Avoiding Armageddon

Avoiding Armageddon
Author: Bruce Riedel
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2013-03-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 935029995X

The India-Pakistan-America relationship has never been a settled one. In Avoiding Armageddon, Bruce Riedel explains the challenge and the importance of successfully managing America's affairs with these two emerging powers and their toxic relationship. The fact that India and Pakistan will be among the most important countries in the twenty-first century makes this a pressing concern. Born from the British Raj, the two nations share a common heritage, but they are different in many important ways. India is already the world's largest democracy and will soon become the planet's most populous nation. Pakistan, soon to be the fifth most populous country, has a troubled history of military coups, dictators, and harboring terrorists such as Osama bin Laden. The long-time rivals are nuclear powers, with tested weapons. They have fought four wars with each other and have gone to the brink of war several times. Meanwhile, U.S. presidents since Franklin Roosevelt have been increasingly involved in the region's affairs. In the past two decades alone, the White House has intervened several times to prevent nuclear confrontation in the subcontinent. South Asia clearly is critical to American national security, and the volatile relationship between India and Pakistan is the crucial factor determining whether the region can ever be safe and stable. Full of riveting details of what went on behind the scenes, and based on extensive research and Riedel's role in advising four U.S. presidents on the region, Avoiding Armageddon reviews the history of American diplomacy in South Asia, the crises that have flared in recent years, and the prospects for future crisis. Riedel provides an in-depth look at the Mumbai terrorist attack in 2008, the worst terrorist outrage since 9/11, and he concludes with authoritative analysis on what the future is likely to hold for America and the South Asia puzzle as well as recommendations on how Washington should proceed.

Planning Armageddon

Planning Armageddon
Author: Nicholas A. Lambert
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 662
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674063066

Before the First World War, the British Admiralty conceived a plan to win rapid victory in the event of war with Germany-economic warfare on an unprecedented scale.This secret strategy called for the state to exploit Britain's effective monopolies in banking, communications, and shipping-the essential infrastructure underpinning global trade-to create a controlled implosion of the world economic system. In this revisionist account, Nicholas Lambert shows in lively detail how naval planners persuaded the British political leadership that systematic disruption of the global economy could bring about German military paralysis. After the outbreak of hostilities, the government shied away from full implementation upon realizing the extent of likely collateral damage-political, social, economic, and diplomatic-to both Britain and neutral countries. Woodrow Wilson in particular bristled at British restrictions on trade. A new, less disruptive approach to economic coercion was hastily improvised. The result was the blockade, ostensibly intended to starve Germany. It proved largely ineffective because of the massive political influence of economic interests on national ambitions and the continued interdependencies of all countries upon the smooth functioning of the global trading system. Lambert's interpretation entirely overturns the conventional understanding of British strategy in the early part of the First World War and underscores the importance in any analysis of strategic policy of understanding Clausewitz's "political conditions of war."

Sleepwalking to Armageddon

Sleepwalking to Armageddon
Author: Helen Caldicott
Publisher: The New Press
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2017-11-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1620972476

A frightening but necessary assessment of the threat posed by nuclear weapons in the twenty-first century, edited by the world's leading antinuclear activist With the world's attention focused on climate change and terrorism, we are in danger of taking our eyes off the nuclear threat. But rising tensions between Russia and NATO, proxy wars erupting in Syria and Ukraine, a nuclear-armed Pakistan, and stockpiles of aging weapons unsecured around the globe make a nuclear attack or a terrorist attack on a nuclear facility arguably the biggest threat facing humanity. In Sleepwalking to Armageddon, pioneering antinuclear activist Helen Caldicott assembles the world's leading nuclear scientists and thought leaders to assess the political and scientific dimensions of the threat of nuclear war today. Chapters address the size and distribution of the current global nuclear arsenal, the history and politics of nuclear weapons, the culture of modern-day weapons labs, the militarization of space, and the dangers of combining artificial intelligence with nuclear weaponry, as well as a status report on enriched uranium and a shocking analysis of spending on nuclear weapons over the years. The book ends with a devastating description of what a nuclear attack on Manhattan would look like, followed by an overview of contemporary antinuclear activism. Both essential and terrifying, this book is sure to become the new bible of the antinuclear movement—to wake us from our complacency and urge us to action.

The Wrong Enemy

The Wrong Enemy
Author: Carlotta Gall
Publisher: HMH
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2014-04-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0544045688

A journalist with deep knowledge of the region provides “an enthralling and largely firsthand account of the war in Afghanistan” (Financial Times). Few reporters know as much about Afghanistan as Carlotta Gall. She was there in the 1990s after the Russians were driven out. She witnessed the early flourishing of radical Islam, imported from abroad, which caused so much local suffering. She was there right after 9/11, when US special forces helped the Northern Alliance drive the Taliban out of the north and then the south, fighting pitched battles and causing their enemies to flee underground and into Pakistan. Gall knows just how much this war has cost the Afghan people—and just how much damage can be traced to Pakistan and its duplicitous government and intelligence forces. Combining searing personal accounts of battles and betrayals with moving portraits of the ordinary Afghans who were caught up in the conflict for more than a decade, The Wrong Enemy is a sweeping account of a war brought by American leaders against an enemy they barely understood and could not truly engage.

Pakistan and Armageddon

Pakistan and Armageddon
Author: Indian Believer
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2009-05-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1465319921

Satan-Allah (95% of Allah) is total lies, total deceit, and total betrayal. Any truth of any kind from any source anywhere in this world is not acceptable to Allah. All truth of all truthful people will not convince one Muslim to say sorry. A slave has no right to say sorry as long as he follows his masters orders. Allah has systematically annihilated, eliminated, killed, converted, kicked out, and simply wiped out about 300 million human beings in the last 1,400 years. That is why we have slaves (Muslims) everywhere.

Magnificent Delusions

Magnificent Delusions
Author: Husain Haqqani
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1610394518

The relationship between America and Pakistan is based on mutual incomprehension and always has been. Pakistan—to American eyes—has gone from being a quirky irrelevance, to a stabilizing friend, to an essential military ally, to a seedbed of terror. America—to Pakistani eyes—has been a guarantee of security, a coldly distant scold, an enthusiastic military enabler, and is now a threat to national security and a source of humiliation. The countries are not merely at odds. Each believes it can play the other—with sometimes absurd, sometimes tragic, results. The conventional narrative about the war in Afghanistan, for instance, has revolved around the Soviet invasion in 1979. But President Jimmy Carter signed the first authorization to help the Pakistani-backed mujahedeen covertly on July 3—almost six months before the Soviets invaded. Americans were told, and like to believe, that what followed was Charlie Wilson's war of Afghani liberation, with which they remain embroiled to this day. It was not. It was General Zia-ul-Haq's vicious regional power play. Husain Haqqani has a unique insight into Pakistan, his homeland, and America, where he was ambassador and is now a professor at Boston University. His life has mapped the relationship of the two countries and he has found himself often close to the heart of it, sometimes in very confrontational circumstances, and this has allowed him to write the story of a misbegotten diplomatic love affair, here memorably laid bare.

Christian Zionism

Christian Zionism
Author: Stephen Sizer
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2021-09-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1666731501

"I am glad to commend Stephen Sizer's groundbreaking critique of Christian Zionism. His comprehensive overview of its roots, its theological basis, and its political consequences is very timely. I myself believe that Zionism, both political and Christian, is incompatible with biblical faith. Stephen's book has helped to reinforce this conviction."--Rev. Dr. John Stott"I believe Stephen Sizer is one of the most authoritative scholars in the world on the vital issue of Christian Zionism. He is a very important voice speaking out against this destructive movement that is killing us [Palestinians] through its theology." --Canon Naim Ateek"Stephen Sizer's Christian Zionism: Road Map to Armageddon? is essential reading for any Western evangelical trying to understand the religious dimensions of American support for Israel. Sizer writes as an insider within the church, not as a critic watching from afar. And he shows with exacting clarity how evangelical eschatology has now embedded itself in a modern political ideology. One quick read of this book will change anyone's perspective on the Middle East permanently." --Professor Gary M. Burge"Congratulations on Christian Zionism. The index alone makes my mouth water, since this is the scholarly treatment to counteract the rabid prophecy pack for which I had been searching. I couldn't be happier that this is published. You and I see eye to eye on this issue. . . . Yours is a true prophetic voice so badly needed in the current prophecy frenzy. And when this mania also affects national and international policy, the danger takes on larger proportions."--Professor Paul Maier"Stephen Sizer's work on Christian Zionism is the most important and comprehensive on the subject to date and should be read by all students of the Middle East and by Christians concerned about a just resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Christian Zionism raises vital theological and political challenges that must be addressed head-on by Christians in the West, particularly evangelicals. The impact of this terribly misguided movement is increasingly putting Christians in the Middle East at risk, and it seems a far cry from the witness and message of Jesus Christ."--Dr Donald Wagner"This study of Christian Zionism, based on Stephen Sizer's doctoral thesis, is of seminal significance. It provides a fascinating survey of the history of Christian Zionism and an in-depth analysis of the theology of this highly important and influential movement."--Rabbi Professor Dan Cohn-Sherbok

Shatter the Nations

Shatter the Nations
Author: Mike Giglio
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2019-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1541742346

Unflinching dispatches of an embedded war reporter covering ISIS and the unlikely alliance of forces who came together to defeat it. The battle to defeat ISIS was an unremittingly brutal and dystopian struggle, a multi-sided war of gritty local commandos and militias. Mike Giglio takes readers to the heart of this shifting, uncertain conflict, capturing the essence of a modern war. At its peak, ISIS controlled a self-styled "caliphate" the size of Great Britain, with a population cast into servitude that numbered in the millions. Its territory spread across Iraq and Syria as its influence stretched throughout the wider world. Giglio tells the story of the rise of the caliphate and the ramshackle coalition--aided by secretive Western troops and American airstrikes--that was assembled to break it down village by village, district by district. The story moves from the smugglers, traffickers, and jihadis working on the ISIS side to the victims of its zealous persecution and the local soldiers who died by the thousands to defeat it. Amid the battlefield drama, culminating in a climactic showdown in Mosul, is a dazzlingly human portrait of the destructive power of extremism, and of the tenacity and astonishing courage required to defeat it.

Allies for Armageddon

Allies for Armageddon
Author: Victoria Clark
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2007-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780300116984

Clark explores the 400 year history of this powerful political ideology from its beginnings among the Puritans of 17th century England to the present-day United States, where Christian Zionists wield unprecedented influence.

The Armageddon Letters

The Armageddon Letters
Author: James G. Blight
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2012
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1442216794

On the 50th anniversary of the most dangerous confrontation of the nuclear era, two of the leading experts on the Cuban missile crisis recreate the drama of those tumultuous days as experienced by the leaders of the three countries directly involved: U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and Cuban President Fidel Castro.