New Books in National Security

In Operation Condor: The Pact That Terrorized a Continent (Storia, 2025), Francesca Lessa uncovers the shadowy machinery behind one of the most chilling transnational terror campaigns of the twentieth century. What began as a secret pact among South America's military dictatorships quickly grew into a coordinated system of surveillance, kidnappings, torture, and disappearances that reached across borders and oceans. Through meticulous research and newly unearthed documents, Lessa reveals how those in power built a network designed to eliminate dissent wherever it dared to surface, turning exile into a false refuge and entire nations into hunting grounds.

This book is not simply a reconstruction of clandestine meetings and sealed orders, though it excels at that. It is a deeply human story that follows the lives interrupted and the families who refused to surrender to silence. Lessa brings to light parents who never stopped searching, survivors who fought to be heard, and investigators who chipped away at decades of denial. Their voices and struggles give this history its pulse, reminding us that truth is often preserved not by institutions but by ordinary people who refuse to forget.

Translated with clarity and grace by Alejandro Reyes, and enriched by Sebastián Santana Camargo's haunting illustrations, this authorized English edition of the acclaimed Plan Cóndor: Viejos secretos y nuevos hallazgos is both a work of history and an act of witness. It confronts a past many hoped would remain in the shadows and insists on remembering, not out of vengeance, but as a defense of democracy and dignity. The result is a gripping, sobering, and ultimately hopeful testament to the enduring power of memory and justice.
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Since the beginning of the twentieth century, governments around the world have expelled, en masse, more than 30 million people. Yet despite its prevalence, mass expulsion remains an understudied phenomenon as scholarly attention has been directed toward the gravest atrocities—genocide and mass killing—or toward forced migration more broadly.

Mass Expulsion: The Politics of Forced Population Removal (Oxford UP, 2026) by Dr. Meghan Garrity examines why and how governments expel, providing a systematic, cross-regional account of mass expulsion over the longue durée. Using the original Government-Sponsored Mass Expulsion (GSME) dataset, the book explains when and where expulsion occurs, who is targeted, and what regimes are most likely to expel. The book identifies two overarching categories of mass expulsion—security and economic—and develops a typology of four corresponding types: counter-irredentist, counter-subversive, reprisal, and nativist. It advances a theory of mass expulsion that traces the decision-making process, showing how key structural, proximate, precipitating, and intervening factors combine to shape the conditions under which governments expel or are restrained. Evidence is drawn from archival research conducted at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the League of Nations archives in Geneva, Switzerland.This research contributes to the fields of international peace and security, political violence, and forced migration. Conceptually, it fills a gap in the literature by systematically examining mass expulsion as a distinct eliminationist policy aimed at the intentional removal of ethnic groups. Theoretically, it extends existing explanations beyond war and security threats, highlighting an entire class of expulsions targeting perceived economic threats. The book deepens our understanding of critical atrocity restraints, demonstrating the importance of alliances, the “homeland” state of the target group, and international organizations. These restraints generate core policy recommendations that seek to spur greater attention to deterring mass expulsion as a priority for atrocity prevention.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
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After
Soviet cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko defected in 1945, Canada was shocked
by the revelation that its own citizens were engaged in espionage for
the Soviet Union. "P.S. Burn after Reading": The Kellock-Taschereau Commission and Soviet Espionage in Canada
(University of Toronto Press, 2026) explores how the Canadian
government used the controversial Kellock-Taschereau
Commission—sometimes judiciously, sometimes not—to uncover and thwart
domestic
spies during the early days of the Cold War.

Drawing
on a wealth of sources, including the Commission’s extensive records,
GRU documents turned over by Gouzenko, American Venona decrypts, Soviet
KGB archives, and newly released British MI5 and MI6 files, authors Dr.
Reinhold Kramer and Dr. Tom Mitchell provide a comprehensive account of
the crisis. They reveal that, despite some civil liberties missteps, the
government’s suspicions were largely justified.

The
book weaves together the evidence against the spies, the tradecraft of
Soviet espionage, complex legal challenges faced by the state, and the
political fallout. With access to hundreds of newly released British
intelligence files, P.S. Burn After Reading
offers both specialists and general readers fresh insights into the
espionage crisis of 1945–46 and the pivotal role it played in exposing
Canada’s postwar security and intelligence vulnerabilities.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 
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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Purges: How Dictators Fight to Survive
(Cornell University Press, 2026) by Dr. Edward Goldring delves into one
of the key tactics that autocrats deploy to maintain power: the removal
of individuals from within the regime.

From Kim Jong Un's
execution of his uncle to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's removal of over a
hundred Turkish generals, purges bear significant consequences for the
survival and endurance of autocrats. Yet much remains unknown about why
dictators use purges and whether they achieve their intended effects.

Drawing
on an original global dataset on civilian and military elite purges in
dictatorships in addition to case studies spanning North and South Korea
as well as Turkey, Dr. Goldring examines the logic behind purges and
their consequences. He shows that dictators purge to consolidate power,
punish disloyalty, and scapegoat elites to alleviate popular threats.
But even as purges help dictators consolidate power early in their
tenure, purges actually weaken
their position when they have been in power for a long time, prompting
pushback. In the face of an increasing global shift toward authoritarian
norms, Purges offers critical insight into how autocrats maintain—and sometimes lose—power.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/national-security

Steve Feldstein's Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalries, Private Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare (St. Martin's Press,
2026) opens with a juxtaposition: China spending vast sums to reach the
far side of the moon, and Ukraine using cheap drones to blunt a far
larger military. Both are stories about technology and power, but they
point in opposite directions.

In our conversation, Feldstein
argues that the outcome of technological competition is not
predetermined. Small states, non-state actors, and private companies
with the right engineers can now challenge much stronger adversaries. We
discuss Iran, whose military innovation grew out of decades of
sanctions rather than in spite of them, and why Western analysts
dismissed what was in plain sight. We then turn to China and Feldstein's
concern that the United States is making unforced errors, hollowing out
the basic research on which its edge depends.

Bytes and Bullets
resists both technological determinism and the claim that nothing has
changed. But this book is also candid about what cannot be predicted: as
machines take on decisions humans once made, who, if anyone, will set
the limits?

Our guest is Steven Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).
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