Civilian Leaders Research Articles

Toward Stable Civil‐Military Relations in Sudan

AbstractThe most dramatic of military interventions is the coup d’état, and the cyclical melodrama of putsches in Sudan has placed the country on a violent path. Perhaps a major reason for an irascible officer corps to plot coups is the lack of an effective contract binding the armed forces and society. This is keeping a chokehold on the country's progress, limiting its potential. In search of a better answer, revisiting the past cycle of military interventions is critically important. The recurrent mass actions and fleeting democratic transitions have exposed the bungling civilian leadership and defined the sociology in which Sudan's civil‐military alchemy has fermented or gone bust. However, if the country had any concord among the military, the political leadership, and society, the risk of domestic military interventions would have been reduced, limiting the scourge of the power grab.

The political deduction and building political security In Sudan post of 2019


 
 
 
 The political deduction in political security issues has become one of the topics that related with the attention of researchers and specialists. On the philosophical level, the deduction based on a certain reason to be as the basis for proving a specific issue that cannot be tackled by the existence of contradictions between two extremes - paradigm (Security and Instability). So that, the future of political security in Sudan is still instability, although the international community's ability to impose their Comprehensive Peace Agreement since February 2005, and according to the requirements of what included in the clauses of the agreement to complete the procurement of democratic transition period, as for the Sudanese opposition forces and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement which are represented the real partners of power. So, the ability of the National Congress Party at that time could have power to consolidate its inclusiveness as a dominant political party.
 From the another hand, the possibilities to infer the dimensions of political security in Sudan are ready to restore the army’s control over the political life, but with the need to maintain the settlement of critical political issues according to a new criteria that take into account the demands of civil forces; However, the civilian leadership was still inactive by as a result of internal divisions and rivalries within, so that the local, regional and international pressures remain to be the only source of strength to achieve a kind of consensus and satisfaction to overcome the critical period and accomplish what can be achieved for the benefit of the political security for Sudan, at the present and future alike. Finally, the absence of mechanisms for managing the divergent interests between civil and military leaders may lead to an unstable civil-military alliance, and they concern about losing of the whole absolute privileges and powers that they enjoyed during the past three decades for the rule of former President Omar al-Bashir, leaving the civilian leadership in 2019 to be as a drastically situation in its inability to form a united front that pushed towards neutralizing the military’s authority or resorting to confront a new period as a returning of violence as what happened in the past. As for the multiplicity of factors affecting on the political security crisis in Sudan, it meant that there is no real solution to subsequent crises in the future, so that the possibility of shifting towards civilian rule remains the only way to manage differences. And the differences between civilians and military alike might erupted at any reason or incentive.
 
 
 

Fearing Hardships and Fatigue? Refusals to Serve in China’s Military, 2009-2018

ABSTRACT Even as many argue that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has become increasingly professionalized, reports of PLA deserters are common. This article investigates such refusals to serve between 2009 and 2018, using an original dataset of 236 publicly reported cases. It demonstrates that mainland reports about desertion are restricted, portraying the behavior as occurring among soldiers who are young, unable to endure hardship, and subject to severe and varied punishments. Analysis of this data shows that refusals to serve are more common in China’s military than public reports indicate, and that China’s leaders are concerned about the phenomenon, though they offer no indication the PLA as a whole would disobey civilian leadership. These findings shed light on China’s civil-military relations, central-local relations, and foreign policy.

Education-Community Initiative: Motivations for Implementing a Civil Leadership Program at an Elementary School

The National Institute of Civil Discourse and the Prison Policy Initiative have reported a number of uncivil interactions in the United States, some resulting in over 36,000 youth detained in the juvenile justice system as of 2022, with 15,800 offenses stemming from person-to-person interactions (Boatright, 2022; Prison Policy Initiative, 2022). Lack of civility, especially among children without skills to resolve conflict in socially appropriate ways, presents serious challenges in communities and to K–12 educators who are responsible for addressing issues that arise in schools. The current study examines through a cultural lens community and school leaders’ motivations in implementing a civil leadership program at the elementary school level and the effect of the intervention in ameliorating uncivil student interactions.

You and Whose Army? How Civilian Leaders Leverage the Military’s Prestige to Shape Public Opinion

How does the military’s popularity influence leaders’ domestic leeway in foreign policy? We argue that leaders have strategic incentives to publicly leverage military prestige because doing so builds support and deflects blame for decisions regarding military force. Rather than shifting power toward the military, these references primarily empower leaders. At the individual level, a survey experiment varies the identity of presidential advisors and the outcomes of a foreign policy decision. References to military advisors increase approval for both action and inaction and insulate leaders from the costs of failure. At the elite level, we analyze presidential speeches to show that leaders reference military elites more when discussing negative issues in foreign policy and less when discussing positive issues. A detailed analysis of speeches surrounding the 2007 Iraq troop surge further supports our expectations. Leaders act upon incentives to politicize the military to loosen domestic constraints on foreign policy.

War in the Mountains: Peasant Society and Counterinsurgency in Algeria, 1918–1958

In this deeply researched and ambitious book, Neil MacMaster examines the neglected history of peasant resistance to French colonialism in Algeria's Chelif Valley. War in the Mountains upends the scholarly consensus that has attributed a politically inert and reactive character to the Algerian peasantry, illuminating their central role in the struggle for independence. MacMaster dismantles the consensus view across four sections and twenty chapters, giving readers an unprecedented look at the kinship units, political organizations, and shared histories that together shaped peasant resistance in the valley. Here, there was no need for urban revolutionaries to “awaken” the ignorant peasantry; peasant communities in the surrounding Dahra and Ouarsenis mountains had been organizing mutual aid and nationalist propaganda networks for decades prior to the arrival of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) in 1956. When the Algerian Revolution finally came, these rural networks formed a base of support without which revolutionary forces could not have prevailed.War in the Mountains exemplifies just how much groundbreaking work can yet be done with colonial state archives. It is a truly social history that examines the critical—but often overlooked—kinship units that structured rural life in the Chelif Valley: the extended household (ayla) and the fraction (bocca), which were assemblies composed of the men in each ayla. By tracing the histories of individual fractions across decades, MacMaster identifies a means with which peasants preserved their communal solidarity and traditional social practices through years of land expropriation and dislocation. In the “native reserves” (communes mixtes) where most peasants lived, fraction patriarchs were often the sole links connecting the rural population to the colonial state. Absentee headmen (caïds) and French agents relied on these fraction leaders for local intelligence, offering access to state resources in exchange for their cooperation. As this system fell into crisis during the Great Depression, fractions and village councils (djemâa) coalesced into what would become a mass resistance movement. The fraction—a precolonial unit of rural social life—thus formed the organizational core through which peasants mobilized for a postcolonial future.The first three parts of the book chart the “terminal decline” of French rule in Algeria and the subsequent rise of the FLN “counter-state” that overtook it (254). Caught in an irreconcilable antagonism between the conservative defenders of the commune mixte system and reformers bent on modernization, the colonial state in Algeria underwent cycles of sputtering reform followed by reactionary backlash and repression. The constricted spaces that these cycles created for peasant political expression were never adequate to legitimize French rule, but they did provide a crucial medium for the introduction of mass electoral politics to the villages of the Chelif. Newly elected village councils operated as counterweights to corrupt French officials, compensating for the absence of colonial state administration with religious and kinship-based mutual aid networks. As revolutionary violence escalated, the survival of communist, Messalist, or Frontiste cells in the region depended on their ability to affect a “juncture” between themselves and the “dormant anti-colonialism of peasant society” expressed in these village councils (480). MacMaster contends that the FLN ultimately prevailed here because it offered a revolutionary program that was most responsive to the values and concerns of the peasantry.The final section of the text reassesses Opération Pilote, an ambitious counterinsurgency plan formulated by the anthropologist Jean Servier. With Pilote, Servier promised an ethnographic “hearts and minds” strategy—built upon political reforms and vast economic development initiatives—that would win over the region's peasant population. Military and civilian leaders soon hailed the operation as a success to be emulated throughout Algeria, but the book reveals stark truths that undermine this sanguine assessment. On the ground in the Dahra and Ouarsenis, the French presence largely continued as one of underadministration punctuated by catastrophic violence. Servier's ethnography also quickly fell out of favor with French officers, replaced by a simplistic program of sloganeering and propaganda derived from the field of behavioral psychology. Moreover, the FLN remained superior to the French in providing basic services and security to the Chelif peasantry. Pilote and its “successes” have been a staple of counterinsurgency literature for decades; MacMaster offers a necessary and overdue corrective to these accounts that dwells on the self-defeating brutality counterinsurgency practitioners unleashed on the very peasants they were supposed to be winning over.By positioning peasants at the center of Algeria's revolutionary struggle, War in the Mountains compels scholars to reconsider the balance of forces driving the country's independence and subsequent state formation. It also establishes a comparative research agenda grounded in an attentiveness to enduring structures of rural life that promises to influence the field for years to come. Accessibly written, albeit dense in its argumentation, this text will make for compelling reading in advanced undergraduate and graduate-level seminars.

Navy En-Route Care in Future Distributed Maritime Operations: A Review of Clinician Capabilities and Roles of Care

Objective As the United States Navy transitions from Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom to preparing for a near-peer competition, an increasing focus of wartime strategy relies upon a network of distributed naval assets for total sea control, known as Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO). Historically, embedded medical personnel have provided care at sea in times of war. Recent reviews of shipboard and evacuated mass casualty incidents have alluded to weaknesses in the existing Navy Medicine approach that will require advances in care provision to sustain high-quality care that would benefit from industry and civilian academic collaboration. To gain input from civilian prehospital expertise and insight, the current DMO and Navy En-Route Care (ERC) systems must be plainly described for non-Navy military and civilian leaders, clinicians, and researchers to understand. Methods N/A Results In this review, we translate US Navy structure and vernacular into common civilian and non-Navy language, describe the maritime role-tiered ERC system, elucidate the medical assets on each naval warship, and discuss clinician levels and capabilities while deployed to help communicate the inherent challenges of US Navy maritime medical care during routine operations, casualty treatment, stabilization, and evacuation. Conclusions We describe the roles of care, clinician levels, and medical assets within the Navy ERC system for researchers and military leaders who aim to mitigate the inherent challenges of future maritime trauma care in the age of Distributed Maritime Operations. This paper lays the framework of the Navy deployed medical system to enable research in maritime en-route care, and prompt inclusion of identified solutions into common use in the US Navy.

Endgames: Military Response to Protest in Arab Autocracies

Endgames: Military Response to Protest in Arab Autocracies

How Narratives Helped the Taliban's Surprise Takeover of Afghanistan in 2021

World witnessed strange events in Afghanistan in august 2021 when over three hundred thousand "well-equipped" Afghan Security Forces, failed to offer any meaningful resistance to the Taliban attacks. The Taliban virtually took over entire Afghanistan including the Capital Kabul in a matter of days,surprisingly without any resistance from Afghan forces. Most US and western writers and military experts blamed Afghan Forces and their civilian leadership for the collapse of resistance and in a way took the blame away from the US-led coalition. This article suggests that the Taliban's surprise and almost bloodless victory has less to do with immediate factors around August 2021. The surprise was slowly manufactured by the Taliban through their strong effort caused by the narratives, spread over two decades of the war. Such consistent narratives created an environment which caused the immediate collapse of Afghan Forces even before the US could complete evacuation out of Afghanistan.

The complex relationship between leadership and gendered experiences: as and with

ABSTRACT Leadership, whether through response, composition, representation, or direction, reflects a complex relationship with gender in the military. The findings of this qualitative study highlighted the profound and complex relationship between leadership and gendered experiences within the military in a variety of facets including within various ranks, from superiors, subordinates, and peers, as well as both as and with leaders. This includes considerations, or lack thereof, for issues pertaining to representation, voice, gender bias, stereotyping, and intersectionality in addition to the significant and prominent issues of sexual misconduct. Military leadership development efforts, both at large and for women in particular, must reflect the pivotal role which leadership plays while simultaneously acknowledging the unique cultural and contextual environment of the military. In addition to continued efforts to encourage and enable women’s military service and leadership, military and civilian leadership, regardless of gender, should be cognizant of the magnitude of leader roles and responsibilities pertaining to gender.

How Mechanization Shapes Coups

Civil-military relations are characterized by a fundamental dilemma. To lower coup risk, leaders frequently empower the military, which satisfies the armed forces with the status quo and enables them to fight against threats challenging the civilian leadership. Simultaneously, a too powerful military itself constitutes a potential threat that is capable of overthrowing the government. Our research adds to this debate by examining the impact of mechanization, that is, the degree to which militaries rely on armored vehicles relative to manpower, on coup risk. We discuss several (opposing) mechanisms before developing the theoretical expectation that higher levels of mechanization should lower the likelihood of a coup due to the increased costs of coup execution. Empirical evidence strongly supports this claim and, thus, contributes to our understanding of the emergence of coups as an essential breakdown of civil-military relations, while adding to the debate surrounding the many trade-offs leaders face when coup-proofing their regimes.

A Critical Study of Press Freedom on Foreign Policy and Indo-Pak Relations in Pakistan

In Pakistan, freedom of press has long been a subject of intense debate. Both the political and non-political governments adopted various legal and constitutional means to regulate the press in the milieu of public debate and criticism. With this view, the current study aims to measure the extent to which the press enjoyed freedom in Pakistan over strategic issues like foreign policy and Indo-Pak relations during civil and military governments. Based on the theoretical framework of agenda-setting coupled with framing, the study also examines the ways and means by which the print media influence the public opinion on foreign policy and Indo-Pak relations. It also takes into account how media agenda transforms into public agenda. The results of the study depict a mixed trend for press freedom. However, one thing remains common that the press enjoyed freedom when new governments commenced whether it was headed by civil leadership or military and this freedom would gradually curtail towards the end of their tenure.

“Nothing Short of Murder”: How Leaders Can Diminish Military Capacities

This article contends that civilian leaders can adversely affect military capacity in the realm of technology. I argue that if civilian leaders have personal biases that blind them to military effectiveness, and if they have the power to make unilateral procurement decisions, then military capacity will be hampered. With a main plausibility probe of Canada’s disastrous World War I Ross rifle, I suggest that Minister of Militia Sam Hughes ensured that Canadians fought with the gun 18 months after its first wartime failures, failures so egregious that one officer said it was “nothing short of murder” to send soldiers into battle with it. I assess two shadow cases on rifle development and procurement involving Union war secretary Simon Cameron and British war secretary Hugh Arnold-Foster, both of which support my theory. I suggest that civilian control over specific military technologies is not desirable, and that civilian control of militaries in general may be strengthened by limiting control of these means of war.

Civil-Military Relations: Guidelines in Politically Charged Societies

Current events warrant a review of US civil-military relations doctrine. This article examines eight principles of military subordination to elected civilian officials and addresses the fundamental question at the heart of civil-military relations theory and practice—what options, if any, does the military have when civilian leadership disregards military advice? Examples drawn from US history provide an important framework to understand the complex interrelational dynamics at play.

Organisational learning during the Donbas War: the development of Ukrainian Armed Forces lessons-learned processes

ABSTRACT This article examines the development and performance of formal organisational learning processes in the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) during the Donbas War (2014-present). Through original empirical research conducted with UAF personnel and documentary analysis, the article develops understanding about the detail of UAF lessons-learned processes and their effectiveness in helping to recalibrate UAF activities to operational demands. The article finds that the performance of UAF lessons-learned processes during the Donbas War has, on the whole, been poor. Since the escalation of Russian aggression in 2014, some positive steps which have been taken to implement best-practices in UAF lessons-learned processes. However, the article uncovers a number of organisational activities, structures and processes which could be improved to weaken the negative impact of bureaucratic politics and organisational culture on learning. It concludes with recommendations for the further development of UAF lessons-learned processes. The article highlights the particular importance of improving the capacity of the civilian leadership to exert effective oversight of military learning and of US and NATO support for these efforts.

Civil-Military Relations and Civilian Victimization in Civil War

Why do some states victimize noncombatants during civil war? Scholars have identified regime type, international norms, and battlefield conditions as important factors explaining variation in outcomes. Here I argue that understanding variation in civilian victimization requires the identification of the institutional interests of those in control of the state. Civilian victimization is likely when the military controls pre-war planning and execution because of the institutional goal of winning wars quickly and efficiently by attacking every major source of enemy power. This often includes noncombatants. Most civilian leaders’ institutional goals, however, are centered around governance. Thus, these leaders prefer restraint from victimization because they often believe such barbarity will result in future difficulties for governance. I test my argument alongside others through a binary regression analysis of 103 conflict dyads between 1989 and 2010 and find that the variable for militarily dominated governments maintains significance across model specifications and features the largest effect size of any variable.

Defenders of Japan: The Post-Imperial Armed Forces, 1946–2016; A History by Garren Mulloy

Reviewed by: Defenders of Japan: The Post-Imperial Armed Forces, 1946–2016; A History by Garren Mulloy Giulio Pugliese Defenders of Japan: The Post-Imperial Armed Forces, 1946–2016; A History. By Garren Mulloy. London: Hurst, 2021. 440 pages. ISBN: 9781849048934 (hardcover; also available as e-book). The English-language academic literature on the postwar Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) is sparse, and studies typically focus on just one branch of the country's armed services. A handful of recent works, including one each on the Maritime and Ground branches, stand out for their fine-grained analyses centered on security issues, politics, and history. Garren Mulloy's encyclopedic tour de force on the evolution of Japan's military, Defenders of Japan,constitutes instead a commendable attempt at disentangling the international and domestic politics behind the entirety of contemporary Japan's "defenders": its navy, army, and air force. The author takes an eclectic, interdisciplinary approach, combining findings by scholars in area studies, history, foreign policy analysis, and international relations to trace the arc of postwar Japan's force structure, military doctrine, and identity (or self-representation) vis-àvis civilian leaders and the population at large. Mulloy's extensive use of primary sources—including archival material, official documentation, and interviews with elite military officers and security officials—provides an incredibly detailed account of the book's subject matter, one that sheds light on lesser-known events and connections. In short, the author's work constitutes an important addition to the literature to which contemporary Japan specialists will want to turn frequently. The book is divided into four thick chapters following a typical periodization. In the first chapter, which is quite fast paced, the author debates the merits of viewing Japan's military in the aftermath of World War II through the prism of the country's imperial legacy. The chapter opens with a spotlight on the continuation of hostilities after the summer of 1945 by thousands of Japanese soldiers scattered throughout Asia—some acting out of choice, some under duress, and some based on their indoctrination. This is followed by an extensive analysis of the little-known engagement by Japanese fighters in the Korean and Vietnam wars, involvement that runs counter to the official narrative of a clean break with militarism after the end of World War II: while both of those subsequent conflicts resulted in Japanese casualties, Tokyo consciously chose to conceal such events under a cloak of silence. The chapter then delves into the genesis of the National Police Reserve (NPR), which was effectively the beginning of Japan's postwar military; it was reborn in 1952 as the National Safety Forces and later as the JSDF. Offering a detailed analysis, Mulloy disputes facile takes that understand the National Police Reserve and National Safety Forces—as well as ancillary forces—as a covert military setup arranged by the US occupiers. He argues that Japanese decision-makers tended to see the merits of these [End Page 175] precursors to the nation's defenders as agents capable of policing—and potentially repressing—the populace. The second chapter is the book's largest. Here the author traces the genealogy of each branch of the JSDF, from the establishment of the unified forces in 1954 to their evolution during the Cold War. The chapter initially deals with issues concerning the constitutional and legal framing of the JSDF and then goes on to elucidate the early emphasis on tight civilian control, as well as the relationship between the JSDF and the public at large. These themes run through the analyses of the Ground, Maritime, and Air Self-Defense branches and add to our understanding of Japan's quantitative and qualitative military buildup (or lack thereof). Other important motifs that run through the chapter concern stovepiping and scant coordination among the three branches, problems that were accompanied by a relative paucity of interest and sense of direction by civilian leaders—especially those sitting in the prime minister's office, which had responsibility over the Japanese Defense Agency. Reliance on the unequal US-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security was partly to blame for this state of affairs, but I was surprised to learn of the extent...

Civil–Military Relations and Russia’s Post-Soviet Military Culture: A Belief System Analysis

This article studies the role of military culture in defense policymaking. It focuses on Russia’s post-Soviet civil–military relations and military reform attempts. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia’s armed forces were in a state of despair. Despite having relative institutional autonomy, the military neither made itself more effective before minister Serdyukov nor tried to overthrow the government. The paper uses the advocacy coalition framework’s belief system approach to analyze data from military memoirs, parliamentary speeches, and 15 interviews. The research shows that the military’s support for institutional autonomy, combined with its elites’ self-serving bias, critically contributed to what I term an “imperfect equilibrium” in Russian civil–military relations: the military could not reform itself and fought back against radical, though necessary, changes imposed by civilian leadership.

Opening the Black Box: The Turkish Military Before and After 15 July 2016

Opening the Black Box: The Turkish Military Before and After 15 July 2016

Obstacles faced by healthcare providers during COVID-19 pandemic in Sudan.

The impacts of COVID -19 pandemic have been quite significant on healthcare providers. I was particularly challenging for those in Low and Middle-Income Countries including Sudan . Unfortunately, the pandemic has hit Sudan on extremely difficult time for the country and its people. The country was coming out of long-brutal and devastating dictatorship and transitioning to new democracy with civilian leadership. In addition to the pandemic related issues, trying to rebuild the health system during socioeconomic crisis, healthcare providers in the country were challenged personally and professionally. These challenges include the stress of working in under-resourced settings with limited access to personal-protection equipment and testing kits raised the fear of contracting the virus and spreading it to their families. The professional, social, and personal life of healthcare providers have been dramatically changed by the ongoing pandemic, however, they are heroically accepting this change in a hope that, this will save the life of many more people. Nevertheless, their fights and sacrifices should at least be rewarded by governments and communities altogether strictly enforce the implementation of other preventive measures including vaccination, face masking, and social distancing and get all protected. We should all understand that, unless we are all protected no one is protected, so all must adapt to the new norm of life and collaborate not only on ending this pandemic but to prevent similar ones in the future.