Showing titles in National & International Security

In American Coup, William Arkin reveals the desk-bound takeover of the highest reaches of government by a coterie of "grey men" of the national security establishment. Operating between the lines of the Constitution this powerful and unelected group fights to save the nation from "terror" and weapons of mass destruction while at the same time modifying and undermining the very essence of the country.

All nations, including the United States, face systemic crises that are reinforcing each other at an explosive point in history. The status quo is now the problem rather than the solution. These novel crises demand an entirely new grand strategy. The global crisis offers an opportunity to redraw America’s grand strategy from the ground up. Should we fail to make full use of this opportunity, the United States will fail, along with all the other nation-states that are incapable of redefining the problems so that new solutions become possible.

In spring of 1953, newly elected President Eisenhower sat down with his staff to discuss the state of American strategy in the Cold War. America, he insisted, needed a new approach to an urgent situation. From this meeting emerged Eisenhower's teams of "bright young fellows", charged with developing competing policies, each of which would come to shape global politics.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has killed hundreds of thousands of people and infected millions while also devastating the world economy. The consequences of the pandemic, however, go much further: they threaten the fabric of national and international politics around the world. What will be the consequences of the pandemic, and what will a post-COVID world order look like? No institution is better suited to address these issues than Johns Hopkins University, which has convened experts from within and outside of the university to discuss world order after COVID-19.

Mexican drug networks are large and violent, engaging in activities like the trafficking of narcotics, money laundering, extortion, kidnapping, and mass murder. Despite the impact of these activities in Mexico and abroad, these illicit networks are remarkably resilient to state intervention.

The Consequences of Humiliation explores the nature of national humiliation and its impact on foreign policy. Joslyn Barnhart demonstrates that Germany's catastrophic reaction to humiliation at the end of World War I is part of a broader pattern: states that experience humiliating events are more likely to engage in international aggression aimed at restoring the state's image in its own eyes and in the eyes of others. Her examination of how national humiliation functions at the individual level explores leaders' domestic incentives to evoke a sense of national humiliation.

It has been well-established that many of the injustices that people around the world experience every day are the result of wide-scale structural problems of politics and economics. These are not merely random personal problems or consequences of bad luck or bad planning. Confronted by this fact, it is natural to ask what should or can we do to mitigate everyday injustices? Just Responsibility integrates ways of taking political responsibility into a rich theory of political community, accountability, and leadership in which taking responsibility for injustice itself transforms the fabric of political life.

In the late '80s and early '90s, driven by the post-Cold War environment and lessons learned during military operations, United States policymakers made intelligence support to the military the Intelligence Community's top priority. In response to this demand, the CIA and DoD instituted policy and organizational changes that altered their relationship with one another. In Subordinating Intelligence: The DoD/CIA Post-Cold War Relationship, David P. Oakley reveals that, despite these concerns, no major changes to either intelligence organization or its priorities were implemented.

A comprehensive study of the geopolitical, security, economic, and environmental future of a major game-changing phenomenon - the alternative energy megatrend. This is not another alternative energy study. Rather, The Prologue identifies and charts the security-related trajectory of a relatively new global phenomenon: the ascent of alternative energy as a 21st century megatrend.

In the late 1970s, the United States often seemed to be a superpower in decline. Battered by crises and setbacks around the globe, its post–World War II international leadership appeared to be draining steadily away. Yet just over a decade later, by the early 1990s, America's global primacy had been reasserted in dramatic fashion. The Cold War had ended with Washington and its allies triumphant; democracy and free markets were spreading like never before.

Authored by leading scholars, the 14 case studies in this volume will help policymakers, scholars, and students make sense of contemporary cyber conflict through historical analogies to past military technological problems.

In The Rising Clamor: The American Press, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Cold War, David P. Hadley explores the relationships that developed between the CIA and the press, its evolution over time, and its practical impact from the creation of the CIA to the first major congressional investigations of its activities in 1975-1976 by the Church and Pike Committees.

The first rule of warfare is to know one's enemy. The second is to know thyself. More than 15 years and three quarters of a trillion dollars after the US invasion of Afghanistan, it's clear that the United States followed neither rule well. America's goals in Afghanistan were lofty to begin with: dismantle al Qaeda, remove the Taliban from power, and remake the country into a democracy.

The End of Victory recounts the costs of failure in nuclear war through the work of the most secret deliberative body of the National Security Council, the Net Evaluation Subcommittee (NESC). From 1953 onward, US leaders wanted to know as precisely as possible what would happen if they failed in a nuclear war—how many Americans would die and how much of the country would remain. The NESC told Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy what would be the result of the worst failure of American strategy.

For the last two decades, Sidney Tarrow has explored "contentious politics" - disruptions of the settled political order caused by social movements. These disruptions range from strikes and street protests to riots and civil disobedience to revolution. In War, States, and Contention, Tarrow shows how such movements sometimes trigger, animate, and guide the course of war and how they sometimes rise during war and in war's wake to change regimes or even overthrow states.

Why do terrorist organizations use children to support their cause and carry out their activities? Small Arms uncovers the brutal truth behind the mobilization of children by terrorist groups. Mia Bloom and John Horgan show us the grim underbelly of society that allows and even encourages the use of children to conduct terrorist activities. They provide listeners with the who, what, when, why, and how of this increasingly concerning situation.

The Sweet Potato Queens are bona fide experts at planning a marvelous marriage (and ending one, look below if you're looking for advice on dumping a deadweight hubby!), so who better to provide this handy wedding planner? And even if you're not planning your own nuptials, surely you have dreamt about your perfect day, regardless of whether you've met Mr. Right yet!

An End to Evil charts the agenda for what’s next in the war on terrorism, as articulated by David Frum, former presidential speechwriter and bestselling author of The Right Man, and Richard Perle, former assistant secretary of defense and one of the most influential foreign-policy leaders in Washington.

Taiwan’s position looks increasingly precarious, and tensions threaten to grow into a major strategic crisis. Chinese President Xi Jinping has made reunification with Taiwan a central pillar of his vision for China, and has ramped up diplomatic and economic pressure on Taiwan.

At the beginning of the 21st century, China is poised to become a major global power. And though much has been written of China's rise, a crucial aspect of this transformation has gone largely unnoticed: the way that China is using soft power to appeal to its neighbors and to distant countries alike.