by Edward N. Luttwak and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2002-01-31 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “If you want peace, prepare for war.” “A buildup of offensive weapons can be purely defensive.” “The worst road may be the best route to battle.” Strategy is made of such seemingly self-contradictory propositions, Edward Luttwak shows—they exemplify the paradoxical logic that pervades the entire realm of conflict.In this widely acclaimed work, now revised and expanded, Luttwak unveils the peculiar logic of strategy level by level, from grand strategy down to combat tactics. Having participated in its planning, Luttwak examines the role of air power in the 1991 Gulf War, then detects the emergence of “post-heroic” war in Kosovo in 1999—an American war in which not a single American soldier was killed.In the tradition of Carl von Clausewitz, Strategy goes beyond paradox to expose the dynamics of reversal at work in the crucible of conflict. As victory is turned into defeat by over-extension, as war brings peace by exhaustion, ordinary linear logic is overthrown. Citing examples from ancient Rome to our own days, from Barbarossa and Pearl Harbor down to minor combat affrays, from the strategy of peace to the latest operational methods of war, this book by one of the world’s foremost authorities reveals the ultimate logic of military failure and success, of war and peace.

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 Logics of War written by Alex Weisiger and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-19 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most wars between countries end quickly and at relatively low cost. The few in which high-intensity fighting continues for years bring about a disproportionate amount of death and suffering. What separates these few unusually long and intense wars from the many conflicts that are far less destructive? In Logics of War, Alex Weisiger tests three explanations for a nation's decision to go to war and continue fighting regardless of the costs. He combines sharp statistical analysis of interstate wars over the past two centuries with nine narrative case studies. He examines both well-known conflicts like World War II and the Persian Gulf War, as well as unfamiliar ones such as the 1864-1870 Paraguayan War (or the War of the Triple Alliance), which proportionally caused more deaths than any other war in modern history. When leaders go to war expecting easy victory, events usually correct their misperceptions quickly and with fairly low casualties, thereby setting the stage for a negotiated agreement. A second explanation involves motives born of domestic politics; as war becomes more intense, however, leaders are increasingly constrained in their ability to continue the fighting. Particularly destructive wars instead arise from mistrust of an opponent's intentions. Countries that launch preventive wars to forestall expected decline tend to have particularly ambitious war aims that they hold to even when fighting goes poorly. Moreover, in some cases, their opponents interpret the preventive attack as evidence of a dispositional commitment to aggression, resulting in the rejection of any form of negotiation and a demand for unconditional surrender. Weisiger's treatment of a topic of central concern to scholars of major wars will also be read with great interest by military historians, political psychologists, and sociologists.

Download or read book Vietnam written by Howard Zinn and published by eBookIt.com. This book was released on 2012-11 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zinn's compelling case against the Vietnam War, now with a new introduction. Of the many books that challenged the Vietnam War, Howard Zinn's stands out as one of the best--and most influential. It helped sparked national debate on the war. It includes a powerful speech written by Zinn that President Johnson should have given to lay out the case for ending the war.

Download or read book Votes Drugs and Violence written by Guillermo Trejo and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-03 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most surprising developments in Mexico's transition to democracy is the outbreak of criminal wars and large-scale criminal violence. Why did Mexican drug cartels go to war as the country transitioned away from one-party rule? And why have criminal wars proliferated as democracy has consolidated and elections have become more competitive subnationally? In Votes, Drugs, and Violence, Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley develop a political theory of criminal violence in weak democracies that elucidates how democratic politics and the fragmentation of power fundamentally shape cartels' incentives for war and peace. Drawing on in-depth case studies and statistical analysis spanning more than two decades and multiple levels of government, Trejo and Ley show that electoral competition and partisan conflict were key drivers of the outbreak of Mexico's crime wars, the intensification of violence, and the expansion of war and violence to the spheres of local politics and civil society.

Download or read book Introduction To Mathematical Logic Extended Edition written by Michal Walicki and published by World Scientific Publishing Company. This book was released on 2016-08-12 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a systematic and well-paced introduction to mathematical logic. Excellent as a course text, the book presupposes only elementary background and can be used also for self-study by more ambitious students.Starting with the basics of set theory, induction and computability, it covers propositional and first order logic — their syntax, reasoning systems and semantics. Soundness and completeness results for Hilbert's and Gentzen's systems are presented, along with simple decidability arguments. The general applicability of various concepts and techniques is demonstrated by highlighting their consistent reuse in different contexts.Unlike in most comparable texts, presentation of syntactic reasoning systems precedes the semantic explanations. The simplicity of syntactic constructions and rules — of a high, though often neglected, pedagogical value — aids students in approaching more complex semantic issues. This order of presentation also brings forth the relative independence of syntax from the semantics, helping to appreciate the importance of the purely symbolic systems, like those underlying computers.An overview of the history of logic precedes the main text, while informal analogies precede introduction of most central concepts. These informal aspects are kept clearly apart from the technical ones. Together, they form a unique text which may be appreciated equally by lecturers and students occupied with mathematical precision, as well as those interested in the relations of logical formalisms to the problems of computability and the philosophy of logic.This revised edition contains also, besides many new exercises, a new chapter on semantic paradoxes. An equivalence of logical and graphical representations allows us to see vicious circularity as the odd cycles in the graphical representation and can be used as a simple tool for diagnosing paradoxes in natural discourse.

Download or read book Between Two Wars 1861 1921 written by James Mark Baldwin and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Cameos from English History The wars of the Roses written by Charlotte Mary Yonge and published by . This book was released on 1886 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Logic in the Wild written by Patrick Girard and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2024-05-14 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is logic a good tool for making decisions? Can it make us better listeners and help us find coherence in views that we disagree with? Is Sherlock Holmes actually good at logic? Patrick Girard addresses these and other questions by presenting logic as the guardian of coherence. Logic, Girard argues, finds coherence in the patterns of reasoning across science, religion, and everyday decision making. It helps communities engage safely by replacing contentious debates with shared, constructive reasoning – logic provides neutral ground for the healthy pursuit of common goals and interests. Logic in the Wild employs common sense language, eschewing technical jargon, symbols, and equations. Girard’s attention focuses on logic’s power to find what unites the complex and the simple, the abstract and the concrete, the theoretical and the practical. In treating logic not as a passive subject to learn but as an active discipline to engage with, Logic in the Wild teaches us to identify patterns in our own reasoning, which inevitably helps us better confront questions central to everyday life.

Download or read book Wars and Capital written by Eric Alliez and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-05-11 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critique of capital through the lens of war, and a critique of war through the lens of the revolution of 1968. “We are at war,” declared the President of the French Republic on the evening of November 13, 2015. But what is this war, exactly? In Wars and Capital, Éric Alliez and Maurizio Lazzarato propose a counter-history of capitalism to recover the reality of the wars that are inflicted on us and denied to us. We experience not the ideal war of philosophers, but wars of class, race, sex, and gender; wars of civilization and the environment; wars of subjectivity that are raging within populations and that constitute the secret motor of liberal governmentality. By naming the enemy (refugees, migrants, Muslims), the new fascisms establish their hegemony on the processes of political subjectivation by reducing them to racist, sexist, and xenophobic slogans, fanning the flames of war among the poor and maintaining the total war philosophy of neoliberalism. Because war and fascism are the repressed elements of post-'68 thought, Alliez and Lazzarato not only read the history of capital through war but also read war itself through the strange revolution of '68, which made possible the passage from war in the singular to a plurality of wars—and from wars to the construction of new war machines against contemporary financialization. It is a question of pushing “'68 thought” beyond its own limits and redirecting it towards a new pragmatics of struggle linked to the continuous war of capital. It is especially important for us to prepare ourselves for the battles we will have to fight if we do not want to be always defeated.

Download or read book The Improbable War written by Christopher Coker and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Improbable War explains why conflict between the USA and China cannot be ruled out. In 1914 war between the Great Powers was considered unlikely, yet it happened. We learn only from history, and popular though the First World War analogy is, the lessons we draw from its outbreak are usually mistaken. Among these errors is the tendency to over-estimate human rationality. All major conflicts of the past 300 years have been about the norms and rules of the international system. In China and the US the world confronts two 'exceptional' powers whose values differ markedly, with China bidding to challenge the current order. The 'Thucydidean Trap' - when a conservative status quo power confronts a rising new one - may also play its part in precipitating hostilities. To avoid stumbling into an avoidable war both Beijing and Washington need a coherent strategy, which neither of them has. History also reveals that war evolves continually. The next global conflict is likely to be played out in cyberspace and outer space and like all previous wars it will have devastating consequences. Such a war between the United States and China may seem improbable, but it is all too possible, which is why we need to discuss it now.

Download or read book Unplanned Wars written by B. Dexter Hoyos and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 1998 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Attempts to reconstruct the reasons why the Romans and the Carthaginians engaged in long and damaging wars with each other despite prosperous periods of alliance. Relying on ancient sources such as the accounts of Polybius, Livy, and Diodorous, the author discusses the period from the antecedents to the First Punic War of 264 B.C.E. to the war-declaration of 218 B.C.E. Arguing that the reasons for the two wars were intertwined, he contends that the outcomes of the wars differ markedly from the original aims of the great powers. Neither side, according to the author, sought war with the other, but war resulted from misunderstandings and miscalculations. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book Inquiry Logic and International Politics written by Benjamin A. Most and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the use of logic, simulation, and empirical data, Benjamin A. Most and Harvey Starr develop and demonstrate a nuanced and more appropriate conceptualization of explanation in international relations and foreign policy in Inquiry, Logic, and International Politics. They demonstrate that a concern with the logical underpinnings of research raises a series of theoretical, conceptual, and epistemological issues that must be addressed if theory and research design are to meet the challenges of cumulation in the study of international relations (or any area of social science). The authors argue for understanding the critical, yet subtle, interplay of the elements with a research triad composed of theory, logic, and method.

Download or read book From the New Deal to the War on Schools written by Daniel S. Moak and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an era defined by political polarization, both major U.S. parties have come to share a remarkably similar understanding of the education system as well as a set of punitive strategies for fixing it. Combining an intellectual history of social policy with a sweeping history of the educational system, Daniel S. Moak looks beyond the rise of neoliberalism to find the origin of today's education woes in Great Society reforms. In the wake of World War II, a coalition of thinkers gained dominance in U.S. policymaking. They identified educational opportunity as the ideal means of addressing racial and economic inequality by incorporating individuals into a free market economy. The passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965 secured an expansive federal commitment to this goal. However, when social problems failed to improve, the underlying logic led policymakers to hold schools responsible. Moak documents how a vision of education as a panacea for society's flaws led us to turn away from redistributive economic policies and down the path to market-based reforms, No Child Left Behind, mass school closures, teacher layoffs, and other policies that plague the public education system to this day.