This short article answers the question of whether, in the context of current American civil–military relations, senior military professionals may loyally dissent from a decision by civilian ...authorities, even including by resignation. Stated another way, can their constitutional duties to obedience to civilian authority ever clash so severely with their responsibilities to their profession and its fiduciary trust with the American people that dissent is obligated. The position offered here is that senior military professionals always retain the moral agency for such dissent. It inheres in their role as a steward of an American military profession exercising the discretionary judgments that are the moral core of their professional work.
•In probable PTSD, negative alterations in cognition and mood positively correlated with suicidal and death ideation.•In probable PTSD, avoidance was negatively correlated with suicidal ideation.•In ...sub-syndromal PTSD, re-experiencing positively correlated with death ideation.•These findings occurred while controlling for depressive symptom clusters.
Veterans with PTSD are at higher risk for suicide. This study examined the specific associations of PTSD symptom clusters with suicidal ideation (SI) and death ideation (DI), independently from depressive symptom clusters. Participants included 695 Israeli male outpatient military veterans (M = 25.35 years, SD = 5.65), divided into subsamples of probable PTSD (PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 PCL-5 ≥ 33) and subthreshold PTSD scores (PCL-5 < 33). Data were extracted from medical chartsand self-report questionnaires. The main analyses included logistic regression to evaluate the associations between SI and DI (Brief Symptom Inventory, items 9 and 39) and PTSD symptom clusters (PCL-5), controlling for depressive symptom clusters (Beck Depression Inventory; cognitive-affective and somatization) in each subsample. The results showed that, for veterans with probable PTSD, the negative alterations in cognition and mood symptom cluster was positively correlated with SI and DI, while avoidance was negatively correlated with SI, independently from depressive symptoms clusters. In those with sub-syndromal PTSD, the re-experiencing cluster was positively correlated with DI, independently from the depressive symptom clusters. These findings highlight the importance of targeting PTSD components, such as negative alterations in cognition and mood symptoms experienced by veterans with PTSD, as part of suicide prevention efforts.
The growing shortage of staff globally confronts the armed forces with the challenge of recruiting and retaining skilled personnel. The article examines the structure of motivation for choosing and ...pursuing the military profession. On the basis of the results of the study of military motivation in the international environment and a comparative analysis with the previous research, the main motives for joining and serving in the armed forces are deduced. The results of the study could be used to improve the image of the military profession and retain qualified personnel.
Throughout history, military officers’ standing in society has been maintained through the establishment and reforming of military academies. Gradually infusing officer education with academic ...standards and scholarly ideals has helped secure the corps’ status as a legitimate profession. Drawing on Norbert Elias and Pierre Bourdieu, this article explores the “academization” of officer education in Sweden over 200 years. It finds that academization processes have been prominent in the military officer field, first, during 19th-century struggles to establish a state-organized educational system and war science discipline for the emerging profession, and second, during post-Cold War struggles to reinstate the military’s legitimacy and status by integrating officer education in the university sector. It argues that academic capital has been drawn on instrumentally in the officer field, as a means to endow the corps with a wider credibility and, more broadly, justify the existence of violent professions in peaceful societies.
While noncommissioned officers (NCOs) are hailed as the “backbone” of the world’s armed forces, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to them compared with the officer corps. NCOs have ...been at the margins of social scientific literature, largely because of Huntington’s officer-centric concept of the military profession, which was based on a sharp division of roles and which excluded NCOs as well as reservists and soldiers. This article holds that the officer–NCO relationship is not a functional, timeless universal in military organizations and thus merits scholarly attention. The (re)introduction of NCO-style “Specialist Officers” in the Swedish Armed Forces is used to highlight how organizational and technological factors affect the division of labor between officers and NCOs and the text ends with a call for comparative research efforts on the category of NCOs.
Romania’s security interests and objectives, the army missions in the current geopolitical context and Romania’s obligations as a member of NATO have imposed the continuation of the process of ...quantitative and qualitative restructuring of the human resources and determined the decision to renounce compulsory military service in favor of the one based on volunteering, starting with the first of January of 2007. The transition from the army based on compulsory military service to the one based on voluntary service imposed the repositioning of the military profession on the Romanian labor market, especially in relation to the competition represented by other similar institutions.
In a recent issue of this journal, we published an article titled “Fault Lines of the American Military Profession”. Donald S. Travis subsequently wrote a Dipustatio Sine Fine rejoinder that raised a ...number of criticisms of our piece and suggested several ways forward. For our part, we detect three serious problems in Travis’s analysis and offer a single syncretic response. Our solution builds on the insights of Travis’s critique while avoiding the pitfalls of his specific line of reasoning. We conclude by urging others to continue to debate and research these very consequential and timely issues.
As armies across Europe are currently developing capabilities to fight a high-intensity conventional war against a peer adversary, these armies will have to develop units that can fight independently ...in a complex environment, with limited direction from higher levels of command. Integral to this process is the need for a competent practice of mission command, viewed as a key component of maneuver warfare. The article identifies a set of enablers that need to be present in a military organization in order to practice mission command efficiently, including shared understanding and trust; initiative; a tolerant approach to failure, success, and learning; and the acceptance of mission command as an all-encompassing practice. The article then presents data from interviews with Swedish army officers focusing on the presence and significance of these enablers in their professional context. The article concludes that the increasing complexity of the peacetime tasks performed by military officers give rise to conflicting leadership demands. Consequently, exercising mission command and socializing younger colleagues into the practice is a far from straightforward process, which frequently competes with other demands placed on officers by their colleagues, the organization that they are part of, or the broader societal context.
Principalele motive în alegerea carierei militare sunt legate de caracteristicile vieţii socioeconomice (68%), şi numai
32% – de cele de profesie. Motivaţia studenţilor pentru cariera militară ...depinde de nivelul dezvoltării aptitudinilor pro-
fesionale şi de condiţiile concrete.
Relaţie pozitivă a fost stabilită între: motivaţie şi scalele Realist, Convenţional ale Inventarului de Interese şi testele
Aptitudine numerică, Aptitudine spaţială ale Bateriei Factoriale la studenţii motivaţi pentru cariera militară (clasterul I);
motivaţie şi scalele Artistic, Social ale Inventarului de Interese şi testele Fluenţă Verbală ale Bateriei Factoriale la studenţii
orientaţi spre caracteristicile vieţii socioeconomice (clasterul II).A REVIEW ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE MOTIVATION AND PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
The main reasons for the military career choice are linked to socio-economic characteristics of life – 68%, and 32% –
of the profession. The motivation of students with military profile depends on the development of professional skills
and specific conditions.
The positive relationship has been established between: Realistic motivation scales, Conventional Interest Inventory
and Numerical Aptitude tests, Aptitude Battery space to motivated students for a military career (cluster I); Artistic mo-
tivation scales, Social Interest Inventory and Battery oral fluency tests to students oriented to socio-economic characte-
ristics of life (cluster II).
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