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The second half of the 20th century featured a strategic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. That competition avoided World War III in part because during the 1950s, scholars like Henry Kissinger, Thomas Schelling, Herman Kahn, and Albert Wohlstetter analyzed the fundamental nature of nuclear deterrence. Decades of arms control negotiations reinforced these early notions of stability and created a mutual understanding that...
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"The End of Victory tells the history of the enigmatic Net Evaluation Subcommittee of the National Security Council. The NESC studied the gravest potential failure of American strategy in the 1950s and '60s: a surprise Soviet nuclear attack. Its annual reports and specialized studies quantified the risks that Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy faced in a decade rife with crises, from Berlin to Cuba. The detailed work of the NESC, whose very existence...
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Over a thirty-five year career, Daniel Bolger rose through the army infantry to become a three-star general, commanding in both theaters of the U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. He participated in meetings with top level military and civilian players, where strategy was made and managed. At the same time, he regularly carried a rifle alongside rank-and-file soldiers in combat actions, unusual for a general. Now, as a witness to all levels of...
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Blood of Tyrants reveals the surprising details of our Founding Fathers' approach to government and this history's impact on today. Delving into the forgotten--and often lurid--facts of the Revolutionary War, Logan Beirne focuses on the nation's first commander in chief, George Washington, as he shaped the very meaning of the United States Constitution in the heat of battle. Key episodes illustrate how the Founders dealt with thorny wartime issues:...
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Black describes nine "phases" of the strategic rise of the nation, in which it progressed through grave challenges, civil and foreign wars, and secured a place for itself under the title of "Superpower." He discredits prevailing notions that our unrivaled status is the product of good geography, demographics, and good luck. Instead, he reveals and analyzes the specific strategic decisions of great statesmen through the ages that transformed the world...
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"When U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan at the end of 2014, it signaled the end of the longest conflict in the nation's history. Yet we are still at war--no longer with other states, but with a host of new enemies, from nihilistic terrorists and narco-traffickers to transnational criminal cartels, lone wolf assassins, and modern-day pirates. Standing against these foes is a tight-knit fraternity of soldiers, cops, lawyers, and spies. Together,...
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The Pentagon's a strange place. Inside secure command centers, military officials make life and death decisions--but the Pentagon also offers food courts, banks, drugstores, florists, and chocolate shops. When Rosa Brooks gave her family a tour, her mother gaped at the glossy window displays: "So the heart of American military power is a shopping mall?" In a sense, yes: the U.S. military has become our one-stop-shopping solution to global problems....
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"This revelatory history of the elusive National Security Council shows how staffers operating in the shadows have driven foreign policy clandestinely for decades. When Michael Flynn resigned in disgrace as the Trump administration's national security advisor the New York Times referred to the National Security Council as "the traditional center of management for a president's dealings with an uncertain world." Indeed, no institution or individual...
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A groundbreaking comparative study of the dynamics and pathologies of war in modern times. Over recent decades, Pulitzer-winning historian John W. Dower has addressed the roots and consequences of war from multiple perspectives. Here he examines the cultures of war revealed by four powerful events--Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, and the invasion of Iraq in the name of a war on terror. The list of issues examined and themes explored is wide-ranging:...