In this startling book, now in paperback, the bestselling author of Explaining Hitler warns that a nuclear World War III is not only the most massive and imminent threat to existence as we know it, but also one of the most ignored. While Russian aggression grows and North Korean nuclear ambitions increase unabated, tensions continue to escalate between India and Pakistan and in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Iran remains committed to developing its nuclear program despite international sanctions. No other writer has assembled the extraordinary array of sources and experiences that Ron Rosenbaum calls on to inform his examination of nuclear war. While working from both historical and contemporary perspectives to explore the people and events that could shape the form of a third world war, he suggests humans have never before been so close to annihilation. In this book, Rosenbaum examines both the paranoia and very real set of possibilities that informs our view of nuclear war and asks whether we can “undream” the nightmare.

Using examples from a wide variety of conflicts, Lawrence Freedman shows that successful military command depends on the ability not only to use armed forces effectively but also to understand the political context in which they are operating. Command in war is about forging effective strategies and implementing them, making sure that orders are appropriate, well-communicated, and then obeyed. But it is also an intensely political process. This is largely because how wars are fought depends to a large extent on how their aims are set. It is also because commanders in one realm must possess the ability to work with other command structures, including those of other branches of the armed forces and allies. In Command, Lawrence Freedman explores the importance of political as well as operational considerations in command with a series of eleven vivid case studies, all taken from the period after 1945. Over this period, the risks of nuclear escalation led to a shift away from great power confrontations and towards civil wars, and advances in communication technologies made it easier for higher-level commanders to direct their subordinates. Freedman covers defeats as well as victories. Pakistani generals tried to avoid surrender as they were losing the eastern part of their country to India in 1971. Iraq's Saddam Hussein turned his defeats into triumphant narratives of victory. Osama bin Laden escaped the Americans in Afghanistan in 2001. The UK struggled as a junior partner to the US in Iraq after 2003. We come across insubordinate generals, such as Israel's Arik Sharon, and those in the French army in Algeria, so frustrated with their political leadership that they twice tried to change it. At the other end of the scale, Che Guevara in Congo in 1966 and Igor Girkin in Ukraine in 2014 both tried to spark local wars to suit their grandiose objectives. Freedman ends the book with a meditation on the future of command in a world that is becoming increasingly reliant on technologies like artificial intelligence. A wide-ranging and insightful history of the changing nature of command in the postwar era, this will stand as a definitive account of a foundational concept in both military affairs and politics.

The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq is the comprehensive source on George Bush's campaign of disinformation before, during, and after the second Gulf War. From the careful linking of Saddam Hussein with Al Qaeda, to the WMD canard, to the September 2003 damage-control sideshow. AlterNet's Christopher Scheer and Lakshmi Chaudhry team up with renowned journalist Robert Scheer to tak

The Military History of the Soviet Union and The Military History of Tsarist Russia treat Russian military history from the rise of the Muscovite state to the present, even peeking briefly into the future. The two volumes will cover Russia's land forces extensively, but will also cover the development of the Russian Navy, and the creation and development of the Russian Air Force, parts of the Russian military machine which are frequently neglected in general writings. The historical analysis will address the development and function of the Russian military whether in peace or in war, as well as the impact of war and changes in the military upon Russian society and politics.

This book comprises findings from the author's wide-ranging research since 1948 on the unresolved Arab/Israel protracted conflict. Brecher reflects back on his detailed analysis of the UN Commission created in November 1947, and his near-seven decades of research and publications on this complex protracted conflict continued since the first of nine Arab/Israeli wars. The book includes an analysis of the crucial early phase of the unresolved struggle for control of Jerusalem in 1948-49 and beyond, based on extensive interviews with Israel’s leaders and prominent Egyptian senior officials, journalists and academics. It addresses the many diverse attempts at conflict resolution, including a peace plan to resolve the Arab/Israel conflict of the author's own design. It concludes with historical reflections about Israel’s behavior, domestically and externally, in 1948-1949 and 2008 and beyond. No other book on this protracted conflict contains so many important interviews with the first two generations of Israeli leaders and Egyptian officials and academics, and no other author can speak from such a deep and prolonged engagement.

In this book, the author reflects major stages in the principal history of oil from the beginning of World War II to 1981. He focuses on the significance of critical aspects of petroleum logistics and presents the strategic dimensions of oil.