New Books in 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/adchoices Support 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 [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

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/adchoices Support 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/adchoices Support 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/adchoices Support 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 [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

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/adchoices Support 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 [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

Who was the spymaster of the Third Reich? How did Nazi ideology influence intelligence collection? Katrin Paehler answers these questions with the first analysis of Office VI of the Reich Security Main Office in her new book The Third Reich’s Intelligence Service: The Career of Walter Schellenberg (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Tracing the development of a distinctly and catastrophically ideological approach to intelligence gathering through an institutional biography of the SS security service, its operations in Italy, and clashes with rival agencies inside Germany, Katrin argues that Shellenberg’s ultimate aim was no less than carving out of an independent foreign policy cast in Himmler’s worldview. Katrin Paehler is an associate professor of history at Illinois State University. She was also a member of the Independent Historians’ Commission of the German Foreign Office and Nazism and its Aftermath. Ryan Stackhouse is a historian of Europe specializing in modern Germany and political policing under dictatorship. His research exploring Gestapo enforcement practices toward different social groups is nearing completion under the working title Policing Hitler’s Critics. He also cohosts the Third Reich History Podcast and can be reached at [email protected] or @Staxomatix. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War Between the Muslim World and the Global North (Yale University Press, 2018) is an ambitious attempt to cover, in one volume, the entire history of the relationship between the ‘Global North’—China, Russia, Europe, Britain, and America—and the Muslim world from Southeast Asia to West Africa. With more than a half a century of experience as a historian, policy maker, diplomat, peace negotiator, and businessman, William R. Polk endeavors to explain the deep hostilities between the Muslim world and the Global North and show how they grew over the centuries. Polk demonstrates how Islam, from its origins in the Arabian Peninsula, spread across North Africa into Europe, Central Asia, the Indian sub-continent, and Southeast Asia. But following the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Islamic civilization entered a decline while Europe began its overseas expansion. Defeated at every turn, Muslims tried adopting Western dress, organizing Westerns-style armies, and embracing Western ideas. None of these efforts stopped the expansion of the West deep into the Muslim world in the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. The post-colonial Muslim world fell victim to what Polk calls a “post-imperial malaise,” typified by native tyrannies, corruption, and massive poverty. Eventually, this malaise gave rise to a furious blowback best typified by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. William R. Polk taught at Harvard University and the University of Chicago, served on the Policy Planning Staff in the Kennedy Administration, negotiated the Egyptian-Israeli Suez ceasefire in the 1960s, and founded the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. He has written nineteen books. 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 [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 an expansive, engrossing, voluminously in depth analysis of the subject, Professor A. G. Hopkins, Professor Emeritus of Commonwealth History at the University of Cambridge, one of the foremost historians of the 19th- and 20th-century British Empire, engages in the fraught, but little studied subject of why and how the ‘American Empire’ differs if at all, from its British progenitor. In American Empire: A Global History (Princeton University Press, 2018)—a book of enormous sweep, ranging widely from the mid-18th century to the present day—Professor Hopkins introduces the reader into an exploration as to the issues of continuity versus discontinuity in British, Imperial and American history, as well as the intersection of empire with Globalization in its various incarnations historically. This is a book which demolishes the time-worn and artificial separation of American history post-1783 from British and indeed Global History. In short, Professor Hopkins’ study is an extremely important book; every historian of whatever specialization should invest the necessary time and attention to read and study it at length. 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 [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

Alison McQueen explores the apocalyptic thought of political theorists Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and Hans Morgenthau in her new book, Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times (Cambridge University Press, 2018). The focus of the book is the way that these theorists engage with apocalyptic ideas and integrate those concepts into their broader political projects, while also putting the three thinkers in a kind of dialogue with each other in our understanding of their contributions to realist thought. This is a very thorough and engaging exploration of the political and theoretical projects of these three thinkers, and by engaging all three as realists, McQueen connects Machiavelli’s, Hobbes’, and Morgenthau’s work in ways that they are not often connected, and spans the schools of thought that usual make claim to their work and ideas. The result is a scholarly conversation integrating both international relations theory and the tradition of the history of political thought. McQueen also provides an understanding of where we, as citizens, often hear or see apocalyptic rhetoric and images, how we might want to think about apocalyptic concepts, and why politicians integrate these images into their public speeches. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

On this episode, we will be talking to Anthimos Alexandros Tsirigotis about his book Cybernetics, Warfare, and Discourse: The Cybernetisation of Warfare in Britain (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017). Given the significant efforts of the field’s founder, Norbert Wiener, to distance cybernetics from military research and application, as well as the ethical stances of some of the field’s later leading lights such as Heinz von Foerster, Humberto Maturana, Herbert Brun, Ranulph Glanville and Larry Richards, it should not be surprising if some contemporary cyberneticians might find the particular combination of words in the books title somewhat disconcerting. However, far from producing a strictly first-order technological study or strategic “how to” manual, Greek military officer Tsirigotis has carried out a decidedly second-order examination of the subject that supplants the mainstream assumption of cyberspace as a set of technologies with a notion of cyberspace as a set of social practices produced, and reproduced, autopoietically through what he calls “cyber discourse.” Grounded in notions of emergence and complexity and employing digital tools of corpus linguistics on policy documents from over the past seven decades, Tsirigotis traces the transformation of such notions as “security” and “threat” in British military circles. The result is a conception of the state, not as a particular bounded geographical region, but as a network of autopoietic social practices; and of a world in which such states do not seek to extinguish external threats through the deployment of hard military power but rather seek to use their networks to adapt to the constant presence of threats in their environment. Along the way, Tsirigotis provides a striking example of what a truly second-order social science, capable of engaging with all manner of social practices beyond the military sphere, might look like. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Civil wars are among the most intractable conflicts in the world. Yet exactly distinguishes civil war from other types of armed struggle? In his book Civil Wars: A History in Ideas (Vintage Books, 2017), David Armitage examines the evolution of the concept over the centuries while explaining the relevance of that debate for today. As Armitage demonstrates, the Romans were the first to define civil wars as we understand them, giving us the name we use today. Their efforts were reflected in the works of authors in early modern Europe, who drew upon the classical tradition in order to comprehend the conflicts of their own day. Precision in defining war became increasingly relevant, both to distinguish civil wars from the newly recognized phenomenon of revolutions and with the emergence of efforts in the nineteenth century to regulate war through treaties and legal codes. This effort continues down to the present day, with the question of whether a conflict is or is not a civil war often determining how the international community responds to it. 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 wake of Ken Burns’ most recent series, The Vietnam War, America’s fascination with the conflict shows no sign of abating. Fortunately the flood of popular retellings of old narratives is supplemented by a number of well-researched and reasoned efforts aimed at garnering a better sense of how our presumptions about the Vietnam War are in need of reinterpretation and revision. Returning to New Books in Military History is historian Gregory A. Daddis, author of two recent accounts of the war that together offer a sharp reassessment of the American effort. In Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing America’s Strategy in Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Withdrawal: Reassessing America’s Final Years in Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2017) Daddis challenges many existing perceptions of the readiness and roles of MACV’s two most prominent commanders, Generals William Westmoreland and Creighton Abrams, as well as their struggles with the Washington defense establishment during the war. By centering his study on the strategic planning and its execution, Daddis not only acknowledges the centrality of Vietnamese agency in the outcome of the war, he also reveals how some historians have misjudged the war’s outcome to present flawed visions of possible victory. 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 Ostrich Paradox: Why We Underprepare for Disasters (Wharton Digital Press, 2017), Robert Meyer and Howard Kunreuther summarize six major cognitive biases that explain why humans fail to adequately prepare for potential disasters. Leveraging examples of high-impact events, The Ostrich Paradox summarizes how preparedness efforts are affected by issues with human memory, risk probability comprehension, and information overload. Finally, the authors provide a tool for assessing and mitigating these biases through a behavioral risk audit. The book is a slim volume that may lend itself for use in professional settings as a training tool. 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 CIA is a well-known agency to say the least. It is a key part of the United States’ national security apparatus and has been for the past 70 years. The CIA’s reputation is mixed though. From 1970s scandals to intelligence failures to its inherent secrecy, the agency can sometimes attract hostility and suspicion even from Americans. In his new book, The Foundation of the CIA: Harry Truman, The Missouri Gang and the Origins of the Cold War (University of Missouri Press, 2017), Richard E. Schroeder argues the agency filled an important hole in American national security in its creation, and does key intelligence work that must be considered in evaluating it. The Foundation of the CIA examines the creation and early years of the agency. Schroeder makes a strong argument that a centralized, permeant national intelligence agency was quite necessary for the United States. In each conflict before WWII, the United States set up systems for collecting intelligence and learned important techniques, but then lost these skills between conflicts. This loss could leave the United States vulnerable to threats when new conflicts emerged. Though the OSS, which served these needs during WWII, was terminated at the end of the war, the CIA was established shortly thereafter to meet these needs in a more permanent way. There were numerous challenges during the early years in the creation of the agency and for its first directors. Schroeder traces these foundations in his book. In this episode, Schroeder discusses his new book. He explains the need for the CIA and the important early years. Schroeder also introduces listeners to the Truman and the Missouri Gang to explain some of the important figures in these early years. Finally, Schroeder discusses the connection between this book and his own career in the CIA. His motivation to write this book stemmed from his career in the CIA and his time teaching students about national security. Christine Lamberson is an Assistant Professor of History at Angelo State University. Her research and teaching focuses on 20th century U.S. political and cultural history. She’s currently working on a book manuscript about the role of violence in shaping U.S. political culture in the 1960s and 1970s. She 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

Risk in Extreme Environments: Preparing, Avoiding, Mitigating, and Managing (Routledge, 2018), edited by Vicki Bier, is a series of multidisciplinary approaches to analysis of rare, severe risks. The essays demonstrate a wide variety of methods, from quantitative analysis to qualitative evaluation of organizations and case studies. Additionally, Risk in Extreme Environments tackles several hot-topics in risk management: managing black swans, balancing investments in preparedness versus response, and institutionalizing resilience. Bier and the other contributors do not stop at risk analysis, but also look at how to communicate risk analysis and translate analysis into good decision-making. 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 Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism (Columbia University Press, 2017), by Mark S. Hamm and Ramon Spaaij, identifies patterns among individuals that commit acts of terror outside of a group or network. Hamm and Spaaij follow these individuals, commonly called lone wolf terrorists, through multiple data points to inform a model of radicalization. The trends and changes in lone wolf terrorists, targets of violence, and radicalization pathways over time provides valuable insights for counterterrorism efforts. Finally, Hamm and Spaaij examine FBI sting operations that aim to prevent terrorist attacks. 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 United States senator in the 1930s and 1940s, Arthur Vandenberg was one of the leading Republican voices shaping the nation’s foreign policy. Though initially a staunch isolationist, as Hendrik Meijer explains in Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in the Middle of the American Century (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Vandenberg eventually became one of the foremost advocates for America’s engagement with the world. As a young man Vandenberg embarked upon a career as a journalist, and soon rose to become the editor of the local newspaper in his hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Vandenberg’s platform made him a force in state politics, and his editorials enjoyed a national readership among Republican leaders. Appointed to the Senate in 1928, Vandenberg soon made a name for himself for his ability to compromise on legislation, and with the electoral decimation of the party in Congress in the 1930s he emerged as one of its most prominent figures. Meijer details the ways in which Vandenberg used his stature to shape American policy, from his role in the drafting of the United Nations Charter to his involvement in the passage of the Marshall Plan and the treaty that established NATO. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

On May 23, 1957, US Army Sergeant Robert Reynolds was acquitted of murdering Chinese officer Liu Ziran in Taiwan. Reynolds did not deny shooting Liu but claimed self-defense and, like all members of US military assistance and advisory groups, was protected under diplomatic immunity. Reynolds’s acquittal sparked a series of riots across Taiwan that became an international crisis for the Eisenhower administration and raised serious questions about the legal status of US military forces positioned around the world. In American Justice in Taiwan: The 1957 Riots and Cold War Foreign Policy (Kentucky University Press, 2017), Stephen G. Craft provides a multi-archival study of the causes and consequences of the Reynolds trial and the ensuing protests. After more than a century of what they perceived as unfair treaties imposed by Western nations, the Taiwanese regarded the special legal status of resident American personnel with extreme distrust. While Eisenhower and his advisers considered Taiwan to be a vital ally against Chinese communism, the US believed that the Taiwanese government had instigated the unrest in order to protest the verdict and demand legal jurisdiction over GIs. 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 Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017), co-editors Matthew Bunn and Scott D. Sagan bring together a series of case studies and lessons learned spanning public and private sectors. Essays include discussions of the American anthrax attacks and the Fort Hood shooting with examinations of organizational issues that allow insider threats to emerge. A study of the gaming and pharmaceutical industries provides alternative frameworks to preventing theft and loss. Insider Threats concludes with a “Worst Practices Guide,” to help high-security organizations dismantle assumptions that lead to security vulnerabilities. Read more about Insider Threats at the Belfer Center. 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 Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling America with the World (Brookings Institution Press, 2017) is an important and in depth study of American interaction with the intricate concept of Sovereignty, from the Founding Fathers to Donald Trump. Stewart Patrick delineates for the reader the fraught concept of sovereignty, showing how it has changed in both meaning and importance for Americans since the foundation of the United States. Going back to John Locke and going forward to John Bolton, Patrick demonstrates that sovereignty is not a static or monolithic concept or idea, but one which is both flexible and enduring. Stewart Patrick is the James H. Binger senior fellow in global governance and director of the International Institutions and Global Governance Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. 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 [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 Transparency Fix: Secrets, Leaks, and Uncontrollable Government Information (Stanford University Press, 2017) dispels the myth that transparency of information will result in a perfect government. Dr. Mark Fenster discusses the motivations of transparency movements and justifications for state secrecy. Through the lens of communications theory, Fenster raises questions about the utility of disclosed information and how it may or may not be deemed valuable by the public. Fenster also examines the state’s ability to keep secrets and what, if any, outcomes result from information disclosure. In conclusion, Fenster asserts transparency, on its own, will not fix the state, but focused efforts on good governance just might. 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

David Morgan-Owen‘s The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880-1914 (Oxford University Press, 2017) tells a complex story clearly and concisely. In the decades prior to the Great War, British preparations for defense of its commercial and imperial interests were warped by fears of an invasion of the home islands. The specter of a French, or after 1905, a German invasion prevented British officials in the Cabinet, the War Office, and the Admiralty from thinking clearly about how to prosecute a European war. Planning to prevent or defeat an enemy landing kept the Royal Navy in a defensive mindset and kept the British Army from thinking clearly about sending an expedition to the continent. Ironically, whether or not the French or Germans themselves had any clear plans to invade Britain went largely undiscussed. As Morgan-Owen makes clear in the interview, even those who consider themselves well-read on the subject of British grand strategy will learn much. 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 the export of the Chicago Police Department’s interrogation experts to Iraq after 2003, to casual references of the US-Indian Wars by US soldiers in Vietnam, Race and America’s Long War (University of California Press, 2017) highlights how the policies and cultural norms of war have become deeply intertwined with, and often dependent on, the architecture of racial difference inside and outside the United States. Blurring the lines between domestic and international affairs, configurations of war represent subtle and direct continuities of US imperialism, colonialism, and structural racism, sometimes across centuries and other times within the same Presidential administration. This book is a collection of essays by Nikhil Pal Singh in which he traces the racialized narratives of security in the United States from the settler colonial wars to acquire Indigenous land, through several centuries of slavery and the period of Reconstruction that followed, through the Civil Rights era and Black Freedom struggles to the Vietnam and Iraq Wars among many other periods and movements, and finally in the context of the more amorphous Wars on Drugs and Terror. Singh draws out one of the core paradoxes of contemporary liberalism, long posited as a remedy to perpetual war, in highlighting that while, “racial exclusion and inclusion have arisen in tandem, so have colorblindness and multiculturalism.” Published in a year of political transition often depicted as a grave departure from the country’s structural and moral past, Singh alternatively frames the current political crisis in terms of five hundred years of continuous inner- and outer-wars, suggesting alternatively that this political transition is a period to confront the long held norms of public life that produced it. Nikhil Pal Singh is Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and History. He is author of Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy. Anna Levy is an independent researcher and policy analyst with interests in critical political economy, historical memory, histories and philosophies of normalization, accountability politics, science and technology, and structural inequality. She is based in Brooklyn, NY. 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 inaugural podcast of Arguing History, historians Michael S. Neiberg and Brian Neumann address the question of Americas decision in 1917 to declare war against Germany. Together they discuss the factors involved in it, such as Germanys wartime provocations and the economic impact the war was having upon the nation. Yet it was more than just a product of the events of the conflict, as it came at a time when the role of the United States in the world was being redefined by its emergence as a major economic and financial power on the international scene. How Americans perceived this also played a role both in the decision to go to war, even though there was no consensus as to how the nation should respond to the consequences of their choice once they made it. Michael S. Neiberg is the Stimson Chair of the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College and the author of Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I (Harvard University Press, 2014). Brian Neumann is an historian with the U.S. Army Center for Military History and the lead editor of the centers series of pamphlets on the war 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 Australia’s Defence Strategy: Evaluating Alternatives for a Contested Asia (Melbourne University Press, 2017), Adam Lockyer, a Senior Lecturer in Security Studies at Macquarie University, explores how to use theory to evaluate defense strategies. He applies his analytical framework to several options facing Australia’s defense strategists. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Phil Gurski‘s Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) is his second recent monograph on terrorism, and another useful resource for practitioners and non-specialists alike. Written in an approachable, grounded style, Western Foreign Fighters is both topical and novel; its comparative analysis of volunteers’ participation in non-sanctioned conflicts both jihadist and secular is especially notable. Gurski’s measured, thoughtful analysis is a credit to the Canadian intelligence community (wherein he spent his entire career) and I look forward to his further publications. 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 Russia’s Securitization of Chechnya: How War Became Acceptable (Routledge, 2017), a study of the transformations of the image of Chechnya in the Russian public sphere, Julie Wilhelmsen performs a post-structuralist revision of the Copenhagen schools concept of securitization a process by which state actors transform subjects into matters of security which allows for the application of extraordinary security measures. Looking at the case of the Russian-Chechen wars, Wilhelmsen suggests that securitization theory may explain the shift in the public perception of the First and Second Chechen wars: from viewing it as a case of local separatism to seeing the Second war as a counter-terrorism operation. Wilhelmsen’s book makes several important contributions to the idea of securitization and the way it applies to the Russia-Chechen wars. She argues that securitization may not be limited to a specific event or change in policy but is rather a broader process, a sum of statements and events, which can gradually change political attitudes. Looking at Russia’s securitization of Chechnya as a complex, multifaceted process allows Wilhelmsen to dispute the idea of Russian politics as authoritarian and focused on a figure of leader. By analyzing the statements of the political elite, journalists, and experts on the war in Chechnya Wilhelmsen demonstrates how the image of Chechnya was gradually constructed as a threatening, terrorist entity foreign and hostile to Russia. An important point Wilhemsen also makes in her book has to do with the possible threat of securitization and phenomena such as the War on Terror present to the human rights: securitization has shown to often lead to legitimizing multiple breaches of human rights as state actors are responding to security threats. Wilhelmsen’s study of social processes, which make wars acceptable will be of interest to scholars of politics, international relations and security studies as well as area studies scholars. Olga Breininger is a PhD candidate in Slavic and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. Her research interests include post-Soviet culture and geopolitics, with a special focus on Islam, nation-building, and energy politics. Olga is the author of the novel There Was No Adderall in the Soviet Union and columnist at Literratura. 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 forty years between 1881 and 1921, the United States Navy went from a small force focused on coastal defense to one of the world’s largest fleets. In Congress Buys a Navy: Politics, Economics, and the Rise of American Naval Power, 1881-1921 (Naval Institute Press, 2016), Paul Pedisich describes the role that the legislative branch played in making this happen. At the start of the period, the Navy possessed a more decentralized organization than today, with the bureau chiefs who ran it more responsive to Congress than the executive branch. The legislators who played critical roles in shaping policy during this period were often driven more by local concerns than any overarching vision of what the Navy should become. Starting in the 1880s, however, successive presidential administrations gradually persuaded Congress to provide more funding to build modern ships. Over time, America’s growing engagement in global affairs led to the expansion of the navy, as the acquisition of an overseas empire brought the United States into competition with European powers, which required a naval force that could defend the increasing number of American interests abroad. 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 9/11 attacks revealed a breakdown in American intelligence and there was a demand for individuals and institutions to find out what went wrong, correct it, and prevent another catastrophe like 9/11 from ever happening again. In Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State (Crown Publishers, 2016) Karen J. Greenberg discusses how the architects of the War on Terror transformed American justice into an arm of the Security State. She tells the story of law and policy after 9/11, introducing the reader to key players and events, showing that time and again, when liberty and security have clashed, justice has been the victim. Expanded intelligence capabilities established after 9/11 (such as torture, indefinite detention even for Americans, offshore prisons created to bypass the protections of the rule of law, mass warrantless surveillance against Americans not suspected of criminal behavior, and overseas assassinations of terrorism suspects, including at least one American) have repeatedly chosen to privilege security over the rule of law. The book addresses how fear guides policy and the dangers of indulging these fears. Karen concludes that “[t]he institutions of justice, caught up in the war on terror, have gone rogue.” 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 Misunderstanding Terrorism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) Marc Sageman provides an important reassessment of the global neojihadi threat to the West. He argues that inaccurate evaluations of the threat and overreactions to a limited threat have transformed U.S. society. By constructing a model to explain the turn to political violence, Sageman shows how a misunderstanding of terrorism in the West has dramatically inflated fear of the actual danger posed by neojihadis. This has led to overreaction of the counterterrorist community, which has resulted in threats to fundamental civil liberties. Sageman makes the distinction that the vast majority of political protestors are not violent and he expands on the conditions that may turn some members of an imagined community from talking about violence to engaging in violence. The book brings realistic numbers into the assessment of the threat facing the West and concludes with straightforward policies to end the threat instead of perpetuating it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

On any mature view, war is horrific. Naturally, there is a broad range of fundamental ethical questions regarding war. According to most moral theories, war is nonetheless sometimes permitted, and perhaps even obligatory. But even an obligatory war may be fought in a morally impermissible way. So it makes sense to distinguish the moral questions concerning the decision to wage war from the questions concerning the conduct of soldiers, armies, and states in the course of fighting a war. There is a large and growing contemporary literature devoted to these questions. Surprisingly absent from these discussions are utilitarian views of the morality of war. In Utilitarianism and the Ethics of War (Routledge, 2016) William H. Shaw of San Jose State University provides a much needed utilitarian analysis of the ethics of war. Shaw proposes a fundamental utilitarian principle regarding the moral rightness of waging war, and then argues on utilitarian grounds for a compelling conception of the morality, duties, and responsibilities that apply to those fighting a war. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

What happens during a presidential transition should a disaster occur? Who is in charge of addressing the 3am phone call, the outgoing or incoming administration? Tevi Troy is the author of Shall We Wake the President?: Two Centuries of Disaster Management from the Oval Office (Lyons Press, 2016). Troy is the CEO of the American Health Policy Institute and former deputy secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services. In Shall We Wake the President?, Troy focuses on the evolving role of the president in dealing with disasters, and examines how our presidents have handled disasters. He also looks at the likelihood of similar disasters befalling modern America, and details how smart policies today can help us avoid future crises, or can best react to them should they occur. In addition, Troy provides information on what government can do to prepare for disasters. 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 Border Contraband: A History of Smuggling Across the Rio Grande (University of Texas Press, 2015) Professor George T. Diaz examines a subject that has received scant attention by historians, but one that is at the heart of contemporary debates over U.S.-Mexico immigration and border enforcement. Focusing on trans-border communities, like Laredo/Nuevo Laredo, Diaz details the interplay between state efforts to regulate cross-border trade and the border people that subverted state and federal laws through acts of petty smuggling and trafficking. Using folk songs (corridos), memoirs, court documents, and newspapers, Diaz uncovers the social history of a transnational contrabandista community that responded to the hardening of the U.S.-Mexico border and the enforcement of trade regulations through the formation of a moral economy. Holding nuanced views of newly erected legal and physical barriers to the mobility of people and consumer goods across the border, contrabandistas established a cultural world of smuggling that regulated trade on its own terms and frustrated state efforts to define and police notions of legality/illegality. Foreshadowing our contemporary moment in which the Rio Grande Valley is associated with criminality, violence, and drug trafficking, Diaz argues, (1) that it was the creation and enforcement of national borders by the U.S. and Mexican states that led to smuggling by establishing a market for contraband goods; and (2) that border people were proactive agents in negotiating and obstructing state efforts to regulate and criminalize activities that were common practice and essential to life along the U.S.-Mexico border. David-James Gonzales (DJ) is a Doctoral Candidate in History at the University of Southern California. He is a historian of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, Civil Rights, and Latino Identity & Politics. DJ’s dissertation examines the influence of Mexican American civic engagement and political activism on the metropolitan development of Orange County, CA from 1930 to 1965. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Matthew Dallek is the author of Defenseless Under the Night: The Roosevelt Years and the Origins of Homeland Security (Oxford University Press, 2016). Dallek is associate professor of political management at The George Washington University. In Defenseless Under the Night, Dallek tells the fascinating history behind America’s first federal office of homeland security created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt appointed New York Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia as director and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as assistant director. While La Guardia focused on preparing the country against foreign attack and militarizing the citizenry, Eleanor Roosevelt believed that the OCD should concentrate instead on establishing a wartime New Deal and a focus on “social defense.” 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 decade and a half of exhausting wars, punishing economic setbacks, and fast-rising rivals has called into question America’s fundamental position and purpose in world politics. Will the US continue to be the only superpower in the international system? Should it continue advancing the world-shaping grand strategy it has followed since the dawn of the Cold War? Or should it “come home” and focus on its internal problems? The recent resurgence of isolationist impulses has made the politics surrounding these questions increasingly bitter. In America Abroad: The United States’ Global Role in the 21st Century (Oxford University Press, 2016), Stephen G. Brooks (Dartmouth College) and William C. Wohlforth (Dartmouth College) take stock of these debates and provide a powerful defense of American globalism. They stress that world politics since end of World War Two has been shaped by two constants: America’s position as the most powerful state, and its strategic choice to be deeply engaged in the world. Ever since, the US has advanced its interests by pursuing three core objectives: reducing threats by managing the security environment in key regions; promoting a liberal economic order to expand global and domestic prosperity; and sustaining the network of global institutions on terms favorable to US interests. While there have been some periodic policy failures, America’s overall record is astounding. But how would America’s interests fare if the United States chose to disengage from the world and reduce its footprint overseas? Their answer is clear: retrenchment would put core US security and economic interests at risk. And because America’s sole superpower status will long endure, the US will not be forced to turn inward. While America should remain globally engaged, it also has to focus primarily on its core interests: reducing great power rivalry and security competition in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East; fostering economic globalization; and supporting a multilateral institutional system that advances US interests. Pursuing objectives beyond this core runs the risk of overextension. A bracing rejoinder to the critics of American globalism, America Abroad is a powerful reminder that a robust American presence is crucial for maintaining world order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

It can be tempting to generalize certain attributes of schools as either being good or bad. Magnet and charter schools are often characterized as being inherently good. They usually offer special programs that ground all of their instruction. Having that choice is appealing to many families, and why not? Someone must have put a lot of thought into creating that special program, convincing stakeholders to open a school, and persuading teachers to build their curriculum around the program often times forgoing a higher salary at another school. With the neighborhood school, it seems like had to be there, and there is not anything special” about it that ties it together, except maybe geography. How is it supposed to compete with International Baccalaureate or STEM or performing arts? These things seem to give school a purpose. But what if the special program is something unexpected, perhaps something with a bit more baggage? How do geography, industry, and what our society expects from students influence the special programs made available to them? Are there any school lotteries you would think twice about before entering your child? In A Curriculum of Fear: Homeland Security in US Public Schools (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), Nicole Nguyen, provides an ethnography of a public high school that responded to calls for reform by adopting homeland security as its primary focus and lens for all other classes. She explores the history of militarization in schools, its impact on students, and the intersection of ethics and personal politics. Nguyen joins New Books in Education for the interview. To share your thoughts on the podcast, you can connect with her via email at [email protected]. Trevor Mattea is an educational consultant and speaker. His areas of expertise include deeper learning, parent involvement, project-based learning, and technology integration. He can be reached by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @tsmattea. 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 evidenced by many of the conversations featured on this podcast, scholarship on the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands composes a significant and influential genre within the field of U.S. Western History and Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies. Geographically rooted in the U.S. Southwest and Mexico, or Greater Mexico, publications in this subfield explore a broad range of themes including: migration and labor, citizenship and race, culture and identity formation, gender and sexuality, politics and social justice, just to name a few. This episode features a conversation with two historians of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: Kelly Lytle Hernandez, author of Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (UC Press, 2010), and John Mckiernan Gonzalez, author of Fevered Measures: Public Health and Race at the Texas-Mexico Border, 1848-1942 (Duke University Press, 2012). My discussion with Kelly and John focuses on their exemplary scholarship to explore how historians conceptualize, investigate, and explain the history of the U.S.-Mexico Border region. In particular, we discuss how the U.S.-Mexico border exists in the minds of policy makers, bureaucrats, low level officials, businessmen and the public at large, as more than a fixed political boundary. Indeed, competing notions of who and what the border is supposed to control has historically shaped ideas about race, public policy, and law enforcement practices throughout the U.S.-Mexico border region. In addition to their existing work, we discuss their forthcoming publications which signal exciting new directions in the field of Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies and U.S. History in general. This conversation was recorded during a session of the 109th annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association held earlier this month in Kona, Hawaii. David-James Gonzales (DJ) is a Doctoral Candidate in History at the University of Southern California. He is a historian of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, Civil Rights, and Latino Identity & Politics. DJs dissertation examines the influence of Mexican American civic engagement and political activism on the metropolitan development of Orange County, CA from 1930 to 1965. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

While the world’s attention is focused on the nuclearization of North Korea and Iran and the nuclear brinkmanship between India and Pakistan, China is believed to have doubled the size of its nuclear arsenal, making it the forgotten nuclear power, as described in Foreign Affairs. Susan Turner Haynes (Professor of Political Science, Lipscomb University) analyzes China’s buildup and its diversification of increasingly mobile, precise, and sophisticated nuclear weapons in her new book Chinese Nuclear Proliferation: How Global Politics is Transforming China’s Weapons Buildup and Modernization (Potomac Books, 2016) . Haynes provides context and clarity on this complex global issue through an analysis of extensive primary source research and lends insight into questions about why China is the only nuclear weapon state recognized under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that continues to pursue qualitative and quantitative advancements to its nuclear force. As the gap between China’s nuclear force and the forces of the nuclear superpowers narrows against the expressed interest of many nuclear and non-nuclear states, Chinese Nuclear Proliferation offers policy prescriptions to curtail China’s nuclear growth and to assuage fears that the “American world order” presents a direct threat to China’s national security. Presenting technical concepts with minimal jargon in a straightforward style, this book will be of use to casual China watchers and military experts 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

Lance deHaven-Smith‘s Conspiracy Theory in America (University of Texas Press, 2014) investigates how the Founders’ hard-nosed realism about the likelihood of elite political misconduct articulated in the Declaration of Independence has been replaced by today’s blanket condemnation of conspiracy beliefs as ludicrous by definition. Lance deHaven-Smith reveals that the term “conspiracy theory” entered the American lexicon of political speech to deflect criticism of the Warren Commission and traces it back to a CIA propaganda campaign to discredit doubters of the commissions report. For this NBN interview, Lance and Jasun discuss the book and the wider implications of what Lance calls State Crimes Against Democracy (SCAD), cultural engineering, and how, when the ruling elite move, they create their own reality. Lance deHaven-Smith is Professor in the Reubin O’D. Askew School of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University. A former President of the Florida Political Science Association, deHaven-Smith is the author of more than a dozen books, including The Battle for Florida, which analyzes the disputed 2000 presidential election. Jasun Horsley is the author of Seen & Not Seen: Confessions of a Movie Autist and several other books on “extra-consensual perceptions.” He has a weekly podcast called The Liminalist: The Podcast Between and a blog. For more info, go to http://auticulture.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

In The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of American Jews (Princeton University Press, 2016), Michael Barnett, University Professor of International Affairs and Political Science at the George Washington University, explores the tension American Jews have felt between cosmopolitanism and tribalism in their approach to global affairs. Barnett explains how American Jews’ desire for inclusiveness and group survival forms a political theology of prophetic Judaism, which has guided the foreign policies of American Jews for over a 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

Ho-fung Hung‘s new book has two main goals: to to outline the historical origins of Chinas capitalist boom and the social and political formations in the 1980s that gave rise to this boom, and to explore the global effects of Chinas capitalist boom and the limit of that boom. In doing so, The China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World (Columbia UP, 2016) offers a timely and provocative account of the emergence and transformations of capitalism in modern China, and of the consequences of its entanglements with the rest of the world for the global political economy. In addition to an in-depth assessment of the Chinese economy, readers will find fascinating discussions of Chinas relations with Africa and Latin America, as well as some thoughtful comparative considerations. Hung’s book traces the rise of capitalism in China from the seventeenth century through today, and uses this historical grounding to point to possible futures. The China boom, Hung maintains, is destined to collapse. 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 Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East (Columbia University Press, 2015), Irene L. Gendzier, Professor Emerita in the Department of Political Science at Boston University, examines new evidence of the role of oil politics in the founding of U.S. policy towards Israel. Gendzier discusses and contextualizes the response of U.S, policy makers to the Holocaust and the plight of European Jewish refugees, and also provides a nuanced account of the role of the American Zionist movement. This book brings a new perspective on the origins of issues that are still very much with us today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Since its coinage in mid-19th century Germany, Realpolitik has proven both elusive and protean. To some, it represents the best approach to meaningful change and political stability in a world buffeted by uncertainty and rapid transformation. To others, it encapsulates an attitude of cynicism and cold calculation, a transparent and self-justifying policy exercised by dominant nations over weaker. Remolded across generations and repurposed to its political and ideological moment, Realpolitik remains a touchstone for discussion about statecraft and diplomacy. It is a freighted concept. The historian John Bew (King’s College London) explores the genesis of Realpolitik in his new book Realpolitik: A History (Oxford University Press, 2015). Besides tracing its longstanding and enduring relevance in political and foreign policy debates, Bew uncovers the context that gave birth to Realpolitik–that of the fervor of radical change in 1848 in Europe. He also explains its application in the conduct of foreign policy from the days of Bismarck onward. Bew is especially adept at illuminating its translation from German into English, one that reveals the uniquely Anglo-American version of realpolitik-small “r” being practiced today–a modern iteration that attempts to reconcile idealism with the pursuit of national interests. Lively, encyclopedic, and utterly original, Realpolitik illuminates the life and times of a term that has shaped and will continue to shape international relations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

When former Mexican president Lazaro Cardenas traveled to Havana in 1959 to celebrate the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, he stood shoulder to shoulder with Fidel Castro in front of a crowd of thousands, providing the early sketches of an image of unquestioned Mexican support for revolutionary Cuba that would persist over the next few decades. Mexico was the only country in the Western Hemisphere that defied the United States and refused to break off relations with Castro’s government, and successive presidential administrations in Mexico cited their own country’s revolutionary legacy in their enduring professions of support. But the story told in Renata Keller‘s fascinating new book, Mexico’s Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2015) paints a rather more complicated story: one in which leaders in all three countries craft official public narratives contradicted by their actions behind-the-scenes, and one in which the optics of foreign policy are undercut by the realities of domestic politics. Using now-restricted Mexican security files, US government documents, and Cuban Foreign Ministry sources, Mexico’s Cold War details how the Cuban Revolution reverberated within Mexico to produce an often contradictory and frequently repressive politics that ultimately resulted in an internal dirty war–one that has parallels in the Mexico of today. Renata Keller is an Assistant Professor of International Affairs at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, where she teaches classes on Latin American politics and US-Latin American relations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Interrogation, Intelligence and Security: Controversial British Techniques (Manchester University Press, 2015) by Samantha Newbery examines issues of history, efficacy, and policy in her thorough examination of British authorities’ use of the “Five Techniques” in Aden, Northern Ireland, and Iraq. Dr. Newbery carefully scrutinizes the historical record, and offers a balanced perspective on controversial interrogation activities throughout the monograph. I look forward to reading her most recent publication, Why Spy?, co-authored with the late, highly decorated former British intelligence officer Brian Stewart. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

David E. Hoffman‘s The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal (Doubleday, 2015) was first brought to my attention in a superb interview conducted with the author at The International Spy Museum. The story immediately captivated my attention and I realized this would be a perfect book to feature on New Books in National Security. I was not disappointed; Mr. Hoffman is as captivating a speaker as he is a writer, capable of weaving together immaculately recreated historical threads. The book is as compelling as it is revealing, delving deep into what Hoffman calls the “sweaty” reality of the intelligence battles fought behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Drawing on extensive interviews, declassified CIA cables, and personal experience walking the very streets of Moscow where his subjects lived and died, Hoffman offers an impressive standard for future storytelling on the realities of spycraft. The Billion Dollar Spy is among the most fascinating and thrilling reads I have enjoyed in recent memory, and I highly recommend it to anyone at all interested in the Cold War or espionage writ large. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Peter A. Shulman‘s new book is a fascinating history of the emergence of a connection between energy (in the form of coal), national interests, and security in nineteenth century America. Coal and Empire: The Birth of Energy Security in Industrial America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015) focuses on three groups who helped shape America’s relationship between energy and security: naval administrators and officers, politicians and policy makers, and scientists and engineers. In clear and persuasive prose, the book advances three main arguments that collectively reframe the way we understand the historiography of energy. First, Americans didn’t begin thinking about energy in terms of security around oil in the early twentieth century, but instead around coal in the nineteenth. Second, the security need for distant coaling stations in the late nineteenth century didn’t catalyze the emergence of an American island empire around 1898. Instead, it was the other way around: the establishment of an American island empire created new demands for coal and coaling stations. Third, technological change was integral to American foreign relations. Shulman’s book shows all of these and much more, in a story that moves from steam power and the postal system, to the development of notions of an economy of time and space, to Commodore Perry, to President Lincoln’s interest in setting up a colony of free blacks to the calculation of great circle routes, to the study of logistics in early twentieth century classrooms, to the Teapot Dome scandal, and beyond. The conclusion of the book discusses some of the most important ways that the arguments of the book are still relevant today, and pays special attention to the ideal of energy independence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security