Reddit mentions: The best military strategy history books

CMDR-FusionCor3 :

Why does NASA not have double the funding from Obama era? I did an EPQ

dissertation on wether NASA was worth the cost, and found that, holy shit yes

it was. Instead of having an army three times as big as the next biggest and

twelve times as big as the next, why not divert funding to education and

science?

SirT6 :

Interestingly, if you look at their [budget

dashboard](https://www.aaas.org/page/federal-rd-budget-dashboard), you'll see

that defense spending has contracted sharply since the beginning of the

reporting period. Most budget growth appears to be in the form of mandatory

spending outlays, mostly associated with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social

Security.

: EconomistMagazine :

:

: That still means we have a huge military though. Even if it's cut it's

: still many times bigger than it needs to be.

:

:: AAAS-AMA :

::

:: JS: Both /u/idtenterro and /u/Minotard make good points below. And I

:: think the broader point I would make is, science and space advocates

:: should make a prospective case for why NASA funding is important, not

:: attack other areas of funding that are important for their own reasons

:: and deeply valued by others. Also, even if the Defense Department were

:: cut, there's no guarantee (and indeed not even a likelihood) that that

:: funding would go to NASA or any other particular place. The piece I

:: linked to above bears that out historically, and there are procedural

:: reasons why that would be highly unlikely as well.

::

: AAAS-AMA :

:

: JS: This is a really important point. Matt wrote this [excellent

: piece](https://www.aaas.org/news/federal-investment-and-peace-dividend)

: about what he termed the "peace dividend" a couple years ago. In it he

: makes exactly this point, as defense spending has ramped down after wars,

: that funding has by and large gone to payments to individuals (largely

: through entitlement programs). The category of things considered

: investments -- namely research, education, and infrastructure -- have been

: on a steady decline as a share of the budget since the peak of the Apollo

: Era. This has been true across both Republican and Democratic Congresses

: and Administrations.

:

AAAS-AMA :

JS: If return on investment were the only, or even the primary, metric by

which we decided where to spend tax dollars, NASA, science and engineering

across the board really, early childhood education, and infrastructure would

probably be the best funded parts of the government. Clearly that is not the

case. There are A LOT of factors that go into policymaking, but to quote Judy

Schneider, long time Congressional Research Service Specialist on Congress,

there are three Ps to policymaking: policy, politics, and process; all three

have to be done right for a bill to become a law. Bad politics and getting

the procedural moves wrong can quickly kill a bill, so often the first P to

go is policy. The question of why NASA's budget isn't bigger, or why any

science or education funding line isn't, is largely about the overall size of

the budget pie Congress has to split up. The history of R&D funding shows

that it is basically a [fixed fraction (~

11%)](https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/BudgetDISC;.jpg) of the total

discretionary funding level. Discretionary funding is the part that Congress

debates every year, as opposed to Mandatory programs like Medicare, Medicaid,

and Social Security, which are funded automatically year to year based on

formulas. When there's more funding in general, more tends to flow to R&D.

The exception is the Space Race, of course, but as many others can argue much

more eloquently than me, that was chiefly about international competition and

national security rather than science (see e.g., John Logsdon). One other

important point here is that there have been huge dividends in terms of

technological advances out of the Defense Department, especially the Defense

Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Here's just [one

piece](https://www.ft.com/content/8c0152d2-d0f2-11e2-be7b-00144feab7de)

exploring how (and in part why) DoD research laid the foundation for a lot of

modern technology. It's an interesting story. I personally am hoping to read

[Sharon Weinberger's The Imagineers of War](https://www.amazon.com

/Imagineers-War-Untold-Pentagon-Changed-ebook/dp/B01HA4JUEA) soon.

AAAS-AMA :

MH: Adding to what Josh said, and to try to bring this down to the point at

which Congress has to actually decide: agencies are divvied up in spending

bills, and if you're an appropriator and you want to (say) double NASA:

either you need a much bigger spending bill, or you need to find that money

by cutting something else currently in your bill. Well, in the current

process NASA is in the same bill as NSF and the Commerce and Justice

departments. If you don't have a bigger bill, what do you cut to grow the

NASA budget? FBI? The Weather Service? The National Marine Fisheries Service?

Most things in most bills have supporters that will put up a fight, even if

they support your ultimate goal of growing NASA. These are the kinds of

trade-offs appropriators have to grapple with.

-----------------------------------------------------------


SirT6 :



Hi and thank you for doing this AMA! Can you talk a bit about how US spending

on R&D compares to other nations? Further, when determining how to spend R&D

dollars, what are the key metrics that politicians consider (return on

investment, portfolio diversification etc)?

AAAS-AMA :

Matt Hourihan (MH): OECD maintains some very useful country profiles that put

national S&T metrics in international context - [here's the U.S. one](https:/

/www.oecd.org/sti/outlook/e-outlook/sticountryprofiles/unitedstates.htm). In

a nutshell, we're at or near the top on several metrics like total dollars

spent, number of elite universities, high-impact papers, triadic patents,

etc; but a lot of this is due to our size. On some science-relevant metrics

we're closer to the OECD median (which is not a bad place to be, though we

can also do better). One of our bigger strengths, besides size, is an

innovative and dynamic business sector. On R&D/GDP overall we're 10th in the

world, with investment ramping up in the Far East in recent years. But that

OECD link has a lot more really interesting data comparisons.

-----------------------------------------------------------


modestmeece91 :



When discussing R & D with republican senators (not in regards to environment)

is their any enthusiasm in regards to funding progress in research involving

biology and medicine? has the well been poisoned by partisan politics involving

scientific policy?

AAAS-AMA :

MH: Biomedical research most definitely has bipartisan support, and has for

many years. Republicans were in the front lines during the push to double NIH

in the 1990s. [Here's an interview with Tom Cole of

Oklahoma](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/23/15674704/trump-

health-research-tom-cole), Republican who runs the House appropriations panel

responsible for NIH funding, and who loves him some NIH. And [here's an

item](http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-

government/congress/article138974053.html) on Cole's counterpart in the

Senate, Missouri's Roy Blunt, among others. Another big NIH supporter.

-----------------------------------------------------------

IamAbot_v01. Alpha version. Under care of /u/oppon.
Comment 5 of 6
Updated at 2017-06-02 07:51:50.575830

This is the final update to this thread

Oh what specifically?

As far as East Asia/Indian Ocean stuff, Robert Kaplan is a pretty good introduction. His book Monsoon is a really good primer on the history of the Indian Ocean region, and it's ongoing (and increasing) importance in international politics. His new book Asia's Cauldron is promising, I haven't read it yet but it is a contemporary and forward looking take at the South China Sea and its role in shaping the future of international relations in the region. I actually just bought it the other day and will be reading it soon (spending the next 18-33 months abroad doing various things). Kaplan's books tend to be a very readable mix of history, personal anecdotes, and political analysis. Sometimes he can get a bit full of himself, especially in sections of Monsoon, but he does a great job at making what he writes accessible to a wide audience while still being at least interesting to read for academics.

For a primer on broad international relations, International Politics is a great starting point. This was my introduction to the field, and while it can be quite dense, it is very informative. It is a collection of essays and articles that is aimed at an intro level IR class (100 level), so while it is certainly on the academic side of things, it is still very approachable, so long as you have the patience to occasionally look up terms and concepts, for someone with no academic background in the subject.

As far as a general reading on grand strategy, I have only heard amazing things about Charles Hill's Grand Strategies. Basically it examines military grand strategy from a historical perspective, the politics behind the strategy, and also ties it into popular literature (such as Shakespeare) in order to make the concepts approachable and digestible for the average person.

For modern military theory that is applicable to today's world, and probably worth understanding given what has been going on in the world for the past decade and what continues to happen, you might be interested in David Kilcullen's The Accidental Guerrilla. Kilcullen has two major books on insurgency, one is Counterinsurgency which is a higher level approach to the topic, while Accidental Guerrilla is a distillation of his observations and studies on counterinsurgency viewed put into a framework that would be easier for the average person to understand.

Admittedly I am a bit biased, as Francis Fukuyama is a family friend, but his latest works The Origins of Political Order and Political Order and Political Decay are great looks into how and why the state system arose, as well as flaws in political systems, corruption, etc.

His earlier (and more famous) book, The End of History and the Last Man is still a very interesting read, although without the proper framing it can be a bit odd in the current global political climate. It works off of a concept that I think is best described in Phillip Bobbit's The Shield of Achilles, which Bobbit terms the "long war". The grand concept of the Long War is that the game changing interstate conflicts throughout history have predominantly been between different types of states. It is a bit of a Darwinist look at state politics and political order, seeing different political models (democracy, communism, fascism, monarchy, etc) as directly competing, and there being a series of successors. The End of History works off of a similar premise, basically saying that once the Soviet Union collapses (it was originally formulated as a series of articles in the late 1980s), Liberal Democratic Capitalism would be the predominant political system, and that it would mark the "end of history" as we knew it up to that point. History had been dominated by massive regional and worldwide conflicts between states that often differed in structure, and that once all the major powers had pretty much gotten to the point of L-D-C, then interstate conflict as we knew it would cease to exist. Obviously conflict still exists, but it is much harder to imagine a World War III in todays world, despite tensions with Russian and China, than it would be just 30 years ago.

Often times in the lives of humans we let ourselves be defined by externals, but this is only truly harmful to those who have never defined themselves internally, because without this internal definition, this laying out of who we are as defined by what we value most in the universe around us, without this, external definitions become the only thing we are and this is a horrible place to be.

When I find myself in a dark place, defined by things external to myself which leave me little control or direction in my own life, I look again at my internal definition of myself, my definition of the universe around me and when those are again refreshed in my mind, the external things loose their power because the master context of my life is switched back to those things most important -- valuable -- to me and my life.

If you don't have your own base definition of yourself, only just some awkward feeling of self left over from times past, then I envy you your task, for you get to build your definition in your immediate future, while mine was built so long ago -- not yet complete, but then I'm not yet dead.

Build your definition of yourself. There are many ways to do this. One thing which was most helpful to me at the age of twenty-two when I found it was this warrior's book, "A Happy Death" for it helped me understand that morals need not be religious, that self-interest and care was not selfishness, and that to live your life with the purpose of becoming the best human you can be is the most honorable way to die, and if you were this guy, well, the answer would be the same. His book tells a warrior's tale, too.

Accept that you were a warrior then, that you're a warrior now, and only the battle has changed. Build your self, it's your primary tool and will let you permanently put the externalities in their proper perspective.

Best wishes, warrior.

Perhaps you've already gotten him a book by now, but here are my recommendations for him and anyone else who reads this thread. I'm a martial arts researcher and a former martial arts teacher. I even wrote my Master's Thesis on martial arts. I've read literally hundreds of books on the subject. There are a lot of terrible books out there on the martial arts but you can't go wrong with any of these.

If he studies Shotokan, the best place to start is with the guy who invented it.
Karate-Do: My Way of Life is written by the founding master of Shotokan, Gichin Funakoshi.
http://www.amazon.com/Karate-Do-Way-Life-Gichin-Funakoshi/dp/1568364989/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411959258&sr=1-10&keywords=shotokan


My number one recommendation is When Buddhists Attack by Jeffery Mann - This is an very well researched book on the history of the relationship between Zen and the Martial arts. It is a fantastic book that will help him deepen his understanding of martial arts instead of intentionally mystifying it more to try to sell more books like most martial arts books do.
http://www.amazon.com/When-Buddhists-Attack-Curious-Relationship/dp/4805312300/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411958781&sr=1-1&keywords=when+buddhists+attack



If he's more into stories, I'd recommend Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa. It's a novelization of one of the most famous samurai to ever live. It's an exaggeration of his life but very entertaining.
http://www.amazon.com/Musashi-Epic-Novel-Samurai-Era/dp/156836427X


If he'd rather learn about the real person I'd recommend The Lone Samurai by William Scott Wilson. Wilson is a famous translator and historian, his work is very well researched and enjoyable to read.
http://www.amazon.com/Lone-Samurai-Life-Miyamoto-Musashi/dp/1590309871/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411958941&sr=1-1&keywords=the+lone+samurai


I'll end with a list of books NOT to buy. These are books are really popular but are full of misinformation, outright fabrications, or worse.


Joe Hyams - Zen in the Martial arts
Eugen Herrigel - Zen in the Art of Archery
Inazo - Nitobe - Bushido

Hope this helps! If not, you have gift ideas for next year!

I started kendo about three months ago, so I can tell you where I'm at:

Footwork, footwork, footwork. Every week most of the time is spent on footwork and yet I still don't feel confident about it. I know I'm improving because my sensei said so, but I feel like I have a long way to go before I can even begin to feel confident in it. Ki-ken-tai-ichi is still not there for me.

At my dojo we had shinai from the very first day, and we practice swinging in each class as well. The first few weeks were men-focused, but we moved on to kote, and dou most recently. Dou is taking some time to learn to do properly.

My stamina has definitely improved, and I notice a bigger improvement if I practice several times throughout the week rather than just at class. Now I can actually make it to the end of class without feeling like I'm going to pass out! Initially, however, it was definitely a struggle. Just after the half hour warm-up I would be completely exhausted.

I still wear work-out clothes (no hakama/keikogi yet) and own no bogu. However, my sensei did start encouraging people to buy their own bokken just last week.

Early on, I bought this book to help me learn all the terminology. I highly recommend it - it has helped me immensely.

I guess certain anthropologists want to 'give back' to the communities they study, and obviously that'll take place in a charity kind of way on a capitalist basis. That isn't very specific to anthropology though, and you can find tons of critiques of NGOs on the internet.

A more interesting critique of anthropology is how it arose from the colonial encounter in order to better rule colonial subjects, justify their inferiority, and so on. A decent Marxist book on this is J. Fabian's Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object, but it has been acknowledged by liberal mainstream anthropologists for a long time.

The US military uses something called "Human Terrain Systems" in which they basically employ anthropologists to help them with imperialism. There's a fairly recent book on this titled Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in the Service of the Militarized State. From what I know it's written from a left-liberal perspective, but it obviously can be really easily linked to a scientific Marxist analysis of imperialism.

Anyway, there's much more to anthropology than it being a weapon of imperialism. Marx & Engels were extremely keen on anthropology and its discoveries' connection to their politics. They wrote loads about it, most famously in Engels's The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, which is actually based on Marx's Ethnological Notebooks. Anthropology continued to play a pretty important role in Marxism, including Lenin encouraging ethnographic studies in order to better administer the USSR.

To add to what Ryan said, there are also a bunch of good books on the subject, most of which can be found for free.

John 'Lofty' Wiseman's SAS Survival Handbook is extremely comprehensive (around 600 pages) and very information-dense.

The US Army Survival Manual is also pretty good, but it's not as comprehensive or detailed as Wiseman's book.

Although it's more of a bushcraft book, Mors Kochanski's Bushcraft is extremely well done. His descriptions are easy to read, but fairly comprehensive, and are paired with detailed sketches and pictures.

Mainly, just go out and practice. You're already a capable outdoorsman, so it shouldn't be too much of a hassle. If you wanna take courses, just search around for courses near where you are, or maybe look at something like NOLS. Hope that's helpful.

To hit a few that haven’t been mentioned:

Colder than Hell is a pretty good autobiography about Korea.

Semper Fi Vietnam gives a pretty good overview of our actions Vietnam. Made me realize how heavy some of the fighting was, and how inaccurate the popular conception of the war was.

No True Glory and The Strongest Tribe are both pretty good accounts of Iraq. The former mostly deals with Fallujah and the latter with the Awakening.

Just wanted to add I'm turning 44 this week and just started kendo in October of last year. So I sure hope you aren't too old!

Honestly you are super young man. While there will be youth that are starting as well, you're at the age where you have some maturity and can probably apply yourself with more focus. The sensei that ran the seminar I just went to over the weekend is 70 years old and still going. So just imagine you have over 50 years of kendo ahead of you.

A couple of resources I found that are really helpful:

http://suffolkkendo.co.uk/KendoTrainingHandbook(rev5).pdf

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4805312319/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Enjoy!

In addition to many of the other books that others have listed (namely Kissinger and Mearsheimer) I have listed a few other books that I would highly recommend reading.

And because you are interested in learning more about the Middle East, be prepared to read. A lot. The Middle East is a far more complex place than most people imagine and understanding the region requires a great deal of knowledge. I have been studying the Middle East for nearly a decade and I still feel like there is so much that I do not know. I would start by reading reputable news sources every day. Places like The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, Financial Times, are the Los Angeles Times are good English language news sources that you should look at. Additionally, I have written up a suggested reading list for learning about the Middle East, though it is a bit more security-related since that's my area of expertise. I hope it helps. And feel free to ask any questions if you have them.

Books - International Relations, Theory and Beyond

• Daniel Drezner - Theories of International Politics and Zombies. A creative and humorous book that seeks to explain the major IR theories in a manner that is easy to understand. Good for establishing a base understanding of international relations.
  
• Bruce Hoffman - Inside Terrorism. Quite possibly the book on terrorism. Written by one of the field's best scholars, this books provides the best introduction and overview on what terrorism is and its history over the past century. Just be sure to purchase the 2006 edition.
  
• Graham Allison - Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. An examination of the different levels of how decisions are made, using the Cuban Missile Crisis as a case study. Another essential book for understanding how different states, agencies within a government, and even individuals, can have major impacts on foreign affairs.
  
• Carl von Clausewitz - On War. One of the most significant books on understanding war in world; its frequently listed alongside Sun Tzu's Art of War. It is essential reading for anyone interested in military affairs and how it plays into politics. Though you only need to read the 1st ,2nd, and maybe 8th chapter, everything else is unnecessary.
  
  

  Books - General History of the Middle East
  

  
  

• Albert Hourani - A History of the Arab Peoples. This is widely considered to be the definitive book on history in the Arab World.
  
• Eugene Rogan - The Arabs: A History. Another essential and critically acclaimed book on Arab history.
  
• Roy Mottahedeh - The Mantle of the Prophet. Role of religion and religious figures in Iran before and during the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
  
• Mark Lynch - The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East. An outline of the causes, reactions, and consequences of the Arab Spring.
  
• Thomas Barfield - Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History. Afghanistan is usually not considered a part of the Middle East in academic research, so I am including this one. It's probably one of the best overviews of Afghan History.
  
  

  Books - Middle East Military History
  

  
  

• Kenneth Pollack - Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991. Probably the best book on Arab militaries culture and effectiveness and warfare in the Middle East between 1945-1991. Very extensive and informative.
  
• Steven Ward - Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces. A well-written history of Iran's military, from the Safavid Empire to the 21st century.
  
• Ahron Bregman - Israel's Wars: A History since 1947. A terrific book outlining Israel's strategic decision making for its military operations since its founding as a country.
  
• Bruce Hoffman - Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947. A look at the establishment of Israel and the development of the current Arab-Israeli conflict.
  
  

  Books - Middle East Terrorism and Substate Violence
  

  
  

• Daniel Byman - Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Global Jihadist Movement: What Everyone Needs to Know. A terrific primer on al-Qaida, ISIL, and jihadism.
  
• Lawrence Wright - The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Probably the best book for outlining the history of al-Qaida and why 9/11 happened.
  
• Michael Wiess and Hassan Hassan - ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror. One of several recent books on ISIL, this one provides an overview on the history and organization of ISIL.
  
• Barry Rubin - Revolution Until Victory?: The Politics and History of the PLO. Although a little old (published in 1996), this books does a great job chronicling the history of the PLO and its role in the Palestinian struggle.
  
• Ahmed Rashid - Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. One of the best books on the rise and fall of the Taliban.
  
  

  Books - U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East
  

  
  

• Bob Woodward - Obama's Wars. Outline of the U.S. foreign policy decision making towards Iraq and Afghanistan in the early years of the Obama administration.
  
• Kenneth Pollack - The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America. A good overview of tensions between the United States and Iran.
  
• Michael R. Gordon - The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. Follows U.S. strategic and political decision making process during the Iraq War and the U.S. occupation.
  
• Peter R. Mansoor - Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War. An extensive outline of the development and outcome of the Surge during the U.S. Occupation of Iraq.
  
• Steve Coll - Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. A widely popular and acclaimed book on U.S. covert operations from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan until 2001.
  
• Mark Mazzetti - The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth. An overview of the CIA's targeted killing program against terrorist organizations.
  
• Michael Morrell - The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism--From al Qa'ida to ISIS. Written by the former acting director of the CIA, this book examines U.S. counterterrorism successes and failures of the past two decades.

Even if AQ does not exist in the manner you think it does, the ideology behind it is a driver for actions that people have undertaken. That means that it does exist and has had an effect on the world. You can deny that a main organization exists, or that they undertook certain actions, but you cannot deny that the idea of them has driven people to actions. That in itself means it exists in some way. I take it on step further and believe this idea was created by an organization in a way to propagate itself (Edit: Their ideology). My real world evidence comes from trusting of real world accounts presented to me second hand, but I do trust the sources that have encountered them in real life.

Further edit: Read this book and tell me this man has written several items on a related topic including a group that doesn't exist.

Purchase the US Army Survival Manual. It's full of information about first aid, tracking and trapping animals, navigating, improvised shelters and water collection methods. I keep a copy of this in my backpacking pack at all times.

Also, make and keep a bug out bag (again, this is my backpacking pack). It should contain basic survival items like a water filtration and purification system, first aid kit, versatile clothing, sewing kit, non perishable food, a weapon and appropriate ammo, a good knife, some para cord, topographic maps of the area you intend to retreat to and planned route to escape the city if you live in one.

As for being part of a group, develop a skill that is valuable to other survivalists. A simple skill that will come in handy would be sewing. Clothes and shoes will need constant maintenance in the wilderness. Learning some basic blacksmithing and would be excellent for making tools. Understanding the basic mechanics of a firearm and how to repair one would also be immensely valuable. Take at least take a CPR & First Aid course. Learn how to navigate in the wilderness and how to predict weather patterns.

If you don't know japanese I found kendo books really difficult as a beginner. There are just so many terms in japanese that you will spend more time looking things up than reading. Plus there is a lot of info there you just won't be able to digest without some time in the dojo. You can still get something out of them, but be aware it can be dense. I came back to most of my books after a year or two of doing kendo and understood them a lot more.

My favorite book on kendo. Salmon sensei writes in a way I find really accessible to western kendoka. I like his blog too.

http://www.amazon.com/Kendo-Comprehensive-Guide-Japanese-Swordsmanship/dp/4805312319?ie=UTF8&keywords=kendo&qid=1462375770&ref_=sr_1_2&sr=8-2

The best history of kendo book I've found.

http://www.amazon.com/Kendo-Culture-Alexander-C-Bennett/dp/0520284372?ie=UTF8&keywords=kendo&qid=1462375770&ref_=sr_1_7&sr=8-7

More recent, but I was impressed by No True Glory by Bing West. It's an account of the battle(s) of Fallujah in 2004. There was rumored to be a movie in the works at one point but it looks like there's no progress.

In depends. The military identifies three levels of war: tactical, operational, and strategic. Tactical is just as it sounds. Small units up to Brigade and Division level. Operational goes higher, division to corps, to Joint Task Force to Theater. Strategic goes from theater to national. The lines can blur, especially between operational and strategic.

In the Army, company grade officers (LTs and CPTs) focus on the tactical level in their training. Theoretically, all junior officers learn some degree of small unit tactics. Some company grade officer end up working at higher levels so they get a lot of OJT at the higher levels. That's what happened to me when I was a Captain assigned to CENTCOM.

Field grades (MAJ-COL) get trained at the operational and strategic level. These are the folks who write all the plans. They are also the ones who command battalions and above.

At the Colonel level, officers get training on the higher echelons of strategy or what some people might call "grand strategy". These are the guys who will write the big war plans.

There are schools at each level that teach officers how to do their jobs. Many officers also attend graduate school. That's where I'm at right now. (http://www.nps.edu/Academics/SIGS/NSA/)

As far as reading goes, it depends on what you're interested in. For tactical, books like "Band of Brothers" are timeless and great. "Thunder Run" is a good look at the early phases of OIF. For a look at the Operational/Strategic level, I'd check out "Cobra II", "Fiasco", and "The Gamble".

Most of the military publications and field manuals are open source. The Ranger Handbook is the best all around for small unit tactics. If you want to learn how the Army is set up, try FM-1 The Army (http://www.army.mil/fm1/) or the COIN manual. (http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24.pdf) For a look at how all the forces fight together, check out the Joint Operations Manual. (http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/new_pubs/jp3_0.pdf) However, most of these are really dry and jargon laden.

If you want a good starting source for strategy and what has shaped strategic thought, check out "Makers of Modern Strategy". (http://www.amazon.com/Makers-Modern-Strategy-Machiavelli-Nuclear/dp/0691027641) You can also read up on some Clausewitz because we love our dead German military theorists in the Army.

A flippant response might read "Your list, with 'The Annotated' [0 - 4] prepended to each entry". Less glibly, I concur with /u/dvdvh, that it is necessary to build a broad recognition of the landscape of history before one goes exploring the geological forces that shaped it. This can be accomplished by picking your favorite time, place, or culture, querying a suitable encyclopedia entry, taking notes if desired, and expanding from there; I personally find the histories of Hungary [5] and Uzbekistan (Sogdiana/Transoxiana) [6] to hold criminally low profiles in the lay-historian's mindset.

For historical perspectives orthogonal to any one physical dimension, I would recommend military histories, which, truer to your own suggestions, can be classical original sources, e.g. Xenophon's "Anabasis" [7], so long as one is willing to research details assumed known by the authors. B. H. Liddell Hart's "Strategy" [8] specifically takes the position that military science prerequisites a knowledge of precedents, and so provides it.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Iliad-Homer-Annotated-H-ebook/dp/B005Y0MWUC

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Divine-Comedy-Translated-Annotated-Illustrated-ebook/dp/B00SIWHOWO

[2] On this point I must bend "The Annotated" to "The Reader's Companion to": https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Companion-Cervantes-Companions-Literature/dp/0521663873

[3] https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/019953621X/

[4] https://www.amazon.com/Fyodor-Dostoyevsky-Annotated-critical-Biography-ebook/dp/B0057JQ206

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Hungary

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Uzbekistan

[7] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Anabasis

[8] https://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Meridian-B-Liddell-Hart/dp/0452010713

So layman can be a relative term... non-degreed but well-read amatuer all the way down to "never read anything related to this topic before", so with that in mind, "Makers of Modern Strategy" is a pretty excellent place to start, collecting essays from a number of notable experts and covering the evolution of military strategy over the past ~500 or so years.

JS: If return on investment were the only, or even the primary, metric by which we decided where to spend tax dollars, NASA, science and engineering across the board really, early childhood education, and infrastructure would probably be the best funded parts of the government. Clearly that is not the case. There are A LOT of factors that go into policymaking, but to quote Judy Schneider, long time Congressional Research Service Specialist on Congress, there are three Ps to policymaking: policy, politics, and process; all three have to be done right for a bill to become a law. Bad politics and getting the procedural moves wrong can quickly kill a bill, so often the first P to go is policy.

The question of why NASA's budget isn't bigger, or why any science or education funding line isn't, is largely about the overall size of the budget pie Congress has to split up. The history of R&D funding shows that it is basically a fixed fraction (~ 11%) of the total discretionary funding level. Discretionary funding is the part that Congress debates every year, as opposed to Mandatory programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, which are funded automatically year to year based on formulas. When there's more funding in general, more tends to flow to R&D. The exception is the Space Race, of course, but as many others can argue much more eloquently than me, that was chiefly about international competition and national security rather than science (see e.g., John Logsdon).

One other important point here is that there have been huge dividends in terms of technological advances out of the Defense Department, especially the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Here's just one piece exploring how (and in part why) DoD research laid the foundation for a lot of modern technology. It's an interesting story. I personally am hoping to read Sharon Weinberger's The Imagineers of War soon.

Books that I found really good are:

Kendo: A Comprehensive Guide to Japanese Swordsmanship

Kendo - Approaches for all Levels

Kendo Kata: Essence and Application I wish this would come back into print so it would be easy for people to get and less expensive.

Are you reading "A Spy Among Friends" by Ben Macintyre? His last book, Double Cross is a fascinating, compulsively readable history of the British double agent system developed and run by MI5 during WWII. Philby makes several appearances throughout the story.

I'd also recommend Spycatcher by Peter Wright, former assistant director of MI5, which details his career as a counterespionage operative in Post-War England. It was famously suppressed by the Thatcher administration upon initial release due to the fact that it named names and embarrassed many senior members of the British Intelligence services.

It is also an excellent book by Ben Macintyre called Double Cross. I would recommend Macintyre's books to anyone who wants to read about espionage. They are all fascinating.

http://www.amazon.com/Double-Cross-Story-D-Day-Spies/dp/0307888770

Great book that goes into a lot of hilarious detail about the XX Division. Reads a lot like a wartime Oceans Eleven.

International Relations and Foreign Policy are two different things.

For a background in the former, the geopolitics Wiki is top tier (avoid the sub).

For American FP, which is the FP that matters, The Grand Chessboard provides the foundation for American Grand Strategy.

Kissinger is worth reading too, especially Diplomacy.

Other users here have mentioned Robert Kagan. I love the man, but he's more American cheerleader than FP analyst.

https://www.amazon.com/Grand-Chessboard-American-Geostrategic-Imperatives/dp/046509435X/

It's about who sets the rules of international trade and who benefits, if china becomes powerful the US can't impose its laws and values on the world. So the US wants to contain china's power otherwise it loses it's ability to set the rules of things like IP, etc. AKA the US wants everyone to have its bullshit corrupt laws that mainly benefit US corporations.

> experts in the study of culture

Almost all of the people who are prominent in the field of anthropology have been funded for their entire careers by governmental and in most cases military agencies. Their credibility as an expert in anything besides how best to write a grant application and other similar bureaucratic functions is zilch, zip, nada, nothing, a great Big Void.

A recent poll suggests 90 percent of Native Americans are not offended by the nickname of Washington’s NFL franchise

I do not use the nickname. But I bet if I was a fan of the team I would use the nickname and people criticizing the nickname-users should go back to their third grade Sunday school lesson about the one who is without sin gets to throw the first stone.

Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in Service of the Militarized State

No book will prepare you for law enforcement, it has to be touched, smelled, heard, and seen. If you're already a cop then the best thing you can do to be better is to be a well rounded human being and books can help with that.

Here's the recommended reading from some of the prior threads I was able to find in the sub.

1. On Killing
   
2. On Combat
   
3. Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement
   
4. Intro to Criminal Evidence
   
5. Blue Blood
   
6. 400 Things Cops Should Know
   
7. Cop: A True Story
   
8. [Verbal Judo] (https://www.amazon.com/Verbal-Judo-Gentle-Persuasion-Updated/dp/0062107704/)
   
9. [What Cops Know] (https://www.amazon.com/What-Cops-Know-Connie-Fletcher/dp/0671750402/)
   
10. [Into the Kill Zone] (https://www.amazon.com/Into-Kill-Zone-Deadly-Force/dp/0787986038/)
    
11. Training at the Speed of Life
    
12. Sharpening the Warrior's Edge
    
13. The Gift of Fear
    
14. Deadly Force Encounters
    
15. The Book of Five Rings
    
    I've read a good portion of the above listed. I highly recommend Emotional Survival and going to see one of Gilmartin's talks if he's in your area. Below are a few of my personal suggestions.
    
    
16. Meditations
    
17. Blink - Not sure if I buy it, but interesting to think about.
    
18. [Armor] (https://www.amazon.com/Armor-John-Steakley/dp/0886773687/)
    
19. Iron John: A Book About Men
    
20. The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
    

It's actually a quote from "Rules for Radicals". It's a must read for just about any politician worth his or her salt. It's basically a political warfare manual. Read that, "The Prince", "On War" and "The art of war" and you will have a pretty good understanding of what they are actually doing up there. There are several other books I'd recommend if you really want an understanding, but those are a good start.

I appreciate your point of view, and I'm sure you're as formally educated on the topic as I am, regardless of your country of birth. Since we're both equally educated and not just repeating how others around us have used the word, correctly or not, I suppose we'll have to scour the resources at hand. I could point to the movie A History of Violence, but you'd say "Bollocks," because that's an American film. And then you'd point to the Harry Potter book An History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot as the British counterpart. I'd then point to A History of Warfare, to Strategy: A History by Sir Lawrence Freedman- a Brit!- or a post currently on the BBC called "A History of the World". Now I've posted several instances of sources from both countries, where you've posted nothing but "Bollocks! I'm British and I know English best!"

And that's fine. Sourcing texts and movies and fictional authors isn't definitive anyway. Just to make sure I get the point across, here's evidence from Oxford Dictionaries to Scribe. This post from Daily Writing Tips explains that "An Historic" isn't just used by pompous assholes (comment by the author, not me); it's occasionally misused by people that didn't know it hasn't been correct since 1938. I suppose Merriam Webster might know a thing or two about the language, though they do concede that An Historic was used correctly once upon a time, but no longer. Here are some more sources from Grammatist, from Cambridge, and Quick and Dirty Tips. There, that's twelve sources all in agreement, which nothing to the contrary other than your "I'm British! Get fucked!"

Finally, I'll complain whenever I want to if sourced material is downvoted while unsourced material is upvoted simply because people want to believe it more. It's a major fallacy in the construction of reddit. While I can admit that a sports forum isn't necessarily the place to debate grammar, I think the OP has actually learned something, and hopefully you have too.

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

I got my undergrad in History (with an emphasis on Military History) and am working on a masters in Military History. My last class was Military Though and Theory, and we read Makers of Modern Strategy. I LOVED the book. Also, if you're gonna buy Clausewitz, be sure to get the Howard/Paret version.

If you're looking to read it, the Howard/Paret translation is the most common and readable translation. It was originally published in three volumes, but it is one work and is published now as the full text. Avoid the Penguin translation or any abridgments unless you need some kindling. Here's a link to the Howard/Paret translation on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/War-Indexed-Carl-von-Clausewitz/dp/0691018545/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1457787735&sr=8-2&keywords=On+War

If you're looking for old three volume editions as collectibles, good luck.

Great book on the topic if you haven't already read it: Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies.

There was a brilliant book written about the Double-Cross system that anyone with an interest in that sort of thing should read.

Doubl Cross is another great book on the topic, as it covers not just Garbo, but also the whole British intelligence scheme he was a part of, putting his actions into context:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0075WP9MK

Liddel Hart's Strategy. Its used at west point in military history classes. Hart is an uninspiring historian but a brilliant strategist.

I wouldn't plan on killing people either and I'm not defending suicide bombers. You might benefit from reading The Accidental Guerrilla. It might give you a broader view on the world.

Because all of the German spies in the UK were working for the allies they could all provide supporting evidence.

Source: Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies

I'm just going to leave this here.

It's a pretty interesting book, I was working on a fantasy book that involves a coup and got it for research.

Other things:

• Silver space blanket (helps in all types of weather)
  
• 250' of parachord (side note: make one of those survival bracelets . It gives you about 12' that is always on your wrist)
  
• Survival Tin (nice little back up: SAS Survival Tin)
  
• WetFire fire starters (stuff is awesome. Little piece all you need to start a fire )
  
• Monocular
  
• Signal Mirror / Whistle
  
• Multi-tool (SOG PowerAssist)
  
• Hand chainsaw (Here)
  
• Army Survival Book (FS 21-76)
  
  EDIT: If I get a chance I'll take a picture of my survival pack. People think I'm crazy but never hurts to be prepared.

I have this. It doesn’t have every single plant ever in it. But I remember it having a section dedicated to identifying edible plants/mushrooms and such. It also tells tells you a multi-step approach to checking if something is edible, if you’re not 100% sure. You can see the size in the customer reviews, I always pack it on camps, just in case :)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SAS-Survival-Guide-survive-Collins/dp/0007320817/ref=mp_s_a_1_13?keywords=sas+survival+handbook+pocket&qid=1574047520&sprefix=sas+survival&sr=8-13

I'm gunna buy it. I need other book suggestions to make it $25 for free shipping.

Here are some of my suggestions to others:

>The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Paperback)
>by John A. Nagl
>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0226841510

>Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Paperback)
>by John A. Nagl
>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0226567702

>War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier (Paperback)
>by Smedley D. Butler
>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0922915865

>Cultivating Exceptional Cannabis: An Expert Breeder Shares His Secrets (Marijuana Tips Series) (Paperback)
>by DJ Short
>http://www.amazon.com/Cultivating-Exceptional-Cannabis-Breeder-Marijuana/dp/0932551599

It's hyperbolic, but he is a very good general and did literally write the book on counterinsurgency.

https://www.amazon.com/Marine-Corps-Counterinsurgency-Field-Manual/dp/0226841510

If you're interested in Machiavelli's thoughts/ideas/impact on Europe (aside from his life), I'd recommend the article on him in the following book:

http://www.amazon.com/Makers-Modern-Strategy-Machiavelli-Nuclear/dp/0691027641/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323205096&sr=8-1

SAS Survival Guide by Lofty Wiseman is a very useful little book that cover all those points and more - only about 3"x3"x1" as well so very compact

http://www.amazon.com/SAS-Survival-Guide-Survive-Collins/dp/0007320817

e.reader is all well and good but remember a lot of situations will get you wet, floods, hurricanes, crossing bodies of water etc and anything electronic should not be relied on.

I'm not all that up to date on modern military theory since most of my knowledge is from military history and not contemporary theory (although the two are, as one would expect, highly intersectional) - I do read some modern war journals and listen to talks on modern war theory though, although relatively rarely.

I'm hardly an expert on the matter (although I'm fairly certain know enough to recognize when someone has no idea what they are talking about). I just read a lot in college, and sucked up whatever I could from the library. I also liked reading a lot of primary sources, including things like reports from field exersises/war games/intel reports/naval excercises. One time I even read the entire

One of my favourites was this book on inter-war German reforms during the Weimar era. Rise and Fall of the Great Powers is another favourite of mine (although I never got to read the whole thing, it's a fucking massive book and I never had the time so) - it's especially good if you want to see some of the economic factors of warfare and tracking them through history. Clausewitz' On War is a classic primer on military and is practically ubiquotous - but it's also old as fuck and is far more important for showing some of the roots of modern (in the broad sense of Victorian/post-Victorian, not 21st century) - treat it like you would The Wealth of Nations.

A few weeks ago I was visiting a friend of a friend who was just promoted to general, and this is the book he was reading at the time:

Strategy: A History
http://www.amazon.com/Strategy-History-Lawrence-Freedman-ebook/dp/B00F3D4IVG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1450548318&sr=1-1&keywords=strategy

I put it on my reading list but haven't done it so far, but it comes highly recommned.

The SAS Survival guide is the Ultimate guide to how to survive just about anything and should be fairly easy to pick up in the US as well.

[Kendo: A Comprehensive Guide to Japanese Swordsmanship by Geoff Salmon] (https://www.amazon.com/Kendo-Comprehensive-Guide-Japanese-Swordsmanship/dp/4805312319/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521676294&sr=8-1&keywords=kendo+a+comprehensive+guide+to+japanese+swordsmanship)
Very interesting and informative book. Covers everything from proper etiquette to wazas to how to put on bogu. My sensei gave me a copy.

No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah by Bing West.

Awesome book. Was bought by a film studio a long time ago and Harrison Ford was connected, but obviously nothing has ever come of it.

• Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
  
  
• Inside the Jihad: My Life with Al Qaeda.
  
  
• No True Glory.
  
  
• The Volunteer.
  
  
• Invisible Armies.
  
  
• One Bullet Away.
  
  
• War of the Flea.
  
  
  Also, most senior officers put out public reading lists every year - so you might try searching that way too.

Two badasses talking about one badass's actions that earned him a spot amongst the Gods? Hngggggg

Also, if you guys haven't already, definitely check out all of Bing West's other books, especially No True Glory. He paints a very real, vivid, accurate, and what I feel is non-biased picture of Iraq at the time, as well as how Fallujah came to fall [and eventually be retaken].

It also chronicles the life of one of daily inspirations.

These have what you are looking for:

[Empty Hand. The Essence of Budo Karate] (https://www.amazon.com/Empty-Hand-Essence-Budo-Karate/dp/3938305134)

[The Book of Five Rings] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1935785974/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499658891&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=the+5+rings+musashi&dpPl=1&dpID=51u6Mn5MaIL&ref=plSrch)

[Bubishi: The Classic Manual of Combat] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/4805313846/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499658987&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=Bubishi)

Double Cross, by Ben Macintyre. Fascinating read

https://www.amazon.com/Double-Cross-Story-D-Day-Spies/dp/0307888770

Strategy by B.H. Liddell Hart sounds perfect for you. It's pretty dense but very detailed.

A good book to read is, The Accidental Guerrilla by David Kilcullen. He explains in depth the cycle of insurgency.

But to answer OPs question. Yes military action is vital to ending terrorism. I look at terrorist groups no differently as gangs in the USA. They exist mainly because no effective government or order exists in those areas. If we stopped patrolling lets say Baltimore would you expect an increase or decrease in gang activity? You’d see an increase like we did after the Freddie Grey incident which led to a wave of homicides.

So can we flood the area with cops/military? In the short term yes it’ll suppress the gangs/terrorist. But in the long term you have to address/fix why they exist.

Nice guy. Notice how he mentions studying Marx! and urban ecology.

what he is doing is called military anthropology

And the book is called "Makers of Modern Strategy: from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age" by Peter Paret. I bought it at the US Air Force Academy when I visited one time :)

And the Russians had spies at high levels in both the British government and military, but didn't truth their reports because the Kremlin assumed the spies were double agents. Interesting book called Double Cross tells all about it.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ACSNQE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813124379/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9562915719/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

this one so you know what will be used against you https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226841510/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

From Mao Tse-tung
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0252068920/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

this one would be one of the better ones for HK https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813124379/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0873649214/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1574885553/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

There are others, but these were handy from my collection.

One of my old professors wrote a book on this. It's pretty good.

and another good one for geo politics

https://www.amazon.com/Grand-Chessboard-American-Geostrategic-Imperatives/dp/046509435X

While it was written in 1968, Coup d'Etat: A Practical Handbook is easily convertible to a fantasy milieu. it's the strategy and tactics you want.

Perhaps something like The Army Survival Manual? I know it has first aid, foraging, methods of getting water, and ways to build shelter.

Looks like the dictator in your scenario has been doing some reading.....

If this kind of thing interests you, read Double Cross by Ben Macintyre.

I found it to be a very interesting book about the espionage efforts in Europe.

The most prominent book on the subject - ['Coup D'Etat] (https://www.amazon.com/Coup-d%C3%89tat-Practical-Handbook-Revised/dp/0674737261/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=M9AWGX6YMAYW08JSEXT8) by Luttwak states that coup leaders need to have the support of mid-level military leaders and control over units nearest to the nexus of power ie Washington DC.

So, unless the coup leaders are able to subvert the loyalty of serious elements of the US military (which is difficult as it is a conservative, volunteer organisation), their coup will fail.

Not so completely, or in the same way. Makers of Modern Strategy is one of the best single volumes on warfare through World War Two and the Cold War.

There are good books on the development of Civil War strategy, on Prussian strategy, on strategy between Unification and WW1, between WW1 and 2, but then things dry up. And there isnt one book that covers everything and every time period. MMS is a great book, and it covers everything (including Weigley's book), but its not as good. Its just all there really is thats comparable.

This, I presume? Link for the curious. I will have to find a copy.

I'd switch out the Catcher in the Rye for this I have a copy and it has some real useful information. And no, it's not just for combat scenarios.

The US took a break to have an election in 2004...and it wasn't going all that well in the first place. Source

Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age Paperback – ed. Peter Paret
That's if you want something more academic that the usual recommendations of Sun Tzu or Clausewitz.

Weaponizing Anthropology David H. Price

https://www.amazon.com/Weaponizing-Anthropology-Science-Militarized-Counterpunch/dp/1849350639

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/484365/pdf

Need to include the manual in the list: https://www.amazon.com/Coup-dÉtat-Practical-Handbook-Revised/dp/0674737261

Strategy: The Indirect Approach - by B. H. Liddell Hart - this was required reading for Israeli military officers for many years.

^This^ ...and Battle By John Lynn, The Military Revolution Debate: Readings On The Military Transformation Of Early Modern Europe Edited by Rogers, and Makers of Modern Strategy by Peter Paret

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Coup-d%C3%89tat-Practical-Handbook-Revised/dp/0674737261/ref=pd_sbs_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=YHMJ10C4NXAJY6Y5E4W7

English version of this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HA4JUEA/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

https://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Meridian-B-Liddell-Hart/dp/0452010713

Makers of Modern Strategy

http://www.amazon.com/Makers-Modern-Strategy-Machiavelli-Nuclear/dp/0691027641

> How's a shill supposed to learn to overthrow our democratic processes?

With this book, actually.

SAS Survival Handbook

US Army Survival Manual: FM 21-76

UST Learn & Live Outdoor Skills

Here is the desktop version of your link

I have the pocket sized one from Collins Gem; ISBN 978-0-00-732081-3


https://www.amazon.ca/Collins-Gem-Sas-Survival-Guide/dp/0007320817/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1503863570&sr=1-1&keywords=9780007320813

https://www.amazon.co.uk/When-Buddhists-Attack-Curious-Relationship/dp/4805312300

The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual

U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual. Leete la seccion sobre sabotaje. Ya sabes lo que tienes que hacer, if you know what I mean...

Accidental Guerilla: https://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Guerrilla-Fighting-Small-Midst/dp/0199754098

Counterinsurgency: https://www.amazon.com/Counterinsurgency-David-Kilcullen/dp/0199737495

Joint Publication 3-24 Counterinsurgency: https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/pubs/jp3_24.pdf

FMFRP 12-18: Mao Tse-tung on Guerilla Warfare

The one i red was in turkish and had 750+ pages. This link has 700+ pages so i think this should be true.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691018545?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0691018545&linkCode=xm2&tag=theclausewitzhom

Sorry for long wait :( i'm a sailor, couldnt check earlier.

It's never okay. Here, read "The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual" and it will educate you on how you defeat a terrorist/insurgent force, here's a hint, it involves not killing civilians.

Its a highly strategic area, fought over for centuries.

Read this book.

https://www.amazon.com/Grand-Chessboard-American-Geostrategic-Imperatives/dp/046509435X

The Art Of War (I just realized that this isn't out either) - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B073QR86XF/ref=mp_s_a_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1500212722&sr=1-7&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=the+art+of+war&dpPl=1&dpID=41UmGUKpWeL&ref=plSrch
 

The Odyssey - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B071JBJTFY/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1500212769&sr=8-1
 

The Iliad -
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B072MQ8FL7/ref=mp_s_a_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1500212836&sr=8-16&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=the+iliad
 

But I think I'll just start reading them to see if I like it

Forgot to also mention, I have about 3 copies of this in various locations. Incredible resource that has been of use plenty of times. Once, stranded on Short Key during a monster storm it was used as kindling for a fire (one of the reasons it is printed on untreated paper).
Seriously, go buy a copy now.

I also really enjoyed Double Cross. It has a good mix of first hand accounts pieced together from Allied records and some images from the program.

As with all of the WWII books I've read, it tends to overstate the importance of the unit in question (turned spies and the spy program in this case), but it really interesting as a whole.

Edit: Maybe overstate is the wrong word, but I've found that books and accounts from participants from WWII tend to state that the effort portrayed turned the tides. It's not that any of these books (Band of Brothers, Double Cross, Beyond The Call, others) are wrong, it's just that there were so many effective pieces in motion that it seems wrong to give weight to any one of them over the others.

> War is becoming automated. We don't march 40,000 troops across an open field to take a town anymore.

Do I have a book for you....

http://www.amazon.com/No-True-Glory-Frontline-Fallujah/dp/0553383191

This is right in my wheelhouse! My own expertise on the war in the Pacific is mainly naval, but yes, I know some good books about that!

I would recommend, first of all, Clayton James' essay American and Japanese Strategies in the Pacific War, located in Peter Paret's Makers of Modern Strategy, which provides exactly what you are looking for. After that, I recommend George Baer's One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The U.S. Navy, 1890 - 1990 (the relevent sections, obviously; not the whole thing) and Doug Smith's Carrier Battles: Command Decision in Harm's Way for a good overview of the US Navy's role in the development of American strategy, policy, and operations against Japan, as well as how interwar Navy PME influenced their thinking on these issues.

David Evans and Mark Peattie's Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887 - 1941 is absolutely imperative for any kind of understanding of the Imperial Japanese Navy's strategic, institutional, and doctrinal shortcomings as they were eventually revealed during WWII. And I highly recommend Ron Spector's Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan, which also offers excellent analysis on the comparative merits and shortcomings of Japanese and US naval strategy.

Gerhard Weinberg's A World At Arms: A Global History of World War II is a bit daunting (1200 pages!) but provides the single best overall review of the war, including the war in the Pacific. For a look at US Army strategy, I'd recommend the US Army Green Book Series on the war in the Pacific; these books were written by Army staff and historians in the decade or two following the war, and offer a perspective that is sometimes difficult to find in more recent works.

The section about Jamaica was absolutely wild. Honestly, reading that book, there were sections where I had to put it down for a second, go, "Jesus fucking Christ" and push back the existential terror, then continue on. Like the bit about how those raiders in Mumbai had to kill a lot of Westerners - not to prove any political point, but because the command center needed a big Twitter presence to provide on-the-fly intel to the raiders, and the easiest way to get Twitter to start paying attention was to kill people who are part of a network that uses Twitter. All those little details really blew my mind.

He doesn't paint a very hopeful picture for the future of the planet. On the flipside, though, the fact that a dude who participated in counter-insurgency operations can see clearly that a lot of future threats will be "wars without enemies" (or whatever he refers to resource scarcity/infrastructure failure as) is kind of heartening. His arguments about effective governance and management of infrastructure also kind of shows that the end game of counter-insurgency studies is basically going to be, "Govern fairly and give people what they need to live, then they won't try to kill you." It'll just be curious to see how many people like Kilcullen reach that logical conclusion.

I'm hopefully going to crack into The Accidental Guerrilla tonight.

A great question. And I can see that there are now two Mongo experts in the field of battle!

Subutai/Tusobodai as he was actually called, overran more territory than any known commander in the history of warfare.^1

He did this through his sheer brilliance in logistical and imaginative strategy. If Genghis Khan was the soul of the Mongolian Empire through its rise. One can argue that it was Subotai who later wielded the sword that allowed the Mongolians to conquer nearly half of Europe, nearly all of Asia and the only nation thus far to have defeated the descendants of the Russian people (The Empire of Rus)

Subutai also used unconventional tactics that at our age would seem very normal and common sense, but Subutai would later be recorded as arguably the very first commander to use Siege weapons in an offensive manner in a non-siege battle. You could almost say that he was the first to use artillery in the ancient world.^2

If you have any more questions I can definitely answer them too!!

It's a great question.

1. Subutai and his records
   
   
2. Siege Warfare and Subutai's first recorded usage
   
   
3. Also
   
   

I am only answering further because I looked at your artwork and it is nice, and it seems you did not pursue the anthropology thing further, which is a good thing. So there's the possibility you're not completely aligned with the US anthropology cult, with its known problems, prejudices and motivations.

I am glad you pointed out various Maya are still around, this is important to educate people on. After all, if they weren't around any more, who would the US have to finance the assassination of in central america through ongoing genocidal schemes?

Your follow up statement that "I'm led to believe that their view of the downfall would be as varied as the countries across which they are spread" does suggest that you have in fact talked to Maya people, and are aware that there was no "collapse" at all, and are aware there is no single Mayan people, and are aware that the ongoing changes in various Maya cultures in history, like the histories of most cultures, aren't particularly sudden or mysterious. These were the main issues with your previous post.

Maya peoples know their history, have maintained their oral and written records, and there is no huge mystery of their history.

There is only the american anthropologists and archaeologists who continue to claim that there is a mystery here or there, while they ignore actual history kept by non-white and non-american peoples. (I qualify this with 'white' because the non-white american anthropologists I know do not have this belief, nor do the non-american white anthropologists.) These are bizarre claims and are among the many reasons that american anthropologists are regarded with skepticism and ridicule by much of the rest of the world anthropological communities.

Worthwhile reading to decolonize the minds of those who have been through US or similarly minded anthro programs.

Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in Service of the Militarized State

From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich

Darkness in El Dorado

Custer Died for Your Sins

Indians and Anthropologists

Read all these. Then proceed.

Here is why I'm not wrong regarding these issues:

Torture is less effective than other methods of interrogation as you can see in the Senate Intelligence Committee's report, and testimony from former FBI agents. However, more importantly, torture is immoral and violates the principals on which America was founded.

If you're suggesting I'm wrong about Trump supporting torture, I would suggest that you read the following articles:

http://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/trump-torture/
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/06/politics/donald-trump-torture/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-torture-waterboarding_us_5775d740e4b04164640f6597

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Attacking civilians, like torture, undermines America's long standing position that it tries to be a force for good. Additionally, it radicalizes large portions of the populace of any nation we are in against us; since people are unsure if they will be targeted and are more likely to know people who died. For better options, I'm going to suggest reading David Kilcullen's books Counterinsurgency and The Accidental Guerrilla.

Here is evidence that Trump supports attacking civilians:
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-i-would-intentionally-kill-families-to-defeat-isis-b5484a36a7a2#.o3xtgsik4
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-reiterates-sire-to-murder-terrorists-families-a6912496.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/21/us/politics/donald-trump-mosul-iraq.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/10/11/donald-trump-wants-a-sneak-attack-on-mosul-but-reality-is-more-complicated/

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Regarding climate change, I'm going to link NASA's page regarding it as it contains more links and evidence than I would take the time to link here.

These articles demonstrate that Trump does consider climate change a hoax:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/03/hillary-clinton/yes-donald-trump-did-call-climate-change-chinese-h/
https://www.factcheck.org/2016/11/the-candidates-on-climate-change/

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Though Stop & Frisk may find some criminals, it was clearly racist in its implementation. Despite finding white criminals at a higher rate than black or hispanic criminals, whites were stopped far less.

Here is Trump supporting Stop & Frisk:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/nyregion/what-donald-trump-got-wrong-on-stop-and-frisk.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/09/28/trumps-false-claim-that-stop-and-frisk-was-not-ruled-unconstitutional/

"The composition and leadership of the insurgents were changing. As the FREs (Former Regime Elements) weakened, (Col. Brian) Drinkwine received warnings that foreign fighters were infiltrating into the Jolan, including the arch-terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi...On a night raid two Egyptians were arrested in an apartment with slogans supporting bin Laden scrawled in sheep's blood on a wall. Neighbors told a reporter that foreign fighters were threatening people who played Western music, styled their hair, wore revealing clothes, or even sold wood to contractors for the Americans."


"We heard the Islamic fundamentalists were starting to taunt Saddam's guys, saying the old army guys didn't have the balls to take on the Americans...We saw a change in tactics."


"The Iraqis never tired of talking, issuing long litanies of complains, making passionate promises of stability, and stoutly denying the presence of foreign fighters. The Fallujans were good people, fighting to protect their city. If the Americans would stop firing and pull out, all would be well. It was never clear, though, who spoke for the fighters. Those with the power of the guns remained shadowy figures, never mentioned by name."


"During the third week of April...Bremer's experienced deputy...chaired four sessions...to resolve the siege... Every day rusted and broken weapons were turned in as symbols of progress while the violence continued. As for expelling the terrorists, the negotiators denied they existed. Foreign fighters, they said, were a myth and an excuse to punish the city."


"(American LtCol Byrne asked) 'Can we agree that we share the same goals? That we both want the heavy weapons and the foreign fighters removed from the city, do we not?' (Former regime LCol. responded:) 'That is an American story. There are no foreign fighters...we take care of security by ourselves. If you are not here, there is no problem.'"


"(Muhhamad Latif, a colonel in the intelligence branch who had been imprisoned for seven years by Saddam) and the city elders met with Mattis, explaining that the people of Fallujah wanted no help from outsiders...Latif denied there were any foreign fighters in the city"


"Foreign fighters from Syria and Saudi Arabia trickled into the city. The insurgents organized a ruling council, called the Mujahadeen Shura, which moved into a mosque in the center of the city and issued written passes for Arab journalists to visit the 'liberated' city...The reign of the Taliban had descended on Fallujah."


"Neither the American nor the Arab press called particular attention to the proliferation of terrorist safe houses in Fallujah, while the city elders vehemently denied Zarqawi existed."


"'For the sake of your city,' Mattis said, 'you must tell Zarqawi and the Syrians to leave. They are killing your innocent fellow countrymen.... Get them out.'" (Chief negotiator Imam Abdullah Janabi replies) 'Someone gives you bad information... there are no foreigners here. You bomb innocent people. We only protect our homes when you come to destroy.'"


-- No True Glory - A Frontline Account of the Battle of Fallujah