Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel occurred over a year ago, but it will be a long time before we can list all the consequences. What we know already is devastating. Hamas killed about 1,200 Israelis and took 251 hostages back to Gaza. Israel’s response was a ferocious war in Gaza, a combined air and ground…
Tag: decisionmaking
H-Diplo | RJISSF Review Essay 113: Friend on Freedman, Command
It is hard to know where to start in reviewing a book like Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine, Sir Lawrence Freedman’s most recent capacious history of a military phenomenon. In previous work, Freedman has tackled strategy and nuclear deterrence—pretty much all of both.[1] Here, he sets out to examine “the…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-21 on Whitlark, All Options on the Table
Rachel Whitlark’s All Options on the Table: Leaders, Preventive War, and Nuclear Proliferation brings together two critical areas of international relations research: nuclear politics and the role of individual leaders. After the Cold War ended, many historians and political scientists turned their attention away from nuclear weapons—and even, for a few years, from international security more…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-14 on Edwards, Prisoner of their Premises
George C. Edwards’s Prisoners of their Premises: How Unexamined Assumptions Lead to War and Other Policy Debacles tackles a central question in the study of foreign policy making: how do we explain decisions that have observably catastrophic outcomes? Edwards’s argument is that a vital step in the making process–problem identification–provides significant purchase on this question….