Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download The Improbable War PDF full book. Access full book title The Improbable War by Christopher Coker. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Christopher Coker Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199396272 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 230
Book Description
The Improbable War explains why conflict between the USA and China cannot be ruled out. In 1914 war between the Great Powers was considered unlikely, yet it happened. We learn only from history, and popular though the First World War analogy is, the lessons we draw from its outbreak are usually mistaken. Among these errors is the tendency to over-estimate human rationality. All major conflicts of the past 300 years have been about the norms and rules of the international system. In China and the US the world confronts two 'exceptional' powers whose values differ markedly, with China bidding to challenge the current order. The 'Thucydidean Trap' - when a conservative status quo power confronts a rising new one - may also play its part in precipitating hostilities. To avoid stumbling into an avoidable war both Beijing and Washington need a coherent strategy, which neither of them has. History also reveals that war evolves continually. The next global conflict is likely to be played out in cyberspace and outer space and like all previous wars it will have devastating consequences. Such a war between the United States and China may seem improbable, but it is all too possible, which is why we need to discuss it now.
Author: Christopher Coker Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199396272 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 230
Book Description
The Improbable War explains why conflict between the USA and China cannot be ruled out. In 1914 war between the Great Powers was considered unlikely, yet it happened. We learn only from history, and popular though the First World War analogy is, the lessons we draw from its outbreak are usually mistaken. Among these errors is the tendency to over-estimate human rationality. All major conflicts of the past 300 years have been about the norms and rules of the international system. In China and the US the world confronts two 'exceptional' powers whose values differ markedly, with China bidding to challenge the current order. The 'Thucydidean Trap' - when a conservative status quo power confronts a rising new one - may also play its part in precipitating hostilities. To avoid stumbling into an avoidable war both Beijing and Washington need a coherent strategy, which neither of them has. History also reveals that war evolves continually. The next global conflict is likely to be played out in cyberspace and outer space and like all previous wars it will have devastating consequences. Such a war between the United States and China may seem improbable, but it is all too possible, which is why we need to discuss it now.
Author: Holger Afflerbach Publisher: Berghahn Books ISBN: 0857453106 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 381
Book Description
The First World War has been described as the "primordial catastrophe of the twentieth century." Arguably, Italian Fascism, German National Socialism and Soviet Leninism and Stalinism would not have emerged without the cultural and political shock of World War I. The question why this catastrophe happened therefore preoccupies historians to this day. The focus of this volume is not on the consequences, but rather on the connection between the Great War and the long 19th century, the short- and long-term causes of World War I. This approach results in the questioning of many received ideas about the war's causes, especially the notion of "inevitability."
Author: Thibault Muzergues Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000536580 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 352
Book Description
In this highly provocative and documented book, Thibault Muzergues describes how war in Europe is now more likely than it has been for at least the past 30 years, how it might come back to Europe and what Europeans can do to avoid getting drawn again in fratricide conflicts. Many consider Europe a continent of peace, with NATO guaranteeing its security and the EU providing the political glue for a Europe Whole and Free. But what if this was not the case anymore? What if, after a decade of crisis, today’s Europe was much more fragile than we thought? The author challenges our assumptions about peace in Europe and forces us to face the realities of a world that has become much more dangerous. Far from being apocalyptic, this book serves as an advance warning to the dangers, both internal and external that are now closing in on Europe – and suggests solutions to avoid them. This book will be key reading for those interested in European politics and history, the European Union, security, and strategic studies, and more broadly to current affairs and international relations.
Author: Christopher Coker Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0197644228 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 198
Book Description
What are humanity's biological origins? What are the mechanisms, including culture, that continue to drive it? What is the history that has allowed it to evolve over time? And what are its functions--how does it survive and thrive by exploiting the features that define it as a species? These are the four questions of the Tinbergen Method for explaining animal behavior, developed by the Nobel Prizewinning Dutch ethologist Niko Tinbergen. This book contends that applying this method to war--which is unique to humans--can help us better understand why conflict is so resilient. Christopher Coker explores these four questions of our past and present, and looks at our post-human future, assessing how far scientific advances in gene-editing, robotics and AI systems will de-center human agency. He concludes that we won't witness war's end until it has exhausted its evolutionary possibilities--meaning that, well into the future, war is likely to remain what Thucydides first called it: 'the human thing'. From the Ancients to Artificial Intelligence, Why War? is an exhilarating tour d'horizon of humankind's propensity to warfare and its behavioral underpinnings, offering new ways of thinking about our species' unique and deadly preoccupation.
Author: Kathleen Broome Williams Publisher: US Naval Institute Press ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 314
Book Description
At the outbreak of World War II, four scientists left their comfortable college teaching positions to work for the government. Three served in uniform, the fourth oversaw contracts for the Navy. Such dramatic changes in life styles during the period were common -- for men. But these established scientists were women, and each made significant contributions to a Navy embroiled in a modern, science-dependent war. Mary Sears, a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution planktonologist, headed the Hydrographic Office's Oceanographic Unit. Grace Hopper, a Yale-trained mathematician, went to the Bureau of Ships Computation Laboratory at Harvard where she worked on one of the first computers, churning out essential data for ordnance and other projects. Florence van Straten, a New York University chemist, served as an aerological engineer analyzing the use of weather in combat. Mina Rees was the chief technical aide to the applied mathematics panel of the National Defense Research Committee. This book firmly places the women within the context of their times. Deeply rooted in previously unexamined primary sources, the work helps readers understand the personal and professional experiences of women in the military and the attitudes they faced, and fully appreciate the educational and occupational barriers faced by women scientists in the 1930s and 1940s. The author focuses on their efforts during the war, but also discusses the women's skills and training, tells how they came to war work, and examines the contributions they made once there. She further considers how the war changed their lives, especially their professional lives, and how it affected their future careers. While other books havebeen written about women in the military, this is the first to focus on Navy women scientists.
Author: C.R.M.F. Cruttwell Publisher: Chicago Review Press ISBN: 0897336607 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 688
Book Description
This vivid, detailed history of World War I presents the general reader with an accurate and readable account of the campaigns and battles, along with brilliant portraits of the leaders and generals of all countries involved. Scrupulously fair, praising and blaming friend and enemy as circumstances demand, this has become established as the classic account of the first world-wide war.
Author: Keith Wilson Publisher: Berghahn Books ISBN: 9781571819284 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
When studying the origins of the First World War, scholars have relied heavily on the series of key diplomatic documents published by the governments of both the defeated and the victorious powers in the 1920s and 1930s. However, this volume shows that these volumes, rather than dealing objectively with the past, were used by the different governments to project an interpretation of the origins of the Great War that was more palatable to them and their country than the truth might have been. In revealing policies that influenced the publication of the documents, the relationships between the commissioning governments, their officials, and the historians involved, this collection serves as a warning that even seemingly objective sources have to be used with caution in historical research.
Author: Hugh Mallory Falconer Publisher: Pen and Sword ISBN: 1526721848 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 264
Book Description
I remember very clearly the day on which I was supposed to dieSo starts the story of Squadron Leader Hugh Mallory Falconer, British Special Operations Executive agent and prisoner of the Nazis for over two and a half grueling years.When he was caught out of uniform by the Gestapo in Tunisia not long after the culmination of Operation Torch in 1942, he had no right to expect anything but the worst. Quite miraculously however, his papers vanished whilst he was being sent to Gestapo HQ in Berlin and, as a result, no-one could make out who he was. This, coupled with his quick-thinking and cunning whilst under interrogation, led to the Nazis including him in a group of high-profile hostages, holding him alongside such notable figures as the former French Minister Leon Blum.The group was intended to save the Nazi leaders' necks as the War ground down to its inevitable end. Offered a certain amount of protection on account of their special status in the eyes of their captors, they experienced the war from a unique vantage point. Held at a variety of infamous camps, including Sachsenhausen, Dachau and Buchenwald, Squadron Leader Mallory was taken on a virtual grand tour of the Third Reich, witnessing the full extent of its horrors.Then in 1945, he was forced to new heights of cunning when the Nazis began exterminating their captives. His daughter, who has painstakingly transcribed the only copy of her fathers memoirs, describes this book, published here for the first time, as a personal manual on keeping your sanity when your weight has dropped to that of a small German Shepherd dog, you are covered in vermin, you are alone and you have everything to fear. It makes for vital and compelling reading.
Author: Joshua Kurlantzick Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1451667892 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
The untold story of how America’s secret war in Laos in the 1960s transformed the CIA from a loose collection of spies into a military operation and a key player in American foreign policy. January, 1961: Laos, a tiny nation few Americans have heard of, is at risk of falling to communism and triggering a domino effect throughout Southeast Asia. This is what President Eisenhower believed when he approved the CIA’s Operation Momentum, creating an army of ethnic Hmong to fight communist forces there. Largely hidden from the American public—and most of Congress—Momentum became the largest CIA paramilitary operation in the history of the United States. The brutal war lasted more than a decade, left the ground littered with thousands of unexploded bombs, and changed the nature of the CIA forever. With “revelatory reporting” and “lucid prose” (The Economist), Kurlantzick provides the definitive account of the Laos war, focusing on the four key people who led the operation: the CIA operative whose idea it was, the Hmong general who led the proxy army in the field, the paramilitary specialist who trained the Hmong forces, and the State Department careerist who took control over the war as it grew. Using recently declassified records and extensive interviews, Kurlantzick shows for the first time how the CIA’s clandestine adventures in one small, Southeast Asian country became the template for how the United States has conducted war ever since—all the way to today’s war on terrorism.
Author: Allan Metcalf Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199703299 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 224
Book Description
It is said to be the most frequently spoken (or typed) word on the planet, more common than an infant's first word ma or the ever-present beverage Coke. It was even the first word spoken on the moon. It is "OK"--the most ubiquitous and invisible of American expressions, one used countless times every day. Yet few of us know the hidden history of OK--how it was coined, what it stood for, and the amazing extent of its influence. Allan Metcalf, a renowned popular writer on language, here traces the evolution of America's most popular word, writing with brevity and wit, and ranging across American history with colorful portraits of the nooks and crannies in which OK survived and prospered. He describes how OK was born as a lame joke in a newspaper article in 1839--used as a supposedly humorous abbreviation for "oll korrect" (ie, "all correct")--but should have died a quick death, as most clever coinages do. But OK was swept along in a nineteenth-century fad for abbreviations, was appropriated by a presidential campaign (one of the candidates being called "Old Kinderhook"), and finally was picked up by operators of the telegraph. Over the next century and a half, it established a firm toehold in the American lexicon, and eventually became embedded in pop culture, from the "I'm OK, You're OK" of 1970's transactional analysis, to Ned Flanders' absurd "Okeley Dokeley!" Indeed, OK became emblematic of a uniquely American attitude, and is one of our most successful global exports. "An appealing and informative history of OK." --Washington Post Book World "After reading Metcalf's book, it's easy to accept his claim that OK is 'America's greatest word.'" --Erin McKean, Boston Globe "Entertaininga treat for logophiles." --Kirkus Reviews "Metcalf makes you acutely aware of how ubiquitous and vital the word has become." --Jeremy McCarter, Newsweek
Author: Christopher Coker
Author: Christopher Coker
Author: Holger Afflerbach
Author: Thibault Muzergues
Author: Christopher Coker
Author: Kathleen Broome Williams
Author: C.R.M.F. Cruttwell
Author: Keith Wilson
Author: Hugh Mallory Falconer
Author: Joshua Kurlantzick
Author: Allan Metcalf