New Books in National Security

“Knowing about China,” Maura Elizabeth Cunningham and Jeffrey Wasserstrom note in the preface to China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2018), is today “an essential part of being an engaged citizen” (p. xvii), and this is a difficult statement to disagree with. Yet as the authors also acknowledge, explaining ‘what everyone needs to know’ about the country is a daunting proposition, particularly at this highly unpredictable point in world history. Yet this fully revised edition of China in the 21st Century tackles the major issues head-on, interweaving context from China’s recent and more distant pasts with present-day insights, and illuminating events, figures and periods little known outside China but of vital importance within the country. Conversely, the co-authors also expertly puncture many of our preconceived ideas about China’s past and present, not shirking the kind of big questions which would have many commentators or academics fleeing for the hills, from Confucius to the Cultural Revolution, Mao to Market-Leninism. Seasoned veterans and novices to Chinese affairs alike will learn a lot from this book which, supplemented by a rich trove of references for further reading, offers new ways of looking at a too-often-misunderstood country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

In Armed with Expertise: The Militarization of American Social Research During the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2013), Joy Rohde discusses the relationship between the social sciences, academia, and national security institutions.  Through an examination of the use of military research during the Cold War, Dr. Rohde raises questions about the ethics of scholarship, the military industrial complex, and the role of expertise in the national security arena.  This book is a thought provoking read on the implications of military-funded social science. 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

In Rising Powers and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1947 (Lexington Books, 2018), Guy Burton, who teaches politics and international relations at the Mohammed bin Rashid School of Government, studies how five rising powers—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, a group that is sometimes called the BRICS countries—have approached the conflict since it first became internationalized in 1947. Yaacov Yadgar is the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism and Judaism (SUNY Press, 2017). You can read more of Yadgar’s work here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

There have been many histories and treatments of the Cold War, few however have the breath, range and definitiveness of Harvard Professor Odd Arne Westad’s new take on the subject: The Cold War: A World History (Basic Books, 2017). In a book which takes the reader from the economic crisis of the 1890’s to the present-day, Professor Westad delineates a history of the Cold War unlike any in the past. In The Cold War, Westad gives the reader a new perspective on a century when great power rivalry and ideological battles transformed every part of the globe. From Europe and North America to the Third World, The Cold War achieves a broadness in its coverage which has yet to be equaled. Based upon a mountain of primary and secondary source research, Professor Westad’s book has set a new standard of scholarship in the field of Cold War studies. All from a past winner of the Bancroft award. Charles Coutinho holds 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. 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

Small Wars, Big Data: The Information Revolution in Modern Conflict (Princeton University Press, 2018), Eli Berman, Joseph H. Felter, and Jacob N. Shapiro, takes a data-based approach to examine how actions can affect violence in asymmetric conflicts.  Using data sets from Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Philippines, the authors evaluate several variables, including the role of civilians, mobile communications, and foreign aid projects.  The book is data-rich and accessible, with findings presented at a tactical level and a policy level. 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

Today we talked with Nancy Mitchell about her book Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War, published by Stanford University Press in 2016 as part of the Cold War International History Project Series. Drawn from extensive archival research and personal interviews spanning three continents, Mitchell’s book attempts to recast the Carter administration as an active, and in some cases forceful, participant in the Cold War. By examining key areas of conflict, most notably Rhodesia and the Horn of Africa, Mitchell illustrates the continuity and shifts in American foreign policy on the continent, while highlighting the importance of Carter seeing these crises “through the prism of the civil rights struggle”. Bringing together the interlocking relationships of the likes of Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, Adwar Sadat, Andrew Young, Ian Smith, and Kenneth Kaunda, her book provides one of the most complete pictures of the Carter administration’s dealings with the African continent and its legacies for US and international policy across the globe. Nancy Mitchell is a Professor of History at North Carolina State University, where she was elected to the Academy of Outstanding Teachers. Her previous work includes the book The Danger of Dreams: German and American Imperialism in Latin America, 1895-1914 (1999), a chapter on “The Cold War and Jimmy Carter,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War (2010), and another on “The United States and Europe, 1900-1914,” in American Foreign Relations since 1600: A Guide to the Literature Online, (2007). Jacob Ivey is an Assistant Professor of History at the Florida Institute of Technology. His research centers largely on the British Colony of Natal, South Africa, most notably European and African systems of state control and defense during the colony’s formative period. He is currently working on a history of anti-apartheid movements in Central Florida. He tweets @IveyHistorian. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Ji-Young Lee’s book investigates the changing nature of tribute relations during the Ming and High Qing between a dominant China and its less powerful neighbors, Korea and Japan. China’s Hegemony: Four Hundred Years of East Asian Domination (Columbia University Press, 2017) reexamines the theory and literature of the tribute system, discovering a significant gap—few studies take into account the domestic political situations of Korea and Japan and their changing needs for Chinese leaders to legitimate them. Official dynastic annals, state letters, edicts, and other diplomatic documents illuminate the internal debates over legitimation that drove Korean and Japanese participation in tribute practices. Ultimately, Lee’s study of Korea and Japan provides a more nuanced theory of hegemony in the study of tributary relationships and international relations in East Asia more broadly. Ji-Young Lee’s book leaves the reader with a better understanding of China’s hegemony in the early modern period and with a sense that we should be paying more attention to China’s neighbors and their reactions to its growing power today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Since 1945, the United States has lost every war it started. Why? A Vietnam War veteran, Tufts University Ph. D. and intimate of many of the leading figures in the American national security apparatus in the past forty-years, Dr. Harlan Ullman‘s new book endeavors to find the answers to this most disturbing of queries. An in depth examination of American strategic and military decision-making since the Eisenhower era, Dr. Ullman shows the reader the flawed policy processes and decisions which made debacles such as Vietnam War, the Second Gulf War and the ongoing war in Afghanistan all too predictable. According to Dr. Ullman one answer to his query is simply that almost all presidents and administrations since 1960 have consistently failed to use sound strategic thinking and lacked sufficient knowledge or understanding of the circumstances prior to deciding whether or not to employ force. From John F. Kennedy to Donald Trump, from Vietnam to the war against ISIS, Anatomy of Failure: Why America Loses Every War It Starts (Naval Institute Press, 2017) is in the words of Edward Luce of the Financial Times a must read book for anyone who wishes to find out why American foreign policy has in too many cases been a catalog of failure. All from the man who invented the concept of ‘Shock and Awe’. Charles Coutinho holds 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. 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

Understanding Cyber Conflict: 14 Analogies (Georgetown University Press, 2017), edited by George Perkovich and Ariel E. Levite, uses analogies to conventional warfare and previous technological innovations to explain the complexities of cyber capabilities and threats. The essays examine cyber weapons, cyber warfare, and cyber defense using case studies that include the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the use of drones. This book is a worthwhile thought exercise to better understand how cyber conflict fits into existing frameworks of international relations and how cyber capabilities may affect existing norms of war. 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

Daniel Bessner’s Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Cornell University Press, 2018) provides a fascinating account of Hans Speier, an oft forgotten yet highly influential figure within the mid-century national security state. Speier, a Weimar emigre intellectual, conducted propaganda for the United States in both the Second World War and the Cold War, and helped build the institutional infrastructure of the so-called military-intellectual complex. This book is more than a biography of a single person, however. It also traces the rise of a new kind of person: the defense intellectual. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Speier and other defense intellectuals, including Henry Kissinger, George Kennan, and Walt Rostow, elevated the influence of experts and even transformed the way U.S. foreign policy was made. With Speier at its center, Democracy in Exile makes critical interventions into many debates, such as the role of crises in democracy, the Cold War’s origins and, perhaps most importantly for us today, the proper place of experts in society and government. (In regard to that last debate, see also Bessner and Stephen Wertheim’s Foreign Affairs article “Democratizing U.S. Foreign Policy.”) Daniel Bessner is the Anne H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Assistant Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Dexter Fergie is a first-year 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