Kategoria BISAC: Technology & Engineering >> Military Science

This unique study argues that the draft dodgers who went to Canada during the Vietnam War were not always the anti-war radicals portrayed in popular culture. Many were the products of stable, conservative, middle class homes who were more interested in furthering their education and careers than in fighting in Southeast Asia. The conflict in Vietnam was just one cause among many for their deep sense of disaffection from the land of their birth. These expatriates remained quintessentially American, because evading the draft was in their opinion consistant with the very best American...

As Rynning shows, armed forces have a natural interest in shaping military doctrine according to their resources, doctrinal traditions, as well as their assessment of the international environment. However, armed forces are also the instrument of policy-makers who are in charge of national security. Using civil-military relations in France from 1958 to the present as a case study, he shows when policy-makers are capable of controlling military doctrine as well as the means armed forces rely on to influence doctrine.

Some scholars argue that policy-makers can control military doctrine...

In this compelling study, Eland questions the core assumptions of the American foreign policy and defense establishments that call for military interventions around the world and high and increasing defense budgets at home. He outlines a security policy more appropriate to the sober realities of the post-Cold War era. This is an approach that calls for military restraint overseas, taking advantage of the already secure U.S. geostrategic position, while safeguarding vital national interests. Eland details the military force structure needed for this new role and calculates the reduced...

A war of attrition is usually conceptualized as a bloody slogging match, epitomized by imagery of futile frontal assaults on the Western Front of the First World War. As such, many academics, politicians, and military officers currently consider attrition to be a wholly undesirable method of warfare. This first book-length study of wars of attrition challenges this viewpoint. A historical analysis of the strategic thought behind attrition demonstrates that it was often implemented to conserve casualties, not to engage in a bloody senseless assault. Moreover, attrition frequently proved an...

Huelfer examines the casualty issue in American military thought and practice during the years between the World Wars. He argues that Americans exhibited a distinct aversion to combat casualties duirng the Interwar Period, a phenomenon that visibly influenced the military establishment and helped shape strategic planning, force modernization, and rearmament for World War II. In a broad topical approach, Huelfer's main theme--casualty aversion--is woven into discussions about military strategy and policies, doctrinal and technological development, the military education system, and how the...

For more than 40 years, U.S. defense policy and the design of military capabilities were driven by the threat to national security posed by the Soviet Union and its allies. As the Soviet Union collapsed, analysts wondered what effect this dramatic change would have upon defense policy and the military capabilities designed to support it. Strangely enough, this development would ultimately have little effect on our defense policy. Over a decade later, American forces are a smaller, but similar version of their Cold War predecessors. The author argues that, despite many suggestions for...

Spurred by the belief that RMA represented the future, the Department of Defense (DoD) set out to transform the U.S. armed forces by adopting RMA concepts. Led by President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the DoD spent billions in an attempt to make the hypothetical capabilities real, changing the entire structure of the armed forces as a result. The services, the media, Congress, and the military industry each had its own agenda, all of which continue to come into play in the development of RMA strategies. The interplay of politics, technology, and military reality...

This volume in the Praeger Security International (PSI) series Classics of the Counterinsurgency Era by two officers-one from the Philippines and the other from America-who fought as guerrillas against the Japanese occupation and went on to defeat the Huk rebellion after World War II. Unlike many other accounts of counterinsurgency operations that focus on theoretical principles and their tactical applications, the authors examine the means to assess the strengths and weaknesses of insurgencies. An enduring contribution of this book is its emphasis on the importance of intelligence in...

This volume in the Praeger Security International (PSI) series Classics of the Counterinsurgency Era by two officers-one from the Philippines and the other from America-who fought as guerrillas against the Japanese occupation and went on to defeat the Huk rebellion after World War II. Unlike many other accounts of counterinsurgency operations that focus on theoretical principles and their tactical applications, the authors examine the means to assess the strengths and weaknesses of insurgencies. An enduring contribution of this book is its emphasis on the importance of intelligence in...

This volume in the Praeger Security International (PSI) series Classics of the Counterinsurgency Era reveals how French officers who served in Indochina, like the author, Roger Trinquier, fought fierce rear-guard actions against ideologically motivated insurgents in the 1940s and 1950s to a far greater extent than their American counterparts later faced in Vietnam. The lack of coherent strategic direction from Paris in the chaotic years of the Fourth Republic left the military with the task of making political decisions in the field. With the original introduction by Bernard B. Fall and a...

This volume in the Praeger Security International (PSI) series Classics of the Counterinsurgency Era reveals how French officers who served in Indochina, like the author, Roger Trinquier, fought fierce rear-guard actions against ideologically motivated insurgents in the 1940s and 1950s to a far greater extent than their American counterparts later faced in Vietnam. The lack of coherent strategic direction from Paris in the chaotic years of the Fourth Republic left the military with the task of making political decisions in the field. With the original introduction by Bernard B. Fall and a...

This volume will help the reader understand fundamental strengths and weaknesses in America's military forces, thereby leading to a comprehension of what genuine military reform is, and is not, and what remains to be done. Ideas will be presented to compare genuine reform to cosmetic dabbling, which fundamentally improves nothing and which sometimes arrives as ill-conceived fads that promise only to burden US combat forces to the point of mental and physical immobility. The work will trace the history of various attempts to impose military reform on American armed forces, especially from...

Why do the combat capabilities of individual soldiers vary so much? This book seeks to provide an answer to this and other questions about variability in combat performance. Some soldiers flee quickly from the battlefield, while others endure all hardships until the bitter end. Some combat units can perform numerous types of missions, while others cannot keep themselves organized during peacetime. Some militaries armed with obsolete weapons have out fought enemies with the latest weapons, just as some massively outnumbered armies have beaten back much larger opponents. In this first social...

Since pre-Columbian times, soldiering has been a traditional life experience for innumerable women in Mexico. Yet the many names given these women warriors--heroines, camp followers, Amazons, coronelas, soldadas, soldaderas, and Adelitas--indicate their ambivalent position within Mexican society. In this original study, Elizabeth Salas explores the changing role of the soldadera, both in reality and as a cultural symbol, from pre-Columbian times up to the present day.

Drawing on military archival data, anthropological studies, and oral history...

As warriors, freedom fighters and victims, as mothers, wives and prostitutes, and as creators and members of peace movements, women are inevitably caught up in the net of war. Yet women s participation in warfare and peace campaigns has often been underestimated or ignored.
Images of Women in Peace and War explores women s relationships to war, peace, and revolution, from the Amazons, Inka and Boadicea, to women soldiers in South Africa, Mau Mau freedom fighters and the protestors at Greenham Common. The contributors consider not only the reality of women s participation but...