Suchergebnisse

Dominated by the ambitions of France's King Louis XIV, Europe in the years 1650-1715 witnessed a series of wars from which emerged many of the theories, practices, and technologies that characterize modern warfare. During this period, European armies evolved modern ideas of army organization and military leadership, as well as modern views of campaign strategy and battle tactics. As European soldiers and colonists moved into Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas, the practice or influence of their military techniques and ideas also affected wars fought in those places. In this volume's 100

War presents the most degraded moral environment humanity creates. It is an arena where individuality is subsumed in collective violence and humanity is obscured as a faceless, merciless enemy pitted against its reflection in an elemental struggle for survival. A barbaric logic has guided the conduct of war throughout history. Yet as Cathal Nolan reveals in this book, even as war can obliterate hope and decency at the grand level it simultaneously produces conditions that permit astonishing exceptions of mercy and shared dignity. Pulling the trigger is usually both the expedient thing and required by war's grim and remorseless calculus. Yet somehow the trigger is not always pulled. Humanity is rediscovered and honoured in a flash of recognition. This book gathers and explores acts of singular mercy, giving them form and substance - across wars, causes, and opposing uniforms.

"History has tended to measure war's winners and losers in terms of its major engagements, battles in which the result was so clear-cut that they could be considered "decisive." Cannae, Konigsberg, Austerlitz, Midway, Agincourt-all resonate in the literature of war and in our imaginations as tide-turning. But these legendary battles may or may not have determined the final outcome of the wars in which they were fought. Nor has the "genius" of the so-called Great Captains--from Alexander the Great to Frederick the Great and Napoleon--played a major role. Wars are decided in other ways. Cathal J. Nolan's The Allure of Battle systematically and engrossingly examines the great battles, tracing what he calls "short-war thinking," the hope that victory might be swift and wars brief. As he proves persuasively, however, such has almost never been the case. Even the major engagements have mainly contributed to victory or defeat by accelerating the erosion of the other side's defences. Massive conflicts, the so-called "people's wars," beginning with Napoleon and continuing until 1945, have consisted of and been determined by prolonged stalemate and attrition, industrial wars in which the determining factor has been not military but matériel. Nolan's masterful book places battles squarely and mercilessly within the context of the wider conflict in which they took place. In the process it help corrects a distorted view of battle's role in war, replacing popular images of the "battles of annihilation" with somber appreciation of the commitments and human sacrifices made throughout centuries of war particularly among the Great Powers. Accessible, provocative, exhaustive, and illuminating, The Allure of Battle will spark fresh debate about the history and conduct of warfare."--Provided by publisher

"This collection of essays cuts to the quick of the most pressing moral issues facing decision-makers today, from the actions of ordinary soldiers in a combat zone to presidents deciding when and where to use force, human rights violations and enforcement, and legal, economic, and military obligations in a globalized world"--

Spans more than 200 years of U.S. diplomatic history. Presents an implicit account of the evolution of the U.S. diplomatic service, from its founding and early principles through the 20th century evolution of its habits and culture.

This article seeks to outline the complex pattern of liberty and national security in international relations through a survey of the historical relationship between those concerns in the foreign policy of what is still the world's most important democratic country, the United States. This study is not a history per se of American diplomacy concerning this cluster of issues, although it is historical in approach. Nor is it directly concerned with an on-going theoretical debate over whether or not democracies are inherently more peaceful than other types of states, despite drawing upon elements of that debate and having implications for it. Instead, what is presented here is an interpretive survey of the importance in U.S. foreign policy of a set of key ideas about international order — specifically, the attempt to resolve ideas of "American mission " with the requirements of security, through increasingly active linkage of U.S. national security to the internal character of foreign regimes. It then explores how that tension became manifest in two policy settings : the United Nations, one of America's major multilateral relationship s, and the Soviet Union, its principal bilateral relationship. In short, this study is concerned with governing ideas in American diplomacy; with how such ideas arise and are sustained or challenged; with how they have been disseminated among allies (and even adversaries) ; and the implications of the reality that the United States have succeeded in imbedding these notions in the structures of the international System. The essay concludes with what should prove a controversial, qualified approval of the new 'liberal realism' evident in American foreign policy in the early 1990s.