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Scott Fitzsimmons argues that small mercenary groups must maintain a superior military culture to successfully engage and defeat larger and better-equipped opponents. By developing and applying competing constructivist and neorealist theories of military performance to four asymmetric wars in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, he demonstrates how mercenary groups that strongly emphasize behavioral norms encouraging their personnel to think creatively, make decisions on their own, take personal initiative, communicate accurate information within the group, enhance their technical proficiency and develop a sense of loyalty to their fellow fighters will exhibit vastly superior tactical capabilities to other mercenary groups. Fitzsimmons demonstrates that although the victorious mercenary groups occasionally had access to weapon systems unavailable to their opponents, the balance of material capabilities fielded by the opposing military forces had far less influence on the outcome of these asymmetric conflicts than the culturally determined tactical behavior exhibited by their personnel.
Welcome to the Drone Age. Where self-defense has become naked aggression. Where courage has become cowardice. Where black ops have become standard operating procedure. In this remarkable and often shocking book, Laurie Calhoun dissects the moral, psychological, and cultural impact of remote-control killing in the twenty-first century. Can a drone operator conducting a targeted killing be likened to a mafia hitman? What difference, if any, is there between the Trayvon Martin case and the drone killing of a teen in Yemen? We Kill Because We Can takes a scalpel to the dark heart of Western foreign policy in order to answer these and many other troubling questions.
During the 1970s a group of Protestant paramilitaries embarked on a spree of indiscriminate murder which left thirty Northern Irish Catholics dead. Their leader was Lenny Murphy, a fanatical Unionist whose Catholic-sounding surname led to his persecution as a child for which he took revenge on all Catholics. Not for the squeamish, The Shankill Butchers is a horrifyingly detailed account of one of the most brutal series of murders in British legal history--a phenomenon whose real nature has been obscured by the political and violent context from which it sprang.
Politics on the Canadian prairies are puzzling. The provinces share common roots, but they have nurtured three distinct political cultures -- Alberta is Canada's bastion of conservatism, Saskatchewan its cradle of social democracy, and Manitoba its progressive centre. Jared Wesley explains this paradox by examining the rhetoric employed by dominant parties to renew their provinces' political code -- freedom for Alberta, security for Saskatchewan, and moderation for Manitoba. Although the content of their campaigns differed, leaders from William Aberhart to Tommy Douglas to Gary Doer have employed distinct codes to ensure their parties' success and shape their provinces' political landscapes.
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The Markets for Force examines and compares the markets for private military and security contractors in twelve nations: Argentina, Guatemala, Peru, Ecuador, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Russia, Afghanistan, China, Canada, and the United States. Editors Molly Dunigan and Ulrich Petersohn argue that the global market for force is actually a conglomeration of many types of markets that vary according to local politics and geostrategic context. Each case study investigates the particular characteristics of the region's market, how each market evolved into its current form, and what consequence the privatized market may have for state military force and the provision of publi...
U.S.A.F. Chief of Staff 2013 Professional Reading List Selection Nearly forty years passed between the Apollo moon landings, the grandest accomplishment of a government-run space program, and the Ansari X PRIZE-winning flights of SpaceShipOne, the greatest achievement of a private space program. Now, as we hover on the threshold of commercial spaceflight, authors Chris Dubbs and Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom look back at how we got to this point. Their book traces the lives of the individuals who shared the dream that private individuals and private enterprise belong in space. Realizing Tomorrow provides a behind-the-scenes look at the visionaries, the crackpots, the financial schemes, the legal wrangling, the turf battles, and--underpinning the entire drama--the overwhelming desire of ordinary people to visit outer space. A compelling story of the pioneers of commercial spaceflight--and their efforts to open the final frontier to everyone--this book traces the path to private spaceflight even as it offers an instructive, entertaining, and cautionary note about its future.