Army Generals Research Articles

Land policy by other means: democracy and the military in contemporary urban Brazil

This paper explores the relationship between Armed Forces commands and the land market in Brazilian metropolises. Given the importance of the urban dimension, the research sheds light on agents usually invisibilized by the literature in an attempt to understand their role in land policy. The practices, meanings, and outcomes of these actions reflect themselves in the decision-making conditions that characterize the field of Brazilian democracy. By establishing a dialogue with the notion that war is the continuation of politics by other means, we present and analyze land policies as continued by war operators. As we analyze military management practices and commodification of public areas, we find the city’s production dynamics galvanized by Army generals. Beyond security, surveillance, and population control, the Armed Forces have carried out a complex set of strategies regarding the occupation of cities, fueling the debate on the nature of democracy underway in contemporary Brazil.

Land policy by other means: democracy and the military in contemporary urban Brazil

This paper explores the relationship between the Armed Forces and the land market in Brazilian metropolises. Highlighting the important of the urban dimensions of this relationship, this research sheds light on agents usually invisibilized by the literature in an attempt to understand their role in land policy. The practices, meanings, and outcomes of the Armed Forces’ involvement is reflectedin the decision-making conditions that characterize Brazilian democracy. By establishing a dialogue with a well-known aphorism from Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz, that war is the continuation of politics by other means, we present and analyze land policies as continued by war operators. As we analyze military management practices and the commodification of public spaces, we find the city’s production dynamics are galvanized by Army generals. Beyond security, surveillance, and population control, the Armed Forces have carried out a complex set of strategies regarding the occupation of cities, fueling debates around the nature of democracy underway in contemporary Brazil.

대한제국기 황궁수위병 복식 고증과 디자인 연구 -1897년 육군장졸복장제식(陸軍將卒服裝制式)을 기준으로-

This study was conducted to present a flat sketch by examining the costumes of the imperial guards during the Korean Empire. The subject period of the historical examination was 1897, and the ranks of reproduction were from the army officers to the officers and corporals below them. The standard regulation is the uniform system for army generals announced on May 15, 1897. By analyzing related rules, remnants of military uniforms, and photographs taken at the time, a flat sketch for each item was drawn. Also, images of wearing illustrations were presented. First, the officer

Nigerian Soldiers On The War Against Boko Haram

Abstract This study explores two main questions: What are the experiences of soldiers who have fought against Boko Haram? What can these experiences teach us about the seeming incapacity of the Nigerian military to defeat Boko Haram? Six major themes are explored. These are perspectives on the mission, morale of troops, military equipment and weapons, suicide and murder–suicide among troops, intelligence leaks, and relationships of troops with the Civilian Joint Task Force, an extralegal militia. Soldiers’ discourses on the mission against Boko Haram reveal three overlapping dimensions. First, there are suspicions about the sponsors and political godfathers of Boko Haram. This suggests a belief that Boko Haram is a conspiracy involving the government and top brass of the military. Second, the patronage system involved in deployment into key positions on the war front. Third, participants believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged because it is a moneymaking machinery for the political and military elites. The evidence suggests that availability of weapons varies by unit and the agency of commanders—their networks and influence within the military and willingness to disobey orders from superiors if their demands are not met. This situation produces radically variegated wartime experiences among troops. Non-commissioned soldiers believe senior commissioned officers perpetrate intelligence leaks and are responsible for the protracted war. Senior Army Generals interviewed in this study support this perspective. The study has major policy implications for successful operations against Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin area and the broader war against terrorism in the Sahel.

Mozambique – Army Generals Appointed

Africa Research Bulletin: Political, Social and Cultural SeriesVolume 58, Issue 1 p. 23033B-23033B Military Mozambique – Army Generals Appointed First published: 16 February 2021 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-825X.2021.09851.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume58, Issue1February 2021Pages 23033B-23033B RelatedInformation

Improving the Civil-Military Relationship: Diversity and the U.S. Army

Although the U.S. Army has significantly increased racial diversity in the aggregate, non-white Americans remain underrepresented as commissioned officers, especially in the General Officer ranks. This is a significant defense policy problem because research shows a strong correlation among the diversity of senior leaders and effectively processing complex information to generate innovative, creative, and efficient solutions. These positive traits of diversity will help General Officers prepare for and manage the long-term and strategic threats posed by peer or near-peer competitors and violent non-state actors. Increased diversity also improves the civil-military relationship by ensuring Army Generals mirror the nation they serve and the soldiers they lead. This paper addresses the lack of racial diversity among U.S. Army General Officers by using descriptive statistical analysis to outline racial diversity trends over the past 10-years and then identifying where and how policies can be most effective. The paper’s findings provide policy makers three options to increase U.S. Army General’s racial diversity.

Okoliczności śmierci Jaropołka Aleksandrowicza Siemionowa w świetle autobiograficznego wiersza „Słowo do poległych”

The primary goal of the article is to introduce to the Polish audience the figure of Yaropolk Aleksandrovich Semyonov (1906–1950), a Russian-Soviet poet, literary scholar and critic, also widely unknown to his native philologists. In 1948, as a result of Stalin’s repressions, he was sent to a prison camp. After two years he was executed by a firing squad and the family was not notified of the killing. The direct cause for the arrest was his 1942 poem A word to the fallen written during the Great Patriotic War in which the author uncovered the organizational and military weakness of the Red Army and spoke negatively about his superiors – both his direct army generals and more distant ones – from the Kremlin. The poem was regarded as counter-revolutionary propaganda and, despite Semyonov’s military merits and the fact that the poem had been written six years before, the author was sentenced to a five-year stay at a prison camp. A word for the fallen is a powerful testament of ruthlessness, cynicism and bureaucracy of the Soviet system which was firmly intolerant of the truth showing its degeneration and non-humanitarian approach, a system which allowed careers to progress at any cost, even in such radical circumstances as the Great Patriotic War.

Denial of the Rohingya Genocide: Problematising Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the Rule of Law in Postcolonial Myanmar

As the world condemns the genocide, Myanmar and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s government denied it and refused to accept it and argued that it sanctioned under the rule of law. This paper problematises these questions:, What is the rule of law in Myanmar? And why do they deny it? This study is qualitative in which pages of transcripts of speeches perused to find themes, settings, and meanings attributed to problematising Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the rule of law in post-colonial Myanmar. These speeches delivered in public from 2016-2018. In analysing her speeches, the paper uses Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. On the part of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, it found that problematising her actions and silence over the Rohingya genocide influenced her late father’s role. She continued to claim that her military father is the father of the Burmese military. She had special relations in incarceration with the army generals during her house arrest. She focused on the democratic transition which she promised in the 2015 election. This study reveals that this rule of law has purely political narratives because the generals are not accountable. This paper subsumes ongoing legal reforms in Myanmar.

Indonesia’s Indo-Pacific Vision: Staying the Course in a Covid-19 World

executive summary: This essay examines the evolution of Indonesia’s Indo-Pacific thinking, major developments since the election of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) in 2014, and the future of the country’s regional leadership amid new 21st-century challenges, particularly Covid-19. main argumentIndonesia’s outlook as a maritime state has matured over the past decade. Under the Jokowi government, important shifts have occurred in the country’s thinking about the Indo-Pacific with implications for maritime policy. In particular, Jokowi has shown a greater focus during his second term on establishing a material legacy—including by upgrading infrastructure, developing human resources, boosting lagging economic growth, and relocating the capital—rather than a visionary one. While Indonesia’s relentless pursuit of multilateralism is necessary to promote regional cooperation and balance strategic rivalry, much of the administration’s attention has been diverted to addressing the economic fallout and public health pressures of the Covid-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, Indonesia’s concerted effort to be an active regional player, given its size and historical nonalignment, remains critical. policy implications• The current Covid-19 crisis and heightened strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific in recent years mean that Indonesia will continue to strenuously pursue multilateralism to balance the influence of both the U.S. and China and to maximize stability and scientific cooperation. • Slowing economic growth and increased strain on the country’s health system due to the pandemic will limit some of Jokowi’s goals for his second term. Yet, given the country’s centrality to the Indo-Pacific construct and the importance of maritime security for the archipelago, the administration cannot afford to divert its focus from the Indo-Pacific. • Indonesia’s failure to develop a coherent response to Indo-Pacific maritime security issues can be traced back to the militarization of its foreign policy. This trend is unlikely to change during the president’s second term, given the prominence of former army generals as advisers in the cabinet.

Power, Gender, and Individual Differences in Spatial Metaphor: The Role of Perceptual Stereotypes and Language Statistics

ABSTRACT English speakers use vertical language to talk about power, such as when speaking of people being “at the bottom of the social hierarchy” or “rising to the top.” Experimental research has shown that people automatically associate higher spatial positions with more powerful social groups, such as doctors and army generals, compared to lower spatial positions, which are associated with relatively less powerful groups, such as nurses and soldiers. However, power as a social dimension is also associated with gender. Here, by means of a reaction-time study and a corpus study, we show that professions that display greater gender asymmetries, such as doctor/nurse, exhibit stronger vertical associations. Moreover, we show that people’s perception of vertical metaphors for power depends on their own gender, with male participants having stronger vertical biases than female participants, which we propose is due to the fact that men are more prone to thinking about power in bodily terms, and to associate it with physical dominance. Our results provide clear evidence for individual differences in metaphor comprehension, thus demonstrating empirically that the same metaphor is understood differently by different people.

Global MH: Clinical and Research Implications in India, Africa, and the Diaspora

Global MH: Clinical and Research Implications in India, Africa, and the Diaspora

“Down to the Very Roots”: The Indonesian Army’s Role in the Mass Killings of 1965–66

ABSTRACTThis article makes the case that the anticommunist violence of 1965–66 in Indonesia was neither inevitable nor spontaneous, but was encouraged, facilitated, directed and shaped by the Indonesian army leadership. It develops that argument in three parts. It shows first how the temporal and geographical variations in the pattern of mass killing corresponded closely to the varied political postures and capacities of army commanders in different locales, and how the mass violence everywhere depended on the army’s substantial logistical assets. Next, it outlines how the army encouraged and directed mass killings by mobilizing militia groups and death squads, and encouraging them to detain and kill members of the PKI (Partai Komunis Indonesia—Indonesian Communist Party) and its allies. Third, it describes how the army provoked and legitimized mass violence by launching a sophisticated media and propaganda campaign that blamed the PKI for the kidnap and murder of six army generals on 1 October 1965, and called for the party and its affiliates to be physically annihilated. The army had allies in this effort, none more enthusiastic than the anticommunist religious and political leaders who fanned the flames of hatred and violence by allusions to long-standing religious and cultural differences. Mass violence was also fuelled by the wider international context of the Cold War and by the acts and omissions of key foreign powers. But without the army’s orchestrated campaign to cast the PKI as evil, without the conscious decision to effect its physical annihilation, and without the mobilization of the army’s considerable organizational and logistical capacity to carry out that decision, it is unlikely that any of those long-standing tensions or external forces would ever have given rise to violence of such staggering breadth and brutality.

Politics, Privileges, and Loyalty in the Zimbabwe National Army

Abstract:In postcolonial Africa, the military has become an actor in politics, often in ways that can be described as unprofessional. This paper focuses on the manner in which the Zimbabwean National Army (ZNA) has become heavily politicized since independence, directly supporting the regime of President Robert Mugabe while denigrating the opposition political party. The military metamorphosed, to all intents, into an extension of President Mugabe’s political party, the ZANU-PF. I argue that even though the military is expected to subordinate itself to a civilian government, the ZNA is highly unprofessional, in- and outside the army barracks. The ways in which politics came to be mediated by army generals, as “war veterans” serving in the military, directly influenced not only how soldiers who joined the army in postindependence Zimbabwe were promoted and demoted, but how they lived their lives as soldiers in the army barracks. This article is based on fifty-eight life histories of army deserters living in exile in South Africa.

Peopling Thailand's 2015 Draft Constitution

We hope that this constitution will bring about a paradigm shift. (1) Following 22 May 2014 military coup in Thailand, a committee was appointed to draft a new constitution. article reviews competing understandings of Thai that emerged during drafting of new constitution, and attempts to explain why draft constitution was rejected by another military-appointed body in September 2015. It argues that during drafting process, liberal royalists sought to reclaim as in order to create a more moral nation in which elected politicians would be subordinated to popular will. However, this conception was not shared by ruling junta, and in end, military deliberately sabotaged new constitution that they themselves had commissioned. The episode offers telling insights into internal dynamics of Thailand's troubled politics and society. Thailand's abortive 2015 draft constitution was crafted by two closely linked elites: retired and serving army generals who formed core of National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), and civilian legal experts who comprised thirty-six-member Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC). Both of these elites invoked notions of populace in support of their visions for country's future. However, close scrutiny reveals that military notions of prachachon (the people) differed significantly from CDC's idea of phonlamueang (citizens). And neither army nor legal specialists invoked generally understood meanings of contained in ground-breaking 1997 People's Constitution. Prachachon was a term used by army for a depoliticized population, operating under military tutelage. Phonlamueang was a term favoured by royal legalists, connoting active citizens who were dedicated to monitoring abuses by elected politicians, animated by deep-rooted loyalty to nation and monarchy. By contrast, 1997 Constitution was characterized by extensive consultation and popular participation which gave the people a strong sense of ownership. No such participation was envisaged either by military or by CDC in 2015. Nevertheless, there were real tensions between political imaginaries of NCPO and CDC, tensions which contributed to eventual failure of drafting process. Thai Constitutionalism The idea that a new constitution might reset Thailand's politics is far from new: variations on this theme were articulated in 1932, 1974, 1997 and 2007. As this author has argued elsewhere, Thailand is at opposite end of spectrum from monumental, sacralized constitutions of countries such as Japan and United States: short documents that are rarely, if ever, amended. (2) Thailand has an iterative constitution, one that is constantly being changed to reflect political vicissitudes. In a talk given at Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand (FCCT) on 8 April 2015, two leading drafters of proposed new constitution, Borwornsak Uwanno and Navin Damrigan, noted that Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Haiti and Ecuador have all had more constitutions than Thailand's nineteen. They quickly added: This is not something to be proud of. But there are reasons behind that. (3) Why, then, does Thailand find itself in such unlikely company? Constitutionalism is a political disease that has long afflicted Thailand. The disease has two main symptoms: legalism and moralism. Most studies of Thai constitutions and constitution-drafting have focused on ways in which successive drafters have sought to deploy legal engineering to shape politics and society--a rules of game approach. Yet this emphasis on legalism can sometimes occlude moral dimensions of Thai public life, in which quasi-Buddhist rhetoric about advancing virtue and opposing evil is all-pervasive. The 2015 draft constitution, issued on 17 April 2015, was first Thai charter in which legal language was overtly overlaid with a discourse of moralism. …

No Reconciliation without Truth: An Interview with Tan Swie Ling on the 1965 Mass Killings in Indonesia

In the early morning of October 1, 1965, self-proclaimed left-wing troops raided the houses of seven top army generals in Jakarta. In the process, six of the generals were killed—three were shot during the kidnapping attempt, while the others were taken to Lubang Buaya, an air force base located in the south of Jakarta, and then killed. The seventh general, Nasution, managed to escape. The perpetrators announced on national radio that they were troops loyal to President Sukarno, and they aimed to protect the president from the danger posed by the right-wing "Council of Generals"—who, they said, were planning to launch a military coup d'état.… This movement was very short-lived. Within one day, it collapsed. Major General Suharto…took control of the army during the morning of October 1 and quickly crushed the movement.… [W]hat happened on October 1, 1965 marked the fall of Sukarno and the rise of Suharto, who was soon to rule Indonesia under his military dictatorship for more than three decades. The brutality of Suharto's New Order is probably not news for people familiar with Indonesia. But there is "an episode the West would prefer to forget," as journalist John Pilger put it, that accompanied Suharto's rise to power: the destruction of Communism and the mass killings that followed—a phenomenon claimed by <em>Time </em>magazine in 1966 as "The West's best news for years in Asia."<p class="mrlink"><p class="mrpurchaselink"><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/index/volume-67-number-7" title="Vol. 67, No. 7: December 2015" target="_self">Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the <em>Monthly Review</em> website.</a></p>

Legitimacy, Scope, and Conflicting Claims on the ICTY: In the Aftermath of Gotovina, Haradinaj and Perišić

Within the span of three months in 2012/2013, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) handed down three major acquittal verdicts: two Croatian Army generals, three members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, and a high ranking Serbian army general. This article analyzes the political fallout from the acquittals to make three principal arguments. First, in the absence of broader transitional justice framework in the former Yugoslavia, the ICTY has become the principal instrument of both retributive and restorative justice, which places undue burdens on an institution with a narrow and technical mandate. Second, the ICTY has brought this unrealistic expectation on itself by legitimizing its work to hostile domestic publics as a path to reconciliation and creation of a historical transcript—promises that a court is not equipped to either make or keep. Third, the human rights community in the region has relied on the ICTY to be its “force multiplier” in building transitional justice efforts. This has further conflated the role of the international court with homegrown transitional justice campaigns and has made the political challenges for local efforts much more daunting.

The Initial Purging Policies after the 1965 Incident at Lubang Buaya

After the Lubang Buaya incident on 1 October 1965 in which six top Indonesian Army generals and a lieutenant were killed, the Army began to implement a nationwide purging campaign with the assistance of civilian anti-communist groups. Thousands of PKI members, supporters and pro-Sukarno groups/individuals immediately became the target of this purge. For organisational purposes, several purging policies were released and then strictly enforced. The official purging policies that are highlighted in this paper are a series of initial directives that were released within days of the generals’ executions. They do not explicitly translate into orders to kill, but are more of a guideline to help anti-communist officials classify and contain communists and other PKI followers. This article attempts to show how these initial directives evolved and also discusses competing purge policies from non-military sources. The co-existence and overlapping nature of the various directives indicate that a power struggle existed between the anti-communist group led by General Soeharto and the presidium of the Dwikora Cabinet who were loyal to President Soekarno.

Red Army Generals Repressed during the Soviet-German War, 1941–1945, Part 2: The Western and Northwestern Axes, July–September 1941

One of the most sordid and obscure aspects of the Soviet-German War, 1941–1945, involved the repression of Red Army senior officers, who, in Stalin's eyes, failed to fulfill their duties to the Motherland. This article, the second part in a multi-part series, exploits hitherto secret archival documents to ‘raise the veil of secrecy’ from this tragic aspect of the war, which took its greatest toll of senior Red Army military leaders during the disastrous Barbarossa campaign in the summer and fall of 1941.

Repressed Soviet Generals: Part 1

This article constitutes the first part of a study, prepared on the basis of archival materials, concerning the fate of Red Army general officers who were illegally repressed by Stalin and Soviet legal authorities during the Soviet-German War, 1941–1945. The author, than a graduate student at Moscow State University, was given unprecedented access to the records of the Soviet Army's Main Cadre Directorate by the Gorbachev government in order to research hitherto forbidden topics regarding general officers in the Red Army who died, were captured or repressed, or otherwise perished during the war. This study follows two studies already written and published by the same author concerning Red Army generals who perished or were captured in the war.

Turkish Politics and Policies under the Impact of the 1980’s PKK Revolt and the Gulf War of the Early 1990s

This article examines Turkish politics and policies during the 1980s and 1990s in light of occurrences in Turkey and neighboring states, with particular attention to the impact of the 1980’s PKK revolt and the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1990. In doing so, it outlines the political debates among the major political parties and the perspectives of the Turkish army generals on the important political issues of the period. These events, and those of the subsequent decade, have led to the emergence of a new status quo in Turkey that has had major political and economic repercussions.