Military Government

En unik inblick i återtagandet av Mosul från terrorsekten IS en osminkad och detaljrik berättelse om hur ett specialförband opererar i strid, våldsam död, kamratskap i främsta linjen och krigets oskyldiga offer. Svenske elitsoldaten Axel Stål är tillbaka i stridens hetta. Som nybefordrad överstelötjnant i kurdiska säkerhetstjänsten blir hans uppgift att hjälpa till med återtagandet av Mosul från terrorsekten Islamiska Staten. Men trots hans långa karriär som operatör runt om i världens värsta oroshärdar visar sig uppdraget bli långt blodigare och svårare än vad Axel någonsin tidigare varit med om.

Afganistán, 1990. El régimen pro soviético de Najibulá parece dar sus últimos estertores tras más de una década de guerra contra los muyahidines. El país, sin saberlo, está abocado a un conflicto fratricida que acabará desembocando en uno de los regímenes más brutales de la historia moderna: el de los talibanes. En ese escenario caótico un joven italiano, de nombre Alberto Cairo, aterriza en el aeropuerto internacional de Kabul. Es fisioterapeuta y viene a trabajar para la Cruz Roja. Está previsto que se quede un año.

Since 9/11, why have we won smashing battlefield victories only to botch nearly everything that comes next? In the opening phases of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, we mopped the floor with our enemies. But in short order, things went horribly wrong. We soon discovered we had no coherent plan to manage the "day after". The ensuing debacles had truly staggering consequences - many thousands of lives lost, trillions of dollars squandered, and the apparent discrediting of our foreign policy establishment.

In the 25 years after 1989, the world enjoyed the deepest peace in history. In The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth, the eminent foreign policy scholar Michael Mandelbaum examines that remarkable quarter century, describing how and why the peace was established and then fell apart. Mandelbaum argues that the widespread peace ended because three major countries put an end to it with aggressive nationalist policies aimed at overturning the prevailing political arrangements in their respective regions.

The German Revolution of November 1918 is nowadays largely forgotten outside Germany. It is generally regarded as a failure even by those who have heard of it, a missed opportunity that paved the way for the rise of the Nazis and the catastrophe to come. Robert Gerwarth argues here that to view the German Revolution in this way is a serious misjudgment. Not only did it bring down the authoritarian monarchy of the Hohenzollern, it also brought into being the first ever German democracy in an amazingly bloodless way.

I Ain't Marching Anymore carefully traces soldier dissent from the early days of the republic through the wars that followed, including the genocidal "Indian Wars", the Civil War, long battles against slavery and racism that continue today, both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, and contemporary military imbroglios.

This book analyzes the evolution of Russian military thought and how Russia's current thinking about war is reflected in recent crises. What Jonsson reveals is that Russia's conception of the very nature of war is now changing, as Russian elites see information warfare and political subversion as the most important ways to conduct contemporary war. Since information warfare and political subversion are below the traditional threshold of armed violence, this has blurred the boundaries between war and peace.

From Major General Jeffrey Schloesser - former commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division and Regional Command-East - comes a revealing memoir of leadership in the chaos and fog of the Afghanistan War.

Somalia was Tom Pecora's first deployment as a CIA Protective Operations Cadre (POC) officer, responsible for providing protective operations support in hostile areas of the world. He later headed up a series of the Agency's undisclosed protective operations teams. From 1989 until his retirement in 2013, he was assigned to multiple war zones across Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, doing the kind of work few are even aware exists.

Russia and China are both believed to have a "grand strategy" - a detailed set of goals backed by expansive ambitions. In the United States, policy makers have tried to articulate similar plans but have failed to reach a widespread consensus since the Cold War ended. Drawing on historical precedents and weighing issues such as Russia's resurgence, China's great rise, North Korea's nuclear machinations, and Middle-East turmoil, Michael O'Hanlon presents a well-researched, ethically sound, and politically viable vision for American national security policy.

El 24 de febrero comenzó una nueva guerra en Europa. Un conflicto que evoca la Guerra Fría, conflictos inacabados y consecuencias terribles. La guerra de Ucrania no es algo nuevo, aunque sí ha adoptado una dimensión totalmente diferente por los actores que la desarrollan y por representar la ruptura del orden internacional vigente. Este audiolibro analiza con precisión y claridad el camino recorrido por Rusia, Ucrania y Occidente hasta la guerra.

Jeannie L. Johnson takes a sympathetic but critical look at the Marine Corps's long experience with counterinsurgency warfare. Which counterinsurgency lessons have been learned and retained for next time and which have been abandoned to history is a story of battlefield trial and error - but also a story of cultural collisions. The audiobook begins with a fascinating and penetrating look inside the culture of the Marine Corps through research in primary sources, including Marine oral histories, and interviews with Marines.

Authors Simon Reich and Peter Dombrowski challenge the common view of grand strategy as unitary. They eschew prescription of any one specific approach, chosen from a spectrum that stretches from global primacy to restraint and isolationism, in favor of describing what America’s military actually does, day to day. They argue that a series of fundamental recent changes in the global system, the inevitable jostling of bureaucratic politics, and the practical limitations of field operations combine to ensure that each presidential administration inevitably resorts to a variety of strategies.

The General’s dysfunctional home life drove him to apply to the Air Force Academy almost 40 years ago, where he was provided with a new family and sense of worth he had never gotten from his own father. This purpose has driven the General throughout his remarkable career, taking him to Alaska, the Pentagon, and Germany; to Florida during Hurricane Opal, and has also allowed him to work alongside Presidents Bush and Obama and Secretaries of Defense Leon Panetta and Ashton Carter. Journey is a book about leadership. It is packed with the General’s lessons from life in the military.

A century ago, Europe's diplomats mismanaged the crisis triggered by the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the continent plunged into World War I, which killed millions, toppled dynasties, and destroyed empires. Today, as the 100th anniversary of the Great War prompts renewed debate about the war's causes, scholars and policy experts are also considering the parallels between the present international system and the world of 1914. Are China and the United States fated to follow in the footsteps of previous great power rivals?

The Vulcan, the second of the three V bombers built to guard the UK during the Cold War, has become an aviation icon like the Spitfire, its delta shape instantly recognizable, as is the howling noise it makes when the engines are opened for takeoff. Vulcan Boys is the first Vulcan book recounted completely firsthand by the operators themselves.

Gavin reassesses the strategy of flexible response, the influence of nuclear weapons during the Berlin Crisis, the origins of and motivations for US nuclear nonproliferation policy, and how to assess the nuclear dangers we face today. Archival evidence makes it clear that decision makers were more concerned about underlying geopolitical questions than about the strategic dynamic between two nuclear superpowers.

When Emma Sky, an intrepid young British woman, volunteered to help rebuild Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, she had little idea what she was letting herself in for: a tour that would last over a decade, longer than that of any senior military or political official. As the only adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Kirkuk and the closest confidante to US General Odierno, Sky was valued for her controversial voice and outsider's point of view.

The urgent truth about the privatization of America’s national security that exposes where this industry came from, how it operates, where it's heading—and why we should be concerned. Thirty years ago there were no private military and security companies (PMSCs); there were only mercenaries. Now the PMSCs are a bona-fide industry, an indispensable part of American foreign and military policy.

Today's warfare has moved away from being an event between massed national populations and toward small numbers of combatants using high-tech weaponry. The editors of and contributors to the timely collection show that this shift reflects changes in the technological, strategic, ideological, and ethical realms.