Learning from Foreign Wars examines how the Russian army interpreted, and what lessons it learned from the wars in Europe between 1859 and 1871, and the American Civil War. This was a time marked by rapid change - political, social, economic and technological. By raising the question of learning from foreign wars the author attempts to fill a gap in the historiography of the Russian army.The army was one of the pillars on which the Russian regime built its power, and it was crucial...

Novel insights into Russian military thought—from the Crimean War to the war in UkraineThe development of the Russian military's strategic thought is an understudied and thus misunderstood subject in the West. Strategy in Russia encompasses the broader context of foreign and domestic policy as well as the military's ties to the country's leadership. The military's strategic thought is closely linked to Russia's existence as a state and explains patterns of Russian ...

How should the countries in the Baltic Sea region and their allies meet the strategic challenges posed by an openly aggressive and expansionist Russia? NATO and the nonaligned states in the region are now more concerned about an external threat than they have been since the end of the Cold War. Russia has been probing air space, maritime boundaries, and even land borders from the Baltic republics to Sweden. Russia's undermining of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea worries former Soviet repu...

Novel insights into Russian military thought―from the Crimean War to the war in UkraineThe development of the Russian military's strategic thought is an understudied and thus misunderstood subject in the West. Strategy in Russia encompasses the broader context of foreign and domestic policy as well as the military's ties to the country's leadership. The military's strategic thought is closely linked to Russia's existence as a state and explains patterns of Russian ...

From the author of Rumsfeld's Wars, "an important addition to the bookshelf of any analyst of post-Soviet security affairs" ( Slavic Review).Dale Herspring analyzes three key periods of change in civil-military relations in the Soviet Union and postcommunist Russia: the Bolshevik construction of the communist Red Army in the 1920s; the era of perestroika, when Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to implement a more benign military doctrine and force postur...

The First World War followed a period of sustained peace in Europe during which people talked with confidence of prosperity, progress, and hope. But in 1914, Europe walked into a catastrophic conflict that killed millions, bled its economies dry, shook empires and societies to pieces, and fatally undermined Europe’s dominance of the world. It was a war that could have been avoided up to the last moment—so why did it happen?Beginning in the early nineteenth century and ending with t...

"A superb book....Mearsheimer has made a significant contribution to our understanding of the behavior of great powers."—The National Interest, Barry R. PosenA decade after the cold war ended, policy makers and academics foresaw a new era of peace and prosperity, an era in which democracy and open trade would herald the "end of history." The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, sadly shattered these idyllic illusions, and John Mearsheimer's masterful new book explains ...

“A monumental new volume. . . . Revelatory, even revolutionary. . . . Clark has done a masterful job explaining the inexplicable.” — Boston GlobeOne of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History)Historian Christopher Clark’s riveting account of the explosive beginnings of World War I.Drawing on new schol...

In the early hours of 24 February 2022, Russian forces attacked Ukraine. The brutality of the Russian assault has horrified the world. But Russians themselves appear to be watching an entirely different war – one in which they are the courageous underdogs and kind-hearted heroes successfully battling a malign Ukrainian foe.Russia analyst Jade McGlynn takes us on a journey into this parallel military and political universe to reveal the sometimes monstrous, sometimes misconstrued at...

**“Compelling.… [E]rudite, objective and immensely readable.” —Ben Hall, Financial TimesAn authoritative history of Europe’s largest military conflict since World War II, from the New York Times best-selling author of The Gates of Europe.**Despite repeated warnings from the White House, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world. Why did Putin start the war—and why has it unfolded in previously unimaginable ways? Ukrainians ha...

Essays on how chaos, totalitarianism, and trauma have shaped Ukraine's culture: "A milestone of the scholarship about Eastern European politics of memory." —Wulf Kansteiner, Aarhus UniversityIn a century marked by totalitarian regimes, genocide, mass migrations, and shifting borders, the concept of memory in Eastern Europe is often synonymous with notions of trauma. In Ukraine, memory mechanisms were disrupted by political systems seeking to repress and control the ...

The unfolding crisis in Ukraine has brought the world to the brink of a new Cold War. As Russia and Ukraine tussle for Crimea and the eastern regions, relations between Putin and the West have reached an all-time low. How did we get here? Richard Sakwa here unpicks the context of conflicted Ukrainian identity and of Russo-Ukrainian relations and traces the path to the recent disturbances through the events which have forced Ukraine, a country internally divided between East and West, to ch...