Bøker av Robbin Laird

In this book, the noted historian, Dr. Kenneth Maxwell, provides an overview of Brazilian developments over the past decade. As the world has changed dramatically, Brazil's role is changing as well. These essays have been written over the past decade and provide insights into Brazil's domestic politics, the role of its military, its changing foreign policy role, and the significant conflicts of the past decade. These essays were written at the time of the events described, so it is a view of Brazil in "real time" so to speak. It is more like an intellectual photo album, than a movie, and provides intellectual insights along those lines. As Maxwell is a noted historian, the book contains pieces on Brazilian history as well. Notably, the fascinating case study of the Recueil is included as well. In 1968 while Maxwell was a Gulbenkian-Newberry Library Fellow at the Newberry Library in Chicago he identified the book of U.S. constitutional documents published in French in France at the instigation of Benjamin Franklin and which were discussed by the Minas conspirators in Brazil 1788-89. Together with a group of very talented Harvard students, he was able to produce a critical edition of the Recueil in Brazil 2013. Maxwell's analysis provides fascinating insights into trans-Atlantic influences in a time of revolution and change. Dr. Kenneth Maxwell was the founding Director of the Brazil Studies Program at Harvard University's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) (2006-2008) and a Professor in Harvard's Department of History (2004-2008). From 1989 to 2004 he was Director of the Latin America Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, and in 1995 became the first holder of the Nelson and David Rockefeller Chair in Inter-American Studies.He served as Vice President and Director of Studies of the Council in 1996. Maxwell previously taught at Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and the University of Kansas. Kenneth Maxwell founded and was Director of the Camões Center for the Portuguese-speaking World at Columbia and was the Program Director of the Tinker Foundation, Inc. From 1993 to 2004, he was the Western Hemisphere book reviewer for Foreign Affairs. He was a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and was a weekly columnist between 2007 and 2015 for Folha de São Paulo and monthly columnist for O Globo from 2015. Maxwell was the Herodotus Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and a Guggenheim Fellow.He served on the Board of Directors of The Tinker Foundation, Inc., and the Consultative Council of the Luso-American Foundation. He is also a member of the Advisory Boards of the Brazil Foundation and Human Rights Watch/Americas. Maxwell received his B.A. and M.A. from St. John's College, Cambridge University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University. As the noted Brazilian journalist and scholar, Adelto Gonçalves has written: "An expert on the history of Brazil and Portugal in the 18th century and author of the classic A Devassa da Devassa (Rio de Janeiro, Editora Paz e Terra, 1977), released in 1973 in England under the title Conflicts and Conspiracies: Brazil and Portugal, 1750 -1808 (Cambridge University Press), his first book, Maxwell, although his work basically focuses on the Portuguese 18th century, has closely followed political developments in both Portugal and Brazil in recent times."He has also published Marquês de Pombal - Paradoxo do Iluminismo (1996), A Construção da Democracia em Portugal (1999), Naked Tropics: essays on empire and other rogues (2003), Chocolate, piratas e outros malandros (Editora Paz e Terra, 1999) and Mais malandros e outros - ensaios tropicais (Editora Paz e Terra (2005), among others."

This is the fourth annual publication we have published at Second Line of Defense and Defense Information. Each of the four publications highlight themes from essays we have published during that year.We are living in a time of compressed history, and our essays in each volume captures the history emerging in that year. We focus on defense issues, so we have highlighted some of the key developments affecting the evolution of defense and security challenges facing the United States and its key allies in that year, as well as innovations and developments in selected military technologies and concepts of operations.This year's volume highlights a number of key developments and dynamics in 2023. This year has been characterized by growing conflict worldwide and further devolution of the global order. We are clearly in a period of history which challenges our fundamental values and challenges us to navigate through a very difficult period of history.Rather than a world of multi-polarity or great national power competition, a key aspect of the new historical epoch we have entered is multi-polar authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is clearly globally ascendent, but these regimes or groups do not share a common ideology or action program.They are not in alliance, although they cooperate when convenient for their particular interests. They support splintered globalization which is when global rules exist to some extent to handle globally important exchanges but the authoritarians are not contributing political capital to maintaining the "rules-based order."Many of these authoritarian states or groups have roots deeply inside Western democracies and through various means operate within Western societies, rather than simply being an external threat.These means are diverse: cyber, economic investments, economic partners who advocate their economic interest, or in the case of a number of Middle Eastern states, the impact of a migration which has not been characterized by new arrivals in the West shedding their cultural or political identities from where they came.At the same time, the liberal democracies or the West as it used to be called, is in the throes of significant self-questioning, internal debates, rejection of capitalism as practiced the last 50 years, and the emergence of disaggregated societies in each of the Western states.These states work together on common issues, but cooperation is challenged by internal national or regional debates (in the case of Europe.)This new era is a major challenge to the United States and its governing elites. It no longer commands a Western shaped global order. There is no great crusade as Eisenhower wrote about.It is about national interests and winnowing commitments to the availability of resources, whether military or financial. The governing elite has not practiced or thought in terms of such discipline and the gap between the evolution of the new era and American leadership is clearly out of phase.

This report focuses on MAWTS-1 in 2023. In 2023, I interviewed the CO of MAWTS-1, Col Eric Purcell, in April and then visited the command in November after the second WTI of the year. This provided a chance to discuss how MAWTS-1 had progressed in working enhanced force mobility for the USMC within the broader joint force, a key emphasis of the force design effort.The challenge is that while the Marines are working FARPs and other means to enhance force mobility, the joint force is in the throes of significant change, whether it be the U.S. Navy working distributed maritime operations or the USAF working agile combat employment.How does the USMC effort to reorganize and enhance its contribution to the joint force while the joint force is itself in fundamental change with much uncertainty over how to do maritime distributed operations and the agile combat air combat employment?The Navy and Air Force sides of this transition have been a major part of our work published elsewhere and provide insights with regard to how challenging the overall force transformation is within which the USMC is working to find its proper place. It is not just up to MAWTS-1 to work the training for such an effort, but NAWDC and Nellis are clearly involved as well.To put it simply: it is a work in progress and the Marines emphasis on a MAGTF organizing principle remains important going forward in spite of the effort to find ways to operate from much smaller organizational formations.This report includes the interviews conducted in 2023. The date indicates when the interview was published on Second Line of Defense or Defense.info and collectively they provide an overview of how MAWTS-1 is training for the way ahead for the USMC by preparing the force that might have to fight tonite.As the end of course video for WTI-1-24 starts: "It is not a question of if the Marine Corps will go into combat. It is only a matter of when."

This book brings together Professor Ken Maxwell's essays published since 2011 on global trends. This book is most likely to be read initially by the many followers of the work of Dr. Kenneth Maxwell, the historian. He is a well-respected and well-known historian of the history of Brazil and the Iberian Peninsula. Even though much of his work focuses on the 18th century, he is not an expert as understood in today's society. He is more like the philosophes of the 18th century, focusing on a subject but with a wide view. Together, these essays provide a comprehensive perspective on the modern world as seen through the eyes of a professional historian who has worked extensively on the 18th Century. These essays reflect an understanding of the world through an unusual lens. The book provides an essayist view on the changing global order seen through the perspective of specific events, countries, and leaders. It provides an important contribution to our thinking about the new global disorder and what comes next.

The Osprey provides an important stimulant for the shift in con-ops whereby the Navy's experimentation with distributed operations intersects with the U.S. Air Force's approach to agile combat employment and the Marine Corps' renewed interest in Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO).In other words, the reshaping of joint and coalition maritime combat operations is underway which focuses upon distributed task forces capable of delivering enhanced lethality and survivability.The U. S. Navy's deployed fleet - seen as the mobile sea bases they are - faces a significantly different future as part of a distributed joint force capable of shaping a congruent strike capability for enhanced lethality. This means not only does the fleet need to operate differently in terms of its own distributed operations, but also as part of modular task forces that include air and ground elements in providing for the offensive-defensive enterprise which can hold adversaries at risk and prevail in conflict.But how did we get here in 2023? How has the strategic shift for the joint forces evolved and caught up with what the tiltrotor revolution has enabled? And how has the Osprey evolved since the recognition of great power competition by the Trump Administration in 2018?It began as a pivot to the Pacific in 2013; it is becoming a con-ops revolution enable in part by tiltrotor aircraft. The book takes two snapshots of this transition.The first focuses on the introduction of the Osprey into the Pacific when the Obama Administration announced its "Pivot to the Pacific.The second focuses on changes to the tiltrotor enterprise since 2019 after the Trump Administration highlighted the "Great Power" competition.

In Australia and Indo-Pacific Defence: Anchoring a Way Ahead, author and editor of over thirty books, Robin Laird, brings to bear his expertise on defence and security affairs to make sense of contemporary Australian international security and defence policy. This is his third book focused on Australian defence. It reveals the sharp mind of a person very well connected in Australian defence policy, academic and military practitioner circles. Laird has expertly sought to engage with and understand perspectives of Australian defence and security experts, many of whom are associated with the Williams Foundation, a not-for-profit Australian organisation established to advocate for the appropriate development and use of airpower, along with the other services, in defence of Australia and its interests. This book echoes the work of the Williams Foundation which has encompassed reforms underway affecting the application not just of airpower, but also capabilities that apply to the maritime, land, space and cyber domains. It addresses the challenges of force modernisation and transformation in the context of fluctuating great power relativities (notably with the rise of an assertive and more confrontational China) in a dynamic Indo-Pacific region, at a time of significant policy initiatives affecting Australia and its place in the world. These initiatives notably include Australia's 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR) and the implementation of the Australia, United Kingdom United States (AUKUS) advanced technical sharing agreement, helping Australia to acquire nuclear propulsion submarines and other advanced military capabilities. This is an important book by a very well connected, informed and astute observer of Australia's circumstances as they pertain to defence challenges, US alliance dynamics, and technological as well as policy and political hurdles. From the Forward by John Blaxland

CONTENTS: PrologueThe American Strategic ChallengeThe American Approach to the RMA: A BaselineThe RMA and Regional Allies: The Asian CaseEurope and the RMAGeneral Considerations --- The Europeanization ChallengeFrance and the RMAThe General Political Dynamic --- Domestic Preoccupation and the Shift from Neo-Gaullism --- The French State Crisis and Technology Policy --- Strategic Rethinking and Processes of Change --- Critical Issues for a French RMA --- Alternative OutcomesGermany and the RMAThe Context of Change --- The Tasks of the Armed Forces --- Critical Issues for a German RMA --- SummaryConclusionsEpilogue: Reflections on the U.S -European Military Technology "Gap"About the Authors