Making War, Thinking History

Making War, Thinking History PDF Author: Jeffrey Record
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612515819
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
In examining the influence of historical analogies on decisions to use--or not use--force, military strategist Jeffrey Record assesses every major application of U.S. force from the Korean War to the NATO war on Serbia. Specifically, he looks at the influence of two analogies: the democracies? appeasement of Hitler at Munich and America's defeat in the Vietnam War. His book judges the utility of these two analogies on presidential decision-making and finds considerable misuse of them in situations where force was optional. He points to the Johnson administration's application of the Munich analogy to the circumstances of Southeast Asia in 1965 as the most egregious example of their misuse, but also cites the faulty reasoning by historical analogy that prevailed among critics of Reagan's policy in Central America and in Clinton's use of force in Haiti and the former Yugoslavia. The author's findings show generational experience to be a key influence on presidential decision-making: Munich persuaded mid-twentieth-century presidents that force should be used early and decisively while Vietnam cautioned later presidents against using force at all. Both analogies were at work for the Gulf War, with Munich urging a decision for war and Vietnam warning against a graduated and highly restricted use of force. Record also reminds us of the times when presidents have used analogies to mobilize public support for action they have already decided to take. Addressing both the process of presidential decision-making and the wisdom of decisions made, this well-reasoned book offers timely lessons to a broad audience that includes political scientists, military historians, defense analysts, and policy makers, as well as those simply curious about history's influence.

Making War

Making War PDF Author: John F. Lehman
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
"Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman here confronts one of the momentous issues of American history and the American present--the contending prerogatives of the president and Congress in making war." "Lehman, a lively controversialist and scholar, examines the history of American military decision making from the Revolutionary period to the Gulf War. Whose power is it to declare war, to carry it out, and to sustain its course and bring it to an end? In addressing these major constitutional questions, Lehman is vibrantly contemporary, too, writing as a government insider to offer a exceptionally vivid perspective on Operation Desert Storm and recent military actions in Grenada, Libya, Lebanon, and Panama. Arguing vehemently for the primacy of presidential over congressional power, Lehman adds crucial new details to our understanding of the post-Vietnam era of American politics." "Characteristically, Lehman pulls no punches. He sheds provocative new light on congressional investigations into Watergate and Iran-Contra, authoritatively demonstrating the ways in which Congress has created crippling impediments to presidential power. Yet he provides a fresh understanding of the essential role Congress must play in committing the nation to war, and he enumerates how presidents from Jefferson to Bush have interpreted--and misinterpreted--the powers grated them as commander in chief." "John Lehman's enlightening new book makes a invaluable contribution as to whether responsible judgments will be made if and when the nation must again confront the crucial decision of making war."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Making War and Building Peace

Making War and Building Peace PDF Author: Michael W. Doyle
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400837693
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
Making War and Building Peace examines how well United Nations peacekeeping missions work after civil war. Statistically analyzing all civil wars since 1945, the book compares peace processes that had UN involvement to those that didn't. Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis argue that each mission must be designed to fit the conflict, with the right authority and adequate resources. UN missions can be effective by supporting new actors committed to the peace, building governing institutions, and monitoring and policing implementation of peace settlements. But the UN is not good at intervening in ongoing wars. If the conflict is controlled by spoilers or if the parties are not ready to make peace, the UN cannot play an effective enforcement role. It can, however, offer its technical expertise in multidimensional peacekeeping operations that follow enforcement missions undertaken by states or regional organizations such as NATO. Finding that UN missions are most effective in the first few years after the end of war, and that economic development is the best way to decrease the risk of new fighting in the long run, the authors also argue that the UN's role in launching development projects after civil war should be expanded.

Making War, Forging Revolution

Making War, Forging Revolution PDF Author: Peter Holquist
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674009073
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
Reinterpreting the emergence of the Soviet state, Holquist situates the Bolshevik Revolution within the continuum of mobilization and violence that began with World War I and extended through Russia's civil war, thereby providing a genealogy for Bolshevik political practices that places them clearly among Russian and European wartime measures.

Making the Forever War

Making the Forever War PDF Author: Mark Philip Bradley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781625345691
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
The late historian Marilyn B. Young, a preeminent voice on the history of U.S. military conflict, spent her career reassessing the nature of American global power, its influence on domestic culture and politics, and the consequences felt by those on the receiving end of U.S. military force. At the center of her inquiries was a seeming paradox: How can the United States stay continually at war, yet Americans pay so little attention to this militarism? Making the Forever War brings Young's articles and essays on American war together for the first time, including never before published works. Moving from the first years of the Cold War to Korea, Vietnam, and more recent "forever" wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Young reveals the ways in which war became ever-present, yet more covert and abstract, particularly as aerial bombings and faceless drone strikes have attained greater strategic value. For Young, U.S. empire persisted because of, not despite, the inattention of most Americans. The collection concludes with an afterword by prominent military historian Andrew Bacevich.

Making War at Fort Hood

Making War at Fort Hood PDF Author: Kenneth T. MacLeish
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069116570X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
An intimate look at war through the lives of soldiers and their families at Fort Hood Making War at Fort Hood offers an illuminating look at war through the daily lives of the people whose job it is to produce it. Kenneth MacLeish conducted a year of intensive fieldwork among soldiers and their families at and around the US Army's Fort Hood in central Texas. He shows how war's reach extends far beyond the battlefield into military communities where violence is as routine, boring, and normal as it is shocking and traumatic. Fort Hood is one of the largest military installations in the world, and many of the 55,000 personnel based there have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. MacLeish provides intimate portraits of Fort Hood's soldiers and those closest to them, drawing on numerous in-depth interviews and diverse ethnographic material. He explores the exceptional position that soldiers occupy in relation to violence--not only trained to fight and kill, but placed deliberately in harm's way and offered up to die. The death and destruction of war happen to soldiers on purpose. MacLeish interweaves gripping narrative with critical theory and anthropological analysis to vividly describe this unique condition of vulnerability. Along the way, he sheds new light on the dynamics of military family life, stereotypes of veterans, what it means for civilians to say "thank you" to soldiers, and other questions about the sometimes ordinary, sometimes agonizing labor of making war. Making War at Fort Hood is the first ethnography to examine the everyday lives of the soldiers, families, and communities who personally bear the burden of America's most recent wars.

Making War in Côte D'Ivoire

Making War in Côte D'Ivoire PDF Author: Mike McGovern
Publisher: Hurst & Company
ISBN: 9781849040648
Category : Côte d'Ivoire
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Gives play to the personalities involved, from Felix Houphouet-Boigny, 'The Ram', who managed Ivorian politics for the country's first 33 years of independence, to the contemporary First Lady Simone Gbagbo. This book's analysis is of the dynamics in place that give certain predictability to the actions of each of the key figures in the drama.

The First Way of War

The First Way of War PDF Author: John Grenier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139444705
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
This 2005 book explores the evolution of Americans' first way of war, to show how war waged against Indian noncombatant population and agricultural resources became the method early Americans employed and, ultimately, defined their military heritage. The sanguinary story of the American conquest of the Indian peoples east of the Mississippi River helps demonstrate how early Americans embraced warfare shaped by extravagant violence and focused on conquest. Grenier provides a major revision in understanding the place of warfare directed on noncombatants in the American military tradition, and his conclusions are relevant to understand US 'special operations' in the War on Terror.

Making War, Thinking History

Making War, Thinking History PDF Author: Jeffrey Record
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612515819
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
In examining the influence of historical analogies on decisions to use--or not use--force, military strategist Jeffrey Record assesses every major application of U.S. force from the Korean War to the NATO war on Serbia. Specifically, he looks at the influence of two analogies: the democracies? appeasement of Hitler at Munich and America's defeat in the Vietnam War. His book judges the utility of these two analogies on presidential decision-making and finds considerable misuse of them in situations where force was optional. He points to the Johnson administration's application of the Munich analogy to the circumstances of Southeast Asia in 1965 as the most egregious example of their misuse, but also cites the faulty reasoning by historical analogy that prevailed among critics of Reagan's policy in Central America and in Clinton's use of force in Haiti and the former Yugoslavia. The author's findings show generational experience to be a key influence on presidential decision-making: Munich persuaded mid-twentieth-century presidents that force should be used early and decisively while Vietnam cautioned later presidents against using force at all. Both analogies were at work for the Gulf War, with Munich urging a decision for war and Vietnam warning against a graduated and highly restricted use of force. Record also reminds us of the times when presidents have used analogies to mobilize public support for action they have already decided to take. Addressing both the process of presidential decision-making and the wisdom of decisions made, this well-reasoned book offers timely lessons to a broad audience that includes political scientists, military historians, defense analysts, and policy makers, as well as those simply curious about history's influence.

How to Make War

How to Make War PDF Author: James F. Dunnigan
Publisher: Quill
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description


War and State Making

War and State Making PDF Author: Karen A. Rasler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000339262
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Originally published in 1989, this is an empirical study of the impact of global war on the expansion and shaping of nation-states. Individual chapters examine the effects of such wars, and the preparation for them, on debt financing, expansion, military spending, welfare spending, GNP and domestic violence. The authors conclude that by virtue of the changes they spurn, global wars are inherently ‘accelerators of social change’.