Exam #2 Flashcards
Enforcing or imposing the national interests of various groups within or between states.
Asymmetrical Warfare
Military Capability Divisions
1) Conventional Forces
2) Irregular Force
3) Weapons of Mass Destruction
Foot soldiers who use assault rifles and other light weapons.
Infantry
An effort to combat guerrilla armies, often including programs to “win the hearts and minds” of rural populations so that they stop sheltering guerillas.
Counterinsurgency
Concealed explosive devices, often left behind by irregular armies, that kill or maim civilians after wars end.
Landmines
Adapted primarily to control passage through the seas and to attack land near coastlines.
Navies
The ability to use military force in areas far from a countries region or sphere of influence.
Power Projection
Use of the electromagnetic spectrum in war such as employing electromagnetic signals for one’s own bench while denying their use to an enemy.
Electronic Warfare
The use of special radar - absorbent materials and unusual shapes in the design of aircraft, missiles, and ships to scatter enemy radar.
Stealth Technology
Political violence that targets civilians deliberately and indiscriminately.
Terrorism
The use of terrorist groups by states, usually under control of a state’s intelligence agency, to achieve political arms.
State Sponsored Terrorism
Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, all distinguished from conventional weapons by their enormous potential lethality and their relative lack of discrimination in whom they kill.
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
World’s most destructive power and weapon.
Nuclear Weapons
Simple and inexpensive weapons.
Fission Weapons
Complex and very expensive
Fusion Weapons
The elements uranium-235 and plutonium, whose atoms split apart and release energy via a chain reaction when an atomic bomb explodes.
Fissionable Weapons
Could hit any enemy’s homeland, usually a long range.
Strategic Weapons
Designed for battlefield use only.
Tactical Nuclear Weapons
The major strategic delivery vehicle for nuclear weapons; it carries a warhead along a trajectory and lets it drop on the target.
Ballistic Missiles
The longest range ballistic missiles are able to travel (about 5,000 miles).
Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles
A small winged missile that can navigate across thousands of miles of previously mapped terrain to reach a particular target; it can carry either a nuclear or a conventional warhead.
Cruise Missiles
A set of agreements through which industrialized states try to limit the flow of missiles relevant technology to their world states.
Missile Technology Control Regime
An agreement that bans the production and possessions of chemical weapons and includes strict verification provisions and the threat of sanctions against violators and non participants in the treaty.
Chemical Weapons Convention (1992)
An agreement that prohibits the development, production, and possession of biological weapons but makes no provision for inspections.
Biological Weapons Convention (1972)
The spread of weapons of mass destruction into the hands of more actors.
Proliferation
A treaty that created a framework for controlling the spread of nuclear materials and expertise, including the International Atomic Energy agency, a UN agency based in Vienna that is charged with inspecting the nuclear power industry in NPT member states to prevent secret military divisions of nuclear material.
Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968)
The possession of second strike nuclear capabilities, which ensure that neither of two adversaries could prevent the other from destroying it in all out war.
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)
A US effort, also known as star wars, to develop defences that could shoot down incoming ballistic missiles, spurred by president Ronald Reagan in 1983. Critics call it an expensive failure that will likely be ineffective.
Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI)
A treaty that prohibited either the United States or the Soviet Union from using a ballistic missile defence as a shield, which would have undermined mutually assured destruction and the basis of deterrence.
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty (1972)
A treaty that bans all nuclear weapons testing, thereby broadening the ban of atmospheric testing negotiated in 1963.
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (1996)
A hierarchy of officials through which states control military forces.
Chain of Command
The relations between a state’s civilian leaders and the military leadership. In most countries, the military takes orders from civilian leaders.
Civil Military Actions
“Blow against the state”; A term that refers to the seizure of political power by domestic military forces, that is, a change of political power outside the state’s constitutional order.
Coup d’Etat
States in which military forces control the government; they are most common in third world countries, where the military may be the only large modern institution.
Military Governments
