New Books in National Security

In 2007, Tim Weiner published the book Legacy of Ashes. It was a history of the CIA from its founding to the early 2000s. As a university student in Italy, I bought the book as soon as it came out. The second non-fiction book I ever bought in English. The book was riveting. It kickstarted my interest in the CIA and covert operations. Now, Tim Weiner has published a sequel to Legacy of Ashes. His new book is called The Mission: the CIA in the 21st Century (Mariner Books, 2025). It is a gripping and revelatory history of the from the late 1990s to the present. It ranges from 9/11 through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to today's battles with Russia and China--and with the President of the United States.  At the turn of the century, the Central Intelligence Agency was in crisis. The end of the Cold War had robbed the agency of its mission. More than thirty overseas stations and bases had been shuttered, and scores that remained had been severely cut back. Many countries where surveillance was once deemed crucial went uncovered. Essential intelligence wasn't being collected. At the dawn of the information age, the CIA's officers and analysts worked with outmoded technology, struggling to distinguish the clear signals of significant facts from the cacophony of background noise.  Then came September 11th, 2001. After the attacks, the CIA transformed itself into a lethal paramilitary force, running secret prisons and brutal interrogations, mounting deadly drone attacks, and all but abandoning its core missions of espionage and counterespionage. The consequences were grave: the deaths of scores of its recruited foreign agents, the theft of its personnel files by Chinese spies, the penetration of its computer networks by Russian intelligence and American hackers, and the tragedies of Afghanistan and Iraq. A new generation of spies now must fight the hardest targets--Moscow, Beijing, Tehran--while confronting a president who has attacked the CIA as a subversive force.  The book reveals how the agency fought to rebuild the espionage powers it lost during the war on terror--and finally succeeded in penetrating the Kremlin. The key message of the book is that the CIA must reclaim its original mission: know thy enemies. This is made even more difficult by the attacks on the intelligence community deployed by the second Trump presidency, from unqualified senior officials to loyalty tests. The fate of the free world hangs in the balance. The Mission includes exclusive on-the-record interviews with six former CIA directors, the top spymaster, thirteen station chiefs, and scores of top operations officers who served undercover for decades and have never spoken to a journalist before. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Driving Terror: Labor, Violence, and Justice in Cold War Argentina (U New Mexico Press, 2025) by Dr. Karen Robert tells the story of twenty-four Ford autoworkers in Argentina who were tortured and “disappeared” for their union activism in 1976, miraculously survived, and pursued a decades-long quest for truth and justice. In December 2018, more than four decades after their ordeal, the men won a historic human-rights case against a military commander and two retired Ford Argentina executives who were convicted of crimes against humanity. The book uses this David-and-Goliath story to explore issues of labor repression and corporate complicity with Argentina’s last military dictatorship as well as to shed light on the enormous obstacles facing victims of such crimes. Its emphasis on working-class activism in the arenas of labor and human rights introduces North American readers to a new narrative of contemporary Argentine history. The Ford survivors’ story intertwines with the symbolic evolution of the car the men helped build at Ford: the Falcon sedan. The political polarization and violence of the Cold War era transformed the Falcon from a popular family car to a tool of state terror after the coup of 1976, when it became associated with the widespread practice of “disappearance.” Its meaning continued to evolve after the return to democracy, when artists and activists used it as a symbol of military impunity during Argentina’s long-term struggles over justice and memory. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

On 9 October 1934, terrorists murdered King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in a Marseille street. The Croatian ultranationalist Ustashe was behind the attack. The Ustashe hoped that the king’s death would cause the collapse of Yugoslavia and the liberation of the Croat people. Murder in Marseille: Right-Wing Terrorism in 1930s Europe (Manchester UP, 2025) examines the circumstances, processes, and trajectories that shaped the Ustashe terrorists and their attack in Marseille. It brings questions about contemporary terrorism to bear on a historical attack: what prompts people to join terrorist organisations? How are these people ‘radicalised’ to commit violence? What roles do women play in terrorism? Murder in Marseille bridges the scholarly gap between historical and contemporary terrorism, paying attention to, and often guided by, current concerns, ideas, theories, and notions about terrorist violence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

This timely collection of essays examines Sino-American relations during the Second World War, the Chinese Civil War and the opening of the Cold War. Drawing on new sources uncovered in China, Taiwan, the UK and the US, the authors demonstrate how 'grassroots' engagements - not just elite diplomacy - established the trans-Pacific networks that both shaped the postwar order in Asia, and continue to influence Sino-US relations today. In these crucial years, servicemen, scientists, students, businesspeople, activists, bureaucrats and many others travelled between the US and China. In every chapter, this innovative volume's approach uncovers their stories using both Chinese and English language sources. By examining interactions among various Chinese and American actors in the dynamic wartime environment, Uneasy Allies: Sino-American Relations at the Grassroots, 1937–1949 (Cambridge UP, 2024) reveals a new perspective on the foundations of American power, the brittle nature of the Sino-American relationship, and the early formation of the institutions that shaped the Cold War Pacific. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Demilitarizing the Future (Anthem Press, 2025) draws from art, anthropology, and activism to investigate the entrenchment of militarism in everyday lives and consider novel imaginaries of its dissolution--of peacemaking, community, and shared equitable futures. This book will be published in October of 2025. In this episode, Rebecca Kastleman, Darcie DeAngelo, Joshua Reno, and Leah Zani join Elena Sobrino to talk about their collaboration editing this anthology. They discuss the ways ecology and infrastructure are central to understanding demilitarization, the importance of interdisciplinary approaches, and the value of creative methods for this work.  "To demilitarize the future, then, requires a radical shift in what we believe is possible. It requires a turning away from the logics of dominance, extraction, and surveillance. It requires recovering forms of life and relations that have long been buried under the ruins of empire, as well as honoring forms of life, arduously crafting different modes of material being and becoming to survive genocide. It demands the nurturing of practices that affirm rest, care, memory, and transformation." Jasbir Puar, Afterword Guests: Rebecca Kastleman works in Columbia University's department of English and Comparative Literature, specializing in modern drama, theory, and performance. Darcie DeAngelo is a medical and visual anthropologist working at the University of Alberta. Joshua Reno is a socio-cultural anthropologist working at Binghamton University. Leah Zani is a public anthropologist, author, and poet based in Oakland, California. Host: Elena Sobrino is an anthropologist studying the emotions and politics of environmental crises, and currently teaching in the Science and Technology Studies program at Tufts University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

The vast majority of the world's countries are experiencing a demographic revolution: dramatic, sustained, and likely irreversible population aging. States' median ages are steadily increasing as the number of people ages 65 and older skyrockets. Analysts and policymakers frequently decry population aging's domestic costs, especially likely slowing economic growth and massive new public expenditures for elderly welfare. But aging has a major yet largely unrecognized international benefit: it significantly reduces the likelihood of international war. Although wars continue to rage in parts of the world, almost none involve aged countries. This book provides a comprehensive and groundbreaking argument why population aging will be a powerful force for peace. Aging will significantly reduce states' military capabilities available for war while also boosting leaders’ and citizens' preferences for peaceful foreign policies. At the same time, the effects of aging will help prevent the emergence of a power transition between the United States and China, which would be a development that is particularly likely to devolve into armed hostilities. If an aged country does initiate war, the effects of aging will create major barriers to military success. The more aging reduces the probability of victory, the greater the disincentives to aggressing. Detailed case studies show how aging has affected the capabilities and preferences in Japan, China, the United States, and Russia. Guest: Mark L. Haas is a Professor of Political Science at Duquesne University. He is the author of The Geriatric Peace: Population Aging and the Decline of War (Oxford University Press, 2025); Frenemies: When Ideological Enemies Ally (Cornell University Press, 2022); The Clash of Ideologies: Middle Eastern Politics and American Security (Oxford University Press, 2012); The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1789-1989 (Cornell University Press, 2005), and co-editor of Ideologies and International Relations (Routledge Press); The Middle East and the United States: History, Politics, and Ideologies (Routledge, 2018, sixth edition) and The Arab Spring: The Hope and Reality of the Uprisings (Routledge, 2017). Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

In a groundbreaking reassessment of the long Cold War era, historian Gregory A. Daddis argues that ever since the Second World War's fateful conclusion, faith in and fear of war became central to Americans' thinking about the world around them. With war pervading nearly all aspects of American society, an interplay between blind faith and existential fear framed US policymaking and grand strategy, often with tragic results. A sweeping history, Faith and Fear: America's Relationship with War Since 1945 (Oxford University Press, 2025) makes a forceful argument by examining the tensions between Americans' overreaching faith in war as a foreign policy tool and their overwhelming fear of war as a destructive force. Gregory A. Daddis is Professor of History and holds the Melbern G. Glasscock Endowed Chair in American History at Texas A&M University. A retired US Army colonel, he deployed to both Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

This deeply researched book offers new perspective on the NATO-Russia relationship through the eyes of Strobe Talbott, a deputy secretary of state for seven years under President Bill Clinton and the key US diplomatic broker for the former USSR. Stephan Kieninger traces the Clinton administration’s efforts to engage Russia and enlarge NATO at the same time, as elements of a new European security architecture. Drawing on Talbott’s diaries, as well as US and European archives and extensive interviews with former government officials, he sheds light on NATO’s opening, its missions in Bosnia and Kosovo, and other vexed issues. Kieninger argues that a careful look at Talbott’s statecraft rebuts Putin’s claims that the West exploited Russia’s weakness after the Cold War, demonstrating that the Clinton administration and its NATO allies sought to include Russia at every step. An illuminating and comprehensive account of US diplomacy during the Clinton years, Securing Peace in Europe provides vital insight into the complex relations between Russia and the West. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Ground Combat: Puncturing the Myths of Modern War (Georgetown UP, 2025) reveals the gritty details of land warfare at the tactical level and challenges the overly subjective and often inaccurate American approach to characterizing war. Ben Connable's motivation for writing the book is to replace overly subjective analyses with an evidence-based approach to examining war. From analyzing a set of over 400 global ground combat cases, Connable shows there has been a modest and evolutionary shift in the characteristics of ground combat from World War II through the early 2020s. This evidence of gradual change repudiates the popular but often hyperbolic arguments about military-technical revolutions and that there is a singular character of war in the modern era. Connable identifies past and current weaknesses in military design and strategy, examines common characteristics in modern ground combat from the data, and reframes the debate over the historical and prospective impact of emerging technologies on war. Ground Combat sets an evidentiary baseline and a new, detail-oriented standard for conflict research and policymaking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Using newly available government records, private papers, and documents obtained through Freedom of Information, The Secret History of UK Vetting from 1909 to the Present (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Daniel Lomas tells the secret story of UK security vetting from 1909 to the present. Although Britain avoided American-style red-baiting and McCarthy-like witch-hunts, successive UK governments have, like their 'Five Eyes' allies, implemented security procedures to protect government, defence and industry from so-called 'subversives' and 'fellow travellers'.Officially, from 1948 the British government applied political tests to civil servants, a process extended to 'character defects' in the early 1950s with the introduction of 'positive vetting'. However, an unofficial purge had taken place for much longer, facing political backlashes as an infringement of 'civil liberties' and suppression of free speech. Although it's been argued that Britain's secret purge had little impact, this study looks at the experiences of those removed from the 'secret state', those LGBT and BAME individuals discriminated against by government, and the impact of government policy generally, while studying the responses of Ministers and civil servants to spy scandals and international events.Drawing from newly released archival material, Freedom of Information releases and interviews, this book offers new insights into the scope of government security checks on civil servants, defence contractors and armed forces personnel from Edwardian 'spy scares' and the inter-war period, to the Cold War and present day. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security