Who Wins?: Predicting Strategic Success and Failure in Armed Conflict

Despite their immense war-fighting capacity, the five most powerful states in the international system have failed to attain their primary political objective in almost 40% of their military operations against weak state and non-state targets since 1945. Why are states with tremendous military might so often unable to attain their objectives when they use force against weaker adversaries? More broadly, under what conditions can states use military force to attain their political objectives and what conditions limit the utility of military force as a policy instrument? Can we predict the outcome of a war before the fighting begins? Scholars and military leaders have argued that poor military strategy choices, domestic political constraints on democratic governments, or failure to commit sufficient resources to the war effort can explain why strong states lose small wars. In contrast, Who Wins? by Patricia L. Sullivan argues that the key to understanding strategic success in war lies in the nature of the political objectives states pursue through the use of military force. Sullvian does not deny the importance of war-fighting capacity, military strategies, or resolve as determinants of war outcomes. But she provides both a coherent argument and substantial empirical evidence that the effects of these factors are dependent on the nature of the belligerents' political objectives.The theory's predictions about the conditions under which states are able to attain their political objectives through the use of military force are tested against the most widely accepted alternative explanations of war outcomes with an abundance of historical data on violent conflicts. The results support Sullivan's argument and challenge both existing theories and conventional wisdom about the impact of factors like military strength, resolve, regime type, and war-fighting strategies on war outcomes.

History

SULLIVAN, PATRICIA

Military

Oxford University Press

Despite their immense war-fighting capacity, the five most powerful states in the international system have failed to attain their primary political objective in almost 40% of their military operations against weak state and non-state targets since 1945. Why are states with tremendous military might so often unable to attain their objectives when they use force against weaker adversaries? More broadly, under what conditions can states use military force to attain their political objectives and what conditions limit the utility of military force as a policy instrument? Can we predict the outcome of a war before the fighting begins? Scholars and military leaders have argued that poor military strategy choices, domestic political constraints on democratic governments, or failure to commit sufficient resources to the war effort can explain why strong states lose small wars. In contrast, Who Wins? by Patricia L. Sullivan argues that the key to understanding strategic success in war lies in the nature of the political objectives states pursue through the use of military force. Sullvian does not deny the importance of war-fighting capacity, military strategies, or resolve as determinants of war outcomes. But she provides both a coherent argument and substantial empirical evidence that the effects of these factors are dependent on the nature of the belligerents' political objectives. The theory's predictions about the conditions under which states are able to attain their political objectives through the use of military force are tested against the most widely accepted alternative explanations of war outcomes with an abundance of historical data on violent conflicts. The results support Sullivan's argument and challenge both existing theories and conventional wisdom about the impact of factors like military strength, resolve, regime type, and war-fighting strategies on war outcomes.

writers can begin their writing processes directly on PWO, in many sections where they can fill out forms for research, planning, or feedback and can use e-mail functions to share their work with others. "The Principles" section provides extensive coverage of important and current topics: social and cultural issues, ethics, reader-orientation, argument and persuasion, usability testing, and writing online. "The Resources" section includes links to search engines, instruction on searching online, sources for business and technical writing research, coverage of online documentation, and job and career resources. The first Web book provides an innovative approach to the theory and practice of writing for the workplace and allows readers to work with the medium that is becoming increasingly dominant in the real world.

Professional Writing Online

Engineering & Transportation

Porter, James

Porter, James E.

Johnson-Eilola, Johndan

Engineering

Longman Pub. Group

Professional Writing Online is not a book, but an instructional website, and it is the first course material intended for applied writing courses that makes full use of the dynamic capabilities of the World Wide Web. The flexibility the Web provides important advantages as a teaching tool over conventional textbooks, and is completely autonomous. Professional Writing Online offers four primary points of entry, which correspond to the four major sections of the site: Projects, Documents, Principles, and Resources. The Projects section provides extended case studies and shorter exercises for use inside and outside the classroom. The Documents section provides a wealth of real-world examples of a variety of document types. The Principles section offers description and guidance on the topics that are integral to an applied writing course. The Resources section provides teachers and students with additional materials that will be useful in the teaching and practicing of writing on the job. These sections are interlinked so students can move back and forth among the sections to find what they need in focusing on a particular topic.Overall, Professional Writing Online provides far more material than a conventional textbook and provides additional links to an abundance of related material on the World Wide Web.

Access code for Professional Writing Online, Version 2.0 (2nd Edition)

Reference

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Longman

Virginia Foster Durr was a monumental champion for civil rights. A white southerner who returned to Alabama in 1951 after twenty years in Washington, she was horrified to revisit the racism of her childhood. She wrote hundreds of letters - humorous, sharp and observant - to her friends up north, among them Eleanor Roosevelt, Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson, Hugo Black and C. Vann Woodward. Published on the 100th anniversary of Durr's birth, her letters offer a distinctive glimpse into the day-to-day battles for racial justice at a pivotal moment in American history.

Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters From the Civil Rights Years

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Routledge

Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press

A leading civil rights historian places Robert Kennedy for the first time at the center of the movement for racial justice of the 1960s?and shows how many of today's issues can be traced back to that pivotal time. Bobby Kennedy was an unlikely civil rights hero. A cold warrior who once worked for Joe McCarthy, he grew up in a sheltered world where segregation was the norm. But when he became attorney general in 1961, he plunged headfirst into the politics of race. In this landmark reconsideration of his life and legacy, Patricia Sullivan reveals how he grasped the moment to emerge as a transformational leader at a tumultuous time. Drawing on government files, personal papers, and oral interviews with many of those who worked with him, Justice Rising shows how RFK used all the tools at his disposal to confront violent resistance to desegregation across the South. He pioneered the use of federal powers to challenge voting rights violations, intervened personally to desegregate schools, and championed criminal justice reform. The Justice Department under Kennedy became an incubator of change, where policy was imagined, tested, and put to work on the volatile frontier of race, crime, and the law. When violent racial uprisings broke out in northern cities and many called for more aggressive law enforcement, Kennedy pushed to address their root causes: entrenched poverty, decaying housing, substandard schools, predatory policing, and a near total absence of employment opportunities. As a presidential candidate before his tragic assassination in 1968 he sought to bridge the nation's racial divisions. Deeply researched and compellingly written, Justice Rising offers a groundbreaking reconsideration of Robert Kennedy's role in the culminating years of the civil rights movement and sheds new light on the battles that remain.

In the 1930s and 1940s, a loose alliance of blacks and whites, individuals and organizations, came together to offer a radical alternative to southern conservative politics. In Days of Hope, Patricia Sullivan traces the rise and fall of this movement. Using oral interviews with participants in this movement as well as documentary sources, she demonstrates that the New Deal era inspired a coalition of liberals, black activists, labor organizers, and Communist Party workers who sought to secure the New Deal's social and economic reforms by broadening the base of political participation in the South. From its origins in a nationwide campaign to abolish the poll tax, the initiative to expand democracy in the South developed into a regional drive to register voters and elect liberals to Congress. The NAACP, the CIO Political Action Committee, and the Southern Conference for Human Welfare coordinated this effort, which combined local activism with national strategic planning. Although it dramatically increased black voter registration and led to some electoral successes, the movement ultimately faltered, according to Sullivan, because the anti-Communist fervor of the Cold War and a militant backlash from segregationists fractured the coalition and marginalized southern radicals. Nevertheless, the story of this campaign invites a fuller consideration of the possibilities and constraints that have shaped the struggle for racial democracy in America since the 1930s.

Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era

Americas

The University of North Carolina Press

In the 1930s and 1940s, a loose alliance of blacks and whites, individuals and organizations, came together to offer a radical alternative to southern conservative politics. In Days of Hope, Patricia Sullivan traces the rise and fall of this movement. Using oral interviews with participants in this movement as well as documentary sources, she demonstrates that the New Deal era inspired a coalition of liberals, black activists, labor organizers, and Communist Party workers who sought to secure the New Deal's social and economic reforms by broadening the base of political participation in the South. From its origins in a nationwide campaign to abolish the poll tax, the initiative to expand democracy in the South developed into a regional drive to register voters and elect liberals to Congress. The NAACP, the CIO Political Action Committee, and the Southern Conference for Human Welfare coordinated this effort, which combined local activism with national strategic planning. Although it dramatically increased black voter registration and led to some electoral successes, the movement ultimately faltered, according to Sullivan, because the anti-Communist fervor of the Cold War and a militant backlash from segregationists fractured the coalition and marginalized southern radicals. Nevertheless, the story of this campaign invites a fuller consideration of the possibilities and constraints that have shaped the struggle for racial democracy in America since the 1930s.

Days of Hope

University of North Carolina Press

Before Brown details the ferment in civil rights that took place across the South before the momentous Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954. This collection refutes the notion that the movement began with the Supreme Court decision, and suggests, rather, that the movement originated in the 1930s and earlier, spurred by the Great Depression and, later, World War II—events that would radically shape the course of politics in the South and the nation into the next century. 
This work explores the growth of the movement through its various manifestations—the activities of politicians, civil rights leaders, religious figures, labor unionists, and grass-roots activists—throughout the 1940s and 1950s. It discusses the critical leadership roles played by women and offers a new perspective on the relationship between the NAACP and the Communist Party. 
Before Brown shows clearly that, as the drive toward racial equality advanced and national political attitudes shifted, the validity of white supremacy came increasingly into question. Institutionalized racism in the South had always offered white citizens material advantages by preserving their economic superiority and making them feel part of a privileged class. When these rewards were threatened by the civil rights movement, a white backlash occurred. 
"A valuable and timely volume . . . particularly welcome for the emphasis it places on the churches, on white women, and on returning black and white veterans, groups whose postwar role has been too long ignored." —Tony Badger, author of The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940 and editor of, with Brian Ward, The Making of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement 
Glenn Feldman is Associate Professor of Business in the Center for Labor Education and Research at The University of Alabama at Birmingham and author of Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915-1949. Patricia Sullivan is Associate Professor of History at the University of South Carolina and author of Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era.

Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South

Feldman, Glenn

Africa

University Alabama Press

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

Books by SULLIVAN, PATRICIA

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

Who Wins?: Predicting Strategic Success and Failure in Armed Conflict

Who Wins?: Predicting Strategic Success and Failure in Armed Conflict

Professional Writing Online

Access code for Professional Writing Online, Version 2.0 (2nd Edition)

Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters From the Civil Rights Years

Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White

Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White

Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era

Days of Hope

Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South