Military History Strategy

The nature of war is constant change. We live in an era of exponential technological acceleration which is transforming how wars are waged. Today, the battlespace is transparent; multi-domain sensors can see anything, and long-range precision fire can target everything that is observed. Autonomous weapons can be unleashed into the battlespace and attack any target from above, hitting the weakest point of tanks and armored vehicles. The velocity of war is hyper-fast.

Over a 35-year career, Daniel Bolger rose through the army infantry to become a three-star general, commanding in both theaters of the U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. He participated in meetings with top-level military and civilian players, where strategy was made and managed. At the same time, he regularly carried a rifle alongside rank-and-file soldiers in combat actions - unusual for a general.

Since September 11, 2001, armed nonstate actors have received increased attention and discussion from scholars, policymakers, and the military. Underlying debates about nonstate warfare and how it should be countered is one crucial assumption: that state and nonstate actors fight very differently.

Today more than 100 small, asymmetric, and revolutionary wars are being waged around the world. This book provides invaluable tools for fighting such wars by taking enemy perspectives into consideration. Using case studies, Manwaring outlines vital survival lessons for leaders and organizations concerned with national security in our contemporary world. The insurgencies Manwaring describes span the globe.

Richard Sorge was dispatched to Tokyo in 1933 to serve the spymasters of Moscow. For eight years, he masqueraded as a Nazi journalist and burrowed deep into the German embassy, digging for the secrets of Hitler's invasion of Russia and the Japanese plans for the East. In a nation obsessed with rooting out moles, he kept a high profile - boozing, womanizing, and operating entirely under his own name.

Hybrid war, grey-zone warfare, unrestricted war: Today, traditional conflict - fought with guns, bombs, and drones - has become too expensive to wage, too unpopular at home, and too difficult to manage. In an age when America threatens Europe with sanctions, and when China spends billions buying influence abroad, the world is heading for a new era of permanent low-level conflict, often unnoticed, undeclared, and unending.

Command of the oceans was crucial to winning World War II. By the start of 1942 Nazi Germany had conquered mainland Europe, and Imperial Japan had overrun Southeast Asia and much of the Pacific. How could Britain and distant America prevail in what had become a "war of continents"? In this definitive account, Evan Mawdsley traces events at sea from the first U-boat operations in 1939 to the surrender of Japan. He argues that the Allied counterattack involved not just decisive sea battles, but a long struggle to control shipping arteries and move armies across the sea.

This study of Soviet tank company tactics is written as a "how they fight" manual. While this report is somewhat dated, I believe the basic underlying tactics have been adopted by the Russian New Look reforms and help define Russian military modernization ambitions. Naturally the use of new technologies will complicate the battlespace. However, in the final analysis, somebody will have to get into a tank and wade into the fray, guns blasting. How the Soviets did that in the past - knowing what works and what doesn't - is bound to affect their approach to combat today.

Today, Chechnya is a republic with some degree of autonomy in the contemporary Russian Federation. The majority of Chechnya’s population is comprised of Sunni Muslims, meaning religion has played a key role in the territory’s development. Wedged in the North Caucasus mountain range and bordering the Caspian Sea, Dagestan is a true meeting point of cultures, religions and geopolitical rivalries. A crossroad between east and west, Dagestan has been vitally important at different times for various powers in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

Since the Cold War, outer space has become of strategic importance for nations looking to seize the ultimate high ground. World powers establishing a presence there must consider, among other things, how they will conduct warfare in orbit. Leaders must dispense with "Buck Rogers" notions about operations in space and realize that policies there will have serious ramifications for geopolitics. How should nations view space? How should they fight there? What would space warfare look like and how should strategists approach it?

The First World War had begun - imposed on the statesmen of Europe by railway timetables. It was an unexpected climax to the railway age. War by Timetable is a history of the mobilization of the armies of the Great Powers in 1914. Taylor not only argues that the circumstances were already set for a general war, he also examines the flaws in the war plans of the Great Powers. The timetables and limited resources that were meant to serve as a deterrent to war instead relentlessly drove the powers into a conflict that engulfed the world.

Since the dawn of his existence, this creature, this fierce and violent beast, has been obsessed with conflict. Like an incurable disease - an addictive drug - war has terrified, teased and taunted, repelled, and fascinated. The power of conquest, the lure and craving for wealth, has fashioned the ultimate beast of war - man. In his own words throughout the centuries, man speaks to us of war - its art, its poetic strategy, its allure, and its tragedy. Come with us now and listen to the words of our own kind as they teach us how to be warriors.

Gavin reassesses the strategy of flexible response, the influence of nuclear weapons during the Berlin Crisis, the origins of and motivations for US nuclear nonproliferation policy, and how to assess the nuclear dangers we face today. Archival evidence makes it clear that decision makers were more concerned about underlying geopolitical questions than about the strategic dynamic between two nuclear superpowers.

More than 2,000 years ago the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu advised us to know our enemies. The question has always been how. In A Sense of the Enemy, the historian Zachary Shore demonstrates that leaders can best understand an opponent not simply from his pattern of past behavior, but from his behavior at pattern breaks. Meaningful pattern breaks occur during dramatic deviations from the routine, when the enemy imposes costs upon himself. It's at these unexpected moments, Shore explains, that successful leaders can learn what makes their rivals truly tick.

War Transformed provides insights for those involved in the design of military strategy, and the forces that must execute that strategy. Emphasizing the impacts of technology, strategic competition, demography, and climate change, Mick Ryan uses historical and contemporary anecdotes to highlight key challenges faced by nations in a new era of great power rivalry. Just as previous industrial revolutions have advanced societies, the nascent fourth industrial revolution will have a similar impact on how humans fight, compete, and build military power in the twenty-first century.

While their husbands, brothers and sweethearts fought in Europe and their mothers, sisters and friends kept the home fires burning, for the first time, a group of remarkable women took to the skies. They weren't allowed into combat but risked their lives in bad weather and without radios to bring our boys the aircraft they so vitally needed. Employed by the Air Transport Auxiliary, these women were known as 'attagirls'. They proved that women, too, could master Spitfires, Mosquitoes and Hawker Hurricanes, forging a new path in aviation.

From the acclaimed author of The Pencil and To Engineer Is Human, The Essential Engineer is an eye-opening exploration of the ways in which science and engineering must work together to address our world's most pressing issues, from dealing with climate change and the prevention of natural disasters to the development of efficient automobiles and the search for renewable energy sources.

The world's most dangerous book. A timeless piece that would undoubtedly disrupt the plans of any authoritarian regime. The Art of Guerrilla Warfare is a must-listen for anyone interested in military strategy. Fighting a superior foe is a momentous task. There are many ways it can be done, there are many ways victories can be achieved. In war, there are no rules, there are no laws. There are only strategies and tactics. A divided people can be isolated and devoured. Survival depends upon the masses forming one mind.

The Roman Empire lasted a solid 500 years—an impressive number by any standard. The decline and final collapse of the Roman Empire took longer than most other empires even existed. Any historian trying to unearth the grand strategy of the Roman Empire must, therefore, always remain cognizant of the time scale. Over the centuries, the Empire's underlying economy, political arrangements, military affairs, and the myriad of external threats it faced were in constant flux, making adaptability to changing circumstances as important to Roman strategists as it is to strategists of the modern era.

Perhaps the most important book on military strategy ever written, Carl von Clausewitz's On War has influenced generations of generals and politicians, has been blamed for the unprecedented death tolls, and is required reading at military academies to this day. But On War, which was never finished and was published posthumously, is obscure and fundamentally contradictory. Hew Strachan, one of the world's foremost military historians, answers these problems in this fascinating book.