Author: Adam B. Lowther
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0275996360
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
As the War in Iraq continues to rage, many in the White House, State Department, Department of Defense, and outside government are left to wonder if it was possible to foresee the difficulty the United States is currently having with Sunni nationalists and Islamic extremists. Recent American military experience offers significant insight into this question. With the fog of the Cold War finally lifting and clarity returning to the nature of conflict, the dominance of asymmetry in the military experience of the United States is all too evident. Lebanon (1982-1984), Somalia (1992-1994), and Afghanistan (2001-2004) offer recent and relevant insight into successes and failures of American attempts to fight adversaries utilizing asymmetric conflict to combat the United States when it intervened in these three states. The results illustrate the difficulty of engaging adversaries unwilling to wage a conventional war and the need for improved strategic and tactical doctrine. It is easy, Lowther writes, for Americans to forget the lessons of past conflicts as the politics of the present dominate.... His purpose here is to highlight some of history's recent lessons so that we may move forward with an awareness of what experience offers.
Author: Rod Thornton
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745633641
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 253
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Book Description
In recent years, the nature of conflict has changed. Through asymmetric warfare radical groups and weak state actors are using unexpected means to deal stunning blows to more powerful opponents in the West. From terrorism to information warfare, the Wests air power, sea power and land power are open to attack from clever, but much weaker, enemies. In this clear and engaging introduction, Rod Thornton unpacks the meaning and significance of asymmetric warfare, in both civilian and military realms, and examines why it has become such an important subject for study. He seeks to provide answers to key questions, such as how weaker opponents apply asymmetric techniques against the Western world, and shows how the Wests military superiority can be seriously undermined by asymmetric threats. The book concludes by looking at the ways in which the US, the state most vulnerable to asymmetric attack, is attempting to cope with some new battlefield realities. This is an indispensable guide to one of the key topics in security studies today.
Author: Roger W. Barnett
Publisher: Potomac Books
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202
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Book Description
Possible asymmetrical warfare scenarios include launching chemical, biological, or suicide attacks; taking indiscriminate actions against critical infrastructure; using hostages or human shields; deliberately destroying the environment; and targeting noncombatants.".
Author: Ivan Arreguín-Toft
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316583007
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275
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Book Description
How do the weak win wars? The likelihood of victory and defeat in asymmetric conflicts depends on the interaction of the strategies weak and strong actors use. Using statistical and in-depth historical analyses of conflicts spanning two hundred years, in this 2005 book Ivan Arregúin-Toft shows that, independent of regime type and weapons technology, the interaction of similar strategic approaches favors strong actors, while opposite strategic approaches favors the weak. This approach to understanding asymmetric conflicts allows us to makes sense of how the United States was able to win its war in Afghanistan (2002) in a few months, while the Soviet Union lost after a decade of brutal war (1979–89). Arreguín-Toft's strategic interaction theory has implications not only for international relations theory, but for policy makers grappling with interstate and civil wars, as well as terrorism.
Author: Larisa Deriglazova
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421429128
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409
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Book Description
A sophisticated appraisal of the problem of asymmetric conflict in the post–World War II period. In a sophisticated combination of quantitative research and two in-depth case studies, Larisa Deriglazova surveys armed conflicts post World War II in which one power is much stronger than the other. She then focuses on the experiences of British decolonization after World War II and the United States in the 2003 Iraq war. Great Powers, Small Wars employs several large databases to identify basic characteristics and variables of wars between enemies of disproportionate power. Case studies examine the economics, domestic politics, and international factors that ultimately shaped military events more than military capacity and strategy.
Author: Andrei P. Tsygankov
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 9781509531141
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
In recent times, US-Russia relations have deteriorated to what both sides acknowledge is an “all time low.” Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and Putin’s continued support for the Assad regime in Syria have placed enormous strain on this historically tense and complex relationship. In one of the first analyses of the evolving Trump-Putin relationship, leading scholar of Russian foreign policy Andrei P. Tsygankov challenges the dominant view that US-Russia relations have entered a new Cold War phase. Russia’s US strategy, he argues, can only be understood in the context of a changing international order. While America strives to preserve its global dominance, Russia—the weaker power—exploits its asymmetric capabilities and relations with non-Western allies to defend and promote its interests, and to avoid yielding to US pressures. Focusing on key areas of conflict and mutual convergence—from European security to China and the Middle East, as well as cyber, nuclear, and energy issues—Tsygankov paints a nuanced and unsentimental picture of two countries whose ties are likely to remain marked by suspicion and conflict for years to come.
Author: T. V. Paul
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521466219
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
This book examines a question generally neglected in the study of international relations: why does a militarily and economically less powerful state initiate conflict against a relatively strong state? T. V. Paul analyses this phenomenon by focusing on the strategic and political considerations, domestic and international, which influence a weaker state to initiate war against a more powerful adversary. The key argument of deterrence theory is that the military superiority of the status quo power, coupled with a credible retaliatory threat, will prevent attack by challengers. The author challenges this assumption by examining six twentieth-century asymmetric wars, from the Japanese offensive against Russia in 1904 to the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982. The book's findings have wide implications for the study of war, power, deterrence, coercive diplomacy, strategy, arms races, and alliances.
Author: Peter R. Lavoy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521767210
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 427
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Book Description
A unique account of military conflict under the shadow of nuclear escalation, with access to the soldiers and politicians involved.
Author: Martin Ewans
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134294816
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 186
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Book Description
This book deals with each of the five conflicts in which Afghanistan has been embroiled, namely the First, Second and Third Anglo-Afghan Wars, the Soviet invasion and the most recent American-led operations.
Author: Colin S. Gray
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Counterinsurgency
Languages : en
Pages : 84
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Book Description
The author offers a detailed comparison between the character of irregular warfare, insurgency in particular, and the principal enduring features of "the American way." He concludes that there is a serious mismatch between that "way" and the kind of behavior that is most effective in countering irregular foes. The author poses the question, Can the American way of war adapt to a strategic threat context dominated by irregular enemies? He suggests that the answer is "perhaps, but only with difficulty."
