Books by "Jon Tetsuro Sumida"
4 books found
Militaries with state-of-the-art information technology sometimes bog down in confusing conflicts. To understand why, it is important to understand the micro-foundations of military power in the information age, and this is exactly what Jon R. Lindsay's Information Technology and Military Power gives us. As Lindsay shows, digital systems now mediate almost every effort to gather, store, display, analyze, and communicate information in military organizations. He highlights how personnel now struggle with their own information systems as much as with the enemy. Throughout this foray into networked technology in military operations, we see how information practice—the ways in which practitioners use technology in actual operations—shapes the effectiveness of military performance. The quality of information practice depends on the interaction between strategic problems and organizational solutions. Information Technology and Military Power explores information practice through a series of detailed historical cases and ethnographic studies of military organizations at war. Lindsay explains why the US military, despite all its technological advantages, has struggled for so long in unconventional conflicts against weaker adversaries. This same perspective suggests that the US retains important advantages against advanced competitors like China that are less prepared to cope with the complexity of information systems in wartime. Lindsay argues convincingly that a better understanding of how personnel actually use technology can inform the design of command and control, improve the net assessment of military power, and promote reforms to improve military performance. Warfighting problems and technical solutions keep on changing, but information practice is always stuck in between.
Global politics in the twenty-first century is complicated by dense economic interdependence, rapid technological innovation, and fierce security competition. How should governments formulate grand strategy in this complex environment? Many strategists look to deterrence as the answer, but how much can we expect of deterrence? Classical deterrence theory developed in response to the nuclear threats of the Cold War, but strategists since have applied it to a variety of threats in the land, sea, air, space, and cyber domains. If war is the continuation of politics by other means, then the diversity of technologies in modern war suggests a diversity of political effects. Some military forces or postures are most useful for "winning" various kinds of wars. Others are effective for "warning" adversaries of consequences or demonstrating resolve. Still others may accomplish these goals at lower political cost, or with greater strategic stability. Deterrence is not a simple strategy, therefore, but a complex relationship between many ends and many means. This book presents findings from a decade-long research program on "cross-domain deterrence." Through a series of theoretical and empirical studies, we explore fundamental trade-offs that have always been implicit in practice but have yet to be synthesized into a general theory of deterrence. Gartzke and Lindsay integrate newly revised and updated versions of published work alongside new work into a holistic framework for understanding how deterrence works--or fails to work--in multiple domains. Their findings show that in deterrence, all good things do not go together.
A pathbreaking critique of the thought of military studies icon Carl Phillip Gottfried von Clausewitz and his magnum opus On War that illuminates why and how that work should be viewed as much more mature, coherent, innovative, and complete than suggested by previous accounts.
Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command
by Jon Tetsuro Sumida
1997 · Woodrow Wilson Center Press
Between 1890 and 1913, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan published a series of books on naval warfare in the age of sail, which established his reputation as the founder of modern strategic history. The author of this work argues that Mahan has been misunderstood and reconsiders his works.