Military Misfortunes

Author: Eliot A. Cohen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439135487
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
Why do competent armies fail? Eliot Cohen and John Gooch explore answers to this question throughout this extensive analysis of unsuccessful military operations. Since it was first published in 1990, Military Misfortunes has become the classic analysis of the unexpected catastrophes that befall competent militaries. Now with a new Afterword discussing America's missteps in Iraq, Somalia, and the War on Terror, Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch's gripping battlefield narratives and groundbreaking explanations of the hidden factors that undermine armies are brought thoroughly up to date. As recent events prove, Military Misfortunes will be required reading for as long as armies go to war.

Military Misfortunes

Author: Eliot A. Cohen
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
Rejecting accepted theories for unexpected military disasters, the authors brilliantly analyze disasters of great magnitude. They assert that military misfortune turns not on individual or collective failure but is rooted in the nature of the complex interconnections between men, systems, and organizations.

Command in War

Author: Martin Van Creveld
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674257219
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
Many books have been written about strategy, tactics, and great commanders. This is the first book to deal exclusively with the nature of command itself, and to trace its development over two thousand years from ancient Greece to Vietnam. It treats historically the whole variety of problems involved in commanding armies, including staff organization and administration, communications methods and technologies, weaponry, and logistics. And it analyzes the relationship between these problems and military strategy. In vivid descriptions of key battles and campaigns—among others, Napoleon at Jena, Moltke’s Königgrätz campaign, the Arab–Israeli war of 1973, and the Americans in Vietnam—Martin van Creveld focuses on the means of command and shows how those means worked in practice. He finds that technological advances such as the railroad, breech-loading rifles, the telegraph and later the radio, tanks, and helicopters all brought commanders not only new tactical possibilities but also new limitations. Although vast changes have occurred in military thinking and technology, the one constant has been an endless search for certainty—certainty about the state and intentions of the enemy’s forces; certainty about the manifold factors that together constitute the environment in which war is fought, from the weather and terrain to radioactivity and the presence of chemical warfare agents; and certainty about the state, intentions, and activities of one’s own forces. The book concludes that progress in command has usually been achieved less by employing more advanced technologies than by finding ways to transcend the limitations of existing ones.

Military Misfortunes: Pitfalls in Understanding

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 5

Book Description
"Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War," by Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch is an intriguing analysis of military misfortunes that have occurred during 20th-century wars. The authors offer some provocative theories about military misfortune while also providing brief analyses of five cases of well-known military failures: the British expedition to Gallipoli in 1915, the fall of France in 1940, the American anti-submarine campaign of 1942, the defeat of the U.S. Eighth Army in Korea by the Chinese in 1950, and the Israeli defense of the Suez and Golan fronts in 1973. To analyze military misfortune, the authors offer a method involving five steps: (1) identify the failure, (2) identify the "critical tasks" that went incomplete or unfulfilled and thus are at the root of the overall failure, (3) analyze the contributions of different layers of organization to the failure, (4) construct an "analytical matrix" that graphically presents the key failures leading to military misfortune, and (5) mark a "pathway" of misfortune through the "analytical matrix." The most important step within this method is the first step, the identification of the precise failure which led to the misfortune. Having identified their methodology, the authors state that there are three basic kinds of failure: failure to learn, failure to anticipate, and failure to adapt. They add that when two types of failure occur together, an "aggregate" failure will result, and when three types of failure occur together, a "catastrophic" failure will result. Despite the best efforts of the authors, the model they use for analyzing military misfortunes leads to an oversimplification of some very complex developments, and the analyses of the five cases offer little that is new. More cogent explanations for several of the misfortunes studied by Cohen and Gooch are to be found in specific studies on those subjects.

Sea of Mud

Author: Gregg J. Dimmick
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Book Description
Two forgotten weeks in 1836 and one of the most consequential events of the entire Texas Revolution have been missing from the historical record - the tale of the Mexican army's misfortunes in the aptly named Sea of Mud, where more than 2,500 Mexican soldiers and 1,500 female camp followers foundered in the muddy fields of what is now Wharton County, Texas. In 1996 a pediatrician and avocational archeologist living in Wharton, Texas, decided to try to find evidence in Wharton County of the Mexican army of 1836. Following some preliminary research at the Wharton County Junior College Library, he focused his search on the area between the San Bernard and West Bernard rivers.Within two weeks after beginning the search for artifacts, a Mexican army site was discovered, and, with the help of the Houston Archeological Society, excavated.

Supreme Command

Author: Eliot A. Cohen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 074324222X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Book Description
“An excellent, vividly written” (The Washington Post) account of leadership in wartime that explores how four great democratic statesmen—Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion—worked with the military leaders who served them during warfare. The relationship between military leaders and political leaders has always been a complicated one, especially in times of war. When the chips are down, who should run the show—the politicians or the generals? In Supreme Command, Eliot A. Cohen expertly argues that great statesmen do not turn their wars over to their generals, and then stay out of their way. Great statesmen make better generals of their generals. They question and drive their military men, and at key times they overrule their advice. The generals may think they know how to win, but the statesmen are the ones who see the big picture. Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion led four very different kinds of democracy, under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. They came from four very different backgrounds—backwoods lawyer, dueling French doctor, rogue aristocrat, and impoverished Jewish socialist. Yet they faced similar challenges. Each exhibited mastery of detail and fascination with technology. All four were great learners, who studied war as if it were their own profession, and in many ways mastered it as well as did their generals. All found themselves locked in conflict with military men. All four triumphed. The powerful lessons of this “brilliant” (National Review) book will touch and inspire anyone who faces intense adversity and is the perfect gift for history buffs of all backgrounds.

Misfortunes of Wealth

Author: James Oliver Goldsborough
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780977042999
Category : California
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Book Description
Where inherited wealth and family intersect--not always for the good.Explores one of American society¿s endlessly fascinating scenarios. Best of all, the story is true. The author takes the reader on a journey beginning with Revolutionary War heroes down through succeeding generations of Civil War notables, industrial titans, an improbable love story with an eleven-year courtship, a couple besotted and befuddled by all that is given them, and finally, a son who not only survives but thrives.The family tree is populated with such historical families as the Shields, Crittendens, Olivers, Nevilles, and Craigs; military, political, and industrial leaders of their time.The story is one of east and west, north and south: Western Pennsylvania, land of opportunity in the Republic¿s early years and later a seat of eastern high society; California immediately after World War II as the new land of opportunity; dreams of railroads and then an airline to open up vast territories of Mexico; brother-against-brother in war. El Chepe and Ramsa; exotic adventures and improbable schemes; lives fulfilled and lives wasted, it portrays the schizophrenia of people ricocheting between vast opportunity and the inability to make a life in the shadow of great wealth.The story is accompanied by astonishing first hand accounts and documentation kept by the author¿s family. Photographs, diaries, and letters give credence to accounts and give voice to the people who wrote them. These are not far-away characters in a fairy tale but real flesh-and-blood human beings speaking through the generations.

Paying the Human Costs of War

Author: Christopher Gelpi
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400830095
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

Book Description
From the Korean War to the current conflict in Iraq, Paying the Human Costs of War examines the ways in which the American public decides whether to support the use of military force. Contrary to the conventional view, the authors demonstrate that the public does not respond reflexively and solely to the number of casualties in a conflict. Instead, the book argues that the public makes reasoned and reasonable cost-benefit calculations for their continued support of a war based on the justifications for it and the likelihood it will succeed, along with the costs that have been suffered in casualties. Of these factors, the book finds that the most important consideration for the public is the expectation of success. If the public believes that a mission will succeed, the public will support it even if the costs are high. When the public does not expect the mission to succeed, even small costs will cause the withdrawal of support. Providing a wealth of new evidence about American attitudes toward military conflict, Paying the Human Costs of War offers insights into a controversial, timely, and ongoing national discussion.

The Tail Wags the Dog

Author: Efraim Karsh
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1632861194
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
The continuing crisis in Syria has raised questions over the common perception of Middle Eastern affairs as an offshoot of global power politics. To Western intellectuals, foreign policy experts, and politicians, “empire” and “imperialism” are categories that apply exclusively to Europe and more recently to the United States of America. As they see it, Middle Eastern history is the product of its unhappy interaction with these powers. Forming the basis of President Obama's much ballyhooed “new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” this outlook is continuing to shape crucial foreign policy among Western governments, but in these pages, Efraim Karsh propounds a radically different interpretation of Middle Eastern experience. He argues that the Western view of Muslims and Arabs as hapless victims is absurd. On the contrary, modern Middle Eastern history has been the culmination of long-existing indigenous trends. Great power influences, however potent, have played a secondary role constituting neither the primary force behind the region's political development nor the main cause of its notorious volatility. Karsh argues it is only when Middle Eastern people disown their victimization mentality and take responsibility for their actions and their Western champions drop their condescending approach to Arabs and Muslims, that the region can at long last look forward to a real “spring.”

Bullets and Bacilli

Author: Vincent J. Cirillo
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813533391
Category : Medicine, Military
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Book Description
This work focuses primarily on military medicine during this conflict. Historian Vincent J. Cirillo argues that there is a universal element of military culture that stifles medical progress. This war gave army medical officers an opportunity to introduce to the battlefield new medical technology, including the X-ray, aseptic surgery and sanitary systems derived from the germ theory. With few exceptions, however, their recommendations were ignored almost completely.