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Pivotal Deterrence
"Crawford explains the political dynamics of pivotal deterrence and the conditions under which it is likely to succeed, while examining some of its most impressive feats and failures. German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's agile approach to the 1870s Eastern Crisis, which prevented war between Russia and Austria-Hungary, is contrasted with Britain's ambiguous and ill-fated maneuvers to deter Germany and France in July 1914. Shifting to the 1960s Cold War, Crawford explores the successes and setbacks in U.S. efforts to prevent NATO allies Greece and Turkey from fighting over Cyprus and to defuse the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan."--BOOK JACKET.
Outsourcing Security
Faced with a decreasing supply of national troops, dwindling defense budgets, and the ever-rising demand for boots on the ground in global conflicts and humanitarian emergencies, decision makers are left with little choice but to legalize and legitimize the use of private military contractors (PMCs). Outsourcing Security examines the impact that bureaucratic controls and the increasing permissiveness of security environments have had on the U.S. military’s growing use of PMCs during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Bruce E. Stanley examines the relationship between the rise of the private security industry and five potential explanatory variables tied to supply-and-demand theory in six historical cases, including Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the U.S. intervention in Bosnia in 1995, and Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Outsourcing Security is the only work that moves beyond a descriptive account of the rise of PMCs to lay out a precise theory explaining the phenomenon and providing a framework for those considering PMCs in future global interaction.
The Geography of Ethnic Violence
The Geography of Ethnic Violence is the first among numerous distinguished books on ethnic violence to clarify the vital role of territory in explaining such conflict. Monica Toft introduces and tests a theory of ethnic violence, one that provides a compelling general explanation of not only most ethnic violence, civil wars, and terrorism but many interstate wars as well. This understanding can foster new policy initiatives with real potential to make ethnic violence either less likely or less destructive. It can also guide policymakers to solutions that endure. The book offers a distinctively powerful synthesis of comparative politics and international relations theories, as well as a strik...
Whole World on Fire
Whole World on Fire focuses on a technical riddle wrapped in an organizational mystery: How and why, for more than half a century, did the U.S. government fail to predict nuclear fire damage as it drew up plans to fight strategic nuclear war?U.S. bombing in World War II caused massive fire damage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but later war plans took account only of damage from blast; they completely ignored damage from atomic firestorms. Recently a small group of researchers has shown that for modern nuclear weapons the destructiveness and lethality of nuclear mass fire often--and predictably--greatly exceeds that of nuclear blast. This has major implications for defense policy: the U.S. gover...
Choosing Your Battles
America's debate over whether and how to invade Iraq clustered into civilian versus military camps. Top military officials appeared reluctant to use force, the most hawkish voices in government were civilians who had not served in uniform, and everyone was worried that the American public would not tolerate casualties in war. This book shows that this civilian-military argument--which has characterized earlier debates over Bosnia, Somalia, and Kosovo--is typical, not exceptional. Indeed, the underlying pattern has shaped U.S. foreign policy at least since 1816. The new afterword by Peter Feaver and Christopher Gelpi traces these themes through the first two years of the current Iraq war, showing how civil-military debates and concerns about sensitivity to casualties continue to shape American foreign policy in profound ways.
Military Power
In war, do mass and materiel matter most? Will states with the largest, best equipped, information-technology-rich militaries invariably win? The prevailing answer today among both scholars and policymakers is yes. But this is to overlook force employment, or the doctrine and tactics by which materiel is actually used. In a landmark reconception of battle and war, this book provides a systematic account of how force employment interacts with materiel to produce real combat outcomes. Stephen Biddle argues that force employment is central to modern war, becoming increasingly important since 1900 as the key to surviving ever more lethal weaponry. Technological change produces opposite effects d...
Dismantling Democratic States
Bureaucracy is a much-maligned feature of contemporary government. And yet the aftermath of September 11 has opened the door to a reassessment of the role of a skilled civil service in the survival and viability of democratic society. Here, Ezra Suleiman offers a timely and powerful corrective to the widespread view that bureaucracy is the source of democracy's ills. This is a book as much about good governance as it is about bureaucratic organizations. Suleiman asks: Is democratic governance hindered without an effective instrument in the hands of the legitimately elected political leadership? Is a professional bureaucracy required for developing but not for maintaining a democratic state? ...
The Sources of Great Power Competition
This volume explores the determinants of state power, the strategic options of rising powers, the drivers of conflict in dynamic international systems, and American grand strategy past and present to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the current era of great power competition. Leveraging insights from international relations, history, economics, and political demography, it offers rich perspectives on the competition among newly rising powers and long-dominant leaders in the international system. This book presents novel theories and innovative empirical investigations into the economic and demographic challenges confronting rising powers, along with new inquiries into these coun...
The Gulf War
"As the latest volume in the Landmark Presidential Decisions series, The Gulf War provides a fresh and concise look at George H. W. Bush's strategic decision making. Spencer Bakich, an expert in wartime strategy, makes three principal arguments about George H. W. Bush's choice for war to reverse Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. First, from 1989-1991 Bush articulated and implemented a coherent "New World Order" grand strategy that sought to promote democracy and free trade through extensive multilateral diplomacy and enhanced American leadership. Second, Bush's New World Order grand strategy powerfully affected the international coalition's coercive diplomacy campaign (Desert Shield) an...
Blinders, Blunders, and Wars
The history of wars caused by misjudgments, from Napoleon’s invasion of Russia to America’s invasion of Iraq, reveals that leaders relied on cognitive models that were seriously at odds with objective reality. Blinders, Blunders, and Wars analyzes eight historical examples of strategic blunders regarding war and peace and four examples of decisions that turned out well, and then applies those lessons to the current Sino-American case.
