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Militarism in a global age : naval ambitions in Germany and the United States before World War I
At the turn of the twentieth century, the United States and Germany emerged as the two most rapidly developing industrial nation-states of the Atlantic world. The elites and intelligentsias of both countries staked out claims to dominance in the twentieth century. In Militarism in a Global Age, Dirk Bönker explores the far-reaching ambitions of naval officers before World War I as they advanced navalism, a particular brand of modern militarism that stressed the paramount importance of sea power as a historical determinant. Aspiring to make their own countries into self-reliant world powers in an age of global empire and commerce, officers viewed the causes of the industrial nation, global influence, elite rule, and naval power as inseparable. Characterized by both transnational exchanges and national competition, the new maritime militarism was technocratic in its impulses; its makers cast themselves as members of a professional elite that served the nation with its expert knowledge of maritime and global affairs. American and German navalist projects differed less in their principal features than in their eventual trajectories. Over time, the pursuits of these projects channeled the two naval elites in different directions as they developed contrasting outlooks on their bids for world power and maritime force. Combining comparative history with transnational and global history, Militarism in a Global Age challenges traditional, exceptionalist assumptions about militarism and national identity in Germany and the United States in its exploration of empire and geopolitics, warfare and military-operational imaginations, state formation and national governance, and expertise and professionalism.
eBook
War! What Is It Good For?
African Americans' long campaign for \"the right to fight\" forced Harry Truman to issue his 1948 executive order calling for equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces. InWar! What Is It Good For?, Kimberley Phillips examines how blacks' participation in the nation's wars after Truman's order and their protracted struggles for equal citizenship galvanized a vibrant antiwar activism that reshaped their struggles for freedom.Using an array of sources--from newspapers and government documents to literature, music, and film--and tracing the period from World War II to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Phillips considers how federal policies that desegregated the military also maintained racial, gender, and economic inequalities. Since 1945, the nation's need for military labor, blacks' unequal access to employment, and discriminatory draft policies have forced black men into the military at disproportionate rates. While mainstream civil rights leaders considered the integration of the military to be a civil rights success, many black soldiers, veterans, and antiwar activists perceived war as inimical to their struggles for economic and racial justice and sought to reshape the civil rights movement into an antiwar black freedom movement. Since the Vietnam War, Phillips argues, many African Americans have questioned linking militarism and war to their concepts of citizenship, equality, and freedom.
eBook
To Kill Nations
\"Edward Kaplan's To Kill Nations is a
fascinating work that packs a thermonuclear punch of ideas and
arguments... The work is suitable for anyone from advanced
undergraduates to experts in the field.\" ― Strategy
Bridge
In To Kill Nations , Edward Kaplan
traces the evolution of American strategic airpower and preparation
for nuclear war from this early air-atomic era to a later period
(1950-1965) in which the Soviet Union's atomic capability,
accelerated by thermonuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, made
American strategic assets vulnerable and gradually undermined
air-atomic strategy.
Kaplan throws into question both the inevitability and
preferability of the strategic doctrine of MAD. He looks at the
process by which cultural, institutional, and strategic ideas about
MAD took shape and makes insightful use of the comparison between
generals who thought they could win a nuclear war and the cold
institutional logic of the suicide pact that was MAD. Kaplan also
offers a reappraisal of Eisenhower's nuclear strategy and diplomacy
to make a case for the marginal viability of air-atomic military
power even in an era of ballistic missiles.
eBook
Torpedo : inventing the military-industrial complex in the United States and Great Britain
In a bold reappraisal, Katherine Epstein uncovers the origins of the \"military-industrial complex\" not in the Cold War but in the decades before WWI, as the United States and Great Britain struggled to perfect a crucial new weapon: the self-propelled torpedo. Torpedo R&D sparked intellectual property battles that reshaped national security law.
eBook
Unwarranted Influence
In Dwight D. Eisenhower's last speech as president, on January 17, 1961, he warned America about the \"military-industrial complex,\" a mutual dependency between the nation's industrial base and its military structure that had developed during World War II. After the conflict ended, the nation did not abandon its wartime economy but rather the opposite. Military spending has steadily increased, giving rise to one of the key ideas that continues to shape our country's political landscape.
In this book, published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Eisenhower's farewell address, journalist James Ledbetter shows how the government, military contractors, and the nation's overall economy have become inseparable. Some of the effects are beneficial, such as cell phones, GPS systems, the Internet, and the Hubble Space Telescope, all of which emerged from technologies first developed for the military. But the military-industrial complex has also provoked agonizing questions. Does our massive military establishment-bigger than those of the next ten largest combined-really make us safer? How much of our perception of security threats is driven by the profit-making motives of military contractors? To what extent is our foreign policy influenced by contractors' financial interests?
Ledbetter uncovers the surprising origins and the even more surprising afterlife of the military-industrial complex, an idea that arose as early as the 1930s, and shows how it gained traction during World War II, the Cold War, and the Vietnam era and continues even today.
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Nursing Civil Rights
In Nursing Civil Rights, Charissa J. Threat investigates the parallel battles against occupational segregation by African American women and white men in the U.S. Army. As Threat reveals, both groups viewed their circumstances with the Army Nurse Corps as a civil rights matter. Each conducted separate integration campaigns to end the discrimination they suffered. Yet their stories defy the narrative that civil rights struggles inevitably arced toward social justice. Threat tells how progressive elements in the campaigns did indeed break down barriers in both military and civilian nursing. At the same time, she follows conservative threads to portray how some of the women who succeeded as agents of change became defenders of exclusionary practices when men sought military nursing careers. The ironic result was a struggle that simultaneously confronted and reaffirmed the social hierarchies that nurtured discrimination.
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The Secret War Against Sweden
Following the stranding of a Soviet Whiskey-class submarine in 1981 on the Swedish archipelago, a series of massive submarine intrusions took place within Swedish waters. However, the evidence for these appears to have been manipulated or simply invented. Classified documents and interviews point to covert Western, rather than Soviet activity. This is backed up by former US Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who stated that Western \"testing\" operations were carried out regularly in Swedish waters. Royal Navy submarine captains have also admitted to top-secret operations. Ola Tunander's revelations make it clear that the United States and Britain ran a \"secret war\" in Swedish waters. The number of Swedes perceiving the Soviet Union as a direct threat increased from 5-10 per cent in 1980 to 45 per cent in 1983. This Anglo-American \"secret war\" was aimed at exerting political influence over Sweden. It was a risky enterprise, but perhaps the most successful covert operation of the entire Cold War.
Preface Acknowledgements 1. Introduction 2. Background: Operation NOTVARP 3. The Hårsfjärden Hunt: A War Diary 4. Reflections after the Submarine Hunt 5. Manipulation of Government Policy 6. The National Origin of the Hårsfjärden Submarine 7. Submarine Ghosts and Psychological Warfare Against Sweden Appendix I: Sources - Archival Material and Interviews Appendix II: Interview with Caspar Weinberger Appendix III: Swedish Naval Forces Mentioned in Chapter 3 References
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Arc of Empire
Although conventionally treated as separate, America's four wars in Asia were actually phases in a sustained U.S. bid for regional dominance, according to Michael H. Hunt and Steven I. Levine. This effort unfolded as an imperial project in which military power and the imposition of America's political will were crucial. Devoting equal attention to Asian and American perspectives, the authors follow the long arc of conflict across seventy-five years from the Philippines through Japan and Korea to Vietnam, tracing along the way American ambition, ascendance, and ultimate defeat. They show how these wars are etched deeply in eastern Asia's politics and culture.The authors encourage readers to confront the imperial pattern in U.S. history with implications for today's Middle Eastern conflicts. They also offer a deeper understanding of China's rise and Asia's place in today's world.For instructors: An Online Instructor's Manual is available, with teaching tips for usingArc of Empirein graduate and undergraduate courses on America's wars in Asia. It includes lecture topics, chronologies, and sample discussion questions.
eBook
Army Diplomacy
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the United States
Army became the principal agent of American foreign policy. The
army designed, implemented, and administered the occupations of the
defeated Axis powers Germany and Japan, as well as many other
nations. Generals such as Lucius Clay in Germany, Douglas MacArthur
in Japan, Mark Clark in Austria, and John Hodge in Korea presided
over these territories as proconsuls. At the beginning of the Cold
War, more than 300 million people lived under some form of U.S.
military authority. The army's influence on nation-building at the
time was profound, but most scholarship on foreign policy during
this period concentrates on diplomacy at the highest levels of
civilian government rather than the armed forces' governance at the
local level.
In Army Diplomacy , Hudson explains how U.S. Army
policies in the occupied nations represented the culmination of
more than a century of military doctrine. Focusing on Germany,
Austria, and Korea, Hudson's analysis reveals that while the
post-World War II American occupations are often remembered as
overwhelming successes, the actual results were mixed. His study
draws on military sociology and institutional analysis as well as
international relations theory to demonstrate how \"bottom-up\"
decisions not only inform but also create higher-level policy. As
the debate over post-conflict occupations continues, this
fascinating work offers a valuable perspective on an important yet
underexplored facet of Cold War history.
eBook