New Books in National Security

Covid-19 is the global threat that owns today’s headlines, but the threat of international and domestic terrorism is still very much with us. Specifically, the widespread upheaval, uncertainty and global anxiety occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic has been seen by terror organizations as a golden opportunity to tie their messaging to information about the disease and intensify their propaganda for purposes of recruitment and incitement to violence. Whether it’s Boko Haram or ISIS, Hezbollah or Hamas, or the range of hate groups acting around the globe, terrorism continues to be a threat to decent people everywhere.N. Darshan-Leitner and S. M. Katz's book Harpoon: Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism's Money Masters (Hachette, 2017) is a revelatory account of the cloak-and-dagger Israeli campaign to target the finances fueling terror organizations--an effort that became the blueprint for U.S. efforts to combat threats like ISIS and drug cartels. ISIS boasted $2.4 billion of revenue back in 2015, yet for too long the global war on terror overlooked financial warfare as an offensive strategy."Harpoon," the creation of Mossad legend Meir Dagan, directed spies, soldiers, and attorneys to disrupt and destroy money pipelines and financial institutions that paid for the bloodshed perpetrated by Hamas, Hezbollah, and other groups. Written by an attorney who worked with Harpoon and a bestselling journalist, Harpoon offers a gripping story of the Israeli-led effort, now joined by the Americans, to choke off the terrorists' oxygen supply, money, via unconventional warfare.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at VanLeerIdeas@gmail.com or tweet @embracingwisdom Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

To better understand the lasting legacy of international relations in the post-Ottoman Middle East, Amit Bein's Kemalist Turkey and the Middle East: International Relations in the Interwar Period (Cambridge University Press, 2017), reexamines Turkey’s engagement with the region during the interwar period. Long assumed to be a period of deliberate disengagement and ruptured ties between Turkey and its neighbors, the volatile 1930s, Bein argues, was instead a period during which Turkey was in fact perceived as taking steps toward increasing its regional prominence. Bein examines the unstable situation along Turkey’s Middle Eastern borders, the bilateral diplomatic relations Ankara established with fledgling governments in the region, grand plans for transforming Turkey into a major transit hub for Middle Eastern and Eurasian transportation and trade, and Ankara’s effort to enhance its image as a model for modernization of non-Western societies. Through this, he offers a fresh, enlightening perspective on the Kemalist legacy, which still resonates in the modern politics of the region today.Reuben Silverman is a PhD candidate at University of California, San Diego Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Is the Indo-Pacific already the most dominant in terms of global power, politics, and wealth? In his newest book, Michael R. Auslin considers the key issues facing the Indo-Pacific which have ramifications for the entire world. Geopolitical competition in the region threatens stability not just in Asia, but globally. In a series of essays, Asia's New Geopolitics: Essays on Reshaping the Indo-Pacific (Hoover Institution Press, 2020) Auslin examines the key issues that are changing the balance of power in Indo-China and globally. He examines China's aggressive global policies and strategies, and its attempts to bend the world to its wishes. He argues that the global focus on the Sino-US competition for power has obscured "Asia's other great game" - the rivalry between long-time foes, China and Japan. He questions whether Kim-Jong-un can control his nuclear weaponry and the implications for safety if he cannot. Auslin examines the plight of women in India and asks whether its "missing women" are potentially hampering any role that India might play on the global stage. Underlying these concerns, the book analyses U.S. strategy in region. If there is be a shift in the global balance of power, what role can and should the U.S. take in limiting China's hegemony? The dramatic final chapter paints a bleak picture of a Sino-American Littoral war in the very near future. Is this the geopolitical trajectory in the Indo-Pacific? Michael R. Auslin offers a "future-history" of what soon could be. Michael Auslin, PhD, is the Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. A historian by training, he specializes in US policy in Asia and geopolitical issues in the Indo-Pacific region.  Jane Richards is a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong. You can find her on twitter where she follows all things related to human rights and Hong Kong politics @JaneRichardsHK Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

How do ideologies of development shape the perceptions of security threats of US foreign policymakers and the political and military leaders of developing countries? What is the relationship between development, democracy, and military coups? How does US foreign aid affect political stability in recipient countries? These are some of the questions addressed in Thomas Field’s fantastic book From Development to Dictatorship: Bolivia and the Alliance for Progress in the Kennedy Era (Cornell UP, 2014).The book focuses on the relationship between the Kennedy administration and the Bolivian government headed by Victor Paz Estenssoro, a former hero of the Bolivian Revolution, as it attempted to generate economic development and built a centralized state in the vast, landlocked, geographically and ethnically diverse country. Field shows how US support for economic restructuring in the mining sector created clashes between the government and labor unions that undermined Paz’s legitimacy, and how Paz government’s reliance on the military to build infrastructure and execute development programs in the countryside -- a strategy that US policymakers supported wholeheartedly -- increased the political profile of the military and made a military coup increasingly likely. The book ends with Paz’s overthrow in a coup in 1964.Thomas Field Jr. is an Associate Professor of Global Security and Intelligence at Emory-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona. He holds a Master’s degree from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a PhD in international history from the London School of Economics. Most recently, he co-edited a volume called Latin America’s Cold War, which examines how the Cold War international system interacted with regional and national political dynamics (and was also the subject of a New Books Network interview).  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

From facial recognition to online shopping, artificial intelligence has become the backbone of the internet and has led to an unprecedented extraction and utilization of personal data. As a result, AI has rapidly outpaced existing free speech, privacy, and national security law.In The Centaur’s Dilemma: National Security Law for the Coming AI Revolution (Brookings Institute Press, 2020), Judge James E. Baker deploys his extensive experience in national security law to argue for AI regulation through legislation. By first tackling the creation of a precise definition of artificial intelligence, Judge Baker then vividly explains the national security applications and implications of AI. In part two, he goes about suggesting a purposeful, legal framework for addressing those national security applications and implications while exploring legal arguments in the absence of clear laws. This timely and insightful work provides an accessible primer of AI for legal generalists while demonstrating how technologists can thoroughly think about the safety and ethics of artificial intelligence.Kyle Beadle is a recent graduate of Louisiana State University, where he studied International Studies and Spanish. He is now seeking a master’s in International Relations and Security. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

How can multiple theoretical approaches yield a better understanding of international political politics?In Understanding and Explaining the Iranian Nuclear 'Crisis': Theoretical Approaches (Lexington Books, 2020), Dr. Halit M. E. Tagma, assistant professor in the department of politics and international affairs at Northern Arizona University and Dr. Paul E. Lenze, senior lecturer in the department of politics and international affairs at Northern Arizona State University combine established theories in both Political Science and International Relations to encourage “eclectic pluralism” – an approach that embraces a variety of different theoretical approaches to understand and explain the historical, geopolitical, international, and domestic dimensions of a particular case: the early 21st century case of the government of Iran’s construction of a uranium enrichment and heavy-water facility and the international response. The book aims to explore what is often called (in their view misrepresented as) the Iranian Nuclear “crisis” in a nuanced and complex manner by slicing it into sub-cases to focus on different forces and actors.For Tagma and Lenze, the analysis of international relations (in this case Iran) risks a problem of bias as European and American observers, for example, interpret Iran through the lens of their own national interest. Their book aims to overcome this bias by “providing alternative and contending theoretical perspectives to understand the contention surrounding Iran’s nuclear program.” Tagma and Lenze insist that IR theories are often good at simplifying very complex cases but weaker when accounting for some of the nuances and specifics. Eclectic pluralism, they argue, brings back some of the nuance and also shows how each of these different theories collides. In that collision, eclectic pluralism sees a mosaic in providing a larger picture of political reality.While Tagma and Lenze believe that gender, post-colonialism, constructivism, and green theory are possible lenses, they set them aside to focus on history, realism, and political economy. They provide (chapter 1) a historical review of Iran’s nuclear program by breaking it down into three separable historical phases: preliminary; stagnation; and renewed interest, (chapter 2) a focus on the security challenges and perceptions of threat using two Realist hypotheses (defensive and offensive), (chapter 3) a structuralist exploration of how the Iranian nuclear contention fit into a larger context of global capitalism and world systems rather than anarchy, (chapter 4) a neoliberal institutional lens focused on Iran’s violation of nuclear nonproliferation norms as reflective of powerful interests in sanctions and their effect on domestic politics, (chapter 5) an emphasis on domestic politics with attention to the complex decision-making that neither occurs in a vacuum nor reflects unitary political responses, and (chapter 6) a further exploration into domestic politics arguing that a two-level game approach captures the politics of the “crisis” particularly the need to consider the interests of both Obama and Khamenei.Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Her Why Diehard Originalists Aren’t Really Originalists recently appeared in the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage and her “Retreat from the Rule of Law: Locke and the Perils of Stand Your Ground” was published in the Journal of Politics (July 2020). Email her comments at sliebell@sju.edu or tweet to @SusanLiebell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

In the past decade, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden became household names. They were celebrated by many as truth-tellers who blew the whistle on governmental abuses. Yet, in the eyes of the state, Manning and Snowden had made so-called “unauthorized disclosures” that jeopardized the nation’s security. Described as such, they could not be labelled “whistleblowers.”This is an example of what the editors of a new, rousing edited volume––not words typically strung together––call the “paradox of national security whistleblowing”: whistleblowing is widely acknowledged to be an essential feature of democracy, but the US government denies its existence. In Whistleblowing Nation: The History of National Security Disclosures and the Cult of Secrecy, editors Hannah Gurman––a Clinical Associate Professor at New York University’s Gallatin School––and Kaeten Mistry––a senior lecturer in American Studies at the University of East Anglia––and their star-studded cast of contributors help makes sense of the odd place of whistleblowing in American politics.Their book shows how the history of whistleblowing raises questions about democracy, citizenship, and truth itself. And, as the US war against whistleblowers has continued unabated since the Vietnam War, it’s a much-needed volume. The book should interest scholars of national security, information, and civil liberties, along with concerned citizens.And, to listeners of this podcast, Mistry and Gurman are offering a discount code—CUP30—which, if entered on the Columbia University Press website, knocks 30% off the book’s price.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Few human enterprises are as complex, dynamic, and unpredictable as war. Armed conflict substitutes the relatively ordered reality of peace with the undeniably chaotic reality of combat. Militaries, by design, seek to make sense of and prepare for that chaos. And as long as there have been organized militaries, there have been military officers, theorists, and observers, like Ardant du Pique or B.H. Liddell Hart, who sought to predict the fundamental nature of the next war. But as Lieutenant General David Barno and Dr. Nora Bensahel observe in Adaptation Under Fire: How Militaries Change in Wartime (Oxford University Press, 2020), anticipating the complexities, subtitles, and character of the next war is no simple task. Warfare has a nasty habit of confounding pre-war assumptions and rendering impotent cherished pre-war doctrines, technologies, and leaders.To successfully contend with warfare’s radical shifts and rampant unknowns, Barno and Bensahel argue, modern militaries need to be adaptable. They must build an adaptive capacity within their doctrine, cultivate an adaptive approach to technological implementation, and—perhaps most importantly—inculcate an adaptive mindset in their tactical, theater, and institutional leadership. Such adaptive capability, Barno and Bensahel contend, will only grow in importance as the resurgence in great power conflict, the effects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and the expansion of warfare into space and cyberspace radically reshape the threat environment of the 21st Century.Whether or not the modern United States military is adaptable enough to face and overcome these threats remains an open question—one that Barno and Bensahel seek to answer. Drawing upon a wealth of examples from the conflicts of the 20th century, Adaptation Under Fire powerfully illustrates what successful and unsuccessful adaptation looks like in relation to military doctrine, technology, and leadership. History, of course, is not predictive. Bensahel and Barno, however, deftly wield its analytic potential, revealing the factors that contribute to a potent adaptive capability, as well as the ways in which those factors manifest or fail to manifest within the United States military today. Lucidly argued and perspicacious in its diagnosis and prescriptions, Adaptation Under Fire makes a compelling argument for adaptability as a core competency in the modern United States military. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Andrew Hom’s new book examines what he calls the “problem of time” in context of international relations and international relations theory. The subject of time is a growing field of research and scholarship in political science and political theory, and Hom’s book spans both these areas by focusing on the way that time and the theory of timing contributes to and shapes our understanding of international relations and the theories that frame international relations. This growing interest in the understanding and role of time, and how this forms and structures politics and, as a result, our lives is at the center of Hom’s research and his unpacking of important international relations theories to discern where and how the theory of timing is integrated into these broader concepts. Hom explains that time is, in fact, how we think through our lives and, as such, it acts as a framework. International Relations and the Problem of Time (Oxford UP, 2020) theorizes about timing, which is connected but also distinct from time. The basic theory of timing integrates narrative, which also helps us to understand or put form on to the events that transpire in the world. As Hom notes in our interview, once you start to look for the issue of time and timing in international relations, it becomes clear that it is everywhere and that it is vitally important to understand in our thinking about international relations theory, and how policy and decisions are made and implemented. International Relations and the Problem of Time interrogates time, examining “what constitutes it, what it means to speak of time and temporality, and how these relate to our wider effort to theorize, explain, and understand global politics. (9)” This is a fascinating, detailed, and comprehensive analysis on multiple levels, examining the concepts of time, temporality, and the theory of timing, the theories that undergirds international relations, and how these abstract conceptions operate within the world of global politics.Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Jeremy Pressman is Associate Professor of Political Science and the Director of Middle East Studies at the University of Connecticut. Jeremy is the author of The Sword is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the Limits of Military Force (Manchester UP, 2020), an exploration of the dominance of military force as the go-to option for political and social leaders on both sides of the Arab Israeli conflict. In our discussion, Jeremy and I discuss why violence is the default preference among some actors not just in the Arab Israeli conflict but in the realm of international relations. We talk about what can and cannot be achieved by violence, and also discuss why violence will never provide a resolution to the conflict. We also discuss the ideologically air-tight explanations upon which each side can draw that can convince people that the other side can never be trusted, and some of the steps that leaders can take to counteract this dangerous fear. The Sword is Not Enough is published by Manchester University Press in 2020.Aaron M. Hagler is an associate professor of history at Troy University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security