Conflict Termination And Military Strategy

Conflict Termination And Military Strategy

Author: Stephen J. Cimbala

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-04-10

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0429721781

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Although considerable attention has been paid to deterrence theory and crisis management, the equally important topic of ending wars has been virtually ignored. Conflict termination is the stepchild of U.S. strategy for a number of reasons. Thinking about how wars should end presupposes acceptance of the fact that war—especially nuclear war— is possible. Further, analyzing options for ending conflicts implies less-than-total victory, a concept that not only runs counter to the U.S. approach to warfare but also raises the specter of “limited war,†an approach that fell into disfavor following Korea and Vietnam. Finally, defining conflict termination objectives assumes that we think more about ends than means, that we know what is important to us and why, and thus understand the risks we will accept to defend specific interests and objectives. The contributors examine a wide variety of topics, ranging from Soviet and U.S. views on conflict termination to past, present, and future U.S. military service contributions. Their aim is to demonstrate the importance of careful evaluation of conflict termination goals during peacetime because when war begins passions and emotions will cloud decisionmaking.


War and Punishment

War and Punishment

Author: H. E. Goemans

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2012-01-06

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 1400823951

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What makes wars drag on and why do they end when they do? Here H. E. Goemans brings theoretical rigor and empirical depth to a long-standing question of securities studies. He explores how various government leaders assess the cost of war in terms of domestic politics and their own postwar fates. Goemans first develops the argument that two sides will wage war until both gain sufficient knowledge of the other's strengths and weaknesses so as to agree on the probable outcome of continued war. Yet the incentives that motivate leaders to then terminate war, Goemans maintains, can vary greatly depending on the type of government they represent. The author looks at democracies, dictatorships, and mixed regimes and compares the willingness among leaders to back out of wars or risk the costs of continued warfare. Democracies, according to Goemans, will prefer to withdraw quickly from a war they are not winning in order to appease the populace. Autocracies will do likewise so as not to be overthrown by their internal enemies. Mixed regimes, which are made up of several competing groups and which exclude a substantial proportion of the people from access to power, will likely see little risk in continuing a losing war in the hope of turning the tide. Goemans explores the conditions and the reasoning behind this "gamble for resurrection" as well as other strategies, using rational choice theory, statistical analysis, and detailed case studies of Germany, Britain, France, and Russia during World War I. In so doing, he offers a new perspective of the Great War that integrates domestic politics, international politics, and battlefield developments.


How Wars End

How Wars End

Author: Gideon Rose

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-12-20

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 1416590552

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The first comprehensive treatment of how the United States has handled the final stages of its conflicts-from World War I to Iraq-spoiled repeatedly by leaders' failures to plan clearly for what to do when the guns fall silent. Concerned with not repeating past errors, our leaders miscalculate and prolong the conflict or invite unwelcome results. In his penetrating analysis of past, present, and future wars, Rose suggests how to break this cycle.


Confrontation, Strategy and War Termination

Confrontation, Strategy and War Termination

Author: Christopher Tuck

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-23

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1317162099

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At the heart of this book is the problem of war termination. Britain won an almost unbroken string of tactical military victories during an undeclared war against the Republic of Indonesia in the 1960s, yet it proved difficult to translate this into strategic success. Using conflict termination theories, this book argues that British strategy during Confrontation was both exemplary and flawed, both of which need not be mutually exclusive. The British experience in Indonesia represents an illuminating case study of the difficulties associated with strategy and the successful termination of conflicts. The value of this book lies in two areas: as a contribution to the literature on British counter-insurgency operations and as a contribution to the debates on the problems of war termination in the context of strategic thought.


Conspirator

Conspirator

Author: Helen Rappaport

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2010-02-23

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 0465021077

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Helen Rappaport's Conspirator is a vivid account of Vladimir I. Lenin's years of exile in Europe, showing that this often-overlooked period shaped the life of one of the 20th century's most important figures. In the years leading up to the Russian Revolution, Lenin traveled between the capital cities of Europe, developing a complex network of collaborators and co-conspirators that would play a significant role in the struggle to come. Rappaport sheds a rare light onto Lenin's early life, describing his relationship with his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, and his extraordinary and unexpected love affair with beautiful activist Inessa Armand. In a riveting narrative, Conspirator describes the courage and the comedy, the setbacks, schisms and disappointments, the extreme persistence and the ruthless dedication that carried Lenin and his colleagues along the inexorable path to the Russian Revolution.


Strategy

Strategy

Author: Captain B. H. Liddell Hart

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2016-07-26

Total Pages: 547

ISBN-13: 1786259737

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This is the classic book on war as we know it. During his long life, Basil H. Liddell Hart was considered one of the world’s foremost military thinkers—a man generally regarded as the “Clausewitz of the 20th century.” Strategy is a seminal work of military history and theory, a perfect companion to Sun-tzu’s The Art of War and Carl von Clausewitz’s On War. Liddell Hart stressed movement, flexibility, and surprise. He saw that in most military campaigns dislocation of the enemy’s psychological and physical balance is prelude to victory. This dislocation results from a strategic indirect approach. Reflect for a moment on the results of direct confrontation (trench war in WWI) versus indirect dislocation (Blitzkrieg in WWII). Liddell Hart is also tonic for business and political planning: just change the vocabulary and his concepts fit.-Print ed. “The most important book by one of the outstanding military authorities of our time.”—Library Journal


The Structure of International Conflict

The Structure of International Conflict

Author: C. R. Mitchell

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1989-03-15

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 1349198218

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What constitutes a `conflict' between human groups, organisations or countries? How do people perceive and behave in conflicts? How do conflicts come to an end and what part can outsiders play in settling them or making them less damaging? The present work seeks to answer such questions by examining common structures and processes found in human conflicts in many settings, and by demonstrating how such common features reveal themselves in conflicts as ostensibly different as international war and interpersonal disagreements in organisations. The Structure of International Conflict seeks to be a some permanent use to all students interested in penetrating beneath the surface details and ostensible dissimilarities of specific wars, disputes and quarrels to the basic structure that underlies all human conflicts, from the most peaceful to the most violent, lethal and destructive.


Why America Loses Wars

Why America Loses Wars

Author: Donald Stoker

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-05-26

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1009220888

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How can you achieve victory in war if you don't have a clear idea of your political aims and a vision of what victory means? In this provocative challenge to US political aims and strategy, Donald Stoker argues that America endures endless wars because its leaders no longer know how to think about war, particularly wars fought for limited aims, taking the nation to war without understanding what they want or valuing victory and thus the ending of the war. He reveals how flawed ideas on so-called 'limited war' and war in general evolved against the backdrop of American conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. These ideas, he shows, undermined America's ability to understand, wage, and win its wars, and to secure peace. Now fully updated to incorporate the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, Why America Loses Wars dismantles seventy years of misguided thinking and lays the foundations for a new approach to the wars of tomorrow.


Zero-Sum Victory

Zero-Sum Victory

Author: Christopher D. Kolenda

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-10-26

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0813152836

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Why have the major post-9/11 US military interventions turned into quagmires? Despite huge power imbalances in the United States' favor, significant capacity-building efforts, and repeated tactical victories by what many observers call the world's best military, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq turned intractable. The US government's fixation on zero-sum, decisive victory in these conflicts is a key reason why military operations to overthrow two developing-world regimes failed to successfully achieve favorable and durable outcomes. In Zero-Sum Victory, retired US Army colonel Christopher D. Kolenda identifies three interrelated problems that have emerged from the government's insistence on zero-sum victory. First, the US government has no organized way to measure successful outcomes other than a decisive military victory, and thus, selects strategies that overestimate the possibility of such an outcome. Second, the United States is slow to recognize and modify or abandon losing strategies; in both cases, US officials believe their strategies are working, even as the situation deteriorates. Third, once the United States decides to withdraw, bargaining asymmetries and disconnects in strategy undermine the prospects for a successful transition or negotiated outcome. Relying on historic examples and personal experience, Kolenda draws thought-provoking and actionable conclusions about the utility of American military power in the contemporary world—insights that serve as a starting point for future scholarship as well as for important national security reforms.