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Modern warfare is almost always multilateral to one degree or another, requiring countries to cooperate as allies or coalition partners. Yet as the war in Afghanistan has made abundantly clear, multilateral cooperation is neither straightforward nor guaranteed. Countries differ significantly in what they are willing to do and how and where they are willing to do it. Some refuse to participate in dangerous or offensive missions. Others change tactical objectives with each new commander. Some countries defer to their commanders while others hold them to strict account. NATO in Afghanistan explores how government structures and party politics in NATO countries shape how battles are waged in the...
In an increasingly complex and unpredictable world, a growing number of observers and practitioners have called for a reexamination of our national security system. Central to any such reform effort is an evaluation of Congress. Is Congress adequately organized to deal with national security issues in an integrated and coordinated manner? How have developments in Congress over the past few decades, such as heightened partisanship, message politics, party-committee relationships, and bicameral relations, affected topical security issues? This volume examines variation in the ways Congress has engaged federal agencies overseeing our nation's national security as well as various domestic political determinants of security policy.
This second edition of The National Security Enterprise provides practitioners' insights into the operation, missions, and organizational cultures of the principal national security agencies and other significant institutions that shape the US national security decision-making process. Unlike some textbooks on American foreign policy, this book provides analysis from insiders who have worked at the National Security Council, the State Department, Department of Defense, the intelligence community, and the other critical entities included in the book. The book explains how organizational missions and cultures create the labyrinth in which a coherent national security policy must be fashioned. Understanding and appreciating these organizations and their cultures is essential for formulating and implementing coherent policies. This second edition includes four new chapters (Congress, DHS, Treasury, and USAID) and updates to the text throughout. It covers the many changes instituted by the Obama administration, implications of the government campaign to prosecute leaks, and lessons learned from more than a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
While the president is the commander in chief, the US Congress plays a critical and underappreciated role in civil-military relations—the relationship between the armed forces and the civilian leadership that commands it. This unique book edited by Colton C. Campbell and David P. Auerswald will help readers better understand the role of Congress in military affairs and national and international security policy. Contributors include the most experienced scholars in the field as well as practitioners and innovative new voices, all delving into the ways Congress attempts to direct the military. This book explores four tools in particular that play a key role in congressional action: the sele...
In an era of ever-increasing polarization in the US Congress, American foreign policy remains marked by frequent bipartisanship. In Bipartisanship and US Foreign Policy, Jordan Tama shows that, even as polarization in American politics reaches new heights, Democrats and Republicans in Washington continue to cooperate on important international issues. Looking closely at congressional voting patterns and recent debates over military action, economic sanctions, international trade, and foreign policy spending, Tama reveals that bipartisanship remains surprisingly common when US elected officials turn their attention overseas. Yet bipartisanship today rarely involves complete unity. Instead, bipartisan coalitions spanning members of both parties often coexist with intra-party divisions or disagreement between Congress and the president, making it difficult for the United States to speak with one voice on the global stage. Drawing on new data and interviews of more than 100 foreign policy practitioners, this book documents the persistence of bipartisanship on international issues and highlights key factors that facilitate or impede cooperation on foreign policy challenges.
In a 2012 opinion piece bemoaning the state of the US Senate, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank cited a “leading theory: There are no giants in the chamber today.” Among the respected members who once walked the Senate floor, admired for their expertise and with a stature that went beyond party, Milbank counted Sam Nunn (D-GA). Nunn served in the Senate for four terms beginning in 1972, at a moment when domestic politics and foreign policy were undergoing far-reaching changes. As a member and then chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he had a vital impact on most of the crucial national security and defense issues of the Cold War era and the “new world order” that fo...
This book improves our understanding of battlefield coalitions, providing novel theoretical and empirical insight into their nature and capabilities, as well as the military and political consequences of their combat operations. The volume provides the first dataset of battlefield coalitions, uses primary sources to understand how non-state actors of varying types form such groupings, reports interviews with policymakers illuminating North Atlantic Treaty Organization operations, and uses cases studies of various wars waged throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries to understand how other such collectives have operated. Part I introduces battlefield coalitions as an ob...
Democracy cannot be taken for granted, whether at home or internationally, and eternal vigilance (along with civic intelligence) is required to protect it. Approaching Democracy provides students with a framework to analyze the structure, process, and action of US government, institutions, and social movements. It also invites comparison with other countries. This globalizing perspective gives students an understanding of issues of governance and challenges to democracy here and elsewhere. At a moment of political hyper-partisanship, economic tensions, media misinformation, hyper-partisanship, and anxieties about the future of civil rights, this is the ideal time to introduce Approaching Dem...
As the costs of a preemptive foreign policy in Iraq have become clear, strategies such as containment and deterrence have been gaining currency among policy makers. This comprehensive book offers an agenda for the contemporary practice of deterrence—especially as it applies to nuclear weapons—in an increasingly heterogeneous global and political setting. Moving beyond the precepts of traditional deterrence theory, this groundbreaking volume offers insights for the use of deterrence in the modern world, where policy makers may encounter irrational actors, failed states, religious zeal, ambiguous power relationships, and other situations where the traditional rules of statecraft do not apply. A distinguished group of contributors here examines issues such as deterrence among the Great Powers; the problems of regional and nonstate actors; and actors armed with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Complex Deterrence will be a valuable resource for anyone facing the considerable challenge of fostering security and peace in the twenty-first century.
The international community's practice of administering territories in post-conflict environments has raised important legal questions. Using Kosovo as a case study, Bernhard Knoll analyses the identity of the administrating UN organ, the ways in which the territories under consideration have acquired partial subjectivity in international law and the nature of legal obligations in the fiduciary exercise of transitional administration developed within the League of Nations' Mandate and the UN Trusteeship systems. Knoll discusses Kosovo's internal political and constitutional order and notes the absence of some of the characteristics normally found in liberal democracies, before proposing that the UN consolidates accountability guidelines related to the protection of human rights and the development of democratic standards should it engage in the transitional administration of territory.