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{"title":"The Defense Identity Crisis: It’s a Hybrid World","authors":"N. Freier","doi":"10.21236/ada510424","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21236/ada510424","url":null,"abstract":"If at the end of the day, we drop the hybrid term and simply gain a better understanding of the large gray space between our idealized bins and pristine western categorizations, we will have made progress. --Frank Hoffman (1) The defense enterprise is abuzz with lively debates on \"hybrid threats\" and \"hybrid war.\" Yet, newly emergent defense trends do not automatically merit exquisite definitions, new doctrine, or new operating concepts. As Frank Hoffman implies, such a caveat might be true of \"hybrid warfare.\" Hybrid war may not yet be reducible to a pristine, doctrine-ready definition. Continued efforts by Hoffman and others to describe it, however, remain invaluable. (2) This trend is admittedly unsatisfying to concept developers and doctrine writers. By nature, they want to neatly categorize and define every aspect of military affairs. Yet, in this instance, patience is a virtue. For its part, too, the defense bureaucracy cannot rush to artificially dismiss a wider universe of defense-relevant, \"wicked\" challenges, in favor of a more limited and \"tame\" set of not-so-new, defense-specific ones. (3) Unfortunately, the hybrid debate is moving in this direction. Too many analysts gravitate toward solving only narrow tactical-to-operational hybrid military problems. In that context, hybrid threats are nettlesome \"high-low\" combinations of capabilities and methods--i.e., violent \"irregular\" forces that possess advanced military capabilities or \"regulars\" who skillfully combine conventional and unconventional warfare. A similar \"reduction\" occurred with irregular warfare (IW) following the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review. As a consequence, the Department of Defense (DOD) quickly took refuge in IW's \"military science\"--direct-action counterterrorism, application of the military aspects of counterinsurgency, and security force assistance--without fully recognizing that DOD would, under many circumstances, be responsible for much of IW's \"social science\" as well. Following a similar course regarding hybrid challenges is a grave mistake. Any rush to define DOD's \"hybrid\" challenge too precisely is a diversion for a Defense Department facing more fundamental issues. It is unclear whether hybrid military threats will ever be singular points of emphasis for doctrine, concepts, or material solutions. For many strategists, the defense challenges described as hybrid are actually examples of cunning leadership in opposition to US or western military superiority. (4) What is clear, however, upon even a cursory examination of current and future operating environments, is that the word hybrid itself aptly describes the majority of DOD's contemporary missions and responsibilities. In short, war alone is not the only thing that is hybrid; an array of broader defense issues is hybrid as well. The defense portfolio is irrevocably diverse. It should be permanently acknowledged as such in defense management practices. DOD in totality--its subordinate service department","PeriodicalId":35242,"journal":{"name":"Parameters","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67988560","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Torture: When the Unthinkable Is Morally Permissible","authors":"M. Cook","doi":"10.5860/choice.45-2875","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.45-2875","url":null,"abstract":"Torture: When the Unthinkable Is Morally Permissible. By Mirko Bagaric and Julie Clarke. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007. 114 pages. $53.50 ($17.95 paper). This slim volume is essentially an extended commentary that builds on a controversial op-ed piece the authors published in the Australian newspapers The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald in May 2005. In that piece, the authors, both professors of law in Australia, argued \"the belief that torture is always wrong is ... misguided....It is this type of absolutist and shortsighted rhetoric that lies at the core of many distorted moral judgments....\" As the tone and placement of the original article would indicate, this book is more a work of strident advocacy than of cool and dispassionate analysis, although to be sure, it touches on all the relevant legal and philosophical issues that bear on the question. The authors begin by acknowledging the absolute legal prohibition on torture in international law and arguing that this restriction is precisely what should be changed. They argue for carving out a narrow exception that would allow a utilitarian calculus to permit torture in cases where lives are at risk, the potential harm of an attack is immediate, there are no other possible means of obtaining information within the time available, the person to be tortured has committed a significant level of wrongdoing, and there is high likelihood that he or she does possess relevant information that, if obtained, will prevent the loss of life. Bagaric and Clarke note that, despite the prohibitions on torture, it in fact is widely practiced around the world, even by nations that would most stridently condemn it publicly. In light of that reality, the authors argue, it would be better if torture were legalized (in the very narrow range of cases they have in mind). Further, having legalized it, they posit there should be a prior-review legal mechanism for issuing a \"torture warrant\" as a much preferable alternative to retrospective decisions regarding torture already committed. The short chapters that follow review the main counterarguments to the legalization proposal. The first is the \"slippery slope\" objection--allowing practice A, which might be morally acceptable, will eventually lead because of either logic or social acceptance to allowing practice B, which is clearly morally unacceptable. The consequence of a slippery slope argument is that one ought not, therefore, to allow A in the first place. Bagaric and Clarke reject this objection on the grounds that it is inherently speculative. The second objection is that acceptance of torture will lead to a general dehumanization of the society that practices it. This critique the authors dismiss on the grounds that it focuses too narrowly on one relationship---between torturer and tortured--to the neglect of the larger framework of affected parties that include the innocents to be saved as a result of information extracted through the use ","PeriodicalId":35242,"journal":{"name":"Parameters","volume":"38 1","pages":"135"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71118648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Tet Offensive: A Concise History","authors":"Stuart A. Herrington","doi":"10.5860/choice.45-2192","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.45-2192","url":null,"abstract":"The Tet Offensive: A Concise History. By James H. Willbanks. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 272 pages. $29.50. James Willbanks, a retired Army officer and military historian, is Director of the Department of Military History at the US Army Command and General Staff College and the author of two previous books on the Vietnam War, one being his timely 2004 volume, Abandoning Vietnam. Detailing persuasive arguments for why Vietnamization failed, Abandoning Vietnam was published at a time in the Iraq conflict when it appeared Washington was hurtling toward another Vietnam-like disaster by contemplating the implementation of a rapid withdrawal. Advocates of this strategy advised that the way out of America's dilemma in Iraq was to \"train and withdraw,\" the sooner, the better. This advice to hastily \"Iraqify\" the war and pull out, journalist Bob Woodward recently contended, came from Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen and the commander in Iraq at the time, General George Casey, in the wake of growing frustrations with and lack of public support for the apparently never-ending maelstrom of violence in faction-tom Iraq. Professor Willbanks's account of the Vietnamization debacle indirectly raised the specter of a repeat performance by Washington related to Iraq. Thanks to the \"Surge\" and a single-minded President who refused to accept less than victory, this strategy was averted. With The Tet Offensive, Willbanks has once again produced a volume that, while focusing on wartime events occurring some 40 years ago, has particular relevance. The author's recounting of the offensive and associated issues is brief (122 pages of text), but well-documented (130 pages of appendices, including source notes, a useful Chronology, Glossary, 33 pages of reproduced documents, Bibliography, and Index). For anyone interested in probing and learning from the Tet Offensive but overwhelmed with the plethora of sources, Willbanks's volume is certainly the most up-to-date and helpful starting point known to this reviewer. Willbanks organizes his work into two parts. Part I, \"Historical Overview,\" is a vivid, concise, and eminently readable recounting of the attacks that comprised the Tet Offensive, including battles in Saigon, Khe Sanh, and Hue, as well as the nationwide onslaughts by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong units. Part II is an engaging examination of the \"Issues and Interpretations\" spawned by the offensive and contains well-written and stimulating discussions of topics such as Hanoi's motivations and objectives in launching the attacks, analysis of the offensive as an intelligence failure, the controversy regarding mass executions in Hue, Hanoi's rationale for besieging Khe Sanh (as a diversion or a serious attempt to achieve another Dien Bien Phu?), and the role of the media during and following Hanoi's election-year gambit. …","PeriodicalId":35242,"journal":{"name":"Parameters","volume":"38 1","pages":"131"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71118941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Securing Japan: Tokyo's Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia","authors":"R. Halloran","doi":"10.5860/choice.45-4040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.45-4040","url":null,"abstract":"Securing Japan: Tokyo's Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia. By Richard J. Samuels. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007. 277 pages. $49.95 ($19.95 paper). The author, a scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has specialized in Japanese affairs for many years, identifies his thesis in the opening line: \"Many Japanese analysts do not believe Japan now has a coherent grand strategy, and more than a few insist that it has never had one.\" This reviewer agrees with that judgment. Professor Samuels, however, strives mightily over the next 210 pages to show that Japan, indeed, has had a grand strategy since the Meiji Restoration of 1868 when it left its feudal age and leapt into the modern era. \"Japanese security policy,\" Samuels asserts, \"has traveled a consistent path since the nineteenth century.\" In that time, Japan entered the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 to ally itself with Britain, then a powerful empire whose navy ruled the waves. In 1940, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact to join the Axis of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, which Samuels fails to mention. After that pact ended in utter defeat, Japan signed a mutual security treaty with the United States. Samuels sees all those alliances and relationships as crafting a grand strategy. They might be better labeled, in the kindest interpretation, as a series of pragmatic and expedient maneuvers to align Japan with the prevailing power of the time. Japan, a middle-sized, resource-poor island nation, is stuck in a rough neighborhood and needs outside friends to survive, not to mention prosper. The author makes much of the \"Yoshida Doctrine,\" named for the late Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, the towering figure who led Japan out of the valley of death following World War II. The Japanese, however, do not favor doctrines, preferring instead vague guidelines that permit freedom of action when circumstances change. Yoshida, ever the practical politician, is not known to have ever used the term. Nor did his \"deshi\" or followers such as Prime Ministers Hayato Ikeda, Eisaku Sato, Kakuei Tanaka, and on through Kiichi Miyazawa, a lineage lasting until 1993. Samuels says the first Japanese to cite the Yoshida Doctrine was Masataka Kosaka, who in 1963 was credited with first use of the term. It is interesting that the author only identifies him as an adviser of Yoshida's. In any event, most scholars agree that the concept of the Yoshida Doctrine rests on two principles: (1) Rely on America to ensure Japan's security while Japan does the minimum necessary to defend itself, and (2) Place maximum effort on economic development, largely through export of goods to pay for much-needed imports. Japan has put those two principles of security policy into practice for the last half century. The nation spends only one percent of its gross national product on defense, a limit endorsed by Japanese taxpayers. Its armed forces are about the 25th largest in the world and are circumscribed wi","PeriodicalId":35242,"journal":{"name":"Parameters","volume":"38 1","pages":"153"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71119166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Beating Goliath: Why Insurgencies Win","authors":"M. W. Markel","doi":"10.1163/2468-1733_shafr_sim170230054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2468-1733_shafr_sim170230054","url":null,"abstract":"Beating Goliath: Why Insurgencies Win. By Jeffrey Record. Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2007.192 pages. $24.95. Beating Goliath attempts to answer an interesting and important question: Is there some dynamic at work that explains why insurgents are capable of defeating larger, stronger powers? As a historian, this reviewer is inclined to deny that an infinitely complex human endeavor like warfare can be reduced to a simple model, preferring instead to explain the results of particular conflicts in terms of contingent circumstances. That inclination may be misplaced. Recently, insurgents have prevailed over major powers often enough to make one suspect the existence of some underlying dynamic. Similar outcomes in such disparate circumstances seem unlikely to be the result of sheer coincidence. The mantra that \"every war is different\" is singularly unhelpful to statesmen who cannot hope to master the social intricacies of every possible arena of conflict, or to the military bureaucracy which develops forces for those wars. Jeffrey Record does us all a service by raising the question in such a concise and readable form. The author does a good job of assessing previous attempts to articulate that dynamic. Early on, he makes the point that most insurgencies fail, something we should all remember. The major schools of thought on why insurgencies succeed or fail include asymmetry of commitment (Andrew Mack), strategic interaction (Ivan Arreguin-Toft), and democracies' inability to employ sufficient brutality in an effort to win (Gil Merom). There are significant theoretical and empirical shortcomings with each theory, which Record ably and dispassionately identifies. The biggest shortcoming, in Record's view, is their failure to accord the factor of external support its due weight. As the author puts it, \"There are few if any examples of colonial or post-colonial insurgencies that prevailed without foreign help.\" He illustrates the importance of such help with brief but pithy analyses of prominent insurgent victories, including the American Revolution, the Spanish guerrillas against Napoleon, the Chinese Civil War, France and America in Indochina, and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. In each of these cases, external support sustained the insurgency and sometimes, as the French, Spanish, and Dutch war against Britain during the American Revolution, subsumed it. Record reminds us that external help can be indirect, often in the form of exerting military pressure on the stronger power in other theaters. These analyses amply support Record's argument that the role of external assistance has to be considered along with Arreguin-Toft's theory of strategic interaction and Mack's thesis of disparity of interests. Unfortunately for Record, his analysis of the current war in Iraq is a \"snapshot in time\" and no longer up to date. Beating Goliath was published in the spring of 2007, when conventional wisdom held that the situation there was an irredeemable mess. One ","PeriodicalId":35242,"journal":{"name":"Parameters","volume":"38 1","pages":"155"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64420883","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Moral Equality of Combatants","authors":"C. Ceulemans","doi":"10.4324/9781315613246-28","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315613246-28","url":null,"abstract":"According to the Just War tradition a war can only be just if two sets of principles are satisfied. (1) First there is the jus ad bellum. These principles tell us when it is just to start a war. There has to be a good reason or a just cause in order for a war to be morally permissible (self-defense, defense of others, putting a stop to human rights violations). The decision to go to war has to be taken by a legitimate authority. Those who wage war need to be motivated by good intentions (desire to promote a more stable peace). War should not only be a last resort (necessity), it must also offer a reasonable chance of success. Moreover, the good the warring party hopes to obtain should outweigh the evil caused by the war (proportionality). The second set of principles, the jus in bello or the right in the war, focuses on the moral constraints that need to be observed during hostilities. Noncombatants must never be the intentional target of military actions (discrimination), and the military utility of a particular act of war has to outweigh the damage it will cause. It is clear that combatants, whatever side they are on, have a moral and legal obligation to respect the in hello principles. This is what ethicists call their in bello responsibility. Can combatants be held responsible for participating in an unjust war? Do they, aside from their in hello responsibility, have an ad bellum responsibility? If so, this would mean that combatants have a duty to judge the justice of the war and refuse to participate in an immoral conflict. Those combatants who would not take such an ad bellum responsibility seriously, and simply follow orders, would risk being considered unjust combatants. Anyone who studies the moral and legal reality of warfare will quickly notice that this presumption of military ad bellum responsibility is firmly rejected. (2) At the core of the Just War tradition is the fundamental doctrine of the moral equality of combatants. Basically this doctrine says that the realm of responsibility of combatants on all sides is equally limited to that of the jus in bello. Combatants cannot be held responsible for the just or unjust nature of the war in which they participate. The ad bellum responsibility belongs solely to the political decisionmakers. Despite its basic role in the normative appreciation of war, the doctrine of moral equality of combatants is not beyond dispute. Even Michael Walzer, who is a strong defender of a strict separation between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, admits that this moral dualism can be somewhat puzzling. (3) It is, after all, far from obvious that the moral status of a combatant in a defensive war is the same as that of a combatant participating in a war of aggression. The former is clearly engaged in a morally legitimate activity (self-defense), whereas the latter is contributing to what most would term a criminal act. So, how can these two be moral equals? Should we not add an ad bellum responsibility for c","PeriodicalId":35242,"journal":{"name":"Parameters","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70653165","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Morality of War","authors":"Brian Orend","doi":"10.5860/choice.44-2057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.44-2057","url":null,"abstract":"HE Treaty of Paris and the President's Naval program have focused the Nation's thought on peace, or, perhaps to be more precise, on the avoidance of war. Yet, because of the diametrically opposed methods of approach used in them, and because of the exaggerated claims which are sure to be set forth by the proponents and antagonists of these measures, the exact status of war, from a moral viewpoint, may be greatly clouded. Hence in this paper we purpose to examine the question of war and to determine the conditions justifying or condemning this instrument of nations. \"War is a contention carried on by force of arms between sovereign states, or communities having in this regard the right of states.\" That war is not instrinsically wrong is evident both from the Divine Positive Law and from the Natural Law. For John the Baptist, in his instruction to the soldiers, says nothing about laying down their arms; which certainly he would have said if war were never justifiable before God. Furthermore, the Natural Law confers on nations the moral powers necessary to the purpose of the nation; viz., to obtain its corporate rights and the rights of its citizens. To forbid it the use of coercion in maintaining intact and inviolable these rights would be to label the end and duties of the nation meaningless, since each nation, being supreme in its temporal affairs, is without a superior to which it can appeal. \"The right of self-defense is part of the law of our nature·, and it is the indispensable duty of civil society to protect its members in the enjoyment of their rights, both of person and property.\"8 Nations may surrender a part of this right by pacts and treaties, but it is only with the consent of the individual nations that international courts may exercise this right, as in the nation alone does the Natural Law implant this right. But of more practical importance than the fact that war is.","PeriodicalId":35242,"journal":{"name":"Parameters","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71113939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Six Floors of Detainee Operations in the Post-9/11 World","authors":"T. Ayres","doi":"10.21236/ada432745","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21236/ada432745","url":null,"abstract":"\"All you need to know is that there was a before 9/11 and an after 9/11. After 9/11 the gloves came off.\" --Corer Black, CIA (1) Before 9/11, many nations battled terrorists and mufti-clad insurgents in places like Ireland, Israel, and Algeria and subsequently detained these nontraditional combatants. These nations deliberated the applicability and relevance of the Geneva Conventions (2) and frequently decided to conduct their detainee and interrogation operations by other standards. (3) The United States had faced similarly ambiguous combatants in past conflicts, choosing \"to extend basic prisoner of war protections to such persons ... based upon strong policy considerations, and ... not necessarily based on any conclusion that the United States was obligated to do so as a matter of law.\" (4) After 9/11, however, the United States ceased viewing its efforts against terrorism as a police enforcement action and embarked upon a Global War on Terrorism. (5) The Bush Administration asserted this was \"a new kind of war\" that justified reconsidering the manner in which the Laws of War would be interpreted and applied. (6) According to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, \"The reality is, the set of facts that exist today with al Qaeda and the Taliban were not necessarily the set of facts that were considered when the Geneva Conventions were fashioned.\" (7) Certain provisions of the Geneva Conventions were even considered \"quaint.\" (8) The United States has, by its post-9/11 policies and actions, demonstrated that the standards for conducting detainee operations, and perhaps the Geneva Conventions themselves, are ripe for reform. The war on terror is in its fourth year, yet there has been little academic or political agreement on what detention and interrogation techniques are ethically advisable and legally allowed. US detainee operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo have been labeled a \"gray zone\" by one analyst. (9) US classification of detainees in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay as \"unlawful combatants\" has aroused voluminous and vociferous academic debate, (10) complicated because there are no internationally accepted, clearly delineated detention and interrogation standards for treating \"unlawful combatants.\" Even in Iraq, where the Administration conceded the Geneva Conventions applied, the overall post-9/11 paradigm shift prompted the Army's command to conduct a deliberative analysis of acceptable interrogation and detention techniques. (11) The Department of Defense is currently undergoing a more comprehensive formal initiative, with the Army acting as the lead agent. (12) To describe the complexity of conducting modern military operations in an urban environment, US Marine Corps General Charles C. Krulak used the metaphor of a \"three-block war,\" (13) an environment wherein soldiers or marines simultaneously fight a high-intensity conflict in one block, suppress a simmering insurgency in another block, and facilitate humanitarian aid in a","PeriodicalId":35242,"journal":{"name":"Parameters","volume":"35 1","pages":"33"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67988662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The News Media and the \"Clash of Civilizations\"","authors":"Philip M. Seib","doi":"10.1057/9781403980335_10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403980335_10","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35242,"journal":{"name":"Parameters","volume":"34 1","pages":"217-234"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"58223929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France in 1870-1871","authors":"E. Kisling","doi":"10.5860/choice.41-4894","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.41-4894","url":null,"abstract":"The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France in 1870-1871. By Geoffrey Wawro. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 327 pages. $35.00. Reviewed by Dr. Eugenia C. Kiesling, Professor of History, US Military Academy. For 40 years, no historian has dared to risk comparison with Michael Howard's Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870-1871 by publishing an English-language history of the Franco-Prussian War. Professor Geoffrey Wawro is not only brave but has succeeded in producing, if not a replacement for Howard, a worthy companion volume. Even more than Howard's book, this is straightforward military history, a study of armies and battles with little discussion of national policy, and with no concern for the economic or other domestic aspects of the war. As such, it is a useful work. The Franco-Prussian War was a military proving ground in an age full of uncertainties. French long-service professionals fought against Prussian conscripts, Chassepot rifles and Mitrailleuse machine guns against the Dreyse needle gun, Krupp's new steel breech-loading six-pounder gun against the French army's four-pounder bronze muzzle-loaders, an efficient general staff against a poor one. No one knew how these various contests would turn out, and Wawro offers an enthralling narrative of how battles were won and lost. As such, it ought to be of great interest to the professional soldier as well as the military historian. In introducing the two armies, Wawro touches only briefly on the fairly well-understood subject of contemporary technological developments and their impact on military tactics. That decision reflects a reasonable economy of force, especially as the necessary points are clearly illustrated in the battle narratives. More problematic is the absence of discussion of the technology's effects at the operational and strategic levels of war. For example, because Wawro says little about railroads, readers unfamiliar with the subject may fail to recognize the technological background to General Helmut von Moltke's prediction for battles of encirclement. One advantage of being the second person to write on a given war is there is no historiography to bother about. Wawro's book is all the more readable for the absence of arguments with other historians. On the other hand, a historiographical discussion would have had the salutary effect of forcing Wawro to take more rigorous positions on certain points of controversy. In particular, Wawro does not situate himself vis-a-vis the triumphalist school of German military history, which sees the Prussian army of 1870 as a model of inexorable efficiency, the precursor of the Wehrmacht of the early years of World War II. If one believes this theory, Germans rolled over France in 1870 and 1940 (and almost in 1914) because their army was overwhelmingly superior in quality of soldiers, leadership, doctrine, organization, and use of technology. This school emphasizes the German General Staff sy","PeriodicalId":35242,"journal":{"name":"Parameters","volume":"34 1","pages":"151"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2004-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71099892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}