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1. Counterinsurgency in Crisis: Britain and the Challenges of Modern Warfare

Author:
David H. Ucko and Robert Egnell
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
Long considered the masters of counterinsurgency, the British military encountered significant problems in Iraq and Afghanistan when confronted with insurgent violence. In their effort to apply the principles and doctrines of past campaigns, they failed to prevent Basra and Helmand from descending into lawlessness, criminality, and violence. By juxtaposing the deterioration of these situations against Britain's celebrated legacy of counterinsurgency, this investigation identifies both the contributions and limitations of traditional tactics in such settings, exposing a disconcerting gap between ambitions and resources, intent and commitment. Building upon this detailed account of the Basra and Helmand campaigns, this volume conducts an unprecedented assessment of British military institutional adaptation in response to operations gone awry. In calling attention to the enduring effectiveness of insurgent methods and the threat posed by undergoverned spaces, David H. Ucko and Robert Egnell underscore the need for military organizations to meet the irregular challenges of future wars in new ways.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Political Violence, War, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
Afghanistan and Central Asia
Publication Identifier:
9780231164276
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

2. Under Siege: PLO Decisionmaking During the 1982 War

Author:
Rashid Khalidi
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
Under Siege is Rashid Khalidi's firsthand account of the 1982 Lebanon War and the complex negotiations for the evacuation of the P.L.O. from Beirut. Utilizing unconventional sources and interviews with key officials and diplomats, Khalidi paints a detailed portrait of the siege and ensuing massacres, providing insight into the military pressure experienced by the P.L.O., the war's impact on Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, and diplomatic efforts by the United States. A new preface by Khalidi considers developments across the Middle East in the thirty years since the conflict. The preface also cites recently declassified Israeli documents to offer surprising new revelations about the roles and responsibilities of both Israeli leaders and American diplomats in the tragic coda to the war, the Sabra and Shatila massacres.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Human Rights, War, and Territorial Disputes
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon
Publication Identifier:
9780231061865
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

3. A History of the U.S. Army Officer Corps, 1900-1990

Author:
Arthur T. Coumbe
Publication Date:
10-2014
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
Abstract:
With the assistance of the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, the Army's Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis published a series of monographs that were intended to provide a theoretical and conceptual framework for the development of an Army Officer Corps Strategy. These monographs consider the creation and maintenance of a highly skilled Officer Corps in the context of the nation's continuing commitment to an all-volunteer military, its far flung international interests, and ongoing changes in its domestic labor market. The authors of the various monographs believe that the confluence of these factors demands a comprehensive Officer Corps strategy that recognizes the interdependency of accessing, developing, retaining, and employing talent. In their view, building a talent-focused strategy around this four-activity human capital model would best enable the Army to match individual officer competencies to specific competency requirements.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, War, International Affairs, and History
Political Geography:
United States

4. Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late

Author:
Joseph Cirincione
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
There is a high risk that someone will use, by accident or design, one or more of the 17,000 nuclear weapons in the world today. Many thought such threats ended with the Cold War or that current policies can prevent or contain nuclear disaster. They are dead wrong--these weapons, possessed by states large and small, stable and unstable, remain an ongoing nightmare. Joseph Cirincione surveys the best thinking and worst fears of experts specializing in nuclear warfare and assesses the efforts to reduce or eliminate these nuclear dangers. His book offers hope: in the 1960s, twenty-three states had nuclear weapons and research programs; today, only nine states have weapons. More countries have abandoned nuclear weapon programs than have developed them, and global arsenals are just one-quarter of what they were during the Cold War. Yet can these trends continue, or are we on the brink of a new arms race--or worse, nuclear war? A former member of Senator Obama's nuclear policy team, Cirincione helped shape the policies unveiled in Prague in 2009, and, as president of an organization intent on reducing nuclear threats, he operates at the center of debates on nuclear terrorism, new nuclear nations, and the risks of existing arsenals.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism, War, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Middle East, and East Asia
Publication Identifier:
9780231164054
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

5. Gendering Global Conflict: Toward a Feminist Theory of War

Author:
Laura Sjoberg
Publication Date:
08-2013
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
Laura Sjoberg positions gender and gender subordination as key factors in the making and fighting of global conflict. Through the lens of gender, she examines the meaning, causes, practices, and experiences of war, building a more inclusive approach to the analysis of violent conflict between states. Considering war at the international, state, substate, and individual levels, Sjoberg's feminist perspective elevates a number of causal variables in war decision-making. These include structural gender inequality, cycles of gendered violence, state masculine posturing, the often overlooked role of emotion in political interactions, gendered understandings of power, and states' mistaken perception of their own autonomy and unitary nature. Gendering Global Conflict also calls attention to understudied spaces that can be sites of war, such as the workplace, the household, and even the bedroom. Her findings show gender to be a linchpin of even the most tedious and seemingly bland tactical and logistical decisions in violent conflict. Armed with that information, Sjoberg undertakes the task of redefining and reintroducing critical readings of war's political, economic, and humanitarian dimensions, developing the beginnings of a feminist theory of war.
Topic:
International Relations, Gender Issues, War, International Security, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
Global Focus
Publication Identifier:
9780231520003
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

6. Young Minds Rethinking the Mediterranean

Author:
Nihan Akıncılar, Anna Alexieva, Jennifer Brindisi, Evinç Doğan, Amanda E. Rogers, and Beatrice Schimmang
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Global Political Trends Center (GPoT)
Abstract:
In this paper, Europeanization of minority rights in Turkey will be explained in detail and in the conclusion part, it will be compared and contrasted with the Europeanization of minority rights in Greece. In this comparison, it is difficult to compare and contrast the mechanisms of Europeanization in Turkey and Greece because these mechanisms are suitable for the member states of the European Union (EU). For the candidate countries, the question of “how it is Europeanized” can be only answered with conditionality. Therefore, instead of trying to adapt Turkey in the case of minority rights to the mechanisms of Europeanization for the member states, in this study, it will be dealt with how the EU matters in affecting the minority rights protection in candidate and member states. Therefore, what this study implies when it is expected to explain Europeanization of mi`nority rights in Turkey is not to handle this case through the Europeanization theories, but how the EU affects the candidate countries through conditionality.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Conflict Prevention, Foreign Policy, Political Violence, Human Rights, War, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, and Greece

7. The Foreign Fighters Problem, Recent Trends and Case Studies: Selected Essays

Author:
Michael Noonan
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Abstract:
On the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines have confronted third-party national combatants. Known as “foreign fighters,” these individuals have gained deadly skills and connections that can be exported or exploited to devastating effect in other locations. Over the past two decades, the foreign fighters phenomenon has grown after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979—to the ethnically cleansed fields of the Balkans to Chechnya and beyond. But this is not a new problem. This report is the second volume of findings from an important series of FPRI conferences on the so-called foreign fighter problem. These conferences have brought together leading experts in the field to examine and discuss this phenomenon from different ideational and disciplinary perspectives. While the first volume dealt primarily with functional areas of the phenomenon, this edition focuses primarily on the case studies of al Qaeda franchises or allied affiliates in Somalia, the Maghreb, Yemen, and Afghanistan/Pakistan. Today, the outcomes of the geopolitical revolution unfolding across North Africa and the Middle East are far from clear, the problems associated with al Qaeda and its affiliated movement are likely to breed havoc for the foreseeable future across the region. Furthermore, the veterans spawned by such conflicts undoubtedly will present problems for international security writ large, too. The cases and phenomenon analyzed here may well provide important lessons for both those interested in the regions under examination here, but also for others who examine international challenges far removed from the study of radical extremism of the al Qaeda variety.
Topic:
War, International Security, Insurgency, and Violent Extremism
Political Geography:
Arab Countries and North Africa

8. Policing and COIN Operations: Lessons Learned, Strategies and Future Directions

Author:
Samuel Musa, John Morgan, and Matt Keegan
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Book
Abstract:
At the time of this writing, the United States and the other members of the International Security Assistance Forces are completing nearly a decade of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. What started as more conventional or traditional fights has degenerated over time into insurgency warfare, something U.S. Forces have had to re-learn and re-build to fight. Re-learn and re-build are key elements as U.S. Forces have fought insurgencies in the past, but consistently maintained forces to fight more conventional warfare. Counterinsurgency (COIN) is very different from armored vehicles rolling through the Fulda Gap, or the race to Baghdad. It is a fight not against a Government as much as it is a fight for control of the mind-set of the population by non-state actors in a race to gain popular support. It is a grassroots battle that not only requires military force, but security established at the local level through everyday police presence that represents the Rule of Law, the national Government, and safety and stability locally. It is against this backdrop that the Center for Technology and National Security Policy (CTNSP) and the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO) came together to look at Policing and COIN and the ways, methods, and techniques that could be shared to help overcome the insurgencies Coalition forces face. The efforts of the CTNSP at the National Defense University (NDU) and the CTTSO culminated in a one-day workshop held on September 29, 2010, on Policing and COIN Operations: Lessons Learned, Strategies, and Future Directions.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Terrorism, War, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, Middle East, and Asia

9. Voices from Iraq: A People's History, 2003-2009

Author:
Mark Kukis
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
Featuring the testimony of close to seventy Iraqis from all walks of life, Voices from Iraq builds a riveting chronological history unmatched for its insight and revelations. Here is a history of the war in Iraq as told entirely by Iraqis living through the U.S. invasion and occupation. Beginning in 2003, this intimate narrative includes the experiential accounts of civilians, politicians, former dissidents, insurgents, and militiamen. Iraqis offering firsthand stories range from onetime Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to resistance fighters speaking on the condition of anonymity. Divided into five parts, these interviews recount the 2003 invasion; Iraq's gradual slide into chaos from 2004 to 2005; the start of a new order in 2006; the rise of open sectarian violence over the next two years; and the effort since 2008 to reconstruct a society from relative calm. Each section includes interviews grouped into themes, with brief epilogues for the participants. Not since Studs Terkel's The Good War has a book captured so acutely the human consequences of a conflict we are still struggling to understand. Voices from Iraq makes utterly vivid the meaning and legacy of America's campaign in Iraq.
Topic:
War, Reconstruction, and Domestic Politics
Political Geography:
Iraq and Middle East
Publication Identifier:
9780231527569
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

10. Diamonds and War: State, Capital, and Labor in British Ruled Palestine

Author:
David De Vries
Publication Date:
04-2010
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
The mining of diamonds, their trading mechanisms, their financial institutions, and, not least, their cultural expressions as luxury items have engaged the work of historians, economists, social scientists, and international relations experts. Based on previously unexamined historical documents found in archives in Belgium, England, Israel, the Netherlands, and the United States, this book is the first in English to tell the story of the formation of one of the world’s main strongholds of diamond production and trade in Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s. The history of the diamond-cutting industry, characterized by a long-standing Jewish presence, is discussed as a social history embedded in the international political economy of its times; the genesis of the industry in Palestine is placed on a broad continuum within the geographic and economic dislocations of Dutch, Belgian, and German diamond-cutting centers. In providing a micro-historical and interdisciplinary perspective, the story of the diamond industry in Mandate Palestine proposes a more nuanced picture of the uncritical approach to the strict boundaries of ethnic-based occupational communities. This book unravels the Middle-eastern pattern of state intervention in the empowerment of private capital and recasts this craft culture’s inseparability from international politics during a period of war and transformation of empire.
Topic:
War, Military Strategy, Natural Resources, Labor Issues, State Violence, and Mining
Political Geography:
Britain, United Kingdom, Europe, Middle East, and Palestine

11. Exporting Security: International Engagement, Security Cooperation, and the Changing Face of the U.S. Military

Author:
Derek S. Reveron
Publication Date:
07-2010
Content Type:
Book
Abstract:
when president bush announced in early 2007 that the United States would become more strategically engaged in Africa, it was through the creation of a new military command—U.S. Africa Command—and not through increasing the activities of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) or the State Department's Bureau of African Affairs. Yet this new “combatant” command is not focused on combat at all; it is optimized for promoting international military partnerships through security assistance. In fact, since the announcement was made, the word “combatant” has fallen away with an emphasis on the noncombat functions that this new unified command will fill.
Topic:
Security and War
Political Geography:
Africa and United States

12. Do Good Fences Make Good Neighbors? What History Teaches Us about Strategic Barriers and International Security

Author:
Brent L. Sterling
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Book
Abstract:
While The Above Biblical Quote reflects a prodefense sentiment oft en evident since man established boundaries, by the second half of the twentieth century a general disdain emerged for the continuing utility of walls, fortresses, and other barriers. The improved precision and destructiveness of weapons as well as the enhanced mobility of militaries appeared to render physical works obsolete. In the late 1950s, Yigal Allon, one of Israel's early military heroes and strategic thinkers, captured the prevailing view by observing that “no modern country can surround itself with a wall.” Fifty years later, however, a range of nations including Afghanistan, Botswana, India, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and the United States have increasingly been attracted to such barriers, none more than Allon's Israel. Walls stand guard along its frontiers with Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, increasingly the West Bank, and possibly soon Egypt. The relative effectiveness of these ground- based works at controlling cross- border traffic has encouraged adversary attack from the sky. Whether it be the frequent homemade Qassam rockets shot from the Gaza Strip (about three thousand through January 2008), the mixture of rockets and missiles launched by Hezbollah during the 2006 Lebanon War (more than four thousand total), or the longer- range, potentially nuclear- armed ballistic missiles potentially possessed by hostile Middle East states, a high threat perception has arisen. In response, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has pursued multiple missile defense systems, some with colorful names such as Iron Dome and David's Sling, to be part of a multilayer network. Although the West Bank “separation barrier” has controversially deviated from the Green Line (the 1967 Israel–West Bank border) in some areas, defense efforts overall have been met with approval across the political spectrum.
Topic:
Defense Policy and War
Political Geography:
United States

13. Ethics International Affairs: A Reader, Third Edition

Author:
Joel H. Rosenthal (ed) and Christian Barry (ed)
Publication Date:
02-2009
Content Type:
Book
Abstract:
No abstract is available.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Democratization, International Law, War, International Affairs, and Political Theory

14. Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces

Author:
Steven R. Ward
Publication Date:
03-2009
Content Type:
Book
Abstract:
In 1978 Iran And Its Armed Forces seemed to stand at the peak of their power and prestige in the modern era. Bountiful oil revenues and a strategic position overlooking the vital Persian Gulf oil export routes boosted Iran's standing in the world. Cold War competition made Iran a recipient of Western and Soviet arms and attention. Iran had just passed Egypt, a far more populous country, in having the largest armed forces in the Middle East. In fact, the Iranian military was outpacing some large European countries in the quantity and sophistication of its equipment. Iran was the only country other than the United States to possess the state- of- the- art F- 14 Tomcat fighter. Iran's military also was funding the development of the advanced British Challenger tank with its then revolutionary Chobham composite armor. These programs rep- resented only the middle stages of an extravagant rearmament process, with numerous sophisticated ground, air, and naval systems on order. In addition, the Iranian armed forces, the Artesh, had polished their reputation by gaining combat experience battling rebels in neighboring Oman and by participating in a UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Iran and Middle East

15. Building State and Security in Afghanistan

Author:
Wolfgang Danspeckgruber
Publication Date:
11-2007
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, Princeton University
Abstract:
Afghanistan represents one of the most unique combinations a country and its society may offer. It is a country with a challenging and unforgiving but majestic geography which favors independence both to the central authorities in the capital but also to potential intruders from the outside. It holds a unique geopolitical location south and east of the Hindukush connecting Central Asia to South Asia, and the Middle East to each of them. It is home to a proud, independent people with a history of ages-old religions and diverse cultures, but also of conflict and war. The Afghans and their country stand out in terms of drama, disadvantages and sometimes even simple suffering, witnessing nearly three decades – an entire generation – of warfare and civil strife. Afghanistan too is home to one of the most archaic societies north of the Indian Ocean. It has very little transportation or energy infrastructure, one of the world's highest rates of poverty, and some of the lowest levels of literacy, health care and GDP per capita. However, Afghanistan is today the world's most important opium producer and is centrally located in a region marked by high population and poverty with tendencies toward fundamentalist religious expression. Afghanistan itself became a base of Islamic militancy.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Political Violence, Civil Society, and War
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Middle East