Download or read book Anticipating Total War written by Manfred F. Boemeke and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-03-28 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in Anticipating Total War explore the discourse on war in Germany and the United States between 1871 and 1914. The concept of "total war" provides the analytical focus. The essays reveal vigorous discussions of warfare in several forums among soldiers, statesmen, women's groups, and educators on both sides of the Atlantic. Predictions of long, cataclysmic wars were not uncommon in these discussions, while the involvement of German and American soldiers in colonial warfare suggested that future combat would not spare civilians. Despite these "anticipations of total war," virtually no one realized the practical implications in planning for war in the early twentieth century.
Download or read book Blindside written by Francis Fukuyama and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2008-01-27 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A host of catastrophes, natural and otherwise, as well as some pleasant surprises—like the sudden end of the cold war without a shot being fired—have caught governments and societies unprepared many times in recent decades. September 11 is only the most obvious recent example among many unforeseen events that have changed, even redefined our lives. We have every reason to expect more such events in future. Several kinds of unanticipated scenarios—particularly those of low probability and high impact—have the potential to escalate into systemic crises. Even positive surprises can be major policy challenges. Anticipating and managing low-probability events is a critically important challenge to contemporary policymakers, who increasingly recognize that they lack the analytical tools to do so. Developing such tools is the focus of this insightful and perceptive volume, edited by renowned author Francis Fukuyama and sponsored by The American Interest magazine. Bl indside is organized into four main sections. "Thinking about Strategic Surprise" addresses the psychological and institutional obstacles that prevent leaders from planning for low-probability tragedies and allocating the necessary resources to deal with them. The following two sections pinpoint the failures—institutional as well as personal—that allowed key historical events to take leaders by surprise, and examine the philosophies and methodologies of forecasting. In "Pollyana vs. Cassandra," for example, James Kurth and Gregg Easterbrook debate the future state of the world going forward. Mitchell Waldrop explores why technology forecasting is so poor and why that is likely to remain the case. In the book's final section, "What Could Be," internationally renowned authorities discuss low probability, high-impact contingencies in their area of expertise. For example, Scott Barrett looks at emerging infectious diseases, while Gal Luft and Anne Korin discuss energy security. How can we avoid
Download or read book Command Of The Air written by General Giulio Douhet and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 620 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the pantheon of air power spokesmen, Giulio Douhet holds center stage. His writings, more often cited than perhaps actually read, appear as excerpts and aphorisms in the writings of numerous other air power spokesmen, advocates-and critics. Though a highly controversial figure, the very controversy that surrounds him offers to us a testimonial of the value and depth of his work, and the need for airmen today to become familiar with his thought. The progressive development of air power to the point where, today, it is more correct to refer to aerospace power has not outdated the notions of Douhet in the slightest In fact, in many ways, the kinds of technological capabilities that we enjoy as a global air power provider attest to the breadth of his vision. Douhet, together with Hugh “Boom” Trenchard of Great Britain and William “Billy” Mitchell of the United States, is justly recognized as one of the three great spokesmen of the early air power era. This reprint is offered in the spirit of continuing the dialogue that Douhet himself so perceptively began with the first edition of this book, published in 1921. Readers may well find much that they disagree with in this book, but also much that is of enduring value. The vital necessity of Douhet’s central vision-that command of the air is all important in modern warfare-has been proven throughout the history of wars in this century, from the fighting over the Somme to the air war over Kuwait and Iraq.
Download or read book Future Tense written by Roxanne Panchasi and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years between the world wars, French intellectuals, politicians, and military leaders came to see certain encounters-between human and machine, organic and artificial, national and international culture-as premonitions of a future that was alternately unsettling and utopian. Skyscrapers, airplanes, and gas masks were seen as traces in the present of a future world, its technologies, and its possible transformations. In Future Tense, Roxanne Panchasi illuminates both the anxieties and the hopes of a period when many French people-traumatized by what their country had already suffered-seemed determined to anticipate and shape the future.Future Tense, which features many compelling illustrations, depicts experts proposing the prosthetic enhancement of the nation's bodies and homes; architects discussing whether skyscrapers should be banned from Paris; military strategists creating a massive fortification network, the Maginot Line; and French delegates to the League of Nations declaring their opposition to the artificial international language Esperanto.Drawing on a wide range of sources, Panchasi explores representations of the body, the city, and territorial security, as well as changing understandings of a French civilization many believed to be threatened by Americanization. Panchasi makes clear that memories of the past-and even nostalgia for what might be lost in the future-were crucial features of the culture of anticipation that emerged in the interwar period.
Download or read book Civilians and War in Europe 1618 1815 written by Erica Charters and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Civilians and War in Europe 1618–1815 is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary look at the role of civilians in early modern warfare, from the Thirty Years War to the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Drawing on works by scholars in art, literature, history, and political theory, the contributors to this volume explore the continuities and transformations in warfare over the course of two hundred years, examining topics central to civilian and war dynamics, including incarceration, cultures of plunder, billeting, and wartime atrocities, in addition to the larger legal practices and philosophical underpinnings of warfare and its aftermath. Showcasing the complex ways civilians were involved in war—not just as anguished sufferers, but as individuals who fought back, who profited, and who negotiated for their own needs—Civilians and War in Europe probes what it meant to be a civilian in countries deeply involved in conflict.
Download or read book Anticipating China written by David L. Hall and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1995-08-17 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By providing parallel accounts of the contrasting developments of classical Chinese and Western traditions, Anticipating China offers a means of avoiding the implicit cultural biases which so often distort Western understanding of Chinese intellectual culture. The book shows that failure to assess the significant cultural differences between China and the West has seriously affected our understanding of both classical and contemporary China, and makes the translation of attitudes, concepts, and issues extremely problematic.
Download or read book War in an Age of Revolution 1775 1815 written by Roger Chickering and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-08 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume examine the historical place of revolutionary warfare on both sides of the Atlantic, focusing on the degree to which they extended practices common in the eighteenth century or introduced fundamentally new forms of warfare.
Download or read book The War Against Paris 1871 written by Robert Tombs and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1981-12-03 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Paris Commune of 1871 is one of the great romantic failures in revolutionary history. Yet very little is known about its enemies, and especially the army, which first fraternized with the revolutionaries and then, two months later, crushed them with the utmost violence. This book, based on extensive archival research, is the first serious study of the role of the army in the civil war. It examines its composition and organization, its weaknesses and their effect on government policy, the steps taken to improve morale and discipline, the state of mind of officers and men and, finally, the conduct of the army in battle and the causes of the final bloodshed, in which about 20,000 Parisians were killed in the fighting or executed afterwards. Its purpose is to cast new light on the policy of the government and the problems of using an army in a civil war, and to tell for the first time the full tragedy of the suppression of the Comune, one of the bloodiest and least understood social conflicts in the history of modern Europe.
Download or read book Tarnished Victory written by William Marvel and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2011 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical look at the the fourth year of Lincoln's administration and the conclusion of the author's four-volume re-examination of the Civil War.
Download or read book The Steps to War written by Paul D. Senese and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-07-21 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question of what causes war has concerned statesmen since the time of Thucydides. The Steps to War utilizes new data on militarized interstate disputes from 1816 to 2001 to identify the factors that increase the probability that a crisis will escalate to war. In this book, Paul Senese and John Vasquez test one of the major behavioral explanations of war--the steps to war--by identifying the various factors that put two states at risk for war. Focusing on the era of classic international politics from 1816 to 1945, the Cold War, and the post-Cold War period, they look at the roles of territorial disputes, alliances, rivalry, and arms races and show how the likelihood of war increases significantly as these risk factors are combined. Senese and Vasquez argue that war is more likely in the presence of these factors because they increase threat perception and put both sides into a security dilemma. The Steps to War calls into question certain prevailing realist beliefs, like peace through strength, demonstrating how threatening to use force and engaging in power politics is more likely to lead to war than to peace.
Download or read book War Is Coming written by Sami Hermez and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2017-01-16 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1975 to 1990, Lebanon experienced a long war involving various national and international actors. The peace agreement that followed and officially propelled the country into a "postwar" era did not address many of the root causes of war, nor did it hold main actors accountable. Instead, a politics of "no victor, no vanquished" was promoted, in which the political elite agreed simply to consign the war to the past. However, since then, Lebanon has found itself still entangled in various forms of political violence, from car bombings and assassinations to additional outbreaks of armed combat. In War Is Coming, Sami Hermez argues that the country's political leaders have enabled the continuation of violence and examines how people live between these periods of conflict. What do everyday conversations, practices, and experiences look like during these moments? How do people attempt to find a measure of certainty or stability in such times? Hermez's ethnographic study of everyday life in Lebanon between the volatile years of 2006 and 2009 tackles these questions and reveals how people engage in practices of recollecting past war while anticipating future turmoil. Hermez demonstrates just how social interactions and political relationships with the state unfold and critically engages our understanding of memory and violence, seeing in people's recollections living and spontaneous memories that refuse to forget the past. With an attention to the details of everyday life, War Is Coming shows how even a conversation over lunch, or among friends, may turn into a discussion about both past and future unrest. Shedding light on the impact of protracted conflict on people's everyday experiences and the way people anticipate political violence, Hermez highlights an urgency for alternative paths to sustaining political and social life in Lebanon.
Download or read book Imperial Germany and the Great War 1914 1918 written by Roger Chickering and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-10 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book represents the most comprehensive history of Germany during the First World War.
Download or read book A World at Total War written by Roger Chickering and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents the results of a conference on the history of total war.
Download or read book Most Secret War written by R.V. Jones and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2009-08-06 with total page 930 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reginald Jones was nothing less than a genius. And his appointment to the Intelligence Section of Britain's Air Ministry in 1939 led to some of the most astonishing scientific and technological breakthroughs of the Second World War. In Most Secret War he details how Britain stealthily stole the war from under the Germans' noses by outsmarting their intelligence at every turn. He tells of the 'battle of the beams'; detecting and defeating flying bombs; using chaff to confuse radar; and many other ingenious ideas and devices. Jones was the man with the plan to save Britain and his story makes for riveting reading.
Download or read book Anticipating Surprise written by Cynthia M. Grabo and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Winning the War written by John B. Alexander, Ph.D. and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty-second century historians will note that a new World War began on 9/11/2001. In reality, it began much earlier. Competing value systems and the lust for natural resources will precipitate an inevitable clash of civilizations. Currently, we face elusive foes-foes who play by other rules-and in fact, we are already engaged in brutal, truly asymmetric conflict with varied forms of fighting; terrorism is but an isolated part. The increasing number of polymorphic hostilities requires revolutionary and unconventional responses. Special operations are the norm. Nanoscale, biological, and digital technologies have transformed how we fight future wars. Tactical lasers that zap pinpoint targets at twenty kilometers are being developed, as is the millimeter-wave Active Denial System that causes intense pain to those exposed. The "Mother of all Bombs" has been dropped, as have thermobaric weapons that destroy caves and bunkers. Robots roam the battlefield while exotic sensors catalogue nearly every facet of our lives. Paralyzing electrical shock weapons are in the hands of police. Even phasers on stun are closer than you think. Winning the War details the technologies and concepts necessary to ultimately determine the outcome of this global conflict. Via realistic scenarios from recovering tourists kidnapped by terrorists, to bringing down drug cartels in the Amazon, and even preventing Armageddon in the Middle East, Winning the War provides an insider's view into how these futuristic weapons will be used and into the complexities of modern warfare. Bold and controversial measures are prescribed, including the essential nature of absolute domination of space. Winning the War makes clear that drastic and innovative actions will be necessary to ensure our national survival.
Download or read book Toward Combined Arms Warfare written by Jonathan Mallory House and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1985 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
