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Long before the overt war in Afghanistan and the covert war against al-Qaida,U.S. forces struck at one of the world's hotbeds of terrorism. On 15 April 1986,in the dead of night, American strike aircraft roared into the heart of MuammarQaddafi's Libya, attacking carefully selected targets and nearly killing the"brother leader" himself. Codenamed Operation El Dorado Canyon, the raidwas in direct response to Qaddafi's support of a terrorist act against U.S.service personnel stationed in Europe and...

This book explores the role of gender in influencing war-fighting actors’ strategies toward the attack or protection of civilians. Traditional narratives suggest that killing civilians intentionally in wars happens infrequently and that the perpetration of civilian targeting is limited to aberrant actors. Recently, scholars have shown that both state and non-state actors target civilians, even while explicitly deferring to the civilian immunity principle. This book fills a gap in the accounts o...

Map best viewed on a tablet device. An account of the Spanish civil war which portrays the struggles of the war, as well as discussing the wider implications of the revolution in the Republican zone, the emergence of brutal dictatorship on the nationalist side and the extent to which the Spanish war prefigured World War II. No war in modern times has inflamed the passions of both ordinary people and intellectuals in the way that the conflict in Spain in 1936 did. The Spanish...

From the television footage shown in all its stark reality and the daily coverage and subsequent memoirs, the impression delivered from the air battles in the Falklands Conflict was that of heroic Argentine pilots who relentlessly pressed home their attacks against the British. While, by contrast, there is a counter-narrative that portrayed the Sea Harrier force as being utterly dominant over its Argentine enemies. But what was the reality of the air war over the Falkland Islands? While books o...

On 8th December 1941, as part of the simultaneous combined attack against Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) invaded the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia and the British colony of Hong Kong. After only 18 days of battle the defenders, a weak, undermanned brigade, were overwhelmed by a superior force of two battle-hardened IJA divisions. What defines the battle of Hong Kong was not the scale - just 14,000 defended the colony - but the intensity of this battle, fought not only by the...

On 9 July 1860 CE, an outbreak of violence in the inner-city Christian quarter of Damascus created shock waves locally and internationally. This book provides a step-by-step presentation of events and issues to assess the true role of all the players and shapers of events. It critically examines the internal and external politico-socio-economic factors involved and argues that economic interests rather than religious fanaticism were the main causes for the riot of 1860. Furthermore, it argues th...

The emperors of the Komnenian dynasty orchestrated the economic and military renewal of the Byzantine Empire. In 1081, Alexios I became emperor of a bankrupt and diminished empire. In 1180, Manuel I ruled the most powerful state in the eastern Mediterranean, capable of sending expeditions to Egypt, Hungary, Italy, and Palestine. This study examines how the Komnenian emperors restored the Byzantine state by building a professional army of mercenaries and Byzantine citizens. It examines the army's...

Scotland in the 17th century was an independent country whose king was the King of England. Charles' proposed remodelling of the Scottish Kirk succeeded in alienating the Protestant population. In 1638 a National Covenant was signed throughout the country, opposing the King's reforms. In 1639 and 1640 two brief wars saw King Charles defeated and Scotland's independence re-asserted. However, one of the leaders, Montrose, was eclipsed by his rivals and in 1644 Montrose raised a Royalist rebellion....

"As cyber-attacks dominate front-page news, as hackers displace terrorists on the list of global threats, and as top generals warn of a coming cyber war, few books are more timely and enlightening than Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, by Slate columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Fred Kaplan. Kaplan probes the inner corridors of the National Security Agency, the beyond-top-secret cyber units in the Pentagon, the "information warfare" squads of the military services, an...

The Human Terrain System (HTS) was catapulted into existence in 2006 by the US military's urgent need for knowledge of the human dimension of the battlespace in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its centrepiece was embedded groups of mixed military and civilian personnel, known as Human Terrain Teams (HTTs), whose mission was to conduct social science research and analysis and to advise military commanders about the local population. Bringing social science - and actual social scientists - to the wars in Ir...

One of Eastern Europe's most important writers, Croatian journalist and novelist Drakulic takes readers into the violent and bitter maelstrom that is the Yugoslavian conflict. In a series of brilliant and poignant personal essays, she describes how ordinary people respond to this gruesome situation.

Different versions of the jet have provided the backbone of the frontline strength of the Iranian air force since the 1970s, and whole generations of Iranian pilots and ground personnel have been trained to fly and maintain them. Indeed, the type bore the brunt of active combat operations during the long war with Iraq. Iranian F-4 Phantom IIs were also some of best equipped examples ever exported by the USA. Some Iranian Phantom II pilots gathered immense experience on the type, flying it in com...