Wars of revelation : the transformative effects of military intervention on grand strategy /
"More than seventy-five years since the end of World War II, military interventions - rather than major wars - have emerged as a defining feature of contemporary geopolitics. Yet, for all the fierce policy debates over interventions and their lessons, scholars have largely ignored the systemati...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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New York, NY, United States of America :
Oxford University Press,
[2021]
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | "More than seventy-five years since the end of World War II, military interventions - rather than major wars - have emerged as a defining feature of contemporary geopolitics. Yet, for all the fierce policy debates over interventions and their lessons, scholars have largely ignored the systematic linkages between these smaller-scale wars and transformations in the grand strategies of states that prosecute them. Wars of Revelation develops a new theory - the informational theory of strategic adjustment - to explain why military interventions can be crucibles of grand strategy. It argues that, by prosecuting a military intervention, states glean rich and rare information about adversaries' capabilities and intentions, as well as their own military power and cost tolerance. The uniquely costly nature of warfighting renders this data particularly credible. Amidst background conditions of intense interstate competition and pervasive uncertainty, states face strong incentives to reassess their grand strategies in light of this new information. This process of grand-strategic updating begins with a reassessment of the strategic assumptions directly tested on the battlefield, but it doesn't end there. Indeed, the grand strategic effects of military interventions are far-reaching because information conveyed via warfighting is widely extrapolated to related strategic assessments. Wars of Revelation demonstrates the plausibility of the informational theory of strategic adjustment in three historically detailed case studies that trace the evolution of American grand strategy over the course of the Cold War and into the early post-Cold War era: the Korean, Vietnam, and First Gulf Wars"-- As American foreign policy experts anticipate a new Cold War with China, there is no better time to reflect on the evolution of the United States' grand strategy during its decades-long contest with Russia. Lissner shows that military interventions in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq were crucibles for American foreign policy in the latter half of the 20th century, testing strategic axioms on the battlefield and compelling adjustments to Washington's conception of its global role. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xii, 225 pages). |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780197583227 0197583229 9780197583203 0197583202 9780197583210 0197583210 |