|
|
|
Sort Order |
|
|
|
Items / Page
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
131415
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
The outbreak of the First World War remains a great historical puzzle and a source of concern, for if we do not understand how it came about we run the risk of stumbling into a similar catastrophe. This article draws parallels between the world of 1914 and the present. It starts with comfortable assumptions made by so many, then and now, that a major conflict was impossible or improbable and then looks at the paradox that globalization not only made the world more interdependent and linked, but also fostered intense local and national identities. It suggests factors that propelled Europe to war in 1914, including national rivalries, imperialism, the arms race and a shifting power balance between rising and declining powers, as well as ideologies and assumptions such as Social Darwinism and militarism, and points out that similar forces and ideas are present today. The article also stresses the dangerous complacency that can arise as a result of decision-makers having successfully dealt with a series of crises. European decision-makers also assumed that they could successfully use war as an instrument of policy and largely ignored or explained away the mounting evidence that the advantage in conflict was swinging to the defence. Again, as the author points out, there are disquieting parallels with the present.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 2 |
ID:
131427
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Adolf Hitler's experiences during the First World War have been much discussed, with historians tending to concentrate on his involvement in the fighting and the operational lessons he later claimed to draw. Much less has been written about the impact of the war on his world view, though recent work has tended to suggest that his paranoid anti-Semitism was not yet visible during the conflict. Drawing on this latest research, but also on newly discovered sources and previously underused material, the author shows that Hitler's main preoccupation during the war and its immediate aftermath was the overwhelming power of Great Britain and its American ally. He associated these two powers with the alleged international Jewish economic conspiracy that had crushed the German empire. Hitler's anti-Semitism thus originated in an anti-capitalist, rather than anti-communist, discourse. He blamed Britain and the US for the rigours of the Versailles peace settlement, a moment which was far more politically formative for him than the experience of defeat itself. His encounter with American soldiers in the summer of 1918 also marked his first engagement with the global power of the United States and the start of a belief in the demographic weakness of the German empire which inspired his plans for Lebensraum in the east.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 3 |
ID:
130269
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines the challenges allies face in coordinating diplomatic efforts to accommodate and peel off their main enemy's Potential Allies. It elucidates the key dimensions, and the underlying Coordination Dynamics, of this problem of "concerted accommodation," and it develops propositions about the conditions that shape the efficacy of such efforts. The argument links allies' strength to their divergent or convergent assessments of the target state's ability to tip the war toward victory or defeat. Divergent assessments foster weak allied efforts that are likely to fail, but when allies agree that the target is a potential "war-tipper," they will support their concerted accommodation policy with more robust cooperation that is more likely to work. The causal arguments and mechanisms are examined in a paired comparison analysis of two First World War cases: the Entente's efforts to induce (1) Ottoman neutrality and (2) Italian intervention.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 4 |
ID:
134191
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
The article focuses on the AEF, entry into WW1; its impact on the allies and revisionist histories of John Pershing's leadership and the outcome of the conflict.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 5 |
ID:
130239
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Almost every war that America has fought since the beginning of the twentieth century was a war America had determined to avoid. We were neutral in World War I?.?.?.?until unlimited submarine warfare against our trans-Atlantic shipping became intolerable. We resisted entering World War II until Pearl Harbor. We defined the Korean peninsula as lying outside our "defense perimeter," as our secretary of state declared in 1950, a few months before North Korea attacked South Korea and we leapt into the fray. A few years later, we rebuffed French appeals for support in Vietnam in order to avoid involving ourselves in that distant country which was soon to become the venue of our longest war and greatest defeat. In 1990, our ambassador to Iraq explained to Saddam Hussein that Washington had "no opinion on?.?.?.?your border disagreement with Kuwait," which he took as encouragement to swallow his small neighbor, forcing a half million Americans to travel around the world to force him to disgorge it. A year after that, our secretary of state quipped about the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia that "we have no dog in that fight," a sentiment echoed by his successor, of the opposite party, who, demonstrating his virtuosity at geography, observed that that country was "a long way from home" in a place where we lacked "vital interests"-all this not long before we sent our air force to bomb Serbia into ceasing its attacks on Bosnia and then bombed it again a few years later until it coughed up Kosovo.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 6 |
ID:
128719
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2013.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Buster hated anchoring. In all his years in command of frigates no other ship's evolution had developed such capacity for cock - up. As he mounted the bridge ladder he expected the worst, and was rarely disappointed. An unconvincing report, the hint of a fumble on the focsle chippy's grubby cap at an unusually rakish angle - and the bridge steps would run red.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 7 |
ID:
131430
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This article explores the way in which art can illuminate war, in particular the Great War. It focuses on Paul Klee's painting, Angelus novus (1920), and the interpretation of that painting by Walter Benjamin, who owned it, in his celebrated theses 'On the concept of history' (1940). Benjamin's interpretation was a kind of parable: he called it the angel of history. Some have taken inspiration from that characterization; others have offered striking alternatives, including Kaiser Wilhelm II and even Adolf Hitler. The article traces the evolution of these identifications; it also considers the continuing artistic response, in historical perspective-notably Anselm Kiefer's The angel of history: poppy and memory (1989). It argues that our conception of the war, and of all wars, is profoundly affected by artistic imagination, and re-imagination.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 8 |
ID:
133874
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Which modern operations becoming increasingly joint in their nature and airpower now in intrinsic part of every military operation, the need for independent air forces is questioned with special emphasis on the British case
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 9 |
ID:
131424
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
From its foundation in 1918, the new Austrian republic was gripped by famine and a crisis of confidence in its currency that threatened to tip the new state into hyperinflation and revolution. This article shows how western efforts to aid Austria combat famine and its financial crisis were linked, and how they had a profound impact on the new League of Nations, the world's first multi-purpose intergovernmental organization. It also demonstrates the importance of the incipient wartime international bureaucracy for League agency. Contrary to the expectations of its architects, member governments, international financiers, businessmen and economists began to see the League as a useful tool to meet common needs that today would be called the search for human security. The article demonstrates how the Austrian food and financial crisis was the founding moment in the institutionalization of international economic and financial coordination, cooperation and oversight. It established the Economic and Financial Organization of the League of Nations, whose work would later inform its successors, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Union. The study speaks to the ways in which the notion of security has broadened in the past two decades to embrace economic, social, political and environmental concerns. But the notion of 'human security' is not new; it was written into the body of the League.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 10 |
ID:
133804
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Austria-Hungary's experience of Germany's junior partner was fraught with misunderstandings and a failure to devise a coherent common strategy
While the Anglo-French experience of coalition warfare during the First World War has been the subject of many English-language volumes, Austria-Hungary's relationship with Germany - its senior partner within the Triple Alliance - has been underexplored. In this article, Günther Kronenbitter analyses the uneasy dynamics of this alliance, tracing it through the two countries' wilfully blinkered, thirty-year preparations for a war that eventually came in August 1914, before exploring their increasingly fraught and inadequate efforts to co-ordinate their campaigns and resources - a process marked by resentment and, more importantly, a failure to take a unified strategic approach.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 11 |
ID:
133061
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Winston Churchill is best remembered as a valiant leader in times of war. He should also be remembered, however, for his efforts to prevent the catastrophic great wars that would scar the history of the twentieth century. While it is largely forgotten today, on the eve of the First World War Churchill made a remarkable attempt to halt the head-to-head competition in naval armaments that was setting Great Britain and Germany against one another as adversaries. In a bold and unconventional initiative, Churchill invited Germany's rulers to take a "holiday" from the competitive building of battleships. As the civilian head of Britain's Royal Navy, Churchill made public appeals for a naval holiday on three separate occasions before 1914. Behind the scenes too he pressed for the opening of negotiations with Germany, using the holiday proposal as the starting point for discussions. It was Churchill's earnest hope that the naval holiday would stop the action-reaction dynamic of the arms race-what statesmen of that era called "the sea war waged in the dockyards"-and reduce the antagonism between Britain and Germany. Rather than letting Britain and Germany be arrayed in opposing camps, he wanted to promote cooperation between Europe's two leading great powers.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 12 |
ID:
134088
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
One reason why Europe went to war in 1914 is that all of the continental great powers judged it a favorable moment for them to fight, and all were more pessimistic about postponing the fight until later. Not only is this historical paradox an interesting puzzle in its own right, but it sheds light on what is arguably the reigning theory of the causes of wars in general: James Fearon's rational bargaining theory. None of Fearon's three main mechanisms-private information, commitment problems, or indivisibility of stakes-can explain the paradox of the universal, simultaneous view of 1914 as a favorable year for war. Two mechanisms that play a marginal role in his analysis, however-bounded rationality in multidimensional power assessments and attempts to mitigate power shifts through coercive diplomacy-help to explain how Europe's powers became trapped in a choice between war now and war later. These mechanisms were set in motion by background strategic assumptions rooted in the culture of militarism and nationalism that perversely structured the options facing Europe's political leaders in 1914. Whereas Fearon's theory assumes that states are paying equal attention to all relevant information, in 1914 each power's strategic calculations produced disproportionate levels of self-absorption in its own domestic concerns and alliance anxieties.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 13 |
ID:
131700
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This article investigates the role of status considerations in the response of dominant powers to the rise of emergent states. Accordingly, the hypothesis explored is that dominant actors are prone to fear that they will lose their upper rank, and, due to this status anxiety, resist the efforts of emergent powers to match or surpass them. The article begins by explaining why political actors deem status important and puts forward a theory of status anxiety in world politics. The more pronounced is this anxiety across status dimensions (economic and military capabilities as well as prestige), the higher the likelihood of conflict. This argument is then tested against competing theories of dominant power behaviour in two cases: the relations between France and Britain from the 1740s to Napoleon and those between Britain and Germany from the 1880s to World War One.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 14 |
ID:
134198
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines American reactions to the First World War from 1914 to American belligerence in 1917. Despite Woodrow Wilson's plea for Americans to be neutral, they had strong reactions to the war. These reactions led to three important legacies in America's dealings with the rest of the world.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 15 |
ID:
133799
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
The First World War set British air power on a path of development that by 1939 made an essential contribution to the conduct of war
At the start of the First World War, the potential of air power for military purposes had already been identified but remained largely underdeveloped, with Britain lagging behind some of its direct European competitors. Peter Gray traces how the First World War acted as a catalyst for British forces to use air power in attack and reconnaissance roles, and unleashed the potential for its further development during the interwar years. By the Second World War, air power had become an indispensable element of warfare.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 16 |
ID:
133798
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Negative myths about the British Army's performance, especially during the Great War, obscure the reality of an institution that learned and improvide throughout both world wars
The performance of the British Army in the two world wars has been the subject of much scrutiny in both scholarly and popular history. The latter has long been dominated by the perception of an underperforming army fighting under incompetent leadership in a futile First World War, in contrast to a more successful and effective force supporting a just cause in the Second. Yet, John Buckley and Gary Sheffield argue, sound scholarly research paints a much more nuanced picture of an institution that between 1914 and 1945 underwent a rich learning process that must be understood in its entirety.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 17 |
ID:
133800
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
A counterfactual account of what Britain's leaders could have done prior to the Great War to prepare the country more effectively for fighting a European land war
The decision-making of Britain's political and military leaders in August 1914 has been subject to much scrutiny in the intervening century. Allan Mallinson argues vehemently that the wrong decisions were taken in the years preceding the outbreak of the conflict, and presents a counterfactual of what Britain's experience could have been had conscription been introduced or sounder preparations for a land engagement been made before 1914.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 18 |
ID:
133802
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Britain's war effort was crucially aided by its Dominions, with Canada's experience of the First World War a prime example of this fundamental military contribution
Canada's contribution to the war effort on the Western Front was of fundamental importance throughout the Great War. Tim Cook traces how, over four years, what started as a little-organised contingent of 31,000 troops of mostly citizen-soldiers grew into an effective fighting force that made significant contributions to the final victory over the Central Powers.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 19 |
ID:
132411
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Conservative leaders may have had a decisive impact on the decision by the Liberal government to enter the Great War in August 1914. In a seminal article of 1975, Keith Wilson argued that their readiness to fight "cut the ground … from beneath the feet of the non-interventionists" in the Cabinet. Those ministers who had hitherto opposed war now recognised that continued divisions could bring the government's collapse, in which case the Unionists, probably in a coalition with pro-war Liberals, would take office and enter the conflict anyway. Since Wilson's essay, important light has focussed on Unionist thinking by works that look at the July Crisis as part of a longer party history. This analysis provides a detailed investigation of the actions of Unionist leaders in the days immediately leading to war. It resolves some of the main contradictions in the primary evidence, argues that the possibility of a coalition was very real and demonstrates that one key player-the first lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill-subsequently tried, with some success, to disguise his activities.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 20 |
ID:
131414
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
The article explores parallels between the fragility of globalization on the eve of the First World War, in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 1907, and today's crisis of globalization following the post-2007 recession. The fragility and interconnectedness of the international economy in both cases could provide a basis for an economic-military strategy. The temptation of using economic connectedness as a substitute for conventional and costly military strategy makes this course particularly attractive to a hegemon-the UK then, the US now-that is facing powerful competition from rising powers (Germany and the US then, China now). The challengers are likely to find their own alternative strategy, and the result breeds uncertainty. In consequence, rule-based international orders are generally strained by transitions of power, even though all the parties see the desirability and need for a common system of rules
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|