Bayonets on Musa Dagh: Ottoman Counterinsurgency Operations – 1915

This article examines the Ottoman military's escalatory response to violence and frames the Armenian insurrection of 1915 in the historical context of contemporary early twentieth-century counterinsurgency campaigns. A case study is presented, from a military historian's perspective, of counterinsurgency operations conducted by the Ottoman Army's 41st Infantry Division against Armenian insurgents on Musa Da? (Musa Dagh) in an operational area south of Iskenderun (Alexandretta). In this particular operational area, it appears that the modern label which most closely approximates what happened there is ethnic cleansing. Finally, the article concludes with an objective assessment of the effectiveness of the Ottoman Army's counterinsurgency operations.     

Chinese Theater and Strategic Missile Force Modernization and its Implications for the United States

The People's Republic of China (PRC), no longer content with its longstanding ‘minimalist’ nuclear posture and strategy, is enhancing the striking power and survivability of its theater and strategic missile forces and rethinking its nuclear doctrine in ways that may pose serious challenges for the United States. Although the modernization of Chinese nuclear and missile forces may ultimately result in greater strategic deterrence stability, this change will not come about immediately or automatically. Indeed, it is entirely possible that China's growing missile capabilities could decrease crisis stability under certain circumstances, especially in the event of a US–China conflict over Taiwan.     

Reconsidering Truman's claim of ‘half a million American lives’ saved by the atomic bomb: The construction and deconstruction of a myth

This essay, based on substantial archival research, critically examines President Harry S. Truman's often‐cited post‐World War II claim that he had received pre‐Hiroshima counsel in 1945 that the invasion(s) of Japan could cost ‘half a million American lives’. This essay concludes that there is no 1945 archival evidence supporting Truman's postwar contention, and that there is substantial evidence undercutting his claim. Moreover, in view of the total size of American forces scheduled for 1945–46 operations against Japan, any claim of 500,000 American dead seems implausible. This essay also critically examines how Truman's postwar memoir claim of ‘half a million American lives’ was constructed, and this essay discusses the many and rather varied casualty/fatality numbers that Truman presented during his White House and post‐presidential years. Such an analysis also focuses on the numbers he privately provided in the construction of his memoirs by ‘ghost’ writers. Reaching beyond the specific question of Truman's claims, this essay also discusses the dangers of analysts relying heavily upon post‐event memoir and interview sources, and this essay emphasises the need generally to instead privilege contemporaenous archival materials. Otherwise, analysts risk letting policymakers, often in self‐serving recollections, shape the history of crucial events.     

Book reviews

John Lawrence Tone, The Fatal Knot: The Guerrilla War in Navarre and the Defeat of Napoleon in Spain. Chapel Hill and London; The University of North Carolina Press 1994. Pp.vii + 239, 1 map, biblio., index. $34.95 (cloth). ISBN 0–8078–2169–1.

Robert Holland (ed), Emergencies and Disorder in the European Empires after 1945. London: Frank Cass, 1994. Pp.x + 256; index. £32 (cloth); £15 (paper). ISBN 0–7146–4516–8 and 4109 X

Deborah L. Norden, Military Rebellion in Argentina: Between Coups and Consolidation. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Pp.242, index, $35/$17.50 (paper). ISBN 0–8032–8369–5.

William M. Minter, Apartheid's Contras: An Inquiry into the Roots of War in Angola and Mozambique. London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books Ltd; Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994. Pp. xii +308, 3 maps, biblio., index. $69.95/£39.95 (cloth); $29.95/£16.95(paper). ISBN 1–85649–266–4 and 266–4.