Armies Without Nations

Armies Without Nations
Author: Robert H. Holden
Publisher:
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2006-02-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 0195310209

Public violence, a persistent feature of Latin American life since the collapse of Iberian rule in the 1820s, has been especially prominent in Central America. Robert H. Holden shows how public violence shaped the states that have governed Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Linking public violence and patrimonial political cultures, he shows how the early states improvised their authority by bargaining with armed bands or montoneras. Improvisation continued into the twentieth century as the bands were gradually superseded by semi-autonomous national armies, and as new agents of public violence emerged in the form of armed insurgencies and death squads. World War II, Holden argues, set into motion the globalization of public violence. Its most dramatic manifestation in Central America was the surge in U.S. military and police collaboration with the governments of the region, beginning with the Lend-Lease program of the 1940s and continuing through the Cold War. Although the scope of public violence had already been established by the people of the Central American countries, globalization intensified the violence and inhibited attempts to shrink its scope. Drawing on archival research in all five countries as well as in the United States, Holden elaborates the connections among the national, regional, and international dimensions of public violence. Armies Without Nations crosses the borders of Central American, Latin American, and North American history, providing a model for the study of global history and politics. Armies without Nations was a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2005.

Armies Without States

Armies Without States
Author: Robert Mandel
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2002
Genre: Internal security
ISBN: 9781588260666

The book concludes with an assessment of the complexities surrounding responses to security privatization - and an exploration of when, and whether, it should be promoted rather than prevented."--BOOK JACKET.

The Modern Mercenary

The Modern Mercenary
Author: Sean McFate
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2014
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0190621087

Sean McFate lays bare the opaque world of private military contractors, explaining the economic structure of the industry and showing in detail how firms operate on the ground. As a former paratrooper and private military contractor, McFate provides an unparalleled perspective into the nuts and bolts of the industry, as well as a sobering prognosis for the future of war.

Mercenaries and War

Mercenaries and War
Author: National Defense University Press
Publisher:
Total Pages: 56
Release: 2019-12-18
Genre: Mercenary troops
ISBN: 9781678665234

Mercenaries are more powerful than experts realize, a grave oversight. Those who assume they are cheap imitations of national armed forces invite disaster because for-profit warriors are a wholly different genus and species of fighter. Private military companies such as the Wagner Group are more like heavily armed multinational corporations than the Marine Corps. Their employees are recruited from different countries, and profitability is everything. Patriotism is unimportant, and sometimes a liability. Unsurprisingly, mercenaries do not fight conventionally, and traditional war strategies used against them may backfire.

On War

On War
Author: Carl von Clausewitz
Publisher:
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1908
Genre: Military art and science
ISBN:

Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War

Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War
Author: Paul Scharre
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2018-04-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0393608999

Winner of the 2019 William E. Colby Award "The book I had been waiting for. I can't recommend it highly enough." —Bill Gates The era of autonomous weapons has arrived. Today around the globe, at least thirty nations have weapons that can search for and destroy enemy targets all on their own. Paul Scharre, a leading expert in next-generation warfare, describes these and other high tech weapons systems—from Israel’s Harpy drone to the American submarine-hunting robot ship Sea Hunter—and examines the legal and ethical issues surrounding their use. “A smart primer to what’s to come in warfare” (Bruce Schneier), Army of None engages military history, global policy, and cutting-edge science to explore the implications of giving weapons the freedom to make life and death decisions. A former soldier himself, Scharre argues that we must embrace technology where it can make war more precise and humane, but when the choice is life or death, there is no replacement for the human heart.

The Armed Forces Officer

The Armed Forces Officer
Author: Richard Moody Swain
Publisher: Government Printing Office
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2017
Genre: Study Aids
ISBN: 9780160937583

In 1950, when he commissioned the first edition of The Armed Forces Officer, Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall told its author, S.L.A. Marshall, that "American military officers, of whatever service, should share common ground ethically and morally." In this new edition, the authors methodically explore that common ground, reflecting on the basics of the Profession of Arms, and the officer's special place and distinctive obligations within that profession and especially to the Constitution.

Between Threats and War

Between Threats and War
Author: Micah Zenko
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2010-08-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0804771901

In Between Threats and War: U.S. Discrete Military Operations in the Post-Cold War World, author Micah Zenko presents a new concept to capture and illuminate the phenomenon: "Discrete Military Operations."