Creating Military Power; The Sources of Military Effectiveness

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Good. vii, [3], 252, [2] pages. Index. DJ has rear flap crease. Risa Brooks is Allis Chalmers Associate Professor of Political Science at Marquette University and a senior associate in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Professor Brooks is the author of Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment. She is also coeditor (with Lionel Beehner and Daniel Maurer) of Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations: Politics, Society and Modern War and coeditor (with Elizabeth Stanley) of Creating Military Power: The Sources of Military Effectiveness. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego, and her professional experiences include positions at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and postdoctoral fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She has served as associate editor for the academic journals International Security and Security Studies. Elizabeth A. Stanley, Ph.D. is a professor of security studies with joint appointments in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and the Department of Government. She is also the Director of Georgetown's Center for Security Studies and Security Studies Program. Earlier in her career, she served as a U.S. Army intelligence officer in South Korea, Germany, and on peacekeeping deployments to the Balkans, leaving service as a captain. She is the creator of Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT), tested through four neuroscience research studies with the U.S. military. Creating Military Power examines how societies, cultures, political structures, and the global environment affect countries' military organizations. Unlike most analyses of countries' military power, which focus on material and basic resources, such as the size of populations, technological and industrial base, and GNP, this volume takes a more expansive view. The study's overarching argument is that states' global environments and the particularities of their cultures, social structures, and political institutions often affect how they organize and prepare for war, and ultimately impact their effectiveness in battle. The creation of military power is only partially dependent on states' basic material and human assets. Wealth, technology, and human capital certainly matter for a country's ability to create military power, but equally important are the ways a state uses those resources, and this often depends on the political and social environment in which military activity takes place. Among the topics covered are: Nationalism, Military Effectiveness, Social Structure, Ethnicity, Political Institutions, Civil-Military Relations, Global Norms, International Competition, Alliances, and Military Outcomes.