Creating Military Power

Creating Military Power PDF Author: Risa Brooks
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804768092
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Creating Military Power examines how societies, cultures, political structures, and the global environment affect countries' military organizations. Unlike most analyses of countries' military power, which focus on material and basic resources—such as the size of populations, technological and industrial base, and GNP—this volume takes a more expansive view. The study's overarching argument is that states' global environments and the particularities of their cultures, social structures, and political institutions often affect how they organize and prepare for war, and ultimately impact their effectiveness in battle. The creation of military power is only partially dependent on states' basic material and human assets. Wealth, technology, and human capital certainly matter for a country's ability to create military power, but equally important are the ways a state uses those resources, and this often depends on the political and social environment in which military activity takes place.

Creating Military Power

Creating Military Power PDF Author: Risa Brooks
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804768092
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book

Book Description
Creating Military Power examines how societies, cultures, political structures, and the global environment affect countries' military organizations. Unlike most analyses of countries' military power, which focus on material and basic resources—such as the size of populations, technological and industrial base, and GNP—this volume takes a more expansive view. The study's overarching argument is that states' global environments and the particularities of their cultures, social structures, and political institutions often affect how they organize and prepare for war, and ultimately impact their effectiveness in battle. The creation of military power is only partially dependent on states' basic material and human assets. Wealth, technology, and human capital certainly matter for a country's ability to create military power, but equally important are the ways a state uses those resources, and this often depends on the political and social environment in which military activity takes place.

Creating Military Power

Creating Military Power PDF Author: Risa Brooks
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804753999
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Creating Military Power examines how societies, cultures, political structures, and the global environment affect countries' military organizations. Unlike most analyses of countries' military power, which focus on material and basic resources—such as the size of populations, technological and industrial base, and GNP—this volume takes a more expansive view. The study's overarching argument is that states' global environments and the particularities of their cultures, social structures, and political institutions often affect how they organize and prepare for war, and ultimately impact their effectiveness in battle. The creation of military power is only partially dependent on states' basic material and human assets. Wealth, technology, and human capital certainly matter for a country's ability to create military power, but equally important are the ways a state uses those resources, and this often depends on the political and social environment in which military activity takes place.

Military Power

Military Power PDF Author: Stephen Biddle
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400837820
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
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 depending on how forces are employed; to focus only on materiel is thus to risk major error--with serious consequences for both policy and scholarship. In clear, fluent prose, Biddle provides a systematic account of force employment's role and shows how this account holds up under rigorous, multimethod testing. The results challenge a wide variety of standard views, from current expectations for a revolution in military affairs to mainstream scholarship in international relations and orthodox interpretations of modern military history. Military Power will have a resounding impact on both scholarship in the field and on policy debates over the future of warfare, the size of the military, and the makeup of the defense budget.

Information Technology and Military Power

Information Technology and Military Power PDF Author: Jon R. Lindsay
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501749579
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Militaries with state-of-the-art information technology sometimes bog down in confusing conflicts. To understand why, it is important to understand the micro-foundations of military power in the information age, and this is exactly what Jon R. Lindsay's Information Technology and Military Power gives us. As Lindsay shows, digital systems now mediate almost every effort to gather, store, display, analyze, and communicate information in military organizations. He highlights how personnel now struggle with their own information systems as much as with the enemy. Throughout this foray into networked technology in military operations, we see how information practice—the ways in which practitioners use technology in actual operations—shapes the effectiveness of military performance. The quality of information practice depends on the interaction between strategic problems and organizational solutions. Information Technology and Military Power explores information practice through a series of detailed historical cases and ethnographic studies of military organizations at war. Lindsay explains why the US military, despite all its technological advantages, has struggled for so long in unconventional conflicts against weaker adversaries. This same perspective suggests that the US retains important advantages against advanced competitors like China that are less prepared to cope with the complexity of information systems in wartime. Lindsay argues convincingly that a better understanding of how personnel actually use technology can inform the design of command and control, improve the net assessment of military power, and promote reforms to improve military performance. Warfighting problems and technical solutions keep on changing, but information practice is always stuck in between.

America's Army

America's Army PDF Author: Beth Bailey
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674035364
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
" ... the story of the all-volunteer force, from the draft protests and policy proposals of the 1960s through the Iraq War"--Jacket.

Toward a European Army

Toward a European Army PDF Author: Trevor C. Salmon
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
ISBN: 9781588262363
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
A comprehensive analysis of the European defence project: its origins, purpose, and goals.

The Art of Creating Power

The Art of Creating Power PDF Author: Benedict Wilkinson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190851163
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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Book Description
The Art of Creating Power explores the intellectual thought and wider impact - on military affairs, politics and the universities - of Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the world's leading authorities on strategy, conflict and international politics. In this volume, senior scholars of international relations and military history trace the long trajectory of Freedman's career and scholarly contribution.

The Diffusion of Military Power

The Diffusion of Military Power PDF Author: Michael C. Horowitz
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9781400835102
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
The Diffusion of Military Power examines how the financial and organizational challenges of adopting new methods of fighting wars can influence the international balance of power. Michael Horowitz argues that a state or actor wishing to adopt a military innovation must possess both the financial resources to buy or build the technology and the internal organizational capacity to accommodate any necessary changes in recruiting, training, or operations. How countries react to new innovations--and to other actors that do or don't adopt them--has profound implications for the global order and the likelihood of war. Horowitz looks at some of the most important military innovations throughout history, including the advent of the all-big-gun steel battleship, the development of aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons, and the use of suicide terror by nonstate actors. He shows how expensive innovations can favor wealthier, more powerful countries, but also how those same states often stumble when facing organizationally complicated innovations. Innovations requiring major upheavals in doctrine and organization can disadvantage the wealthiest states due to their bureaucratic inflexibility and weight the balance of power toward smaller and more nimble actors, making conflict more likely. This book provides vital insights into military innovations and their impact on U.S. foreign policy, warfare, and the distribution of power in the international system.

The Dragon Extends its Reach

The Dragon Extends its Reach PDF Author: Larry M. Wortzel
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1612344062
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
China has evolved from a nation with local and regional security interests to a major economic and political power with global interests, investments, and political commitments. It now requires a military that can project itself around the globe, albeit on a limited scale, to secure its interests. Therefore, as Larry M. Wortzel explains, the Chinese Communist Party leadership has charged the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with new and challenging missions that require global capabilities. Advances in technology and the development of indigenous weapons platforms in China, combined with reactions to modern conflicts, have produced a military force very different from that which China has fielded in the past. Wortzel presents a clear and sobering picture of the PLA’s modernization effort as it expands into space and cyberspace, and as it integrates operations in the traditional domains of war. This book will appeal to the specialist in security and foreign policy issues in Asia as well as to the person interested in arms control, future warfare, and global military strategies. The book puts China’s military growth into historical context for readers of recent military and diplomatic history.

Drift

Drift PDF Author: Rachel Maddow
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307461009
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
The #1 New York Times bestseller that charts America’s dangerous drift into a state of perpetual war. Written with bracing wit and intelligence, Rachel Maddow's Drift argues that we've drifted away from America's original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war. To understand how we've arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan, along the way exploring Reagan's radical presidency, the disturbing rise of executive authority, the gradual outsourcing of our war-making capabilities to private companies, the plummeting percentage of American families whose children fight our constant wars for us, and even the changing fortunes of G.I. Joe. Ultimately, she shows us just how much we stand to lose by allowing the scope of American military power to overpower our political discourse. Sensible yet provocative, dead serious yet seri­ously funny, Drift reinvigorates a "loud and jangly" political debate about our vast and confounding national security state.