Peacekeeping, peace enforcement and ‘stability operations’ ask soldiers to use violence to create peace, defeat armed threats while having no enemies and uphold human rights without taking sides. The ...challenges that face peacekeepers cannot be easily reduced to traditional just war principles. Built on insights from care ethics, case studies including Darfur, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti and Liberia and scores of interviews with peacekeepers, trainers and planners in the field in Africa, India and more, Daniel H. Levine sheds light on the challenges of peacekeeping. And he asserts that the traditional ‘holy trinity’ of peacekeeping principles – consent, impartiality, and minimum use of force – still provide the best moral guide for peacekeepers.
In recent times, the Blue Berets have become markers of peace and security around the globe. Yet, the iconoclastic symbol of both the Blue Beret and the Blue Helmet continue to engage the ...international political imagination in ways that downplay the inconsistent effects of peacekeeping missions on the security of local people. In this book, Paul Higate and Marsha Henry develop critical perspectives on UN and NATO peacekeeping, arguing that these forms of international intervention are framed by the exercise of power. Their analysis of peacekeeping, based on fieldwork conducted in Haiti, Liberia and Kosovo, suggests that peacekeeping reconfigures former conflict zones in ways that shape perceptions of security. This reconfiguration of space is enacted by peacekeeping personnel who 'perform' security through their daily professional and personal practices, sometimes with unanticipated effects. Insecure Spaces' interdisciplinary analysis sheds great light on the contradictory mix of security and insecurity that peace operations create.
In an era when the global community is confronted with challenges posed by violent nonstate organizations--from FARC in Colombia to the Taliban in Afghanistan--our understanding of the nature and ...emergence of these groups takes on heightened importance. Julie Mazzei's timely study offers a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics that facilitate the organization and mobilization of one of the most virulent types of these organizations, paramilitary groups (PMGs).Mazzei reconstructs in rich historical context the organization of PMGs in Colombia, El Salvador, and Mexico, identifying the variables that together create a triad of factors enabling paramilitary emergence: ambivalent state officials, powerful military personnel, and privileged members of the economic elite. Nations embroiled in domestic conflicts often find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place when global demands for human rights contradict internal expectations and demands for political stability. Mazzei elucidates the importance of such circumstances in the emergence of PMGs, exploring the roles played by interests and policies at both the domestic and international levels. By offering an explanatory model of paramilitary emergence, Mazzei provides a framework to facilitate more effective policy making aimed at mitigating and undermining the political potency of these dangerous forces.
The Soldier and the Changing Stateis the first book to systematically explore, on a global scale, civil-military relations in democratizing and changing states. Looking at how armies supportive of ...democracy are built, Zoltan Barany argues that the military is the most important institution that states maintain, for without military elites who support democratic governance, democracy cannot be consolidated. Barany also demonstrates that building democratic armies is the quintessential task of newly democratizing regimes. But how do democratic armies come about? What conditions encourage or impede democratic civil-military relations? And how can the state ensure the allegiance of its soldiers?
Barany examines the experiences of developing countries and the armed forces in the context of major political change in six specific settings: in the wake of war and civil war, after military and communist regimes, and following colonialism and unification/apartheid. He evaluates the army-building and democratization experiences of twenty-seven countries and explains which predemocratic settings are most conducive to creating a military that will support democracy. Highlighting important factors and suggesting which reforms can be expected to work and fail in different environments, he offers practical policy recommendations to state-builders and democratizers.
This important new history of the development of a leadership corps of officers during World War I opens with a gripping narrative of the battlefield heroism of Cpl. Alvin York, juxtaposed with the ...death of Pvt. Charles Clement less than two kilometers away.
Clement had been a captain and an example of what a good officer should be in the years just before the beginning of the war. His subsequent failure as an officer and his redemption through death in combat embody the question that lies at the heart of this comprehensive and exhaustively researched book: What were the faults of US military policy regarding the training of officers during the Great War?
In The School of Hard Knocks, Richard S. Faulkner carefully considers the selection and training process for officers during the years prior to and throughout the First World War. He then moves into the replacement of those officers due to attrition, ultimately discussing the relationship between the leadership corps and the men they commanded.
Replete with primary documentary evidence including reports by the War Department during and subsequent to the war, letters from the officers detailing their concerns with the training methods, and communiqués from the leaders of the training facilities to the civilian leadership, The School of Hard Knocks makes a compelling case while presenting a clear, highly readable, no-nonsense account of the shortfalls in officer training that contributed to the high death toll suffered by the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I.
You, The People Chesterman, Simon
2005, 2004-03-18, 20040101
eBook
Transitional administrations represent the most complex operations attempted by the United Nations. The missions in Kosovo (1999—) and East Timor (1999–2002) are commonly seen as unique in the ...history of the United Nations. But they may also be seen as the latest in a series of operations that have involved the United Nations in ‘state‐building’ activities, in which it has attempted to develop the institutions of government by assuming some or all of those sovereign powers on a temporary basis. Viewed in light of earlier UN operations, such as those in Namibia (1989–1990), Cambodia (1992–1993), and Eastern Slavonia (1996–1998), the idea that these exceptional circumstances may not recur is somewhat disingenuous. The need for policy research in this area was brought into sharp focus by the weighty but vague responsibilities assigned to the United Nations in Afghanistan (2002—) and its contested role in Iraq (2003—).This book seeks to fill that gap. Aimed at policy‐makers, diplomats, and a wide academic audience (including international relations, political science, international law, war studies, and development studies), the book provides a concise history of transitional administration and a treatment of the five key issues confronting such operations: peace and security, the role of the United Nations as government, establishing the rule of law, economic reconstruction, and exit strategies. Research for the book has been conducted through extensive field research and interviews with key UN staff and local representatives in almost all of the territories under consideration. The unifying theme is that, while the ends of transitional administration may be idealistic, the means cannot be.
Nearly half of all countries emerging from civil conflict relapse into war within a few years of signing a peace agreement. The postwar trajectories of armed groups vary from organizational cohesion ...to dissolution, demilitarization to remilitarization. In Organized Violence after Civil War, Daly analyzes evidence from thirty-seven militia groups in Colombia, demonstrating that the primary driving force behind these changes is the variation in recruitment patterns within, and between, the warring groups. She documents the transition from war to peace through interviews with militia commanders, combatants and victims. Using rich ex-combatant survey data and geo-coded information on violence over fifty years of war, Daly explains the dynamics inside armed organizations and the strategic interactions among them. She also shows how the theory may be used beyond Colombia, both within the region of Latin America and across the rest of the world.
The concept of UN peacekeeping has had to evolve and change to meet the challenges of contemporary sources of conflict; consequently, peacekeeping operations have grown rapidly in number and ...complexity. This book examines a number of issues associated with contemporary multinational peace operations, and seeks to provide insights into the problems that arise in establishing and deploying such forces to meet the challenges of current conflicts. The focus of the book is three case studies (Lebanon, Somalia and Kosovo), involving a comparative analysis of the traditional peacekeeping in Lebanon, the more robust peace enforcement mission in Somalia, and the international administration undertaken on behalf of the international community in Kosovo. The book analyses the lessons that may be learned from these operations in terms of mandates, command and control, use of force and the relevance of international humanitarian and human rights law to such operations.
This is the first academic analysis of the role of embedded media in the 2003 Iraq War, providing a concise history of US military public affairs management since Vietnam.
In late summer 2002, the ...Pentagon considered giving the press an inside view of the upcoming invasion of Iraq. The decision was surprising, and the innovative "embedded media program" itself received intense coverage in the media. Its critics argued that the program was simply a new and sophisticated form of propaganda. Their implicit assumption was that the Pentagon had become better at its news management and had learned to co-opt the media.
This new book tests this assumption, introducing a model of organizational learning and redraws the US military’s cumbersome learning curve in public affairs from Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, the Persian Gulf, Somalia, the Balkans to Afghanistan, examining whether past lessons were implemented in Iraq in 2003. Thomas Rid argues that while the US armed forces have improved their press operations, America’s military is still one step behind fast-learning and media-savvy global terrorist organizations.
War and Media Operations will be of great interest to students of the Iraq War, media and war, propaganda, political communications and military studies in general.
'War and Media Operations is must-reading for anyone who wants to understand how modern wars are sold to public opinion.' Jamie Shea, Director of Policy Planning at NATO, alliance spokesman during the Kosovo War 'Those who support or oppose 'embedded' journalism will find ammunition here but Rid himself doesn't take shots.' Steven Komarow, USA TODAY, embedded with the US Army's V Corps during the Iraq War 'thought-provoking, insightful, and deeply engaging' Ikujiro Nonaka, Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, former Xerox Professor of Knowledge, Haas School of Business, University of Berkeley, author of The Knowledge Creating Company 'Thomas Rid demonstrates how nimble adversaries such as Al-Qaeda are coming up with their own information strategy.' James Mann, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, author of Rise of the Vulcans 'The best analysis I have yet seen of the role of Public Affairs within the wider context of Information Operations.' Philip Taylor, University of Leeds, UK, author of Munitions of the Mind: A History of Propaganda
1. Introduction Part 1: The Military as a Learning Organization 2. Perspectives on Military Learning 3. A Model of Strategic Innovation Part 2: The History of Media Operations 4. Disastrous Public Affairs: Vietnam 5. Restrictive Public Affairs: Grenada, Panama, and the Persian Gulf 6. Experimental Public Affairs: Somalia, the Balkans, and Afghanistan Part 3: A Case Study of Strategic Innovation 7. Retrieving Past Experiences? 8. Strategic Public Affairs: Iraq Part 4: Discussion and Outlook 9. The Friendly Learning Loop 10. The Adversarial Learning Loop
This collection investigates how different countries approach the inclusion or exclusion of immigrants in their armed forces, and offers immigrant military participation as a way to provide a pathway ...to citizenship, foster greater societal integration, and achieve a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive military.
