New Books in National Security

Americans since the beginning of their history, have constantly made moral judgments about presidents and foreign policy. Unfortunately, many of these assessments are poorly thought through and assessed. An American President is either praised for the moral clarity of his statements or judged solely on the results of their actions. In Do Morals Matter?: Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump (Oxford UP, 2020), Joseph S. Nye, Jr., one of the world's leading scholars of international relations, as well as someone who has served in prominent positions in both the Carter and the Clinton Administrations provides a concise yet penetrating analysis of the role of ethics in American foreign policy during the post 1945 era. Nye works through each presidency from FDR to Trump and scores their foreign policy on three ethical dimensions of their intentions, the means they used, and the consequences of their decisions. Alongside this, he also evaluates their leadership qualities, elaborating on which approaches work and which ones do not. Regardless of a president's policy preference, Nye shows that each one was not fully constrained by the structure of the system and actually had choices. He further notes the important ethical consequences of non-actions, such as Truman's willingness to accept stalemate in Korea rather than use nuclear weapons. Since we so often apply moral reasoning to foreign policy, Nye suggests how to do it better. Most importantly, presidents need to factor in both the political context and the availability of resources when deciding how to implement an ethical policy-especially in a future international system that presents not only great power competition from China and Russia, but a host of novel transnational threats: the illegal drug trade, infectious diseases, terrorism, cybercrime, and climate change. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written recently for Chatham House’s International Affairs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

The former West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt grew up as a devout Anglophile, yet he clashed heavily and repeatedly with his British counterparts Wilson, Callaghan, and Thatcher during his time in office between 1974 and 1982. Helmut Schmidt and British-German Relations: A European Misunderstanding (Cambridge University Press, 2019) looks at Schmidt's personal experience to explore how and why Britain and Germany rarely saw eye to eye over European integration, uncovering the two countries' deeply competing visions and incompatible strategies for post-war Europe. But it also zooms out to reveal the remarkable extent of simultaneous British-German cooperation in fostering joint European interests on the wider international stage, not least within the transatlantic alliance against the background of a worsening superpower relationship. By connecting these two key areas of bilateral cooperation, Mathias Haeussler of the University of Regensburg offers a major revisionist reinterpretation of Anglo-German bilateral relationship under Schmidt, relevant to anybody interested in British-German relations, European integration, and the Cold War. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written recently for Chatham House’s International Affairs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Is a rising power – like China – a threat to the world order? The conventional wisdom in international relations says that power transitions – particularly increases in military power – are intrinsically destabilizing to the international order. In her new book The Struggle for Recognition in International Relations: Status, Revisionism, and Rising Powers (Oxford UP, 2020), Michelle Murray counters that political actors and scholars of politics should focus on how the actions of rising powers are interpreted or perceived by other nations. Murray encourages us to see power transitions as struggles for recognition: social constructs aimed at forming identities. Social uncertainty shapes the struggle for recognition – especially misrecognition by other nations. Murray contrasts two case studies – Germany’s naval build-up before WWI and the United States’s expansion of power after the Spanish-American War of 1898 – to argue that military capabilities do not adequately account for why Germany was viewed as a threat by European powers but the United States was welcomed by Great Britain as a friendly power. Murray looks at the ways in which establishing and maintaining identity is uncertain because these identities are unpredictably perceived (or mis-perceived) by other powers. Her research explores the many ways in which states navigate identity formation under conditions of anarchy. The podcast includes interesting reflections on how China’s identity – as an ally or threat – might be shaped in the future. Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Sarah Burns’ new book The Politics of War Powers: The Theory and History of Presidential Unilateralism (University Press of Kansas, 2020) pulls together distinct threads in analyzing the theoretical framing of presidential power in the American constitutional system and then tracing that power through forty-five presidents. Burns begins by assessing Locke’s impact on the constitutional design of the presidency and then turning her attention to the more substantial contributions made by Montesquieu, since Montesquieu had an equally sizeable impact on the Founders and their thinking about this office. There were great tensions at the time of the Founding about the powers that the president has in pursuing war and military engagements. The Politics of War Powers pays close attention to the distinctions made in the Constitution between the role of the legislature in declaring war, and the role of the president in prosecuting war. This is the foundation for Burns’ analysis of presidential implementation of these powers over the course of more than 200 years, and she carefully examines these theoretical foundations, devoting the first third of The Politics of War Powers to unpacking and discussing the competing views of this important and, at times, suspect, power. Following from this theoretical basis, The Politics of War Powers dives into deeply researched explorations of not only the presidents themselves and how they thought about and used their war powers, but also how and where Congress acted and responded. This dimension of the analysis is particularly important to consider, and Burns sketches the ways in which the early Congress exerted its authority and constitutional role in regard to war and the war powers embedded in the Constitution. She then goes on to explore the tension between the executive and the legislature over the course of a number of military engagements that pressed on these competing capacities. The final section of the book outlines the ways in which presidential war powers have grown substantially and the legal reasoning that has grown up around these powers as Congress has stepped back from its own role in regard to war powers. In many ways, The Politics of War Powers is as much about congressional engagement or abdication in its constitutional role as it is about the expansion of presidential power. The delicate balance between the branches has shifted rather substantially, according to Burns’ analysis, and The Politics of War Powers draws out the ways in which this balance has shifted over the course of American history and political development. 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). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

America's war on terror is widely defined by the Afghanistan and Iraq fronts. Yet, as this book demonstrates, both the international campaign and the new ways of fighting that grew out of it played out across multiple fronts beyond the Middle East. Maria Ryan explores how secondary fronts in the Philippines, sub-Saharan Africa, Georgia, and the Caspian Sea Basin became key test sites for developing what the Department of Defense called "full spectrum dominance": mastery across the entire range of possible conflict, from conventional through irregular warfare. Full Spectrum Dominance: Irregular Warfare and the War on Terror (Stanford University Press, 2019) is the first sustained historical examination of the secondary fronts in the war on terror. It explores whether irregular warfare has been effective in creating global stability or if new terrorist groups have emerged in response to the intervention. As the U.S. military, Department of Defense, White House, and State Department have increasingly turned to irregular capabilities and objectives, understanding the underlying causes as well as the effects of the quest for full spectrum dominance become ever more important. The development of irregular strategies has left a deeply ambiguous and concerning global legacy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

The Baltics are about to be thrust onto the world stage. With a 'belligerent' Vladimir Putin to their east (and 'expansionist' NATO to their west), Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are increasingly the subject of unsettling headlines in both Western and Russian media. But how real are these fears, subject as they are to media embellishment, qualification and denial by both Russia and the West? What do they mean for those living in the Baltics - and for the world? In The Shadow in the East: Vladimir Putin and the New Baltic Front (I. B. Tauris, 2020), Aliide Naylor takes us inside the geopoltitics of the region. Travelling to the heart of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania she explores modernity in the region that birthed Skype, investigates smuggling and reports of troop movements in the borderlands, and explains the countries' unique cultural identities. Naylor tells us why the Baltics matter, arguing persuasively that this region is about to become the new frontline in the political struggle between East and West. Aliide Naylor is a freelance journalist focusing on Russia and eastern Europe, her writing has appeared in The Guardian, New Statesman, POLITICO Europe, frieze, Vice, among others. Naylor has travelled to all corners of the Baltic states and has also lived in both St. Petersburg and Moscow, where she served as Arts Editor at The Moscow Times. Steven Seegel is professor of history at University of Northern Colorado. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McMaster University, provides a unique sociological analysis of how critics confront the different types of uncertainty associated with their practice. The book explores how reviewers get matched to books, the ethics and etiquette of negative reviews and ‘punching up’, along with professional identities and the future of criticism. The book is packed with interview material, coupled with accessible and easy to follow theoretical interventions, creating a text that will be of interest to social sciences, humanities, and general readers alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

With the world’s attention riveted to the nuclear threat from Iran, Yaakov Katz’s new book could not be more timely. In Shadow Strike: Inside Israel’s Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power (St. Martin's Press, 2019), Jerusalem Post Editor-in-Chief Katz tells the inside story of how Israel stopped Syria from becoming a global nuclear nightmare. On September 6, 2007, shortly after midnight, Israeli fighters advanced on Deir ez-Zour in Syria. Although Israel often flew into Syria as a warning to President Bashar al-Assad, this time there was no warning and no explanation. This was a covert operation, with one goal: to destroy a nuclear reactor being built by North Korea under a tight veil of secrecy in the Syrian desert. From the “you are there” opening scene, the book is both a page-turner and robust journalism. Katz takes the reader on a complex journey through politics and personalities, intelligence, diplomacy and most of all, courage that led to the successful deterrence of an existential threat. Renee Garfinkel is a psychologist, writer, and Middle East commentator for the nationally syndicated TV program, The Armstrong Williams Show.. Write her at [email protected] or tweet @embracingwisdom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

The Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence was one of the last crises of formal imperialism. British settlers in present-day Zimbabwe, then known as Rhodesia, refused to accept demands from London that they accept requirements for majority rule before they could receive independence. In 1965, they declared independence and attempted to establish their own state that would preserve white minority rule indefinitely. For the next fifteen years, the Rhodesian government fought to win international acceptance and stabilize its own internal affairs. While the country remained a pariah state internationally, it won friends and supporters as well. Meanwhile, the ongoing resentment over the denial of economic and political rights for the country’s black majority soon spiraled into a guerilla war, one that threatened to drag in the Soviet Union. Eddie Michel’s The White House and White Africa: Presidential Policy Toward Rhodesia During the UDI Era, 1965-1979 (Routledge, 2018) examines the complicated relationship between the United States and Rhodesia. Michel charts the complicated course that successive presidential administrations navigated, particularly in terms of bolstering support for the white minority government or inflaming the country’s civil war into a broader regional conflict. Michel also makes clear the differences between different administration, noting for example the quiet support provided to Salisbury by the Nixon Administration. Ultimately, the White House under Carter played an important role in the negotiations that ended the civil war and white minority rule, allowing an independent Zimbabwe to come into existence in 1980. Zeb Larson is a recent graduate of The Ohio State University with a PhD in History. His research deals with the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years working on a PhD, or if you’re a faculty member whose career has basically consisted of higher ed, switching isn’t so easy. PhD holders are mostly trained to work as professors, and making easy connections to other careers is no mean feat. Because the people you know were generally trained to do the same sorts of things, an easy source of advice might not be there for you. Thankfully, for anybody who wishes there was a guidebook that would just break all of this down, that book has now been written. Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers (Stylus Publishing, 2020) by Kathryn E. Linder, Kevin Kelly, and Thomas J. Tobin offers practical advice and step-by-step instructions on how to decide if you want to leave behind academia and how to start searching for a new career. If a lot of career advice is too vague or too ambiguous, this book corrects that by outlining not just how to figure out what you might want to do, but critically, how you might go about accomplishing that. Zeb Larson is a recent graduate of The Ohio State University with a PhD in History. His research deals with the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

In April 2014, a cohort of twenty-five hip hop artists assembled in Washington, D.C. for the first orientation meeting of a new cultural diplomacy program sponsored by the United States State Department. Next Level brings hip hop practitioners from the United States to other countries where they collaborate with local artists in workshops and other events in short residencies. Mark Katz, a hip hop scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, proposed the program and served as its first director. Build: The Power of Hip Hop Diplomacy in a Divided World (Oxford University Press, 2019) is Katz’s response to the first five years of this project. Cultural diplomacy has been part of the State Department’s outreach efforts since the 1940s, but hip hop was only included in the program when Toni Blackman became a cultural specialist in 2001. In his book, Katz takes on the hard questions prompted by the legacy of American imperialism abroad and racism at home that informs hip hop as a global art form and makes a Next Level residency a complex interaction between people that have something important in common, but also much that could divide them. He uses the insights he has gleaned from over thirty residencies around the world as he considers the sometimes conflicting agendas between artists and diplomats that can complicate cultural diplomacy. While defending the value of people-to-people exchanges as a way to bring about what he calls conflict transformation, Katz takes a hard look at what is beneficial as well as difficult about these types interactions. Mark Katz is Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the founding director of Next Level. His work centers on hip hop and the transformative effect of technology on music. In 2016 he was awarded the Dent Medal. Build is his fourth book. Kristen M. Turner, Ph.D. is a lecturer at North Carolina State University in the music department. Her work centers on American musical culture at the turn of the twentieth century and has been published in several journals and essay collections. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

In The New Battle for the Atlantic: Emerging Naval Competition with Russia in the Far North (Naval Institute Press, 2019), Magnus Nordenman explores the emerging competition between the United States and its NATO allies and the resurgent Russian navy in the North Atlantic. This maritime region played a key role in the two world wars and the Cold War, serving as the strategic link between the United States and Europe that enabled the flow of reinforcements and supplies to the European Allies. Nordenman shows that while a conflict in Europe has never been won in the North Atlantic, it surely could have been lost there. With Vladimir Putin’s Russia threatening the peace in Europe following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the North Atlantic and other maritime domains around Europe are once again vitally important. But this battle will in many ways be different, Nordenman demonstrates, due to an overstretched U.S. Navy, the rise of disruptive technologies, a beleaguered NATO that woke up to the Russian challenge unprepared for high-end warfighting in the maritime domain, and a Russia commanding a smaller, but more sophisticated, navy equipped with long-range cruise missiles. Nordenman also provides a set of recommendations for what the United States and NATO must do now in order to secure the North Atlantic in this new age of great power competition. Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Seven decades of military spending during the cold war and war on terror have created a vast excess of military hardware – what happens to all of this military waste when it has served its purpose and what does it tell us about militarism in American culture? Josh Reno’s Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness (University of California Press, 2019), explores the myriad afterlives of military waste and the people who witness, interpret, manipulate, and reimagine them. In this episode of New Books in Anthropology, he talks to host Jacob Doherty about how engineers within the military industrial complex conceptualize waste, how artists try to demilitarize surplus air force planes, how near earth orbit has filled up with the debris, and how militarized culture shapes the way we understand mass shootings. Josh Reno is an associate professor of anthropology at Binghampton University and the author of Waste Away. Jacob Doherty is a lecturer in the anthropology of development at the University of Edinburgh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

A trade war with China has dangerous implications for the global economy. What began more than a year ago with President Trump’s decision to impose tariffs has become an unpleasant economic reality for many businesses. Recently, the U.S. labeled China a “currency manipulator.” But an even larger long-term threat comes from China’s aggressive espionage offensive that is playing out in behind-the-scenes as of the U.S. and China struggle for global dominance. Our guest is Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow and director of Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Her most recent book, The Third Revolution: Xi Jinpeng and the New Chinese State (Oxford University Press, 2018), explains the background to recent dramatic changes inside China. She is among a distinguished group of China specialists who once favored engagement with Beijing, but are now calling for the United States to take a more forceful approach as China attempts to undermine democratic values. We discuss the best ways to navigate this relationship. "Managing this relationship is essential," says Elizabeth. "It cannot allowed to it to spiral down too far." Richard Davies and Jim Meigs are the host of the terrific podcast “How Do We Fix It?,” on which they talk to the world’s most creative thinkers about, well, how to fix things. Lots of things. Important ones. Highly recommended. You can find “How Do We Fix It” on Apple Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Climate change impacts-more heat, drought, extreme rainfall, and stronger storms-have already harmed communities around the globe. Even if the world could cut its carbon emissions to zero tomorrow, further significant global climate change is now inevitable. Although we cannot tell with certainty how much average global temperatures will rise, we do know that the warming we have experienced to date has caused significant losses, and that the failure to prepare for the consequences of further warming may prove to be staggering. Building a Resilient Tomorrow: How to Prepare for the Coming Climate Disruption (Oxford University Press, 2019), edited by Alice C. Hill and Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, does not dwell on overhyped descriptions of apocalyptic climate scenarios, nor does it travel down well-trodden paths surrounding the politics of reducing carbon emissions. Instead, it starts with two central facts: climate impacts will continue to occur, and we can make changes now to mitigate their effects. While squarely confronting the scale of the risks we face, this pragmatic guide focuses on solutions-some gradual and some more revolutionary-currently being deployed around the globe. Each chapter presents a thematic lesson for decision-makers and engaged citizens to consider, outlining replicable successes and identifying provocative recommendations to strengthen climate resilience. Between animated discussions of ideas as wide-ranging as managed retreat from coastal hot-zones to biological approaches for resurgent climate-related disease threats, Hill and Martinez-Diaz draw on their personal experiences as senior officials in the Obama Administration to tell behind-the-scenes stories of what it really takes to advance progress on these issues. The narrative is dotted with tales of on-the-ground citizenry, from small-town mayors and bankers to generals and engineers, who are chipping away at financial disincentives and bureaucratic hurdles to prepare for life on a warmer planet. For readers exhausted by today's paralyzing debates on yearly "fluke" storms or the existence of climate change, Building a Resilient Tomorrow offers better ways to manage the risks in a warming planet, even as we work to limit global temperature rise. Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

One of the central pillars of US counterterrorism policy is that capturing or killing a terrorist group's leader is effective. Yet this pillar rests more on a foundation of faith than facts. In Leadership Decapitation: Strategic Targeting of Terrorist Organizations (Stanford University Press, 2019), Jenna Jordan examines over a thousand instances of leadership targeting—involving groups such as Hamas, al Qaeda, Shining Path, and ISIS—to identify the successes, failures, and unintended consequences of this strategy. As Jordan demonstrates, group infrastructure, ideology, and popular support all play a role in determining how and why leadership decapitation succeeds or fails. Taking heed of these conditions is essential to an effective counterterrorism policy going forward. Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Recent debates over the building of a border wall on the U.S.-Mexico divide have raised logistical and ethical issues, leaving the historical record of border building uninvoked. A recent book, written by UT Austin professor Dr. C.J. Alvarez, offers an over one-hundred-year history that extends to before the building of a border wall in 1990. Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide (UT Press, 2019) recounts the history of how both US and Mexican government agencies surveyed, organized, and operationalized land and water from 1848 until 2009. By centering the relationship between government agencies and border policing, Alvarez clearly shows how construction and manipulation of the border space’s natural features maintained the political and geographical form of the nation-state, how it reproduced the notion of the border space as something needing to be controlled and dominated, and how it transformed the border space into one of economic possibility and growth. The history of construction and hydraulic engineering on the divide is largely about the opposing forces of border building to keep certain people and things out, and border building to let certain things in. Alvarez lays bare this tension between tactical infrastructure and trade infrastructure both as forces that have organized border life. During the 1960s and 70s, “the ports of entry began to embody the ever-deepening contradictions embedded in policies designed to accelerate sanctioned economic exchange on the one hand while seeking to decelerate black market commerce on the other,” Alvarez writes (143). By the turn of the 21st century, Alvarez argues, most of the police construction on the border was designed to manage the negative effects of previous building projects and policies. In regards to the completion of the 2009 border fence, Alvarez writes, “It was overbuilding designed to compensate for an unsustainable immigration system, unsustainable ‘drug wars,’ and an unsustainable politics of scapegoating noncitizens. Far more successful at achieving its stated goals, however, was the infrastructure of cross-border commerce” (222). Dr. Alvarez utilizes extensive government records from the binational agency International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC)/ Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (CILA), records from Army Corps of Engineers, the INS, and the prodigious W.D. Smithers photograph collection from the Harry Ransom Center. The number of photographs included in the manuscript shows the vastness of the US-Mexico divide's natural landscape, shows how agencies attempted to make sense of such vastness, and shows what they constructed. Border Land, Border Water is a must-read for historians of the US-Mexico divide, environmental historians, and anyone interested in better understanding from a historical perspective current calls construction on the border. Dr. Alvarez, “Chihuahuan Desert History” School for Advanced Research Colloquium Talk Jonathan Cortez is a Ph.D. candidate of American Studies at Brown University. You can follow Jonathan on Twitter @joncortz and on their personal website www.historiancortez.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Italy's current crisis of Mediterranean migration and detention has its roots in early twentieth century imperial ambitions. Stephanie Malia Hom's new book Empire's Mobius Strip: Historical Echoes in Italy's Crisis of Migration and Detention (Cornell University Press, 2019) investigates how mobile populations were perceived to be major threats to Italian colonization, and how the state's historical mechanisms of control have resurfaced, with greater force, in today's refugee crisis. What is at stake in Empire's Mobius Strip is a deeper understanding of the forces driving those who move by choice and those who are moved. Hom focuses on Libya, considered Italy's most valuable colony, both politically and economically. Often perceived as the least of the great powers, Italian imperialism has been framed as something of "colonialism lite." But Italian colonizers carried out genocide between 1929–33, targeting nomadic Bedouin and marching almost 100,000 of them across the desert, incarcerating them in camps where more than half who entered died, simply because the Italians considered their way of life suspect. There are uncanny echoes with the situation of the Roma and migrants today. Hom explores three sites, in novella-like essays, where Italy's colonial past touches down in the present: the island, the camp, and the village. Empire's Mobius Strip brings into relief Italy's shifting constellations of mobility and empire, giving them space to surface, submerge, stretch out across time, and fold back on themselves like a Mobius strip. It deftly shows that mobility forges lasting connections between colonial imperialism and neoliberal empire, establishing Italy as a key site for the study of imperial formations in Europe and the Mediterranean. Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump broke not only from the Republican Party consensus but also from the bipartisan consensus on the direction of recent U.S. foreign policy. Calling the Iraq war a terrible mistake and lamenting America's nation building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Trump has shown little interest in maintaining the traditional form of American leadership of the liberal international order. He has threatened to pull the United States out of NATO, complained that the United States was being taken advantage of by its trading partners, and argued that uncontrolled third-world immigration was a terrible mistake and indeed a threat to the American heartland. Instead, Trump's “America First” vision called for a reassertion of American nationalism on the economic front as well as in foreign affairs. In short, President Trump’s foreign policy is more akin to that of the pre-Franklin Delano Roosevelt America. Fuel to the Fire: How Trump made America’s Foreign Policy Even Worse (and How We Can Recover) (Cato Institute, 2019), co-authored by Christopher A. Preble, John Glaser, and A. Trevor Thrall, this book provides an assessment of Trump’s America First Doctrine, its performance to date and its implications for the future. Since Trump took office, it has become clear that “America First” was more campaign slogan than coherent vision of American grand strategy and foreign policy. As president Trump has steered a course that has maintained some of the worst aspects of foreign policy of the Bush and Obama era – namely the pursuit of primacy if not hegemony and frequent military intervention abroad – while managing to make a new set of mistakes all his own. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written recently for Chatham House’s International Affairs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

The Versailles Treaty of 1919, celebrates its one-hundred anniversary this year. And, yet unlike the more recent centenaries, such as that of the outbreak of the Great War or the Russian Revolution, the Versailles Treaty, notwithstanding its importance as perhaps the most important of the twentieth-century, has not seen the same level of interest? Is this relatively indifference due to the fact that it is still regarded by some (in the words of John Maynard Keynes) as a 'Carthaginian Peace', which lead inevitably to the rise of Hitler and the outbreak of the Second World War? To discuss this and other aspects of the Treaty, in the podcast channel, 'Arguing History', are Professor of History at the University of Exeter, Jeremy Black and Dr. Charles Coutinho, of the Royal Historical Society. Professor Jeremy Black MBE, Is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. A graduate of Queens College, Cambridge, he is the author of well over one-hundred books. In 2008 he was awarded the “Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Lifetime Achievement". Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written recently for Chatham House’s International Affairs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Professor Paul Robinson's new book, Russian Conservatism (Cornell University Press, 2019) is a comprehensive examination of the roots and development of the hardy strain of conservative political thought in Russian history. Robinson begins by tackling the thorny question of how to define conservatism in the Russian context and introduces readers to the "principle of organicism." The use of natural metaphors by Russian conservatives to define their fundamental beliefs is potent: change and development must be organic, and, as Nikolai Berdiaev asserted, "…consist of a healthy reaction to violation of organic nature." Armed with this definition, Robinson expertly guides us through the development of conservative thought in Russia, beginning with the reign of Alexander I and ending with Vladimir Putin. Along the way, Robinson pauses to introduce the Slavophiles, Pan Slavs, Eurasianists, and the emigre thinkers such as Ivan Ilyin, now enjoying a return to favor amongst Russian elites. Unlike many historians who bring the narrative to a screeching halt in October 1917, Robinson offers us a through-line for the continued development of Russian conservatism during the Soviet century from the heady days of revolution to the return of more “traditional” values and trappings in the run up to World War II. This approach offers a new perspective on the topic, as does Robinson's deft division of each period into a separate and thorough examination of the cultural, political, and socio-economic branches of the movement. Professor Robinson writes fluidly and engagingly about his topic; "Russian Conservatism" is a magisterial work, and a must-read for students of Russia's past as well as those of her present, and certainly those eager to divine her future. Paul Robinson is Professor of History of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. He is author of several books, including The White Russian Army in Exile, 1920–1941, and Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, Supreme Commander of the Russian Army which won the Society for Military History's distinguished book award for biography, and most recently, co-author of Aiding Afghanistan. He blogs about his research and Russia regularly at https://irrussianality.wordpress.com. Jennifer Eremeeva is an award-winning author and American expatriate writer who writes about travel, culture, cuisine and culinary history, Russian history, and Royal History, with bylines in Reuters, Fodor's, USTOA, LitHub, The Moscow Times, and Russian Life. She is the in-house travel blogger for Alexander & Roberts, and author of two books: "Lenin Lives Next Door: Marriage, Martinis, and Mayhem in Moscow," and "Have Personality Disorder, Will Rule Russia: A Pocket Guide to Russian History." Follow Jennifer on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook or visit jennifereremeeva.com for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

In Iran and Palestine: Past, Present and Future (Routledge, 2019), Seyed Ali Alavi (SOAS University of London) surveys the history of the relationship between Iran – and especially the Islamic Republic of Iran - with Palestinian organisations and leadership. It also, quite obviously, deals with Iranian views of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Analysing the connections of the Iranian revolutionary movements, both the Left and the Islamic camps’ perspectives are scrutinized. To provide a historical background to the post-revolutionary period, the genealogy of pro-Palestinian sentiments before 1979 are traced additionally. Demonstrating the pro-Palestinian stance of post-revolutionary Iran, the study focuses on the causes of roots of the ideological outlook and the interest of the state. Despite a growing body of literature on the Iranian Revolution and its impacts on the region, Iran’s connection with Palestine have been overlooked. This new volume fills the gap in the literature and enables readers to unpack the history of the two states. This unique and comprehensive coverage of Iran and Palestine’s relationship is a key resource for scholars and students interested in international relations, politics, Islamic and Middle East studies. 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/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Every time that I teach any portion of a course dealing with Ronald Reagan and the end of the Cold War, I gird myself for the inevitable myth-busting that I’m going to do. The idea that Reagan won the Cold War by bankrupting the Soviet Union through heavy military expenditures has become a piece of commonly accepted wisdom about the 40th president. In the eyes of Reagan’s defenders, the military buildup the president began in the early 1980s forced the Soviets to either accept a reformer, Mikhail Gorbachev, or in trying to keep up with the weight of the military buildup ruined their own economy in the process. Consequently, toughness and a commitment to a strong military were the triumphalist lessons of the Cold War. Beth Fischer’s The Myth of Triumphalism: Rethinking President Reagan's Cold War Legacy (University Press of Kentucky, 2019) challenges this interpretation of Reagan’s Cold War foreign policy. Fischer argues that the military buildup was actually deeply counterproductive, frightening the Soviet leadership and delaying meaningful negotiations for several years. In lionizing President Reagan, triumphalists ignore the contributions that Reagan did make to ending the Cold War: a willingness to think radically about the elimination of nuclear weapons and to negotiating with his Soviet counterparts. Contemporary policymakers would do well to avoid the belligerent lessons offered by triumphalists and instead ought to pay attention to Reagan’s actual conduct during the Cold War. Zeb Larson is a recent graduate of The Ohio State University with a PhD in History. His research deals with the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

From efficient instructions on how to kill civilians to horrifying videos of beheadings, no terrorist organization has more comprehensively weaponized social media than ISIS. Its strategic, multi-platformed campaign is so effective that it has ensured global news coverage and inspired hundreds of young people around the world to abandon their lives and their countries to join a foreign war. Michael Krona and Rosemary Pennington's new book The Media World of ISIS (Indiana University Press, 2019) explores the characteristics, mission, and tactics of the organization's use of media and propaganda. Contributors consider how ISIS's media strategies imitate activist tactics, legitimize its self-declared caliphate, and exploit narratives of suffering and imprisonment as propaganda to inspire followers. Using a variety of methods, contributors explore the appeal of ISIS to Westerners, the worldview made apparent in its doctrine, and suggestions for counteracting the organization's approaches. Its highly developed, targeted, and effective media campaign has helped make ISIS one of the most recognized terrorism networks in the world. Gaining a comprehensive understanding of its strategies—what worked and why—will help combat the new realities of terrorism in the 21st century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Never have so many possessed the means to be so lethal. The diffusion of modern technology (robotics, cyber weapons, 3-D printing, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence) to ordinary people has given them access to weapons of mass violence previously monopolized by the state. In recent years, states have attempted to stem the flow of such weapons to individuals and non-state groups, but their efforts are failing. In Power to the People: How Open Technological Innovation is Arming Tomorrow’s Terrorists (Oxford University Press, 2019), Audrey Kurth Cronin... Explains a fundamental shift in patterns of innovation for lethal technologies, and what it means; Looks at individuals and private groups, not states, as the most significant trend redefining the future; Presents contemporary case studies and discussion of paradigm-shifting technology from the late 19th century and mid-20th century; Combines history, science and technology, political science, security and terrorism studies, with a deep understanding of US and international security policy; Considers why certain lethal technologies spread, which ones to focus on, and how individuals and private groups might adapt the latest off-the-shelf technologies for malevolent ends; and Recommends a broad array of tactics and policies to contain and combat violent rogue actors worldwide. Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Today I talked to David H. McIntyre about How to Think about Homeland Security; Volume 1: The Imperfect Intersection of National Security and Public Safety and Volume 2: Risk, Threats, and the New Normal (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). The next evolution in improving homeland security is to analyze and evaluate various theories of bureaucratic change against the national-level catastrophic threats we are most likely to face. This synthesis provides the bridge between volume 1 (understanding homeland security) and the next in the series (understanding the risk and threats to domestic security). Volume 1: The Imperfect Intersection of National Security and Public Safety explains homeland security as a struggle to meet new national security threats with traditional public safety practitioners. It offers a new solution that reaches beyond training and equipment to change practitioner culture through education. This first volume represents a major new contribution to the literature by recognizing that homeland security is not based on theories of nuclear response or countering terrorism, but on, making bureaucracy work. Volume 2: Risk, Threats and the New Normal explains the new political and technological developments that created new domestic national security threats against the nation and the people of the United States. The book traces the development of and competition between national preparedness (focused on people and property), and civil defense / security (focused on the defense of systems and infrastructure) since the latter days of World War I. Extensive policy research demonstrates a shift in federal (and hence state and local) focus over the last decade from WMD based Threats at the National Security Level (TNSL) back to more traditional hazards and disasters. A framework is offered to analyze and evaluate TNSL dangers to national power; it is applied to a case study involving a nuclear attack. Recommendations are offered to mitigate or prevent the potentially catastrophic aftermath. In Vol 3 this analysis will be extended to other TNSL events (chemical, biological, radiological, etc.) and the actors who must prepare for them. Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous―and easier to share than ever. We associate charts with science and reason; the flashy visuals are both appealing and persuasive. Pie charts, maps, bar and line graphs, and scatter plots (to name a few) can better inform us, revealing patterns and trends hidden behind the numbers we encounter in our lives. In short, good charts make us smarter―if we know how to read them. However, they can also lead us astray. Charts lie in a variety of ways―displaying incomplete or inaccurate data, suggesting misleading patterns, and concealing uncertainty―or are frequently misunderstood, such as the confusing cone of uncertainty maps shown on TV every hurricane season. To make matters worse, many of us are ill-equipped to interpret the visuals that politicians, journalists, advertisers, and even our employers present each day, enabling bad actors to easily manipulate them to promote their own agendas. In How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information (W. W. Norton, 2019), data visualization expert Alberto Cairo teaches us to not only spot the lies in deceptive visuals, but also to take advantage of good ones to understand complex stories. Public conversations are increasingly propelled by numbers, and to make sense of them we must be able to decode and use visual information. By examining contemporary examples ranging from election-result infographics to global GDP maps and box-office record charts, How Charts Lie demystifies an essential new literacy, one that will make us better equipped to navigate our data-driven world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

According to one dictionary definition, the term means: “to yield or concede to the belligerent demands of (a nation, group, person, etc.) in a conciliatory effort, sometimes at the expense of justice or other principles”. Of course when one employs this term in a historical context, it is usually taken to refer to the ‘Appeasement’ by Great Britain of the Fascist powers during the 1930s. In this latest edition of ‘Arguing History’, Professor of History Jeremy Black and Dr. Charles Coutinho of the Royal Historical Society, discuss the historical nature of appeasement and endeavor to go beyond the reductionist and ahistorical picture so popular with some historians and much of the reading public. Going beyond the sloganeering that originated with Michael Foot’s The Guilty Men, and more recent tomes like Tim Bouverie’s Appeasement, this discussion of the topic endeavors to examine at length the underlying variables which factored into British policy in the 1930s. Professor Jeremy Black MBE, Is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. A graduate of Queens College, Cambridge, he is the author of well over one-hundred books. In 2008 he was awarded the “Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Lifetime Achievement.” Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written recently for Chatham House’s International Affairs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Why don’t governments do more to prevent genocide? What role does the public have in compelling their governments to take an active stand in the face of genocide? In Reluctant Interveners: America's Failed Responses to Genocide from Bosnia to Darfur (Rutgers University Press, 2019), Eyal Mayroz approaches these questions and more through an interdisciplinary lens that includes history, political science, rhetorical studies, and media studies. In doing so, Mayroz focuses on the United States and the complex relationships between political elites, including those who reside in the executive office; political and media communication, including the flow of information upward and downward; and the citizenry, including public opinion, political engagement, and political action. In Reluctant Interveners, Mayroz offers a critical, but not pessimistic account of the relationship between the U.S. government and its citizens when it comes to genocide recognition and prevention. Importantly, Mayroz’s research illustrates the ways in which the public and civil society can seek to take control of the narrative from those officials who attempt to manage the public through framing suspected cases of genocide in ways that will elicit support for their preferred policy. In this regard, Mayroz highlights the potential for the American public to play a more influential role in presidential decisions in response to genocide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

There is perhaps no more iconic symbol of the Cold War than the Berlin Wall, the 96-mile-long barrier erected around West Berlin in 1961 to stem the flow of refugees from Eastern Europe. In Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, The Berlin Wall, and the Most Dangerous Place On Earth (Scribner, 2019), Iain MacGregor draws upon interviews with a wide range of people to recount the history of the wall and how it affected the lives of the people on either side of it. Through their firsthand experiences he recounts the tension-filled hours when East German workers began constructing the first elements of what became an elaborate series of obstacles that restricted access to the two sides of the partitioned city. As Berliners gradually adapted to the presence of the wall, thousands of people on the eastern side risked their lives in their search for ways around, above, and below the barriers to gain their freedom in the West. As MacGregor explains, underlying much of this was the assumption by nearly all sides of the permanence of the wall, a belief that was proven false by the dramatic events of November 1989 which resulted in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reuniting of the two sides of the German city. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

As Dr. Sara Lorenzini points out in her new book Global Development: A Cold War History (Princeton UP, 2019), the idea of economic development was a relatively novel one even as late as the 1940s. Much of the language of development was still being invented or refined by experts and policymakers. And yet, within a few decades, the idea of foreign aid for development had become a critical soft power tool for the United States, the Soviet Union, and the European powers during the Cold War. Newly independent states, meanwhile, articulated a need for development aid to help them overcome the impoverishing legacy of colonialism. Dr. Lorenzini’s book charts the development of this idea beginning in the early middle of the twentieth century until the late 1980s, when the end of the Cold War took some of the impetus away from demands for development aid. In addition to showing how the superpowers and Europeans participated in development schemes, she pays close attention to the role of multinational organizations in trying to facilitate and coordinate these demands while granting a voice to those in the Global South seeking development. The book is a useful reminder to those that development as an idea is never uncomplicated, and that the support for development had powerful domestic roots in addition to its international connections. Zeb Larson is a recent graduate of The Ohio State University with a PhD in History. His research deals with the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Following World War II, in the midst of global decolonization and intensifying freedom struggles within its borders, the United States developed a worldwide police assistance program that aimed to crush left radicalism and extend its racial imperium. Although policing had long been part of the US colonial project, this new roving cadre of advisors funded, supplied, and trained foreign counterinsurgency forces on an unprecedented scale, developing a global cop-consciousness that spanned from Los Angeles to Saigon. In ​Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing​ (University of California Press, 2019), Stuart Schrader makes the compelling case that the growth of carceral state is just one front of a “discretionary empire” that persists today. Badges Without Borders​ traces the tangled routes of police bureaucrats as they brought their munitions, methods, and money to precincts at home and abroad, and obviates the divide between “foreign” and “domestic” policy. Ultimately, Schrader suggests that US global power has relied on police reform to endlessly reproduce an ideology of “security.” Patrick Reilly​ is a PhD student in US History at Vanderbilt University. He studies police, community organizations, and urban development. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Speaking to an advisor in 1966 about America's escalation of forces in Vietnam, American Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara confessed: 'We've made mistakes in Vietnam … I've made mistakes. But the mistakes I made are not the ones they say I made'. In her book, 'I Made Mistakes': Robert McNamara's Vietnam War Policy, 1960-1968 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Dr. Aurélie Basha i Novosejt, Lecturer in American History at the University of Kent, provides a fresh and controversial examination of McNamara's decisions during the Vietnam War. Although McNamara is remembered as the architect of the Vietnam War, Dr. Novosejt draws on new primary sources - including the diaries of his close confidant & advisor John T. McNaughton - to reveal a man who resisted the war more than most. As Secretary of Defense, he did not want the costs of the war associated with a new international commitment in Vietnam, but he sacrificed these misgivings to instead become the public face of the war out of a sense of loyalty to the President Lyndon B. Johnson. Cambridge University Professor Andrew Preston calls Dr. Novosejt’s book: ‘boldly original’, which sheds ‘new light on the subject’. In short Dr. Novosejt's books is a must read for any serious student of the Americanization of the Vietnam War in the 1960's. 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 [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might called "fundamental research." Their authors--dedicated researchers one and all--provide the scholarly stuff upon which many non-fiction trade books are based. So when you are reading, say, a popular history, you are often reading UP books at one remove. Of course, some UP books are also bestsellers, and they are all well written (and, I should say, thoroughly vetted thanks to the peer review system), but the greatest contribution of UPs is to provide a base of fundamental research to the public. And they do a great job of it. How do they do it? Today I talked to Kathryn Conrad, the president of the Association of University Presses, about the work of UPs, the challenges they face, and some terrific new directions they are going. We also talked about why, if you have a scholarly book in progress, you should talk to UP editors early and often. And she explains how! Listen in. Marshall Poe is the editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

In July 1958, U.S. Marines stormed the beach in Beirut, Lebanon, ready for combat. Farcically. they were greeted by vendors and sunbathers. Fortunately, the rest of their mission—helping to end Lebanon’s first civil war—went nearly as smoothly and successfully, thanks in large part to the skillful work of American diplomats on site, who helped arrange a compromise solution. Future American interventions in the region would not work out quite as well. Bruce Rydel’s new book Beirut 1958: How America's Wars in the Middle East Began (Brookings, 2019), tells the now-forgotten story (forgotten, that is, in the United States) of the first U.S. combat operation in the Middle East. President Eisenhower sent the Marines in the wake of a bloody coup in Iraq, a seismic event that altered politics not only of that country but eventually of the entire region. Eisenhower feared that the coup, along with other conspiracies and events that seemed mysterious back in Washington, threatened American interests in the Middle East. His action, and those of others, were driven in large part by a cast of fascinating characters whose espionage and covert actions could be grist for a movie. Although Eisenhower’s intervention in Lebanon was unique, certainly in its relatively benign outcome, it does hold important lessons for today’s policymakers as they seek to deal with the always unexpected challenges in the Middle East. Veteran CIA analyst, National Security Council Staff member and Assistant Secretary of Defence Bruce Reidel describes the scene as it emerged six decades ago, and he suggests that some of the lessons learned then are still valid today. A key lesson? Not to rush to judgment when surprised by the unexpected. And don’t assume the worst. 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 [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Whether man-made or naturally occurring, large-scale disasters can cause fatalities and injuries, devastate property and communities, savage the environment, impose significant financial burdens on individuals and firms, and test political leadership. Moreover, global challenges such as climate change and terrorism reveal the interdependent and interconnected nature of our current moment: what occurs in one nation or geographical region is likely to have effects across the globe. Our information age creates new and more integrated forms of communication that incur risks that are difficult to evaluate, let alone anticipate. All of this makes clear that innovative approaches to assessing and managing risk are urgently required. When catastrophic risk management was in its inception thirty years ago, scientists and engineers would provide estimates of the probability of specific types of accidents and their potential consequences. Economists would then propose risk management policies based on those experts' estimates with little thought as to how this data would be used by interested parties. Today, however, the disciplines of finance, geography, history, insurance, marketing, political science, sociology, and the decision sciences combine scientific knowledge on risk assessment with a better appreciation for the importance of improving individual and collective decision-making processes. The essays in The Future of Risk Management (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), edited by Howard Kunreuther, Robert J. Meyer, Erwann O. Michel-Kerjan, highlight past research, recent discoveries, and open questions written by leading thinkers in risk management and behavioral sciences. The Future of Risk Management provides scholars, businesses, civil servants, and the concerned public tools for making more informed decisions and developing long-term strategies for reducing future losses from potentially catastrophic events. Visit the University of Pennsylvania Press and enter promo code RISK50 during checkout to receive a 50% discount. Valid until November 15, 2019. Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not necessarily make us good teachers. Jessamyn Neuhaus’s Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers (West Virginia University Press, 2019) helps us to identify and embrace that geekiness in us and then offers practical, step-by-step guidelines for how to turn it to effective pedagogy. It’s a sharp, slim, and entertaining volume that can make better teachers of us all. Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A Peoples History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford, 2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

In the twenty-five years after 1989, the world enjoyed the deepest peace in history. In The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth (Oxford Univiersity Press, 2019), the eminent foreign policy scholar Michael Mandelbaum examines that remarkable quarter century, describing how and why the peace was established and then fell apart. To be sure, wars took place in this era, but less frequently and on a far smaller scale than in previous periods. Mandelbaum argues that the widespread peace ended because three major countries -- Vladimir Putin's Russia in Europe, Xi Jinping's China in East Asia, and the Shia clerics' Iran in the Middle East -- put an end to it with aggressive nationalist policies aimed at overturning the prevailing political arrangements in their respective regions. The three had a common motive: their need to survive in a democratic age with their countries' prospects for economic growth uncertain. Mandelbaum further argues that the key to the return of peace lies in the advent of genuine democracy, including free elections and the protection of religious, economic, and political liberty. Yet, since recent history has shown that democracy cannot be imposed from the outside, The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth has a dual message: while the world has a formula for peace, there is no way to ensure that all countries will embrace it 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 [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

In his new book The War for Muddy Waters: Pirates, Terrorists, Traffickers, and Maritime Security (Naval Institute Press, 2019), Joshua Tallis uses the “broken windows” theory of policing to reexamine the littorals, developing a multidimensional view of the maritime threat environment. With a foundational case study of the Caribbean, Tallis explores the connections between the narcotics trade, trafficking, money laundering, and weak institutions. He finds that networks are leveraged for multiple streams of illicit activity, but enforcement efforts sometimes only focus on a single threat. Additionally, Tallis compares these findings in two comparative case studies in the Gulf of Guinea and the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. Hybrid threats emerge as a theme in these case studies, marked by the fusion of criminality and terrorism and conventional and unconventional tactics. Ultimately, Tallis recommends actors in the maritime environment evaluate threats in this multidimensional context and collaborate with communities to achieve overarching strategic objectives. Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

The enterprise of journalism is in crisis. Today’s journalists face accusations of “fake news” on the one hand, and harassment, arrest, and even the murder of reporters on the other. At the same time, we who rely on journalists for information, are constantly bombarded by breaking news. Confronted by video and print updates in real time, it is increasingly challenging to keep up with, let alone understand, world events. Barrels of information continually roll towards us; how can we find the time and space to stop and consider – to digest the content of news and to reflect on what it all means? Seen through the whirlwind of information, the world in general, and the Middle East in particular, can appear more confusing and chaotic than ever. Enter Seth Frantzman. His new book After Isis: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East (Gefen House Publishing, 2019) is just what is needed to help deal with the news confusion. The brutal Syrian civil war and the war against Isis left hundreds of thousands dead, and made millions more refugees. Frantzman spent months traveling throughout the Middle East to get a first-hand view of the region, its people and politics in war’s aftermath. He shares his insights and understanding in this important work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

From Moscow, the world looks different. It is through understanding how Russia sees the world—and its place in it—that the West can best meet the new Russian challenge to the existing world order. Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia to Confront the West (Chatham House, 2019), by Chatham House Senior Russian expert, Keir Giles provides the sophisticated and curious reader a primer to help explain Putin’s Russia. As per Giles, Russia and the West are like neighbors who never seem able to understand each other. A major reason, this book argues, is that Western leaders tend to think that Russia should act as a “rational” Western nation—even though Russian leaders, Tsars, Commissars and Presidents alike for centuries have thought and acted based on their country’s much different history and traditions. Russia, through Western eyes, is unpredictable and irrational, when in fact its leaders from the Tsars to Putin almost always act in their own very predictable and rational ways. For Western leaders to try to engage with Russia without attempting to understand how Russians look at the world is a recipe for repeated disappointment and frequent crises. Keir Giles, describes how Russian leaders have used consistent doctrinal and strategic approaches to the rest of the world. These approaches may seem deeply alien in the Western world, but understanding them is essential for successful engagement with contemporary Russia. Giles argues that understanding how Moscow’s leaders think and act—not just Vladimir Putin but his predecessors and eventual successors—will help their counterparts in the West develop a less crisis-prone and more productive relationship with Russia. 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 [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

A popular myth in the American nationalist imaginary is that the country has been on a continued path of progress. Another is that the country’s history has been the self-realization of the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence. Jay Sexton says these are wrong. In fact, in his new book A Nation Forged by Crisis: A New American History (Basic Books, 2018), he shows how crises and contingency have given the United States its shape, from 1776 to the Civil War through to the Great Depression and world wars of early twentieth century. Some of the most influential changes occurred, Sexton writes, during “contingent moments in which the existence of the nation was up for grabs.” In this impressively concise and provocative book, Sexton places the history of the republic in the broader currents of the international system (“foreign powers,” he writes, are “the most overlooked actors in American history”) and chronicles the crises that have rocked the country into change (the Union’s mobilization during the Civil War, for instance, fueled the growth of Wall Street). The book deserves to be read by historians and non-historians alike. 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 [email protected] or on Twitter @DexterFergie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Initiated in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, have the reforms of the US intelligence enterprise served their purpose? What have been the results of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and a reorganized FBI? Have they helped to reduce blind spots and redundancies in resources and responsibilities ... and to prevent misuses of intelligence and law enforcement? How did a disaster like the Snowden scandal happen? In Spying: Assessing US Domestic Intelligence Since 9/11 (Lynne Rienner, 2019), Darren Tromblay answers these questions in his thorough, often provocative, assessment of post–9/11 US domestic intelligence activities in the pursuit of national security. Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

The United States has been the world's dominant power for more than a century. Now many analysts and commentators believe that other countries such as China are rising and the United States is in decline. Is the era of American hegemony over? Is America finished as a superpower? In his superb and learned book, Unrivaled: Why America Will remain the World's Sole Superpower(Cornell University Press, 2018), Michael Beckley, Professor in the Department of Political Science at Tufts University cogently argues that the United States has unique advantages over other nations that, if used wisely, will allow it to remain the world's sole superpower throughout this century. We are not living in a transitional, post-hegemonic, pluralist era. Instead, we are in the midst of what he calls the unipolar era―a period as singular and important as any epoch in modern history. This era, Beckley contends, will endure because the US has a much larger economic and military lead over its closest rival, China, than most people think and the best prospects of any nation to amass wealth and power in the decades ahead. Deeply researched and brilliantly argued, Professor Beckley’s book covers hundreds of years of great power politics and develops new methods for measuring power and predicting the rise and fall of nations. According to Chatham House’s International Affairs, Unrivaled, “is by far the most comprehensive analysis to date on the power dynamics of the international system and clearly debunks the established narrative on US decline”. By documenting long-term trends in the global balance of power and explaining their implications for world politics, the book provides guidance for policymakers, businesspeople, and scholars alike. 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 [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

The past decade has seen a tremendous production of scholarship on American missionary endeavors in the Middle East. In Faithful Encounters: Authorities and American Missionaries in the Ottoman Empire (McGill-Queens University Press, 2018), Emrah Şahin approaches this dynamic field of inquiry from a less-common perspective, that of the Ottoman Empire. Relying on largely untapped official imperial sources emanating from the Sublime Porte, Şahin recounts complaints from local authorities and fraught diplomatic considerations, which Ottoman sultans, ministers, and bureaucrats were forced to grapple with as they sought to maintain control of their Empire. Weaving together compelling stories from Ottoman records, the book describes the Sublime Porte’s efforts to regulate physical space, censor missionary publications, and monitor missionary activities. With engaging anecdotes, Faithful Encounters offers a more complex look at Muslim-Christian relations and America’s engagement with the Ottomans. Emrah Şahin is the director of the Turkish Studies Program at the University of Florida and a lecturer at their Center for European Studies. He earned his PhD in History from McGill University in Canada. Joshua Donovan is a PhD candidate at Columbia University’s Department of History. His dissertation examines national and sectarian identity formation within the Greek Orthodox Christian community in Syria, Lebanon, and the diaspora. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Illiberal China: The Ideological Challenge of the People's Republic of China (Palgrave, 2018) by Daniel Vukovich analyzes the 'intellectual political culture' of post-Tiananmen China in comparison to and in conflict with liberalism inside and outside the P.R.C. It questions how mainland politics and discourses challenge ‘our’ own, chiefly liberal and anti-‘statist’ political frameworks and how can one understand its general refusal of liberalism? Daniel argues that the Party-state poses a challenge to our understandings of politics, globalization, and even progress. To be illiberal is not necessarily to be reactionary and vulgar but to be anti-liberal and to seek alternatives to a degraded liberalism. The book analyses the history of liberalism within China, the forces of the New Left, and some of the sites of struggle such as Wukan and Hong Kong. Today I spoke with Daniel about his new book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

In his book Peacemakers: American Leadership and the End of Genocide in the Balkans (University of Kentucky Press, 2017), Ambassador James W. Pardew describes the role of the U.S. involvement in ending the wars and genocide in the Balkans. As a soldier-diplomat, Pardew reminds us of the human nature of diplomacy. Pardew was the one of the major players in U.S. policy making, leading Balkan task forces. He was also a policy advisor to NATO. His book reflects the perspective of an experienced soldier who led the peace-making process through his use of compassion when dealing with mass murdering despots. He refocuses the nature of the dissolution of the Yugoslavia as a humanitarian crisis that could not be settled without dealing with all of the participants. His work is inspiring in the face of the senseless destruction of 100,000+ dead and thousands more displaced. He proves that the good guys can win without dropping down to the levels of the tyrants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

If today’s geopolitical fragmentation and the complexities of a ‘multipolar’ world order have led some to reminisce about the apparent stability of the Cold War era’s two ‘camps’, it should be remembered that things were of course never so straightforward. As Jeremy Friedman shows in Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World, the 1960s-1980s Sino-Soviet Split(UNC Press, 2018) generated a much more fractious and divided global situation than today’s nostalgia would imply. Taking ideology seriously as a component of socialist foreign policy, Friedman’s new and compelling analysis shows how deep Moscow and Beijing’s disagreements ran, and argues that the division was based at heart on two quite different revolutionary agendas. Drawing on archives all over the world in multiple languages, Shadow Cold War traces the origins of these agendas in revolutionary experience in each of Russia and China, and reveals how these continued to manifest themselves as Soviet and Chinese interests competed in the developing world in the latter half of the twentieth century. With China in particular now a major player in many of the locations discussed here, this book should be indispensable reading for anyone seeking clarity about how we got to where we are today. Ed Pulford is a postdoctoral researcher at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and northeast Asian indigenous groups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

In this provocative challenge to United States policy and strategy, former Professor of Strategy & Policy at the US Naval War College, and author or editor of eleven books, Dr. Donald Stoker argues that America endures endless wars because its leaders no longer know how to think about war in strategic terms and he reveals how ideas on limited war and war in general have evolved against the backdrop of American conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. These ideas, he shows, were and are flawed and have undermined America's ability to understand, wage, and win its wars, and to secure peace afterwards. America's leaders he argues have too often taken the nation to war without understanding what they want or valuing victory, leading to the “forever wars” of today in Afghanistan and Iraq. Why America Loses Wars: Limited War and US Strategy from the Korean War to the Present(Cambridge University Press, 2019) dismantles seventy years of misguided thinking and lays the foundations for a new approach to the wars of tomorrow. Why American Loses War is a must read for policy practitioners, serving soldiers and the lay educated public. 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 [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

The practice of Partition understood as the physical division of territory along ethno-religious lines into separate nation-states is often regarded as a successful political "solution" to ethnic conflict. In their edited volume Partitions: A Transnational History of Twentieth-Century Territorial Separatism (Stanford University Press, 2019), Laura Robson and Arie Dubnov uncover the collective history of the concept of partition and locate its genealogy in the politics of twentieth-century empire and decolonization. Moving beyond the nationalist frameworks that served in the first instance to promote partition as a natural phenomenon, the volume discusses creation of new political entities in the world of the British empire, from the Irish Free State, to the Dominions (later Republics) of India and Pakistan, and Palestine. Yorgos Giannakopoulos is a currently a Junior Research Fellow in Durham University, UK. He is a historian of Modern Britain and Europe. His published research recovers the regional impact of British Intellectuals in Eastern Europe in the age of nationalism and internationalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security