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Private Peaceful
by Michael MorpurgoAs the enemy lurks in the darkness, Private Thomas Peaceful struggles to stay awake through the night. He has lived through the terror of gas attacks, watched his friends die, and battled the rats, the mud and the sheer exhaustion of staying alert. But in the morning, Thomas will be forced to confront an even greater horror. When morning comes, the unthinkable will happen.
Private Pictures: Soldiers' Inside View of War
by Janina StrukSnapshots taken by American soldiers of Iraqi prisoners stripped naked, humiliated and tortured shocked the world in 2004 and more have followed from the conflict in Afghanistan, but whether the public have been horrified by the soldiers' conduct or the fact they have taken pictures has not been clear. In fact, as this remarkable book reveals and relates, soldiers have taken photographs of war and its atrocities for more than 100 years. But their pictures are private, intended mainly for the soldiers themselves, as mementoes or as attempts to make sense of the chaos, brutality and boredom of war. They can be gruesome or sociable, shocking or mundane and they are seldom regarded as serious contributions to a visual culture of war, which since 1939 has been dominated by professional war photography. But with the 21st-century shift to simple digital photography, transmission by the internet available to all, and a new 'citizen journalism', soldiers' pictures are acquiring a new resonance."Private Pictures" traces this unacknowledged genre of photography from the origins of popular photography in the Boer War through to the present day; it discusses how the images have been used and it asks: what effect might the wider appreciation of soldiers' pictures have on the popular perception of war?
Private Security and Identity Politics: Ethical Hero Warriors, Professional Managers and New Humanitarians (Routledge Private Security Studies)
by Jutta Joachim Andrea SchneikerThis book examines the self-representation and identity politics of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs). PMSCs have become increasingly important over the past few decades. While their boom is frequently explained in functional terms, such as their cost-efficiency and effectiveness, this book offers an alternative explanation based on an analysis of the online self-presentations of forty-two US- and UK-based companies. PMSCs are shaping how they are perceived and establishing themselves as acceptable and legitimate security actors by eclectically appropriating identities more commonly associated with the military, businesses and humanitarian actors. Depending on their audience and clients’ needs, they can be professional hero warriors, or promise turn-key security solutions based on their exceptional expertise, or, in a similar way to humanitarians, reassure those in need of relief and try to make the world a better place. Rather than being merely public relations, the self-referential assertions of PMSCs are political. Not only do they contribute to a normalization of private security and reinforce an already ongoing blurring of lines between the public and private sectors, they also change what we deem to be ‘security’ and a ‘security actor’. This book will be of much interest to students of private military companies, critical security studies, military studies, security studies and IR.
Private Security Companies during the Iraq War: Military Performance and the Use of Deadly Force (Cass Military Studies)
by Scott FitzsimmonsThis book explores the use of deadly force by private security companies during the Iraq War. The work focuses on and compares the activities of the US companies Blackwater and Dyncorp. Despite sharing several important characteristics, such as working for the same client (the US State Department) during the same time period, the employees of Blackwater fired their weapons far more often, and killed and seriously injured far more people in Iraq than their counterparts in DynCorp. In order to explain this disparity, the book undertakes the most comprehensive analysis ever attempted on the use of violence by the employees of these firms. Based on extensive empirical research, it offers a credible explanation for this difference: Blackwater maintained a relatively bellicose military culture that placed strong emphasis on norms encouraging its personnel to exercise personal initiative, proactive use of force, and an exclusive approach to security, which, together, motivated its personnel to use violence quite freely against anyone they suspected of posing a threat. Specifically, Blackwater’s military culture motivated its personnel to fire upon suspected threats more quickly, at greater distances, and with a greater quantity of bullets, and to more readily abandon the people they shot at when compared to DynCorp’s personnel, who maintained a military culture that encouraged far less violent behaviour. Utilizing the Private Security Company Violent Incident Dataset (PSCVID), created by the author in 2012, the book draws upon data on hundreds of violent incidents involving private security personnel in Iraq to identify trends in the behaviour exhibited by the employees of different firms. Based on this rich and original empirical data, the book provides the definitive study of contemporary private security personnel in the Iraq War. This book will be of much interest to students of the Iraq War, Private Security Companies, Military Studies, War and Conflict Studies and IR in general.
Private Security Contractors and New Wars: Risk, Law, and Ethics (Contemporary Security Studies)
by Kateri CarmolaThis book addresses the ambiguities of the growing use of private security contractors and provides guidance as to how our expectations about regulating this expanding ‘service’ industry will have to be adjusted. In the warzones of Iraq and Afghanistan many of those who carry weapons are not legally combatants, nor are they protected civilians. They are contracted by governments, businesses, and NGOs to provide armed security. Often mistaken as members of armed forces, they are instead part of a new protean proxy force that works alongside the military in a multitude of shifting roles, and overseen by a matrix of contracts and regulations. This book analyzes the growing industry of these private military and security companies (PMSCs) used in warzones and other high risk areas. PMSCs are the result of a unique combination of circumstances, including a change in the idea of soldiering, insurance industry analyses that require security contractors, and a need for governments to distance themselves from potentially criminal conduct. The book argues that PMSCs are a unique type of organization, combining attributes from worlds of the military, business, and humanitarian organizations. This makes them particularly resistant to oversight. The legal status of these companies and those they employ is also hard to ascertain, which weakens the multiple regulatory tools available. PMSCs also fall between the cracks in ethical debates about their use, seeming to be both justifiable and objectionable. This transformation in military operations is a seemingly irreversible product of more general changes in the relationship between the individual citizen and the state. This book will be of much interest to students of private security companies, war and conflict studies, security studies and IR in general. Kateri Carmola is the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Political Science at Middlebury College in Vermont. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
Private Smith's Journal Recollections of the Late War: Recollections Of The Late War (classic Reprint)
by Benjamin T. SmithTHE Civil War journal of Benjamin T. Smith is the record kept by an unsophisticated 18-year-old of his services in the Civil War, from October, 1861, to November, 1865. Smith’s journal differs from most journals kept by privates because he saw the war from two different levels—as a simple soldier who endured the rough discomforts, the miserable food, the occasional moments of great danger, and the fleeting times of fellowship around the fire, and as a member of a division headquarters, carrying important messages, acting as a mounted scout, serving as General Phil Sheridan’s orderly.
A Private Treason
by Ingrid GreenburgerA Private Treason is the memoir of a courageous German woman who, as a girl of nineteen from an upper-middle-class Gentile family, rejected Nazism completely and gave up her language and her country forever. Branded a "traitor," she fled from the blitzkrieg to Vienna, the Dalmation islands, Paris, finally to the zone libre in southern France--a fugitive's life preserved by forged identity papers and haunted by the fear of detention and arrest. Yet she managed to survive.Now, she looks back on the war and her youth. Her intense, personal memories are recalled in fragments--she tells each one honestly and with powerful emotion, including her childhood in Berlin and the liberation of France in 1944. She recalls her neighborhood amid Berlin's plentiful parks and lakes and as she matures, we see her first perceptions of the ominous moods and events beginning to shake Germany--the deep resentment over losing World War I, the vicious gossip of "hereditary enemies," the first outburst of political and racial violence that would eventually be transformed into hobnailed boots, truncheons, and swastika armbands, separating her from schoolmates and playmates forever.A Private Treason is filled with poignant recollections of the people in her life: her strict, deeply Teutonic grandfather--target of her childhood rebellions with his haughty refinement and tyrannical whims--who finally expresses his love openly just before she leaves Germany; her gentle, withdrawn father and talented, emotionally unstable mother; Loirette, a clever, myopic Vichy official secretly working for the Resistance; and André, her intellectual lover, continually frustrated in his attempts to work effectively for the maquis.Much of A Private Treason tells the story of Ingrid and André's struggle to stay alive and together, of their separations and reunions, of her transporting forged papers for the maquis and his plotting to escape to England, of the enormous risks they both took to hide their comrades and condemned refugees, and of their hope, finally fulfilled, for the Allied invasion that would eventually drive the Germans out of France. A few days after the invasion begins, André is killed in one of the last military actions in the Vercors.In its story of suffering and personal grief, A Private Treason denounces all wars. Yet, at the same time, Ingrid Greenburger's strength and natural exuberance shine throughout this stirring account of one woman's response to the outrages of war and Nazism.The late Ingrid Greenburger was the widow of literary agent Sanford Greenburger.
Privateering: Patriots and Profits in the War of 1812 (Johns Hopkins Books on the War of 1812)
by Faye M. KertThe first book to tell the tale of the War of 1812 from the privateers’ perspective.Winner of the John Lyman Book Award of the North American Society for Oceanic HistoryDuring the War of 1812, most clashes on the high seas involved privately owned merchant ships, not official naval vessels. Licensed by their home governments and considered key weapons of maritime warfare, these ships were authorized to attack and seize enemy traders. Once the prizes were legally condemned by a prize court, the privateers could sell off ships and cargo and pocket the proceeds. Because only a handful of ship-to-ship engagements occurred between the Royal Navy and the United States Navy, it was really the privateers who fought—and won—the war at sea.In Privateering, Faye M. Kert introduces readers to U.S. and Atlantic Canadian privateers who sailed those skirmishing ships, describing both the rare captains who made money and the more common ones who lost it. Some privateers survived numerous engagements and returned to their pre-war lives; others perished under violent circumstances. Kert demonstrates how the romantic image of pirates and privateers came to obscure the dangerous and bloody reality of private armed warfare.Building on two decades of research, Privateering places the story of private armed warfare within the overall context of the War of 1812. Kert highlights the economic, strategic, social, and political impact of privateering on both sides and explains why its toll on normal shipping helped convince the British that the war had grown too costly. Fascinating, unfamiliar, and full of surprises, this book will appeal to historians and general readers alike.
Privateering and Diplomacy, 1793–1807: Great Britain, Denmark-Norway and the Question of Neutral Ports
by Atle L. WoldThis book addresses the British-Danish diplomatic debate on privateering and neutral ports in the period 1793-1807, when Denmark-Norway remained neutral in the war between Britain and France. The British government protested against the use French privateers made of Norwegian ports as bases for their attacks on the British Baltic Sea and Archangel Trades, but the Danish government insisted on keeping the ports open. This led to a running dispute on the relative rights and duties of belligerents and neutrals, but also on violations of the tentative agreement that the two governments reached in 1793. The three main chapters in the book address the principled debate on privateering and neutral ports; the central role played in the debate by the British diplomatic and consular representatives in Denmark-Norway; and privateering in practice. The final two chapters look at the impact of the Dutch change of sides in the war in 1795, and the development from the official closure of the Norwegian ports to privateers in 1799 until Denmark-Norway’s entry into the war on the side of France in 1807.
Privateers Of Charleston In The War Of 1812
by Harold MouzonDuring the War of 1812 the United States government issued "letters of marque" to private individuals authorising them to attack, board and ransom British shipping. Among the most successful of these ships hailed from the port of Charleston harbour in South Carolina, they plundered the Atlantic seaboard searching for British sails on the horizon.
Privateers of the Revolution: War on the New Jersey Coast, 1775–1783
by Donald Grady ShometteA narrative of the forgotten privateering war on the Jersey coast during the American Revolution Addresses the maritime conflict period 1775-1783 from both Patriot and Loyalist perspectivesReveals the hitherto untold account of the British &“Death Ships&” on which 11,000 died
A Privateer's Voyage Round the World (Seafarers' Voices)
by George ShelvockeIn 1719, Captain George Shelvocke, a poverty-stricken ex-naval officer, appealed for help to an old shipmate, Edward Hughes, who was then part of a consortium fitting-out two privateering vessels to prey on the Spanish in the Pacific. He offered Shelvocke the captaincy of the larger ship but then demoted him to a smaller vessel, and Shelvocke, bitter and revengeful, immediately set off on his own for South America with a semi-mutinous crew, and his much-hated Captain of Marines, William Betagh. After rounding Cape Horn, one of Shelvockes men shot a black albatross an event later to be immortalised in Coleridges Rime of the Ancient Mariner and then, off Chile, with considerable loot onboard his ship, the Speedwell, was wrecked in the Juan Fernandez Islands. Undaunted, he built another vessel and eventually returned to England, via Macao, loaded with Spanish plunder. Back home he was arrested for piracy and defrauding his shareholders, though he argued that he owed the original owners nothing as their ship had been honestly lost. The events were grippingly portrayed in his memoir A Voyage Round the World by Way of the Great South Sea, though some of it was disputed by Betagh and others, and it still reads today as a fast moving, incident-packed tale exposing the world of the maritime mercenaries and privateers, men who would take on anything and everything for Gold!
The Privatization of Israeli Security
by Shir HeverIn this book, Shir Hever considers the impact of the ongoing Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, the influence of U.S. military aid and the rise of neoliberalism in Israel, to make sense of this dramatic change in security policy.Through the lens of political economy, this book shows how the Israeli security elites turn violence into a commodity in order to preserve their status and wealth, providing a fresh new perspective on the Israeli occupation.
Privatizing War: A Moral Theory (War, Conflict and Ethics)
by William FeldmanThis book offers a comprehensive moral theory of privatization in war. It examines the kind of wars that private actors might wage separate from the state and the kind of wars that private actors might wage as functionaries of the state. The first type of war serves to probe the ad bellum question of whether private actors can justifiably authorize war, while the second type of war serves to probe the in bello question of whether private actors can justifiably participate in war. The cases that drive the analysis are drawn from the rich and complicated history of private military action, stretching back centuries to the Italian city-states whose mercenaries were reviled by Machiavelli. The book also takes up the hypothetical examples conjured by philosophers—the private protective agencies of Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, for example, and the private armies of Thomas More’s Utopia. The aim of this book is to propose a theory of privatization that retains currency not only in assessing current military engagements, but past and future ones as well. In doing so, it also raises a set of important questions about the very enterprise of war. This book will be of much interest to students of ethics, political philosophy, military studies, international relations, war and conflict studies, and security studies.
The Privilege of Peace (Peacekeeper #3)
by Tanya HuffFormer space marine Torin Kerr returns for one final adventure to save the Confederation in the last book in the military science fiction Peacekeeper trilogy.Warden Torin Kerr has put her past behind her and built a life away from the war and everything that meant. From the good, from the bad. From the heroics, from the betrayal. She's created a place and purpose for others like her, a way to use their training for the good of the Confederation. She has friends, family, purpose.Unfortunately, her past refuses to grant her the same absolution. Big Yellow, the ship form of the plastic aliens responsible for the war, returns. The Silsviss test the strength of the Confederation. Torin has to be Gunnery Sergeant Kerr once again and find a way to keep the peace.
The Privilege of Peace: A Torin Kerr Novel (Peacekeeper #3)
by Tanya HuffIn bestselling author Tanya Huff’s third book in the Peacekeeper series, Warden Torin Kerr must decide where she’s needed most when a galaxy’s worth of trouble hits the fan…Torin Kerr loves leading Strike Team Alpha for the Peacekeepers. There’s too much paperwork, and the people she’s trying to rehabilitate shoot real bullets at her, but the force she’s creating will change the Confederation.That is, if the Confederation can hold. Too many malcontents are rallying to Humans First, becoming terrorists and rebels with spies in seemingly every network. The Silsviss are on the verge of violently withdrawing from their treaty. Big Yellow has reappeared with the alien warmongers that experimented on them all, and a furious and incomprehensible demand. And a certain general is growling out Torin’s name and pushing a reenlistment contract.As the world she’s fought to preserve teeters on the brink of collapse, Torin can’t do it all—but with a team like hers, she doesn’t have to. And when the chips are down, there’s no one who can change the game like Torin Kerr…
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power
by Daniel YerginWinner of the Pulitzer Prize and hailed as &“the best history of oil ever written&” by Business Week, Daniel Yergin&’s &“spellbinding…irresistible&” (The New York Times) account of the global pursuit of oil, money, and power addresses the ongoing energy crisis. Now with an epilogue that speaks directly to the current energy crisis, The Prize recounts the panoramic history of the world&’s most important resource—oil. Daniel Yergin&’s timeless book chronicles the struggle for wealth and power that has surrounded oil for decades and that continues to fuel global rivalries, shake the world economy, and transform the destiny of men and nations. This updated edition categorically proves the unwavering significance of oil throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first by tracing economic and political clashes over precious &“black gold.&” With his far-reaching insight and in-depth research, Yergin is uniquely positioned to address the present battle over energy which undoubtedly ranks as one of the most vital issues of our time. The canvas of his narrative history is enormous—from the drilling of the first well in Pennsylvania through two great world wars to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Operation Desert Storm, and both the Iraq War and current climate change. The definitive work on the subject of oil, The Prize is a book of extraordinary breadth, riveting excitement, and great value—crucial to our understanding of world politics and the economy today—and tomorrow.
The Problem with Pilots: How Physicians, Engineers, and Airpower Enthusiasts Redefined Flight
by Timothy P. SchultzAn illuminating look at how human vulnerability led to advances in aviation technology.As aircraft flew higher, faster, and farther in the early days of flight, pilots were exposed as vulnerable, inefficient, and dangerous. They asphyxiated or got the bends at high altitudes; they fainted during high-G maneuvers; they spiraled to the ground after encountering clouds or fog. Their capacity to commit fatal errors seemed boundless. The Problem with Pilots tells the story of how, in the years between the world wars, physicians and engineers sought new ways to address these difficulties and bridge the widening gap between human and machine performance.A former Air Force pilot, Timothy P. Schultz delves into archival sources to understand the evolution of the pilot–aircraft relationship. As aviation technology evolved and enthusiasts looked for ways to advance its military uses, pilots ceded hands-on control to sophisticated instrument-based control. By the early 1940s, pilots were sometimes evicted from aircraft in order to expand the potential of airpower—a phenomenon much more common in today's era of high-tech (and often unmanned) aircraft.Connecting historical developments to modern flight, this study provides an original view of how scientists and engineers brought together technological, medical, and human elements to transform the pilot's role. The Problem with Pilots does away with the illusion of pilot supremacy and yields new insights into our ever-changing relationship with intelligent machines.
Problematics of Military Power: Government, Discipline and the Subject of Violence
by Michael S. DrakeThis book traces the relations between the organization of violence and social and political order from ancient Rome to early modern Europe. Following the work of Michel Foucault, the author studies the ways authority, obedience and forms of self-conduct were produced by the micro-techniques used to govern the bodies of violence deployed in different forms of warfare.
Problems and Perspectives of Conventional Disarmament in Europe (Routledge Library Editions: Cold War Security Studies #38)
by United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research UNIDIRThis book, first published in 1989, explores the ideas, proposals and counterproposals surrounding the thorny issue of Cold War conventional force disarmament in Europe. European nations acknowledged the need to reduce military tensions, but divergences remained as to the concrete ways and means for the attainment of the security objectives on the basis of mutually acceptable reductions of their respective forces. A UNIDIR-organized conference examined these issues, and presented here are the conference reports and findings, together with speaker responses.
Problems of Contemporary Militarism (Routledge Library Editions: International Security Studies #16)
by Asbjørn EideThis book, first published in 1980, presents a comprehensive and detailed look at the problem of international militarisation. It examines the key issues, the meaning of the problem, the international context and the spread of militarism to the Third World, its fast growth and dangerous implications – including to the development of often poorer countries.
Problems of International Politics: The Wartime Origins of Democratization
by Reyko HuangWhy do some countries emerge from civil war more democratic than when they entered into it, while others remain staunchly autocratic? Observers widely depict internal conflict as a pathway to autocracy or state failure, but in fact there is variation in post-civil war regimes. Conventional accounts focus on war outcomes and international peacebuilding, but Huang suggests that postwar regimes have wartime origins, notably in how rebel groups interact with ordinary people as part of war-making. War can have mobilizing effects when rebels engage extensively with civilian populations, catalyzing a bottom-up force for change toward greater political rights. Politics after civil war does not emerge from a blank slate, but reflects the war's institutional and social legacies. The Wartime Origins of Democratization explores these ideas through an original dataset of rebel governance and rigorous comparative case analysis. The findings have far-reaching implications for understanding wartime political orders, statebuilding, and international peacebuilding.
Problems of International Politics: Compliant Rebels
by Hyeran JoSeventeen million people have died in civil wars and rebel violence has disrupted the lives of millions more. In a fascinating contribution to the active literature on civil wars, this book finds that some contemporary rebel groups actually comply with international law amid the brutality of civil conflicts around the world. Rather than celebrating the existence of compliant rebels, the author traces the cause of this phenomenon and argues that compliant rebels emerge when rebel groups seek legitimacy in the eyes of domestic and international audiences that care about humanitarian consequences and human rights. By examining rebel groups' different behaviors such as civilian killing, child soldiering, and allowing access to detention centers, Compliant Rebels offers key messages and policy lessons about engaging rebel groups with an eye toward reducing civilian suffering in war zones.
Proceed At Will
by Burke WilkinsonHE COURTED DANGER TO WIN A WOMAN.WAS HE HERO OR HELL?Daredevil Geoffrey Mildmay’s war record gave no clue. The man who knew him best wasn’t sure of him. The women he loved were too blinded, or too bitter, to judge him fairly.“To bloody red hell with the job, I say! Everyone watching me, never a moment to myself. How can a man know what he wants…”What he really wanted was beautiful, teasing Brenda. They wanted him to sink a battleship. So they used the girl to lure him….Was the promise of even such a woman enough when the odds were all against his survival?
Proceed to Peshawar
by George J. HillThis is a story of adventure in the Hindu Kush Mountains, and of a previously untold Military and Naval Intelligence Mission along about 800 miles of the Durand Line in World War II. The American officers passed through the Tribal Areas and the princely states of the North-West Frontier Province, and into Baluchistan. It also provides an insight into the background and daily life of a Naval Intelligence Officer who was stationed in Karachi, India (now Pakistan), in World War II. He was probably the first American official to travel to all of the Provinces that now comprise the country of Pakistan, and he also traveled in India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).