War as Paradox

War as Paradox
Title War as Paradox PDF eBook
Author Youri Cormier
Publisher McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Pages 315
Release 2016-11-01
Genre Philosophy
ISBN 0773548505

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Two centuries after Carl von Clausewitz wrote On War, it lines the shelves of military colleges around the world and even showed up in an Al Qaeda hideout. Though it has shaped much of the common parlance on the subject, On War is perceived by many as a “metaphysical fog,” widely known but hardly read. In War as Paradox, Youri Cormier lifts the fog on this iconic work by explaining its philosophical underpinnings. Building up a genealogy of dialectical war theory and integrating Hegel with Clausewitz as a co-founders of the method, Cormier uncovers a common logic that shaped the fighting doctrines and ethics of modern war. He explains how Hegel and Clausewitz converged on method, but nonetheless arrived at opposite ethics and military doctrines. Ultimately, Cormier seeks out the limits to dialectical war theory and explores the greater paradoxes the method reveals: can so-called “rational” theories of war hold up under the pressures of irrational propositions, such as lone-wolf attacks, the circular logic of a “war to end all wars,” or the apparent folly of mutually assured destruction? Since the Second World War, commentators have described war as obsolete. War as Paradox argues that dialectical war theory may be the key to understanding why, despite this, it continues.

The Senkaku Paradox

The Senkaku Paradox
Title The Senkaku Paradox PDF eBook
Author Michael E. O'Hanlon
Publisher Brookings Institution Press
Pages 274
Release 2019-04-30
Genre Political Science
ISBN 0815736908

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America needs better options for resolving potential crises In recent years, the Pentagon has elevated its concerns about Russia and China as potential military threats to the United States and its allies. But what issues could provoke actual conflict between the United States and either country? And how could such a conflict be contained before it took the world to the brink of thermonuclear catastrophe, as was feared during the cold war? Defense expert Michael O'Hanlon wrestles with these questions in this insightful book, setting them within the broader context of hegemonic change and today's version of great-power competition. The book examines how a local crisis could escalate into a broader and much more dangerous threat to peace. What if, for example, Russia's “little green men” seized control of a community, like Narva or an even smaller town in Estonia, now a NATO ally? Or, what if China seized one of the uninhabited Senkaku islands now claimed and administered by Japan, or imposed a partial blockade of Taiwan? Such threats are not necessarily imminent, but they are far from inconceivable. Washington could be forced to choose, in these and similar cases, between risking major war to reverse the aggression, and appeasing China or Russia in ways that could jeopardize the broader global order. O'Hanlon argues that the United States needs a better range of options for dealing with such risks to peace. He advocates “integrated deterrence,” which combines military elements with economic warfare. The military components would feature strengthened forward defenses as well as, possibly, limited military options against Russian or Chinese assets in other theaters. Economic warfare would include offensive elements, notably sanctions, as well as measures to ensure the resilience of the United States and allies against possible enemy reprisal. The goal is to deter war through a credible set of responses that are more commensurate than existing policy with the stakes involved in such scenarios.

The Book of the War

The Book of the War
Title The Book of the War PDF eBook
Author Lawrence Miles
Publisher
Pages 244
Release 2002-09-01
Genre Fiction
ISBN 9781570329050

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Marking the first five decades of the conflict, THE BOOK OF THE WAR is an A to Z of a self-contained continuum and a complete guide to the Spiral Politic, from the beginning of recordable time to the fall of humanity.

Paradoxes of War

Paradoxes of War
Title Paradoxes of War PDF eBook
Author Zeev Maoz
Publisher Routledge
Pages 368
Release 1990
Genre Political Science
ISBN 9780044451136

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No-Win War

No-Win War
Title No-Win War PDF eBook
Author Zahid Hussain
Publisher Oxford University Press, USA
Pages 372
Release 2021-08-03
Genre
ISBN 9780190704193

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This book explores the post-9/11 relations between the US and Pakistan. The growing divergence between Washington and Islamabad has taken an already uneasy alliance to a point of estrangement. Yet, a complete breakup is not an option. The underlying cause of the tension, within the partnership the two had entered on 13 September 2001, has never been fully understood. What is rarely discussed is how Pakistan's decision to ally itself with the US pushed the country into a war with itself; the cost of Pakistan's tight roping between alignment with the US and old links with the Afghan Taliban; and its long-term implications for the region and global security. This book elucidates implications for Afghanistan in the so-called war on terror while revealing US and Pakistan's foreign policy initiatives. The author explores all this through little known facts and through the players involved in this cloak and dagger game. The book tells the story behind the headlines: how equivocal is ISI's break with the Afghan Taliban fighting the coalition forces in Afghanistan; the shootout in Lahore involving a CIA agent; and the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Advocating Weapons, War, and Terrorism

Advocating Weapons, War, and Terrorism
Title Advocating Weapons, War, and Terrorism PDF eBook
Author Ian E. J. Hill
Publisher Penn State Press
Pages 241
Release 2018-08-17
Genre Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN 027108278X

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Technē’s Paradox—a frequent theme in science fiction—is the commonplace belief that technology has both the potential to annihilate humanity and to preserve it. Advocating Weapons, War, and Terrorism looks at how this paradox applies to some of the most dangerous of technologies: population bombs, dynamite bombs, chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, and improvised explosive devices. Hill’s study analyzes the rhetoric used to promote such weapons in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By examining Thomas R. Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population, the courtroom address of accused Haymarket bomber August Spies, the army textbook Chemical Warfare by Major General Amos A. Fries and Clarence J. West, the life and letters of Manhattan Project physicist Leo Szilard, and the writings of Ted “Unabomber” Kaczynski, Hill shows how contemporary societies are equipped with abundant rhetorical means to describe and debate the extreme capacities of weapons to both destroy and protect. The book takes a middle-way approach between language and materialism that combines traditional rhetorical criticism of texts with analyses of the persuasive force of weapons themselves, as objects, irrespective of human intervention. Advocating Weapons, War, and Terrorism is the first study of its kind, revealing how the combination of weapons and rhetoric facilitated the magnitude of killing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and illuminating how humanity understands and acts upon its propensity for violence. This book will be invaluable for scholars of rhetoric, scholars of science and technology, and the study of warfare.

Paradoxes of War

Paradoxes of War
Title Paradoxes of War PDF eBook
Author Zeev Maoz
Publisher Taylor & Francis
Pages 383
Release 2020-12-22
Genre Political Science
ISBN 1000259056

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Why do reasonable people lead their nations into the tremendously destructive traps of international conflict? Why do nations then deepen their involvement and make it harder to escape from these traps? In Paradoxes of War, originally published in 1990, Zeev Maoz addresses these and other paradoxical questions about the war process. Using a unique approach to the study of war, he demonstrates that wars may often break out because states wish to prevent them, and continue despite the desperate efforts of the combatants to end them. Paradoxes of War is organized around the various stages of war. The first part discusses the causes of war, the second the management of war, and the third the short- and long-term implications of war. In each chapter Maoz explores a different paradox as a contradiction between reasonable expectations and the outcomes of motivated behaviour based on those expectations. He documents these paradoxes in twentieth century wars, including the Korean War, the Six Day War, and the Vietnam War. Maoz then invokes cognitive and rational choice theories to explain why these paradoxes arise. Paradoxes of War is essential reading for students and scholars of international politics, war and peace studies, international relations theory, and political science in general.