Despite the large literature on the Napoleonic wars, many key subjects remain unexplored in English language scholarship. This article reviews recent (approximately the past ten years) Anglophone ...military history scholarship addressing the European dimensions of the Napoleonic era to offer suggestions for future research.
During the nineteenth century, states routinely defeated insurgent foes. Over the twentieth century, however, this pattern reversed itself, with states increasingly less likely to defeat insurgents ...or avoid meeting at least some of their demands. What accounts for this pattern of outcomes in counterinsurgency (COIN) wars? We argue that increasing mechanization within state militaries after World War I is primarily responsible for this shift. Unlike their nineteenth-century predecessors, modern militaries possess force structures that inhibit information collection among local populations. This not only complicates the process of sifting insurgents from noncombatants but increases the difficulty of selectively applying rewards and punishment among the fence-sitting population. Modern militaries may therefore inadvertently fuel, rather than deter, insurgencies. We test this argument with a new data set of 286 insurgencies (1800–2005) and a paired comparison of two U.S. Army divisions in Iraq (2003–2004). We find that higher levels of mechanization, along with external support for insurgents and the counterinsurgent's status as an occupier, are associated with an increased probability of state defeat. By contrast, we find only partial support for conventional power- and regime-based explanations, and no support for the view that rough terrain favors insurgent success.
The area of the Slovak Republic has served over history as a ‘melting pot’ of civilizations and migrations. Thus during numerous conflicts and wars it turned into a stage of military operations. It ...is remarkable that a relatively small surface of the country gave so much space to numerous armies. Those campaigns have left many traces, represented by battlefields, monuments and also movable items, militaria. However, since Slovakia is a relatively young republic, several problems are present with respect to building military museology on the national level. In the past, Slovakia’s military museology was presented mostly in museums in other countries. The fall of the Communist regime enabled to transform the existing military museums into serious institution to present and research into the national military history. Currently, the process of the development of military museology in our country can neither be considered as completed nor as satisfactory.
Explores the fundamental role of the military in state-building in francophone postcolonial West Africa and how foreign economic and military aid has influenced it. How did African armed forces in ...postcolonial states in francophone West Africa influence decolonization and state-building in African states? How did foreign assistance from ex-colonial powers, the USSR and the US and colonial state structures influence political systems, and sometimes result in weak and unstable governance? This book explores the development of national militaries in Cote d'Ivoire, Dahomey (now Benin), Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) and Togo during the 1960s and 1970s. Revealing the strength of decision-making power by African political elites, the study also shows the decisive impact of foreign economic and military assistance on countries that did not experience a prolonged armed conflict. The author provides new insights into the way the decisions of African governments in building their national militaries impacted postcolonial states' autonomy, legitimacy, sovereign control and governance. In West Africa, during the 1960s, France sought to maintain exclusive relations with its former colonies through military assistance, economic aid and close personal relations with African political and military elites. State coercive capacities extended far beyond the strength of political institutions, with soldiers' assumption of political roles linked to the weaknesses of colonial and postcolonial structures. Disagreements between French and American officials, as well as Arab-Israeli and Sino-Russo conflicts, increased African presidents' opportunities to mobilize external resources. Yet in the late 1980s, it became evident that national militaries and police were often the main causes of personal insecurity, rather than providing protection, and that some economies remained weak and political structures unstable. This book is available as an Open Access ebook under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC. The open access version of this publication was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
The Race with No Finish Line offers a framework for understanding the strategies of states engaged in competition for regional hegemony. Employing insights drawn from business strategy, the author ...argues for an essentially asymmetric understanding of fundamental policy goals for states engaged in competition for control of a region of the globe, with one state attempting to maintain a dominant position and another attempting, by focusing limited resources, to supplant it.
The proclamation of Belarusian independence on March 25, 1918, and the rival establishment of the Soviet Belarusian state on January 1, 1919, created two distinct and mutually exclusive national ...myths, which continue to define contemporary Belarusian society. This book examines the processes that resulted in this dual resolution in the context of World War I and the subsequent Russian Revolutions. Based on original archival material, Lizaveta Kasmach scrutinizes the development of competing concepts of Belarusian nationhood in the context of rivaling national aspirations and imperial policies. The analysis convincingly demonstrates the divisions within the nationalist movement, both politically between the moderates and socialists, and geographically between German-occupied territory with Vilna as a center versus Russian-controlled territory around Minsk. Besides the case study of Belarusian nation-building efforts, the book is a contribution to the study of the First World War in East Central Europe, approaching the war and its aftermath as a mobilizational moment in the region.
This book provides a systematic analysis of the Russian-Ukraine war, using the concept of resilient fighting power to assess the operational performance of both sides during the first year of the ...full-scale invasion. The Russian war in Ukraine began in 2014 and continued for eight years, before the full-scale invasion of 24 February 2022. It is not a new war, but the intensity of the warfighting revived many discussions about the conduct of inter-state warfare, which has not been seen in Europe for decades. This book does not aim to offer an exhaustive operational analysis of the war, but rather provides a preliminary systematic analysis across various domains of warfare using the concept of fighting power to assess the operational performance of both sides. First, the book discusses the conceptual component and the post-Cold War adaptations of the Soviet strategic tradition by both the Ukrainian and the Russian Armed Forces. Following that, it gives an evaluation of the various aspects of warfighting in the land, air, maritime and cyber domains. Then, the book examines the role of international allied assistance, sanctions and weapons delivery in strengthening the resilience of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The book concludes with some comments on the role of inter-state warfare in the current strategic environment and future warfare. This book will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, defence studies, foreign policy, Russian studies and international relations.
The Balkan wars begun with the agression of the Balkan Alliance including Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro against the Ottoman Empire. Bulgaria that had the strongest army was pionieer in this war, ...aimed to conquer the hole Thrace, Edirne included, and advanced until Chataldja. It urged the Armenians living on its territory or abroad to take part in the war in order to reach its aspirations towards the Ottoman Empire; thus it formed a Armenian Volunteer Troop inside its army in order to increase the Bulgarian-Armenian cooperation. This troop fighted against the Ottoman Empire and was demobilized just after the end of the First Balkan War.
PDF
