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Author: Hsiao-ting Lin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674969626
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 189
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Book Description
The existence of two Chinese states—one controlling mainland China, the other controlling the island of Taiwan—is often understood as a seemingly inevitable outcome of the Chinese civil war. Defeated by Mao Zedong, Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to Taiwan to establish a rival state, thereby creating the “Two Chinas” dilemma that vexes international diplomacy to this day. Accidental State challenges this conventional narrative to offer a new perspective on the founding of modern Taiwan. Hsiao-ting Lin marshals extensive research in recently declassified archives to show that the creation of a Taiwanese state in the early 1950s owed more to serendipity than careful geostrategic planning. It was the cumulative outcome of ad hoc half-measures and imperfect compromises, particularly when it came to the Nationalists’ often contentious relationship with the United States. Taiwan’s political status was fraught from the start. The island had been formally ceded to Japan after the First Sino-Japanese War, and during World War II the Allies promised Chiang that Taiwan would revert to Chinese rule after Japan’s defeat. But as the Chinese civil war turned against the Nationalists, U.S. policymakers reassessed the wisdom of backing Chiang. The idea of placing Taiwan under United Nations trusteeship gained traction. Cold War realities, and the fear of Taiwan falling into Communist hands, led Washington to recalibrate U.S. policy. Yet American support of a Taiwan-based Republic of China remained ambivalent, and Taiwan had to eke out a place for itself in international affairs as a de facto, if not fully sovereign, state.
Author: Hsiao-ting Lin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674969626
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 189
Get Book Here
Book Description
The existence of two Chinese states—one controlling mainland China, the other controlling the island of Taiwan—is often understood as a seemingly inevitable outcome of the Chinese civil war. Defeated by Mao Zedong, Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to Taiwan to establish a rival state, thereby creating the “Two Chinas” dilemma that vexes international diplomacy to this day. Accidental State challenges this conventional narrative to offer a new perspective on the founding of modern Taiwan. Hsiao-ting Lin marshals extensive research in recently declassified archives to show that the creation of a Taiwanese state in the early 1950s owed more to serendipity than careful geostrategic planning. It was the cumulative outcome of ad hoc half-measures and imperfect compromises, particularly when it came to the Nationalists’ often contentious relationship with the United States. Taiwan’s political status was fraught from the start. The island had been formally ceded to Japan after the First Sino-Japanese War, and during World War II the Allies promised Chiang that Taiwan would revert to Chinese rule after Japan’s defeat. But as the Chinese civil war turned against the Nationalists, U.S. policymakers reassessed the wisdom of backing Chiang. The idea of placing Taiwan under United Nations trusteeship gained traction. Cold War realities, and the fear of Taiwan falling into Communist hands, led Washington to recalibrate U.S. policy. Yet American support of a Taiwan-based Republic of China remained ambivalent, and Taiwan had to eke out a place for itself in international affairs as a de facto, if not fully sovereign, state.
Author: Lynne Heasley
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 1628954493
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 237
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Book Description
2022 NAUTILUS SILVER WINNER FOR LYRIC PROSE—In The Accidental Reef and Other Ecological Odysseys in the Great Lakes, Lynne Heasley illuminates an underwater world that, despite a ferocious industrial history, remains wondrous and worthy of care. From its first scene in a benighted Great Lakes river, where lake sturgeon thrash and spawn, this powerful book takes readers on journeys through the Great Lakes, alongside fish and fishers, scuba divers and scientists, toxic pollutants and threatened communities, oil pipelines and invasive species, Indigenous peoples and federal agencies. With dazzling illustrations from Glenn Wolff, the book helps us know the Great Lakes in new ways and grapple with the legacies and alternative futures that come from their abundance of natural wealth. Suffused with curiosity, empathy, and wit, The Accidental Reef will not fail to astonish and inspire.
Author: Michael Knights
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0755643046
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226
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Book Description
The U.S.-led effort to fight the Islamic State in northeastern Syria since 2014 has been as controversial and poorly understood as it has been significant. Advocates of fighting “by, with and through” the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) view the campaign as a near-ideal case study of a cost-effective U.S. military intervention that should be duplicated in the future. Critics of the campaign say that the U.S. allied itself with a terrorist group and endangered its ties with Turkey, a long-stranding NATO partner; losing sight of strategic priorities in order to win tactical victories at low cost. This book combines general research with 50 interviews gathered in Syria with Kurdish, Arab and Christian SDF officers, and 50 interviews with U.S. and French officials and military officers with on-the-ground involvement in the war. It provides an unprecedented window into how the war was really prosecuted, in the eyes of the participants at all levels, uniquely looking not only at how U.S. soldiers view their partner forces, but how the local partners view them in return. This is a unique and essential insight into US strategy in Syria and beyond.
Author: Jared Cohen
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1501109839
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 528
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Book Description
This New York Times bestselling “deep dive into the terms of eight former presidents is chock-full of political hijinks—and déjà vu” (Vanity Fair) and provides a fascinating look at the men who came to the office without being elected to it, showing how each affected the nation and world. The strength and prestige of the American presidency has waxed and waned since George Washington. Eight men have succeeded to the presidency when the incumbent died in office. In one way or another they vastly changed our history. Only Theodore Roosevelt would have been elected in his own right. Only TR, Truman, Coolidge, and LBJ were re-elected. John Tyler succeeded William Henry Harrison who died 30 days into his term. He was kicked out of his party and became the first president threatened with impeachment. Millard Fillmore succeeded esteemed General Zachary Taylor. He immediately sacked the entire cabinet and delayed an inevitable Civil War by standing with Henry Clay’s compromise of 1850. Andrew Johnson, who succeeded our greatest president, sided with remnants of the Confederacy in Reconstruction. Chester Arthur, the embodiment of the spoils system, was so reviled as James Garfield’s successor that he had to defend himself against plotting Garfield’s assassination; but he reformed the civil service. Theodore Roosevelt broke up the trusts. Calvin Coolidge silently cooled down the Harding scandals and preserved the White House for the Republican Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. Harry Truman surprised everybody when he succeeded the great FDR and proved an able and accomplished president. Lyndon B. Johnson was named to deliver Texas electorally. He led the nation forward on Civil Rights but failed on Vietnam. Accidental Presidents shows that “history unfolds in death as well as in life” (The Wall Street Journal) and adds immeasurably to our understanding of the power and limits of the American presidency in critical times.
Author: John Fabian Witt
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674045270
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
In the five decades after the Civil War, the United States witnessed a profusion of legal institutions designed to cope with the nation’s exceptionally acute industrial accident crisis. Jurists elaborated the common law of torts. Workingmen’s organizations founded a widespread system of cooperative insurance. Leading employers instituted welfare-capitalist accident relief funds. And social reformers advocated compulsory insurance such as workmen’s compensation. John Fabian Witt argues that experiments in accident law at the turn of the twentieth century arose out of competing views of the loose network of ideas and institutions that historians call the ideology of free labor. These experiments a century ago shaped twentieth- and twenty-first-century American accident law; they laid the foundations of the American administrative state; and they occasioned a still hotly contested legal transformation from the principles of free labor to the categories of insurance and risk. In this eclectic moment at the beginnings of the modern state, Witt describes American accident law as a contingent set of institutions that might plausibly have developed along a number of historical paths. In turn, he suggests, the making of American accident law is the story of the equally contingent remaking of our accidental republic.
Author: James Stavridis
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 161251782X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
Despite demonstrated prowess in the handling of ships and sailors, five years after receiving his commission, Jim Stavridis was planning on getting out of the Navy and going to law school. His assignments officer, a young lieutenant commander by the name of Mike Mullen (who would go on to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs) noticed something special in Stavridis, however, and convinced him to stay on active duty by dangling the prospect of Uncle Sam sending him to graduate school. Going ashore for a few years, Stavridis earned his MALD and PhD in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. The experience that taught him to look beyond the horizon and to think and act globally. Throughout his career Stavridis was anything but uniform in the way he approached his duties. An avid reader and prolific author he wrote more than 55 articles, commentaries, and book reviews in the Navy’s professional journal “Proceedings” beginning when he was still a midshipman and continuing to this day. He has also written for some of the leading papers and journals in the United States, including the, New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic Magazine, Naval War College Review, and many others His career was marked by unusually challenging assignments including command of a U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer in the early ‘90s; two stints as a top aide to two different Secretaries of the Navy (one a Republican and the other a Democrat); and command of an aircraft carrier battle group. Stavridis narrowly missed being killed on September 11, 2001 when an American Airlines aircraft plunged into the Pentagon not far from his office. He was subsequently put in charge of a Navy think tank, “Deep Blue,” which was tasked with reimagining the service’s role in a post-9/11 environment. Already selected for his first star as 9/11 unfolded, his rise through the ranks was swift – even going directly from one-star to three-star admiral without ever wearing two stars – when he was selected to be the senior military assistant to the very demanding Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Surviving that crucible, he was nominated for his fourth star at the age of 50, one of the youngest persons to serve at that rank in modern history. He then became the first naval officer to lead the U.S. Southern Command – responsible for all U.S. military operations in the Caribbean and Central and South America. At the end of that assignment he was picked to be the first naval officer to serve as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO – a job first held by Dwight D. Eisenhower and then by a string of prominent generals. When he was given that assignment, the New York Times referred to Stavridis as a “renaissance Admiral,” something Stavridis turned into “the accidental Admiral” given he was the first sailor to head to that command. That is where this book, “The Accidental Admiral” picks up – as Stavridis enlightens readers about securing such a position and serving as NATO’s top man in uniform for four years. They were challenging years indeed. Stavridis was responsible for NATO operations in Afghanistan, its conduct of a military intervention in Libya and preparation for possible war in Syria – as well as worrying about the Balkans, cyber threats, piracy, all while cutting NATO by 30% due to budget reductions by the 28 nations of the Alliance. More than just describing the history of what happened, Stavridis shares with reader the “why” and gives insights into the personalities of those with whom he dealt, ranging from President Barack Obama; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Secretaries of Defense Robert Gates, Leon Panetta, and Chuck Hagel; Afghan President Hamid Karzai; Generals David Petraeus, Stanley McChrystal, John Allen and many more. The Accidental Admiral is more t
Author: Evan Haefeli
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022674275X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 395
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Book Description
The United States has long been defined by its religious diversity and recurrent public debates over the religious and political values that define it. In Accidental Pluralism, Evan Haefeli argues that America did not begin as a religiously diverse and tolerant society. It became so only because England’s religious unity collapsed just as America was being colonized. By tying the emergence of American religious toleration to global events, Haefeli creates a true transnationalist history that links developing American realities to political and social conflicts and resolutions in Europe, showing how the relationships among states, churches, and publics were contested from the beginning of the colonial era and produced a society that no one had anticipated. Accidental Pluralism is an ambitious and comprehensive new account of the origins of American religious life that compels us to refine our narratives about what came to be seen as American values and their distinct relationship to religion and politics.
Author: David Kilcullen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199754098
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377
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Book Description
A Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to General David Petraeus, Kilcullen's vision of war dramatically influenced America's decision to rethink its military strategy in Iraq. Now, Kilcullen provides a remarkably fresh perspective on the War on Terror.
Author: David Frew
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780578761381
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
To coincide with the celebration of Presque Isle State Park's 100-year anniversary in 2021, "Accidental Paradise: A Natural, Political, and Social History of Presque Isle" is targeted for publication by the Jefferson Educational Society in November 2020. Written by Erie historian David Frew with images coordinated and photographed by historian Jerry Skrypzak, the book marks the fifth collaboration by the two authors. Publication follows a three-year project in which Frew and Skrypzak address the geological formation of the peninsula, its natural history, and colorful political history leading to its creation as a state park. It also features the many people, events, and roles played by Erie's peninsula to the present day. Included is naval history, ecology, the Presque Isle Lighthouse, the story of famous squatter Joe Root, the Tom Ridge Environmental Center, Waldameer Park, fishing, environmental issues, the forerunners of the U.S. Coast Guard, and much more.
Author: Celeste L. Arrington
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501703366
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
Government wrongdoing or negligence harms people worldwide, but not all victims are equally effective at obtaining redress. In Accidental Activists, Celeste L. Arrington examines the interactive dynamics of the politics of redress to understand why not. Relatively powerless groups like redress claimants depend on support from political elites, active groups in society, the media, experts, lawyers, and the interested public to capture democratic policymakers' attention and sway their decisions. Focusing on when and how such third-party support matters, Arrington finds that elite allies may raise awareness about the victims’ cause or sponsor special legislation, but their activities also tend to deter the mobilization of fellow claimants and public sympathy. By contrast, claimants who gain elite allies only after the difficult and potentially risky process of mobilizing societal support tend to achieve more redress, which can include official inquiries, apologies, compensation, and structural reforms.Arrington draws on her extensive fieldwork to illustrate these dynamics through comparisons of the parallel Japanese and South Korean movements of victims of harsh leprosy control policies, blood products tainted by hepatitis C, and North Korean abductions. Her book thereby highlights how citizens in Northeast Asia—a region grappling with how to address Japan’s past wrongs—are leveraging similar processes to hold their own governments accountable for more recent harms. Accidental Activists also reveals the growing power of litigation to promote policy change and greater accountability from decision makers.
