Mission Revolution: The US Military and Stability Operations By Jennifer Morrison Taw New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2012 280 pages $26.00 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A recurring debate within US military affairs is whether change within military operations is "revolutionary" because they are a profound, distinct departure from the past, or they are "evolutionary" as the next logical steps in adapting to complex, recurring and somewhat intractable problems. In "Mission Revolution," Professor Jennifer Taw asserts over the past two decades Defense Department civilian and military leaders have made a revolutionary shift in accepting and integrating "stability operations" as a core mission for US military forces. Faced with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and "persistent conflict" in coming years, issuance of DoD Directive 3000.05 was the pivotal point where progressive defense leaders mandated reform and improvements of doctrine, organization and training whereby "stability operations"--the capability to establish order advancing US interests and values--were put on equal footing with offense and defense capabilities. In doing so, progressives began purposefully moving military forces from a warfighting focus on delivering "decisive force" into areas traditionally civilian-dominated efforts due to the rise of complex threats of international criminals, terrorist, and jihadists. Taw offers alternative reasons beyond the past two decades of peacekeeping and counterinsurgency experience as to why such "infamously stubborn institutions" such as the US military would adopt such changes, asserting they are mostly pragmatic and self-interested: that Pentagon leaders now embrace new, non-standard missions reinforcing the utility of military efforts in policy accomplishment in order to retain force structure during future austerity. Taw provides an interesting overview of the historical context and doctrinal development for stability operations throughout US history, noting land forces have been constantly involved in a variety of lesser contingencies and post-war commitments exceeding the capacity and acceptable risk of civilian USG efforts. However, "warfighting" preparation has dominated readiness efforts while assuming the risk that a military prepared for conventional conflict could readily adapt to lesser contingencies where security and stability were the focus of USG efforts. These perspectives ran counter to the needs of post-Cold War Administrations who complained the Pentagon's "all or nothing" to using military force created an expensive military with little utility in shaping and maintaining international order. Much to Secretary Rumsfeld's frustration (who also believed the military shouldn't "do windows"), Iraq and Afghanistan post-conflict requirements again highlighted military force in itself is rarely decisive, and significant skilled and capable military forces are required in insecure environments to accomplish sustainable political ou
{"title":"Mission Revolution: The US Military and Stability Operations","authors":"James H. Embrey","doi":"10.5860/choice.50-5290","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.50-5290","url":null,"abstract":"Mission Revolution: The US Military and Stability Operations By Jennifer Morrison Taw New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2012 280 pages $26.00 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A recurring debate within US military affairs is whether change within military operations is \"revolutionary\" because they are a profound, distinct departure from the past, or they are \"evolutionary\" as the next logical steps in adapting to complex, recurring and somewhat intractable problems. In \"Mission Revolution,\" Professor Jennifer Taw asserts over the past two decades Defense Department civilian and military leaders have made a revolutionary shift in accepting and integrating \"stability operations\" as a core mission for US military forces. Faced with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and \"persistent conflict\" in coming years, issuance of DoD Directive 3000.05 was the pivotal point where progressive defense leaders mandated reform and improvements of doctrine, organization and training whereby \"stability operations\"--the capability to establish order advancing US interests and values--were put on equal footing with offense and defense capabilities. In doing so, progressives began purposefully moving military forces from a warfighting focus on delivering \"decisive force\" into areas traditionally civilian-dominated efforts due to the rise of complex threats of international criminals, terrorist, and jihadists. Taw offers alternative reasons beyond the past two decades of peacekeeping and counterinsurgency experience as to why such \"infamously stubborn institutions\" such as the US military would adopt such changes, asserting they are mostly pragmatic and self-interested: that Pentagon leaders now embrace new, non-standard missions reinforcing the utility of military efforts in policy accomplishment in order to retain force structure during future austerity. Taw provides an interesting overview of the historical context and doctrinal development for stability operations throughout US history, noting land forces have been constantly involved in a variety of lesser contingencies and post-war commitments exceeding the capacity and acceptable risk of civilian USG efforts. However, \"warfighting\" preparation has dominated readiness efforts while assuming the risk that a military prepared for conventional conflict could readily adapt to lesser contingencies where security and stability were the focus of USG efforts. These perspectives ran counter to the needs of post-Cold War Administrations who complained the Pentagon's \"all or nothing\" to using military force created an expensive military with little utility in shaping and maintaining international order. Much to Secretary Rumsfeld's frustration (who also believed the military shouldn't \"do windows\"), Iraq and Afghanistan post-conflict requirements again highlighted military force in itself is rarely decisive, and significant skilled and capable military forces are required in insecure environments to accomplish sustainable political ou","PeriodicalId":35242,"journal":{"name":"Parameters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71141843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Violence After War: Explaining Instability in Post-Conflict States By Michael J. Boyle Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014 448 pages $69.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Michael J. Boyle's new book offers a welcome look at post-conflict violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Rwanda, East Timor, and Iraq. Despite its tide, the book sensitizes readers more generally to the fallacy of assuming that countries have graduated to post-conflict status with the ostensible end in fighting. Conflict can persist when parties seek to "renegotiate" the terms of a peace through violence, new parties arise to stake their claim to power, or coalitions dissolve in disputes over the division of the spoils. The book focuses accordingly on "strategic violence" which is "designed to transform the balance of power and resources in a state" (8). Such violence is most obvious when one or more of the contending parties seeks to challenge the terms of a settlement having agreed to them, perhaps, under duress or false pretenses. But strategic violence sometimes has a more complex explanation with ambiguous evidentiary support. It can occur when groups fragment to pursue their own (unclear) agendas by capitalizing on ethnic, religious, or political conflict and engaging in criminal activities by employing criminal gangs to mobilize resources and target opponents for "strategic" purposes. "Not only can such violence be unconnected or only indirectly related to the cause of the war itself, but it can also provide a space for opportunists to pursue a variety of personal or criminal vendettas, some of which will be detached from the fighting that preceded it." In consequence, "the violence of the post-conflict period will often appear as an inchoate mix of personal attacks, criminal violence, and political-strategic violence significantly different from violence in the war that preceded it" (5). In Boyle's terminology, strategic violence mixes with "expressive violence," an emotional response to loss or suffering, and "instrumental violence," undertaken for criminal or personal gain. The analytical challenge is met, as Boyle recognizes, by ascertaining the collective (not individual) motives behind the violence, as discerned from tell-tale, aggregate patterns. For that effort, Boyle marshals revealing quantitative and qualitative evidence to portray trends over time in the various conflicts. According to Boyle, the key to understanding the role of strategic violence in post-conflict countries is appreciating the distinction between the "direct pathway" to violence in which the parties, targets, and issues in contestation remain relatively constant (from the conflict through the post-conflict periods) and the "indirect pathway" in which groups splinter and violence is a function of "multiple and overlapping bargaining games between new and emergent claimants for power and resources" (12). In discussing these pathways, Boyle's central argument reduces to four hypotheses
{"title":"Violence after War: Explaining Instability in Post-Conflict States","authors":"James H. Lebovic","doi":"10.5860/choice.185026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.185026","url":null,"abstract":"Violence After War: Explaining Instability in Post-Conflict States By Michael J. Boyle Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014 448 pages $69.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Michael J. Boyle's new book offers a welcome look at post-conflict violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Rwanda, East Timor, and Iraq. Despite its tide, the book sensitizes readers more generally to the fallacy of assuming that countries have graduated to post-conflict status with the ostensible end in fighting. Conflict can persist when parties seek to \"renegotiate\" the terms of a peace through violence, new parties arise to stake their claim to power, or coalitions dissolve in disputes over the division of the spoils. The book focuses accordingly on \"strategic violence\" which is \"designed to transform the balance of power and resources in a state\" (8). Such violence is most obvious when one or more of the contending parties seeks to challenge the terms of a settlement having agreed to them, perhaps, under duress or false pretenses. But strategic violence sometimes has a more complex explanation with ambiguous evidentiary support. It can occur when groups fragment to pursue their own (unclear) agendas by capitalizing on ethnic, religious, or political conflict and engaging in criminal activities by employing criminal gangs to mobilize resources and target opponents for \"strategic\" purposes. \"Not only can such violence be unconnected or only indirectly related to the cause of the war itself, but it can also provide a space for opportunists to pursue a variety of personal or criminal vendettas, some of which will be detached from the fighting that preceded it.\" In consequence, \"the violence of the post-conflict period will often appear as an inchoate mix of personal attacks, criminal violence, and political-strategic violence significantly different from violence in the war that preceded it\" (5). In Boyle's terminology, strategic violence mixes with \"expressive violence,\" an emotional response to loss or suffering, and \"instrumental violence,\" undertaken for criminal or personal gain. The analytical challenge is met, as Boyle recognizes, by ascertaining the collective (not individual) motives behind the violence, as discerned from tell-tale, aggregate patterns. For that effort, Boyle marshals revealing quantitative and qualitative evidence to portray trends over time in the various conflicts. According to Boyle, the key to understanding the role of strategic violence in post-conflict countries is appreciating the distinction between the \"direct pathway\" to violence in which the parties, targets, and issues in contestation remain relatively constant (from the conflict through the post-conflict periods) and the \"indirect pathway\" in which groups splinter and violence is a function of \"multiple and overlapping bargaining games between new and emergent claimants for power and resources\" (12). In discussing these pathways, Boyle's central argument reduces to four hypotheses ","PeriodicalId":35242,"journal":{"name":"Parameters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71024937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Laws, Outlaws, and Terrorists: Lessons from the War on Terrorism","authors":"Sibylle Scheipers","doi":"10.5860/choice.48-5340","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.48-5340","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35242,"journal":{"name":"Parameters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71133898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief By James M. McPherson New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2014. 320 pages $32.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Nobody was better trained as a mid-nineteenth-century commander in chief than Jefferson Davis. There were more important American military leaders and more successful Washington hands prior to the Civil War, but Davis was almost unique in the way he navigated both worlds. A graduate of West Point, combat veteran and war hero (from his role as a regimental officer in the Mexican War), Davis was also a long-serving US senator from Mississippi, who had chaired the Committee on Military Affairs and held the post of Secretary of War during the Pierce Administration. If anybody was prepared for the challenges of an American civil war, it was Davis. Yet both contemporaries and historians have always appeared underwhelmed by the man whom James McPherson now sympathetically labels, "The Embattled Rebel." Part of the problem was too much expertise. Davis knew better than his generals how to fight the war, and with a few exceptions (such as in his relationship with Robert E. Lee), he meddled and micromanaged incessantly. McPherson goes so far as to claim, "No other chief executive in American history exercised such hands-on influence in the shaping of military strategy." (11) That's a bold statement in light of Abraham Lincoln's equally assertive leadership style, but the noted Civil War historian demonstrates time and again how obsessive Davis was about exercising his duties as commander in chief. The signs were apparent from the beginning, when on Sunday morning, July 21, 1861, the Confederate president "could stand it no longer" and "commandeered a special train" to take him out to the first great battlefield of the war near Manassas Junction. (41) There, Davis even acted briefly as a field commander, "rallying" straggling troops by proclaiming, on horseback, "I am Jefferson Davis ... Follow me back to the field." (41) Lincoln, too, saw a little bit of combat in 1864 at Fort Stevens near Washington, but the former Illinois militia captain never ventured anything quite as bold as this. Nor was Lincoln as aggressive as Davis in demanding face-to-face conferences with his generals in the field, though both civilian leaders were surprisingly eager throughout the conflict to travel out to the frontlines to see for themselves what was happening. Of course, Lincoln usually gets praised for being attentive to such details while Davis often gets vilified for nitpicking. McPherson warns against allowing these sorts of comparisons to cloud a more objective evaluation of the losing side of this equation. Instead, the author tries to understand Davis on his own terms and that's exactly what makes this particular Rebel leader seem so embattled. Even the most devoted Civil War buff will be surprised by how early and often Davis found himself criticized and undermined by his own contemporaries. At his First Inaugural add
{"title":"Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief","authors":"M. Pinsker","doi":"10.5860/choice.189760","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.189760","url":null,"abstract":"Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief By James M. McPherson New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2014. 320 pages $32.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Nobody was better trained as a mid-nineteenth-century commander in chief than Jefferson Davis. There were more important American military leaders and more successful Washington hands prior to the Civil War, but Davis was almost unique in the way he navigated both worlds. A graduate of West Point, combat veteran and war hero (from his role as a regimental officer in the Mexican War), Davis was also a long-serving US senator from Mississippi, who had chaired the Committee on Military Affairs and held the post of Secretary of War during the Pierce Administration. If anybody was prepared for the challenges of an American civil war, it was Davis. Yet both contemporaries and historians have always appeared underwhelmed by the man whom James McPherson now sympathetically labels, \"The Embattled Rebel.\" Part of the problem was too much expertise. Davis knew better than his generals how to fight the war, and with a few exceptions (such as in his relationship with Robert E. Lee), he meddled and micromanaged incessantly. McPherson goes so far as to claim, \"No other chief executive in American history exercised such hands-on influence in the shaping of military strategy.\" (11) That's a bold statement in light of Abraham Lincoln's equally assertive leadership style, but the noted Civil War historian demonstrates time and again how obsessive Davis was about exercising his duties as commander in chief. The signs were apparent from the beginning, when on Sunday morning, July 21, 1861, the Confederate president \"could stand it no longer\" and \"commandeered a special train\" to take him out to the first great battlefield of the war near Manassas Junction. (41) There, Davis even acted briefly as a field commander, \"rallying\" straggling troops by proclaiming, on horseback, \"I am Jefferson Davis ... Follow me back to the field.\" (41) Lincoln, too, saw a little bit of combat in 1864 at Fort Stevens near Washington, but the former Illinois militia captain never ventured anything quite as bold as this. Nor was Lincoln as aggressive as Davis in demanding face-to-face conferences with his generals in the field, though both civilian leaders were surprisingly eager throughout the conflict to travel out to the frontlines to see for themselves what was happening. Of course, Lincoln usually gets praised for being attentive to such details while Davis often gets vilified for nitpicking. McPherson warns against allowing these sorts of comparisons to cloud a more objective evaluation of the losing side of this equation. Instead, the author tries to understand Davis on his own terms and that's exactly what makes this particular Rebel leader seem so embattled. Even the most devoted Civil War buff will be surprised by how early and often Davis found himself criticized and undermined by his own contemporaries. At his First Inaugural add","PeriodicalId":35242,"journal":{"name":"Parameters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71027214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-03-22DOI: 10.1163/2468-1733_shafr_sim250040048
S. Metz
The Strategist: Brent Scowcroft and the Call of National Security By Bartholomew Sparrow New York, NY: PublicAffairs, 2015 752 pages $34.99 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Few people have influenced US national security policy as much as Brent Scowcroft. Some luminaries burned more brightly--Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski come to mind--but their time in the spotlight was shorter. Scowcroft was a senior policy maker in both the Ford and George H.W. Bush administrations, and an influential figure in Washington policy circles between and after his stints in the White House. And he was there for some of the most seminal events in American history including the final collapse of South Vietnam and the end of the Cold War. As Bartholomew Sparrow puts in The Strategist, his massive new authorized biography of Scowcroft, "... no other official or analyst has consistently had such a profound impact on the national security policy of the United States. For many in Washington, Brent Scowcroft is a pillar of the foreign policy community and a global strategist par excellence." (xii) Capturing a career of this magnitude is an ambitious undertaking so Sparrow's book includes well over 500 pages of primary text. It draws deeply from both secondary and primary material--including Scowcroft's personal files--as well as extensive interviews with Scowcroft himself and dozens of his colleagues and associates, many of them central architects of American security policy. Sparrow's admiration for Scowcroft is evident on every page. At times it tips so far toward imbalance that it detracts from the power of the book: the author consistently gave Scowcroft credit for everything that worked out well and absolves him of responsibility for what might seem to be missteps. For instance, when recounting components of the Bush policy that were less than successful or outright failures such as Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Scowcroft recedes into the background. On successful endeavors such as the Bush administration's response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, he moves to the fore as when Sparrow argues that Scowcroft "Almost single handedly ... determined what the United States' response to the invasion of Kuwait was going to be" (385). Still, there is much to be drawn from this impressive book. Two questions are particularly important. Sparrow places great stress on the idea that Scowcroft is the model of a national security adviser, combining a detailed grasp of complex issues with realism, pragmatism and a willingness to work behind the scenes rather than hogging the limelight. Sparrow notes George H.W. Bush described Scowcroft as "the perfect national security advisor. …
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Every Citizen a Soldier: The Campaign for Universal Military Training after World War II By William A. Taylor College Station, TX: Texas AM determining the role of universal military training (UMT) and its impact on groups within American society; and defining the relationship of citizenry to its military. Taylor provides a well-explicated precursor to the UMT efforts. Military historians will be familiar with the post-First World War Plattsburg Movement where American students and businessmen volunteered for basic military training under the command of then-former Army Chief of Staff General Leonard Wood. The movement's success greatly influenced Wood and future generals whom he mentored--George C. Marshall and John Palmer--both who became the foremost uniformed advocates for UMT. This legacy of the First World War became the National Defense Act of 1920, which reorganized the General Reserve (including the National Guard). However, a critical provision for compulsory military training of males between the ages of 18 and 21 was dropped from the bill. In hopes the world would not brook another conflict of a scale as the Great War, the United States followed George Washington's imperative for a "respectably defensive posture" (22) with a small standing army and reliance on mobilizing its citizenry for military operations. Embroiled in the Second World War in 1944, Army Chief of Staff General Marshall signed War Department Circular No. 347 to make UMT "the primary goal of the army's postwar establishment." (29) To Marshall, UMT was essential in developing military leaders, informing public opinion on military matters, minimizing the expense of a large standing army, and aligning democratic traditions with civilian participation in defense and a small standing force. …
{"title":"Every Citizen a Soldier: The Campaign for Universal Military Training after World War II","authors":"Charles D Allen","doi":"10.5860/choice.187157","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.187157","url":null,"abstract":"Every Citizen a Soldier: The Campaign for Universal Military Training after World War II By William A. Taylor College Station, TX: Texas AM determining the role of universal military training (UMT) and its impact on groups within American society; and defining the relationship of citizenry to its military. Taylor provides a well-explicated precursor to the UMT efforts. Military historians will be familiar with the post-First World War Plattsburg Movement where American students and businessmen volunteered for basic military training under the command of then-former Army Chief of Staff General Leonard Wood. The movement's success greatly influenced Wood and future generals whom he mentored--George C. Marshall and John Palmer--both who became the foremost uniformed advocates for UMT. This legacy of the First World War became the National Defense Act of 1920, which reorganized the General Reserve (including the National Guard). However, a critical provision for compulsory military training of males between the ages of 18 and 21 was dropped from the bill. In hopes the world would not brook another conflict of a scale as the Great War, the United States followed George Washington's imperative for a \"respectably defensive posture\" (22) with a small standing army and reliance on mobilizing its citizenry for military operations. Embroiled in the Second World War in 1944, Army Chief of Staff General Marshall signed War Department Circular No. 347 to make UMT \"the primary goal of the army's postwar establishment.\" (29) To Marshall, UMT was essential in developing military leaders, informing public opinion on military matters, minimizing the expense of a large standing army, and aligning democratic traditions with civilian participation in defense and a small standing force. …","PeriodicalId":35242,"journal":{"name":"Parameters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71026004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941 By Roger Moorhouse Basic Books: New York, NY 2014 372 pages $29.99 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 23, 1939 is one of the most notorious diplomatic arrangements of all time. With this deal on economic cooperation and spheres of influence between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, Hitler and Stalin crushed Poland, divided up central and Eastern Europe between them and heralded the coming of the Second World War. During the Cold War, historians could only consult the German records of the negotiations leading to the non-aggression pact and the brief period of Nazi-Soviet collaboration, but since the collapse of the Soviet Union our knowledge of the Soviet side of the episode has benefited enormously from the opening up of Russian archives. In The Devils' Alliance, Roger Moorhouse draws on the latest research and sources to offer readers a vivid retelling of the making and breaking of the deal. He carefully reconstructs the game of political hardball played play by the German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and his Soviet counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov. The absorbing story of the diplomatic bargaining over frontiers and trade is set against the wider context of the implementation of the pact. The twenty-two months of Nazi-Soviet collaboration enabled the two regimes to experiment in the brutal imposition of their ideological visions on the peoples of Eastern Europe. Behind the German armies, advancing into Poland came special police units to murder Jews and others deemed enemies of the Third Reich; the advance of the Red Army permitted Moscow step by step to Sovietize its share of eastern Poland and the Baltic states and to murder or exile its political foes. With great skill, Moorhouse conveys the human tragedy of these events with telling details from individual experiences. Through these individual tragedies multiplied thousands of times over, Moorhouse reminds us why the collective memories of the period of Nazi-Soviet collaboration overshadow the politics of Eastern Europe to this day. Moorhouse underscores the basis of the deal was strategic, not ideological. Although the two regimes are often lumped together under the "totalitarian" rubric, there was no red-brown political affinity drawing them together. Ribbentrop may have dreamed about a grand alliance between the Axis states and the Soviet Union to confront Anglo-American powers, but he was alone in this respect. …
{"title":"The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941","authors":"J. Maiolo","doi":"10.5860/choice.188271","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.188271","url":null,"abstract":"The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941 By Roger Moorhouse Basic Books: New York, NY 2014 372 pages $29.99 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 23, 1939 is one of the most notorious diplomatic arrangements of all time. With this deal on economic cooperation and spheres of influence between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, Hitler and Stalin crushed Poland, divided up central and Eastern Europe between them and heralded the coming of the Second World War. During the Cold War, historians could only consult the German records of the negotiations leading to the non-aggression pact and the brief period of Nazi-Soviet collaboration, but since the collapse of the Soviet Union our knowledge of the Soviet side of the episode has benefited enormously from the opening up of Russian archives. In The Devils' Alliance, Roger Moorhouse draws on the latest research and sources to offer readers a vivid retelling of the making and breaking of the deal. He carefully reconstructs the game of political hardball played play by the German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and his Soviet counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov. The absorbing story of the diplomatic bargaining over frontiers and trade is set against the wider context of the implementation of the pact. The twenty-two months of Nazi-Soviet collaboration enabled the two regimes to experiment in the brutal imposition of their ideological visions on the peoples of Eastern Europe. Behind the German armies, advancing into Poland came special police units to murder Jews and others deemed enemies of the Third Reich; the advance of the Red Army permitted Moscow step by step to Sovietize its share of eastern Poland and the Baltic states and to murder or exile its political foes. With great skill, Moorhouse conveys the human tragedy of these events with telling details from individual experiences. Through these individual tragedies multiplied thousands of times over, Moorhouse reminds us why the collective memories of the period of Nazi-Soviet collaboration overshadow the politics of Eastern Europe to this day. Moorhouse underscores the basis of the deal was strategic, not ideological. Although the two regimes are often lumped together under the \"totalitarian\" rubric, there was no red-brown political affinity drawing them together. Ribbentrop may have dreamed about a grand alliance between the Axis states and the Soviet Union to confront Anglo-American powers, but he was alone in this respect. …","PeriodicalId":35242,"journal":{"name":"Parameters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71026533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Four Decades On: Vietnam, the United States, and the Legacies of the Second Indochina War Scott Laderman, Edwin A. Martini, eds. Durham, NO Duke University Press, 2013 334 pages $24.94 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The American War in Vietnam continues to engage creative scholars from across diverse academic disciplines to rethink both the legacies of the war and the war itself. The editors of Four Decades On have assembled an impressive collection of scholarship in this vein, drawing from the transnational study of identity, memory, film, culture, tourism, and economy. The contributors explore boundaries, official histories and counter-narratives, and remembrance and reconciliation to assess the enduring legacies of a ten-year war, now literally Four Decades On, and they go beyond traditional, though still useful, American or Vietnamese-centric approaches. The resulting collection compels reflection on how assumptions and myths influence memory, and emphasizes the illuminating conclusions of new, cross-disciplinary approaches applied to understand better the deep and fingering legacy of this war. In this, the editors succeed. Christina Schwenkel, for example, an anthropologist at the University of California, Riverside, argues transnationalism influences the evolving narrative of the war exhibited at museums, memorials, and other war-related sites in Vietnam. As Vietnam's economy becomes more global and war tourism gains popularity among American visitors, narratives at these sites (which Schwenkel calls "memory-scapes") have shifted from the older hurray-for-we-defeated-the-Americans to a softer, more American friendly tone, often focusing on mutual victim-hood of combatants and non-combatants, regardless of nationality. For Schwenkel, reconciliation, ironically, may be the most important if not unintended consequence of Vietnam's desire to open markets with the United States and court American tourists. Analyzing cultural legacies looms large in this collection. Historian Walter Hixson, of the University of Akron, examines how Americans have emphasized healing and overcoming the Vietnam Syndrome through a variety of means, but most interestingly through film, which tends to focus on the American soldier as victim and the Vietnamese as nearly invisible. These cultural influences allow revisionist history to take root, which can deflect attention from real questions of American intent in Vietnam and American militarism in general. Fitting well into this rubric of memory, narrative, and reconciliation are the divisive issues of "Agent Orange" and accounting for POWs/ MIAs. The legacies of both have been strewn with myth, politics, and manipulation. Diane Niblack Fox, an anthropologist who also teaches Vietnamese Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, offers one the better article-length studies of this controversial issue. Fox looks at the impact of the use of chemical defoliants from multiple perspectives--science, medicine, public policy and law, t
杜伦，杜克大学出版社，2013年，334页，$24.94[插图遗漏]美国在越南的战争继续吸引来自不同学科的富有创造力的学者重新思考战争的遗产和战争本身。《四十年》的编辑们在这方面汇集了令人印象深刻的学术成果，这些成果来自对身份、记忆、电影、文化、旅游和经济的跨国研究。作者探索了边界、官方历史和反叙事，以及记忆和和解，以评估一场十年战争的持久遗产，现在被称为“四十年”，他们超越了传统的(尽管仍然有用的)以美国或越南为中心的方法。由此产生的集合迫使人们反思假设和神话是如何影响记忆的，并强调了新的、跨学科的方法的启发性结论，这些方法用于更好地理解这场战争的深刻和指导性遗产。在这一点上，编辑们成功了。例如，加州大学河滨分校(University of California, Riverside)的人类学家克里斯蒂娜·施温克尔(Christina Schwenkel)认为，跨国主义影响了越南博物馆、纪念馆和其他与战争有关的遗址中对战争的不断演变的叙述。随着越南经济日益全球化，战争旅游在美国游客中越来越受欢迎，这些景点的叙述(Schwenkel称之为“记忆景观”)已经从老式的“为我们打败美国人而欢呼”转变为一种更柔和、更美国友好的语气，经常关注战斗人员和非战斗人员的相互受害者身份，而不考虑国籍。对于Schwenkel来说，具有讽刺意味的是，和解可能是越南希望与美国开放市场并吸引美国游客的最重要的后果。分析文化遗产在这个收藏中显得尤为重要。阿克伦大学(University of Akron)的历史学家沃尔特·希克森(Walter Hixson)研究了美国人是如何通过各种方式强调治愈和克服越南综合症的，但最有趣的是通过电影，电影往往把重点放在作为受害者的美国士兵和几乎看不见的越南人身上。这些文化影响使修正主义历史扎根，这可能会转移人们对美国在越南的意图和美国军国主义的真正问题的注意力。《橙剂》和对战俘/失踪人员的解释很好地契合了记忆、叙事和和解的主题。两者的遗产都充斥着神话、政治和操纵。人类学家黛安·尼布莱克·福克斯(Diane Niblack Fox)也在圣十字学院(College of the Holy Cross)教授越南研究，她对这个有争议的问题提供了一篇更好的文章长度研究。福克斯从科学、医学、公共政策和法律、非营利组织的工作、历史以及最有趣的直接受影响者的实际经历等多个角度审视了使用化学脱叶剂的影响。．．．
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A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire By Geoffrey Wawro New York, NY: Basic Books/Perseus Books Group, 2014 440 pages $29.99 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The present work is a long-overdue look at a neglected topic on the First World War. Author Geoffrey Wawro is a well established author with earlier monographs on the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian Wars of 1866 and 1870 respectively. His current work blazes a new trail. A Mad Catastrophe examines the pre-war Austro-Hungarian Empire, policy makers' monumental decisions, and the disastrous operations in 1914. The acknowledgments section is a fascinating read unto itself on his ancestors and their links to the current story. He intends to demolish the myth of the quaint Austro-Hungarian Empire under grandfatherly Emperor Franz Joseph. His introduction sets the stage in no uncertain terms. Chapters 1 through 5 describe the peacetime Dual Monarchy, including war plans and the pre-military response to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. He sees an unworkable state, the more so due to Magyar duplicity; Austrian inadequacy; and unsolvable, ethnic tensions, which demanded national, self-determination. Franz Joseph, the venerable Emperor from 1848, is out of his depth in the unraveling domestic situation and the more-challenged diplomacy of the early twentieth century during its latest crisis. Domestically, his shortcomings were glaring in a structure that empowered him over a bureaucracy of ostensibly representative institutions. Wawro explains why the Hapsburg state did not posture itself for success. The long-expected showdown with Serbia, showcased by the assassinations, provided more challenges than opportunities. Diplomacy notwithstanding, nearly six weeks passed before troops invaded Serbia. Swift action by Austria would have capitalized upon international sympathy. More critically, Chief of General Staff Conrad von Hotzendorf should have understood Austria's limitations in fighting both Serbia and Russia simultaneously. A Serbian campaign had to be immediate or not at all. The text paints a similarly dismal picture of Austro-Hungarian conflict of military operations. Chapters 6 through 13 cover 1914. Austrian General Oskar Potiorek commanded no less than three disastrous invasions of Serbia in four months, between August and December. Conrad sabotaged proper weighting of effort and deployment in either theater. The fighting in Galicia ebbed and flowed, but Wawro's thrust is poor Austro-Hungarian performance against a better-prepared Russian Army, despite its own challenges. Chapter 14 outlines the devastating cost to the Empire of just five months of war with staggering casualties. He is not the first historian to state Austria-Hungary retained a sort of "militia army" due to losses in experienced officers and noncommissioned officers, besides untrained conscripts. The Epilogue reviews the rest of the war, marked by fas
《一场疯狂的灾难:第一次世界大战的爆发和哈布斯堡帝国的崩溃》杰弗里·瓦沃(Geoffrey Wawro)著，纽约，纽约:Basic Books/珀尔修斯图书集团，2014年，440页29.99美元[插图略]这本书是对第一次世界大战中一个被忽视的话题的一种期待已久的审视。作者Geoffrey Wawro是一位著名的作家，他的早期专著分别是1866年的奥普战争和1870年的普法战争。他目前的工作开辟了一条新路。《疯狂的灾难》考察了战前的奥匈帝国，决策者的重大决定，以及1914年的灾难性行动。致谢部分本身就很吸引人，它讲述了他的祖先以及他们与当前故事的联系。他打算摧毁在祖父弗朗茨·约瑟夫皇帝统治下古怪的奥匈帝国的神话。他的介绍毫不含糊地奠定了基础。第一章到第五章描述了和平时期的双重君主制，包括战争计划和对弗朗茨·斐迪南大公和他的妻子索菲被暗杀的军事前反应。他看到了一个无法运作的国家，尤其是由于马扎尔人的口是心非;奥地利不足;以及无法解决的种族紧张关系，这需要民族自决。弗朗茨•约瑟夫(Franz Joseph)，这位1848年即位的德高望重的皇帝，在不断恶化的国内形势和20世纪初面临更大挑战的外交危机中，已经不知所措。在国内，他的缺点在一个让他凌驾于表面上代表机构的官僚机构之上的结构中显得十分明显。Wawro解释了为什么哈布斯堡王朝没有为成功做好准备。暗杀事件表明，人们期待已久的与塞尔维亚的摊牌带来的挑战多于机遇。尽管采取了外交手段，但军队入侵塞尔维亚还是过了将近六个星期。奥地利的迅速行动将利用国际同情。更重要的是，奥地利总参谋长康拉德·冯·霍岑多夫(Conrad von Hotzendorf)应该明白奥地利在同时与塞尔维亚和俄罗斯作战时的局限性。塞尔维亚的战役要么立即进行，要么根本不进行。文中也描绘了奥匈战争中军事行动的凄惨景象。第6章到第13章涵盖了1914年。奥地利将军Oskar Potiorek在8月至12月的四个月内指挥了三次对塞尔维亚的灾难性入侵。康拉德在两个战区都破坏了适当的努力和部署。加利西亚的战斗起起伏伏，但Wawro的重点是奥匈帝国在面对准备更充分的俄军时表现不佳，尽管俄军本身也面临挑战。第十四章概述了短短五个月的战争给帝国带来的毁灭性损失以及惊人的伤亡。他不是第一个认为奥匈帝国保留了一种“民兵军队”的历史学家，因为除了未经训练的义务兵外，还有经验丰富的军官和士官的损失。结语部分回顾了战争的剩余部分，以更快的衰落为标志，以及战后接替奥匈帝国的失败国家。从本质上讲，哈布斯堡国家的政治、社会和经济状况意味着人员和装备的预算严重不足，这对准备工作产生了巨大影响。脚本化的演习场景取代了自由思考的演习。国家权力的许多方面缺乏足够的能力和能力。奥匈帝国的地面部队没有战略基础、作战技巧和战术表达能力来应对战争的特点，也没有提出防御火力困境的理论解决方案。军队已经有近半个世纪没有参加过战斗了;而塞尔维亚人则经历了两次巴尔干战争。俄国人从1905年的对日战争中吸取了重要的教训。一些奥匈帝国的领导人了解现代战争，但军队的学习水平参差不齐。．..
{"title":"A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire","authors":"James D. Scudieri","doi":"10.5860/choice.52-0431","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.52-0431","url":null,"abstract":"A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire By Geoffrey Wawro New York, NY: Basic Books/Perseus Books Group, 2014 440 pages $29.99 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The present work is a long-overdue look at a neglected topic on the First World War. Author Geoffrey Wawro is a well established author with earlier monographs on the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian Wars of 1866 and 1870 respectively. His current work blazes a new trail. A Mad Catastrophe examines the pre-war Austro-Hungarian Empire, policy makers' monumental decisions, and the disastrous operations in 1914. The acknowledgments section is a fascinating read unto itself on his ancestors and their links to the current story. He intends to demolish the myth of the quaint Austro-Hungarian Empire under grandfatherly Emperor Franz Joseph. His introduction sets the stage in no uncertain terms. Chapters 1 through 5 describe the peacetime Dual Monarchy, including war plans and the pre-military response to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. He sees an unworkable state, the more so due to Magyar duplicity; Austrian inadequacy; and unsolvable, ethnic tensions, which demanded national, self-determination. Franz Joseph, the venerable Emperor from 1848, is out of his depth in the unraveling domestic situation and the more-challenged diplomacy of the early twentieth century during its latest crisis. Domestically, his shortcomings were glaring in a structure that empowered him over a bureaucracy of ostensibly representative institutions. Wawro explains why the Hapsburg state did not posture itself for success. The long-expected showdown with Serbia, showcased by the assassinations, provided more challenges than opportunities. Diplomacy notwithstanding, nearly six weeks passed before troops invaded Serbia. Swift action by Austria would have capitalized upon international sympathy. More critically, Chief of General Staff Conrad von Hotzendorf should have understood Austria's limitations in fighting both Serbia and Russia simultaneously. A Serbian campaign had to be immediate or not at all. The text paints a similarly dismal picture of Austro-Hungarian conflict of military operations. Chapters 6 through 13 cover 1914. Austrian General Oskar Potiorek commanded no less than three disastrous invasions of Serbia in four months, between August and December. Conrad sabotaged proper weighting of effort and deployment in either theater. The fighting in Galicia ebbed and flowed, but Wawro's thrust is poor Austro-Hungarian performance against a better-prepared Russian Army, despite its own challenges. Chapter 14 outlines the devastating cost to the Empire of just five months of war with staggering casualties. He is not the first historian to state Austria-Hungary retained a sort of \"militia army\" due to losses in experienced officers and noncommissioned officers, besides untrained conscripts. The Epilogue reviews the rest of the war, marked by fas","PeriodicalId":35242,"journal":{"name":"Parameters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71147236","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Waging War: Alliances, Coalitions, and Institutions of Interstate Violence By Patricia A. Weitsman Palo Alto, CA: Standford University Press, 2014 279 pages $27.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Allies are the most aggravating of people. They introduce considerations of their own nationalpolitics, none of which have the faintest bearing on the matter of immediate issue [but] their most annoying characteristic is the astonishing way they seem incapable of recognising how sound, how wise, how experienced are our views." Diary of Field-Marshal William J. Slim, commander of the British 14th Army in World War II In Waging War, Patricia A. Weitsman argues our understanding of what the late military historian Russell Weigley famously called "the American way of war" needs to be brought into the 21st-century. Weigley claimed annihilation--destroying the enemy's armed forces and (ideally) occupying his capital--was the basic American strategy in war. While European great powers hewed closely to the Clausewitzian understanding of war as a continuation of diplomacy by other means--a necessary limitation for nation-states embedded in a delicate continental balance of power--the United States approached war as kind of violent intermission to diplomacy: we negotiate, we fight, we negotiate again, making peace on our terms. Weigley's thesis cohered nicely with 20th-century notions of "American Exceptionalism" and strategic unilateralism. To Weitsman, however, that is its principal weakness: in fact, the United States doesn't simply make war (or peace) on its terms. America is embedded in a network of global alliances, coalitions, and institutions simultaneously enabling and constraining its power. As a result, Weitsman argues, the American way of war is profoundly multilateral --profoundly political. "The norm of multilateralism," she writes, "is entrenched in the American way of waging war." This means American policymakers and strategists must take into consideration the goals, objectives, and objections of its allies and coalition partners at all stages of war fighting--compromises can, and often do, frustrate policymakers, public opinion, and even the conduct of America's wars themselves. Waging War is not a book about the operational aspects of coalition warfare, though one can glean some insights from Weitsman's case studies. Her book is a contribution to scholarly debates about alliances and coalitions within the international relations and security studies disciplines and as a result may frustrate those professionally interested in the operational or political-military dynamics of alliance and coalition warfare. Weitsman frames her argument in the context of what she calls "realist institutionalism," attempting to bridge the gap between the two dominant strands of International Relations theorizing--realism, with its emphasis on interests, and neoliberalism, with its emphasis on formal and informal international institutions--showing military alliances and coal
《发动战争:联盟、联盟和州际暴力的机构》Patricia A. Weitsman帕洛阿尔托，加州:斯坦福大学出版社，2014年，279页$27.95。他们引入了对本国政治的考虑，这些考虑都与当前的问题没有丝毫关系，但他们最令人讨厌的特点是，他们似乎无法认识到我们的观点是多么合理、多么明智、多么有经验。”陆军元帅威廉·j·斯利姆(二战期间英国第14军指挥官)的日记在《发动战争》一书中，帕特里夏·a·韦茨曼认为，我们对已故军事历史学家拉塞尔·威格利著名的“美国战争方式”的理解需要被带入21世纪。威格利声称歼灭——摧毁敌人的武装力量并(理想情况下)占领他的首都——是美国的基本战争战略。欧洲大国紧紧遵循克劳塞维茨(clausewitz)对战争的理解，认为战争是外交以其他方式的延续——这是嵌入微妙的大陆权力平衡中的民族国家的必要限制——而美国则将战争视为外交的一种暴力间歇:我们谈判，我们战斗，我们再次谈判，按照我们的条件达成和平。威格利的论点与20世纪的“美国例外论”和战略单边主义的概念非常吻合。然而，对韦茨曼来说，这是它的主要弱点:事实上，美国并不是简单地按照自己的条件制造战争(或和平)。美国处于一个由全球联盟、联盟和各种机构组成的网络之中，这些机构既赋予美国权力，又制约着它的权力。因此，韦茨曼认为，美国的战争方式是深刻的多边主义——深刻的政治。“多边主义的准则，”她写道，“在美国发动战争的方式中根深蒂固。”这意味着美国的政策制定者和战略家必须在战争的各个阶段考虑到其盟友和联盟伙伴的目标、目的和反对意见——妥协可能而且经常会使政策制定者、公众舆论甚至美国战争本身的行为受挫。《发动战争》并不是一本关于联合战争的作战方面的书，尽管人们可以从韦茨曼的案例研究中获得一些见解。她的书对国际关系和安全研究学科中关于联盟和联盟的学术辩论做出了贡献，结果可能会让那些对联盟和联盟战争的操作或政治军事动态感兴趣的专业人士感到沮丧。韦茨曼在她所谓的“现实主义制度主义”的背景下构建了她的论点，试图弥合国际关系理论的两大主导流派之间的鸿沟——强调利益的现实主义和强调正式和非正式国际机构的新自由主义——表明军事联盟和联盟不仅限制了美国在战争中的战略行动，而且促进了美国在全球范围内行使霸权。…
{"title":"Waging War: Alliances, Coalitions, and Institutions of Interstate Violence","authors":"Russell A. Burgos","doi":"10.5860/choice.52-0522","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.52-0522","url":null,"abstract":"Waging War: Alliances, Coalitions, and Institutions of Interstate Violence By Patricia A. Weitsman Palo Alto, CA: Standford University Press, 2014 279 pages $27.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Allies are the most aggravating of people. They introduce considerations of their own nationalpolitics, none of which have the faintest bearing on the matter of immediate issue [but] their most annoying characteristic is the astonishing way they seem incapable of recognising how sound, how wise, how experienced are our views.\" Diary of Field-Marshal William J. Slim, commander of the British 14th Army in World War II In Waging War, Patricia A. Weitsman argues our understanding of what the late military historian Russell Weigley famously called \"the American way of war\" needs to be brought into the 21st-century. Weigley claimed annihilation--destroying the enemy's armed forces and (ideally) occupying his capital--was the basic American strategy in war. While European great powers hewed closely to the Clausewitzian understanding of war as a continuation of diplomacy by other means--a necessary limitation for nation-states embedded in a delicate continental balance of power--the United States approached war as kind of violent intermission to diplomacy: we negotiate, we fight, we negotiate again, making peace on our terms. Weigley's thesis cohered nicely with 20th-century notions of \"American Exceptionalism\" and strategic unilateralism. To Weitsman, however, that is its principal weakness: in fact, the United States doesn't simply make war (or peace) on its terms. America is embedded in a network of global alliances, coalitions, and institutions simultaneously enabling and constraining its power. As a result, Weitsman argues, the American way of war is profoundly multilateral --profoundly political. \"The norm of multilateralism,\" she writes, \"is entrenched in the American way of waging war.\" This means American policymakers and strategists must take into consideration the goals, objectives, and objections of its allies and coalition partners at all stages of war fighting--compromises can, and often do, frustrate policymakers, public opinion, and even the conduct of America's wars themselves. Waging War is not a book about the operational aspects of coalition warfare, though one can glean some insights from Weitsman's case studies. Her book is a contribution to scholarly debates about alliances and coalitions within the international relations and security studies disciplines and as a result may frustrate those professionally interested in the operational or political-military dynamics of alliance and coalition warfare. Weitsman frames her argument in the context of what she calls \"realist institutionalism,\" attempting to bridge the gap between the two dominant strands of International Relations theorizing--realism, with its emphasis on interests, and neoliberalism, with its emphasis on formal and informal international institutions--showing military alliances and coal","PeriodicalId":35242,"journal":{"name":"Parameters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71147337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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