The most comprehensive history of Canadian military intelligence and its influence on key military operations

Canadian intelligence has become increasingly central to the operations of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). Canadian Military Intelligence: Operations and Evolution from the October Crisis to the War in Afghanistan is the first comprehensive history that examines the impact of tactical, operational, and strategic intelligence on the Canadian military.

Drawing upon a wide range of original documents and interviews with participants in specific operations, author David A. Charters provides an inside perspective on the development of military intelligence since the Second World War. He shows how intelligence influenced key military operations, from domestic internal security to peacekeeping efforts to high-intensity air campaigns—including the October Crisis of 1970, the Oka Crisis, the Gulf War, peacekeeping and enforcement operations in the Balkans, and the war in Afghanistan. He describes how decades of experience, innovation, and increasingly close cooperation with its Five Eyes and NATO allies allowed Canada’s military intelligence to punch above its weight. Its tactical effectiveness and ability to overcome challenges reshaped the outlook of military commanders, and intelligence emerged from the margins to become a central feature of military and defense operations.

Canadian Military Intelligence offers lessons from the past and critical implications for future intelligence support with the creation of the Canadian Forces Intelligence Command. This book will be essential to both intelligence history and military history readers and collections.

Public consciousness of the threat of nuclear war is rising steadily. Responses to the nuclear dilemma are conflicting and often confusing. Never have we been more in need of information and perspective, for if we wish to avoid war we must understand it. Michael Howard offers an analysis of our present predicament by discussing those issues that cause war and make peace. His book includes an examination of nuclear strategy today, views of the past about the conduct of international relations, ethics, modes of defense, and studies of military thinkers and leaders. The Causes of Wars illuminates the interrelationship between men and ideas, between war and other social forces, and between our present situation and its roots in the past.

Public consciousness of the threat of nuclear war is rising steadily. Responses to the nuclear dilemma are conflicting and often confusing. Never have we been more in need of information and perspective, for if we wish to avoid war we must understand it.

Michael Howard offers an analysis of our present predicament by discussing those issues that cause war and make peace. His book includes an examination of nuclear strategy today, views of the past about the conduct of international relations, ethics, modes of defense, and studies of military thinkers and leaders. The Causes of Wars illuminates the interrelationship between men and ideas, between war and other social forces, and between our present situation and its roots in the past.

The Celestine monks of France represent one of the least studied monastic reform movements of the late Middle Ages, and yet also one of the most culturally impactful. Their order - an austere Italian Benedictine reform of the late thirteenth century, which came be known after the papal name of their founder, Celestine V (St Peter of Murrone) - arrived in France in 1300. After a period of marginal growth, they flourished in the region from the mid-fourteenth century, founding thirteen new houses over the next hundred years, taking their total to seventeen by 1450. Not only did the French Celestines expand, they gained a distinctive character that separated them from their Italian brothers. More urban, better connected with both aristocratic and bourgeois society, and yet still rigorous and reformist, they characterised themselves as the 'Observant' wing of their order, having gained self-government for their provincial congregation in 1380 following the arrival of the Great Western Schism (1378-1417). But, as Robert L.J. Shaw argues, their importance runs beyond monastic reform: the late medieval French Celestines are a mirror of the political, intellectual, and Christian reform culture of their age. Within a France torn by war and a Church divided by schism, the French Celestines represented hope for renewal, influencing royal presentation, lay religion, and some of the leading French intellectuals of the period, including Jean Gerson.

Is religion best seen as only a cause of war, or is it a source of comfort for those caught up in conflict?

Checkpoint, Temple, Church and Mosque is based on fieldwork in Sri Lanka’s most religiously diverse and politically troubled region in the closing years of the civil war. It provides a series of new and provocative arguments about the promise of a religiously based civil society, and the strengths and weaknesses of religious organisations and religious leaders in conflict mediation. It argues that for people trapped in long and violent conflicts, religion plays a contradictory role, often acting as a comforting and stabilising force but also, in certain situations, acting as a source of new conflict. Additionally, war itself can lead to profound changes in religious institutions: Catholic priests engage with Buddhist monks and new Muslim leaders, while Hindu temples and Pentecostal churches offer the promise of healing.

This book will provoke new debate about the role of religious organisations and leaders in situations of extreme conflict and will be of great interest to students of anthropology, development studies, religious studies and peace/conflict studies.

This collaborative collection provides fresh perspectives on Christianity and the conduct of war in medieval East Central Europe and Scandinavia, investigating the intersection between religion, culture, and warfare in territories that were only integrated into Christendom in the Central Middle Ages. The contributors analyze cultures that lay outside Charlemagne's limes and the frontiers of the Byzantine Empire, to consider a region stretching from the Balkans to the Baltic and Scandinavia. The volume considers clerics as military leaders and propagandists, the role of Christian ritual and doctrine in warfare, and the adaptation and transformation of indigenous military cultures. It uncovers new information on perceptions of war and analyzes how local practices were incorporated into clerical narratives, enabling the reader to achieve a complete understanding of the period.

The  phrase “War on Terror” has quietly been retired from official usage, but it persists in the American psyche, and our understanding of it is hardly complete. Nor will it be, W. J. T Mitchell argues, without a grasp of the images that it spawned, and that spawned it.

Exploring the role of verbal and visual images in the War on Terror, Mitchell finds a conflict whose shaky metaphoric and imaginary conception has created its own reality. At the same time, Mitchell locates in the concept of clones and cloning an anxiety about new forms of image-making that has amplified the political effects of the War on Terror. Cloning and terror, he argues, share an uncanny structural resemblance, shuttling back and forth between imaginary and real, metaphoric and literal manifestations. In Mitchell’s startling analysis, cloning terror emerges as the inevitable metaphor for the way in which the War on Terror has not only helped recruit more fighters to the jihadist cause but undermined the American constitution with “faith-based” foreign and domestic policies.

Bringing together the hooded prisoners of Abu Ghraib with the cloned stormtroopers of the Star Wars saga, Mitchell draws attention to the figures of faceless anonymity that stalk the ever-shifting and unlocatable “fronts” of the War on Terror. A striking new investigation of the role of images from our foremost scholar of iconology, Cloning Terror will expand our understanding of the visual legacy of a new kind of war and reframe our understanding of contemporary biopower and biopolitics.

The story of civilian clothing use during World War II. 

Manufacturing for civilians across the globe nearly stopped at the outset of World War II, as outfitting troops took precedence over nonmilitary production. Raw materials were prioritized for the armed forces and the majority of nonmilitary factories were shifted to war work, resulting in shortages and rationing of consumer products. Civilians, especially women, responded to the resulting scarcity of goods by using ingenuity and creativity to “make do.” In Clothing Goes to War, Nan Turner offers a critical look at some of the resourceful results of this period as necessity paved the way for fashionable invention.

Many books have been written about strategy, tactics, and great commanders. This is the first book to deal exclusively with the nature of command itself, and to trace its development over two thousand years from ancient Greece to Vietnam. It treats historically the whole variety of problems involved in commanding armies, including staff organization and administration, communications methods and technologies, weaponry, and logistics. And it analyzes the relationship between these problems and military strategy.

In vivid descriptions of key battles and campaigns—among others, Napoleon at Jena, Moltke’s Königgrätz campaign, the Arab–Israeli war of 1973, and the Americans in Vietnam—Martin van Creveld focuses on the means of command and shows how those means worked in practice. He finds that technological advances such as the railroad, breech-loading rifles, the telegraph and later the radio, tanks, and helicopters all brought commanders not only new tactical possibilities but also new limitations.

Although vast changes have occurred in military thinking and technology, the one constant has been an endless search for certainty—certainty about the state and intentions of the enemy’s forces; certainty about the manifold factors that together constitute the environment in which war is fought, from the weather and terrain to radioactivity and the presence of chemical warfare agents; and certainty about the state, intentions, and activities of one’s own forces. The book concludes that progress in command has usually been achieved less by employing more advanced technologies than by finding ways to transcend the limitations of existing ones.

In 1917, shortly after the United States’ declaration of war on Germany, Guy Emerson Bowerman, Jr., enlisted in the American army’s ambulance service. Like other young ambulance drivers—Hemingway, Dos Passos, Cummings, Cowley—Bowerman longed to “see the show.” He was glad to learn that the ambulance units were leaving for France right away.

For seventeen months, until the armistice of November 1918, Bowerman kept an almost daily diary of the war. To read his words today is to live the war with an immediacy and vividness of detail that is astonishing.

Only twenty when he enlisted, Bowerman was an idealistic, if snobbish, young man who exulted that his section was made up mostly of young “Yalies” like himself. But he expected the war to change him, and it did. In the end he writes that he and his compatriots scarcely remember a world at peace. "The old life was gone forever. . ."

Guy Bowerman’s unit was attached to a French infantry division stationed near Verdun. Sent to halt the German drive to Paris in 1918, the division participated in the decisive counterattack of July and tracked the routed Germans through Belgium. Then, “unwarned,” Bowerman and his comrades were “plunged into … a life of peace.” Into this life, he writes, they walked “bewildered,” like “men fearing ambush.”

This remarkable chronicle of one young man’s rite of passage is destined to become a classic in the literature of the Great War.

The first comprehensive study of the Song of Songs' use of military metaphors

Although love transcends historical and cultural boundaries, its conceptualizations, linguistic expressions, and literary representations vary from culture to culture. In this study, Danilo Verde examines love through the military imagery found throughout the Song’s eight chapters. Verde approaches the military metaphors, similes, and scenes of the Song using cognitive metaphor theory to explore the overlooked representation of love as war. Additionally, this book investigates how the Song conceptualizes both the male and the female characters, showing that the concepts of masculinity and femininity are tightly interconnected in the poem. Conquered Conquerors provides fresh insights into the Song's figurative language and the conceptualization of gender in biblical literature.

          A picturesque island strategically located at the entrance of Manila Bay, Corregidor has had military significance since the days of the Spanish galleon trade. Although its dramatic role in the defense of the Philippines during World War II is well documented, relatively little is known about its history apart from military involvement. This richly illustrated book tells the story of the island and sheds new light on the geopolitical forces that shaped its destiny.

            Corregidor in Peace and War is a biography of a mysterious island known simply as “the Rock.” It traces the buildup of armaments and fortifications on the island after the American occupation of the Philippines in 1898, then chronicles clandestine military preparations for an expected war with Imperial Japan. It vividly documents aspects of island life before World War II—including the enviable lifestyle of the American officer corps stationed there, the development of the island’s rail system using imported American streetcars, and the creation of the Philippine Scouts coastal artillery units—and then records its loss and recapture during the struggle with Japan. The final chapter reviews the island’s history since the war.

            More than 150 illustrations include maps and photos from both the Spanish and American periods up to the present day—some photographs published more than a century ago and impeccably restored, many never before seen in print. Interweaving new and old photos with informative text, Charles Hubbard and Collis Davis, Jr., provide a guided tour that captures the natural beauty of an island once enjoyed by early residents but subsequently decimated by cannon fire and aerial bombardment. Brilliant color images evoke a place where flora and wildlife coexist alongside abandoned fortifications, documenting stark reminders from times of war. Other photographs show the majestic “suicide cliffs” where Japanese soldiers are said to have jumped to their deaths rather than become prisoners.

            Now a tourist destination and historic monument, Corregidor remains a formidable island worthy of its nickname. Corregidor in Peace and War uncovers its many unknown facets and singularly reflects the experiences of both a place and a people that deserve a prominent place in history.

The South Korean warship Cheonan was sunk in mysterious circumstances on 26 March 2010. The remarkable events that followed are analysed by Tim Beal and woven into a larger study of the increasingly volatile relations between North and South Korea and US concern about the rise of China.

South Korea's stance towards the North has hardened significantly since the new conservative government came to power. Beal argues that the South moved quickly to use the sinking of the Cheonan to put international pressure on the North, even before the cause of the sinking had been established. The US followed suit by attempting to pressurise China into condemning North Korea. The media reports at the time presented an open and shut case of unprovoked North Korean aggression, but the evidence points towards the accidental triggering of a South Korean mine as the cause and South Korean fabrication to incriminate the North.

With the South bent on forcing the fall of the North's regime with US help and China unlikely to stand idly by, this book offers an essential guide to the key factors behind the crisis and possible solutions.

From the Bronze Age to the twenty-first century, vying armies have clashed over the territory stretching from the Upper Nile to modern-day Iraq and Iran. Crossroads of War captures five millennia of conflict and conquest in detailed full-color maps, accompanied by incisive, accessible commentary.

The lands of the Middle East were home to a succession of empires—Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Persian—that rose and declined with the fortunes of battle. Kings and generals renowned in history bestrode the region: Nebuchadnezzar, David, Alexander the Great, Saladin, Napoleon. The religions of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were born here and from the beginning became embroiled in conflicts ranging from the Maccabean Revolt to Muhammad’s Arabian conquests to the Christian Crusades. In the twentieth century, the Middle East witnessed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and played a role in the grim dramas of two world wars, as T. E. Lawrence helped spark the Arab Revolt and General Bernard Montgomery defeated Hitler’s Desert Fox, General Erwin Rommel, at El Alamein.

From the Yom Kippur War and Operation Desert Storm to a Global War on Terror that still looms over the twenty-first century, the Middle East continues to be shaped by the vagaries and vicissitudes of military conflict. Ian Barnes’s Crossroads of War offers valuable insights into the part of the world that first cradled civilization and then imagined its demise in a final clash of armies at Armageddon.

A powerful exposition of how culture shapes social and political change. "Transition" is the name typically given to the time of radical change following the fall of communism, connoting a shift from planned to market economy, from dictatorship to democracy. Transition is also, in Michael Kennedy's analysis, a culture in its own right-with its own contentions, repressions, and unrealized potentials. By elaborating transition as a culture of power and viewing it in its complex relation to emancipation, nationalism, and war, Kennedy's book clarifies the transformations of postcommunism as well as, more generally, the ways in which culture articulates social change. This ambitious work is, in effect, a nuanced critical-cultural sociology of change. Kennedy examines transition culture's historical foundation by looking at the relationship among perestroika, Poland, and Hungary, and considers its structure and practice in the following decade across fields and nations. His wide-ranging analysis-of the artifacts of transition culture's proponents, of interviews with providers and recipients of technical assistance in business across Eastern Europe, and of focus groups assessing the successes and failures of social change in Estonia and Ukraine-suggests a transition culture deeply implicated in nationalism. But this association, Kennedy contends, is not necessarily antithetical to transition's emancipation. By reconsidering transition culture's relationship to the Wars of Yugoslav Succession and communism's negotiated collapse in Poland and Hungary, he shows how transition might be reconceived in terms of solidarity, freedom, and peace. Distinguished by its focus on culture, not only within particular nations but in the transnational community organized around transition, this book will help reframe the debate about postcommunist social change. Michael D. Kennedy is vice provost for international affairs, director of the International Institute, and associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan.