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"MILITARY RELATIONS"
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States, Citizens and the Privatisation of Security
Recent years have seen a growing role for private military contractors in national and international security. To understand the reasons for this, Elke Krahmann examines changing models of the state, the citizen and the soldier in the UK, the US and Germany. She focuses on both the national differences with regard to the outsourcing of military services to private companies and their specific consequences for the democratic control over the legitimate use of armed force. Tracing developments and debates from the late eighteenth century to the present, she explains the transition from the centralized warfare state of the Cold War era to the privatized and fragmented security governance, and the different national attitudes to the privatization of force.
eBook
The Road to War: Presidential Commitments Honored and Betrayed
Not since Pearl Harbor has an American president gone to Congress to request a declaration of war. Nevertheless, since then, one president after another, from Truman to Obama, has ordered American troops into wars all over the world. From Korea to Vietnam, Panama to Grenada, Lebanon to Bosnia, Afghanistan to Iraq-why have presidents sidestepped declarations of war? Marvin Kalb, former chief diplomatic correspondent for CBS and NBC News, explores this key question in his thirteenth book about the presidency and U.S. foreign policy.
Instead of a declaration of war, presidents have justified their war-making powers by citing \"commitments,\" private and public, made by former presidents. Many of these commitments have been honored, but some betrayed. Surprisingly, given the tight U.S.-Israeli relationship, Israeli leaders feel that at times they have been betrayed by American presidents. Is it time for a negotiated defense treaty between the United States and Israel as a way of substituting for a string of secret presidential commitments?
From Israel to Vietnam, presidential commitments have proven to be tricky and dangerous. For example, one president after another committed the United States to the defense of South Vietnam, often without explanation. Over the years, these commitments mushroomed into national policy, leading to a war costing 58,000 American lives. Few in Congress or the media chose to question the war's provenance or legitimacy, until it was too late. No president saw the need for a declaration of war, considering one to be old-fashioned.
The word of a president can morph into a national commitment. It can become the functional equivalent of a declaration of war. Therefore, whenever a president \"commits\"the United States to a policy or course of action with, or increasingly without, congressional approval, watch out-the White House may be setting the nation on a road toward war.
eBook
Fighting for Rights
Leaders around the globe have long turned to the armed forces as
a \"school for the nation.\" Debates over who serves continue to
arouse passion today because the military's participation policies
are seen as shaping politics beyond the military, specifically the
politics of identity and citizenship. Yet how and when do these
policies transform patterns of citizenship? Military service,
Ronald R. Krebs argues, can play a critical role in bolstering
minorities' efforts to grasp full and unfettered rights. Minority
groups have at times effectively contrasted their people's
battlefield sacrifices to the reality of inequity, compelling state
leaders to concede to their claims. At the same time, military
service can shape when, for what, and how minorities have engaged
in political activism in the quest for meaningful citizenship.
Employing a range of rich primary materials, Krebs shows how the
military's participation policies shaped Arab citizens' struggles
for first-class citizenship in Israel from independence to the
mid-1980s and African Americans' quest for civil rights, from World
War I to the Korean War. Fighting for Rights helps us make sense of
contemporary debates over gays in the military and over the virtues
and dangers of liberal and communitarian visions for society. It
suggests that rhetoric is more than just a weapon of the weak, that
it is essential to political exchange, and that politics rests on a
dual foundation of rationality and culture.
Leaders around the globe have long turned to the armed forces as
a \"school for the nation.\" Debates over who serves continue to
arouse passion today because the military's participation policies
are seen as shaping politics beyond the military, specifically the
politics of identity and citizenship. Yet how and when do these
policies transform patterns of citizenship? Military service,
Ronald R. Krebs argues, can play a critical role in bolstering
minorities' efforts to grasp full and unfettered rights. Minority
groups have at times effectively contrasted their people's
battlefield sacrifices to the reality of inequity, compelling state
leaders to concede to their claims. At the same time, military
service can shape when, for what, and how minorities have engaged
in political activism in the quest for meaningful citizenship.
Employing a range of rich primary materials, Krebs shows how the
military's participation policies shaped Arab citizens' struggles
for first-class citizenship in Israel from independence to the
mid-1980s and African Americans' quest for civil rights, from World
War I to the Korean War. Fighting for Rights helps us make
sense of contemporary debates over gays in the military and over
the virtues and dangers of liberal and communitarian visions for
society. It suggests that rhetoric is more than just a weapon of
the weak, that it is essential to political exchange, and that
politics rests on a dual foundation of rationality and culture.
eBook
Japan : the toothless tiger
Declan Hayes explores the threats Japan faces in the coming decades, particularly if the United States downscales its military presence in the region. Since Japan's defeat and occupation at the end of World War II, the Land of the Rising Sun has developed only limited military capability. Constrained by a new constitution dictated after the war by the occupying forces, Japan has not been able to rebuild its former military might. Japan has become a toothless tiger-seemingly fierce, but actually powerless.
Book
Choosing Your Battles
America's debate over whether and how to invade Iraq clustered into civilian versus military camps. Top military officials appeared reluctant to use force, the most hawkish voices in government were civilians who had not served in uniform, and everyone was worried that the American public would not tolerate casualties in war. This book shows that this civilian-military argument--which has characterized earlier debates over Bosnia, Somalia, and Kosovo--is typical, not exceptional. Indeed, the underlying pattern has shaped U.S. foreign policy at least since 1816. The new afterword by Peter Feaver and Christopher Gelpi traces these themes through the first two years of the current Iraq war, showing how civil-military debates and concerns about sensitivity to casualties continue to shape American foreign policy in profound ways.
eBook
North Korean military proliferation in the Middle East and Africa : enabling violence and instability
North Korea has posed a threat to stability in Northeast Asia for decades. Since Kim Jong-un assumed power, this threat has both increased and broadened. Since 2011, the small, isolated nation has detonated nuclear weapons multiple times, tested a wide variety of ballistic missiles, expanded naval and ground systems that threaten South Korea, and routinely employs hostile rhetoric. Another threat it poses has been less recognized: North Korea presents a potentially greater risk to American interests by exporting its weapons systems to other volatile regions worldwide.In North Korean Military Proliferation in the Middle East and Africa, Bruce E. Bechtol Jr. analyzes relevant North Korean military capabilities, what arms the nation provides, and to whom, how it skirts its sanctions, and how North Korea's activities can best be contained. He traces illicit networks that lead to state and nonstate actors in the Middle East, including Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, and throughout Africa, including at least a dozen nations. The potential proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons technology and the vehicles that carry it, including ballistic missiles and artillery, represent a broader threat than the leadership in Pyongyang. Including training and infrastructure support, North Korea's profits may range into the billions of dollars, all concealed in illicit networks and front companies so complex that the nation struggles to track and control them. Bechtol not only presents an accurate picture of the current North Korean threat -- he also outlines methodologies that Washington and the international community must embrace in order to contain it.
Book
Civil-military relations and shared responsibility : a four-nation study
A provocative approach to evaluating civil-military relations. Dale R. Herspring considers the factors that allow some civilian and military organizations to operate more productively in a political context than others, bringing into comparative study for the first time the military organizations of the U.S., Russia, Germany, and Canada. Refuting the work of scholars such as Samuel P. Huntington and Michael C. Desch, Civil-Military Relations and Shared Responsibility approaches civil-military relations from a new angle, military culture, arguing that the optimal form of civil-military relations is one of shared responsibility between the two groups. Herspring outlines eight factors that contribute to conditions that promote and support shared responsibility among civilian officials and the military, including such prerequisites as civilian leaders not interfering in the military's promotion process and civilian respect for military symbols and traditions. He uses these indicators in his comparative treatment of the U.S., Russian, German, and Canadian militaries. Civilian authorities are always in charge and the decision on how to treat the military is a civilian decision. However, Herspring argues, failure by civilians to respect military culture will antagonize senior military officials, who will feel less free to express their views, thus depriving senior civilian officials, most of whom have no military experience, of the expert advice of those most capable of assessing the far-reaching forms of violence. This issue of civilian respect for military culture and operations plays out in Herspring's country case studies. Scholars of civil-military relations will find much to debate in Herspring's framework, while students of civil-military and defense policy will appreciate Herspring's brief historical tour of each countries' post–World War II political and policy landscapes.
eBook