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Contemporary world history has highlighted militarization in many ways, from the global Cold War and numerous regional conflicts to the general assumption that nationhood implies a significant and growing military. Yet the twentieth century also offers notable examples of large-scale demilitarization, both imposed and voluntary. Demilitarization in the Contemporary World fills a key gap in current historical understanding by examining demilitarization programs in Germany, Japan, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica. Contributors investigate factors such as military defeat, border security risks, economic pressures, and the development of strong peace cultures among citizenry. Exemplifying the political difficulties of demilitarization in both its failures and successes, Demilitarization in the Contemporary World provides a possible roadmap for future policies and practices.

Why do armed groups recruit large numbers of children as fighters, often coercively? The international community has tried to curb these crimes by shaming and punishing leaders who commit them—in short, making the crimes costlier. Are these policies effective and sufficient? The answer lies in more attention to the strategic interaction between rebel leaders and recruits. We adapt theories of industrial organization to rebellious groups and show how, being less able fighters, children are attractive recruits if and only if they are easier to intimidate, indoctrinate, and misinform than adults. This ease of manipulation interacts with the costliness of war crimes to influence rebel leaders' incentives to coerce children into war. We use a case study and a novel survey of former child recruits in Uganda to illustrate this argument and provide hard evidence not only that children are more easily manipulated in war, but also how—something often asserted but never demonstrated. Our theory, as well as a new “cross-rebel” data set, also support the idea that costliness matters: foreign governments, international organizations, diasporas, and local populations can discourage child recruitment by withholding resources or punishing offenders (or, conversely, encourage these crimes by failing to act). But punishing war crimes has limitations, and can only take us so far. Children's reintegration opportunities must be at least as great as adults' (something that demobilization programs sometimes fail to do). Also, indoctrination and misinformation can be directly influenced. We observe grassroots innovations in Uganda that could be models for the prevention and curbing of child soldiering and counterinsurgency generally.

\"This edited volume deals with the reintegration and trajectories of intrastate or interstate war veterans. It raises the question of the effects of the war experience on ex-combatants with regards, in particular, to the perpetuation of a certain level of violence as well as the maintaining of structures, networks, and war methods after the war. The book considers various modalities of reintegration and analyzes how they are linked to resources, statuses, and sociabilities that were all built during the war. The various chapters of the book also analyze the role of policies that were made for war veterans, the way society welcomed them back, and the social and economic context. \"-- Provided by publisher.

This book compares post-civil war societies to look at the presence or absence of organized violence, analysing why some ex-combatants return to organised violence and others do not. Even though former fighters have been identified as a major source of insecurity, there have been few efforts to systematically examine why some ex-combatants re-engage in organized violence, while others do not. This book compares the presence or absence of organized violence in different ex-combatant communities - former fighters that used to belong to the same armed faction and who share a common, horizontal identity based on shared war-and peacetime experiences - in the Republic of Congo (ex-Cobras, Cocoyes and Ninjas) and Sierra Leone (ex-Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, Civil Defense Force and Revolutionary United Front). The main determinants of ex-combatant violence are whether former fighters have access to elites and to second-tier individuals - such as former mid-level commanders - who can act as intermediaries between the two. By utilizing relationships based on selective incentives and social networks, these two kinds of remobilizers are able to generate the needed enticements and feelings of affinity, trust or fear to convince ex-combatants to resort to arms. These findings demonstrate that the outbreak of ex-combatant violence can only be understood by more clearly incorporating an actor perspective, focusing on three levels of analysis: the elite, midlevel and grass-root. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, civil wars, post-conflict reconstruction, war and conflict studies, security studies and IR.

While traditionally, Americans view expensive military structure as a poor investment and a threat to liberty, they also require a guarantee of that very freedom, necessitating the employment of armed forces. Beginning with the seventeenth-century wars of the English colonies, Americans typically increased their military capabilities at the beginning of conflicts only to decrease them at the apparent conclusion of hostilities. InDrawdown: The American Way of Postwar, a stellar team of military historians argue that the United States sometimes managed effective drawdowns, sowing the seeds of future victory that Americans eventually reaped. Yet at other times, the drawing down of military capabilities undermined our readiness and flexibility, leading to more costly wars and perhaps defeat. The political choice to reduce military capabilities is influenced by Anglo-American pecuniary decisions and traditional fears of government oppression, and it has been haphazard at best throughout American history. These two factors form the basic American \"liberty dilemma,\" the vexed relationship between the nation and its military apparatuses from the founding of the first colonies through to present times.With the termination of large-scale operations in Iraq and the winnowing of forces in Afghanistan, the United States military once again faces a significant drawdown in standing force structure and capabilities. The political and military debate currently raging around how best to affect this force reduction continues to lack a proper historical perspective. This volume aspires to inform this dialogue. Not a traditional military history,Drawdownanalyzes cultural attitudes, political decisions, and institutions surrounding the maintenance of armed forces.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the characteristics of the Latin American participation in the United Nations Mission in Colombia (UNMC), looking into the contributions of regional actors to the peace process in the immediate post-conflict. Testimonies from Latin American actors involved in the demobilization, disarmament and reintegration process help identify their perceptions of strengths and shortcomings of the mission. This paper analyses both the enduring relevance of their individual/institutional trajectories and the adaptations needed to implement the Peace Agreement in the Colombian context. Design/methodology/approach This is an exploratory case study. Primary data collection relied on in-depth, semi-structured interviews, allowing the authors to tap into how the trajectories of those involved help explain continuities and innovations of the UNMC regarding previous UN missions. Findings This paper argues that cultural factors are central to understand how Latin Americans participated in the UNMC. The design of the Monitoring and Verification Mechanism and the inclusion of a strong gender agenda make the UNMC a salient case, both for scholars studying Latin American presence in peace processes and for those looking into peace building, more generally. Originality/value The fieldwork, conducted with military/security forces, UN officials and civilians, has made available a diverse spectrum of testimonies that provide crucial insights into “lessons learned”, contributing to tracing the trajectories of these actors and providing insights for the improvement of future political and peacebuilding multilateral missions.

Based on 10 months of fieldwork in the Acholi region of northern Uganda among youth and adults who were forcefully recruited into the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) during the war, this article provides qualitative details to research on ‘appetitive aggression.’ Through two case-stories the article unfolds first person articulations of how ‘appetitive aggression’ is experienced as ‘the urge to kill’ and how it relates to the emic Acholi spiritual concept of ‘cen’; a local Luo expression used to describe places and human beings possessed by evil spirits. The analysis illuminates what the individual and social implications of ‘the urge to kill’ and ‘cen’ entail for two Acholi men; first in a militia and then in a civil post-war context. The analysis then relates these findings to soldier experiences across cultures and time periods. While our analysis supports the findings in ‘appetitive aggression’ studies that appetitive aggression serves as a resilient protective factor against developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), this study documents that once the former forcefully recruited return to civilian life, ‘appetitive aggression’ and ‘the urge to kill’ precipitate individual and at times lethal social and moral complications in a fragile post-war community. Thus, the article argues that appetitive aggression and the emic perceptions and experiences of it among the local population are essential to consider in studies, processes and programs targeting demobilization, rehabilitation, reconciliation and re-integration.

Objetivo/contexto:el artículo propone analizar el reclutamiento de niños, niñas y adolescentes como una forma de trata de personas. Más allá de las aproximaciones teóricas que enfatizan las dimensiones de seguridad o derechos, este estudio aborda el tema como una forma de trabajo no libre. Mediante un estudio de caso, centrado en las prácticas de reclutamiento por parte del paramilitarismo en Colombia, el artículo se enfoca en la entrada de los niños, niñas y adolescentes al grupo armado, la salida, las funciones que cumplieron y las formas de explotación a las que fueron sometidos. Esta investigación sostiene que el reclutamiento en Colombia opera como un mercado laboral a gran escala en un orden social de guerra, donde los “empleadores” son grupos paramilitares y la fuerza de trabajo está conformada, en parte, por niños, niñas y adolescentes. Metodología:el estudio de caso se basa en diferentes fuentes de información: la base de datos de reclutamiento ilícito facilitada por la unidad especial de Justicia y Paz de la Fiscalía General de Colombia (989 casos de niños y niñas reclutados entre 1981 y 2005), sentencias de Justicia y Paz, audiencias de las víctimas en el proceso judicial y entrevistas semiestructuradas a diferentes actores. Conclusiones:el artículo muestra que el reclutamiento, como forma de trata, es funcional al orden social de la guerra en contextos de pobreza y desigualdad. Existe una oferta y una demanda; así, los niños y niñas que “trabajaron” como soldados no sólo son víctimas sino también agentes que tomaron decisiones en contextos difíciles. Por tanto, si las condiciones socioeconómicas de estos niños y niñas, incluso tras su desvinculación, siguen ofreciendo una decisión entre “lo malo y lo peor”, su incorporación a un grupo violento (ya no “armado” sino “criminal”) seguirá una opción viable. Originalidad:el artículo contribuye a la literatura académica sobre un tema actual, como el solapamiento entre tráfico humano y reclutamiento infantil en situaciones de conflicto armado y postconflicto. También contribuye a la literatura sobre “trabajo no libre” al enfocarse en un actor (grupos armados ilegales) que no han sido analizados hasta ahora. Finalmente, el artículo demuestra los límites de entender el tráfico humano (y el reclutamiento de niños como una de sus expresiones) como un problema de seguridad o titularidad de derechos. Subraya las ventajas analíticas y políticas de categorías como “trabajo no libre” para buscar soluciones efectivas en materia de prevención y reintegración de niños soldados.