Kategoria BISAC: Technology & Engineering >> Military Science

This is the only current book on maritime Djibouti, and the only one available in English since 1968. It describes the geography, naval history, and present strategic role of this small country, and indicates its possible future. Naval Strategy East of Suez includes previously little-known facts of French covert action in "Italian East Africa, 1938-1941"; and of "Operation Toreador "(1956), which served to aid Operation Musketeer. It also turns a spotlight on the Allied blockade of Djibouti in 1940-1942. In a sense, this book is a more readable, and less technical, treatment of what...

This study argues that guerrilla insurgencies will be a major feature of the post-Cold War international scene, and that the advisability of intervention in some of them will become a serious issue in American politics. Americans therefore need to refine their understanding of insurgency. Anthony James Joes analyzes several major insurgencies of this century, all of which the United States became involved in to one degree or another. While approaching each guerrilla insurgency as a primarily political phenomenon within a definite historical and cultural context, Joes also provides the...

The history of the Scouts & Raiders of World War II is the story of the original ancestors of today's elite SEAL teams. As the Navy's first special warfare commandos these highly trained and skilled officer/enlisted boat crews conducted pre-assault recons of landing beaches, hydrographic recons, marked assault beaches, and guided in assault waves from 36-foot Scout boats, rubber boats, and kayaks at North Africa, Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, Southern France, and Normandy, earning numerous decorations for heroism, including 8 Navy Crosses. In the Mediterranean, S&Rs trained elite units such as...

Regan argues that the militarization of a society is a complex political and sociological phenomenon, that can generate a life of its own and that feeds upon itself. Regan combines a statistical and a historical approach with an empirical analysis to serve as the basis for the development of a theory of the power of political symbolism. He examines the extent to which a violent foreign policy and societal militarization are part of a self-amplifying feedback cycle. At a time when permanent and substantial demilitarization are possible, his study reveals the factors that serve to sustain...

Gudmundsson tells the story of field artillery in the 20th century and its impact on the major conflicts of our time. Its purpose is to provide the reader--whether artilleryman or not--with hitherto unavailable insights on the role that artillery plays in the larger battle and how that has helped shape the world that we live in today. Unique aspects of the book include the treatment of technical issues in non-technical language, the extensive use of German and French sources generally unavailable to the English-speaking reader, the shattering of some long-cherished myths, and the...

This book describes the creation of a new economy in the Soviet Union from 1930 to 1945. The Red Army defeated the Germans in World War II with equipment produced by that economy and not with masses of untrained men as has been often argued. The Soviet weapons were produced in factories designed and built under the direction of American engineers in the 1930s. Also, the Weimar Republic played a part in the creation of the Red Army by providing aviation and tank training schools and technical assistance to the developing armaments industry. Dunn argues that if France had been invaded by the...

These essays explore the link between the naval strength and global power of Great Britain and the United States from 1815 to the present. The British Way of Warfare assumed that the country with control of the sea could ensure safe and rapid communications for its commerce. The American theory of naval strategy, on the other hand, assumed that one had to engage the enemy in order to assure command of the sea. These case studies illustrate once again that naval history must include cultural, economic, political, and social contexts.

Presenting alternative methods of conflict resolution, this examination of the philosophy of peace presents nonlethal weaponry as a solution to the destructiveness of war. Conventional lethal weapons and weapons of mass destruction evolved into an unprecedented 900 billion dollar a year defense industry. This industry and its war makers have taken the lives of an estimated 170 million human beings in this century. A new approach appropriate to the new world order must be found. This study provides a historical analysis of weapons and forces in this century and traces the development of...

After an introduction showing three examples of military disintegration, the author examines six historical occurrences in depth: The India Mutiny of 1857; the 1917 French Army mutinies; the depredations following the British siege of San Sebastian, 1813; the surrender of the U.S. 106th Infantry Division in 1944; the Sand Creek Indian Massacre, 1864; and the My Lai massacre in 1968. The final chapter begins with a recapitulation of the four processes shown to be the foundations of disintegration--leadership failure, collapse of the units' internal primary groups, alienation, and...

Cogan examines the France-NATO problem, going back to its origins in 1945-1952, when a weak France, obsessed by the threat of Germany and jealous of the ascendancy gained by the British during the war, sought security guarantees and assistance from the United States. However, in the process, France put itself in a position of dependence under the NATO integrated command to a degree that later governments of a resurgent France felt compelled to challenge--and are still doing so today.

Post-World War II France was to disappoint the hopes of such American statesmen as Dean...

In his analysis of insurgency war, Donald Hamilton first attempts to provide insight into a strategic concept he believes is little understood today, and to explain its complicated relationship to American policy failures in Southeast Asia during the post-1945 era of containment. The study develops a working model of insurgency, explaining it as both a unique method and type of war-making. Significant findings include the inability of policymakers to perceive a potential insurgency in Vietnam as early as 1946, subsequent American involvement in not one, but three Asian insurgencies during...

This work proposes the reorganization of America's ground forces on the strategic, operational and tactical levels. Central to the proposal is the simple thesis that the U.S. Army must take control of its future by exploiting the emerging revolution in military affairs. The analysis argues that a new Army warfighting organization will not only be more deployable and effective in Joint operations; reorganized information age ground forces will be significantly less expensive to operate, maintain, and modernize than the Army's current Cold War division-based organizations. And while ground...

American foreign policy since 1947 cannot be understood apart from the U.S. security assistance program. Beginning with Truman, every president has considered security assistance programs important means for furthering U.S. national interests. Security assistance has been used to support a wide variety of policies, including the Truman Doctrine and containment, the underwriting of the Camp David Accords, and the channeling of aid to the newly democratic countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

American foreign policy since 1947 cannot be understood apart from the U.S. security...

From riverine operations in the American Civil War and China in the 1860s to the major fleet engagements of the World Wars, plus more recent naval actions in the Falklands/Malvenas War and Gulf War, Lindberg and Todd methodically show how geography has shaped the strategy, tactics, and tools of naval warfare. Alfred T. Mahan was perhaps the first naval professional to recognize and acknowledge fully the influence of geography on navies and naval warfare. Many of his principles of seapower were inherently geographical and influenced both what kind of naval force a state would possess and...

It was logical to expect that the European Economic and Monetary Union would lead ineluctably to an autonomous European defense; the very size of the European Union seems to demand it. The EU eventually will reach the point where its economic and demographic weight will far exceed that of the United States. Can it not be expected too that the EU will seek to make this weight felt internationally? Cogan tracks the halting creation of an independent European military structure, a third way between national armies and ATO, since the Iron Curtain's fall.

With the Cold War's end and...

The great Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, in his classic "On War," introduced the idea of friction in war. Friction was one of the most important ideas that Clausewitz put forward. His application of the term is generally taken to be limited to events on the field of battle. But had Clausewitz lived to the end of the 20th century, he undoubtedly would have broadened his understanding of friction to include the nexus between war and policy making. He would have done so because his most fundamental insight, apart from the significance of friction in war, was his insistence...

American politicians have long been troubled by the question of whether or not to deploy a national missile defense system. The argument has focused upon the questions of cost, both political and fiscal, plus the reliability of the technologies. This study places that debate within the context of an ongoing controversy over the direction of American foreign and defense policy since the 1950s. Since that time several distinct worldviews (labeled Believers, Pragmatists, and Wilsonians) have been articulated, views which predetermine decision-makers' positions on national missile defense....

From the mid-19th century to the early Cold War, the United States has a long history with China, and that interaction has not always been positive or productive. This brief history of foreign intervention in China, viewed through the experiences of the United States Marines, examines how the occupying powers dealt with a fellow sovereign nation. In many cases this involved the partition or outright absorption of Chinese territory through naked aggression. Clark contends that, considering the past two centuries, the Chinese have good reason to distrust all foreigners, and he urges the...

The process of military change management must be as well planned and as well led as any other military operation. This book considers the complex and challenging area of change management within military organizations. While the military can learn a lot from the wealth of existing civilian management literature, the unique circumstances of most military organizations often require different approaches. With an understanding of the important factors involved, military planners can approach change through a means that allows them to harness the inevitability and power of change to achieve...

The gender barrier that stood for nearly two centuries at the United States Military Academy was toppled in 1976. Based on more than one hundred interviews, thousands of pages of Academy documents, and a wide array of secondary sources, this is the first comprehensive history of what the admission of women at West Point meant for the Academy, for the Army, and for the United States. The story of how West Point prepared for the precedent-setting arrival of women has never before been thoroughly told. Given the current interest in the role of women in the armed forces, and the attention...