War In An Age Of Risk

Download or read book War in an Age of Risk written by Christopher Coker and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-05-08 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wars throughout history have been fought in the name of ideology, religion and the pursuit of peace. Our thinking about war – when it is justified, how it should be fought and how it is perceived – has changed dramatically over time. Whereas in the past war has been seen as a battle of wills, this provocative and illuminating new book shows how war has evolved into an exercise in risk management. In a rare blend of political science, sociology, history and cultural thought, Christopher Coker peels away the layers of meaning shrouding our current understanding of war and warfare. Using the ideas of writers such as Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck and Frank Furedi, he shows that risk has become the language of business, politics and public policy and so we should not be surprised that it has now become the language of war. The book highlights the increasing difference between homeland security and national security in the modern world, arguing that the defense of the citizen is often now more challenging than the defense of the state. By demonstrating the changing character and complexity of conflict from World War I to the current the current fight against terrorism, the book provides a powerful and highly distinctive account of the re-branding of war in an age of risk. This book is set to ignite debate amongst students and scholars of international politics as well as appealing to anyone interested in war and its place in contemporary society.

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 On War written by Carl von Clausewitz and published by . This book was released on 1908 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Icons of War and Terror written by John Tulloch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-07-26 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the ideas of key thinkers and media practitioners who have examined images and icons of war and terror. Icons of War and Terror explores theories of iconic images of war and terror, not as received pieties but as challenging uncertainties; in doing so, it engages with both critical discourse and conventional image-making. The authors draw on these theories to re-investigate the media/global context of some of the most iconic representations of war and terror in the international ‘risk society’. Among these photojournalistic images are: Nick Ut’s Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of a naked girl, Kim Phuc, running burned from a napalm attack in Vietnam in June 1972; a quintessential ‘ethnic cleansing’ image of massacred Kosovar Albanian villagers at Racak on January 15, 1999, which finally propelled a hesitant Western alliance into the first of the ‘new humanitarian wars’; Luis Simco’s photograph of marine James Blake Miller, ‘the Marlboro Man’, at Fallujah, Iraq, 2004; the iconic toppling of the World Trade Centre towers in New York by planes on September 11, 2001; and the ‘Falling Man’ icon – one of the most controversial images of 9/11; the image of one of the authors of this book, as close-up victim of the 7/7 terrorist attack on London, which the media quickly labelled iconic. This book will be of great interest to students of media and war, sociology, communications studies, cultural studies, terrorism studies and security studies in general.

Download or read book The New Rules of War written by Sean McFate and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Stunning. Sean McFate is a new Sun Tzu." -Admiral James Stavridis (retired), former Supreme Allied Commander at NATO An Economist Book of the Year 2019 Some of the principles of warfare are ancient, others are new, but all described in The New Rules of War will permanently shape war now and in the future. By following them Sean McFate argues, we can prevail. But if we do not, terrorists, rogue states, and others who do not fight conventionally will succeed—and rule the world. The New Rules of War is an urgent, fascinating exploration of war—past, present and future—and what we must do if we want to win today from an 82nd Airborne veteran, former private military contractor, and professor of war studies at the National Defense University. War is timeless. Some things change—weapons, tactics, technology, leadership, objectives—but our desire to go into battle does not. We are living in the age of Durable Disorder—a period of unrest created by numerous factors: China’s rise, Russia’s resurgence, America’s retreat, global terrorism, international criminal empires, climate change, dwindling natural resources, and bloody civil wars. Sean McFate has been on the front lines of deep state conflicts and has studied and taught the history and practice of war. He’s seen firsthand the horrors of battle and understands the depth and complexity of the current global military situation. This devastating turmoil has given rise to difficult questions. What is the future of war? How can we survive? If Americans are drawn into major armed conflict, can we win? McFate calls upon the legends of military study Carl von Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and others, as well as his own experience, and carefully constructs the new rules for the future of military engagement, the ways we can fight and win in an age of entropy: one where corporations, mercenaries, and rogue states have more power and ‘nation states’ have less. With examples from the Roman conquest, World War II, Vietnam, Afghanistan and others, he tackles the differences between conventional and future war, the danger in believing that technology will save us, the genuine leverage of psychological and ‘shadow’ warfare, and much more. McFate’s new rules distill the essence of war today, describing what it is in the real world, not what we believe or wish it to be.

Download or read book Inadvertent Escalation written by Barry R. Posen and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-13 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this sobering book, Barry R. Posen demonstrates how the interplay between conventional military operations and nuclear forces could, in conflicts among states armed with both conventional and nuclear weaponry, inadvertently produce pressures for nuclear escalation. Knowledge of these hidden pressures, he believes, may help some future decision maker avoid catastrophe.Building a formidable argument that moves with cumulative force, he details the way in which escalation could occur not by mindless accident, or by deliberate preference for nuclear escalation, but rather as a natural accompaniment of land, naval, or air warfare at the conventional level. Posen bases his analysis on an empirical study of the east-west military competition in Europe during the 1980s, using a conceptual framework drawn from international relations theory, organization theory, and strategic theory.The lessons of his book, however, go well beyond the east-west competition. Since his observations are relevant to all military competitions between states armed with both conventional and nuclear weaponry, his book speaks to some of the problems that attend the proliferation of nuclear weapons in longstanding regional conflicts. Optimism that small and medium nuclear powers can easily achieve "stable" nuclear balances is, he believes, unwarranted.

Download or read book Armed Drones and the Ethics of War written by Christian Enemark and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-11 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book assesses the ethical implications of using armed unmanned aerial vehicles (‘hunter-killer drones’) in contemporary conflicts. The American way of war is trending away from the heroic and towards the post-heroic, driven by a political preference for air-powered management of strategic risks and the reduction of physical risk to US personnel. The recent use of drones in the War on Terror has demonstrated the power of this technology to transcend time and space, but there has been relatively little debate in the United States and elsewhere over the embrace of what might be regarded as politically desirable and yet morally worrisome: risk-free killing. Arguably, the absence of a relationship of mutual risk between putative combatants poses a fundamental challenge to the status of war as something morally distinguishable from other forms of violence, and it also undermines the professional virtue of the warrior as a courageous risk-taker. This book considers the use of armed drones in the light of ethical principles that are intended to guard against unjust increases in the incidence and lethality of armed conflict. The evidence and arguments presented indicate that, in some respects, the use of armed drones is to be welcomed as an ethically superior mode of warfare. Over time, however, their continued and increased use is likely to generate more challenges than solutions, and perhaps do more harm than good. This book will be of much interest to students of the ethics of war, airpower, counter-terrorism, strategic studies and security studies in general.