Synopses & Reviews
In The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Concise History, Second Edition, Don Munton and David A. Welch distill the best current scholarship on the Cuban missile crisis into a brief and accessible narrative history. The authors draw on newly available documents to provide a comprehensive treatment of its causes, events, consequences, and significance. Stressing the importance of context in relation to the genesis, conduct, and resolution of the crisis, Munton and Welch examine events from the U.S., Soviet, and Cuban angles, revealing the vital role that differences in national perspectives played at every stage. While the book provides a concise, up-to-date look at this pivotal event, it also notes gaps and mysteries in the historical record and highlights important persistent interpretive disputes. The authors provide a detailed guide to relevant literature and film for those who wish to explore further. Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the crisis, this revised and updated edition of The Cuban Missile Crisis is ideal for undergraduate courses on the 1960s, U.S. foreign policy, the Cold War, twentieth-century world history, and comparative foreign policy.
Review
“Bruce Stanleys scholarly work gets to the heart of Americas inexorable drift toward contracted military services. . . . This book is a must-read for strategic-level military practitioners and their civilian overseers, providing valuable insights into the contemporary dynamics of raising armies for war.”—Stephen L. Melton, author of
The Clausewitz Delusion
Review
“Stanleys hypotheses set down some rational benchmarks that policymakers should consider when deciding on whether and how much to use the PMC industry in future conflicts.”—David Isenberg, senior analyst at Wikistrat and the author of
Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq
Review
“A worthy inclusion in a course on statistics and almost any international relations or security studies course. Stanley is the first to offer a coherent theory explaining why the United States is increasingly relying on private military contractors, and he tests this theory exhaustively.”—Dan G. Cox, professor at the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies and author of
Terrorism, Instability, and Democracy in Asia and AfricaSynopsis
Faced with a decreasing supply of national troops, dwindling defense budgets, and the ever-rising demand for boots on the ground in global conflicts and humanitarian emergencies, decision makers are left with little choice but to legalize and legitimize the use of private military contractors (PMCs).
Outsourcing Security examines the impact that bureaucratic controls and the increasing permissiveness of security environments have had on the U.S. militarys growing use of PMCs during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Bruce E. Stanley examines the relationship between the rise of the private security industry and five potential explanatory variables tied to supply-and-demand theory in six historical cases, including Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the U.S. intervention in Bosnia in 1995, and Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Outsourcing Security is the only work that moves beyond a descriptive account of the rise of PMCs to lay out a precise theory explaining the phenomenon and providing a framework for those considering PMCs in future global interaction.
About the Author
Don Munton is Professor and Founding Chair of International Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia.
David A. Welch is CIGI Chair of Global Security and Interim Director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, and Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo.
Table of Contents
Contents
New to the Second Edition Acknowledgments
List of Acronyms
Dramatis Personae (and Positions in October 1962)
Introduction: The REAL Thirteen Days
Chapter 1: Background to the Crisis
U.S.-Cuban Relations in Historical Perspective
The Bay of Pigs and Operation Mongoose
The Soviet Decision to Deploy
Chapter 2: Deployment and Discovery
Details of the Deployment
The Intelligence Game of Cat and Mouse
Warnings Too Late
On the Eve of Crisis
Chapter 3: From Discovery to Blockade
The Storm Before the Calm
Narrowing the Options
Decision
Chapter 4: The Perfect Storm
The Speech
Carrots and Sticks
Khrushchev and Kennedy Waver
The Crisis Heats Up
The Dobrynin Meeting
Climax and Resolution
Chapter 5: Aftermath
Removing the Missiles from Cuba
The Cuban Bomber Crisis
The Domestic and International Public Reaction
Steps Toward Détente: The Hot Line and Test Ban
Conclusion: The Cuban Missile Crisis Fifty Years Later
Bibliographic Essay
Early Treatments of the Crisis
The Second Wave: "Critical Oral History"
Recent Accounts
Background and History
Aftermath and Lessons
Document Collections and Websites
Film
Index