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This Armed Forces & Society forum is dedicated to exploring recent trends in the characteristics of military reserves and of the changing character of reserve forces within the armed forces within the military, the civilian sphere, and in between them. To bring new and critical perspectives to the study of reserve forces and civil–military relations, this introduction and the five articles that follow draw on two organizing conceptual models: The first portrays reservists as transmigrants and focuses on the plural membership of reservists in the military and in civilian society and the “travel” between them. The second model focuses on the multiple formal and informal compacts (contracts, agreements, or pacts) between reservists and the military.

Since 2001 there has been an increase in the use of reserve forces in conflicts sparking a number of organizational transformations when it comes to reserves. In Britain, the Future Reserves 2020 (FR2020) transformation was a cornerstone of recent defence policy. Yet, the scholarly work on military innovations has ignored reserve forces. This article examines why and how the recent attempt to transform the British Army Reserve was undertaken, and analyses its outcome. In doing so, this article contributes a major new case-study to the literature focused on civilian-directed peacetime innovation and the impact of intra-party and intraservice politics upon it. Firstly, we originally examine how intra-party political motivations were the primary initiator of the innovation. Secondly, contrary to previous intra-service rivalry explanations, we argue that our case is a compelling example of intra-service rivalry between components rather than branches, and over manpower and organizational structure rather than technology and visions of victory. Finally, addressing the lack of theory in innovation studies, we show how the transformation followed post-Fordist principles to address its political, ideological and financial drivers. We conclude that numerous innovation processes can be operant at different times, and that FR2020 has been frustrated by the interaction between these processes.

This book examines the local and international dynamics and strategies that have come to define the often violent relationship between Israel and Lebanon. Since the end of the Cold War, academic debate over the nature of war in the contemporary world has focused upon the asymmetric nature of conflict among a raft of failed or failing states, often held together by only a fragile notion of a shared communal destiny. Little scholarly attention has been paid, however, to one such conflict that predates the ending of the Cold War, yet still appears as intractable as ever: Israel's hostile relationship with Lebanon and in particular, its standoff with the Lebanese Shi'a militia group, Hizbollah. As events surrounding the 'Second Lebanon War' in the summer of 2006 demonstrate, the clear potential for further cross border violence as well as the potential for a wider regional conflagration that embraces Damascus and Tehran remains as acute as ever. This book focuses on the historical background of the conflict, while also considering the role that other external actors, most notably Syria, Iran and the United Nations, play in influencing the conduct and outcomes of the Israeli-Lebanese conflict. In addition, it also looks at Hizbollah's increasing sway in Lebanese domestic politics, its increased military cooperation with Iran and Syria, and the implications of such developments. This book will be of much interest to students of Middle Eastern politics, War and Conflict Studies, International Security and International Relations in general. Clive Jones is Professor of Middle East Studies and International Politics in the School of Politics and International Studies (POLIS), University of Leeds, UK. His books include Soviet Jewish Aliyah 1989-92 (1996), Israel: Challenges to Democracy, Identity and the State (with

The notions that military violence engenders security and that military service is a selfless and necessary act are orthodoxies in political, military and scholarly debate. The UK Army Reserve’s recent expansion prompts reconsideration of this orthodoxy, particularly in relation to the suggestion that reservists serve selflessly. Drawing on fieldwork with British Army reservists and their spouses/partners, we examine how this orthodoxy allows reservists to engage in everyday embodied performances, and occasionally articulations, of the need to serve, in order to free themselves up from household responsibilities. This supposed necessity of military service necessitates heteropatriarchal divisions of labour, which facilitate participation in military service and the state’s ability to conduct war/war preparations. However, while reserve service is represented as sacrificial and necessary, it is far more self-serving and is better understood as ‘serious leisure’, an activity whose perceived importance engenders deep self-fulfilment. By showing that the performances of sacrifice and necessity reservists rely on are selfish, not selfless, we show how militarism is facilitated by such everyday desires. We conclude by reflecting on how exposing reserve service as serious leisure could contribute to problematizing the state’s ability to rely on everyday performances and articulations of militarism and heteropatriarchy to prepare for and wage war.

This article explores our experiences of conducting feminist interpretive research on the British Army Reserves. The project, which examined the everyday work-Army-life balance challenges that reservists face, and the roles of their partners/spouses in enabling them to fulfil their military commitments, is an example of a potential contribution to the so-called ‘knowledge economy’, where publicly funded research has come to be seen as ‘functional’ for political, military, economic, and social advancement. As feminist interpretive researchers examining an institution that prizes masculinist and functionalist methodologies, instrumentalised knowledge production, and highly formalised ethics approval processes, we faced multiple challenges to how we were able to conduct our research, who we were able to access, and what we were able to say. We show how military assumptions about what constitutes proper ‘research’, bolstered by knowledge economy logics, reinforces gendered power relationships that keep hidden the significant roles women (in our case, the partners/spouses of reservists) play in state security. Accordingly, we argue that the functionalist and masculinist logics interpretive researchers face in the age of the knowledge economy help more in sustaining orthodox modes of knowledge production about militaries and security, and in reinforcing gendered power relations, than they do in advancing knowledge.

This chapter examines Israel's counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency strategy and campaigns particularly vis-à-vis Palestinian groups on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It will also briefly look at the Israeli Defence Forces' (IDF) conduct in Lebanon during its occupation of the country between 1982 and 2000; thereafter it will focus on Israel's counterinsurgency campaigns during the two Intifadas (1987-91 and 2000-6), periods in which its counterinsurgency and population control measures were seriously put to the test.

This chapter analyses Israel's counter-insurgency (COIN) strategy vis-à-vis the terrorist and guerrilla threats originating in south Lebanon from the late 1970s to 2000. It initially gives a brief overview of Israel's traditional counter-terrorist/counter-insurgency strategy evolved first against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) - the period in which Palestinian terrorist and guerrilla activity began to become an important source of threat to Israel's northern border - before exploring in more detail its evolution against the Shi'a Hizbollah's insurgency campaign from the mid-1980s onwards. Whilst touching briefly upon other foreign actors - namely Syria and Iran - as well as the Lebanese ethno-religious cleavages - principally between the Christian and Muslim groups - that have defined Israeli-Lebanese relations, this chapter will focus on how Israel employed its military forces against the threats emanating from southern Lebanon. In doing so, this chapter provides a critical assessment as to the effectiveness of Israel's counter-terrorist and counter-guerrilla strategies in combating anti-Israel groups - most notably Hizbollah during almost three decades of conflict in Lebanon.

This study set out to analyse the causes, conduct and outcomes of Israel's protracted and asymmetric conflict with terrorist/insurgent groups that have operated out of south Lebanon since the late 1960s. \"Whilst the motivations and actions of various actors involved in this conflict arena were examined, particular attention was given to the two principal belligerents of this enduring low-intensity asymmetric conflict: Israel and Hizbollah.

Catignani discusses the organizational changes of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) due to large budgetary cutbacks. The IDF's security doctrine, which until now has focused on bringing the war to the enemy's territory by capturing it with the use of large conventional forces through maneuver warfare, will emphasize instead the use of precision weaponry together with the significant exploitation of the IDF's intelligence capabilities in order to reduce the sensor-to-shooter cycle.