Search results for ""Author Fred Charles Iklé""

In this eloquent and impassioned book, defense expert Fred Ikle predicts a revolution in national security that few strategists have grasped; fewer still are mindful of its historic roots. We are preoccupied with suicide bombers, jihadist terrorists, and rogue nations producing nuclear weapons, but these menaces are merely distant thunder that foretells the gathering storm. It is the dark side of technological progress that explains this emerging crisis. Globalization guarantees the spread of new technologies, whether beneficial or destructive, and this proliferation reaches beyond North Korea, Iran, and other rogue states. Our greatest threat is a cunning tyrant gaining possession of a few weapons of mass destruction. His purpose would not be to destroy landmarks, highjack airplanes, or attack railroad stations. He would annihilate a nation's government from within and assume dictatorial power. The twentieth century offers vivid examples of tyrants who have exploited major national disasters by rallying violent followers and intimidating an entire nation. To explain how we have become so vulnerable, Ikle turns to history. Some 250 years ago, science was freed from political and religious constraints, causing a cultural split in which one part of our culture remained animated by religion and politics while the other became guided by science. Since then, technological progress and the evolving political order march to different drummers. Science advances at an accelerating pace while religion and politics move along a zigzag course. This divergence will widen and endanger the survival of all nations. Drawing on his experience as a Washington insider, Ikle outlines practical measures that could readily be implemented to help us avert the worst disaster.

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"Mission accomplished," George Bush famously proclaimed in reference to the defeat of Saddam Hussein's military organization. However, as recent events in Iraq have once again demonstrated, it is much easier to start a war than it is to end it. Every War Must End, which Colin Powell credits in his autobiography with having shaped his thinking on how to end the first Gulf War, analyzes the many critical obstacles to ending a war--an aspect of military strategy that is frequently and tragically overlooked. This book explores the difficult and often painful process through which wars in the modern age have been brought to a close and what this process means for the future. Ikle considers a variety of examples from twentieth-century history and examines specific strategies that effectively "won the peace," including the Allied policy in Germany and Japan after World War II. In the new preface to his classic work, Ikle explains how U.S. political decisions and military strategy and tactics in Iraq-the emphasis on punishing Iraqi leaders, not seeking a formal surrender, and the failure to maintain law and order-have delayed, and indeed jeopardized, a successful end to hostilities.

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