Recent years have seen a growing role for private military contractors in national and international security. To understand the reasons for this, Elke Krahmann examines changing models of the state, ...the citizen and the soldier in the UK, the US and Germany. She focuses on both the national differences with regard to the outsourcing of military services to private companies and their specific consequences for the democratic control over the legitimate use of armed force. Tracing developments and debates from the late eighteenth century to the present, she explains the transition from the centralized warfare state of the Cold War era to the privatized and fragmented security governance, and the different national attitudes to the privatization of force.
This book offers an empirical comparison of Chinese and Indian international strategic behavior. It is the first study of its kind, filling an important gap in the literature on rising Indian and ...Chinese power and American interests in Asia. The book creates a framework for the systematic and objective assessment of Chinese and Indian strategic behavior in four areas: (1) strategic culture; (2) foreign policy and use of force; (3) military modernization (including defense spending, military doctrine and force modernization); and (4) economic strategies (including international trade and energy competition). The utility of democratic peace theory in predicting Chinese and Indian behavior is also examined. The findings challenge many assumptions underpinning Western expectations of China and India.
Paying the human costs of war Gelpi,Christopher; Feaver, Peter D; Reifler, Jason
2009., 20090209, 2009, 2009-02-09, 20090101
eBook
From the Korean War to the current conflict in Iraq, Paying the Human Costs of War examines the ways in which the American public decides whether to support the use of military force. Contrary to the ...conventional view, the authors demonstrate that the public does not respond reflexively and solely to the number of casualties in a conflict. Instead, the book argues that the public makes reasoned and reasonable cost-benefit calculations for their continued support of a war based on the justifications for it and the likelihood it will succeed, along with the costs that have been suffered in casualties. Of these factors, the book finds that the most important consideration for the public is the expectation of success. If the public believes that a mission will succeed, the public will support it even if the costs are high. When the public does not expect the mission to succeed, even small costs will cause the withdrawal of support. Providing a wealth of new evidence about American attitudes toward military conflict, Paying the Human Costs of War offers insights into a controversial, timely, and ongoing national discussion.
In the period 1900-1940 the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Switzerland reacted in divergent ways to the same foreign military threats. This volume argues that their internal politics and ...politico-military strategic culture are vital keys to understanding those differences.
This open access book compares the experiences of large-scale military procurement in Canada and Australia. Focusing on the recent frigate and jet-fighter programmes, it demonstrates how delays ...suffered in delivering weapons systems and platforms in these countries have been caused by misalignments between the strategic requirements set out by the armed forces and government defence policies. By bringing the insights of public management and administration to those of defence studies, the book presents policy options that will help improve the nature of future large-project military procurement. It will appeal to scholars and students of public administration, public management, and defence studies, as well as practitioners and policymakers.
In this 2003 study of China's militarism, Andrew Scobell examines the use of military force abroad - as in Korea (1950), Vietnam (1979), and the Taiwan Strait (1995–6) - and domestically, as during ...the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and in the 1989 military crackdown in Tiananmen Square. Debunking the view that China has become increasingly belligerent in recent years because of the growing influence of soldiers, Scobell concludes that China's strategic culture has remained unchanged for decades. Nevertheless, the author uncovers the existence of a 'Cult of Defense' in Chinese strategic culture. The author warns that this 'Cult of Defense' disposes Chinese leaders to rationalize all military deployment as defensive, while changes in the People's Liberation Army's doctrine and capabilities over the past two decades suggest that China's twenty-first century leaders may use military force more readily than their predecessors.
Contemporary Western war is represented as enacting the West’s ability and responsibility to help make the world a better place for others, in particular to protect them from oppression and serious ...human rights abuses. That is, war has become permissible again, indeed even required, as ethical war. At the same time, however, Western war kills and destroys. This creates a paradox: Western war risks killing those it proposes to protect. This book examines how we have responded to this dilemma and challenges the vision of ethical war itself. That is, it explores how the commitment to ethics shapes the practice of war and indeed how practices come, in turn, to shape what is considered ethical in war. The book closely examines particular practices of warfare, such as targeting, the use of cultural knowledge, and ethics training for soldiers. What emerges is that instead of constraining violence, the commitment to ethics enables and enhances it. The book argues that the production of ethical war relies on an impossible but obscured separation between ethics and politics, that is, a problematic politics of ethics, and reflects on the need to make decisions at the limit of ethics.
Connecting ISR structures from Land Units with ISR structures of Air and Naval units, represents a real challenge, for assuring the whole information cycle in a flexible, robust, and complex ...architecture in order to create a common known image and to assure support for the commander of the Joint Forces Group in taking the best decisions. The importance of achievement interconnection between ISR structures at all level of hierarchy and from all categories of forces is determined by impredictibility of operational environment, and the necessity of shortening response time during decisional process.
Visualizing the various operational contexts of recent Land Forces’ employment, there were many situations where the nominated structures also faced unconventional adversaries, even though, ...initially, the nature of operation had been identified as having a conventional pattern. This particularity is perpetuated more and more aggressively, determining the conventional military structures of the Land Forces to operate in order to face both regular and irregular forces, even within the same AO. Based on these coordinates, the article triggers to identify the principles needed to adjust the operational approach of Land Forces, so that the organic structures can perform in engaging the adversary from AOs within current and future operations. Also, a subsidiary objective of the present research is to identify the mutations at the level of ACOAs based on which the adjustment of FFCOAs will be made.
Climate change over the last two decades, coupled with the health crisis caused by the SARS COV-2 virus, requires central and local public authorities to involve all resources are available to ...preserve the health and life of the population, as well as for the protection of their material and cultural values.In addition to the fact that the Romanian Army performs support functions, it has unique capabilities whose use becomes indispensable for the management of civil emergencies1.Compared to the tasks to be performed, in order to limit and eliminate the consequences caused by disasters, the military engineer structures in the Romanian Army represent the most adequate capability, by the fact that they are able to intervene in most situations. However, the military engineer capabilities must be constantly perfected and adapted so that they are able to respond to the new types of risks that may arise.
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