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The ultimate account of the long-forgotten operations of RAF 617 Squadron, World War II's famous Dambusters The Dambusters were the…
go-to forces for dangerous precision attacks: They bombed Hitler’s prize battleship, Tirpitz, as well as rocket sites, weapon strongholds, and the dams at the heart of the industrial Ruhr; they targeted enemy leaders including Hitler and Mussolini; and they created a false fleet on D-Day, which fooled the Germans. But they also suffered brutal losses, with 75 percent of 617 Squadron killed in action by the end of the war. In this awe-inspiring book, John Nichol, himself a former RAF flight lieutenant, retraces the path of 617 Squadron’s most dangerous sorties, the ones largely lost to history. Including personal stories of the surviving Dambusters, Return of the Dambusters is a tense, poignant story of courage by men who braved death in the name of freedom.US Defense Politics: The Origins of Security Policy
Par Harvey M Sapolsky, Eugene Gholz, Caitlin Talmadge. 2017
This book 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 veterans and new material on topics such as cyberwarfare and lobbying. 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 other 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 third edition will be essential reading for students of US defense politics, national security policy, and homeland security, and highly recommended for students of US foreign policy, public policy, and public administration.The Fall of Baghdad
Par Jon Lee Anderson. 2004
For every great historical event, seemingly, at least one reporter writes an eyewitness account of such power and literary weight…
that it becomes joined with its subject in our minds-George Orwell's Homage to Cataloniaand the Spanish Civil War; John Hersey's Hiroshimaand the dropping of the first atomic bomb; Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories of Rwandaand the Rwandan genocide. Whatever else is written about the Iraqi people and the fall of Saddam, Jon Lee Anderson's The Fall of Baghdadis worthy of mention in this company. No subject has become more hotly politicized than the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime, and so a thick fog of propaganda, both from boosters of the war and its opponents, has obscured the reality of what the Iraqi people have endured and are enduring, under Saddam Hussein and now. For that reason alone, The Fall of Baghdadis a great and necessary book. Jon Lee Anderson has drawn on all of his reserves of stamina and personal bravery to create an astonishing portrait of humanity in extremis, a work of great wisdom, human empathy, and moral clarity. He follows a remarkable and diverse group of Iraqis over the course of this extraordinary time: from the all-pervasive fear that comes from living under Saddam's brutal, Orwellian rule to the surreal atmosphere of Baghdad before the invasion; to the invasion's commencement and the regime's death spiral down into its terrible endgame; to America's disastrously ill-conceived seizure of power and its fruits. In channeling a tragedy of epic dimensions through the stories of real people caught up in the whirlwind of history, Jon Lee Anderson has written a book of timeless significance.Shadow Divers
Par Robert Kurson. 2004
In the tradition of Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air and Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm comes a true tale of…
riveting adventure in which two weekend scuba divers risk everything to solve a great historical mystery-and make history themselves.For John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, deep wreck diving was more than a sport. Testing themselves against treacherous currents, braving depths that induced hallucinatory effects, navigating through wreckage as perilous as a minefield, they pushed themselves to their limits and beyond, brushing against death more than once in the rusting hulks of sunken ships.But in the fall of 1991, not even these courageous divers were prepared for what they found 230 feet below the surface, in the frigid Atlantic waters sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey: a World War II German U-boat, its ruined interior a macabre wasteland of twisted metal, tangled wires, and human bones-all buried under decades of accumulated sediment.No identifying marks were visible on the submarine or the few artifacts brought to the surface. No historian, expert, or government had a clue as to which U-boat the men had found. In fact, the official records all agreed that there simply could not be a sunken U-boat and crew at that location.Over the next six years, an elite team of divers embarked on a quest to solve the mystery. Some of them would not live to see its end. Chatterton and Kohler, at first bitter rivals, would be drawn into a friendship that deepened to an almost mystical sense of brotherhood with each other and with the drowned U-boat sailors-former enemies of their country. As the men's marriages frayed under the pressure of a shared obsession, their dives grew more daring, and each realized that he was hunting more than the identities of a lost U-boat and its nameless crew.Author Robert Kurson's account of this quest is at once thrilling and emotionally complex, and it is written with a vivid sense of what divers actually experience when they meet the dangers of the ocean's underworld. The story of Shadow Divers often seems too amazing to be true, but it all happened, two hundred thirty feet down, in the deep blue sea.Wartime Captivity in the 20th Century: Archives, Stories, Memories
Par Fabien Th ofilakis, Anne-Marie Path. 2012
Long a topic of historical interest, wartime captivity has over the past decade taken on new urgency as an object…
of study. Transnational by its very nature, captivity's historical significance extends far beyond the front lines, ultimately inextricable from the histories of mobilization, nationalism, colonialism, law, and a host of other related subjects. This wide-ranging volume brings together an international selection of scholars to trace the contours of this evolving research agenda, offering fascinating new perspectives on historical moments that range from the early days of the Great War to the arrival of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.Conflict, War, and Peace: An Introduction to Scientific Research
Par John A Vasquez, Sara Mclaughlin Mitchell. 2014
Introducing students to the scientific study of peace and war, Conflict, War, and Peace: An Introduction to Scientific Research, edited…
by Sara McLaughlin Mitchell and John A. Vasquez, provides an overview of current scholarship in this dynamic area of study. Focusing on the factors that shape relationships between countries and that make war or peace more likely, this collection of articles by top scholars explores such key topics as dangerous dyads, alliances, territorial disputes, rivalry, arms races, democracy peace, trade, international organizations, territorial peace, and nuclear weapons. Each article is followed by the editors’ commentary: a “Major Contributions” section highlights the article’s theoretical advances and relates each study to the broader literature, while a “Methodological Notes” section carefully walks students through the techniques used in the analysis. Methodological topics include research design, percentages, probabilities, odds ratios, statistical significance, levels of analysis, selection bias, logic, duration models, and game theory models.The Nazi Genocide of the Roma
Par Anton Weiss-Wendt. 2015
Using the framework of genocide, this volume analyzes the patterns of persecution of the Roma in Nazi-dominated Europe. Detailed case…
studies of France, Austria, Romania, Croatia, Ukraine, and Russia generate a critical mass of evidence that indicates criminal intent on the part of the Nazi regime to destroy the Roma as a distinct group. Other chapters examine the failure of the West German State to deliver justice, the Romani collective memory of the genocide, and the current political and historical debates. As this revealing volume shows, however inconsistent or geographically limited, over time, the mass murder acquired a systematic character and came to include ever larger segments of the Romani population regardless of the social status of individual members of the community.Lessons from Russia's Operations in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine
Par Andrew Radin, Brian Nichiporuk, Jenny Oberholtzer, Katya Migacheva, Michael Kofman, Tkacheva. 2017
This report assesses the annexation of Crimea by Russia (February–March 2014) and the early phases of political mobilization and combat…
operations in Eastern Ukraine (late February–late May 2014). It examines Russia’s approach, draws inferences from Moscow’s intentions, and evaluates the likelihood of such methods being used again elsewhere.Joint Base Langley-Eustis (Images of Modern America)
Par Mark A. Chambers. 2017
Joint Base Langley-Eustis (JBLE) has served for over 100 years as a cornerstone of American military aviation. The base has…
served as a flight test center for US Navy seaplanes and observation/spotter aircraft, as well as the ill-fated Roma airship. Additionally, JBLE was one of the first US Air Force (USAF) bases to operate the advanced Lockheed F-22 Raptor. In 1921, Langley Field served as the launching point for Gen. William “Billy” Mitchell’s US Army Air Service efforts in historic battleship bombing flight experiments. Prior to World War II, Langley Field became the first US Army Air Corps base to operate the Boeing YB-17, prototype of the famous B-17 Flying Fortress. During the latter half of the 20th century, Langley Air Force Base served as the headquarters for the Tactical Air Command (TAC) and the Air Combat Command (ACC). JBLE still serves as ACC headquarters.Endurance and War: The National Sources of Military Cohesion
Par Jasen J. Castillo. 2014
Scholars and military practitioners alike have long sought to understand why some country's militaries fight hard when facing defeat while…
others collapse. In Endurance and War, Jasen Castillo presents a new unifying theory—cohesion theory—to explain why national militaries differ in their staying power. His argument builds on insights from the literatures on group solidarity in general and military effectiveness in particular, which argue that the stronger the ties binding together individuals in a group of any kind, the higher the degree of cohesion that a group will exhibit when taking collective action, including fighting in war. Specifically, he argues that two types of ties determine the cohesion, and therefore the resilience, of a nation's armed forces during war: the degree of control a regime holds over its citizens and the amount of autonomy the armed forces possess to focus on training for warfighting. Understanding why armed forces differ in their cohesion should help U.S. military planners better assess the military capabilities of potential adversaries, like Iran and North Korea. For scholars of international politics, cohesion theory can help provide insights into how countries create military power and how they win wars.Military Adaptation in Afghanistan
Par James A. Russell, Theo Farrell, Frans Osinga. 2013
When NATO took charge of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for Afghanistan in 2003, ISAF conceptualized its mission largely…
as a stabilization and reconstruction deployment. However, as the campaign has evolved and the insurgency has proved to more resistant and capable, key operational imperatives have emerged, including military support to the civilian development effort, closer partnering with Afghan security forces, and greater military restraint. All participating militaries have adapted, to varying extents, to these campaign imperatives and pressures. This book analyzes these initiatives and their outcomes by focusing on the experiences of three groups of militaries: those of Britain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the US, which have faced the most intense operational and strategic pressures; Germany, who's troops have faced the greatest political and cultural constraints; and the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Taliban, who have been forced to adapt to a very different sets of circumstances.Culture, Conflict, and Counterinsurgency
Par Thomas H. Johnson, Barry Scott Zellen. 2014
It Takes More than a Network: The Iraqi Insurgency and Organizational Adaptation
Par Chad C Serena. 2014
It Takes More than a Network presents a structured investigation of the Iraqi insurgency's capacity for and conduct of organizational…
adaptation. In particular, it answers the question of why the Iraqi insurgency was seemingly so successful between 2003 and late 2006 and yet nearly totally collapsed by 2008. The book's main argument is that the Iraqi insurgency failed to achieve longer-term organizational goals because many of its organizational strengths were also its organizational weaknesses: these characteristics abetted and then corrupted the Iraqi insurgency's ability to adapt. The book further compares the organizational adaptation of the Iraqi insurgency with the organizational adaptation of the Afghan insurgency. This is done to refine the findings of the Iraq case and to present a more robust analysis of the adaptive cycles of two large and diverse covert networked insurgencies. The book finds that the Afghan insurgency, although still ongoing, has adapted more successfully than the Iraqi insurgency because it has been better able to leverage the strengths and counter the weaknesses of its chosen organizational form.Contractors and War: The Transformation of US Expeditionary Operations
Par Christopher Kinsey, Malcolm Hugh Patterson. 2013
The U. S. military is no longer based on a Cold War self-sufficient model. Today's armed forces are a third…
smaller than they were during the Cold War, and yet are expected to do as much if not more than they did during those years. As a result, a transformation is occurring in the way the U. S. government expects the military to conduct operationswith much of that transformation contingent on the use of contractors to deliver support to the armed forces during military campaigns and afterwards. Contractors and Warexplains the reasons behind this transformation and evaluates how the private sector will shape and be shaped by future operations. The authors are drawn from a range of policy, legislative, military, legal, and academic backgrounds. They lay out the philosophical arguments supporting the use of contractors in combat and stabilization operations and present a spectrum of arguments that support and criticize emergent private sector roles. The book provides fresh policy guidance to those who will research, direct, and carry out future deployments.Britain and the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy, 1964-1970
Par David James Gill. 2014
Drawing on primary sources from both sides of the Atlantic, Britain and the Bomb explores how economic, political, and strategic…
considerations have shaped British nuclear diplomacy. The book concentrates on Prime Minister Harold Wilson's first two terms of office, 1964-1970, which represent a critical period in international nuclear history. Wilson's commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and his support for continued investment in the British nuclear weapons program, despite serious economic and political challenges, established precedents that still influence policymakers today. The continued independence of Britain's nuclear force, and the enduring absence of a German or European deterrent, certainly owes a debt to Wilson's handling of nuclear diplomacy more than four decades ago. Beyond highlighting the importance of this period, the book explains how and why British nuclear diplomacy evolved during Wilson's leadership. Cabinet discussions, financial crises, and international tensions encouraged a degree of flexibility in the pursuit of strategic independence and the creation of a non-proliferation treaty. Gill shows us that British nuclear diplomacy was a series of compromises, an intricate blend of political, economic, and strategic considerations.Learning to Forget: US Army Counterinsurgency Doctrine and Practice from Vietnam to Iraq
Par David Fitzgerald. 2013
Learning to Forgetanalyzes the evolution of US counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine over the last five decades. Beginning with an extensive section…
on the lessons of Vietnam, it traces the decline of COIN in the 1970s, then the rebirth of low intensity conflict through the Reagan years and the conflict in Bosnia, culminating in the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. It explains how the lessons of Vietnam led the Army to Iraq and the way in which their confronting and reimagining of these lessons offered them a way out of that war. In the process it provides an illustration of how military leaders make use of history and demonstrates the difficulties of drawing lessons from the past that can usefully be applied to contemporary circumstances. The book outlines how the construction of lessons is tied to the construction of historical memory and describes the interplay between the two processes—demonstrating how histories are constructed to serve the needs of the present. In so doing, it creates a new theory of doctrinal development.Waging War: Alliances, Coalitions, and Institutions of Interstate Violence
Par Patricia A. Weitsman. 2014
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.Inside Nuclear South Asia
Par Scott D. Sagan. 2009
For policy makers, legislators, analysts, intelligence and military professionals, students, and researchers, Sagan (political science, Stanford U. ) compiles six…
essays that consider the spread of nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan and the potential consequences of proliferation, including the possibility of war. Scholars of government, Asian studies, international relations and politics, national security affairs, and political science in the US and UK illustrate the complexity of the decision-making process and the diversity of opinions on nuclear weapons issues in these countries by providing insight on the domestic politics and organizational interests behind policies and a critique of narrow views of nuclear proliferation in general. They examine why nuclear capabilities have not led to peace and consider domestic political interests, civil-military relations, and bureaucratic processes that contribute to policy choices related to nuclear testing at various times. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)Deterring Terrorism: Theory and Practice
Par Andreas Wenger, Alex Wilner. 2012
During the Cold War, deterrence theory was the cornerstone of U. S. foreign policy. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, however,…
popular wisdom dictated that terrorist organizations and radical fanatics could not be deterredand governments shifted their attention to combating terrorism rather than deterring it. This book challenges that prevailing assumption and offers insight as to when and where terrorism can be deterred. It first identifies how and where theories of deterrence apply to counterterrorism, highlighting how traditional and less-traditional notions of deterrence can be applied to evolving terrorist threats. It then applies these theoretical propositions to real-world threats to establish the role deterrence has within a dynamic counterterrorism strategyand to identify how metrics can be created for measuring the success of terrorism deterrence strategies. In sum, it provides a foundation for developing effective counterterrorism policies to help states contain or curtail the terrorism challenges they face.Getting to Zero
Par Mcardle Kelleher Catherine, Reppy Judith. 2011
Getting to Zero takes on the much-debated goal of nuclear zero—exploring the serious policy questions raised by nuclear disarmament and…
suggesting practical steps for the nuclear weapon states to take to achieve it. It documents the successes and failures of six decades of attempts to control nuclear weapons proliferation and, within this context, asks the urgent questions that world leaders, politicians, NGOs, and scholars must address in the years ahead.