War Without Battles: Canada's NATO Brigade in Germany

History

Maloney, Sean M.

Americas

McGraw-Hill Ryerson/Trade

This book chronicles most vividly and convincingly the significant role played by Canada's NATO Brigade Group at a critical juncture in world history; a period when Soviet expansionism in Europe was checked, communism's contradictions exposed and the USSR itself ultimately collapsing.  It further challenges the view held in many Canadian academic and political circles that Canada's NATO role was not important, and that peace in Europe was maintained strictly by the nuclear balance of terror.  This simplistic analysis fails to comprehend that strong conventional NATO forces contributed equally to deterrence by showing Western moral resolve and by raising the nuclear threshold, thus reducing the likelihood of immediate use of atomic weapons in a conflict.  The Canadian Brigade, because of the critical ground in Germany it defended on, was crucial to this effort.  The Cold War was a War Without Battles and Canadians can be proud of the role their soldiers played in it.This history-sponsored by, worked on, and contributed to by members of the Brigade themselves-is based on previously classified archival research and over 100 interviews, including with British and German Commanders who worked with the Canadians.  Particularly fascinating are details of NATO planning for meeting a Warsaw Pact attack, including how nuclear weapons would be used.Replete with personal experiences, stories and anecdotes, it vividly describes what service life was like in Germany for Canadian soldiers, as well as their families.  This includes living among the German citizenry and the mutual acculturation which ensued; the ever present possibility of war and the "Snowball" bugouts which kept attitudes and skills honed; the troops fanaticism with regard to brigade sports, especially hockey; and of course the never-ending training and Fallex's.War Without Battles is both a superb historical accounting of a just ended era in Canadian military history as well as a fitting accolade to all who served in Canada's NATO Brigade.  It deserves to be read by civilians and soldier alike.

War without battles: Canada's NATO brigade in Germany, 1951-1993

McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Limited

In Learning to Love the Bomb, Sean M. Maloney explores the controversial subject of Canada’s acquisition of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Based on newly declassified Canadian and U.S. documents, it examines policy, strategy, operational, and technical matters and weaves these seemingly disparate elements into a compelling story that finally unlocks several Cold War mysteries. For example, while U.S. military forces during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis were focused on the Caribbean Sea and the southeastern United States, Canadian forces assumed responsibility for defending the northern United States, with aircraft armed with nuclear depth charges flying patrols and guarding against missile attack by Soviet submarines. This defensive strategy was a closely guarded secret because it conflicted with Canada’s image as a peacekeeper and therefore a more passive member of NATO than its ally to the south. It is revealed here for the first time. The place of nuclear weapons in Canadian history has, until now, been a highly secret and misunderstood field subject to rumor, rhetoric, half-truths, and propaganda. Learning to Love the Bomb reveals the truth about Canada’s role as a nuclear power.

Learning to Love the Bomb: Canada's Nuclear Weapons During the Cold War

POTOMAC BOOKS

Within hours of the September 11 attacks, Sean M. Maloney deciphered that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were the aggressors behind the despicable act. A war in Afghanistan then was inevitable. As a military historian, Maloney was determined to go there to study and record the events for posterity, if for no other reason than the education of his future students at Canada's Royal Military College. What resulted is an in-depth and up-close look at the planning stages, deployment, and aftermath of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. In Enduring the Freedom, Maloney presents a rare on-the-spot view from such important locations as Kabul, Bagram, and Kandahar. He describes the American-led intervention in Afghanistan and the conduct of the war through early 2003, then discusses the events of 2003 from the three locales in detail. Some critics contend that the war in Afghanistan is another Vietnam. Maloney rebuts that appraisal, pointing out that as opposed to the vague language of the Vietnam era, American objectives were clearly stated for Afghanistan. Those objectives were: to destroy al Qaeda's networks, training camps, resources, and communication systems; to destroy any governmental entity providing support or sanctuary to al Qaeda; and to undertake reconstruction efforts to ensure international terrorists can never again use the country as a base. The first objective has more or less been achieved. How to accomplish the last two is still widely debated, and Maloney offers some insightful thoughts and opinions. Finally, he offers educated advice going forward in the hopeful completion of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Enduring the Freedom: A Rogue Historian in Afghanistan

Middle East

How exactly do you stabilize a country that has been at war for nearly thirty years? Challenging the Chaos is the first book to look at the Provincial Reconstruction Teams, the Embedded Training Teams, Strategic Advisory Team-Afghanistan and other little-known units that helped the Afghan people establish a government after the Taliban fell. With the historical and political odds stacked against them, the men and women of these vital organizations worked shoulder-to shoulder with Afghans at all levels of society, and at great personal risk in a lethal and unforgiving environment. Their efforts helped stave off another Afghan civil war and successfully prevented the Taliban from exploiting the chaos left in the wake of their 2001-02 collapse. Challenging the Chaos is a personal story written by a Canadian military historian who observed these efforts as they unfolded in 2004-05. Sean. Maloney takes us on a journey from exotic and poppy-laden Badkashan province in the north, into international intrigue in the capital, Kabul, and then to Kandahar province in the south, where the threat of IED attacks lay around the corner on a daily basis. This work details the operations of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), which played a vital role in stabilizing Afghanistan after the Taliban were removed from power. It provides understanding about how the international effort in Afghanistan and the enemy has evolved since 2003 so we can succeed in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is not Iraq and it is dangerous to template one war onto the other. The war in Afghanistan is unique, as is our response to the insurgency-Afghanistan, its people, and its insurgent's needs to be understood on their own terms and not in relationship to the American experience in Iraq. The United State's closest ally in Afghanistan, next to the Afghan people, is Canada and Canada has played a key role in the effort- this goes unrecognized by American politicians and the American people even while Canadian soldiers are working, fighting and dying alongside American soldiers.

Confronting the Chaos: A Rogue Historian Returns to Afghanistan

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Naval_Institute_Press

Fighting For Afghanistan is the third book in the Rogue Historian trilogy, taking Maloney's story into the conflict in 2006, when the Taliban-led insurgency threatened to overwhelm the U.S.-led coalition in southern Afghanistan. This shift to near-conventional warfare, as opposed to the small-scale guerilla attacks and urban terrorism in Kandahar, caught everybody by surprise and forced a small, under-equipped Canadian battle group, supported by a Canadian-led multinational brigade consisting of American, British, Dutch, forces, into a desperate series of battles to protect the city and to prevent the collapse of British forces in neighboring Helmand province. The author arrived on the ground just as the situation spun out of control and he was able to capture, at all levels from infantry company to battle group to brigade headquarters, exactly what happened. This book explains the difficulties in balancing security and development, the challenges of operating in an austere, alien environment, and the human cost of counterinsurgency warfare in Afghanistan. Fighting For Afghanistan takes the reader through all of the moving parts and planning and then depicts how it played out on the field of battle. During the course of the action, the author became the first Canadian military historian to go into combat since the Korean War. The battles around Kandahar City in 2006 were the turning point in the Afghanistan war and this book is the first to explain events in detail from all three levels. This is the only account that shows the scope of the fighting in the south in this time period. Because of his close proximity to the action, the author was nearly killed on several occasions that summer during the fighting and he brings the intensity of this experience to his writing.

Fighting for Afghanistan: A Rogue Historian at War

Asia

King of the Cold War crisis film, Dr. Strangelove became a cultural touchstone from the moment of its release in 1964. The duck-and-cover generation saw it as a satire on nuclear issues and Cold War thinking. Subsequent generations, removed from the film's historical moment, came to view it as a quasi-documentary about an unfathomable secret world. Sean M. Maloney uses Dr. Strangelove and other genre classics like Fail Safe and The Bedford Incident to investigate a curious pop cultural contradiction. Nuclear crisis films repeatedly portrayed the failures of the Cold War's deterrent system. Yet the system worked. What does this inconsistency tell us about the genre? What does it tell us about the deterrent system, for that matter? Blending film analysis with Cold War history, Maloney looks at how the celluloid crises stack up against reality--or at least as much of reality as we can reconstruct from these films with confidence. The result is a daring intellectual foray that casts new light on Dr. Strangelove, one of the Cold War era's defining films. &nbsp; <div>&nbsp;</div>

Deconstructing Dr. Strangelove: The Secret History of Nuclear War Films

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

Emergency War Plan examines the theory and practice of American nuclear deterrence and its evolution during the Cold War. Previous examinations of nuclear strategy during this time have, for the most part, categorized American efforts as "massive retaliation" and "mutually assured destruction," blunt instruments to be casually dismissed in favor of more flexible approaches or summed up in inflammatory and judgmental terms like "MAD." These descriptors evolved into slogans, and any nuanced discussion of the efficacy of the actual strategies withered due to a variety of political and social factors. Drawing on newly released weapons effects information along with new information about Soviet capabilities as well as risky and covert espionage missions, Emergency War Plan provides a completely new examination of American nuclear deterrence strategy during the first fifteen years of the Cold War, the first such study since the 1980s. Ultimately what emerges is a picture of a gargantuan and potentially devastating enterprise that was understood at the time by the public in only the vaguest terms but that was not as out of control as has been alleged and was more nuanced than previously understood. &nbsp;

Emergency War Plan: The American Doomsday Machine, 1945–1960

War in Afghanistan: Eight Battles in the South

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Maloney, Sean M.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Maloney, Sean M.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Maloney, Sean M.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

War Without Battles: Canada's NATO Brigade in Germany

War without battles: Canada's NATO brigade in Germany, 1951-1993

Learning to Love the Bomb: Canada's Nuclear Weapons During the Cold War

Enduring the Freedom: A Rogue Historian in Afghanistan

Confronting the Chaos: A Rogue Historian Returns to Afghanistan

Fighting for Afghanistan: A Rogue Historian at War

Enduring the Freedom: A Rogue Historian in Afghanistan

Deconstructing Dr. Strangelove: The Secret History of Nuclear War Films

Emergency War Plan: The American Doomsday Machine, 1945–1960

War in Afghanistan: Eight Battles in the South