Author: Larry Diamond
Publisher: JHU Press
Release Date: 1996-09-30
Genre: Political Science
How will civil-military relations affect efforts to consolidate new democracies in developing and postcommunist countries? How should democratic governments go about establishing civilian control of the armed forces? This volume brings together ten distinguished authorities from around the world to examine these questions as they relate to Latin America, Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union.
Author: Elizabeth Salas
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Release Date: 1990
Since pre-Columbian times, soldiering has been a traditional life experience for innumerable women in Mexico. Yet the many names given these women warriors—heroines, camp followers, Amazons, coronelas, soldadas, soldaderas, and Adelitas—indicate their ambivalent position within Mexican society. In this original study, Elizabeth Salas explores the changing role of the soldadera, both in reality and as a cultural symbol, from pre-Columbian times up to the present day. Drawing on military archival data, anthropological studies, and oral history interviews, Salas first explores the real roles played by Mexican women in armed conflicts. She finds that most of the functions performed by women easily equate to those performed by revolutionaries and male soldiers in the quartermaster corps and regular ranks. She then turns her attention to the soldadera as a continuing symbol in Mexican and Chicano culture, examining the image of the soldadera in literature, corridos, art, music, and film. Challenging many traditional stereotypes, Salas finds that the fundamental realities of war link all Mexican women, regardless of time period, social class, or nom de guerre.
Author: Clyde Edward Wood
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
Release Date: 2011-07-01
Napoleon delayed his attack at Waterloo to allow the mud to dry. Had he attacked earlier, he might have defeated Wellington before Blücher arrived. In November 1942, Russian mud stopped the Germans, who could not advance again until the temperature dropped low enough to freeze the mud. During the Vietnam War, "Project Popeye" was an American attempt to lengthen the monsoon and cause delays on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Soldiers have always known just how significant mud can be in war. But historians have not fully recognized its importance, and few have discussed the phenomenon in more than a passing manner. Only three books--Military Geography (by John Collins), Battling the Elements (by Harold Winters et al.), and Battlegrounds) (edited by Michael Stephenson)-- have addressed it at any length and then only as part of the entire environment's effect on the battlefield. None of these books analyzed mud's influence on the individual combatant. Mud: A Military History first defines the substance's very different types. Then it examines their specific effects on mobility and on soldiers and their equipment over the centuries and throughout the world. From the Russian rasputiza to the Southeast Asian monsoon, C. E. Wood demonstrates mud's profound impact on the course of military history. Citing numerous veterans' memoirs, archival sources, personal interviews, and historical sources, soldier-scholar Wood pays particular attention to mud's effect on combatants' morale, health, and fatigue. His book is for all infantrymen--past, present, or the clean, dry, comfortable armchair variety.
The Nigerian civil war was the watershed in the history of the Nigerian military. It demonstrated the need for a modern, professional army, navy and airforce, with sophisticated weaponry, and led to a huge increase in expenditure and personnel. It also demonstrated - very significantly - how the military could wield supreme political power. Peters traces the history of the Nigerian military from its colonial constabulary-type organization as part of the Royal West African Frontier Force, to the establishment of the military state. Revealing the extent to which the military is considered a glamorous calling and a passport to wealth, Peters shows how its officers are drawn from the educated elite and play leading roles in all aspects of life: political, economic and social. The military has succeeded in guaranteeing a measure of national cohesion, and has increased the number of states in Nigeria to ensure regional stability; its ranks include all ethnic groups; and it has played an important role as an international peace-keeping force. But while it has claimed to correct the evils of civilian rule, it has resisted democracy and has failed to correct the financial profligacy, economic mismanagement, corruption and nepotism it sought to eradicate. This study provides a thorough account of Nigerian society through a focus on its single most powerful institution.
Author: Stephen Morillo
Release Date: 2006-10-03
What is Military History? presents a clear, readable introduction to a popular field of history. It shows that military history encompasses a wide range of perspectives on all aspects of pas military organization and activity. Fundamental features of the field are included: The background to military history, showing its development from ancient times; The key ideas and concepts that shape analysis of military activity; The current controversies about which military historians argue, and why they are important; A survey of who does military history, where it is taught and published, and how it is practiced; A look at where military history is headed in the future. This is an ideal book for students of military history and of historiography generally, as well as for anyone interested in learning more about the dynamics of this rich and growing area of study.
Author: John M. Collins
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
Release Date: 2011-03-01
This book covers many topics that are crucial to military planning but often receive only passing mention in histories or briefings. Collins, a former Army officer, stresses land geography, but he does not stint oceans, the atmosphere, or interplanetary space. His discussions of urban areas are too brief, given the increasing amount of large-scale violence in cities since the end of World War II.
Author: Bret A. Moore
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date: 2013-08-15
Military Psychologists' Desk Reference is the authoritative guide in the field of military mental health, covering in a clear and concise manner the depth and breadth of this expanding area at a pivotal and relevant time.
"This book analyzes the origins of the relationships between Islamist groups and Pakistan's military, and explores Pakistan's quest for identity and security. Tracing how the Pakistani military has sought U.S. support by making itself useful for concerns of the moment, author Husain Haqqani offers an alternative view of political developments in Pakistan since the country's independence in 1947"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Michael A. Bellesiles
Publisher: New Press, The
Release Date: 2012-09-11
In A People’s History of the U.S. Military, historian Michael A. Bellesiles draws from three centuries of soldiers’ personal encounters with combat—through fascinating excerpts from letters, diaries, and memoirs, as well as audio recordings, film, and blogs—to capture the essence of the American military experience firsthand, from the American Revolution to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military service can shatter and give meaning to lives; it is rarely a neutral encounter, and has contributed to a rich outpouring of personal testimony from the men and women who have literally placed their lives on the line. The often dramatic and always richly textured first-person accounts collected in this book cover a wide range of perspectives, from ardent patriots to disillusioned cynics; barely literate farm boys to urbane college graduates; scions of founding families to recent immigrants, enthusiasts, and dissenters; women disguising themselves as men in order to serve their country to African Americans fighting for their freedom through military service. A work of great relevance and immediacy—as the nation grapples with the return of thousands of men and women from active military duty—A People’s History of the U.S. Military will become a major new touchstone for our understanding of American military service.
Author: William E. Odom
Publisher: Yale University Press
Release Date: 2000
In this text, a United States Army officer and scholar traces the rise and fall of the Soviet military, arguing that it had a far greater impact on Soviet politics and economic development than was perceived in the West. The author asserts that Gorbachev saw that shrinking the military and the military-industrial sector of the economy was essential for fully implementing perestroika and that his efforts to do this led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Odom enhances his account with interviews with key factors in the Soviet Union before, during and after the collapse. He describes the condition of the Soviet military during the mid-1980s and explains how it became what it was - its organizational structures, manpower policies, and military-industrial arrangements. He then moves to the events that led to its destruction, taking us to the most secret circles of Soviet policy making, as well as describing the public debates, factional struggles in the new parliament, and street combat as army units tried to repress the political forces unleashed by glasnost.
Author: James P. Tate
Publisher: The Minerva Group, Inc.
Release Date: 2002-06-01
The Seventh Military History Symposium of the United States Air Force Academy brought together military historians, frontier historians, western historians, and local historians. The papers presented are arranged in four sections: The Frontier and American Military Tradition Comparison of Military Frontiers Impact of the Military on the Frontier Military Life on the Frontier Papers in the first two sections address the broad weep of the military experience on the frontier. These papers help provide perspective and conceptual framework within which to fit the more specific studies in the third and fourth sections. The fifth section, "The Seventh Military History Symposium in Perspective," includes the reactions and commentary of three leading military historians.
Author: Bret A. Moore
Release Date: 2011
The military imposes unique and often severe challenges to couples, which clinicians – particularly the growing numbers of civilian clinicians who see military couples – often struggle to address. These problems are only compounded by misunderstandings and misconceptions about what it means to be part of a specific branch of the military and part of the military as a whole. Handbook of Counseling Military Couples includes a clear, thorough introduction to military culture and to couple relationships in the military. But more than that, it provides readers with expert analyses of the special types of issues that come up for military couples and shows clinicians how to address them productively. In the chapters, readers will find the answers to questions such as how are military couples' rights different from those of civilians? What attitudes and beliefs about relationships might military members bring to a session, and how are those different from those of civilians? What is the state of marriage and divorce in each of the branches and within the military in general? For a particular treatment modality, how does research in with military members compare to that of civilians? When should particular treatment strategies be used, and why – and how?