Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crisis explores, in fascinating depth, the nature, direction, and impact of military and civilian influence on violence. Richard K. Betts discusses the postwar involvement of U.S. military and nonmilitary leaders in decisions on the use of force in foreign affairs, and the variety of advice from the different military services. Twenty intervention decisions and ten escalation desicions in crises are examined, including Korea, Berlin, Cuba, and Vietnam. To update this edition Betts has written a preface analyzing the significance of the issues in light...

The tragic events of September 11, 2001, and the false assessment of Saddam Hussein's weapons arsenal were terrible reminders that good information is essential to national security. These failures convinced the American public that their intelligence system was broken and prompted a radical reorganization of agencies and personnel, but as Richard K. Betts argues in this book, critics and politicians have severely underestimated the obstacles to true reform.

One of the nation's foremost political scientists, Betts draws on three decades of work within the U.S. intelligence community to...

Throughout most of American history, US military forces proved unready for the wars that were thrust upon them and suffered costly reverses in early battles. During the Cold War, for the first time, US defence policy tried to maintain high readiness in peacetime. But now, with the Cold War over and defence budgets falling, what will happwn to US military forces? Will they revert to a state of unpreparedness or find their balance? Politicians and military planners alike have found this crucial issue especially difficult to deal with because they have often misunderstood what unreadiness really...

In numerous crises after World War II-- Berlin, Korea, the Taiwan Straits, and the Middle East-- the United States resorted to vague threats to use nuclear weapons in order to deter Soviet or Chinese military action. On a few occasions the Soviet Union also engaged in nuclear saber-ratling. Using declassified documents and other sources, this volume examines those crises and compares the decisionmaking processes of leaders who considered nuclear threats with the commonly accepted logic of nuclear deterrence and coercion.

Argues that although U.S. foreign policy failed with regard to the Vietnam War, the decision making processes worked.

The tragic events of September 11, 2001, and the false assessment of Saddam Hussein's weapons arsenal were terrible reminders that good information is essential to national security. These failures convinced the American public that their intelligence system was broken and prompted a radical reorganization of agencies and personnel, but as Richard K. Betts argues in this book, critics and politicians have severely underestimated the obstacles to true reform.

One of the nation's foremost political scientists, Betts draws on three decades of work within the U.S. intelligence community to...