Books in the Praeger Security International series

Since the first edition of this book was published in 2009, significant changes have occurred in the security landscape, both domestically and internationally. This second edition is thoroughly updated to reflect those changes, offering a complete review of the various security and resilience measures currently in place and potential strategies to safeguard life and property within the U.S. homeland. As noted in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's National Preparedness Goal, the mission area of protection is vital to the homeland in its focus on actions to protect people, vital interests, and our nation's way of life. With that in mind, this book discusses strategies such as risk analysis and assessment, information sharing, and continuity planning. The authors focus on relevant and timely threats and hazards facing specific infrastructure components including, but not limited to, agriculture and food, banking and finance, water, energy, telecommunications, and transportation. The dynamic posture of critical infrastructure security and resilience (CISR) underscores the importance of an integrated, layered all-hazards approach. In describing this approach, the book includes new chapters on planning and guidance, public and private partnerships, cyber issues and threats, and careers in infrastructure protection. Additions such as discussion questions, learning objectives, and fundamental concepts for each chapter provide additional direction for instructors and students alike.

This comprehensive work provides a treasure trove of ways to seek, find, and use the power of will to gain an advantage over one's opponents in mental conflicts.Will has been-and always will be-the basis for succeeding in any conflict or competition. To win in a conflict or competition, decision-makers must comprehend the meaning and implications of will and successfully transform theories about it into practice. In the 21st century, it is especially important for military leaders and security professionals to comprehend will in sufficient depth to enable them to impose their will on other resisting entities and learn how to block or parry their adversaries' efforts to impose their will on them. This book will go a long way in helping decision-makers achieve these goals.Each chapter in this book addresses one of 14 elements that will help readers to use will successfully over their adversaries: life-force, purpose, strength of motive, capabilities, determination, perseverance, sacrifice, passion, advantage, disadvantage, imposition, action, assessment, and adaptation. The book also provides readers with 18 considerations that will serve them well in all types of conflicts. This book will be particularly beneficial to decision-makers in the military, law enforcement, and business, as well as attorneys and judges.

This illuminating book examines and refines the commonplace "wisdom" about cyber conflict-its effects, character, and implications for national and individual security in the 21st century."Cyber warfare" evokes different images to different people. This book deals with the technological aspects denoted by "cyber" and also with the information operations connected to social media's role in digital struggle.The author discusses numerous mythologies about cyber warfare, including its presumptively instantaneous speed, that it makes distance and location irrelevant, and that victims of cyber attacks deserve blame for not defending adequately against attacks. The author outlines why several widespread beliefs about cyber weapons need modification and suggests more nuanced and contextualized conclusions about how cyber domain hostility impacts conflict in the modern world.After distinguishing between the nature of warfare and the character of wars, chapters will probe the widespread assumptions about cyber weapons themselves. The second half of the book explores the role of social media and the consequences of the digital realm being a battlespace in 21st-century conflicts. The book also considers how trends in computing and cyber conflict impact security affairs as well as the practicality of people's relationships with institutions and trends, ranging from democracy to the Internet of Things.

Is NATO still in the best interest of the United States? This provocative work argues that the focus on NATO distracts the U.S. from the vital foreign policy challenges of the 21st century, most notably China's rise in power.Since its beginning in 1949, NATO-the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-has been at the center of U.S. foreign policy. The alliance was crucial during the decades of the Cold War, and the United States collaborated closely with NATO during crises in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libya. But does the NATO alliance still serve the best interests of the U.S.?The NATO of today-one that has expanded to 30 member countries-risks involving the U.S. in unwanted military activities of the future, actions that were not intended in the original Atlantic alliance. In addition, the real challenges for foreign policy of 21st century are not in Europe, but in the expanding economic powerhouses in Asia, especially China. NATO Reconsidered argues that the changes in world politics in recent decades requires that the more than 70-year-old alliance should no longer be the principal focus of U.S. foreign policy.

A reference for national security professionals, political appointees in the security realm, and others who participate in the formulation, evaluation, and execution of strategy, in addition to those who study and follow national security debates.

"This book is an indispensable resource for anyone looking to understand the Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar's role in promoting the group, and the ideological, social, and religious factors that have led to its ultimate failure"--

Why do the combat capabilities of individual soldiers vary so much? In this first social scientific study of the effectiveness of combat troops, Newsome evaluates competing explanations for the varying combat capabilities and performances. There are four main explanations, each emphasizing the influence of a single factor.

With the end of the Cold War, the euphoria of the Gulf War of the 1990s and the avowal of a New World Order, peace-operations were declared as the recipe for a better world through international intervention in conflict arenas.

This text explores the historical and contemporary causes of militant Islamic fundamentalism. It also shows why, despite their terrorist attacks on the West, fundamentalists are even more dangerous to Muslim countries that want to join the global economy.

The threat of weapons of mass destruction is still viable, and unless proper motions are made to prohibit this, global safety is still at risk. Prior arms control agreements have moved humanity within striking distance of global prohibition, yet these weapons of mass destruction remain. This enlightening work discusses original principles for a treaty banning nuclear and chem-bio weapons worldwide. Mattis argues that a proposed new nuclear treaty, replacing today's inadequate 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, would demand unanimous accession by States which must be achieved before such a treaty enters into force. By asking essential questions, and offering value-creative proposals for nuclear treaty provisions, this work offers a clear path to the daylight of worldwide weapons of mass destruction prohibition.Not only is global safety threatened by the use of nuclear and chem-bio weapons, but more inclusively, today, society is at risk of nuclear weapons being stolen or acquired by terrorists for purposes of destruction. This risk lends to a necessary treaty that would require down-blending of highly enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium to eliminate this prospect. The heart of this work is its delineation of necessary elements for a nuclear ban treaty that addresses inevitable concerns of all States, especially today's nine nuclear weapon States. Mattis addresses 17 major proposed treaty provisions that include: how to suitably ascertain "e;unanimous accession"e; by states to a nuclear ban treaty (unanimity being a condition for entry into force); requirement that states be signatories to the current chemical and biological weapons bans [CWC/BWC] prior to signing a nuclear ban treaty; "e;non-withdrawal"e; by states from the treaty once it is in effect; necessary and new verification elements for banning nuclear weapons; the establishment, via nuclear ban provision, of "e;non-withdrawal"e; from the CWC and BWC. By asking essential questions, and offering illuminating proposals for nuclear ban treaty provisions, the work offers a path to a safer future through worldwide prohibition of weapons of mass destruction.