Surprise, Security, and the American Experience PDF Download

Author: John Lewis Gaddis
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674018362
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
In this provocative book, a distinguished Cold War historian argues that September 11, 2001, was not the first time a surprise attack shattered American assumptions about national security and reshaped American grand strategy.

Author: John Lewis Gaddis
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674018365
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
In this provocative book, a distinguished Cold War historian argues that September 11, 2001, was not the first time a surprise attack shattered American assumptions about national security and reshaped American grand strategy.

Author: Erik J. Dahl
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1589019989
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
How can the United States avoid a future surprise attack on the scale of 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, in an era when such devastating attacks can come not only from nation states, but also from terrorist groups or cyber enemies? Intelligence and Surprise Attack examines why surprise attacks often succeed even though, in most cases, warnings had been available beforehand. Erik J. Dahl challenges the conventional wisdom about intelligence failure, which holds that attacks succeed because important warnings get lost amid noise or because intelligence officials lack the imagination and collaboration to “connect the dots” of available information. Comparing cases of intelligence failure with intelligence success, Dahl finds that the key to success is not more imagination or better analysis, but better acquisition of precise, tactical-level intelligence combined with the presence of decision makers who are willing to listen to and act on the warnings they receive from their intelligence staff. The book offers a new understanding of classic cases of conventional and terrorist attacks such as Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway, and the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The book also presents a comprehensive analysis of the intelligence picture before the 9/11 attacks, making use of new information available since the publication of the 9/11 Commission Report and challenging some of that report’s findings.

Author: Larry Hancock
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 161902795X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
Surprise Attack explores sixty plus years of military and terror threats against the United States. It examines the intelligence tools and practices that provided warnings of those attacks and evaluates the United States' responses, both in preparedness – and most importantly – the effectiveness of our military and national command authority. Contrary to common claims, the historical record now shows that warnings, often very solid warnings, have preceded almost all such attacks, both domestic and international. Intelligence practices developed early in the Cold War, along with intelligence collection techniques have consistently produced accurate warnings for our national security decision makers. Surprise Attack traces the evolution and application of those practices and explores why such warnings have often failed to either interdict or intercept actual attacks. Going beyond warnings, Surprise Attack explores the real world performance of the nation's military and civilian command and control history – exposing disconnects in the chain of command, failures of command and control and fundamental performance issues with national command authority. America has faced an ongoing series of threats, from the attacks on Hawaii and the Philippines in 1941, through the crises and confrontations of the Cold War, global attacks on American personnel and facilities to the contemporary violence of jihadi terrorism. With a detailed study of those threats, the attacks related to them, and America's response, a picture of what works – and what doesn't – emerges. The attacks have been tragic and we see the defensive preparations and response often ineffective. Yet lessons can be learned from the experience; Surprise Attack represents a comprehensive effort to identify and document those lessons.

Author: Gary Sick
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
The explosive book that sparked a congressional investigation is now in paperback and updated with new testimony from key participants. Naval veteran Gary Sick was the principal White House aide for Iran during the hostage crisis of 1979-81 and is the author of All Fall Down: America's Tragic Encounter with Iran. Photographs.

Author: John Lewis Gaddis
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440684502
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
“Outstanding . . . The most accessible distillation of that conflict yet written.” —The Boston Globe “Energetically written and lucid, it makes an ideal introduction to the subject.” —The New York Times The “dean of Cold War historians” (The New York Times) now presents the definitive account of the global confrontation that dominated the last half of the twentieth century. Drawing on newly opened archives and the reminiscences of the major players, John Lewis Gaddis explains not just what happened but why—from the months in 1945 when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. went from alliance to antagonism to the barely averted holocaust of the Cuban Missile Crisis to the maneuvers of Nixon and Mao, Reagan and Gorbachev. Brilliant, accessible, almost Shakespearean in its drama, The Cold War stands as a triumphant summation of the era that, more than any other, shaped our own. Gaddis is also the author of On Grand Strategy.

Author: Lloyd E. Ambrosius
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316737861
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
In this new work, one of the world's leading historians of US foreign relations, Lloyd E.Ambrosius, addresses enduring questions about American political culture and statecraft by focusing on President Woodrow Wilson and the United States in international relations during and after World War I. Updated to include recent historiography as well as an original introduction and conclusion, Woodrow Wilson and American Internationalism features nine different essays closely linked together by the themes of Wilson's understanding of Americanism, his diplomacy to create a new world order in the wake of World War I, and the legacy of his foreign policy. Examining the exclusive as well as universal dimensions of Wilsonianism, Ambrosius assesses not only Wilson's role during his presidency but also his legacy in defining America's place in world history. Speaking to the transnational turn in American history, Ambrosius shows how Wilson's liberal internationalist vision of a new world order would shape US foreign relations for the next century.

Author: Michael Clarke
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030534944
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
This handbook provides a comprehensive analysis of the contemporary theory, practice and themes in the study of national security. Part 1: Theories examines how national security has been conceptualised and formulated within the disciplines international relations, security studies and public policy. Part 2: Actors shifts the focus of the volume from these disciplinary concerns to consideration of how core actors in international affairs have conceptualised and practiced national security over time. Part 3: Issues then provides in-depth analysis of how individual security issues have been incorporated into prevailing scholarly and policy paradigms on national security. While security now seems an all-encompassing phenomenon, one general proposition still holds: national interests and the nation-state remain central to unlocking security puzzles. As normative values intersect with raw power; as new threats meet old ones; and as new actors challenge established elites, making sense out of the complex milieu of security theories, actors, and issues is a crucial task - and is the main accomplishment of this book.

Author: Michael Emerson
Publisher: CEPS
ISBN: 9290796790
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
The European Security Forum brings together senior officials and experts from EU and Euro-Atlantic Partnership countries, including the United States and Russia, to discuss security issues of strategic importance to Europe. Now in its sixth year of operation, the Forum is jointly directed by the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. The ambition of this fourth annual volume of Readings in European Security is to serve as a prism through which the EU's external relations and security can be assessed, with contributions from its American and Russian partners. The book contains the complete set of working papers presented and discussed from January through December 2006. During this period, international experts tackled highly topical strategic issues ranging from the security of energy supplies in Europe to Ukraine's strategic security to Islamic extremism in Europe to the strategic implications of the failed EU Constitutional Treaty.

Author: Robert Kagan
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375724915
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
Most Americans believe the United States had been an isolationist power until the twentieth century. This is wrong. In a riveting and brilliantly revisionist work of history, Robert Kagan, bestselling author of Of Paradise and Power, shows how Americans have in fact steadily been increasing their global power and influence from the beginning. Driven by commercial, territorial, and idealistic ambitions, the United States has always perceived itself, and been seen by other nations, as an international force. This is a book of great importance to our understanding of our nation’s history and its role in the global community.