Author: Giorgio Mariani
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252039751
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
The notion that war plays a fundamental role in the United States' idea of itself obscures the rich--and by no means naïve--seam of anti-war thinking that winds through American culture. Non-violent resistance, far from being a philosophy of passive dreamers, instead embodies Ralph Waldo Emerson's belief that peace "can never be defended, never be executed, by cowards." Giorgio Mariani rigorously engages with the essential question of what makes a text explicitly anti-war. Ranging from Emerson and Joel Barlow to Maxine Hong Kingston and Tim O'Brien, Waging War on War explores why sustained attempts at identifying the anti-war text's formal and philosophical features seem to always end at an impasse. Mariani moves a step beyond to construct a theoretical model that invites new inquiries into America's nonviolent, nonconformist tradition even as it challenges the ways we study U.S. warmaking and the cultural reactions to it. In the process, he shows how the ideal of nonviolence and a dislike of war have been significant, if nonhegemonic, features of American culture since the nation's early days. Ambitious and nuanced, Waging War on War at last defines anti-war literature while exploring the genre's role in an assertive peacefighting project that offered--and still offers--alternatives to violence.
Author: David J. Barron
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451681976
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 576
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Book Description
“Vivid…Barron has given us a rich and detailed history.” —The New York Times Book Review “Ambitious...a deep history and a thoughtful inquiry into how the constitutional system of checks and balances has functioned when it comes to waging war and making peace.” —The Washington Post A timely account of a raging debate: The history of the ongoing struggle between the presidents and Congress over who has the power to declare and wage war. The Constitution states that it is Congress that declares war, but it is the presidents who have more often taken us to war and decided how to wage it. In Waging War, David J. Barron opens with an account of George Washington and the Continental Congress over Washington’s plan to burn New York City before the British invasion. Congress ordered him not to, and he obeyed. Barron takes us through all the wars that followed: 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American war, World Wars One and Two, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and now, most spectacularly, the War on Terror. Congress has criticized George W. Bush for being too aggressive and Barack Obama for not being aggressive enough, but it avoids a vote on the matter. By recounting how our presidents have declared and waged wars, Barron shows that these executives have had to get their way without openly defying Congress. Waging War shows us our country’s revered and colorful presidents at their most trying times—Washington, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Johnson, both Bushes, and Obama. Their wars have made heroes of some and victims of others, but most have proved adept at getting their way over reluctant or hostile Congresses. The next president will face this challenge immediately—and the Constitution and its fragile system of checks and balances will once again be at the forefront of the national debate.
Author: Patricia A. Weitsman
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804788944
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
Military alliances provide constraints and opportunities for states seeking to advance their interests around the globe. War, from the Western perspective, is not a solitary endeavor. Partnerships of all types serve as a foundation for the projection of power and the employment of force. These relationships among states provide the foundation upon which hegemony is built. Waging War argues that these institutions of interstate violence—not just the technology, capability, and level of professionalism and training of armed forces—serve as ready mechanisms to employ force. However, these institutions are not always well designed, and do not always augment fighting effectiveness as they could. They sometimes serve as drags on state capacity. At the same time, the net benefit of having this web of partnerships, agreements, and alliances is remarkable. It makes rapid response to crisis possible, and facilitates countering threats wherever they emerge. This book lays out which institutional arrangements lubricate states' abilities to advance their agendas and prevail in wartime, and which components of institutional arrangements undermine effectiveness and cohesion, and increase costs to states. Patricia Weitsman outlines what she calls a realist institutionalist agenda: one that understands institutions as conduits of capability. She demonstrates and tests the argument in five empirical chapters, examining the cases of the first Gulf War, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Each case has distinct lessons as well as important generalizations for contemporary multilateral warfighting.
Author: Aaron Rapport
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801455634
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281
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Book Description
As the U.S. experience in Iraq following the 2003 invasion made abundantly clear, failure to properly plan for risks associated with postconflict stabilization and reconstruction can have a devastating impact on the overall success of a military mission. In Waging War, Planning Peace, Aaron Rapport investigates how U.S. presidents and their senior advisers have managed vital noncombat activities while the nation is in the midst of fighting or preparing to fight major wars. He argues that research from psychology—specifically, construal level theory—can help explain how individuals reason about the costs of postconflict noncombat operations that they perceive as lying in the distant future.In addition to preparations for "Phase IV" in the lead-up to the Iraq War, Rapport looks at the occupation of Germany after World War II, the planned occupation of North Korea in 1950, and noncombat operations in Vietnam in 1964 and 1965. Applying his insights to these cases, he finds that civilian and military planners tend to think about near-term tasks in concrete terms, seriously assessing the feasibility of the means they plan to employ to secure valued ends. For tasks they perceive as further removed in time, they tend to focus more on the desirability of the overarching goals they are pursuing rather than the potential costs, risks, and challenges associated with the means necessary to achieve these goals. Construal level theory, Rapport contends, provides a coherent explanation of how a strategic disconnect can occur. It can also show postwar planners how to avoid such perilous missteps.
Author: Wayne E. Lee
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199797455
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 561
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Book Description
Waging War: Conflict, Culture, and Innovation in World History provides a wide-ranging examination of war in human history, from the beginning of the species until the current rise of the so-called Islamic State. Although it covers many societies throughout time, the book does not attempt to tell all stories from all places, nor does it try to narrate "important" conflicts. Instead, author Wayne E. Lee describes the emergence of military innovations and systems, examining how they were created and then how they moved or affected other societies. These innovations are central to most historical narratives, including the development of social complexity, the rise of the state, the role of the steppe horseman, the spread of gunpowder, the rise of the west, the bureaucratization of military institutions, the industrial revolution and the rise of firepower, strategic bombing and nuclear weapons, and the creation of "people's war."
Author: Thomas E. Ricks
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374605173
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
#1 New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas E. Ricks offers a new take on the Civil Rights Movement, stressing its unexpected use of military strategy and its lessons for nonviolent resistance around the world. “Ricks does a tremendous job of putting the reader inside the hearts and souls of the young men and women who risked so much to change America . . . Riveting.” —Charles Kaiser, The Guardian In Waging a Good War, the bestselling author Thomas E. Ricks offers a fresh perspective on America’s greatest moral revolution—the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s—and its legacy today. While the Movement has become synonymous with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ethos of nonviolence, Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize–winning war reporter, draws on his deep knowledge of tactics and strategy to advance a surprising but revelatory idea: the greatest victories for Black Americans of the past century were won not by idealism alone, but by paying attention to recruiting, training, discipline, and organization—the hallmarks of any successful military campaign. An engaging storyteller, Ricks deftly narrates the Movement’s triumphs and defeats. He follows King and other key figures from Montgomery to Memphis, demonstrating that Gandhian nonviolence was a philosophy of active, not passive, resistance—involving the bold and sustained confrontation of the Movement’s adversaries, both on the ground and in the court of public opinion. While bringing legends such as Fannie Lou Hamer and John Lewis into new focus, Ricks also highlights lesser-known figures who played critical roles in fashioning nonviolence into an effective tool—the activists James Lawson, James Bevel, Diane Nash, and Septima Clark foremost among them. He also offers a new understanding of the Movement’s later difficulties as internal disputes and white backlash intensified. Rich with fresh interpretations of familiar events and overlooked aspects of America’s civil rights struggle, Waging a Good War is an indispensable addition to the literature of racial justice and social change—and one that offers vital lessons for our own time.
Author: Christopher Coker
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
ISBN: 9781588261304
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
Coker (international relations, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK) puts a new spin on war by considering it as a changeable phenomenon that varies through time and place. The shift of war from an event that drew physically and emotionally on a nation's people to one that is seen with detachment as foreign policy is the book's major premise. Coker considers numerous wars, both ancient and modern (including the recent conflicts in Somalia and Afghanistan), and also considers the impact of computers and the possibility of cyber-war. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: Chauncey Del French
Publisher: Oregon State University Press
ISBN: 9780870710483
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The United States' entry into World War II necessitated rapid mobilization of the country's shipbuilding industry. A massive national effort was needed to build ships faster than they were being sunk by the enemy. This book recounts in intelligent and delightful detail how that need was met by the home-front workforce. Chauncey French and his wife, Jessie, were among the hundreds of thousands of workers recruited by Henry Kaiser for the nation's wartime emergency shipbuilding program. The memoir that French began while working as a pipe fitter in the Kaiser shipyard in Vancouver, Washington, is a compelling account of how the war changed the lives of those at home. His first-hand stories relate the sometimes tense and often humorous intermingling of people-including women and African Americans in unprecedented numbers-from different backgrounds who learned to work together for a common cause. The editors have selected and annotated more than 150 illustrations that capture the human drama, teamwork, and camaraderie that made the incredible level of production at the shipyards possible. Introductory essays, an appendix, notes, additional reading, and an index augment the author's lively narrative. Book jacket.
Author: Frank Vogl
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442218533
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 311
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Book Description
Waging War on Corruption is a fascinating look at worldwide corruption by a leader of the global anticorruption movement. Frank Vogl draws on twenty years of experience to share a history filled stories of activists, victims, and villains; strengthening our understanding of the complexities of corruption with wisdom and integrity.
Author: Susan Yoshihara
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0275999920
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
A revealing examination looks at the decision-making in four NATO capitals about waging war in Kosovo and Iraq. Written by a combat veteran who also served on the faculty of the Naval War College, Waging War to Make Peace: U.S. Intervention in Global Conflicts is a thought-provoking analysis of the decision to make war in the modern world. The subject is examined through the lens of the decision-making of four NATO nations—Britain, France, Germany, and the United States—in the 1999 Kosovo campaign compared to their decisions in 2003 regarding the Iraq war. What emerges is a picture of how the bitter dispute over Iraq was the result of disagreements about who has the authority to wage war, when it is justified, and whether nations have an obligation to intervene in the case of human rights and humanitarian emergencies. The book shows how those who enthusiastically hailed a new era of warfare based upon human rights and humanitarian values misjudged the significance of the Kosovo decision, and it underscores issues with which leaders must come to grips if NATO allies are to avoid broader disputes in the years ahead.
