The History and Politics of Defense Reviews

The History and Politics of Defense Reviews PDF Author: Raphael S. Cohen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780833099730
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This report explores the history and politics behind the post-Cold War history of defense reviews to understand how they evolved, what they can and cannot accomplish, and how the services and the Department of Defense can maximize their future use.

The History and Politics of Defense Reviews

The History and Politics of Defense Reviews PDF Author: Raphael S. Cohen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780833099730
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
This report explores the history and politics behind the post-Cold War history of defense reviews to understand how they evolved, what they can and cannot accomplish, and how the services and the Department of Defense can maximize their future use.

Irrational Security

Irrational Security PDF Author: Daniel Wirls
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801898420
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
2011 Winner of the Selection for Professional Reading List of the U.S. Marine Corps The end of the Cold War was supposed to bring a “peace dividend” and the opportunity to redirect military policy in the United States. Instead, according to Daniel Wirls, American politics following the Cold War produced dysfunctional defense policies that were exacerbated by the war on terror. Wirls’s critical historical narrative of the politics of defense in the United States during this “decade of neglect” and the military buildup in Afghanistan and Iraq explains how and why the U.S. military has become bloated and aimless and what this means for long-term security. Examining the recent history of U.S. military spending and policy under presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, Wirls finds that although spending decreased from the close of the first Bush presidency through the early years of Clinton’s, both administrations preferred to tinker at the edges of defense policy rather than redefine it. Years of political infighting escalated the problem, leading to a military policy stalemate as neither party managed to craft a coherent, winning vision of national security. Wirls argues that the United States has undermined its own long-term security through profligate and often counterproductive defense policies while critical national problems have gone unmitigated and unsolved. This unified history of the politics of U.S. military policy from the end of the Cold War through the beginning of the Obama presidency provides a clear picture of why the United States is militarily powerful but “otherwise insecure.”

Empire of Defense

Empire of Defense PDF Author: Joseph Darda
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022663292X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
“I still think today as yesterday that the color line is a great problem of this century,” an eighty-five-year-old W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in 1953, revisiting his famous claim from fifty years earlier. But the “greater problem,” he now believed, was that war had “become universal and continuous, and the excuse for this war continues largely to be color and race.” Empire of Defense reveals how that greater problem emerged and grew from the formation of the Department of Defense in the late 1940s to the long wars of the twenty-first century. When the Truman administration dissolved the Department of War, a cabinet-level department since 1789, and formed the DOD, it did not, Joseph Darda argues, end war but rather establish new racial criteria for who could wage it, for which lives deserved defending. Historians have long studied “perpetual war.” Critical race theorists have long confronted “the permanence of racism.” Empire of Defense shows––through an investigation of state documents, fiction, film, memorials, and news media––how the two converged and endure through national defense. Amid the rise of anticolonial and antiracist movements the world over, defense secured the future of war and white supremacy.

US Defense Politics

US Defense Politics PDF Author: Harvey M. Sapolsky
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135104387
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
This textbook provides an accessible overview of US defense politics for upper-level students. This new edition has been fully updated and revised, with a new chapter on intelligence and new material on unmanned drones, women in the military, the Tea Party, and other key issues. Analyzing the ways in which the United States prepares for war, the authors demonstrate how political and organizational interests determine US defense policy and warn against over-emphasis on planning, centralization, and technocracy. Emphasizing the process of defense policy-making rather than just the outcomes of that process, US Defense Politics departs from the traditional style of many existing textbooks. Designed to help students understand the practical side of American national security policy, the book examines the following key themes: US grand strategy; who joins America's military; how and why weapons are bought; the management of defense; public attitudes toward the military and casualties; the roles of the President and the Congress in controlling the military; the effects of 9/11 and the Global War on Terror on security policy, homeland security, government reorganizations, and intra- and inter-service relations. The textbook will be essential reading for students of US defense politics, US national security policy and homeland security, and highly recommended for students of US foreign policy, US public policy and public administration.

US Defense Politics

US Defense Politics PDF Author: Harvey M. Sapolsky
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135980365
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
This new textbook seeks to explain how US defense and national security policy is formulated and conducted. The focus is on the role of the President, Congress, political partisans, defense industries, lobbies, science, the media, and interest groups, including the military itself, in shaping policies. It examines the following key themes: US grand strategy; who joins America's military; how and why weapons are bought; the management of defense; public attitudes toward the military and casualties; the roles of the President and the Congress in controlling the military; the effects of 9/11 on security policy, homeland security, government reorganizations, and intra- and inter-service relations. The book shows how political and organizational interests determine US defense policy, and warns against the introduction of centralising reforms. In emphasizing the process of defense policy-making, rather than just the outcomes of that process, this book signals a departure from the style of many existing textbooks.

Active Defense

Active Defense PDF Author: M. Taylor Fravel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691210330
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
What changes in China's modern military policy reveal about military organizations and strategySince the 1949 Communist Revolution, China has devised nine different military strategies, which the People's Liberation Army (PLA) calls "strategic guidelines." What accounts for these numerous changes? Active Defense offers the first systematic look at China's military strategy from the mid-twentieth century to today. Exploring the range and intensity of threats that China has faced, M. Taylor Fravel illuminates the nation's past and present military goals and how China sought to achieve them, and offers a rich set of cases for deepening the study of change in military organizations.Drawing from diverse Chinese-language sources, including memoirs of leading generals, military histories, and document collections that have become available only in the last two decades, Fravel shows why transformations in military strategy were pursued at certain times and not others. He focuses on the military strategies adopted in 1956, 1980, and 1993-when the PLA was attempting to wage war in a new kind of way-to show that China has pursued major change in its strategic guidelines when there has been a significant shift in the conduct of warfare in the international system and when China's Communist Party has been united.Delving into the security threats China has faced over the last seven decades, Active Defense offers a detailed investigation into how and why states alter their defense policies.

Strategy

Strategy PDF Author: Sir Lawrence Freedman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199349908
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 768

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Book Description
Selected as a Financial Times Best Book of 2013 In Strategy: A History, Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the world's leading authorities on war and international politics, captures the vast history of strategic thinking, in a consistently engaging and insightful account of how strategy came to pervade every aspect of our lives. The range of Freedman's narrative is extraordinary, moving from the surprisingly advanced strategy practiced in primate groups, to the opposing strategies of Achilles and Odysseus in The Iliad, the strategic advice of Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, the great military innovations of Baron Henri de Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz, the grounding of revolutionary strategy in class struggles by Marx, the insights into corporate strategy found in Peter Drucker and Alfred Sloan, and the contributions of the leading social scientists working on strategy today. The core issue at the heart of strategy, the author notes, is whether it is possible to manipulate and shape our environment rather than simply become the victim of forces beyond one's control. Time and again, Freedman demonstrates that the inherent unpredictability of this environment-subject to chance events, the efforts of opponents, the missteps of friends-provides strategy with its challenge and its drama. Armies or corporations or nations rarely move from one predictable state of affairs to another, but instead feel their way through a series of states, each one not quite what was anticipated, requiring a reappraisal of the original strategy, including its ultimate objective. Thus the picture of strategy that emerges in this book is one that is fluid and flexible, governed by the starting point, not the end point. A brilliant overview of the most prominent strategic theories in history, from David's use of deception against Goliath, to the modern use of game theory in economics, this masterful volume sums up a lifetime of reflection on strategy.

A World Beyond Politics?

A World Beyond Politics? PDF Author: Pierre Manent
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691125678
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
We live in the grip of a great illusion about politics, Pierre Manent argues in A World beyond Politics? It's the illusion that we would be better off without politics--at least national politics, and perhaps all politics. It is a fantasy that if democratic values could somehow detach themselves from their traditional national context, we could enter a world of pure democracy, where human society would be ruled solely according to law and morality. Borders would dissolve in unconditional internationalism and nations would collapse into supranational organizations such as the European Union. Free of the limits and sins of politics, we could finally attain the true life. In contrast to these beliefs, which are especially widespread in Europe, Manent reasons that the political order is the key to the human order. Human life, in order to have force and meaning, must be concentrated in a particular political community, in which decisions are made through collective, creative debate. The best such community for democratic life, he argues, is still the nation-state. Following the example of nineteenth-century political philosophers such as Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill, Manent first describes a few essential features of democracy and the nation-state, and then shows how these characteristics illuminate many aspects of our present political circumstances. He ends by arguing that both democracy and the nation-state are under threat--from apolitical tendencies such as the cult of international commerce and attempts to replace democratic decisions with judicial procedures.

Space and Defense Policy

Space and Defense Policy PDF Author: Damon Coletta
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135969655
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
This edited volume introduces the reader to the role of space in military and defense strategy, and outlines some of the major foreign and domestic actors in the space arena, as well as constraints of law and treaties on activities in space. It also addresses science and technology as they relate to space policy. The book addresses three main questions: How does the realm of space fit into strategic thinking about national security? How does policy regarding space develop and what considerations, both in the United States and abroad, figure prominently in calculations about space policy? How do different states/nations/actors regard the role of space in their national security calculations and how do these policies impact each other? This book fills a niche in the space policy field, providing insights into space and strategy from international experts from the military, academic and scientific communities. A unique feature of the book is the chapter on science and technology, which utilizes the latest information available concerning space utilization and exploration.

The Liberal Defence of Murder

The Liberal Defence of Murder PDF Author: Richard Seymour
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1781689628
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
A war that has killed more than a million Iraqis was a "humanitarian intervention", the US army is a force for liberation, and the main threat to world peace is posed by Islam. These are the arguments of a host of liberal commentators, including such notable names as Christopher Hitchens, Kanan Makiya, Michael Ignatieff, Paul Berman, and Bernard-Henri Lvy. In this critical intervention, Richard Seymour unearths the history of liberal justifications for empire, showing how savage policies of conquest-including genocide and slavery-have been retailed as charitable missions. From the Cold War to the War on Terror, Seymour argues that colonialist notions of "civilization" and "progress" still shape liberal pro-war discourse, concealing the same bloody realities. In a new afterword, Seymour revisits the debates on liberal imperialism in the era of Obama and in the light of the Afghan and Iraqi debacles.