War Aims Research Articles

Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans during World War I, by Marvin Benjamin Fried

Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans during World War I, by Marvin Benjamin Fried

Marvin Benjamin Fried. Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans during World War I. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014. Pp. 320, map, illus.

Marvin Benjamin Fried. Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans during World War I. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014. Pp. 320, map, illus.

A Baptist View from the Trenches: Lockhart Landels Ireland (1887–1916)

The Great War (1914–1918) was seen by many Scottish Baptists as a just war waged by the British Empire to protect smaller nations against German militarism. Many young men volunteered for war service to do their bit to defeat an unscrupulous foe that had inflicted such brutality on the civil population of Belgium. One of these volunteers was Lockhart L. Ireland a gifted writer and committed Baptist. Through his war fiction he gives real insight into the brutality of war but his other writings suggest a glory set over and against this. He was not disillusioned about the war's purpose and to die in such conflict would be a noble act. He is an important figure who eloquently presents commonly held views at the time and how far many Baptists had come to identify British political war aims with Christian duty.

The Ideas of 1914 – German Intellectuals and the Legitimation of the German Reich's Policy at the Beginning of the First World War

After the outbreak of the World War in august 1914, German intellectuals – university professors, writers, artists and publicists – gave an important contribution to the legitimation of the German Reich’s war aims. As a kind of ‘spiritual mobilization’ for the sake of the defense of the fatherland from the allied enemies, they engaged in intense publicity and propaganda activities whose goal was to show the responsibility of the opponent countries for the outbreak of the war as well as to prove that Germany was fighting a just war for its national survival. The ideological justification of the German war aims formulated in the so called ‘ideas of 1914’ rested on several motives. First, the French revolution and its entire political, social and conceptual inheritance were discarded. The revolutionary transformation of society, the theory of natural law, the liberal and democratic ideology and the parliamentary system consider to be inappropriate to ‘German national spirit’, German intellectuals argued for the superiority of gradual social reforms, conservative social and political order and authoritarian political system embodied in the Hohenzollern monarchy. At the same time, they rejected the modern class society marked by the predominance of the egoistic individual interests in favour of an allegedly harmonious ‘organic community’. Finally, they attributed some higher metaphysical meaning to the current war since it was conceived of as a battle for the preservation of the German culture understood as sublimation of highest spiritual achievements of the entire humanity, from the decadent materialistic civilization of Western Europe as well as ‘barbarian’ Russia. In that way, in the ‘ideas of 1914, German intellectuals expressed all elements about the peculiarities of German history (der deutsche Sonderweg) thus giving ideological legitimacy to the German Reich’s war endeavours and to its ‘grab for world power’.

Nikolaj Velimirovic’s letters to Aleksandar Belic sent from London 1916.

The Archive of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade holds four letters that the Nikolaj Velimirovic (1881-1956) sent in 1916. to philologist Aleksandar Belic (1876-1960). Both of them were send by the Serbian government in the missions at the the Allied capitals - Velimirovic in London, Belic in Petrograd. Velimirovic?s view of international relations and the importance of the impact of the Russian Empire in Great Britain led him to cooperation with Belic to help Serbia in achieving its war aims.

Across the Bloody Chasm: The Culture of Commemoration Among Civil War Veterans by M. Keith Harris

Reviewed by: Across the Bloody Chasm: The Culture of Commemoration Among Civil War Veteransby M. Keith Harris Michael F. Conlin Across the Bloody Chasm: The Culture of Commemoration Among Civil War Veterans. By M. Keith Harris. Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014. Pp. [xii], 220. $42.50, ISBN 978-0-8071-5772-5.) In Across the Bloody Chasm: The Culture of Commemoration Among Civil War Veterans, M. Keith Harris explores how Civil War veterans remembered that awful conflict. Harris shows that most Union and Confederate veterans commemorated the Civil War in distinctly sectional ways. He contends that from the perspective of its veterans, the public memory of the Civil War was “a story of competition, negotiation, and contestation” (p. 4). While most white Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries focused on reconciliation between the two sections, extolling the bravery and dedication of soldiers on both sides, veterans continued to fight the Civil War by other means, such as at monument dedications and in textbooks. Indeed, Harris shows that Civil War veterans rarely met with their former opponents to remember the conflict. Instead, they met with their former comrades, reinforcing their common beliefs. Harris shows that Civil War veterans disputed everything from military tactics to the return of battle flags to Confederate units. They contested the treatment of prisoners of war and punitive measures taken against civilians. If Union veterans were outraged by the appalling conditions at Andersonville, then their Confederate counterparts bitterly resented William T. Sherman’s depredations in Georgia and the Carolinas. Union veterans sought to cover their cause in glory by reminding postbellum generations that they had fought for union and emancipation. Despite the fact that most Union army veterans were just as racist as typical white Americans, they gloried in the fact they [End Page 454]had rid the United States of the curse of slavery. Union veterans asserted that slavery was the cause of the conflict and that Confederates had committed treason to defend that odious institution. Union veterans elevated emancipation, claiming that it was just as important to their cause as preservation of the Union. Of course, most white Union veterans could oppose slavery while still supporting racial inequality. Many Confederate veterans downplayed slavery as the cause of the war. Some flatly denied that they had fought to protect slavery, instead emphasizing defense of their homes and communities and vague but oppressive actions taken by the tyrannical North as the reasons for their noble bid for southern independence. Both Confederate and Union veterans claimed the mantle of the Founders and charged their adversaries with undermining the Union those worthies had established. Harris complicates the picture of white supremacist postbellum reconciliation between the North and the South and Union and Confederate veterans offered by David W. Blight in Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory(Cambridge, Mass., 2001). Blight contends that Americans in the early twentieth century conspicuously ignored slavery as a cause of the Civil War and emancipation as a war aim, giving the segregated nation a public memory of the war on southern terms, culminating in the fiftieth anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg in 1913. Harris shows this was not the case for the war’s veterans. However, the strength of Across the Bloody Chasmis also its weakness. Harris’s focus on veterans tells us only how those select Americans remembered the Civil War. While they were respected, these ex-soldiers were far less influential than their children, who established the postwar consensus on sectional reconciliation. Michael F. Conlin Eastern Washington University Copyright © 2016 The Southern Historical Association

Book Review: Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans during World War I by Marvin Benjamin Fried

Book Review: <i>Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans during World War I</i> by Marvin Benjamin Fried

Europe on Trial: The Story of Collaboration, Resistance, and Retribution during World War II by Istvan Deak

EUROPE ON TRIAL: THE STORY OF COLLABORATION, RESISTANCE, AND RETRIBUTION DURING WORLD WAR II By Istvan Deak. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2015. 288 pp.Prolific scholar Istvan Deak examines the spectrum of collaboration and resistance across Europe during the Second World War in Europe on Trial: Story of Collaboration, Resistance, and Retribution during World War II. For Hungarian-born Deak, these themes have a deep personal resonance; he begins his account with the story of Bela Stollar, the fiance of his sister and close friend from his youth who died resisting fascism in Hungary. Throughout the autobiographical account that opens this text, Deak recounts his life in war-time Hungary, followed by his refugee status in early Cold War Paris and his academic career at Columbia University.In this concise textbook, Deak stresses that collaboration with the Nazi regime remained endemic in Europe until the tide of the war turned against Germany at the battles of Stalingrad and El Alamein. For Deak, European collaboration proved essential to furthering Nazi war aims, especially in implementing the phases of the Holocaust. Collaboration took different forms. In some cases independent nations aligned themselves with Nazi Germany in order to further their own national interests. For instance, Hungary sought to regain territories lost as a result of the Treaty of Trianon. For conquered nations, collaboration was indicative of self-preservation, especially if the German authorities permitted a modicum of autonomy. By supplying the German war effort and eschewing armed resistance, the Danes managed to preserve their parliamentary system throughout much of the war. Other nations, especially Poland, possessed fewer avenues of collaboration, but the widespread embrace of antisemitism led some Poles to aid the Nazis in ferreting out Jews.What is the line between collaboration and resistance? How does one consider the question of fear and intimidation? Drawing upon Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men, Deak observes that even those involved in the actual murder of Jews had a remarkable range of options and could opt out from serving as executioners. But do we swing too far in the other direction and fail to stress the primacy of the Nazis as perpetrators of the Holocaust? How much autonomy did Hungary's ruler, Admiral Horthy, have in chartering a foreign policy that challenged Nazi Germany? Even in 1944, with the Wehrmacht losing the war on both fronts, Horthy tilted away from the Nazis, only to be toppled by German troops with the support of Hungarian fascists. In the Netherlands in 1941, Dutch Jews resorted to violence, and Dutch workers waged sympathy strikes on their behalf. Deak observes that these actions were unique for occupied Europe, but also acknowledges how quickly they were suppressed by German forces.How much weight should Deak give to the question of intention? surrender of France in 1940 and the creation of the Vichy regime suggest a level of collaboration of the highest order. Many other governments, most notably those of Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Greece, refused to surrender when facing military defeat, continuing the struggle in exile.Considering Europe on Trial made me reflect on my own encounters with the Second World War in my college textbooks in the late 1970s and ponder shifts in historiographical focus. During the Cold War the lines between good and evil seemed more rigid. In my introductory class, The Atlantic Community and Contemporary World 1914-1945, my professors at Drew University assigned Robert Edwin Herzstein's Adolf Hitler and the German Trauma, 1913-1945 (1974) as the main text dealing with the Second World War. …

Selected Bibliography

Selected Bibliography Skyler D. Gordon Primary Sources Du Bois, W. E. B. “The Clash of Colour: Indians and American Negroes.” 1936. In W. E. B. Du Bois on Asia: Crossing the World Color Line, edited by Bill V. Mullen and Cathryn Watson, 69–73. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2005. Du Bois, W. E. B. “The Present Outlook for the Dark Races of Mankind.” AME Church Review 17, no. 2 (1900): 95–110. Hunton, Addie W. and Kathryn M. Johnson. Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Forces. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Eagle Press, 1920. Tate, Merze. “Decadence of the Hawaiian Nation and Proposals to Import a Negro Labor Force.” The Journal of Negro History 47, no. 4 (October 1962): 248–63. ———. Hawaii: Reciprocity or Annexation. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1968. ———. “Review: A Personal Report on an American Negro in India.” The Journal of Negro Education 24, no. 2 (Spring 1955): 130–32. ———. “Review: A Report on India.” The Journal of Negro Education 25, no. 4 (Autumn 1956): 412–13. ———. “Review: Imperialism in Disguise.” The Journal of Negro Education 23, no. 4 (Autumn 1954): 447–49. ———. “Review: Life with the Nehrus.” The Journal of Negro Education 23, no. 4 (Autumn 1954): 443–44. ———. “Review: Somaliland Under Italy’s Heel.” The Journal of Negro Education 21, no. 4 (Autumn 1952): 497–99. ———. “Review: The White Man’s Pan African Idea.” The Journal of Negro Education 13, no. 1 (Winter 1944): 76–79. ———. “Review: Who Are South Africans?” The Journal of Negro Education 23, no. 4 (Autumn 1954): 444–47. [End Page 208] ———. “Slavery and Racism as Deterrent to the Annexation of Hawaii, 1854–1855.” The Journal of Negro History 47, no. 1 (January 1962): 1–18. ———. “The War Aims of World War I and World War II and Their Relation to the Darker Peoples of the World.” The Journal of Negro Education 12, no. 3 (Summer 1943): 521–32. Tate, Merze and Fidele Fay. “Slavery and Racism in South Pacific Annexations.” The Journal of Negro History 50, no. 1 (January 1965): 1–21. Tobias, Channing H. “World Implications of Race.” Presentation at the Jubilee Meeting of the Conference of Foreign Mission Boards in Canada and in the United States, Chicago, January 3–7, 1944. In Report of the Jubilee Meeting of the Conference of Foreign Mission Boards in Canada and in the United States, 187–91. New York: Foreign Missions Conference of North America, 1944. Wright, Richard. The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference. Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1926. Newspapers and Periodicals The Afro-American Sentinel [Omaha, Nebraska]. 1896. The Cleveland Gazette. 1896–1914. The Colored American Magazine. 1905–1909. The Crisis. 1914–1919. The New York Age. 1909. The New York Times. 1896. The Times [London, England]. 1895–1896. The Voice of the Negro. 1905. The Washington Bee [Washington, D. C.]. 1895. Articles Adair, Zakiya. “Respectable Vamp: A Black Feminist Analysis of Florence Mills’ Career in Early Vaudville Theater.” Journal of Africa American Studies 17, no. 1 (March 2013): 7–21. Allen, Ernest, Jr. “Waiting for Tojo: The Pro-Japan Vigil of Black Missourians, 1932–1943.” Gateway Heritage (Fall 1995): 38–55. Allen, Ernest, Jr. “When Japan Was ‘Champion of the Darker Races’: Satokata Takahashi and the Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism.” The Black Scholar 24 (Winter 1994): 23–46. Angelo, Ann-Marie. “The Black Panthers in London, 1967–1972: A Diasporic Struggle Navigates the Black Atlantic.” Radical History Review 103 (Winter 2009): 17–35. Bair, Barbara. “Pan-Africanism as Process: Adelaide Casely Hayford, Garveyism, and the Cultural Roots of Nationalism.” In Imagining Home: [End Page 209] Class, Culture, and Nationalism in the African Diaspora, edited by Sidney J. Lemelle and Robin D. G. Kelley. London: Verso, 1994. ———. “True Women, Real Men: Garvey, Ideology, and Social Roles in the Garvey Movement.” In Gendered Domains: Rethinking Public and Private in Women’s History, edited by Dorothy O. Helly and Susan M. Reverby, 154–66. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Bayly, C. A., Sven Beckert, Matthew Connelly, Isabel Hofmeyer, Wendy Kozol, and Patricia Seed. “AHR Conversation: On Transnational History.” American Historical Review 111, no. 5 (December 2006): 1441...

Tseli Germanii v Pervoi mirovoi voine na Vostoke: krutye povoroty istorii i istoriografii | The Goals of Germany in the East during the First World War: Sharp Turns in History and Historiography

In the evaluation of the goals of the countries that fought in the First World War, one of the mostpersistent stereotypes testifies to the particular aggressiveness of the Kaiser’s Germany, and itsexclusive role in the outbreak of the war. This opinion is directly related to Lithuania, when it comesto the expansionist approach of Germany with respect to the western border zones of the RussianEmpire. The paper looks for the origins of these historiographic stereotypes, by analysing how thegoals of Germany in the First World War were presented in Soviet historiography, and, in a broadersense, in socialist bloc historiography; and how Lithuanian historiography in the period of restoredindependence has been impacted by the approaches of foreign researchers. After looking at studiesof recent resonant historiographic trends with respect to the military aims of the Kaiser’s Germany,and their traces in the Lithuanian study of history, the author makes an attempt to verify thevalidity of the statement about ‘German expansionism’ as regards Lithuania and the neighbouringregion in the initial period of the war, which has been little explored in Lithuania. Key Words: First World War, German war aims, Soviet historiography, Lithuanian historiography. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15181/ahuk.v31i0.1200

Balance of Power or Principle of Nationality? The Evolution of French Plans towards East-Central Europe during the War

In August 1914, France had already defined a pattern of war aims which would be shaped and amended during the next four years. Regarding East-Central Europe, two approaches present themselves to the French policy-makers: the classic system of alliances to maintain the balance of power, and the new internationalist doctrine implying the priority application of the principle of nationality. Both these concepts reacted to the geopolitical evolutions which occurred during the Great War. The article analyses these evolutions of the French concept of a ‘world order’ in East-Central Europe between 1914 and 1918 primarily through an examination of the case of Poland.

Punishing Crimes of Terror in Article III Courts

As the government’s strategy for advancing the “War on Terror” has evolved, preventative prosecutions of terrorism suspects in the Article III courts have played an increasingly important role. In this way, the civilian courts have been enlisted as participants in the government’s war strategy in the conflict with al Qaeda. Problematically, though, there has been little attention to how this interbranch war strategy could be more effective and better coordinated. In particular, there has been relatively little conversation about the civilian courts’ approach to sentencing and punishing defendants convicted of terrorism crimes perpetrated in connection with the War on Terror. For whatever reason, movement toward reform has been stagnant — the United States Sentencing Guidelines have been largely accepted as providing adequate guidance to the courts in their sentencing practices. This article demonstrates why the Guidelines fall short and suggests how they can improve. The article takes as its frame of reference the Executive’s war strategy and war aims in this conflict, which include preventative prosecution. In view of that strategy and its related objectives, it considers how the current Guidelines framework for international terrorism is insufficient. In so doing, the article identifies the appropriate legal principles, sentencing purposes, and historical experiences that are relevant to the United States’ conflict with al Qaeda but not adequately accounted for in the current Guidelines regime. The article proposes a way to revise the Guidelines to incorporate these principles, purposes, and lessons from history in a way that will better serve the United States’ overarching war effort. Importantly, the article proposes a sentencing and punishment framework that draws from both domestic and international law and context — consistent with the global nature of this conflict — thereby enhancing the transparency of the civilian courts’ sentencing and punishment practices and improving the coherency of this component of United States counterterrorism policy.

The United States and the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895

In the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, the United States claimed to be neutral, but was in fact pro-Japanese. Before the war, it repeatedly refused mediation requests by China and Korea and rejected Britain’s joint mediation proposal while tacitly agreeing to or inciting Japan’s launching a war. During the war, American diplomats, as wartime protectors of both Japanese and Chinese nationals, frequently went beyond the limits of international law to protect Japanese spies in China. As the only mediator between China and Japan, the United States rejected the joint mediation efforts of European powers and helped reduce international pressure on Japan. At the same time, it unilaterally convinced the Qing government to accept Japan’s aggressive demands so as to help Japan achieve its war aims. The main reason for the United States’ bias towards Japan was that it hoped to use Japan to end the tributary relationship between China and Korea in order to further open the door to China while weakening the influence of Britain and Russia in East Asia.

The Bar Fight Theory of International Conflict: Regime Type, Coalition Size, and Victory

Studies of regime type and war show that democracies tend to win the wars they fight, but questions remain about why this is the case. A simple, if underappreciated, explanation for democratic success is that democracies fight alongside larger and more powerful coalitions. Coalition partners bring additional material capabilities and may also provide intangible benefits to the war effort, such as increased legitimacy or confidence. Democracies may also find it less costly to join coalitions, as democratic war aims may be easier to apportion among the victors without diluting the spoils. Evaluating our hypotheses in a sample of all wars (or all militarized disputes) during the period 1816–2000, we find that democracies fight alongside larger coalitions and that states fighting alongside larger coalitions are more likely to win major contests. Coalition size subsumes most (and in some specifications all) of the direct effect of regime type on victory.

Allying to Win: Regime Type, Alliance Size, and Victory

Studies of regime type and war have shown that democracies tend to win the wars they fight, but questions remain about why this is the case. A simple, if under-appreciated, explanation for democratic victory is that democracies fight alongside larger and more powerful coalitions. Coalition partners bring additional material capabilities and may provide intangible benefits to the war effort, such as increased legitimacy or confidence. Democracies may also find coalitions less costly or constraining, even as democratic war aims may be easier to apportion among the victors without diluting the spoils. Evaluating our hypotheses in a sample of all wars (or all militarized disputes) during the period 1816-2000, we find that democracies have more coalition partners when they fight, and that states fighting with more numerous coalition partners are more likely to win major contests. This finding is robust to replacing the number of coalition partners with the cumulative military power of those partners. Non-democracies also gain a likelihood-of-victory benefit with additional partners, but they appear less willing or able to form large military coalitions. Finally, we show that the indirect effect of democracy on success in war through coalition size subsumes much of the direct effect previously attributed to regime type.

Marvin Benjamin Fried. Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans during World War I.

Marvin Benjamin Fried. Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans during World War I.

Do “Foreign Voices” Influence the News and Public Opinion?

Influence from Abroad: Foreign Voices, the Media, and US Public Opinion. By Danny Hayes, Matt Guardino. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 186 pp., $85.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-1-107-03552-2); $25.00 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-1-107-69102-5). The relationship between foreign policy, public opinion, and media has long been a focus of scholarly concern. One body of scholarship highlights the tendency of media to rally publics in support of government war aims, and another has explored the extent to which media coverage and public opinion can turn against wars, especially when they become protracted. As the authors note, much of this literature has been dominated by a particular theoretical approach which highlights the propensity of journalists to index the news to the range of debate preferred by political elites (Bennett 1990). As part of the elite-driven paradigm (Robinson et al. 2010), this position maintains that news media are largely subservient to political power. Influence from Abroad offers a unique contribution to the literature, first by exploring prewar media coverage during the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion and second by arguing that oppositional sources from abroad play a greater role than predicted by the indexing hypothesis. In effect, the authors argue that patterns of media–state relations are more nuanced than suggested by the indexing hypothesis. There is much to commend this book. The argument proceeds in a careful and empirically rich manner. Indeed, as the authors note, there is a lack of careful, systematic, and rigorous empirical research of wartime media coverage and even less focusing on the run-up to a war. Danny Hayes and Matt Guardino's approach presents a refreshing antidote to so much of the literature on war and media, which typically eschews rigorous research design and presents selective “readings” of media …

War Exit

This article argues that we must sever the ethics of war termination from the ethics of war initiation: a belligerent who embarks on a just war at time t1 might be under a duty to sue for peace at t2 before it has achieved its just war aims; conversely, a belligerent who embarks on an unjust war at t1 might acquire a justification for continuing at t2. In the course of making that argument, the article evaluates the various ways in which belligerents end their wars.

Fighting the "Islamic State" The Case for US Ground Forces

Abstract: This article argues counterinsurgency wars are not analogous the challenges presented by the Islamic State. The United States needs accept the nature of the war it is in, and undertake clear and comprehensive assessment of the necessary for strategic success. Such assessment will make apparent the need commit US ground combat forces. (1) ********** The rise of the Islamic State has forced policy makers confront uncomfortable questions: What will it take defeat the Islamic State? What is the nature of the current conflict against the Islamic State? Can the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), bolstered by US and allied air power, advisers, special forces--almost everything short of ground combat forces--defeat the Islamic State? The difficulty the Iraqis experienced in taking Tikrit and the recent abandonment of Ramadi should be instructive, as was the premature announcement by US Central Command of coming ISF spring 2015 offensive retake Mosul, which was followed by admission that the ISF is not yet ready for the kind of fight Mosul entail. (2) Many have already commented on the need have all US options on the table defeat the Islamic State. Retired Marine Corps General James Mattis recently wrote US strategy should include ground combat forces to achieve our war aims. (3) This article explains why US ground forces are not just better option than the ISF, but absolutely necessary for achieving US policy objectives against the Islamic State. Does Our Strategy Fit the War We Are In? All students of strategy have had the ends-ways-means catechism drummed into them at some point in their education. Assessing the US strategy for the war with the Islamic State from this perspective is useful in reaching understanding of what needs be done defeat the Islamic State. Additionally, it will illustrate the continuing challenges in post-9/11 strategy formulation and, in particular, the chasm between desired and deployed means. President Obama, in his February 11, 2015 letter the Congress requesting Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) fight the Islamic State, set forth clear ends for his strategy: to degrade and defeat ISIL. (4) To this point in the fight against the Islamic State, the US has been limited a systematic campaign of airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria and supporting various anti-Islamic State security forces. (5) American means are limited air power, advisers, and US support the Iraqis. The other beyond US supporting forces--the boots on the ground--include the ISF, Kurdish Peshmerga and Sunni and Shi'a militias, the latter backed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Indeed, Major General Qasem Soleimaini, commander of the Iranian Quds Force, was at one point directing the offensive retake Tikrit. (6) This is problematic in terms of US strategy in the region, but also creates sectarian tensions with Iranians deeply involved in taking Sunni areas. The AUMF explicitly states it would not authorize long-term, large-scale ground combat operations like those our Nation conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the fundamental flaw in conceptualizing strategy for defeating the Islamic State in Iraq--seeing this new fight as similar in character the past 14 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Clausewitz is instructive when he stresses that war is an instrument of policy.... This way of looking at it will show us how wars must vary with the nature of their motives and of the situations which give rise them. (7) Quite simply, the United States needs understand the war it is in and the adversary it faces in the Islamic State. The Islamic State is not insurgency like the United States fought from 2003 until its departure from Iraq. Rather, it is aspiring proto-state bent on taking and holding territory. …

Nazifying colonialism: settler colonialism and the fate of Germany's colonial chronotope

Dr Heinrich Schnee was among Weimar Germany's foremost colonial authors and agitators for the return of Germany's overseas colonies. An examination of Schnee's work and cultural milieu through the prism of Bakhtin's concept of the literary chronotope reveals the differences and similarities between liberals and Nazis on the question of colonies and empire in the interwar period. It also assists in explaining the complex interrelationship between the proponents of a global colonial empire and contiguous eastern expansion between 1918 and 1945. Despite the appearance of a seemingly polyphonic Nazi foreign policy, Schnee's irredentist demands for a global empire were never translated into war aims by the Nazi state, which found itself unable to realise its primary imperial goal of creating a German empire in Eastern Europe.