Cathal J. Nolan – författare

War presents the most degraded moral environment humanity creates. It is an arena where individuality is subsumed in collective violence and humanity is obscured as a faceless, merciless enemy pitted against its reflection in an elemental struggle for survival.A barbaric logic has guided the conduct of war throughout history. Yet as Cathal Nolan reveals in this gripping, poignant, and powerful book, even as war can obliterate hope and decency at the grand level it simultaneously produces conditions that permit astonishing exceptions of mercy and shared dignity. Pulling the trigger is usually both the expedient thing and required by war's grim and remorseless calculus. Yet somehow the trigger is not always pulled. A different choice is made. Restraint triumphs. Humanity is rediscovered and honored in a flash of recognition.This book gathers and explores acts of singular mercy, giving them form and substance—across wars, causes, and opposing uniforms. These acts demand our attention not only for the moral uplift they supply but because they challenge assumptions about humanity itself. Rising above ordinary courage, they may ultimately transcend our understanding, entering the realm of the ineffable. Nevertheless, as Nolan shows, acts of mercy in war are not the provenance of saints but of ordinary men and women who perform them at great personal risk. As much or more than the normal war hero stories, we must recognize the extraordinary courage of the merciful in war.Mercy is an exceptional book about exceptions, challenging myths and heroic fabrications, refuting claims to exclusive moral virtue. It reminds us that decency in warfare is also universal, offering a haunting and compellingly humane counternarrative to war's usual inhumane logic.

History has tended to measure war's winners and losers in terms of its major engagements, battles in which the result was so clear-cut that they could be considered "decisive." Marathon, Cannae, Tours, Agincourt, Austerlitz, Sedan, Stalingrad--all resonate in the literature of war and in our imaginations as tide-turning. But were they? As Cathal J. Nolan demonstrates in this magisterial and sweeping work, victory in major wars usually has been determined in other ways. Even the most legendarily lopsided of battles did not necessarily decide their outcomes. Nolan also challenges the hoary concept of the military "genius," even of the Great Captains--from Alexander to Frederick and Napoleon--mapping instead the decent into total war.The Allure of Battle systematically recreates and analyzes the major campaigns among the Great Powers, from the Middle Ages through the 20th century, from the fall of Byzantium to the defeat of the Axis powers, tracing the illusion of "short-war thinking," the hope that victory might be swift and conflict brief. Such as almost never been the case. Even one-sided battles have mainly contributed to victory or defeat by accelerating erosion of the other side's defenses, resources, and will.Massive conflicts, the so-called "people's wars," beginning with Napoleon and continuing until the end of World War II, have been more fundamentally determined by prolonged stalemate and attrition, wars in which the determining factor was not tactical but industrial.Nolan's masterful book places battles squarely and mercilessly within the context of the wider conflict in which they took place. In the process it help corrects a distorted view of their role in war, replacing popular images of "decisive battles" with somber appreciation of the sacrifice and endurance necessary to victory. Accessible, provocative, exhaustive, and illuminating, The Allure of Battle will spark fresh debate about the history and conduct of warfare.

Cathal Nolan's The Allure of Battle shows that while wars have shaped the history of the modern world, their outcomes are decided by many other factors. The book argues that major battles are not decisive to the outcome of wars; rather, wars depend on longer-term attrition in which the side that wins gradually and remorselessly overwhelms the other with larger arsenals and greater reserves of manpower. To illustrate his argument, Nolan draws on conflicts throughout the world and throughout history (aside from classical or medieval warfare, which, he argues, had greatly different characters from each other and from early modern and modern warfare). The Allure of Battle systematically examines a series of great battles, each described in the standard literature as the ¨turning point¨ of the war in which they occurred. It asks how they actually fit in the histories of those wars and military history more generally. In each case Nolan will show that even huge and important battles, which are widely considered to have been decisive, actually and mainly contributed to victory or defeat by compressing attrition, which is what in the end led to the outcome of each and every war. He will also illustrate how the character of longer wars of attrition also fundamentally shaped extended periods of postwar peace, that military, moral, and matériel exhaustion rather than battlefield supremacy per se was determinative. Nolan is not proposing to have discovered linear or universal laws about modern military history, nor is he attempting a "theory of war. " His point is to look at battles within the context of the wider conflict in which they took place. The result will be an accessible, provocative, and even entertaining book that will reflect fresh thinking in the historical community about the conduct of warfare in terms that will appreciated by a wider readership.The Allure of Battle is an accessible, provocative, and entertaining book that illuminates fresh debate in the historical community about the conduct of warfare in terms that readers of military history will appreciate.

Established scholars on both sides of the Atlantic offer a broad perspective of the central themes in German-American relations in the twentieth century and show how the most current developments have evolved. This interpretive survey helps fill a major gap in the literature covering the long-term relationships between Germany and the United States and demonstrates how liberal democratic values have been upheld. Policymakers concerned with U.S. foreign policy and German and European relations will find this edited collection illuminating. Students and scholars in government, international relations, and European studies will find this work valuable.This edited collection describes the mixture of idealism with which American foreign policy has traditionally viewed republican government and peaceful international relations and the pragmatism involved in securing American interests after 1945 and supporting a prosperous German republic. At the same time it deals with the extent to which German objectives have been consistent with American goals. The book begins with a discussion of the Kantian ideal of an international civil society and its place in the tradition of U.S. foreign policy. The middle chapters deal with the evolution of that tradition from Wilsonian precepts after World War I to American tutelage in the establishment and protection of the Federal Republic. The final chapters confront Germany's place in Europe after 1989 and attempt to answer the question: Has American idealism been realistic?

This new analysis of governing ideas in U.S. foreign policy shows how they arise, are sustained and challenged both domestically and internationally, and become part of the world order. Nolan assesses the problems of reconciling concerns for individual rights and liberal principles with national security interests in U.S. foreign policy over the course of the twentieth century. This interpretive survey redefines the key components in the make-up of U.S. diplomacy and provides good reading for students of American government, international relations and U.S. foreign policy, American and world history, defense, and human rights policy.This short history traces the notions that liberty is indivisible and that security depends ultimately on the establishment and success of liberal-democratic norms between and within states. It shows how U.S. policy vacillates between giving active or passive expression to these ideas, always relying on a basic assumption about the presumed pacific character of democracy. Utilizing a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, it looks at how these ideas became manifest in two major policy settings---those affecting the Soviet Union and the UN. Through these case studies, the book shows how these ideas become progressively embedded in U.S. policy; how they have been challenged by different interests and events; how they were disseminated among and accepted by allies (and even several former adversaries); and how, as a result, they now permeate the structures of major international organizations, and even underlie the emerging post-Cold War international system as a whole. The conclusion offers an interesting perspective for the future.

This book spans more than 200 years of U.S. diplomatic history. Its geographical scope widens along with the expanding interests of America itself, from initial exclusive concern with the empires of Europe, to the emerging nations of Latin America, to the commercial opportunities and geopolitical concerns of Asia and Africa. The ambassadors chosen for inclusion reflect these historical changes in American foreign relations. Organized alphabetically, the biographies present an implicit account of the evolution of the U.S. diplomatic service, from its founding and early principles through the 20th century evolution of its habits and culture.

Dominated by the ambitions of France's King Louis XIV, Europe in the years 1650-1715 witnessed a series of wars from which emerged many of the theories, practices, and technologies that characterize modern warfare. During this period, European armies evolved modern ideas of army organization and military leadership, as well as modern views of campaign strategy and battle tactics. As European soldiers and colonists moved into Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas, the practice or influence of their military techniques and ideas also affected wars fought in those places. In this volume's 1000 plus entries, an award-winning author of reference works on international relations and war describes and defines important events, technologies, and individuals from this seminal period of global military history.

This collection of essays cuts to the quick of the most pressing moral issues facing decision-makers today, from the actions of ordinary soldiers in a combat zone to presidents deciding when and where to use force.Ethics lie at the heart of human and therefore also international affairs, compelling nations to get involved "over there" and dedicate resources to intervention or to justify detachment. The politics and rhetoric of ethics constrain decision-makers, greatly complicating international situations. This third edition of Ethics and Statecraft addresses the moral reasoning behind the art of peacemaking as well as the ethics and statecraft of conducting war. The coverage ranges from historical transformations of whole eras of diplomatic and international history to issues of ethics of bombing and the laws of war. Specific attention is paid to emerging issues such as armed humanitarian intervention and sanctions, drone wars, war crimes, and economic justice. The work is ideally suited for undergraduate and graduate students of international relations, history, political science, and ethics. It will also be useful for NGO officials and military officers struggling with these issues in the field. General readers will find illumination of highly relevant historical issues—including Allied bombing of civilians during World War II—that set precedents for both expansion and limitations on the laws of war. They will also encounter pressing modern-day quandaries, such as the conditions that permit or even require military or humanitarian intervention, and the impact of new technologies on old moral problems.

This collection of essays cuts to the quick of the most pressing moral issues facing decision-makers today, from the actions of ordinary soldiers in a combat zone to presidents deciding when and where to use force.Ethics lie at the heart of human and therefore also international affairs, compelling nations to get involved "over there" and dedicate resources to intervention or to justify detachment. The politics and rhetoric of ethics constrain decision-makers, greatly complicating international situations. This third edition of Ethics and Statecraft addresses the moral reasoning behind the art of peacemaking as well as the ethics and statecraft of conducting war. The coverage ranges from historical transformations of whole eras of diplomatic and international history to issues of ethics of bombing and the laws of war. Specific attention is paid to emerging issues such as armed humanitarian intervention and sanctions, drone wars, war crimes, and economic justice. The work is ideally suited for undergraduate and graduate students of international relations, history, political science, and ethics. It will also be useful for NGO officials and military officers struggling with these issues in the field. General readers will find illumination of highly relevant historical issues—including Allied bombing of civilians during World War II—that set precedents for both expansion and limitations on the laws of war. They will also encounter pressing modern-day quandaries, such as the conditions that permit or even require military or humanitarian intervention, and the impact of new technologies on old moral problems.