Recommending Books for Purchase (Bulletin 80 - June 2020): Military and Defence Studies

This book sets out to explain the variation in nations' reactions to their defeats in war. Typically, we observe two broad reactions to defeat: an inward-oriented response that accepts defeat as a reality and utilizes it as an opportunity for a new beginning, and an outward-oriented one that rejects defeat and invests national energies in restoring what was lost--most likely by force. This volume argues that although defeats in wars are humiliating experiences, those sentiments do not necessarily trigger aggressive nationalism, empower radical parties, and create revisionist foreign policy. Post-defeat, radicalization will be actualized only if it is filtered through three variables: national self-images (inflated or realistic), political parties (strong or weak), and international opportunities and constraints. The author tests this theory on four detailed case studies, Egypt (1967), Turkey/Ottoman Empire, Hungary and Bulgaria (WWI), and Islamic fundamentalism. 

This book assesses the Sino-Japanese strategic competition in the context of the South China Sea (SCS) territorial disputes. The South China Sea territorial disputes are quickly becoming the most significant security problem in East and Southeast Asia. Two major powers, China and Japan, have interests in the region and are pursuing different strategies that can significantly impact the outcome of the disputes. Utilizing Securitization Theory, this study evaluates the Sino-Japanese strategic competition through political narratives that galvanize the military and economic policies that are transforming the region. It highlights how these narratives, so closely bounded to the political legitimacy of current governments and supported by provocative policies, have resulted in a co-constitutive pattern of enmity and securitization, thus making it increasingly difficult to resolve the disputes.

This book develops a framework for analysis, and a set of research strategies, to better understand the conditions and mechanisms involved in the considerable use of caveats by states contributing militarily to coalition operations. In the professional language of military servicemen, security analysts and decision-makers, "caveats" refers to the reservations on the use of force states put on their military contingents as a precondition to participate in particular multinational enforcement operations. Such understood caveats are an instrument of statecraft and foreign policy. However, caveats also are a potential threat to the integrity and military effectiveness of the coalition force in question, and, further down the road, an erosion on the fabric of security alliances. This volume is ideal for audiences interested in military and defence studies, security studies and coalition warfare.

This edited volume provides a critical and comparative discussion of  the changing synergy between the military and society in the dramatically transforming global security climate, drawing on examples from the Asian, Pacific, African, Middle Eastern, European and South American regions. The book is interdisciplinary and covers wide-ranging issues relating to civil military relations, democratization, regional security, ethnicity, peace-building and peace keeping, civilian oversight, internal repression, gender, regime change and civil society. 

This book identifies contemporary military coalition defections, builds a theoretical framework for understanding why coalition defection occurs and assesses its utility for both the scholarly and policy practitioner communities. Drawing upon the author's own experiences managing the Afghanistan coalition for the Pentagon, the volume builds a relevant policy and practical understanding of some of the key aspects of contemporary coalition warfare. Ultimately, it concludes that coalition defection is prompted by heightened perceptions of political and military risk.  Yet the choice of how to defect-- whether to completely withdraw forces or instead find another, less risky way to participate--is largely a function of international and alliance pressures to remain engaged.

This book explores the global politics of disarmament through emerging international relations (IR) theories of discourse and imagination. Each chapter reflects on an aspect of contemporary activism on weapons through an analogous story from literary tradition. Shahrazade, convenor of the 1001 Nights, offers a potent metaphor for the humanitarian advocacy seeking to moderate the behaviour of violent people. The author reads Don Quixote in Cambodia's minefields, reflects on Lysistrata at Greenham Common and considers how tropes in The Tempest were enrolled in both Pacific nuclear testing and efforts to resist it. The book draws on ethnographic fieldwork in communities affected by weapons and disarmament advocacy at the UN and calls for a re-enchantment of IR, alive to affect, ritual and myth. 

This book examines how emergent trends in innovation and its governance are raising new and old questions about how to control technology. It develops a new framework for understanding how emergent fields of science and technology emerge as security concerns; and the key challenges these fields pose from a global security perspective. The study focuses on the politics which have surrounded the emergent field of Synthetic Biology, a field which has become emblematic of both the potentials and limits of more preemptive approaches to governance. This highly accessible work will be of interest to both scholars and practitioners working on the ethical responsibilities of innovators and the assessment of emergent technology as well as the global governance of weapons.  

This book sheds light on one of the most under-studied but powerful navies in the world. Using a multifaceted approach, it examines how the Republic of Korea Navy (ROKN) has sought to transform itself from a coastal naval force focused solely on deterring North Korea to a navy capable of operating in the blue waters of East Asia and beyond. The project argues that peninsular and regional security dynamics, technological developments, the US-South Korea alliance and internal politics combine to inform and shape ROKN modernisation.  

This book, the second of a two-volume series entitled POW/MIA Accounting, summarizes the final four of the author's seven-year association with the U.S. government's program to account for military service members who went missing during America's historic conflicts. Based on hundreds of primary source documents including email and records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, this volume is an unprecedented description of the extent of political interference in the science of human skeletal identification. The narrative in Volume 2 derives from the author's four-year experience as a member of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command's (JPAC) Central Identification Laboratory located at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam on Oahu, Hawaii.  

Why has the US military begun to suffer from overstretch in recent decades? Why is one of the largest militaries in the world, and the most expensive by far, periodically stressed by the operational demands placed upon it? This book argues that recent problems with overstretch are the result of a heavy reliance on technology to solve tactical and strategic problems. Over the last seven decades, the US armed services have consistently chosen to push the technological frontier out in an effort to first gain, and then maintain, qualitative superiority over potential foes. The high procurement and support costs associated with cutting-edge weapon systems has resulted in a military that is shrinking in both absolute size and in the relative share of combat forces. The culmination of this process is a US military that increasingly lacks the capacity needed to conduct operations without putting significant stress on its personnel and equipment. Lake argues that this pattern is a manifestation of an American cultural disposition favoring technology. He shows that this affinity for technology is present in the organizational cultures of all the armed services, though not to the same degree. By examining procurement programs for each armed service, this book reveals how attempts to develop and leverage superior technology has resulted in some notable program failures, high procurement costs for the latest generation of equipment with associated production cuts, and the high support requirements that are causing the relative share of combat forces to shrink. Lake's analysis of recent initiatives by the armed services suggests that this pattern is likely to continue, with the US military remaining prone to overstretch whenever its operational tempo increases above the peacetime baseline.

This book explores different aspects of the regulation of private security contractors working for governments. The author specifically examines the US, identifying the obstacles that have hindered US regulatory outcomes. Theoretical discussions, supported by conceptual analysis of Bourdieu's Theory of Practice, are applied to analysis based on interviews with current and former employees of key stakeholders. By analyzing the political, bureaucratic, and organizational obstacles to the implementation of consistent and enforceable regulations, Jovana Jezdimirovic Ranito points to creative possibilities for future use of her conceptual framework. 

This book examines why the U.S. counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have failed and presents a solution for future counterinsurgency campaigns that was developed and tested in Afghanistan in the hope that it will spark a conversation that will shape the next counterinsurgency war to U.S. advantage. The author argues that both development assistance and counterinsurgency campaigns - which often go hand in hand -  overwhelm weak states with too much money, too many projects, and too many consultants, leading to weaker rather than stronger governments. The solution proposed, was initially developed by David Petraeus but never effectively implemented. Using an insider's perspective, this volume explains the details of this solution and the problem with its mis-implementation in Afghanistan.