How a new understanding of warfare can help the military fight today’s conflicts more effectivelyThe way wars are fought has changed starkly over the past sixty years. International military campaigns used to play out between large armies at central fronts. Today's conflicts find major powers facing rebel insurgencies that deploy elusive methods, from improvised explosives to terrorist attacks. Small Wars, Big Data presents a transformative understanding o...

The most common image of world politics involves states negotiating, cooperating, or sometimes fighting with one another; billiard balls in motion on a global pool table. Yet working through local proxies or agents, through what Eli Berman and David A. Lake call a strategy of "indirect control," has always been a central tool of foreign policy. Understanding how countries motivate local allies to act in sometimes costly ways, and when and how that strategy succeeds, is ess...

Applying fresh tools from economics to explain puzzling behaviors of religious radicals: Muslim, Christian, and Jewish; violent and benign.How do radical religious sects run such deadly terrorist organizations? Hezbollah, Hamas, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the Taliban all began as religious groups dedicated to piety and charity. Yet once they turned to violence, they became horribly potent, executing campaigns of terrorism deadlier than those of their secular rivals. In

Small Wars, Big Data provides groundbreaking perspectives for how small wars can be better strategized and favorably won to the benefit of the local population. The authors show that a revolution in the study of conflict-enabled by vast data, rich qualitative evidence, and modern methods-yields new insights into terrorism, civil wars, and foreign interventions. Modern warfare is not about struggles over territory but over people; civilians-and the information they might choose to ...

David Kilcullen is one of the world's most influential experts on counterinsurgency and modern warfare, a ground-breaking theorist whose ideas "are revolutionizing military thinking throughout the west" (Washington Post). Indeed, his vision of modern warfare powerfully influenced the United States' decision to rethink its military strategy in Iraq and implement "the Surge," now recognized as a dramatic success. In Counterinsurgency, Kilcullen brings together his most salient writings on th...

The United States, Barry R. Posen argues in Restraint**, has grown incapable of moderating its ambitions in international politics.** Since the collapse of Soviet power, it has pursued a grand strategy that he calls "liberal hegemony," one that Posen sees as unnecessary, counterproductive, costly, and wasteful. Written for policymakers and observers alike, Restraint explains precisely why this grand strategy works poorly and then provides...

Modern warfare is almost always multilateral to one degree or another, requiring countries to cooperate as allies or coalition partners. Yet as the war in Afghanistan has made abundantly clear, multilateral cooperation is neither straightforward nor guaranteed. Countries differ significantly in what they are willing to do and how and where they are willing to do it. Some refuse to participate in dangerous or offensive missions. Others change tactical objectives with each new commander. Som...

From the rising significance of non-state actors to the increasing influence of regional powers, the nature and conduct of international politics has arguably changed dramatically since the height of the Cold War. Yet much of the literature on deterrence and compellence continues to draw (whether implicitly or explicitly) upon assumptions and precepts formulated in-and predicated upon-politics in a state-centric, bipolar world. Coercion moves beyond these somewhat hidebound premis...

Children at War is the first comprehensive book to examine the growing and global use of children as soldiers.P.W. Singer, an internationally recognized expert in twenty-first-century warfare, explores how a new strategy of war, utilized by armies and warlords alike, has targeted children, seeking to turn them into soldiers and terrorists.Singer writes about how the first American serviceman killed by hostile fire in Afghanistan—a Green Beret—was shot by a fourteen-y...

The Human Terrain System (HTS) was catapulted into existence in 2006 by the US military's urgent need for knowledge of the human dimension of the battlespace in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its centrepiece was embedded groups of mixed military and civilian personnel, known as Human Terrain Teams (HTTs), whose mission was to conduct social science research and analysis and to advise military commanders about the local population. Bringing social science - and actual social scientists - to the wars...

At War with Women reveals how post-9/11 politics of gender and development have transformed US military power. In the mid-2000s, the US military used development as a weapon as it revived counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military assembled all-female teams to reach households and wage war through development projects in the battle for "hearts and minds." Despite women technically being banned from ground combat units, the all-female ...

Since the end of World War II, there have been 181 insurgencies around the world. In fact, most modern warfare occurs in the form of insurgencies, including in such high-profile countries as Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. However, in spite of their prevalence, we still know relatively little about how insurgencies function. With more than three dozen violent insurgencies currently taking place today, a deeper understanding of insurgent groups is more important than ever. In ...