Books

The Peninsula publishing house has republished the book by the well-known British reporter Tim Marshall "Prisoners of Geography", with a most suggestive subtitle that reads "everything there is to know about world politics from ten maps." It is a relatively short book that, in a dozen chapters, tries to explain the keys to world geopolitics in the style of what Robert Kaplan does in "The Revenge of Geography", but with a more casual tone and in a much more relaxed way. more superficial. There are few occasions when we can say a book is bad. This one is. That said, we will try to explain ourselves so that the reason for our statement is understood. Firstly, the book, despite its ambition, is too general and reduces conflicts of enormous complexity to mere binary oppositions. The tone, excessively relaxed, is artificial, since it is not biting in the style of [Keep reading…]

These days we have had the fortune of reading "The international politics of the great powers", a title written by Juan Tovar Ruiz, professor of International Relations at the University of Burgos and about whom we have also previously commented "The doctrine in the foreign policy of the United States". The book, totally necessary, addresses the present and future situation of the international arena, marked by an increasingly intense competition between great powers, with special prominence of the United States and the People's Republic of China, but without neglecting the role of others. revisionist actors like the Russian Federation. However, far from remaining a mere description, it delves into the causes and also offers explanations from the point of view of political science, adopting the perspective of neoclassical realism. "The international politics of the great powers" is divided, for this purpose, into three distinct parts. In the [Keep reading…]

Our friend and collaborator, Federico Supervielle Bergés, an officer of the Spanish Navy as well as a writer, has recently published the fourth installment of the adventures of the "Albatross", under the title "The narco submarine". Following the trend of the three previous works, it is an easy book to read, engaging from beginning to end, surprising for its approach and very enjoyable. What's more, we could say that it is, by far, the best of the four. Let's see why... First of all, as subjective as it may be, this time he is not talking about pirates or nationalists, nor about drones, boats and AKs. Talk about submarines. Submarine warfare, without a doubt the most complex and exciting facet of naval warfare. For that reason alone it is worth buying. Furthermore, the assumption it raises could not be more current, with narco-submarines (not just semi-submersibles) making the route between South America and Europe, in this case at [Keep reading…]

"International security at your fingertips" is a collective work, edited by Clara Rodríguez Chirino, which seeks to respond in an entertaining and educational way to common questions about international security and defense, so that any reader unrelated to the subject has an accessible explanation at hand. , although no less rigorous. The idea of ​​publishing this book arose from observing the growing interest of Spanish society in issues related to international security (now popularized under the term "geopolitics"). Given that the majority of texts on these topics tend to be of a technical and/or academic nature, we saw the need to bring security closer to the average citizen by avoiding technicalities and simplifying concepts. Therefore, the objective of this book is to offer an introduction to issues such as terrorism, nuclear weapons or cybersecurity without going into detail. Despite the efforts on the part of [Keep reading…]

The Gunpowder Age Tonio Andrade The book we are discussing today is special. "The Age of Gunpowder", written by Tonio Andrade, was published in Spanish in 2017 by Crítica and offers us a very different point of view than the usual one on the Military Revolution of the Modern Age. The latter, which we have addressed in these pages, was an idea that dates back to the 50s, but was popularized in the 90s by the British historian Geoffrey Parker. It has since been accepted by many as an absolute truth, despite its many inconsistencies which Parker himself acknowledges. Tonio Andrade, far from cowering in the face of such a challenge and in a very elegant way, resorts to Chinese and European sources from the late Middle Ages and the Modern Age, demonstrating that the generalization of firearms was not an exclusively European phenomenon. As we know, the [Keep reading…]

Unlike most of the books we discuss in this section, “The Soul of the Spies,” by Pablo Zarrabeitia, is a novel. However, it is a novel that serves to understand a world and characters that are characterized by the shadows they sow around them. There are times when a superior feels that a subordinate is asking too many questions, and he resorts to “the need to know,” to see if, with any luck, he will shut up. One of the problems with this guideline is that, when dealing with human relationships and organizations, it is difficult to elucidate a priori what someone who is going to perform a dangerous job in a hostile environment may need to know to survive or, simply, to carry out their work effectively. As far as human beings are concerned, it is common that things [Keep reading…]

History of Military Strategy Jeremy Black The book we recommend today is certainly surprising. Under the title "History of Military Strategy", it has been written by Professor of History at the University of Exeter, Jeremy Black. When you have it in your hands and judging by the title, you expect something more similar to the "History of War" edited by Geoffrey Parker, to "Grand Strategies" by John Lewis Gaddis or to "Strategy" by Lawrence Freedman. Nothing is further from reality. The first thing that strikes about "History of Military Strategy" is that far from starting in antiquity, or even before, in prehistory, talking about how the first groups that faced each other polished their tactics until they became "something more," He does it in the 18th century. That is, it does not talk about strategy in general, but rather about strategy as a term. Then it goes back [Keep reading…]

Alianza Editorial has published in Spanish «4.0. The new industrial revolution" by Italian author Patrizio Bianchi focused on analyzing the changes that are occurring around the 4th Industrial Revolution, Industrial Revolution 4.0. or whatever you want to call it. These, of profound significance, affect us on multiple levels, some of which we are still beginning to understand, since the phenomenon is too close in time to be able to evaluate it with the necessary perspective. The book, however, attempts to explain at least the most important ones, focusing on production as an object of study. Using classics such as David Ricardo or Adam Smith and concepts such as skill, dexterity and judgment, Bianchi creates a common thread that allows us to understand how these three terms have evolved or gained greater or lesser importance. importance according to the industrial revolutions that have taken place until reaching the current moment, [Keep reading…]

History of War Geoffrey Parker The Spanish publishing house Akal has republished the work History of War, directed by the eminent British historian and Hispanist Geoffrey Parker, who on this occasion leads a team made up of a cast of great historians. It is, without a doubt, a classic book despite the fact that the original edition dates back to 2005, although it is also controversial, since many have accused Parker and this work of being Eurocentric. However, the author is honest and from the first pages, already in the introduction, he tells us about the "Western practice of war" which, whether we like it or not, is the one that has been imposed throughout the World in the last centuries. Be that as it may, the main virtue of this book is to offer a complex explanation of the evolution of the war from its beginnings and [Keep reading…]

In recent days we have been lucky enough to read, thanks to the detail that its author, David Hernández Martínez, has had, "The kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the hegemony of the Middle East", which addresses in detail the country's grand strategy Arabic in a rigorous and dispassionate way, perhaps the two most important adjectives when dealing with this type of work. [Keep reading…]