Download or read book Military Strategy as Public Discourse written by Tadd Sholtis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-04 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the current history of United States military strategy in Afghanistan as an example of dysfunctional policy discourse among the nation’s elites. The legitimacy of a country’s military strategy can become a subject of intense public debate and doubt, especially in prolonged conflicts. Arguments typically hinge on disagreements about the values at stake, the consequences of action or inaction, and the authority of those responsible for the plan. As the US entered its second decade at war in Afghanistan, political and military leaders struggled to explain the ends and means of their strategy through internal policy debates, the promotion of counterinsurgency doctrine, and day-to-day accounts of the war’s progress. Military Strategy as Public Discourse considers recent US strategy in Afghanistan as a form of valid and equitable public discussion among those with the ability to affect outcomes. The work examines the dominant forms of discourse used by the various groups of elites who make and execute strategy, and considers how representations of these forms of discourse in news media shapes elite understanding of the purpose of US efforts in wars of choice. The book proposes how policy-makers should address the problems of public discourse on war, which tends to exclude or marginalize relevant elites and focus on narrow questions of validity. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, US foreign policy, and security studies in general.
Download or read book Obama in Afghanistan written by Tadd Sholtis and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As military strategy changes over the course of a prolonged conflict, the validity of the strategy (the appropriateness of ends and logic of means) becomes a subject of increasing debate and doubt. As leaders try to sustain the political legitimacy of their strategy, other elites may place greater emphasis on an often neglected aspect of strategic discourse: the equity of the process of making strategy, defined as its relative public transparency and the inclusion of autonomous participants in debate and decision-making. It therefore may be useful to consider strategy in a prolonged war of change as a critical discourse in which a growing number of elites demand a more thorough and open discussion of the strategy in order to support it. The idea of strategy as critical discourse is used to explain the struggles of the Obama administration to change the strategy in Afghanistan and perceptions of that strategy at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels."--Abstract.
Download or read book Making Strategy written by Dennis M. Drew and published by . This book was released on 2002-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National secuirty strategy is a vast subject involving a daunting array of interrelated subelements woven in intricate, sometimes vague, and ever-changing patterns. Its processes are often irregular and confusing and are always based on difficult decisions laden with serious risks. In short, it is a subject understood by few and confusing to most. It is, at the same time, a subject of overwhelming importance to the fate of the United States and civilization itself. Col. Dennis M. Drew and Dr. Donald M. Snow have done a considerable service by drawing together many of the diverse threads of national security strategy into a coherent whole. They consider political and military strategy elements as part of a larger decisionmaking process influenced by economic, technological, cultural, and historical factors. I know of no other recent volume that addresses the entire national security milieu in such a logical manner and yet also manages to address current concerns so thoroughly. It is equally remarkable that they have addressed so many contentious problems in such an evenhanded manner. Although the title suggests that this is an introductory volume - and it is - I am convinced that experienced practitioners in the field of national security strategy would benefit greatly from a close examination of this excellent book. Sidney J. Wise Colonel, United States Air Force Commander, Center for Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education
Download or read book The Soft Power of War written by Lilie Chouliaraki and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-06-05 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, which was originally published as a Special Issue of Journal of Language & Politics 4:1 (2005), takes the war in Iraq as an exemplary case through which to demonstrate the changing nature of contemporary power. The book convincingly argues that the effective study of international politics depends today upon our understanding of the interplay between hard (military, economic) and soft (symbolic) power. One might say, between the politics of territory, guns or money and the language of narrating the world in coherent and persuasive stories. Bringing together different strands of discourse analysis with social, historical and, to an extent, political analysis, all contributions seek to illustrate the ways in which a variety of public genres, from political speeches to computer games and from educational material to newspaper reports, produce influential knowledge about the war and shape the ethical and political premises upon which the legitimacy of this war and a ‘vision’ of the emergent world order rests.
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 Alternative Military Strategies For The Future written by Keith A. Dunn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-04 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, prominent civilian and military experts in defense, representing the maritime-continental coalition, military reform, and noninterventionist schools of thought, outline the changes in military strategy, policy, and force structure that they believe the United States must adopt if it is to cope successfully with threats to national security in the 1980s and 1990s. The authors analyze US interests and objectives, the changing strategic environment, and the major security threats facing the United States in the coming decades. They also discuss what they believe is the proper mix of political, economic, and military instruments for dealing with fixture threats. The alternative strategies they present are wide-ranging and comprehensive, running the gamut from a strategic withdrawal from global commitments to proposals for increasing US power projection and forcible entry capabilities in the Third World. In many ways the chapters are critical of current and past approaches to military strategy. The authors believe it is essential that strategists understand the existing critiques of current U.S. military strategy in order to make the correct policy decisions for the future.
Download or read book Military Strategy and Public Support for War written by Jeffrey M. Bonheim and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation explores the endogenous relationship between military strategy and public support for war, focusing on the effects of military operations on public support and the resulting incentives for leaders to shape and adjust the conduct of war. When making decisions about military strategy, leaders have an opportunity to forecast the effects of operations on future public support. The choice of military strategy and operations directly influences battlefield events, and some of these events are more or less likely to receive media coverage and public attention. Conditional on learning about an operation, the public may even respond better to the success and progress of certain types of operations. Anticipation of the public's future response can influence a leader's current decisions about military strategy; differences between operation types in media coverage, public consumption, and public response can generate incentives for leaders to focus on one type over another to produce results that will best maintain or bolster public support. The degree of this influence is likely to increase or decrease with the current salience of public support among the many concerns leaders face. The project consists of three papers and applies text-as-data methods, survey experiments, time-series statistical analyses, and a qualitative case study to address this process in the context of U.S. counterinsurgency operations. I argue that military strategy should be conceptualized as a selection of operational components, chosen from a menu of options that are applicable to a particular policy goal, and that the balance of operational components can be continuously adjusted. In counterinsurgency, the primary variation occurs in the balance between offensive and stability operations. The first paper examines which kinds of battlefield information are communicated to the public through the media and which kinds of wartime news individuals prefer to consume. Using text-as-data methods, I show that press coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was skewed toward combat and violence, making it more likely for the public to be exposed to the successes of offensive operations than to those of stability operations, and that the coverage given to casualties increased over time, creating a "stickiness" in the prevalence of casualty coverage, which could potentially inflate perceptions of the human costs of war. A conjoint analysis experiment shows that respondents, especially Republicans, choose reports about the good outcomes of both offensive and stability operations at high rates, but choose to read reports about the human costs of war at much lower rates. The second paper explores how individuals might respond differently to offensive and stability operations, conditional on actually learning of an operation. Using four survey experiments, I show that offensive operations increase support among Republicans, while stability operations increase support among Democrats. This conditional partisan effect is partly driven by differences in militant internationalism, but partisan differences remain even when controlling for these beliefs about the use of force. In the third paper, I discuss how the previous results contribute to incentives to shift the balance toward offensive operations when civilian leaders -- especially those interested in maintaining Republican support -- are pressured to maintain or bolster public support. Using quantitative and qualitative evidence, I show that the balance of U.S. operations in Iraq between 2003 and 2008 shifted toward offensive operations during election years and that the conduct of operations continued to be influenced by domestic factors even after the broader context of the conflict changed after 2008. I conclude with a discussion of why the influence of domestic political considerations on military strategy may, in fact, be appropriate, and suggest areas for future research in the study of military strategy and American civil-military relations.
Download or read book Strategic Theory for the 21st Century The Little Book on Big Strategy written by Harry R. Yarger and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Art and Practice of Military Strategy written by George Edward Thibault and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 904 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Maneuver and Manipulation written by Tim Hwang and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-06-27 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ongoing discussion around the Russian development of hybrid warfare and the revelations about meddling in the 2016 United States Presidential election have focused the public's attention on the threats posed by coordinated campaigns of propaganda and disinformation. These recent events have also raised concerns around the broader challenge posed by the emergence of a "post-fact society," the notion that the weakening ability for civil society and the public to analyze truth and falsity is creating a threat to the health and sustainability of democratic institutions. Technology and the Internet, in particular, play a key role in shaping the flow of information through society. Not surprisingly, the role of these systems in enabling new types of information warfare has figured prominently in the discussion as policymakers and scholars begin to develop their thinking about the appropriate response to these issues. Platforms such as Facebook and Google have been seen as having had a significant role in facilitating Russian propaganda efforts, incentivizing the distribution of false information, and encouraging the creation of extremist "filter bubbles." As the defense community develops its approach to countering present-day online propaganda and disinformation techniques, it will need to place concerns around immediate threats into a broader understanding of the nature of the challenge. In short, the defense community will require an articulation of a unified strategic concept. This monograph offers an initial sketch of such a concept, proposing one approach to characterizing the strategic situation in the current information space and, based on that, some conjectures about the effective conduct of online information warfare.
Download or read book Maneuver and Manipulation written by Tim Hwang and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-05-21 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ongoing discussion around the Russian development of hybrid warfare and the revelations about meddling in the 2016 United States Presidential election have focused the public's attention on the threats posed by coordinated campaigns of propaganda and disinformation. These recent events have also raised concerns around the broader challenge posed by the emergence of a "post-fact society," the notion that the weakening ability for civil society and the public to analyze truth and falsity is creating a threat to the health and sustainability of democratic institutions. Technology and the Internet, in particular, play a key role in shaping the flow of information through society. Not surprisingly, the role of these systems in enabling new types of information warfare has figured prominently in the discussion as policymakers and scholars begin to develop their thinking about the appropriate response to these issues. Platforms such as Facebook and Google have been seen as having had a significant role in facilitating Russian propaganda efforts, incentivizing the distribution of false information, and encouraging the creation of extremist "filter bubbles." As the defense community develops its approach to countering present-day online propaganda and disinformation techniques, it will need to place concerns around immediate threats into a broader understanding of the nature of the challenge. In short, the defense community will require an articulation of a unified strategic concept. This monograph offers an initial sketch of such a concept, proposing one approach to characterizing the strategic situation in the current information space and, based on that, some conjectures about the effective conduct of online information warfare.
Download or read book Strategic Communication written by Christopher Paul and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-04-07 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume in the Contemporary Military, Strategic, and Security Issues series presents a concise introduction to the evolution, key concepts, discourse, and future options for improved strategic communication in today's U.S. government. Strategic Communication: Origins, Concepts, and Current Debates is a groundbreaking study, the first book explicitly focused on strategic communication as it is currently used and discussed in the U.S. government. Written specifically for those who are new to strategic communication, this incisive book clarifies the definitional debate, explores the history of the term and its practice, and embraces a broad, practical definition. But that is only the beginning. Moving to the realities of the issue, author Christopher Paul reviews dozens of government reports on strategic communication and public diplomacy released since 2000, examining specific proposals related to improving strategic communication in the U.S. government and explaining the disagreements. Most important, he offers consensus and clarity for the way ahead, discussing how disparate elements of the government can be coordinated to master—and win—the "war of ideas" through fully integrated and synchronized communications and actions.
Download or read book We Keep America on Top of the World written by Daniel Hallin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-10-25 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We Keep America on Top of the World is a lucid exploration of contemporary American journalism, with particular emphasis on its influential and controversial conponent - television news. Daniel Hallin's discussion encompasses the central and most controversial issues in the study of journalism: the wars in Vietnam and Central America; US-Soviet summits; the origin of the ten-second soundbite; the differences between print and television journalism; and the tension between professionalism and populism. We Keep America on Top of the World offers a distinctive approach to understanding an institution torn between the imperatives of the market, political ideology and popular fashion, and journalistic professionalism. It will be essential reading for students of media, communication and journalism.
Download or read book Military Strategy written by John M. Collins and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 1019 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides an overview of the principles, theories, policies, and other fundamentals of modern warfare and their applications in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Taken by Storm written by W. Lance Bennett and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1994-10-03 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American politics and political economy series.
Download or read book Discourse War and Terrorism written by Adam Hodges and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-04-11 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discourse since September 11, 2001 has constrained and shaped public discussion and debate surrounding terrorism worldwide. Social actors in the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere employ the language of the “war on terror” to explain, react to, justify and understand a broad range of political, economic and social phenomena. Discourse, War and Terrorism explores the discursive production of identities, the shaping of ideologies, and the formation of collective understandings in response to 9/11 in the United States and around the world. At issue are how enemies are defined and identified, how political leaders and citizens react, and how members of societies understand their position in the world in relation to terrorism. Contributors to this volume represent diverse sub-fields involved in the critical study of language, including perspectives from sociocultural linguistics, communication, media, cultural and political studies.
Download or read book Public Affairs written by William M. Hammond and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 1988 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: United States Army in Vietnam. CMH Pub. 91-13. Draws upon previously unavailable Army and Defense Department records to interpret the part the press played during the Vietnam War. Discusses the roles of the following in the creation of information policy: Military Assistance Command's Office of Information in Saigon; White House; State Department; Defense Department; and the United States Embassy in Saigon.
