Authoritative and concise, Warfare in the Western World concentrates on selected campaigns and battles, showing how political and military leaders in the West have used armies to wage war effectively over the last four centuries. The text moves through the centuries, discussing how operational developments and technological improvements eventually led to the concept of total war, first approached in the American Civil War and culminating in the twentieth century's two world wars.

Authoritative and concise, Warfare in the Western World concentrates on selected campaigns and battles, showing how political and military leaders in the West have used armies to wage war effectively over the last four centuries. The text moves through the centuries, discussing how operational developments and technological improvements eventually led to the concept of total war, first approached in the American Civil War and culminating in the twentieth century's two world wars.

The magnum opus of one of America's most respected military historians, The Art of War in the Western World has earned its place as the standard work on how the three major operational components of war--tactics, logistics, and strategy--have evolved and changed over time. This monumental work encompasses 2,500 years of military history, from infantry combat in ancient Greece through the dissolution of the Roman Empire to the Thirty Years' War and from the Napoleonic campaigns through World War II, which Jones sees as the culmination of modern warfare, to the Israeli-Egyptian War of 1973.

Winner of the Andrew F. Krepinevich Writing Award A 2022 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title Selected for the Irregular Warfare Initiative’s Inaugural Reading List (2022) In today’s complex international environment, how do the United States, China, and Russia manage the return of great power competition as well as the persistent threat of violent non-state actors? This book explores "shaping": the use of military power to construct a more favorable environment by influencing the characteristics of other militaries, altering the relationships between them, or managing the behavior of allies. As opposed to traditional strategies of warfighting or coercion, shaping relies less on threats, demonstrations, and uses of violence and more on attraction, persuasion, and legitimacy. Because shaping relies more on soft power than on hard power, this approach contradicts the conventional wisdom of the purpose militaries serve. Kyle J. Wolfley explores the emergence of shaping in classical strategy and its increased frequency following the end of the Cold War when threats and allies became more ambiguous. He illustrates the four logics of shaping—attraction, socialization, delegation, and assurance—through five case studies of recent major military exercise programs led by the United States, China, India, the United Kingdom, and Russia. Moreover, the author reveals through sentiment analysis and statistics of over one thousand multinational exercises from 1980 to 2016 how major powers reacted to a complex international environment by expanding the number and scope of shaping exercises. Illuminating an understudied but surprisingly common tool of military statecraft, this book offers a fresh understanding of military power in today's competitive international system.

The Ira Gruber Papers from 1953 - 2008 include correspondence of faculty meetings, recommendations on faculty and graduate students, personal letters, course development, and professional writings. Papers on the development and revisions of his three major writings, "The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution", "Warfare in Western World: Military Operations Since 1871", and "John Peebles' American War: The Diary of a Scottish Grenadier". Also contained in this collection are Ira Gruber's papers on the courses he developed and taught including notes and exams. The papers and correspondence on his service for development of course distribution credit, faculty handbook, and professional vitae. Personal appointment calendars and papers dealing with his involvement in the Champions Golf Club are also contained within collection.

Many different social scientists have been challenged by the origins of wars, their immediate causes and the mechanisms leading to the breakdown of peaceful relations. Many have speculated whether conflicts were avoidable and whether alternative policies might have prevented conflict. The Ashgate Research Companion to War provides contributions from a number of theorists and historians with a focus on long term, systemic conflicts. The problèmatique is introduced by the Editors highlighting the need for interdisciplinary approaches to the study of war as a global phenomenon. The following 29 essays provide a comprehensive study guide in four sections: Part I explicates differing theories as to the origins of war under the general concept of 'polemology'. Part II analyzes significant conflicts from the Peloponnesian wars to World War II. Part III examines the ramifications of Cold War and post-Cold War conflict. Part IV looks at long cycles of systemic conflict, and speculates, in part, whether another global war is theoretically possible, and if so, whether it can be averted. This comprehensive volume brings us a much needed analysis of wars throughout the ages, their origins, their consequences, and their relationship to the present. A valuable understanding that is ideal for social scientists from a variety of backgrounds.

The existence of the Schlieffen plan has been one of the basic assumptions of twentieth-century military history. It was the perfect example of the evils of German militarism: aggressive, mechanical, disdainful of politics and of public morality. The Great War began in August 1914 allegedly because the Schlieffen plan forced the German government to transform a Balkan quarrel into a World War by attacking France. And, in the end, the Schlieffen plan failed at the battle of the Marne. Yet it has always been recognized that the Schlieffen plan included inconsistencies which have never been satisfactorily explained. On the basis of newly discovered documents from German archives, Terence Zuber presents a radically different picture of German war planning between 1871 and 1914, and concludes that, in fact, there never really was a `Schlieffen plan'.

"Among the crucial problems that confront mankind today are those associated with a degraded environment. This book examines the extent to which warfare and other military activities contribute to such degradation. The military capability to damage the environment and to cause ecological disruption has escalated, and there is no sign that the level of conflict in the world is decreasing. The military use and abuse of each of the several major global habitats -- temperate, tropical, desert, arctic, insular, and oceanic -- are evalusated separately in the light of the civil use and abuse of that habitat"--Dust jacket.