Download or read book On the Brink written by Van Jackson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Former Pentagon insider Van Jackson explores how Trump and Kim reached - and avoided - the precipice of nuclear war.

Download or read book On Theories of Victory Red and Blue written by Brad Roberts and published by . This book was released on 2020-05-10 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the United States and its allies put their military focus on the post-9/11 challenges of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, Russia and China put their military focus onto the United States and the risks of regional wars that they came to believe they might have to fight against the United States. Their first priority was to put their intellectual houses in order-that is, to adapt military thought and strategic planning to the new problem. The result is a set of ideas about how to bring the United States and its allies to a "culminating point" where they choose to no longer run the costs and risks of continued war. This is the "red theory of victory." Beginning in the second presidential term of Obama administration, the U.S. military focus began to shift, driven by rising Russian and Chinese military assertiveness and outspoken opposition to the regional security orders on their peripheries. But U.S. military thought has been slow to catch up. As a recent bipartisan congressional commission concluded, the U.S. intellectual house is dangerously out of order for this new strategic problem. There is no Blue theory of victory. Such a theory should explain how the United States and its allies can strip away the confidence of leaders in Moscow and Beijing (and Pyongyang) in their "escalation calculus"-that is, that they will judge the costs too high, the benefits to low, and the risks incalculable. To develop, improve, and implement the needed new concepts requires a broad campaign of activities by the United States and full partnership with its allies.

Download or read book The Second Nuclear Age written by Paul Bracken and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-11-13 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading international security strategist offers a compelling new way to "think about the unthinkable." The cold war ended more than two decades ago, and with its end came a reduction in the threat of nuclear weapons—a luxury that we can no longer indulge. It's not just the threat of Iran getting the bomb or North Korea doing something rash; the whole complexion of global power politics is changing because of the reemergence of nuclear weapons as a vital element of statecraft and power politics. In short, we have entered the second nuclear age. In this provocative and agenda-setting book, Paul Bracken of Yale University argues that we need to pay renewed attention to nuclear weapons and how their presence will transform the way crises develop and escalate. He draws on his years of experience analyzing defense strategy to make the case that the United States needs to start thinking seriously about these issues once again, especially as new countries acquire nuclear capabilities. He walks us through war-game scenarios that are all too realistic, to show how nuclear weapons are changing the calculus of power politics, and he offers an incisive tour of the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia to underscore how the United States must not allow itself to be unprepared for managing such crises. Frank in its tone and farsighted in its analysis, The Second Nuclear Age is the essential guide to the new rules of international politics.

Download or read book CONFLICTS IN YEMEN AND U S NATIONAL SECURITY written by W. Andrew Terrill 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 Back to the brink written by Tim Sweijs and published by The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. This book was released on 2016-03-10 with total page 69 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Real North Korea written by Andrei Lankov and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state. Based on vast expertise, this book reveals how average North Koreans live, how their leaders rule, and how both survive

Download or read book Nuclear Folly A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis written by Serhii Plokhy and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The definitive history.…With his masterly book, Mr. Plokhy has sounded a warning bell." — The Economist A harrowing account of the Cuban missile crisis and how the US and USSR came to the brink of nuclear apocalypse. Nearly thirty years after the end of the Cold War, today’s world leaders are abandoning disarmament treaties, building up their nuclear arsenals, and exchanging threats of nuclear strikes. To survive this new atomic age, we must relearn the lessons of the most dangerous moment of the Cold War: the Cuban missile crisis. Serhii Plokhy’s Nuclear Folly offers an international perspective on the crisis, tracing the tortuous decision-making that produced and then resolved it, which involved John Kennedy and his advisers, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, and their commanders on the ground. In breathtaking detail, Plokhy vividly recounts the young JFK being played by the canny Khrushchev; the hotheaded Castro willing to defy the USSR and threatening to align himself with China; the Soviet troops on the ground clearing jungle foliage in the tropical heat, and desperately trying to conceal nuclear installations on Cuba, which were nonetheless easily spotted by U-2 spy planes; and the hair-raising near misses at sea that nearly caused a Soviet nuclear-armed submarine to fire its weapons. More often than not, the Americans and Soviets misread each other, operated under false information, and came perilously close to nuclear catastrophe. Despite these errors, nuclear war was ultimately avoided for one central reason: fear, and the realization that any escalation on either the Soviets’ or the Americans’ part would lead to mutual destruction. Drawing on a range of Soviet archival sources, including previously classified KGB documents, as well as White House tapes, Plokhy masterfully illustrates the drama and anxiety of those tense days, and provides a way for us to grapple with the problems posed in our present day.

Download or read book Lucky War written by Richard Moody Swain and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1997 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides an account, from the point of view of the U.S. Army forces employed, of the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War, from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait to the withdrawal of coalition forces from southeastern Iraq. It focuses on the Army's part in this war, particularly the activities of the Headquarters, Third Army, and the Army Forces Central Command (ARCENT). It looks especially at the activities of the VII Corps, which executed ARCENT's main effort in the theater ground force schwerpunkt -- General Schwarzkopf's "Great Wheel." This is not an official history; the author speaks in his own voice and makes his own judgments. Maps.

Download or read book War Will and Warlords written by and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compares the reasons for and the responses to the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan since October 2001. Also examines the lack of security and the support of insurgent groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan since the 1970s that explain the rise of the Pakistan-supported Taliban. Explores the border tribal areas between the two countries and how they influence regional stability and U.S. security. Explains the implications of what happened during this 10-year period to provide candid insights on the prospects and risks associated with bringing a durable stability to this area of the world.

Download or read book The Chinese Navy written by Institute for National Strategic Studies and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2011-12-27 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of the growing Chinese Navy - The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) - and its expanding capabilities, evolving roles and military implications for the USA. Divided into four thematic sections, this special collection of essays surveys and analyzes the most important aspects of China's navel modernization.

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 Scenes from an Unfinished War written by Daniel P. Bolger and published by www.Militarybookshop.CompanyUK. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Low-intensity conflict (LIC) often has been viewed as the wrong kind of warfare for the American military, dating back to the war in Vietnam and extending to the present conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. From the American perspective, LIC occurs when the U.S. military must seek limited aims with a relatively modest number of available regular forces, as opposed to the larger commitments that bring into play the full panoply of advanced technology and massive commitments of troops. Yet despite the conventional view, U.S. forces have achieved success in LIC, albeit "under the radar" and with credit largely assigned to allied forces, in a number of counterguerrilla wars in the 1960s."Scenes from an Unfinished War: Low-Intensity Conflict in Korea, 1966-1969" focuses on what the author calls the Second Korean conflict, which flared up in November 1966 and sputtered to an ill-defined halt more than three years later. During that time, North Korean special operations teams had challenged the U.S. and its South Korean allies in every category of low-intensity conflict - small-scale skirmishes along the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas, spectacular terrorist strikes, attempts to foment a viable insurgency in the South, and even the seizure of the USS Pueblo - and failed. This book offers a case study in how an operational-level commander, General Charles H. Bonesteel III, met the challenge of LIC. He and his Korean subordinates crafted a series of shrewd, pragmatic measures that defanged North Korea's aggressive campaign. According to the convincing argument made by "Scenes from an Unfinished War," because the U.S. successfully fought the "wrong kind" of war, it likely blocked another kind of wrong war - a land war in Asia. The Second Korean Conflict serves as a corrective to assumptions about the American military's abilities to formulate and execute a winning counterinsurgency strategy. Originally published in 1991. 180 pages. maps. ill.

Download or read book The General vs the President written by H. W. Brands and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War comes the riveting story of how President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur squared off to decide America's future in the aftermath of World War II. "A highly readable take on the clash of two titanic figures in a period of hair-trigger nuclear tensions.... History offers few antagonists with such dramatic contrasts, and Brands brings these two to life." —Los Angeles Times At the height of the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman committed a gaffe that sent shock waves around the world, when he suggested that General Douglas MacArthur, the willful, fearless, and highly decorated commander of the American and U.N. forces, had his finger on the nuclear trigger. At a time when the Soviets, too, had the bomb, the specter of a catastrophic third World War lurked menacingly close on the horizon. A correction quickly followed, but the damage was done; two visions for America’s path forward were clearly in opposition, and one man would have to make way. The contest of wills between these two titanic characters unfolds against the turbulent backdrop of a faraway war and terrors conjured at home by Joseph McCarthy. From the drama of Stalin’s blockade of West Berlin to the daring landing of MacArthur’s forces at Inchon to the shocking entrance of China into the war, The General and the President vividly evokes the making of a new American era.

Download or read book The 2030 Spike written by Colin Mason and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The clock is relentlessly ticking! Our world teeters on a knife-edge between a peaceful and prosperous future for all, and a dark winter of death and destruction that threatens to smother the light of civilization. Within 30 years, in the 2030 decade, six powerful 'drivers' will converge with unprecedented force in a statistical spike that could tear humanity apart and plunge the world into a new Dark Age. Depleted fuel supplies, massive population growth, poverty, global climate change, famine, growing water shortages and international lawlessness are on a crash course with potentially catastrophic consequences. In the face of both doomsaying and denial over the state of our world, Colin Mason cuts through the rhetoric and reams of conflicting data to muster the evidence to illustrate a broad picture of the world as it is, and our possible futures. Ultimately his message is clear; we must act decisively, collectively and immediately to alter the trajectory of humanity away from catastrophe. Offering over 100 priorities for immediate action, The 2030 Spike serves as a guidebook for humanity through the treacherous minefields and wastelands ahead to a bright, peaceful and prosperous future in which all humans have the opportunity to thrive and build a better civilization. This book is powerful and essential reading for all people concerned with the future of humanity and planet earth.

Download or read book The Art of Sanctions written by Richard Nephew and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-12 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nations and international organizations are increasingly using sanctions as a means to achieve their foreign policy aims. However, sanctions are ineffective if they are executed without a clear strategy responsive to the nature and changing behavior of the target. In The Art of Sanctions, Richard Nephew offers a much-needed practical framework for planning and applying sanctions that focuses not just on the initial sanctions strategy but also, crucially, on how to calibrate along the way and how to decide when sanctions have achieved maximum effectiveness. Nephew—a leader in the design and implementation of sanctions on Iran—develops guidelines for interpreting targets’ responses to sanctions based on two critical factors: pain and resolve. The efficacy of sanctions lies in the application of pain against a target, but targets may have significant resolve to resist, tolerate, or overcome this pain. Understanding the interplay of pain and resolve is central to using sanctions both successfully and humanely. With attention to these two key variables, and to how they change over the course of a sanctions regime, policy makers can pinpoint when diplomatic intervention is likely to succeed or when escalation is necessary. Focusing on lessons learned from sanctions on both Iran and Iraq, Nephew provides policymakers with practical guidance on how to measure and respond to pain and resolve in the service of strong and successful sanctions regimes.

Download or read book Global Trends 2030 written by National Intelligence Council and published by Cosimo Reports. This book was released on 2018-02-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important report, Global Trends 2030-Alternative Worlds, released in 2012 by the U.S. National Intelligence Council, describes megatrends and potential game changers for the next decades. Among the megatrends, it analyzes: - increased individual empowerment - the diffusion of power among states and the ascent of a networked multi-polar world - a world's population growing to 8.3 billion people, of which sixty percent will live in urbanized areas, and surging cross-border migration - expanding demand for food, water, and energy It furthermore describes potential game changers, including: - a global economy that could thrive or collapse - increased global insecurity due to regional instability in the Middle East and South Asia - new technologies that could solve the problems caused by the megatrends - the possibility, but by no means the certainty, that the U.S. with new partners will reinvent the international system Students of trends, forward-looking entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades will find this essential reading.

Download or read book Thucydides Other Traps written by Alan Greeley Misenheimer and published by . This book was released on 2019-06-06 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of a "Thucydides Trap" that will ensnare China and the United States in a 21st century conflict-much as the rising power of Athens alarmed Sparta and made war "inevitable" between the Aegean superpowers of the 5th century BCE-has received global attention since entering the international relations lexicon 6 years ago. Scholars, journalists, bloggers, and politicians in many countries, notably China, have embraced this beguiling metaphor, coined by Harvard political science professor Graham Allison, as a framework for examining the likelihood of a Sino-American war. This case study examines the Thucydides Trap metaphor and the response it has elicited. Hewing closely to what the historian of the Peloponnesian War actually says about the causes and inevitability of war, it argues that, while Thucydides' text does not support Allison's normative assertion about the "inevitable" result of an encounter between "rising" and "ruling" powers, the History of the Peloponnesian War (hereafter, History) does identify elements of leadership and political dynamic that bear directly on whether a clash of interests between two states is resolved through peaceful means or escalates to war. It is precisely because war typically begins with a considered decision by a national command authority to reject other options and mobilize for conflict (and thus always entails an element of choice) that insight from Thucydides' History remains relevant and beneficial for the contemporary strategist, or citizen, concerned in such decisions.Accordingly, this case study concludes that the Thucydides Trap, as conceived and presented by Graham Allison, draws welcome attention both to Thucydides and to the pitfalls of great power competition, but fails as a heuristic device or predictive tool in the analysis of contemporary events. Allison's metaphor offers, at best, a potentially misleading over-simplification of Thucydides' nuanced and problematic account of the origins of the epochal conflict that defined his age. Moreover, it overlooks actual insights from the History that can help political decisionmakers-including, but not limited to, those of the United States and China-either avoid war or, if ignored, pose genuine policy "traps" that can make an avoidable war more likely, and a necessary war more costly.