Abstract
What are young Australians’ understandings of, and attitudes to, the military and military service? This article describes a pilot study of 320 young Australian university students’ attitudes to the military and military service during a time when Australia was engaged in the Afghanistan war. The main purpose of this study was to develop a survey instrument for further work in researching civil–military relations in Australia. Civil–military relations describe the complex set of relationships between the civil and military spheres. The role of the military, the relationship between the state and the military, the division of labor between civilian and military entities, foreign policy, and knowledge of military service are some of the fields that constitute a study of civil–military relations. This article reports on beliefs about, and attitudes to the specificities of military service and responses to the broader field of civil–military relations.
Highlights
Since the 1990s, Australia has progressively increased its engagement in overseas operations, from Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, through Cambodia, Rwanda, East Timor, and Iraq to the present day, to name but a few
Civil–military relations describe the complex set of relationships between the civil and military domains
Two people indicated that being an enlisted soldier allowed them to engage in practical activities and absolved them of responsibility in difficult situations where others’ lives were at risk. This pilot study has raised several key issues regarding the development of a useful survey instrument for understanding attitudes to the military and military service in Australia
Summary
Since the 1990s, Australia has progressively increased its engagement in overseas operations, from Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, through Cambodia, Rwanda, East Timor, and Iraq to the present day, to name but a few. This article reports on the study’s assessment of beliefs about, and attitudes to, the specificities of military service and their views of civil–military relations more broadly Questions around these matters provided the opportunity through open-ended survey questions to discuss attitudes to war, state violence, foreign policy, and beliefs about the role of the military in Australian society (attitudes to the military). Responses to the survey sought students’ knowledge about service, the roles of different services (e.g., Navy, Air Force, and Army), and other distinctions within the military such as Army Reserves or Australian Regular Army, or commissioned and non-commissioned officers (attitudes to military service) An examination of both attitudes to the military and military service together would allow a consideration of the relationship between military attitudes and military propensity.
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