Abstract:

"Mel Goodman has spent the last few decades telling us what's gone wrong with American intelligence and the American military, and now, in National Insecurity, he tells us what we must do to change the way the system works, and how to fix it. Goodman is not only telling us how to save wasted billions—he is also telling us how to save ourselves."—Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker Upon leaving the White House in 1961, President Eisenhower famously warned Americans about the dangers of a "military industrial complex," and was clearly worried about the destabilizing effects of a national economy based on outsized investments in military spending. As more and more Americans fall into poverty and the global economy spirals downward, the United States is spending more on the military than ever before. What are the consequences and what can be done? Melvin A. Goodman, a twenty-four-year veteran of the CIA, brings peerless authority to his argument that US military spending is indeed making Americans poorer and less secure while undermining our political standing in the world. Drawing from his firsthand experience with war planners and intelligence strategists, Goodman offers an insider's critique of the US military economy from President's Eisenhower's farewell warning to Barack Obama's expansion of the military's power. He outlines a much needed vision for how to alter our military policy, practices and spending in order to better position the United States globally and enhance prosperity and security at home. Melvin A. Goodman is the Director of the National Security Project at the Center for International Policy. A former professor of international security at the National War College and an intelligence adviser to strategic disarmament talks in the 1970s, he is the author of several books, including the critically acclaimed The Failure of Intelligence.

This text provides a thorough overview of how states pursue security against violence, and how this pursuit paradoxically creates greater insecurity at the national, international, and individual levels. The traditional insistence that states are the primary and most important actors makes security, ultimately, elusive. This argument provides a compelling framework for students to understand the breadth and nuance of security at each level. Case studies throughout the text bring life to the concepts. This fully revised third edition includes discussion of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China and the Uyghurs, the Covid-19 pandemic, the January 6th Capitol insurrection, Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election; Mexico’s use of its military in internal security, the coup in Myanmar, Orbán’s Hungary, China and Taiwan, India and Pakistan, US-China competition, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Russia’s Wagner Group, North Korea’s missile testing, refugees in Poland, and numerous other examples, large and small. The third edition features: Highlighted cases to illustrate new security threats across the globe, now listed at the start of each chapter Beginning-of-chapter Learning Objectives and End-of-chapter Discussion Questions that reinforce student learning and engagement The unique framework arguing that security remains elusive because of the ethic insisting that states are the most important actors.

The mass violence of the twentieth century’s two world wars—followed more recently by decentralized and privatized warfare, manifested in terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and other localized forms of killing—has led to a heightened awareness of human beings’ vulnerability and the precarious nature of the institutions they create to protect themselves from violence and exploitation. This vulnerability, something humans share amid the diversity of cultural beliefs and values that mark their differences, provides solid ground on which to construct a framework of human rights. Bryan Turner undertakes this task here, developing a sociology of rights from a sociology of the human body. His blending of empirical research with normative analysis constitutes an important step forward for the discipline of sociology. Like anthropology, sociology has traditionally eschewed the study of justice as beyond the limits of a discipline that pays homage to cultural relativism and the “value neutrality” of positivistic science. Turner’s expanded approach accordingly involves a truly interdisciplinary dialogue with the literature of economics, law, medicine, philosophy, political science, and religion.

There is a visible change in the outlook towards security all over the world-probably because of the increasing complexity of global problems and their repercussions for millions of people all over the world. Insecurity is not just all pervasive but is reiterating its alarming overtones more forcefully than during the cold war era. There are now threats very different from a military attack on a nation's territory. The concept of National Security hence needs to be redefined. The gamut of its perceptions has undergone a paradigm shift. The context against which the policy makers seek to establish national security is undergoing tumultuous changes. While not downplaying the relevance of strategic means of maintaining national security, this book explores the emerging non-strategic threats to national security, with the obvious grave consequences on human security. This book attempts to address several questions: Can the concepts of National Security and Human Security be reconciled meaningfully? Can their approaches and objectives be inter-twined so that we can live a fuller life? Can the nations and citizenry-both feel equally secure at the same time?

Provides critical evidenced based assessements and tools with which to investigate the role of rights abrogation in the health of populations.

The best country-by-country assessment of human rights. The human rights records of more than ninety countries and territories are put into perspective in Human Rights Watch's signature yearly report. Reflecting extensive investigative work undertaken by Human Rights Watch staff, in close partnership with domestic human rights activists, the annual World Report is an invaluable resource for journalists, diplomats, and citizens, and is a must-read for anyone interested in the fight to protect human rights in every corner of the globe.