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Title: Strategy in the Contemporary World: Introduction to Strategic Studies by John Baylis, James Wirtz, Eliot Cohen, Colin Gray ISBN: 0-19-878273-X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $28.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)
Rating: 4
Summary: Useful introduction to strategic studies
Comment: This introductory textbook of strategic studies covers four main themes: the enduring issues of strategy, the evolution of joint warfare, twentieth-century theories, and contemporary issues of grand strategy. The book is written from the perspective of 'Western security interests', but even so, studying strategy helps us to think clearly about the ways in which states and others use organised force for political ends.
The writers all refute technological determinism: new weapons - artillery in World War One, tanks in World War Two, guided missiles in the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, precision bombing and superior ground force technology in the Gulf War - were none of them unbeatable. They show that the basic principles of conducting land warfare have hardly changed in the last hundred years. Armies need to combine their arms, defend in depth, keep large reserves, use cover and concealment, and integrate movement and suppressive fire. In particular, Stephen Biddle shows that, contrary to many claims, the USAF air war in the Gulf did not destroy all the Iraqi armour. Possibly 4,100 armoured vehicles later fought the US ground forces, but they did not fight according to the basic principles, so they were beaten.
However, the editors err in dividing what they call '20th-century theories' - deterrence, arms control, terrorism and 'irregular warfare' (national liberation struggles) - from the 'contemporary issues' of technology, weapons of mass destruction, and humanitarian intervention. These are all still live issues. Further, the editors could have presented them in the livelier form of debates.
As with any collection of pieces by many hands, the quality is uneven, but generally the better essays are more grounded in the realities of 20th-century military history. The worse ones try to discuss, for instance, the causes of war in terms of biology or psychology. As a rule, strikingly individual expressions of one person's views, like Colin Gray's Modern Strategy, or Bernard Brodie's War and Politics, provoke more thought than compilation textbooks
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Title: Modern Strategy by Colin S. Gray ISBN: 0198782519 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $32.95 |
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Title: Strategy by Basil Henry Liddell Hart ISBN: 0452010713 Publisher: Plume Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 1991 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: On War (Classics S.) by Karl Von Clausewitz ISBN: 0140444270 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1982 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050 by MacGregor Knox, Williamson Murray ISBN: 052180079X Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 27 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The Penguin Dictionary of International Relations (Penguin Reference) by Graham Evans, Jeffrey Newnham ISBN: 0140513973 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 1999 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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