War As Risk Management

Download or read book War as Risk Management written by Yee-Kuang Heng and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-04-18 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major new study shows how war can be thought of in terms of proactive risk management rather than in terms of conventional threat response. It addresses why the study of ‘risk management’ has helped fields such as sociology and criminology conceptualize new policy challenges but has made limited impact on Strategic Studies with new case studies of recent Anglo-American military campaigns in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. The author shows how ‘risk' is now a key defining feature of our globalized era, encompassing issues from global financial meltdown, terrorism, infectious diseases, to environmental degradation and how its vocabulary, such as the Precautionary Principle, now permeates the way we think about war, and how it now appears in US and UK defence policy documents, and speeches from both civilian and military staff. This book will be of great interest to all students and scholars of strategic studies, war studies, international relations and globalization.

Download or read book An Empire of Indifference written by Randy Martin and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2007-03-14 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this significant Marxist critique of contemporary American imperialism, the cultural theorist Randy Martin argues that a finance-based logic of risk control has come to dominate Americans’ everyday lives as well as U.S. foreign and domestic policy. Risk management—the ability to adjust for risk and to leverage it for financial gain—is the key to personal finance as well as the defining element of the massive global market in financial derivatives. The United States wages its amorphous war on terror by leveraging particular interventions (such as Iraq) to much larger ends (winning the war on terror) and by deploying small numbers of troops and targeted weaponry to achieve broad effects. Both in global financial markets and on far-flung battlegrounds, the multiplier effects are difficult to foresee or control. Drawing on theorists including Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and Achille Mbembe, Martin illuminates a frightening financial logic that must be understood in order to be countered. Martin maintains that finance divides the world between those able to avail themselves of wealth opportunities through risk taking (investors) and those who cannot do so, who are considered “at risk.” He contends that modern-day American imperialism differs from previous models of imperialism, in which the occupiers engaged with the occupied to “civilize” them, siphon off wealth, or both. American imperialism, by contrast, is an empire of indifference: a massive flight from engagement. The United States urges an embrace of risk and self-management on the occupied and then ignores or dispossesses those who cannot make the grade.

Download or read book Success and Failure in Limited War written by Spencer D. Bakich and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-03-20 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Common and destructive, limited wars are significant international events that pose a number of challenges to the states involved beyond simple victory or defeat. Chief among these challenges is the risk of escalation—be it in the scale, scope, cost, or duration of the conflict. In this book, Spencer D. Bakich investigates a crucial and heretofore ignored factor in determining the nature and direction of limited war: information institutions. Traditional assessments of wartime strategy focus on the relationship between the military and civilians, but Bakich argues that we must take into account the information flow patterns among top policy makers and all national security organizations. By examining the fate of American military and diplomatic strategy in four limited wars, Bakich demonstrates how not only the availability and quality of information, but also the ways in which information is gathered, managed, analyzed, and used, shape a state’s ability to wield power effectively in dynamic and complex international systems. Utilizing a range of primary and secondary source materials, Success and Failure in Limited War makes a timely case for the power of information in war, with crucial implications for international relations theory and statecraft.

Download or read book War as Risk Management written by Yee-Kuang Heng and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-04-18 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the reconfiguration of war as risk management in the post-Cold War, post-September 11 era. Confronted with ill-defined ‘wars’ against complex security risks such as terrorism and WMD proliferation, the main aim is to suggest and critically analyse an innovative inter-disciplinary approach to the ‘transformation of war’ debate.

Download or read book Rebels in a Rotten State written by Kieran Mitton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uses Sierra Leone as a case study in our understanding of the brutal nature of modern conflict

Download or read book Saving Lives and Staying Alive written by Michael Neuman and published by Hurst & Company. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much like the large commercial companies, most humanitarian aid organizations now have departments specifically dedicated to protecting the security of their personnel and assets. The management of humanitarian security has gradually become the business of professionals who develop data collection systems, standardized procedures, norms, and training meant to prevent and manage risks. A large majority of aid agencies and security experts see these developments as inevitable - all the more so because of quantitative studies and media reports concluding that the dangers to which aid workers are today exposed are completely unprecedented. Yet, this trend towards professionalization is also raising questions within aid organizations, MSF included. Can insecurity be measured by scientific means and managed through norms and protocols? How does the professionalization of security affect the balance of power between field and headquarters, volunteers and the institution that employs them? What is its impact on the implementation of humanitarian organizations' social mission? Are there alternatives to the prevailing security model(s) derived from the corporate world? Building on MSF's experience and observations of the aid world by academics and practitioners, the authors of this book look at the drivers of the professionalization of humanitarian security and its impact on humanitarian practices, with a specific focus on Syria, CAR and kidnapping in the Caucasus.

Download or read book Not War, Not Peace? written by George Perkovich and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-04 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mumbai blasts of 1993, the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001, Mumbai 26/11—cross-border terrorism has continued unabated. What can India do to motivate Pakistan to do more to prevent such attacks? In the nuclear times that we live in, where a military counter-attack could escalate to destruction beyond imagination, overt warfare is clearly not an option. But since outright peace-making seems similarly infeasible, what combination of coercive pressure and bargaining could lead to peace? The authors provide, for the first time, a comprehensive assessment of the violent and non-violent options available to India for compelling Pakistan to take concrete steps towards curbing terrorism originating in its homeland. They draw on extensive interviews with senior Indian and Pakistani officials, in service and retired, to explore the challenges involved in compellence and to show how non-violent coercion combined with clarity on the economic, social and reputational costs of terrorism can better motivate Pakistan to pacify groups involved in cross-border terrorism. Not War, Not Peace? goes beyond the much discussed theories of nuclear deterrence and counterterrorism strategy to explore a new approach to resolving old conflicts.