Middle Powers and Accidental Wars

Middle Powers and Accidental Wars PDF Author: Bernard Fook Weng Loo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
The traditional understanding of strategic stability, as a condition wherein adversarial states refrain from waging a strategic war, is in the first place flawed as it conflates the concept with the wider issue of causes of war, it places too great an emphasis on arms racing and crisis management, and it has focused too much on nuclear strategy. This study situates the concept directly with the phenomena of accidental or inadvertent wars, and proposes an understanding of strategic stability as a condition wherein policy-makers do not feel pressured into knee-jerk decisions concerning the use of military force. This study proposes a framework of conventional strategic stability. It includes a geographic and strategic cultural milieu that frames the processes by which policy-makers and strategic planners identify and assess the threat posed by potential adversaries. It directs attention away from armaments to other military-strategic factors such as interpretations of strategic doctrines and intelligence and early warning processes. how domestic and external political conditions provide clues as to how and why strategic stability either maintains or fails, because decisions for war are ultimately political in nature.

Middle Powers and Accidental Wars

Middle Powers and Accidental Wars PDF Author: Bernard Fook Weng Loo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
The traditional understanding of strategic stability, as a condition wherein adversarial states refrain from waging a strategic war, is in the first place flawed as it conflates the concept with the wider issue of causes of war, it places too great an emphasis on arms racing and crisis management, and it has focused too much on nuclear strategy. This study situates the concept directly with the phenomena of accidental or inadvertent wars, and proposes an understanding of strategic stability as a condition wherein policy-makers do not feel pressured into knee-jerk decisions concerning the use of military force. This study proposes a framework of conventional strategic stability. It includes a geographic and strategic cultural milieu that frames the processes by which policy-makers and strategic planners identify and assess the threat posed by potential adversaries. It directs attention away from armaments to other military-strategic factors such as interpretations of strategic doctrines and intelligence and early warning processes. how domestic and external political conditions provide clues as to how and why strategic stability either maintains or fails, because decisions for war are ultimately political in nature.

The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War

The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War PDF Author: Bruce G. Blair
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815717119
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
The end of the cold war and the disintegration of the Soviet Union has not eliminated the threat posed to international security by nuclear weapons. The Soviet breakup actually created a new set of dangers: the accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons and the illicit transfer of nuclear warheads, technology, or expertise to the Third World. The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War analyzes the danger of nuclear inadvertence lurking in the command and control systems of the nuclear superpowers. Foreign policy expert Bruce G. Blair identifies the cold war roots of the contemporary risks and outlines a comprehensive policy agenda to strengthen control over nuclear forces. Based on discussions with numerous U.S. and Russian experts, including Russian launch officers who served in the strategic rocket forces and ballistic missile submarines, this book reveals a wealth of new facts about the hidden history of U.S. and Soviet nuclear crisis alerts and exercises. It is a richly detailed, rigorous, and authoritative account of nuclear operations and overturns much conventional wisdom on the subject.

The Accidental Superpower

The Accidental Superpower PDF Author: Mr. Peter Zeihan
Publisher: Twelve
ISBN: 9781455583683
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In the bestselling tradition of The World Is Flat and The Next 100 Years, THE ACCIDENTAL SUPERPOWER will be a much discussed, contrarian, and eye-opening assessment of American power. Near the end of the Second World War, the United States made a bold strategic gambit that rewired the international system. Empires were abolished and replaced by a global arrangement enforced by the U.S. Navy. With all the world's oceans safe for the first time in history, markets and resources were made available for everyone. Enemies became partners. We think of this system as normal-it is not. We live in an artificial world on borrowed time. In THE ACCIDENTAL SUPERPOWER, international strategist Peter Zeihan examines how the hard rules of geography are eroding the American commitment to free trade; how much of the planet is aging into a mass retirement that will enervate markets and capital supplies; and how, against all odds, it is the ever-ravenous American economy that-alone among the developed nations-is rapidly approaching energy independence. Combined, these factors are doing nothing less than overturning the global system and ushering in a new (dis)order. For most, that is a disaster-in-waiting, but not for the Americans. The shale revolution allows Americans to sidestep an increasingly dangerous energy market. Only the United States boasts a youth population large enough to escape the sucking maw of global aging. Most important, geography will matter more than ever in a de-globalizing world, and America's geography is simply sublime.

The Paradox of Power

The Paradox of Power PDF Author: David C. Gompert
Publisher: Government Printing Office
ISBN: 9780160915734
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
The second half of the 20th century featured a strategic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. That competition avoided World War III in part because during the 1950s, scholars like Henry Kissinger, Thomas Schelling, Herman Kahn, and Albert Wohlstetter analyzed the fundamental nature of nuclear deterrence. Decades of arms control negotiations reinforced these early notions of stability and created a mutual understanding that allowed U.S.-Soviet competition to proceed without armed conflict. The first half of the 21st century will be dominated by the relationship between the United States and China. That relationship is likely to contain elements of both cooperation and competition. Territorial disputes such as those over Taiwan and the South China Sea will be an important feature of this competition, but both are traditional disputes, and traditional solutions suggest themselves. A more difficult set of issues relates to U.S.-Chinese competition and cooperation in three domains in which real strategic harm can be inflicted in the current era: nuclear, space, and cyber. Just as a clearer understanding of the fundamental principles of nuclear deterrence maintained adequate stability during the Cold War, a clearer understanding of the characteristics of these three domains can provide the underpinnings of strategic stability between the United States and China in the decades ahead. That is what this book is about.

Strategy And Defense Policy For Small States: Problems And Prospects

Strategy And Defense Policy For Small States: Problems And Prospects PDF Author: Bernard F W Loo
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9811244308
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
For students of Strategic Studies in small countries with limited financial, human and military resources, the available literature on Strategic Studies, in particular texts that seek to explain the key concepts and components of Strategic Studies, can be very alien in its focus to the strategic conditions and issues that these countries face.This book contains a collection of essays that seeks to discuss key concepts in Strategic Studies, as well as contemporary challenges in strategy and defence policy, from the perspective of small states. It is based on the idea — derived from the German philosopher of war, Carl von Clausewitz — that there is a distinction between logic and grammar: while the field of Strategic Studies contains a number of key concepts (such as geopolitics and geostrategy, strategic culture, arms dynamics and the phenomenon of military modernization) that are universal in logic, the grammar (that is, the specific manifestations of these concepts) in the contexts of small states is necessarily different from larger, more materially endowed, states.Related Link(s)

Security, Strategy and Military Change in the 21st Century

Security, Strategy and Military Change in the 21st Century PDF Author: Jo Inge Bekkevold
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317565339
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This edited volume explores and analyses strategic thinking, military reform and adaptation in an era of Asian growth, European austerity and US rebalancing. A significant shift in policy, strategy and military affairs is underway in both Asia and Europe, with the former gaining increasing prominence in the domain of global security. At the same time, the world’s powers are now faced with an array of diverse challenges. The resurgence of great power politics in both Europe and Asia, along with the long term threats of terrorism, piracy and sustained geopolitical instability has placed great strain on militaries and security institutions operating with constrained budgets and wary public support. The volume covers a wide range of case studies, including the transformation of China’s military in the 21st century, the internal and external challenges facing India, Russia’s military modernization program and the USA’s reassessment of its strategic interests. In doing so, the book provides the reader with the opportunity to conceptualize how strategic thinking, military reform, operational adaptation and technological integration have interacted with the challenges outlined above. With contributions by leading scholars and practitioners from Europe and Asia, this book provides a valuable contribution to the understanding of strategic and operational thinking and adjustment across the world. This book will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, security studies, defence studies, Asian politics, Russian politics, US foreign policy and IR in general.

The Paradox of Power

The Paradox of Power PDF Author: David C. Gompert
Publisher: Department of the Army
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Looking deeply into the matter of strategic vulnerability, the authors address questions that this vulnerability poses: Do conditions exist for Sino-U.S. mutual deterrence in these realms? Might the two states agree on reciprocal restraint? What practical measures might build confidence in restraint? How would strategic restraint affect Sino-U.S. relations as well as security in and beyond East Asia?

Naval Modernisation in Southeast Asia

Naval Modernisation in Southeast Asia PDF Author: Geoffrey Till
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319584065
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description
This edited volume reviews the nature and consequences of naval modernisation in Southeast Asia against the backdrop of growing tensions over the South China Sea and increasing competition between the United States and China in the region. The varying problems and challenges facing the small and medium navies of the area as they seek to grow their maritime power in response to their perceptions of strategic need are compared and contrasted. The prospects of significant destabilisation of an already volatile area - even of a potential naval arms race, are carefully analysed. There can be little doubt that naval modernisation in Southeast Asia is a key indicator of the likely future of the Asia Pacific and also illustrates the problems faced by small and medium powers in a world dominated by the great. Accordingly this book will be of much interest to students and teachers focusing on security in the Asia Pacific region as well to those concerned with naval development in genera l.

Restraining Great Powers

Restraining Great Powers PDF Author: T. V. Paul
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300228481
Category : Balance of power
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
At the end of the Cold War, the United States emerged as the world's most powerful state, and then used that power to initiate wars against smaller countries in the Middle East and South Asia. According to balance-of-power theory--the bedrock of realism in international relations--other states should have joined together militarily to counterbalance the United States' rising power. Yet they did not. Nor have they united to oppose Chinese aggression in the South China Sea or Russian offensives along its western border. This does not mean balance-of-power politics is dead, argues renowned international relations scholar T. V. Paul; instead it has taken a different form. Rather than employ familiar strategies such as active military alliances and arms buildups, leading powers have engaged in "soft balancing," which seeks to restrain threatening powers through the use of international institutions, informal alignments, and economic sanctions. Paul places the evolution of balancing behavior in historical perspective, from the post-Napoleonic era to today's globalized world. This book offers an illuminating examination of how subtler forms of balance-of-power politics can help states achieve their goals against aggressive powers without wars or arms races.

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (Updated Edition)

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (Updated Edition) PDF Author: John J. Mearsheimer
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393076245
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 572

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Book Description
"A superb book.…Mearsheimer has made a significant contribution to our understanding of the behavior of great powers."—Barry R. Posen, The National Interest The updated edition of this classic treatise on the behavior of great powers takes a penetrating look at the question likely to dominate international relations in the twenty-first century: Can China rise peacefully? In clear, eloquent prose, John Mearsheimer explains why the answer is no: a rising China will seek to dominate Asia, while the United States, determined to remain the world's sole regional hegemon, will go to great lengths to prevent that from happening. The tragedy of great power politics is inescapable.