This collection, comprising key works by James J. Wirtz, explains how different threat perceptions can lead to strategic surprise attack, intelligence failure and the failure of deterrence. This volume adopts a strategist’s view of the issue of surprise and intelligence failure by placing these phenomena in the context of conflict between strong and weak actors in world affairs. A two-level theory explains the incentives and perceptions of both parties when significant imbalances of military power exist between potential combatants, and how this situation sets the stage for strategic surprise and intelligence failure to occur. The volume illustrates this theory by applying it to the Kargil Crisis, attacks launched by non-state actors, and by offering a comparison of Pearl Harbor and the September 11, 2001 attacks. It explores the phenomenon of deterrence failure; specifically, how weaker parties in an enduring or nascent conflict come to believe that deterrent threats posed by militarily stronger antagonists will be undermined by various constraints, increasing the attractiveness of utilising surprise attack to achieve their objectives. This work also offers strategies that could mitigate the occurrence of intelligence failure, strategic surprise and the failure of deterrence. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, strategic studies, security studies and IR in general.
In this account of one of the worst intelligence failures in American history, James J. Wirtz explains why U.S. forces were surprised by the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive in 1968. Wirtz reconstructs the turning point of the Vietnam War in unprecedented detail. Drawing upon Vietcong and recently declassified U.S. sources, he is able to trace the strategy and unfolding of the Tet campaign as well as the U.S. response.
The first accessible reference to cover the history, context, current issues, and key concepts surrounding biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. A collection of information on everything from aerosols to zones of peace, these two volumes cover historical background, technology, and strategic implications of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, thus providing facts, terms, and context needed to participate in contemporary policy debate. This encyclopedia is the only comprehensive reference dedicated to the three types of weapons of mass destruction. With over 500 entries arranged alphabetically, volume one covers biological and chemical weapons, while volume two focuses on nuclear weapons. Experts from eight countries cover issues related to these weapons, policies, strategies, technologies, delivery vehicles, arms control concepts, treaties, and key historical figures and locations. Entries are written to make difficult concepts easy to understand by cutting through military and scientific jargon. Students, lay readers, scientists, and government policy makers are provided with the broad range of information needed to place today's policy discussions in proper strategic or historical context.
Intelligence and the National Security Strategist: Enduring Issues and Challenges presents students with a useful anthology of published articles from diverse sources as well as original contributions to the study of intelligence. The collection includes classic perspectives from the history of warfare, views on the evolution of U.S. intelligence, and studies on the delicate balance between the need for information-gathering and the values of democratic societies. It also includes succinct discussions of complex issues facing the Intelligence Community, such as the challenges of technical and clandestine collection, the proliferation of open sources, the problems of deception and denial operations, and the interaction between the Intelligence Community and the military. Several timely chapters examine the role of the intelligence analyst in support of the national security policymaker. Rounding out the volume are appendices on the legislative underpinnings of our national intelligence apparatus.
This textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to the strategic history of the past two centuries, showing how those 200 years were shaped and reshaped extensively by war. The book takes a broad view of what was relevant to the causes, courses and consequences of conflict. The volume provides students with a strong grounding in the contribution of war to the development of the modern world, from the pre-industrial era to the age of international terrorism and smart weapons. Covering all the major wars of the past two centuries, the third edition has been revised and updated and now includes: new introductory essays at the start of each section to help students recognize historical turning points and strategic themes; revised and updated material on the post-Cold War period, accommodating new developments and contemporary perspectives; new material on non-Western views on strategy, especially Sun Tzu; a new chapter on ‘The age of acceleration and great power competition’, starting with the death of Bin Laden and ending with the Ukraine crisis; a new Conclusion offering a synthesis between the message of earlier editions and the state of strategy today. This textbook will be essential reading for students of strategic studies, security studies, war studies, International Relations and international history.
This volume describes how technological and geo-political trends are rapidly transforming maritime affairs. A mix of original and previously published material, this volume describes how the 21st-century great power competition is changing the face of naval operations in general, and U.S. Navy operations in the Western Pacific in particular. The rise of an assertive China and its new anti-access and area-denial capabilities threaten the aircraft carrier-based maritime dominance of the U.S. Navy. Military and political trends in the Western Pacific and beyond suggest that the world is encountering a pivotal moment when existing weapons, tactics, and operations might be rendered obsolete by techno-strategic change. This volume considers these developments from three perspectives by describing: (1) the techno-strategic setting; (2) the institutional constraints that impede the ability of the U.S. Navy to respond to these changes; and (3) a new approach to naval force planning and strategy to cope with these developments. The volume culminates in a discussion of sophisticated strategies and operational concepts that position the U.S. Navy and its maritime allies and partners to prevail in today’s techno-strategic churn. This book will be of much interest to students of naval policy, strategic studies, Asia-Pacific politics, and International Relations.
Since the end of the Cold War, naval analysts and strategists have faced a crisis. On the one hand, they are well versed with the enduring concepts of strategy, intelligence and the procedures and lessons generated by nearly fifty years of Cold War. On the other hand, there is a widespread notion that traditional ways of doing business undermine new, more cooperative opportunities that have arisen in international politics since 1989. This criticism is reflected in attempts at "New Thinking" which places societal, environmental and even "Utopian" solutions to military and intelligence problems ahead of traditional concepts of strategy. At the same time, events like the Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo, Desert Fox and "intelligence surprises" (Indian and Pakistan nuclear testing) demonstrate a mastery of the principles of intelligence and strategy are the cornerstone of U.S. foreign and defense policy.
As part of its general rethinking of America's global strategy, the Bush Administration initiated a re-examination of America's nuclear doctrine that has generated considerable controversy with its focus on maintaining a reliance on nuclear weapons and potentially increasing willingness to use them. Here a group of leading strategic analysts examine the background to the re-evaluation, issues of implementation and potential implications internationally.
The second edition of Johnson and Wirtz's anthology provides a comprehensive set of readings in the field of intelligence studies. The book spans a wide range of topics, from how the United States gathers and interprets information collected around the world to comparisons of the American intelligence system with the secret agencies of other nations. The text addresses a wide range of material including: (1) the meaning of strategic intelligence; (2) methods of intelligence collection; (3) intelligence analysis; (4) the danger of intelligence politicization; (5) relationships between intelligence officers and the policymakers they serve; (6) covert action; (7) counterintelligence; (8) accountability and civil liberties; (9) the implications of the major intelligence failures in 2001 and 2002 regarding, respectively, the terrorist attacks against the United States and the faulty estimates about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; and (10) intelligence as practiced in other nations. New to This Edition * A review of the state of intelligence research literature * An interview with former CIA director Richard Helms * The early development of U.S. satellite surveillance * The role of intelligence leaks in the federal government * Improving relations between the producers and consumers of intelligence * The Senate investigation of the Ames spying scandal in the CIA * NSA warrantless wiretaps * Intelligence mistakes leading up to the 9/11 attack * Intelligence failures in the faulty predictions of WMDs in Iraq * Institutional conflicts that contributed to 9/11 failures * The British intelligence failures regarding WMDs in Iraq
On June 4, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson delivered what he and many others considered the greatest civil rights speech of his career. Proudly, Johnson hailed the new freedoms granted to African Americans due to the newly passed Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, but noted that "freedom is not enough." The next stage of the movement would be to secure racial equality "as a fact and a result." The speech was drafted by an assistant secretary of labor by the name of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had just a few months earlier drafted a scorching report on the deterioration of the urban black family in America. When that report was leaked to the press a month after Johnson's speech, it created a whirlwind of controversy from which Johnson's civil rights initiatives would never recover. But Moynihan's arguments proved startlingly prescient, and established the terms of a debate about welfare policy that have endured for forty-five years. The history of one of the great missed opportunities in American history, Freedom Is Not Enough will be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand our nation's ongoing failure to address the tragedy of the black underclass.
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