British judicial engagement and the juridification of the armed forces

Although the law has always been a major reference point in the conduct of war, little scholarly attention has focused on the transformative effect of recent legal challenges, judicial rulings and inquiries on the armed forces themselves, notably the 2011 Gage Inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa and the Philip Inquiry into the Mull of Kintyre helicopter disaster. Despite this, the impact has been significant in the ways it has transformed the governance regime of British armed forces and the professional autonomy of the military. This article conceptualizes the impact of law on the armed forces as ‘juridification’. In applying this concept, this article analyses the implications of this for the culture, conduct and organization of the British armed forces. It argues that juridification closes a civil–military relations gap between society on the one hand and the armed forces on the other. As important, juridification also brings with it permanent instability because of the inevitable conflicts that arise from the replacement of an old order based on authority, to a new military system based on rights. Thus the effects of juridification are not just a liminal moment—a transitory dislocation from established structures and the reversal of existing hierarchies—followed by the creation of a permanent new order. Rather, juridification has initiated an era of instability that is characterized by the absence of any permanent settlement of authority and rights in the governance of the armed forces. This has significant implications for the armed forces and their professional autonomy and the social, political and legal context in which armed forces have to operate.     

American civil–military relations today: the continuing relevance of Samuel P. Huntington's The soldier and the state

Fifty‐five years after it was first published, Samuel Huntington's The soldier and the state remains an essential starting point for serious discussions of American civil–military relations. In part this is due to the boldness and ambition of the author. Huntington brought theory to a research area that had suffered from too little theorizing and then went on to formulate concepts that scholars and practitioners of civil–military relations still find useful. These include: the conceptualization of the military as a profession; the articulation of the two central forces shaping the nature of military institutions as the functional and the societal imperatives; and the formulation of subjective and objective control as the two main patterns of civilian control. This review article briefly revisits these concepts and argues that they retain utility in illuminating important issues in American civil–military relations today. It also argues, however, that Huntington's contributions were productive but not perfect. Some of his specific definitions, such as the content of military expertise, are debatable. Some of his central concerns, such as whether the United States could sustain a strong military over an extended period of time, are no longer central today. Finally, in some places the literature has moved beyond what Huntington offered. The best example is the ongoing debate over how the country's political leaders and its most senior military officers should interact. It is precisely on this point that Huntington's objective control is the weakest. While The soldier and the state certainly does not deserve uncritical acceptance, it does continue to merit a fair hearing. Current discussions of American civil–military relations are likely to be more reasonable and productive if Huntington is given a voice.     

British civil–military relations and the problem of risk

Drawing primarily on the experience of the UK since 2001, this article examines the increasing prevalence of risk as an organizing concept for western defence and security planning and its implications for civil–military relations and strategy‐making. It argues that there may be tensions between such approaches and the principles of good strategy‐making, which aim to link means and resources to ends in a coherent manner. Not only does risk potentially blur the relationship between means and ends in the strategy‐making process, it also exposes it to contestation, with multiple interpretations of what the risks actually are and the strategic priority (and commitment) which should be attached to them. The article examines these tensions at three levels of risk contestation for British defence: institutions, operations and military–society relations. In the case of the UK, it contends that the logic of risk has not been able to provide the same national motivation and sense of strategic purpose as the logic of threat. In this context, calls for a reinvigoration of traditional strategy‐making or a renewed conception of national interest may be missing a more fundamental dissonance between defence policy, civil–military relations and the wider security context. More widely, the strategic ennui that some western states have been accused of may not simply be a product of somehow falling out of the habit of strategy‐making or an absence of ‘political will’. Instead, it may reflect deeper social and geostrategic trends which constrain and complicate the use of military force and obscure its utility in the public imagination.     

Understanding the Helmand campaign: British military operations in Afghanistan

British forces are now engaged in a major operation in southern Afghanistan, the outcome of which is likely to be strategically decisive—especially for the configuration and status of Britain's land forces. Although progress seems to have been made, there has been much criticism of the campaign. Through an analysis of the three‐year Helmand mission (Operation Herrick), this article explores whether, for all the improvements in the campaign in terms of resources and numbers of troops, the basic structure of the campaign established in 2006 has endured. Instead of focusing on an ‘ink‐spot’ from which to expand, British forces have tended to operate from dispersed forward operating bases from which they have insufficient combat power to dominate terrain and secure the population. They are consequently engaged in a seemingly endless round of high‐intensity tactical battles which are normally successful in themselves but do not contribute to the overarching security of the province. The analysis explores the way in which this distinctive campaign lay‐down—the preference for dispersal and high‐intensity fighting—may be a reflection of British military culture and its military doctrine. By highlighting potential unacknowledged aspects of the British military profession, the article aims to contribute to debates about the development of the armed forces.     

Complexity,strategy and the national interest

British strategy‐making has been subject to a sustained critique in recent years, from parliamentarians, retired members of the armed forces and scholars of strategic studies. This article examines the nature of this critique and the evolving character of strategic practice in Britain. It argues that the criticisms of British strategymaking are often misplaced, for two main reasons. First, many base their critique on a reductionist notion of unitary ‘national interest’ that fails to capture systemic patterns of complexity and contestation in the wider security environment and in Britain. Second, they underestimate or ignore the extent to which the UK strategic community is itself innovating in response to these themes, particularly since the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review. This is not to argue that considerable challenges do not remain for strategy‐making in Britain. Most notably, these include: how to translate strategic innovation in departments and elsewhere into a coherent national strategic agenda; how to do this while maintaining institutional coordination and a shared sense of strategic purpose across government (and beyond); how to sustain and consolidate institutional expertise and experience in a rapidly changing civil service and at a time of continuing public austerity; and how to articulate and legitimate security policy decisions among a general public that is both disengaged from elite strategic discourse and sceptical of the efficacy of military force. Even so, the article concludes by arguing that it is possible to see the outline of an emergent and distinctive theory of action in contemporary British strategic practice, characterized by principles of adaptivity, anticipation, self‐organisation and nascent cross‐governmentalism.     

What are armed forces for? The changing nature of military roles in Europe

European armed forces are currently undergoing a profound series of shifts in relation to their core roles. These changes are increasingly challenging long-held assumptions about what armed forces are for and how they should be structured and organized. This article argues that these changes have not primarily occurred in response to an objective, functional reassessment of the nature of the threat, as is assumed in much of the civil—military relations literature. Instead, new military roles are emerging as a consequence of domestic and international socio-political infl uences that shape states' perceptions of what their armed forces should look like and the purposes they should serve.     

周恩来与中共军事领导体制的创建

周恩来作为党的早期的重要领导人,非常重视党的军事工作,较早地从理论上探索党对革命武装的领导.在实践中他开拓性地创设了革命武装的政治工作制度,亲自领导党的军事领导体制的创建工作,为形成、确立党的军事领导体制作出了卓越的历史性贡献.     

The Other Allies: Military Security,National Allegiance,and the Enlistment of ‘Friendly Aliens’ in the Australian Armed Forces, 1939–45

Abstract

This article investigates military security attitudes toward the enlistment of ‘friendly aliens’ in the Australian armed forces during the Second World War. Employing of?cial correspondence of the period, the study positions contemporary debates regarding the enlistment of Allied nationals from Axis-occupied countries within the context of Australian conceptions of race, British nationality, and national allegiance. It is argued that, while British practice was in?uential and uniformity of Imperial policy was a desired objective, the unique concerns of Australian security, the domestic relationship between citizenship and military service, and the White Australia policy combined to determine the nature and application of Australian security attitudes in this area. In certain cases, these factors exercised severely negative impacts upon ‘friendly aliens’ who volunteered for service in the Australian armed forces.     

Breaking the covenant: governance of the British army in the twenty-first century

This article argues that the military covenant between senior army commanders and soldiers is breaking down for two reasons: first, British forces are being engaged in new and controversial wars of choice, putting new and distinct pressures on the covenant; and second because senior military commanders have not fully appreciated the changes to their authority and power in governing the British army. It further suggests that military commanders, central staff and ministers need to acknowledge the scale of the internal challenges to the military covenant and develop appropriate responses. Drawing on examples from gender equality and sexual orientation, allegations of war crimes in Iraq, the military's duty of care and the proposed launch of a British Armed Forces Federation, this article argues that these challenges show that the military leadership has no choice but to rethink its outdated approach to governance of the British army, if it is to remain fi t for purpose. Without appropriate adaptation, army chiefs will have themselves contributed to the breaking of the military covenant, between the army and the individual soldier.     

The military, psychiatry, and "unfit" soldiers, 1939-1942

This article examines the psychiatric screening of U.S. soldiers during the Second World War, established by psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949), as a key moment in the public application of clinical psychiatry, as well as a turning point in Sullivan's intellectual and professional career. After a brief look at the ideas and expectations Sullivan brought to the screening system, I discuss a major problem of the screening: the mismatch between the medical concept of disease prevention and the realities of the mass screening as a public policy. As a way to highlight this mismatch, I focus on Sullivan's failure to protect homosexual men from medical and social stigmatization by screening them out of the armed forces. Despite his liberal approach to the issue of homosexuality before the war, which he had created in his clinical practice, Sullivan was unable to persuade the military and the public of gay men's right to serve the nation. The examination of how his sympathetic view of homosexuality became circumscribed reveals not only the gap between clinical insights and public policy, but also how tentative views of homosexuality in public debate among liberal psychiatrists during the decade preceding the war contributed to the failure to make non-homophobic policy in the 1940s. This article shows that the relative conservatism in the politics of sexuality among liberal psychiatrists, as well as the intransigent conservatism as seen in homophobic tradition of the Army, contributed to the discriminatory screening criteria.     

Domestic abuse and the public/private divide in the British military

Divisions between the social spheres of public and private are always fluid, mutually constitutive, and politically and socially formulated. Within the British military, such divisions are further framed through the needs of operational effectiveness. In the pursuit of operational effectiveness the public/private divide functions at times as porous, in large part through the military's provision of services such as housing, welfare and policing to personnel and their families and through the notion of a close-knit military community, and at others as firm, bolstering operational effectiveness through recourse to militarised ideas of the private sphere as the fixed space of hearth, home and femininity which is to be protected by military force. This article employs narratives of domestic abuse as a window through which to analyse enactments of the public/private divide in the British military. The analysis draws upon interview participants' experiences of abuse and of help-seeking to illustrate the complex and fluid ways in which the prioritisation of operational effectiveness frames and delimits the public and the private within the contemporary British military in relation to domestic abuse. The impacts of this upon victim-survivors' help-seeking experiences are discussed.     

Warfare,political identities,and displacement in Spain and Colombia

This paper explores the causes of displacement during civil wars. Recent scholarship has shown that conventional civil wars – those in which forces are relatively balanced – and irregular civil wars – those in which one side is substantially stronger than the other – exhibit different patterns of violence. We hypothesize that, while the mode of violence differs, the form of displacement should be consistent across the wars: displacement is a tactic of war that armed groups use to conquer new territories. By expelling civilians associated with rivals, armed groups improve their odds of gaining control of contested territory. This implies that members of a group are targeted for displacement because of their identity and presumed loyalties. We test the theory using two fine-grained datasets on individuals displaced during a conventional civil war, in Spain (1936–1939), and an irregular civil war, in Colombia (1964–). In both cases, the war cleavage was ideological and reflected in national elections: the locations where political parties received support indicated which populations were sympathetic to rivals. In both civil wars, we observe higher levels of displacement in locations where more sympathizers of rival armed groups reside. The article is the first comparison to our knowledge of the sub-national dynamics of displacement within two different civil wars and it shows that the microfoundations of displacement are similar across types. Finally, the article explains macro-level differences with a coherent micro-level framework.     

REPRESENTATION IN THE U.S. ARMED FORCES?

On November 8, 1978 several years of activity in the Congress and concern by the Department of Defense culminated in Public Law 95–610 when President Carter signed bill S.274. This law prohibits union organizations of the armed forces, membership in military labor organizations by members of the armed forces, and recognition of military labor organizations by the Government. Severe sanctions can be imposed for violations. Since representation is a broader concept than collective bargaining, P.L. 95–610, even should it survive possible court challenges to its constitutionality, does not settle the basic issues. These issues focus on (1) the changing demography and enlistment rules for the armed forces; (2) the response of the Department of Defense to these changes; and (3) the evolution of the various organizations of present and former military personnel into more union-like activities. This paper addresses the policy implications of the foregoing three factors and suggests approaches compatible with both our military needs and our civilian traditions.     

The Use of Armed Forces in Law Enforcement: Legal,Constitutional and Political Issues in Australia

In Western democracies armed forces perform a variety of internal functions. This paper examines the principles and issues relating to the use of the Australian Defence Force in the enforcement of law against individual citizens and aliens. This function is normally the responsibility of the police but there are pressures in Australia and overseas for the wider use of armed forces in this field. Traditional restraints on the employment of armed forces in this capacity date back to parliamentary resistance to the power of the Crown. Several barriers, constitutional, legal and institutional, have developed to ensure that the executive cannot easily abuse its necessary control over the armed forces in a way that endangers civil liberties. While there is no serious danger of such abuse at present, several issues need to be monitored.     

Reassessing the special relationship

The resignation of Tony Blair as British Prime Minister and the transition from Bush to Obama in the US mark the end of the second revival of the US–UK special relationship. The classic era of the special relationship began under the Labour government in the 1940s, though it was Winston Churchill who inspired the concept. It ended with the resignation of Harold Macmillan in 1963. Margaret Thatcher revived close personal relations with the US President as a guiding principle of UK foreign policy and Tony Blair successfully revived them again, even though the end of the Cold War had transformed the framework of transatlantic relations. Over the past 60 years US–UK relations have embedded specific security arrangements which have persisted, largely unquestioned, through the ups and downs of political relations at the top: close links between the two countries' armed forces; access to defence technology and procurement; intelligence ties through the UKUSA Agreement; a semi-independent nuclear deterrent and provision of military bases in the UK and its overseas territories. Public debate on the costs and benefits of these links has been limited; successive governments have discouraged a wider debate. The Obama administration enters office with few of the personal ties to Britain and to English culture, which have underpinned the special relationship. Earlier US administrations have approached relations with the UK from the perspective of US interests, while many British political leaders have felt—and have hoped to find in Washington—a sentimental attachment to Anglo–American partnership. British foreign policy would benefit from a reassessment of the structures of US–UK relations in terms of British interests, costs and benefits.     

Stuck in the past? British views on the Spanish army’s effectiveness and military culture, 1946–1983

After the Civil War the Spanish army functioned as a guardian of domestic order, but suffered from antiquated material and little financial means. These factors have been described as fundamental reasons for the army’s low potential wartime capability. This article draws on British and German sources to demonstrate how Spanish military culture prevented an augmented effectiveness and organisational change. Claiming that the army merely lacked funding and modern equipment, falls considerably short in grasping the complexities of military effectiveness and organisational cultures, and might prove fatal for current attempts to develop foreign armed forces in conflict or post-conflict zones.     

German liberalism and the militarisation of civil society, 1813–1848/49

From the beginning of nineteenth century German liberals endeavoured to reform the armies of different German states, subject them to constitutional authorities, open their ranks to members of civil society and turn military service into a civic obligation. After the Wars of Liberation and during the Vormärz years, the liberals struggle for democratically oriented armed forces was combined with their opposition to restorative regime and their hopes for the national unification of Germany and the formation of civil society. The liberals campaign, however, turned military service and military values into authentic manifestations of the ideal civil society. Military service was admired for the qualities it bestowed on those who bore arms and the values guiding its members as citizens. Paradoxically, military service became the founding institution of civil society. This process found further expression upon the renewed establishment of the civil militias (Bürgerwehren) during the Vormärz and the central role they played in the 1848 revolution. They were intended to introduce alternative forces into the army, but they ended up performing popular military and policing activities. Through this process, the Bildung ideal in the formation of civil society declined considerably, and the liberals actually contributed to the militarisation of society.     

Killing Kith and Kin: The Viability of British Military Intervention in Rhodesia, 1964-5

This article uses correspondence from former members of theRhodesian security services, recent oral testimony from Britishpoliticians and civil servants, and newly available documentaryevidence from archives around the world, to re-examine the viabilityof British military intervention in Rhodesia during 1964 and1965. It argues that the military and political obstacles tothe use of force cited at the time and since have been grosslyexaggerated. This article argues that with sufficient resolve,the Labour government led by Harold Wilson could have used forcein an attempt to prevent or end Rhodesia's Unilateral Declarationof Independence of 11 November 1965. This might have offereda possible solution to one of the most protracted and embarrassinginternational problems that confronted successive British governmentsduring disengagement from Empire.     

Skyjackers,jackals and soldiers: British planning for international terrorist incidents during the 1970s

Following the Munich Olympics massacre of September 1972, the British government conducted a series of contingency plans to ensure that Whitehall, police constabularies and the armed forces were prepared for similar crises affecting the UK and its citizens. This article examines the evolution of British counterterrorist planning during the 1970s, which still shapes Whitehall's crisis management procedures for responding to international terrorism, and also procedures for calling for military support in response to hijackings, hostage‐taking and similar incidents both domestically and overseas. It demonstrates that while there are differences in the character of the terrorist threat 40 years ago and today, there are also parallels between the practical and political challenges of counterterrorism in the era of the Baader–Meinhof group and Carlos the Jackal, and the struggle against al‐Qaeda and its affiliates today.     

Continuity and change: prospects for civil—military relations in Turkey

Early indications suggest that the appointment of General Yaþar Büyükanýt as chief of the Turkish general staff (TGS) at the end of August 2006 marked a new era in civil‐military relations in the country. Yet it would be a mistake to see the military's more forthright attitude under Büyükanýt simply as a return to the past. Civil‐military relations in Turkey have always been characterized by a combination of continuity and change. Both the legal basis for and the TGS's own perceptions of the role and responsibilities of the military have remained unchanged for over 70 years. However, the extent and the manner in which the military has influenced politics have always varied. In recent years the TGS's ability to ensure that government policy remains within acceptable parameters has been primarily based on its public prestige rather than the prospect of a full‐blooded military coup. Although the TGS has always been the most respected institution in the country, the Turkish public's willingness to tolerate, or even to encourage, its assumption of a more active political role has traditionally varied according to changes in the prevailing domestic political circumstances: falling during times of stability and confidence and rising during times of uncertainty. In early 2007 both the country and the government of the moderately Islamist Justice and Development Party (JDP) appeared to have lost momentum and direction. In such an environment, and in the continued absence of an eff ective political opposition, many Turks will once again look to the country's military to prevent the JDP from increasing its control over the apparatus of state, starting with the appointment of a new president in April 2007. To date the JDP has always backed down in the face of pressure from the TGS. However, whether it will continue to do so, and what the TGS can or will do if the JDP defies its warnings, currently all remain unclear.