[PDF] War Chaos And History eBook

Author : Roger Beaumont
Publisher : Praeger
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 44,17 MB
Release : 1994-11-21
Category : History
ISBN : 0275949494

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War, Chaos, and History considers the implications of the emerging field of research in chaos-complexity-non-linearity for the study of war. This study examines the special dependence of military professionals on history in their shaping of doctrines, style, and attitudes in spite of the wide gap between the portrayal of war in military history and the far greater intricacy of its reality. Special foci in the analysis include: the fragility of doctrine; the chronic confounding of plans and expectations in actual operations; the congruences of chaos and creativity theoretics; effects of war on the environment; and problems of evidence and reportage. Three cases--battle cruisers, tank destroyers, and heavy fighter aircraft--are presented to illustrate paradoxes, especially the gap between vision and realization, and the tension between the urge to control and the impulse to create chaos in war.

Author : Colin Gray
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 15,73 MB
Release : 2004-08-02
Category : History
ISBN : 1135754756

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In this volume, Professor Colin Gray develops and applies the theory and scholarship on the allegedly historical practice of the 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA), in order to improve our comprehension of how and why strategy 'works'. The author explores the RMA hypothesis both theoretically and historically. The book argues that the conduct of an RMA has to be examined as a form of strategic behaviour, which means that, of necessity, it must "work" as strategy works. The great RMA debate of the 1990s is reviewed empathetically, though sceptically, by the author, with every major school of thought allowed its day in court. The author presents three historical RMAs as case studies for his argument: those arguably revealed in the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon; in World War I; and in the nuclear age. The focus of his analysis is how these grand RMAs functioned strategically. The conclusions that he draws from these empirical exercises are then applied to help us understand what, indeed, is - and what is not - happening with the much vaunted information-technology-led RMA of today.

Author : Máté Rigó
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 10,48 MB
Release : 2022-08-15
Category : History
ISBN : 1501764667

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Capitalism in Chaos explores an often-overlooked consequence and paradox of the First World War—the prosperity of business elites and bankers in service of the war effort during the destruction of capital and wealth by belligerent armies. This study of business life amid war and massive geopolitical changes follows industrialists and policymakers in Central Europe as the region became crucially important for German and subsequently French plans of economic and geopolitical expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Based on extensive research in sixteen archives, five languages, and four states, Máté Rigó demonstrates that wartime destruction and the birth of "war millionaires" were two sides of the same coin. Despite the recent centenaries of the Great War and the Versailles peace treaties, knowledge of the overall impact of war and border changes on business life remains sporadic, based on scant statistics and misleading national foci. Consequently, most histories remain wedded to the viewpoint of national governments and commercial connections across national borders. Capitalism in Chaos changes the static historical perspective by presenting Europe's East as the economic engine of the continent. Rigó accomplishes this paradigm shift by focusing on both supranational regions—including East-Central and Western Europe—as well as the eastern and western peripheries of Central Europe, Alsace-Lorraine and Transylvania, from the 1870s until the 1920s. As a result, Capitalism in Chaos offers a concrete, lively history of economics during major world crises, with a contemporary consciousness toward inequality and disparity during a time of collapse.

Author : Stephen C. Lubkemann
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 414 pages
File Size : 27,9 MB
Release : 2010-03-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0226496430

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Fought in the wake of a decade of armed struggle against colonialism, the Mozambican civil war lasted from 1977 to 1992, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives while displacing millions more. As conflicts across the globe span decades and generations, Stephen C. Lubkemann suggests that we need a fresh perspective on war when it becomes the context for normal life rather than an exceptional event that disrupts it. Culture in Chaos calls for a new point of departure in the ethnography of war that investigates how the inhabitants of war zones live under trying new conditions and how culture and social relations are transformed as a result. Lubkemann focuses on how Ndau social networks were fragmented by wartime displacement and the profound effect this had on gender relations. Demonstrating how wartime migration and post-conflict return were shaped by social struggles and interests that had little to do with the larger political reasons for the war, Lubkemann contests the assumption that wartime migration is always involuntary. His critical reexamination of displacement and his engagement with broader theories of agency and social change will be of interest to anthropologists, political scientists, historians, and demographers, and to anyone who works in a war zone or with refugees and migrants.

Author : Colin Gray
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 47,65 MB
Release : 2004-03-25
Category : History
ISBN : 0203339258

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In this volume, Professor Colin Gray develops and applies the theory and scholarship on the allegedly historical practice of the 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA), in order to improve our comprehension of how and why strategy 'works'. The author explores the RMA hypothesis both theoretically and historically. The book argues that the conduct of an RMA has to be examined as a form of strategic behaviour, which means that, of necessity, it must "work" as strategy works. The great RMA debate of the 1990s is reviewed empathetically, though sceptically, by the author, with every major school of thought allowed its day in court. The author presents three historical RMAs as case studies for his argument: those arguably revealed in the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon; in World War I; and in the nuclear age. The focus of his analysis is how these grand RMAs functioned strategically. The conclusions that he draws from these empirical exercises are then applied to help us understand what, indeed, is - and what is not - happening with the much vaunted information-technology-led RMA of today.

Author : Linda Robinson
Publisher : PublicAffairs
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 36,13 MB
Release : 2009-03-05
Category : History
ISBN : 0786738154

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Special Forces soldiers are daring, seasoned troops from America's heartland, selected in a tough competition and trained in an extraordinary range of skills. They know foreign languages and cultures and unconventional warfare better than any U.S. fighters, and while they prefer to stay out of the limelight, veteran war correspondent Linda Robinson gained access to their closed world. She traveled with them on the frontlines, interviewed them at length on their home bases, and studied their doctrine, methods and history. In Masters of Chaos she tells their story through a select group of senior sergeants and field-grade officers, a band of unforgettable characters like Rawhide, Killer, Michael T, and Alan -- led by the unflappable Lt. Col. Chris Conner and Col. Charlie Cleveland, a brilliant but self-effacing West Pointer who led the largest unconventional war campaign since Vietnam in northern Iraq. Robinson follows the Special Forces from their first post-Vietnam combat in Panama, El Salvador, Desert Storm, Somalia, and the Balkans to their recent trials and triumphs in Afghanistan and Iraq. She witnessed their secret sleuthing and unsung successes in southern Iraq, and recounts here for the first time the dramatic firefights of the western desert. Her blow-by-blow story of the attack on Ansar al-Islam's international terrorist training camp has never been told before. The most comprehensive account ever of the modern-day Special Forces in action, Masters of Chaos is filled with riveting, intimate detail in the words of a close-knit band of soldiers who have done it all.

Author : Colin Gray
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 15,39 MB
Release : 2004-08-02
Category : History
ISBN : 1135754764

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The remit of this study is to encourage further studies that make an honest and successful effort to achieve synergy between social science and history when analysing the impact of revolutions in military affairs (RMAs).

Author : C.R.M.F. Cruttwell
Publisher : Chicago Review Press
Page : 688 pages
File Size : 27,46 MB
Release : 2019-09-03
Category : History
ISBN : 0897336607

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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.