Veteran Activism and the Global War on Terror is the first study of the literature of dissent that has emerged from the veterans of the global War on Terror. Spencer Ackerman's Reign of Terror stated that “The most impactful activism against the War on Terror came from within the Security State itself . . . low ranking soldiers and intelligence contractors whose exposure to the war prompted them to expose it to the world.” Veteran Activism and the Global War on Terror examines this subculture of veterans whose stories have dramatically shifted the conversation about literature and activism. Author M. C. Armstrong introduces and explores America's post-9/11 soldier-writers, a community that challenges pivotal contemporary assumptions about allegiance, democracy, geography, solidarity, and national identity. Chapters are organized around a triad of core concepts–parrhesia, cosmopolitanism, and dissensus–and discuss authors including Elliot Ackerman, Kristin Beck, Joseph Hickman, Phil Klay, Kevin Powers, and Edward Snowden. Armstrong argues that this scene represents a literary movement and perhaps the most significant literary community since the Beat Generation, and Veteran Activism and the Global War on Terror reads the work of these writers as the loci of a “dissenting” overhaul of the official narratives and rhetorical maps that chart the United States' Global War on Terror.

The white power movement in America wants a revolution. It has declared all-out war against the federal government and its agents, and has carried out—with military precision—an escalating campaign of terror against the American public. Its soldiers are not lone wolves but are highly organized cadres motivated by a coherent and deeply troubling worldview of white supremacy, anticommunism, and apocalypse. In Bring the War Home, Kathleen Belew gives us the first full history of the movement that consolidated in the 1970s and 1980s around a potent sense of betrayal in the Vietnam War and made tragic headlines in the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. Returning to an America ripped apart by a war that, in their view, they were not allowed to win, a small but driven group of veterans, active-duty personnel, and civilian supporters concluded that waging war on their own country was justified. They unified people from a variety of militant groups, including Klansmen, neo-Nazis, skinheads, radical tax protestors, and white separatists. The white power movement operated with discipline and clarity, undertaking assassinations, mercenary soldiering, armed robbery, counterfeiting, and weapons trafficking. Its command structure gave women a prominent place in brokering intergroup alliances and giving birth to future recruits. Belew’s disturbing history reveals how war cannot be contained in time and space. In its wake, grievances intensify and violence becomes a logical course of action for some. Bring the War Home argues for awareness of the heightened potential for paramilitarism in a present defined by ongoing war.

Examines US foreign and domestic policy through the narratives of post-9/11 US military veterans and the activism they are engaged in. While veterans are often cast as a “problem” for society, Fight to Live, Live to Fight challenges this view by focusing on the progressive, positive, and productive activism that veterans engage in. Benjamin Schrader weaves his own experiences as a former member of the American military and then as a member of the activist community with the stories of other veteran activists he has encountered across the United States. An accessible blend of political theory, international relations, and American politics, this book critically examines US foreign and domestic policy through the narratives of post-9/11 military veterans who have turned to activism after having exited the military. Veterans are involved in a wide array of activism, including but not limited to antiwar, economic justice, sexual violence prevention, immigration issues, and veteran healing through art. This is an accessible, captivating, and engaging work that may be read and appreciated not just by scholars, but also students and the wider public. “There is currently no book on the market that does what this book does (and could do) and I welcome it. There are books on veterans, of course, but there are none that focus in particular on veterans’ activism written by a veteran activist and academic. The book is in many ways a testament to our time and a kind of generational story that I am sure many veterans will relate to.” — Synne L. Dyvik, University of Sussex

For the first time, a military expert on both Russia and insurgency offers the definitive guide on activities in Southern Russia, explaining why the Russian approach to counter terrorism is failing and why terrorist and insurgent attacks in Russia have sharply increased over the past three years. The Insurgency in Chechnya and the North Caucasus: From Gazavat to Jihad is an comprehensive treatment of this 300 year-old conflict. Thematically organized, it cuts through the rhetoric to provide a contextual framework with which readers can truly understand the "why" and "how" of one of the world's longest-running contemporary insurgencies, despite Russia's best efforts to eradicate it. A fascinating case study of a counterinsurgency campaign that is in direct contravention of U.S. and Western strategy, the book also examines the differences and linkages between insurgency and terrorism; the origins of conflict in the North Caucasus; and the influences of different strains of Islam, of al-Qaida, and of the War on Terror. A critical examination of never-before-revealed Russian counterinsurgency (COIN) campaigns explains why those campaigns have consistently failed and why the region has seen such an upswing in violence since the conflict was officially declared "over" less than two years ago.

"The first study of the literature of dissent that has emerged from the veterans of the global War on Terror. Veteran Activism and the Global War on Terrror explores America's post-9/11 soldier-writers, a community that challenges pivotal contemporary assumptions about allegiance, democracy, geography, solidarity, and national identity. Chapters are organized around a triad of core concepts--parrhesia, cosmopolitanism, and dissensus--and discuss authors including Elliot Ackerman, Kristin Beck, Joseph Hickman, Phil Klay, Kevin Powers, and Edward Snowden, arguing that their work forms a loci of a "dissenting" overhaul of the official narratives and rhetorical maps that chart the United States' Global War on Terror"--

War has always made people rich: from high-tech weaponry to construction and catering, war is a commercial bonanza. But as Solomon Hughes shows in this wide-ranging chronicle, the many incarnations of the War on Terror have dramatically extended the role of private enterprise, bringing market forces and market thinking to bear on areas of public policy that were once the sole preserve and responsibility of politicians and the state. There will always be a private company willing to pitch for this fabulously lucrative business, whether supplying the additional soldiery which made the invasion of Iraq seem possible, or creating databases of people deemed to be a threat to national security. Surveying the activities of private contractors in the provision of frontline mercenaries, security services guarding key installations and VIPs, prisons and law enforcement, media management, and intelligence-gathering at home and abroad, Hughes demonstrated that the private sector and its army of lobbyists and salesmen are continuously lowering the practical and moral barriers to interventions of every kind, from torture and imprisonment without trial, to blanket surveillance of the civilian population, and to outright war. Meanwhile the state is evermore evasive when it comes to taking responsibility for the practices it authorizes via agreements drawn up under a veil of ‘commercial privacy,’ and remains as inept as it has ever been at procuring efficiency and value for money from its contracts. Who is behind companies that reap the dividend of the War on Terror, eagerly plugging the gap between what politicians would like to do – and frequently claim they can and must do – and what is actually possible? How close are they to our political decision-makers? Do they actually deliver what they are contracted to deliver? And at what moral and financial price? Hughes catalogs the appalling record of private contractors doing our governments’ dirtiest work, and asks how we can possibly justify delivering into commercial hands those area of public life which, above all others, demand the very highest standards of scrupulousness and integrity.

Examines the difficulties in applying international law to recent armed conflicts known as 'new wars'.