New Books in National Security

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization regularly appears in newspapers and political science scholarship. Surprisingly, historians have yet to devote the attention that the organization’s history merits. Timothy A. Sayle, an Assistant Professor of history at the University of Toronto, attempts to correct this. His fascinating new book, Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order (Cornell University Press, 2019), examines the history of NATO from its founding in the late 1940s through to its expansion in the post-Cold War era. Sayle shows how NATO wasn’t just any organization; it was, he writes, “an instrument of great-power politics and the basis for a Pax Atlantica.”Taking his readers deep into the decision-making of NATO and its member states from the 1940s to the 1990s, Sayle provides a new, innovative international history of the second half of the twentieth century. Enduring Alliance should interest historians and scholars from across subfields—military history, U.S. foreign policy history, Cold War history, and global governance studies.Dexter Fergie is a PhD student of US and global history at Northwestern University. He is currently researching the 20th century geopolitical history of information and communications networks. He can be reached by email at dexter.fergie@u.northwestern.edu or on Twitter @DexterFergie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Beginning in the mid-1850s, a number of people in Europe and the United States undertook a range of efforts in response to the horrors of war. In his book War, Law and Humanity: The Campaign to Control Warfare, 1853-1914 (Bloomsbury, 2018) James Crossland describes the emergence of various movements in the second half of the 19th century designed to address the suffering caused by military conflict. Though such suffering has been a part of warfare since time immemorial, as Crossland explains the emergence of the popular press in the early 19th century brought awareness of the battlefield experience to a greater part of the population. In response, several motivated volunteers embarked upon a variety of activities to address the effects of war, from providing better treatment for wounded soldiers to spearheading efforts to establish mutually-agreed-upon limits on the conduct of warfare. Within a decade, organizations such as the United States Sanitary Commission and the Red Cross emerged to coordinate and regularize these efforts, often with official support from warring governments. Yet these attempts to moderate misery were opposed by another product of the reaction to the warfare of the era – the peacemakers who wanted to end war altogether and who viewed the efforts to regulate it as an enabling of inter-state conflict. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Jeremy Black, professor of history at Exeter, is well-known as one of the most prolific of publishing historians. His latest book, War and its Causes (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), returns to a subject upon which he has already published several ground-breaking contributions. With an argument that reflects recent work in the field, and a breadth of reference that stretches from the beginnings of human culture to the present day, War and its Causes argues for an important new typology of conflict between and within civilisations, cultures and states, and, while addressing the limitations of commentary and analysis, observes patterns across history that make sense of recent conflicts – and those that may be about to begin.Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, and he is the author most recently of John Owen and English Puritanism (Oxford University Press, 2016). 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 series of riveting and in depth interviews, America's senior statesman, former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, discusses the challenges of directing foreign policy during times of great global tension. With insights which are pertinent to the present and indeed the future.As National Security Advisor to President Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger utterly transformed America's approach to diplomacy and in particular with China, the USSR, Vietnam, and the Middle East, helping to lay the foundations for geopolitics of the past fifty years, as well as we know them today. In a series of questions and answers with his friend and long-time associate Winston Lord, himself a well-know and celebrated figure--Ambassador to China, Director of the Policy Planning staff, Assistant Secretary of State and head of the Council on Foreign Relations--these conversations provide unique insights into the mind of one of the most celebrated figures in 20th-century American history. Kissinger on Kissinger: Reflections on Diplomacy, Grand Strategy, and Leadership (All Points Books, 2019) is a series of faithfully transcribed interviews between these two men. The result is a frank and well-informed overview of US foreign policy in the tumultuous period of the Nixon-Ford Presidency. This book is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand tomorrow's global challenges.Charles Coutinho has a doctorate in history from New York University. Where he studied with Tony Judt, Stewart Stehlin and McGeorge Bundy. His Ph. D. dissertation was on Anglo-American relations in the run-up to the Suez Crisis of 1956. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written recently for the Journal of Intelligence History and Chatham House’s International Affairs. It you have a recent title to suggest for a podcast, please send an e-mail to Charlescoutinho@aol.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Andreas Krieg’s edited volume, Divided Gulf: The Anatomy of a Crisis(Palgrave, 2019), brings together a group of prominent Gulf scholars to discuss the Gulf crisis that pits a Saudi-United Arab Emirates-led alliance against Qatar. The alliance’s economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar since 2017 has implications that go far beyond the regional dispute. The book highlights the fact that strategies of the opposed parties are to a significant extent shaped by the evolution of information and cyber warfare. It also highlights the rise of nationalism in Gulf states that fundamentally changes the role of tribes and the nature of the Gulf state in the 21st century. The book argues that at the core of the Gulf struggle are fundamentally different visions of Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the one hand and Qatar on the other on how to ensure regime survival in an era of social and economic change in which autocratic governments increasingly have to efficiently deliver public goods and services. It projects the Gulf crisis as one more intractable Middle Eastern problem in which countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia see ensuring their survival in terms of security. In doing so, the book makes a significant contribution to the literature on a region that is key to global developments and increasingly plays a role in shaping a new world order.James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Thailand is one of the world’s last remaining military dictatorships, and the last in Asia. While we are familiar with the Thai military’s frequent interventions in Thai politics, we know rather less about its external security role. As rivalry between the superpowers, the United States and China, has grown in recent years, Thailand’s strategic position in the East Asian region has become increasingly important. But what do we know about Thailand’s “strategic culture”? How does the country’s security elite, including the military, think about “war, force, and security”? This is the subject of Greg Raymond’s timely new book, Thai Military Power: A Culture of Strategic Accommodation (NIAS Press, 2018). At a time when the Thai military, and in particular, its controversial relationship with Thailand’s monarchy, are under great scrutiny, the subject of this book has implications not only for Thailand, but for the broader region.Listeners to this episode may also enjoy listening to Lee Morgenbesser, Behind the Facade: Elections under Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia(SUNY Press, 2016) and  Shane Strate, The Lost Territories: Thailand’s History of National Humiliation (University of Hawaii Press, 2015).Patrick Jory teaches Southeast Asian History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland. He can be reached at: p.jory@uq.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Michael J. Mazarr has written a history of the policy planning process leading up to the Iraq War in 2003.  Mazarr has conducted over one hundred interviews with senior policy officials from the George W. Bush administration, combined with a comprehensive review of published memoirs and declassified government documents, to provide a richly detailed history of America’s involvement in Iraq.  In his new book, Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America’s Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy (Public Affairs, 2019), Mazarr reviews the key faulty assumptions that hampered the war planning process, including assuming the intelligence was sufficient that weapons of mass destruction existed, assuming that Iraq had a middle-class technocratic elite just waiting to take over after liberation, assuming that the U.S. could intervene with only a “light footprint,” without any need for prolonged occupation, and failing to plan for the security situation in the aftermath of the war.  In addition to providing a narrative of how the decision to go to war occurred, Mazarr draws lessons to help guide future policy makers at all levels of government.Ian J. Drake is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University. His scholarly interests include American legal and constitutional history and political theory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

The Taiwan Strait Crises of 1954-55 and 1958 occurred at the height of the Cold War. Mao’s China bombarded Nationalist-controlled islands, and U.S. President Eisenhower threatened the use of nuclear weapons. These were dramatic events, and it can be a difficult to disentangle military and political posturing from the real concerns of the three involved powers. Using newly available sources, Pang Yang Huei reexamines the Taiwan Strait Crises and concludes that China, Taiwan, and the United States were much more aware of each other’s concerns than previous studies have indicated. Strait Rituals: China, Taiwan, and the United States in the Taiwan Strait Crises, 1954-1958(Hong Kong University Press, 2019) traces the role of ritual, symbols, and gestures in the tacit communication between Beijing, Taipei, and Washington. Ultimately, this detailed history contributes to a better understanding of the history of the Asia-Pacific region during the Cold War.Laurie Dickmeyer is an Assistant Professor of History at Angelo State University, where she teaches courses in Asian and US history. Her research concerns nineteenth-century US-China relations. She can be reached at laurie.dickmeyer@angelo.edu and on Twitter (@LDickmeyer). 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 post–Cold War era, states increasingly find themselves in conflicts with nonstate actors. Finding it difficult to fight these opponents directly, many governments instead target states that harbor or aid nonstate actors, using threats and punishment to coerce host states into stopping those groups.In their book Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States That Host Nonstate Actors (Columbia UP, 2018), Wendy Pearlman and Boaz Atzili investigate this strategy, which they term triadic coercion. They explain why states pursue triadic coercion, evaluate the conditions under which it succeeds, and demonstrate their arguments across seventy years of Israeli history. This rich analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict, supplemented with insights from India and Turkey, yields surprising findings. Traditional discussions of interstate conflict assume that the greater a state’s power compared to its opponent, the more successful its coercion. Turning that logic on its head, Pearlman and Atzili show that this strategy can be more effective against a strong host state than a weak one because host regimes need internal cohesion and institutional capacity to move against nonstate actors. If triadic coercion is thus likely to fail against weak regimes, why do states nevertheless employ it against them? Pearlman and Atzili’s investigation of Israeli decision-making points to the role of strategic culture. A state’s system of beliefs, values, and institutionalized practices can encourage coercion as a necessary response, even when that policy is prone to backfire.A significant contribution to scholarship on deterrence, asymmetric conflict, and strategic culture, Triadic Coercion illuminates an evolving feature of the international security landscape and interrogates assumptions that distort strategic thinking.Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Since 2011, civil wars and state failure have wracked the Arab world, underlying the misalignment between national identity and political borders. In Break all the Borders: Separatism and the Resshaping of the Middle East (Oxford UP, 2019), Ariel I. Ahram examines the separatist movements that aimed to remake those borders and create new independent states. With detailed studies of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the federalists in eastern Libya, the southern resistance in Yemen, and Kurdish nationalist parties, Ahram explains how separatists captured territory and handled the tasks of rebel governance, including managing oil exports, electricity grids, and irrigation networks. Ahram emphasizes that the separatism arose not just as an opportunistic response to state collapse. Rather, separatists drew inspiration from the legacy of Woodrow Wilson and ideal of self-determination. They sought to reinstate political autonomy that had been lost during the early and mid-twentieth century. Speaking to the international community, separatist promised a more just and stable world order. In Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Libya, they served as key allies against radical Islamic groups. Yet their hopes for international recognition have gone unfulfilled. Separatism is symptomatic of the contradictions in sovereignty and statehood in the Arab world. Finding ways to integrate, instead of eliminate, separatist movements may be critical for rebuilding regional order.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security