Explore the vast range of titles available.

The British military have embarked on a comprehensive process of transformation towards a network-enabled, effects-orientated, and expeditionary force posture. This has involved developing brand new military doctrine, organizational concepts, and technology. The US military are also transforming, and American military ideas about network-centric and effects-based warfare have influenced the British military. But the British have not simply aped their US ally. Rather, British military transformation has followed a different path. Hence, this article proposes a dynamic model of military innovation involving two international drivers: new operational challenges and military emulation; and three national shapers: resource constraints, domestic politics and military culture. This model is then applied to a detailed empirical analysis of the process and progress of British military transformation.

In seeking to explain why and how the war in Afghanistan has dragged on, most analysis has focused on the western and Afghan government effort. In this article, we examine how the war looks from the perspective of the insurgency. Using Helmand province as a case-study, we draw on a large number of original interviews with Taliban field commanders and fighters to produce a uniquely detailed picture of the Taliban at war. In the first section, we explore how the Taliban returned to Helmand from 2004 to 2006, and show how the British made the situation far worse when they deployed forces to Helmand in 2006. In the second part of the article we examine the evolution of the Taliban insurgency in Helmand since 2006. We show how the Taliban has developed an increasingly centralized organizational structure, a more militarized shadow government and greater professionalism of field units. The overall picture that emerges is of a resilient insurgency that has adapted under immense military pressure. The Taliban have suffered very heavy attrition in Helmand, but they are far from defeated.

Success in war depends on alignment between operations and strategy. Commonly, such alignment takes time as civilian and military leaders assess the effectiveness of operations and adjust them to ensure that strategic objectives are achieved. This article assesses prospects for the US-led campaign in Afghanistan. Drawing on extensive field research, the authors find that significant progress has been made at the operational level in four key areas: the approach to counterinsurgency operations, development of Afghan security forces, growth of Afghan sub-national governance and military momentum on the ground. However, the situation is bleak at the strategic level. The article identifies three strategic obstacles to campaign success: corruption in Afghan national government, war-weariness in NATO countries and insurgent safe havens in Pakistan. These strategic problems require political developments that are beyond the capabilities of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). In other words, further progress at the operational level will not bring 'victory'. It concludes, therefore, that there is an operational—strategic disconnect at the heart of the ISAF campaign.

When NATO took charge of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for Afghanistan in 2003, ISAF conceptualized its mission largely as a stabilization and reconstruction deployment. However, as the campaign has evolved and the insurgency has proved to more resistant and capable, key operational imperatives have emerged, including military support to the civilian development effort, closer partnering with Afghan security forces, and greater military restraint. All participating militaries have adapted, to varying extents, to these campaign imperatives and pressures. This book analyzes these initiatives and their outcomes by focusing on the experiences of three groups of militaries: those of Britain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the US, which have faced the most intense operational and strategic pressures; Germany, who's troops have faced the greatest political and cultural constraints; and the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Taliban, who have been forced to adapt to a very different sets of circumstances.

The traditional focus on power and politics in security studies has been robustly challenged this decade by the development of two ideational approaches to the subject: constructivism and culturalism. The first section briefly examines these two literatures, considers how they have differed in the past, and suggests how they may now form a coherent constructivist research program. Section two clears up two common misconceptions about constructivism in security studies-namely, that it does not have a positivist epistemology but has a normative agenda. Constructivists do seek to explain the world (according to rules of social science) but not to change it. Section three addresses the criticism that a positivist epistemology is inconsistent with an ontology that gives causal weight to cultural variables. The final section concludes by discussing two options-one confrontational, the other cooperative-for a constructivist engagement of realism (the dominant approach in North American security studies).

NATO member states are all undergoing some form of military transformation. Despite a shared vision, transformation has been primarily a US-led process centered on the exploitation of new information technologies in combination with new concepts for \"networked organizations\" and \"effects-based operations.\" Simply put, European states have been unable to match the level of US investment in new military technologies, leading to the identification of a growing \"transformation gap\" between the US and the European allies. This book assesses the extent and trajectory of military transformation across a range of European NATO member states, setting their transformation progress against that of the US, and examining the complex mix of factors driving military transformation in each country. It reveals not only the nature and extent of thetransatlantic gap, but also identifies an enormous variation in the extent and pace of transformation among the European allies, suggesting both technological and operational gapswithin Europe.

The opening article of a forum on Nina Tannenwald's, The Nuclear Taboo (2008), discusses her argument that a nuclear taboo explains the non-use of nuclear weapons since 1945. Evolution of the nuclear taboo & the mechanisms that have made it work are examined, along with limitations of its application in both military practices & international civilian law. The global development of a powerful taboo against nuclear weapons is described as a moral (not legal) norm that works by regulating action, constituting social situations, & producing permissive effects. It is said to have influenced US policy through both domestic & world opinion as well as the moral convictions of individual leaders. Consideration is given to the impact of allied diplomacy; the taboo's broad acceptance; & stages in its development. It is contended that Tannenwald fails to give enough attention to such challenges to the nuclear taboo as rogue states; the integration of nuclear & conventional assets in a united strike force; & the proposed development of low-yield nuclear weapons. The taboo's future potential is discussed. J. Lindroth

This volume was produced in the context of the crisis of legitimacy that occasioned the 2003 Iraq War. As is well known, a bitter feud broke out in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) over the legality of using force against Iraq. The US government justified going to war in the context of a new doctrine of preventive use of force for self-defence - a doctrine that was soon named after President George W. Bush. The British government anchored its case for war in two previous UNSC resolutions; res. 678 which originally authorised use of force against Iraq in the 1990-91 Gulf War, and res. 687 which suspended res. 678 on a number of conditions including the disarming of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) stockpiles, facilities and programmes. Both the US and British positions were underpinned by intelligence, subsequently proved to be flawed, that Iraq had failed to get rid of its WMD. Opponents of the war disputed this intelligence and, moreover, argued that the Bush Doctrine was plain illegal and ridiculed the British idea of resurrecting twelve-year-old UNSC resolutions. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]