Easy answers to the numerous problems posed by the proliferation of nuclear weapons will not be found in Paul Bracken’s The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics. In fact, Bracken has very little to say about what are often considered to be the perennial nuclear issues of the post-Cold War world….
Tag: Israel
Response to Essay 20 on Reconceptualizing Deterrence: Nudging toward Rationality in Middle Eastern Rivalries
I want to thank H-Diplo for publishing this response, and James A. Russell for taking the time to read and review my book. I also want to thank Robert Jervis for the additional comments on Russell’s review. Because the review did not fully address the book’s main arguments and findings, thereby missing the main points…
Review Essay 20 on Reconceptualizing Deterrence: Nudging toward Rationality in Middle Eastern Rivalries
In 1959 Bernard Brodie’s book Strategy in the Missile Age[1] augured in an interesting but relatively short-lived debate over the impact of nuclear weapons on the prospect of war between the United States and the Soviet Union. It appeared amidst a spasm of scholarship on nuclear strategy, deterrence, escalation ladders, limited war and coercive bargaining…
Roundtable 6-5 on The Rise & Decline of the American ‘Empire’: Power and its Limits in Comparative Perspective
Something about the decline of great powers provokes great debates, and this roundtable is no exception. In his latest work, Geir Lundestad deploys the formidable learning he has acquired in a distinguished and prolific career as a diplomatic historian to dissect the current debate on American decline. He considers contemporary concerns in a broad historical…
Article Review 23 on “Israel’s War in Gaza: A Paradigm of Effective Military Learning and Adaptation.” International Security 37:2 (Fall 2012), and on “Just War Moral Philosophy and the 2008-09 Israeli Campaign in Gaza.”
Benjamin Lambeth and Jerome Slater share a common interest in the military meaning of Arab-Israeli confrontations of the last decade, but they come at the battles very differently. Whereas Lambeth is interested in analyzing the Israel Defense Forces’ effectiveness and learning curve, Slater is focused upon the morality of Israel’s actions, calling Operation Cast Lead…
Roundtable 4-5 on Good Fences, Bad Neighbors: Border Fixity and International Conflict
Boaz Atzili’s Good Fences, Bad Neighbors: Border Fixity and International Conflict explores the impact of the norm of border fixity that has arisen in world politics since 1945. He questions the view that a norm of border fixity reliably promotes peace; instead, he argues, the effect of the norm depends on conditions, and under today’s…
Roundtable 4-2 on A High Price: The Triumphs and Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism
Daniel Byman’s A High Price straddles two literatures: that on Israeli military and security history, and that on the burgeoning field of counterterrorism studies. On the whole, one should say, it draws on the former to inform the latter, which explains some of the reviewers’ reaction to it. It is of interest that counterinsurgency, as…
Review Essay 10 on Cutting a Fuse, not the Fuse!
Robert Pape and James Feldman in Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It build on Pape’s earlier work, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.[1] This volume is designed to further develop the earlier argument in Dying to Win that the occurrence of suicide terrorism is…
Roundtable 3-6 on “The CIA and U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1947: Reforms, Reflections and Reappraisals”
The special issue of Intelligence and National Security, Volume 26, April-June 2011 continues the process of bringing intelligence in from the cold. It is to be hoped that the reviews here contribute to the parallel process of familiarizing diplomatic historians with what is known about intelligence and bringing in two fields closer together. We are…
Roundtable 2-12 on “Democracy and Victory”
In the following exchange Dan Reiter defends his argument that democratic states win most of the wars that they fight primarily because they choose which wars to engage in more carefully than authoritarian states do.[1] This is called the “selection effects” explanation because democracies are selecting which wars to fight and which to avoid. Here,…
