Showing posts with label military history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label military history. Show all posts

Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World Review

Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World
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Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World ReviewThe U.S. National Security Act of 1947 established a national security structure which was felt to be necessary to protect the U.S. from what was perceived as serious threats from foreign and domestic enemies. Almost immediately a parallel structure, invisible to public, was created as a compliment to the public national security establishment. This parallel structure is what this absolutely fascinating book refers to as the "black world."
According to Trevor Paglen, a geographer by trade, this black world can bounded by adroit compilation of blank areas on official maps, deleted passages from official documents, and acute observations of restricted areas and activities. Well he has certainly done a very thorough job of it. He begins with the secret and unacknowledged government test sites scattered throughout the country, but especially in the South Western U.S. that actually employ an astonishingly large number military and civilian workers yet still are literarily off the map. He subsequently tackles such arcane topics as black operations, black funding, and a host of other unacknowledged, often denied, U.S. activities including questionable and even illegal programs and operations. Perhaps the most discouraging information he provides is how easily it is for officials of the black world to hoodwink congress and the media, both nominal guards against government excesses. Certainly the most astonishing thing he reveals is that the black world in total may employ as many as 4 million military and civilians who carry secret or higher clearances. The fact that this many people can be involved and yet so many black activities remain completely off the gird is pretty scary in itself.
This reviewer has tremendous respect for the academic discipline of geography. It combines some of the best features of social and physical science and perhaps is the most effective system for understanding the phenomenon of Globalization. Some 60 years ago one branch of geography that was called "cultural geography" sought to describe the relationship between societies and the environment in which they lived. The term may no longer be used, but Paglen is a cultural geographer in the best sense of the term.
Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World Overview

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Grasping the Democratic Peace Review

Grasping the Democratic Peace
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Grasping the Democratic Peace ReviewThis book is a collection of Russet's earlier work on the democratic peace, the finding that no two democracy have ever gone to war with one another, with an emphasis on those works that expand the empirical realm of testing. The first two chapters essentially summarize the literature on the democratic peace (up until 1993) explaining both its empirical roots and the theoretical arguments. After summarizing the normative and structural explanations, Russett (with William Antholis) attempts to discover if the democratic peace extended to Ancient Greece. Finding only minor support Russett hypothesizes that peace needs not only the simple institutions of democracy, but also the perception, by other democracies, of the type of regime. Without the mutual recognition the norms and institutions democracy may fail to prevent conflict. Russett (with Zeev Maoz) then applies the democratic peace to the post World War II era and finds that joint democracy does in fact promote peace. The last empirical study in the book deals with non-industrial societies (done with Carol and Melvin Ember). While it remains difficult to gain a strong relationship, they do find that participation, joint participatory societies, matters in reducing conflict. In general, this book is a good summary of Russett's early work on the democratic peace and provides some interesting tests as the theory is applied to non-nation-state eras. For those new to this literature it is a good place to start.Grasping the Democratic Peace Overview

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