A revolution in military geopolitics?

This paper looks into the recent discussions within the US military community of a coming or current ‘revolution in military affairs’ (RMA) which is said to imply fundamental changes in military geopolitical imaginations and practices (military geopolitics). In a first step, an account of the rhetorical and the conceptual part of the discourse of the RMA is conducted. In a second step, the proclaimed RMA is situated within a wider cumulative technological and organizational development in warfare after the Second World War. In a third step, special attention is given to geopolitical incongruities or contradictions apparent within the discourse of the RMA, and between the rhetorical part of the RMA and more conventional geopolitical practices and imaginations. In a conclusion, the promise of an actor–network approach in further investigations of contemporary techno-geopolitical discourses and practices is spoken for.     

Debunking the cliché of Italian military cowardice: the Italian military internees and Guareschi

This article has two goals. The first is to challenge the cliché (outside Italy) of the cowardly and clownish Italian soldier by recalling the voluntary journey to concentration camps (Lagers) of 650,000 soldiers and officers, the so-called Italian Military Internees (IMI), who said ‘No!’ to the German ‘invitation’ to swear an oath of loyalty to the Reich upon the declaration of the armistice on 8 September 1943. Despite a reign of terror in the Lagers in which they were interned, most continued to resist until they died or were repatriated at the end of the war. The second goal is to examine the idiosyncratic evocation of officers’ experience as IMI by Giovannino Guareschi in his Diario clandestino (1949). He played a major role in the IMIs’ ‘unarmed resistance’ in the four Lagers in which he was interned and the work consists mostly of material written in situ for his companions in misfortune.     

Drawing (on) women’s military experiences and narratives – Israeli women soldiers’ challenges in the military environment

This article utilizes arts-based methods as a feminist methodology for understanding women’s experiences in military service, according to theories of feminist security studies. It explores how non-combatant women in the army retrospectively narrate stressful situations that happened during their military service. Using arts-based methods, we examine how they derive meaning from their experiences in a masculine, military environment, affected by ongoing conflict. This article analyzes twenty images drawn by Israeli women who served in the army in the previous 2–4 years. The women drew a stressful event from their military service, explained the image, and elaborated on how they coped with the situation. A content analysis of the pictures and the narratives produced three themes: the responsibility for others in life threatening situations, the military as a first professional work experience and the interaction between military and gender hierarchies. In general, women soldiers experienced the army as complex as they encountered their first adult work space in which they learned responsibility and skills of the ‘adults’ world’. However, they were also exposed to a rigid hierarchy and to stressful security situations typical of army contexts. While non-combat women soldiers were allegedly protected from the violence of the army, they are also indirectly exposed to the danger inherent in an army context. This analysis goes beyond the hero narrative, and moves into taboo territories of young women’s narratives and experiences in the military.     

All the way? The evolution of German military power

German strategic decision‐makers have to reconsider their approach to the use of force. In Afghanistan, the Bundeswehr is faced with the challenge of a growing insurgency. This situation requires a willingness to provide combat forces for the NATO‐led International Security Assistance Force. Hence, the conviction in German domestic politics that the Bundeswehr should only be employed for the purposes of stabilization and reconstruction is increasingly challenged by a changing operational reality in Afghanistan, and allies’ reluctance to continue to accept German policy. In essence, the issue is about German participation in counterinsurgency operations. To continue current policy undermines Germany's military credibility among allied partners and restrains Germany's ability to utilize fully military power as an instrument of policy. This article argues that while military force in recent years has become an integral part of German foreign policy to pursue national interests, political decision‐makers in Berlin and the broader German public will still have to come to terms with the reality of a new security environment in Afghanistan. For the German government the ‘small war’ in northern Afghanistan is a very politically exhausting undertaking. Both politically and militarily Germany seems ill‐prepared to sustain such an operation. Its political and strategic culture still promotes an aversion to involvement in war‐fighting. In addition, the government and the Bundeswehr lack vital strategy‐making capabilities. Still, there are indicators that the changing operational reality in Afghanistan might lead to a significant evolution of the German approach to the use of force.     

The Swedish ‘military state’, 1560–1720

Erik Ringmar, Identity, Interest and Action. A Cultural Explanation of Sweden's Intervention in the Thirty Tears’ War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 236 pp. ISBN 0–521–56314–3.     

Colonial knowledge and the military in India, 1780–1860

Military officers and surgeons played a critical role in the collection, analysis and dissemination of knowledge in colonial India. Yet the little attention to date that has been directed at scholars with military backgrounds has treated their army service as incidental to, rather than formative of, their contributions to knowledge of India. While not all were actively engaged in intellectual pursuits, a surprisingly large number of orientalists came from the army. In some cases, this can be attributed to the military's need for specific information. But such strictly utilitarian motives were not always at work; boredom, curiosity and professional aspirations encouraged officers and surgeons to take up scientific, literary and artistic activities. Military service also offered opportunities for travel, as well as technical training, which furthered such pursuits. Consequently, much of the colonial knowledge that was generated in the first century of colonial rule was tinged with military values and it was sometimes framed in language redolent of the army. This would in turn help to popularise certain readings of Indian society, particularly those which stressed the medieval and fragmented nature of Indian society. The boundaries between fact and fiction became blurred as romanticism came to influence British aesthetic, historical and scientific encounters with India.     

Re-examining the Australian public's attitude to military casualties: post-heroic or defeat-phobic?

Australia, like most other developed democracies, is often alleged to suffer from ‘casualty phobia’. The perception that the Australian public will not tolerate casualties in foreign conflicts has shaped the decisions of both civilian and military policy makers. Measures taken to protect Australian forces from casualties may, for instance, also serve to increase the risk to civilians in the country to which they are deployed. The USA underwent a similar debate some years ago. Innovative public opinion research techniques—especially ‘survey experiments’ which allow researchers to establish causal relationships by consciously manipulating one variable while holding others constant—have established that the American public are not reflexively casualty-phobic and that the impact of casualties on public opinion can be outweighed by other factors, such as the public's confidence in the mission's overall success. In this article, the author replicates one of the key survey experiments from the US debate, suitably adapted to Australian conditions, with a nationally representative sample of Australian voters. The author finds that the same pattern holds in Australia as in the USA: casualties do lower public support for a given mission, but the mission's chances of success matter more.     

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.     

Replacing a Father: civilian aspects of the Swedish military, 1600–1800

Early modern society was characterized by severe conflicts, but not all were caused by antagonistic relations between military (combatants) and civilian (noncombatants) persons. The civil–military relations were blurred. The separation and differentiation of civil and military functions in society was a process that occurred mainly in the 19th century. This process coincided with a conceptual change of the nature of gender: ‘civil’ became feminine and ‘military’ became masculine. Civil–military relations in early modern societies have recently been the focus of novel and productive research, and this article falls into that category. How civilian aspects of society were subordinated to military demands while still being a part of the military is examined in this article from a different angle; namely, to what extent the military was in charge of civilian aspects within its own organization. This is discussed from a gender perspective and scrutinized through the role of children in a series of issues connected with the creation of boundaries between civilian and military spheres in society. To put it simply, what did children do within the Swedish military in the 17th and 18th centuries? And who were the children? The answers are based on data from garrisons and the Swedish Ship’s Boys’ Corps, together with data from previous research on military history in Scandinavia. The article is part of a project that aims to make visible the role of children in the military prior to the era of child soldiers.     

The vigorous and doux soldier: David Hume’s military defence of commerce

ABSTRACT

If war is an inevitable condition of human nature, as David Hume suggests, then what type of societies can best protect us from defeat and conquest? For David Hume, commerce decreases the relative cost of war and promotes technological military advances as well as martial spirit. Commerce therefore makes a country militarily stronger and better equipped to protect itself against attacks than any other kind of society. Hume does not assume commerce would yield a peaceful world nor that commercial societies would be militarily weak, as many contemporary scholars have argued. On the contrary, for him, military might is a beneficial consequence of commerce.     

China's and India's perspectives on military intervention: why Africa but not Syria?

This article addresses the puzzle for students of international relations as to why China and India, two major re-emerging powers in Asia, do not always baulk at military intervention invoked by Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, while they rhetorically harbour strong reservations about it. The recent cases of Côte d'Ivoire (2011), Libya (2011), Syria (since 2011) and Mali (since 2012) show that both China and India acquiesced in external military intervention in these African countries plunged into brutal civil wars, with only intervention in Syria being rebuffed. By studying how they voted in the United Nations Security Council in 2011–12 and their discourses on intervention, including humanitarian intervention, this article examines why their decisions about intervention in Africa diverged from their decisions regarding intervention in Syria. The authors put forward the thesis that their behaviour can be explained by an interplay between norms and interests, in which they express a common anti-US liberal imperialist stance, shaped by a ‘collective historical trauma' and ‘post-imperial ideology', and demonstrate concerns for state failure and preferences for regional initiatives and political mediation to resolve civil wars.     

Who goes there? Accounting for gender in the urge to explore abandoned military bunkers

This article enquires into the motivations of ‘bunkerologists’ – a term coined for analytic convenience by the author to describe those who research, explore and survey twentieth century military bunkers as a hobby. Specifically, it considers the gendered dimension of this predominantly male pastime. In doing so, the article examines the role of a range of cultural influences, including signification of militarism, inter-generational initiation and remembrance around themes of defence and labour, human-technology relations, conquest, and hermitic escapism. These factors all appear to have roles to play in disposing individuals towards participation in this practice. The analysis finds the source of many of these influences within a particular mode of English male socialisation, and masculinities related to it, prevalent in the late twentieth century. The analysis presented is also grounded in an auto-ethnographic exploration of the biographical roots of the author's own choice of this research topic and the effect of the research upon him and his family. Whilst the subject matter of the study may be regarded as somewhat arcane, the analysis of the role of socialisation within routes to participation in this predominantly masculine pastime may help to illuminate the motivational frameworks of other rarely studied, and seemingly introverted, ‘male’ hobbies such as train spotting, stamp collecting and sport fishing (angling).     

Disciplining technology: Electronic reliability,Cold‐War military culture and the topside ionogram

Abstract

This essay explores the relationship between cold‐war military electronics and the material culture of space science. Focusing on the world's first ionospheric research satellite, designed and built by the Canadian Defence Research Telecommunications Establishment at the height of the Cold War, it seeks to situate the practices and beliefs that underwrote the reliability of this instrument within more profound changes in electronics and electrical engineering during the 1950s. Rather than invoke a monolithic culture of reliability to explain the work of satellite technicians and engineers, this investigation identifies instead two principle approaches to the question of reliability in cold‐war electronics, their origin in the shortcomings of industrial electronics after the Second World War, as well as the place of the satellite project within them. By concentrating our attention on the conceptual and technical dimensions of electronic reliability, radier than on more traditional aspects of solid‐state research and industrial innovation, we can understand how technicians and engineers, developing weapons systems and scientific instruments alike, struggled to understand and use operationally and cognitively unstable electronic devices, and what these struggles suggest about the complex material and social legacy of the Cold War.