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Ignorant Armies: Tales and Morals of an Alien Empire combines startling stories from the life of an American diplomat with equally startling opinions about the country he represented abroad for over three decades. Charles Sam Courtney chose his book's title to convey bizarreness, the bizarreness of some of the things that happened to him as well as the bizarreness of contemporary America's behavior toward the rest of the world. In his Forward and in Chapters II, IV and VI he expresses his dismay at what has become of the United States in the post-Cold War era. He depicts the decline of the country from its former status as the world's model nation to its current one as global pariah. He attributes this decline, not to mischievous foreign powers or even to wicked politics at home, but rather to the Americans themselves. He describes how the pervasive culture of consumerism and overweening ignorance of Americans have left them incapable of engaging in the kind of enlightened public discourse a genuine democracy demands. He considers the decline irreparable, and he has come to believe that he has lost his country. After a lifetime of service to America, his loss is personal and painful. In Chapters I, III and V he recounts some personal episodes in his life as a diplomat. He was a hostage to terrorists twice, once in the Near East and once in the United States Senate. On an earlier occasion, as a brand new junior diplomat, he was fired for slugging a journalist. JFK saved his career, but in a heart-rending way. Not long after that Courtney helped his Turkish secretary in Istanbul pursue an illicit affair, with the result that interlocking sexual and political betrayals disrupted the Soviet Union's espionage operations throughout the Near East. A few years later in Calcutta he was encouraged by the CIA, no less, to fall into a Soviet sex trap. He concludes his personal reminiscences by describing his friendship with a man who probably was the KGB station chief in London but who, in 1992, was seeing his world turn upside down. This poignant tale and those preceding it capture the Cold-War world that was. They also foreshadow the world that was to come.
"The closing months of 1977 saw the beginning of the most important debate on the functions and future of American intelligence since the original National Security Act of 1947 signaled the rise of what has become an intelligence empire. The Senate Intelligence hearings, the Watergate revelations, and the daily barrage of leaks and exposés about "mind control" and mail-opening programs were merely a prelude to the struggle to reorganize and control the bweildering proliferation of agencies, activities, and responsibilities that make up the vital intelligence shield of this country. The Armies of Ignorance is one of the most authoratative and important contributions to understanding what has gone on in the sprawling intelligence community and what must be done to ensure this country's real "national security." Part of the task is historical -- this book examines the entire history of American espionage from the Revolution to the present. The more important and more difficult task is that of relating how the intelligence establishment has really functioned since the early days of the Second World War and how its unwritten law compares with Congressional mandates, executive orders, and the U.S. Constitution..."--Book jacket.
In Armies of Deliverance, Elizabeth Varon offers both a sweeping narrative of the Civil War and a bold new interpretation of Union and Confederate war aims.
Armies of Arabia is the first book to comprehensively analyze the armed forces of the Gulf monarchies. Zoltan Barany explains the conspicuous ineffectiveness of Gulf militaries with a combination of political-structural and sociocultural factors. Following a brief exposition on their historical evolution, he explores the region's six armies of the region comparatively, through the lenses of military politics, sociology, economics, and diplomacy. The book'sthemes come together in the last chapter that critically evaluates the Saudi and Emirati armed forces' record in the on-going war in Yemen.
Explains the motivation of ordinary soldiers to enlist, serve and fight in the armies of eighteenth-century Europe.
The shattering final instalment of Philip Reeve's Predator Cities quartet flings you back into his blasted world of predator cities, ruinous wars and terrifying Stalkers. Abandoned by Hester, Tom and Wren stumble across the wreckage of a vast traction city: London. As the Green Storm take arms and the truce with the Traction Cities splinters, the world is on a collision course - beginning and ending in London's ruined shell. As everything Tom and Hester know and love hurtles towards apocalypse, who will be left to tell the tale? Winner of the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize 2007, this epic finale is fast-moving, thrilling, heartbreaking - and as exciting as hell!
From the jungles of west Africa to the killing fields of the former Yugoslavia, wherever the next global hotspot flares into action, the private military waits, ready to step into the fray. Once they were known as "soldiers of fortune." Now, they call themselves "military advisors." The honourable history of soldiers-for-hire clashes with the modern distaste for "mercenaries." In this compelling and controversial new book, James Davis reveals the shadowy inside world of the multi-billion-dollar international security industry.