Showing results for "War" in Public Policy

In a world where oil-rich states are more likely to start war than their oil-dependent counterparts, it's surprising how little attention is still paid to these so-called petrostates. These states' wealth props up the global arms trade, provides diplomatic leverage, and allows them to support violent and nonviolent proxies. In Oil, the State, and War, Emma Ashford explores the many potential links between domestic oil production and foreign policy behavior and how oil production influences global politics.

Economic sanctions dominate the landscape of world politics today. First developed in the early twentieth century as a way of exploiting the flows of globalization to defend liberal internationalism, their appeal is that they function as an alternative to war. This view, however, ignores the dark paradox at their core: designed to prevent war, economic sanctions are modeled on devastating techniques of warfare.

Trade disputes are usually understood as conflicts between countries with competing national interests, but as Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis show in this book, they are often the unexpected result of domestic political choices to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of workers and ordinary retirees. Klein and Pettis trace the origins of today's trade wars to decisions made by politicians and business leaders in China, Europe, and the United States over the past 30 years.

When two Stanford graduate students set out to create a new kind of cigarette that wouldn’t kill them, they didn’t foresee all the obstacles that lay ahead — or the powerful forces their invention would unleash. Nearly 10 years after the launch of the JUUL, Backfired: The Vaping Wars asks: Could e-cigarettes have been the solution to one of the world’s most pressing public health problems—or was this technology doomed to introduce a whole new generation to nicotine, and end up perpetuating an intractable addiction?

Andrew Wakefield reveals the inside story of desperate parents trying to help their autistic children, only to be labeled as abusers by social workers, medical professionals, and the courts. As the number of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders grows each year, new discoveries and controversies arise. Andrew Wakefield explores many of these in his thorough investigation of the recent trial case of the “Arizona 5,” which destroyed an Arizona family.

New York Times Bestseller An exploration of the age-old complicity between skywatchers and warfighters, from the best-selling author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. In this fascinating foray into the centuries-old relationship between science and military power, acclaimed astrophysicist...

A decade ago, the soldiers of Bravo Company deployed to Afghanistan for a tour in Kandahar’s notorious Arghandab Valley. By the time they made it home, three soldiers had been killed in action, a dozen more had lost limbs, and an astonishing half of the company had Purple Hearts. In the decade since, two of the soldiers have died by suicide, more than a dozen have tried, and others admit they’ve considered it. Written with an insider’s eye and ear and drawing on extensive interviews and original reporting, Bravo Company follows the men from their initial enlistment on.

The hallmarks of America’s War on Terror have been repeated long deployments and a high percentage of troops returning with psychological problems. Family members of combat veterans are at a higher risk of potentially lethal domestic violence than almost any other demographic; it’s estimated that one in four children of active-duty service members has symptoms of depression; and nearly one million veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan require increased care due to physical or psychological trauma.

Since the start of the Trump era, the United States and the Western world has finally begun to wake up to the threat of online warfare and the attacks from Russia. The question no one seems to be able to answer is: What can the West do about it? Central and Eastern European states, however, have been aware of the threat for years. Nina Jankowicz has advised these governments on the front lines of the information war. The lessons she learnt from that fight—and from her attempts to get US congress to act—make for essential listening.

When tough-on-crime laws passed 30 years ago during an era of drug-fueled violence, they were supported across the political spectrum. The subsequent "war on drugs" sent non-violent offenders to prison for decades and, in some cases, life. As a result, the nation's prison and jail population today is 2.3 million, more than quadruple the number that were incarcerated in 1980. One in 100 adults is behind bars in America.

From a former senior advisor to Senator John McCain comes an urgent wake-up call about how new technologies are threatening America's military might. For generations of Americans, our country has been the world's dominant military power. How the US military fights, and the systems and weapons...

What if everything we’ve been told about addiction is wrong? One of Johann Hari’s earliest memories is of trying to wake up one of his relatives and not being able to. As he grew older, he realised there was addiction in his family. Confused, he set out on a three-year, thirty-thousand mile journey to discover what really causes addiction – and how to solve it. Told through a series of gripping human stories, this audiobook was the basis of a TED talk and animation that have been viewed more than twenty million times. It has transformed the global debate about addiction.

Shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year award A renowned climate scientist shows how fossil fuel companies have waged a thirty-year campaign to deflect blame and responsibility and delay action on climate change, and offers a battle plan for how we can save the planet. Recycle...

Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of life - and death - in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world's poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. With passionate eyewitness accounts from the prisons of Russia and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, this book links the lived experiences of individual victims to a broader analysis of structural violence.

After nine months of examining and analyzing U.S. military involvement in Iraq, the bi-partisan Iraq Study Group issued this report on Dec. 6, 2006. The report calls the situation in Iraq "grave and deteriorating" and says, "There is no path that can guarantee success, but the prospects can be improved".

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Philip Stevens. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Christopher Brooke. Thomas Hobbes lived through the Thirty Years War and Britain's civil wars, and the trauma of these events led to his great masterpiece of...

Twenty years of America’s Global War on Terror produced little tangible success while exacting enormous harm. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States sustained tens of thousands of casualties, expended trillions of dollars, and inflicted massive suffering on the very populations that we sought to “liberate.” Now the inclination to forget it all and move on is palpable. But there is much to be learned from the immense debacle. And those who served and fought in these wars are best positioned to teach us.

From the Washington Post's two-time Pulitzer-winning senior Pentagon reporter, the definitive military chronicle of the Iraq War-and a searing judgment of its gross strategic blindness-drawing on the accounts of senior military officers giving voice to their anger for the first time. Unabridged...

Prominent military historian Victor Davis Hanson explores the nature of leadership with his usual depth and vivid prose in The Savior Generals, a set of brilliantly executed pocket biographies of five generals (Themistocles, Belisarius, William Tecumseh Sherman, Matthew Ridgway, and David Petraeus) who single-handedly saved their nations from defeat in war. War is rarely a predictable enterprise - it is a mess of luck, chance, and incalculable variables. Today's sure winner can easily become tomorrow's doomed loser.

War Is a Racket is a classic short treatise by Major General Smedley D. Butler, one of the most decorated U.S. Marines in American history, turned outspoken critic of war. Drawing on his 34-year military career and firsthand experience in conflicts from the Caribbean to World War I, Butler delivers a powerful critique of how modern wars are driven not by noble ideals but by economic interests that profit from conflict.