Civil Military Research Articles

Book Review: War Epidemics: An Historical Geography of Infectious Diseases in Military Conflict and Civil Strife, 1850–2000

Book Review: War Epidemics: An Historical Geography of Infectious Diseases in Military Conflict and Civil Strife, 1850–2000

Defense Organization and Civil—Military Relations in Latin America

This study examines how defense institutions and personnel are formally organized in Latin America. In a region long plagued by praetorian armies, it is especially important that organizational designs ensure that civilians maintain institutional control over armed forces. For this to occur, it is argued that those designs must incorporate certain principles: (a) enhance the civilian presence in key defense institutions, (b) empower defense ministries, (c) lower the military's vertical authority along the chain of command, and (d) unify civilian power while dividing military power. Based on an examination of legal documents and other data for sixteen Latin American democracies, findings show three general organizational patterns: an ideal—typical defense structure that achieves all four objectives, a second best defense structure that still leaves too much military power unified, and a dual command structure that is least desirable for weakening the defense ministry while coalescing military might high up the ladder of influence.

IMPUNITY RESURGENT: THE POLITICS OF MILITARY ACCOUNTABILITY IN INDONESIA, 1998–2001

IMPUNITY RESURGENT: THE POLITICS OF MILITARY ACCOUNTABILITY IN INDONESIA, 1998–2001

Major Failures of Process and Judgment: National Security Policy Making in the Bush Administration

The failures of process and judgment that help explain the war in Iraq are varied. Established patterns of policy making were overshadowed by mechanisms operating outside the formal system, notably by Vice President Richard Chaney. Also, an arrogant defense secretary overpowered senior military officers as well as the Department of State and its secretary. While it is difficult for Congress to constrain a president once a major military enterprise has been approved, Congress has been even more compliant that usual in this case. There are no panaceas, but manageable changes can strengthen the system and make another Iraq far less likely. The roles of the secretary of state and national security adviser need to be strengthened, and career military officers and civil servants must be encouraged and supported in their efforts to offer independent views to the political leadership. Most important is a policy environment open to varied perspectives rather than driven by narrow dogma.

Book Reviews

Book reviwed in this articles. The Seeds of Democracy: Early Elections in Colonial New South Wales. By M.M.H. Thompson “No Fit Place for Women”? Women in New South Wales Politics, 1856‐2006. Edited by Deborah Brennan and Louise Chappell The Hitler Club. By Gary Gumpl and Richard Kleinig Cabinet Government in Australia, 1901‐2006. By Patrick Weller Deported: A History of Forced Departures from Australia. By Glenn Nicholls Behind Closed Doors: Politics, Scandals and the Lobbying Industry. By John Warhurst Capitalist Networks and Social Power in Australia and New Zealand. By Georgina Murray Writing Party History: Papers from a Seminar held at Parliament House, Sydney, May 2006. Edited by David Clune and Ken Turner No, Prime Minister: Reclaiming Politics from Leaders. By James Walter and Paul Strangio Great Mistakes of Australian History. Edited by Martin Crotty and David Andrew Roberts Violence and Colonial Dialogue: The Australian‐Pacific Indentured Labor Trade. By Tracey Banivanua‐Mar Redefining the Pacific? Regionalism, Past, Present and Future. Edited by Jenny Bryant‐Tolalau and Ian Frazer. Builders of Empire: Freemasons and British Imperialism, 1717‐1927. By Jessica L. Harland‐Jacobs The Victorians: An Age in Retrospect. By John Gardiner Thomas Carlyle. By John Morrow Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life. By Mark Francis The Irish General Thomas Francis Meagher. By Paul R. Wylie Hitler's Bavarian Antagonist. Georg Moenius and the Allgemeine Rundschau of Munich, 1929‐1933. By Gregory Munro Legitimizing Military Rule: Indonesian Armed Forces Ideology, 1958‐2000. By Salim Said Soeharto's Armed Forces: Problems of Civil Military Relations in Indonesia. By Salim Said Democratic Accountability: Why Choice in Politics is Both Possible and Necessary. By Leif Lewin War in Human Civilization. By Azar Gat The Law of Armed Conflict: Constraints on the Contemporary Use of Military Force. Edited by Howard M. Hensel The One and the Many: Reading Isaiah Berlin. Edited by George Crowder and Henry Hardy

The Military's Corporate Interests

In “Civil–Military Relations in Indonesia and the Philippines,” Mark Beeson argued that the likelihood of future military interventions in Indonesia and the Philippines was best understood by examining the countries' political economies. Beeson contended that because the Indonesian military remains heavily involved in economic activities, it will likely remain politically quiescent. And because fewer opportunities exist for the Philippine military to engage in business undertakings, the specter of further military interventions remains. Beeson's argument is characteristic of the corporate interest perspective in the civil-military relations literature. This article examines the effectiveness of corporate interest arguments in explaining military interventions into the political arena. It advances two main arguments: first, corporate interest propositions are under-specified and not analytically useful to explain military interventions. Second, by concentrating on the corporate interests of the Indonesian and Philippine militaries, Beeson omitted more salient factors that have led to prior interventions in the two countries.

Civil–Military Relations in Indonesia and the Philippines

This article examines civil-military relations in Indonesia and the Philippines in the after-math of the largely unexpected recent coup in Thailand. The central issue it investigates is whether Indonesia and the Philippines may prove equally susceptible to military intervention. The conclusion is that although the potential for coups in the Philippines can never be discounted, Indonesia looks surprisingly stable by contrast. One key cause of this apparent stability, it is argued, is the military's role in economic activities, which makes it more or less content with the status quo. Although the dynamics of civil-military relations are significantly different in both the Philippines and Thailand, all three cases suggest that there is a need to take the political economy of civil-military relations much more seriously if we wish to understand them fully in the contemporary era.

Civil—Military Structure, Political Communication, and the Democratic Peace

Looking beyond the democratic/Kantian peace argument that highlights the pacifying effect of regime type on international conflict, this study explores additional, potentially important domestic factors that may influence conflict — most notably, civil—military structure, such as degree of civil versus military control and military manpower system. It also looks into the effects of political communication in terms of diplomatic channels and open media. On the basis of logistic regression analysis for 120 countries during the period from 1950 to 1992, the authors report that strong military influence is more likely to lead to the onset of militarized interstate disputes, wars, and international crises while the presence of conscripted soldiers, diplomatic activities, and open media makes that less likely. These results hold up in the presence of the three Kantian peace variables (i.e. democracy, economic interdependence, and joint membership in international organizations) and other control variables that are standards within contemporary research designs. Thus, the authors conclude that the four factors are important complements to understanding the impact of domestic traits on interstate conflict beyond the conventional regime-type explanation of the democratic/Kantian peace.

Emergency management international: improving national and international disaster preparedness and response

Since 1998, the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has been responsible for managing activities of the Civil Military Emergency Preparedness (CMEP) programme, in Europe and Central Asia. CMEP supports international partner nations' national and regional strategies related to disaster preparedness and consequence management for all hazards including the development and exercise of national and regional plans. The use of available technologies including the internet, remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and reliable civil-military planning processes, are key programme components. More than 55 seminars, workshops and Table Top Exercises (TTXs) have occurred since the programme's inception. In 2005, USACE developed Emergency Management International (EMI), a programme designed to provide CMEP – and a broader range of USACE expertise – globally. This paper explains these programmes and provides a review of their evolution and the services offered. We examine the necessary conditions for effective disaster planning, preparedness and response for large disasters requiring national and international coordination and cooperation and examples of techniques used and outcomes of CMEP activities. The paper concludes with a discussion of a proposed approach to addressing all hazards responses for oil-related disasters in Africa.

Finding the Road to the Last Mile: Civil-Military Operations and Effects of Mitigation on Stability and Reconstruction Operations (Nation-Building) in Iraq

Initial US efforts to rebuild and rehabilitate Iraq were a failure. This failure was all but guaranteed by the mistaken confidence that senior levels of the US Government held in Iraqi Government capacity. Once the inability of the Iraqi Government to govern was realised, efforts to take over their responsibilities were equally fraught due to a lack of planning and properly skilled personnel. By this time, much critical time had been lost in establishing an effective information management plan, and insurgent propaganda had taken root. Substantial sums of money and prodigious effort were employed to rectify the governance and information problems, but to limited effect due to a further lack of planning. Having identified these problems and learned some difficult lessons, the US V Corps formed an integrated, synchronised “C24” cell at MNF-I, incorporating the C7 (Engineer), C8 (Comptroller) and C9 (Civil Military Operations, or CMO) positions into a “one stop shop” for CMO, synchronising its efforts and shaping all of V Corps into a powerful force for “constructive engagement”. Shortcomings still exist, however, and harnessing the full capabilities of the interagency is the only way to overcome them.

Dereliction of Duty Redux?: Post-Iraq American Civil-Military Relations

The protracted war in Iraq has exacerbated existing tensions and dysfunctional elements inherent in American civil-military relations. Many in the national security community were worried that civil-military relations were far from satisfactory well before the war. 1 1 Richard H. Kohn, “Out of Control: The Crisis in Civil-Military Relations,” The National Interest, Spring 1994, pp. 3-17; A. J. Bacevich, “Civilian Control, A Useful Fiction?” Joint Force Quarterly, Autumn/Winter 1994/95, pp. 76-79; Don Snider and Miranda Carlton-Carew, U.S. Civil-Military Relations: In Crisis or Transition?, Washington, DC: CSIS, 1995; Thomas E. Ricks, “The Widening Gap Between the Military and Society,” The Atlantic Monthly, July 1997, pp. 66-78; Eliot A. Cohen, “Civil Military Relations,” Orbis, Spring 1997; Peter Feaver, “The Gap: Soldiers, Civilians and Their Mutual Misunderstanding,” National Interest, Fall 2000, pp. 29-37. For too long this dimension of “the American way of war” had been allowed to drift without resolution. The Iraq conflict could result in a further deterioration in this crucial component of strategic effectiveness due to mutual “scapegoating, blame-avoiding and willful institutional refusal to recognize and act on the sources of defeat.” 2 2 David Betz, “Redesigning Land Forces for Wars Amongst the People,” Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 28, No. 2, August 2007, p. 221. For an explicit example see Ricardo S. Sanchez, Speech before the Military Reports and Editors Association, 12 Oct. 2007, accessed at http://www.militaryreporters.org/sanchez_101207.html This essay explores the current precarious nature of civil-military relations in this country. It also explores the emergence of a “stab in the back” thesis among the military community, and various issues raised by the ongoing Long War. Based on this evaluation, the article concludes with some proposals to remedy or lessen the strains that exist today. These remedies seek to better define the compact and code of conduct that governs the overall relationship between the masters of policy and the dedicated servants we ask to carry out those policies.

Military–Civilian Collaboration in Trauma Care and the Senior Visiting Surgeon Program

More than 18,000 injured soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have been cared for at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. The Senior Visiting Surgeons Program is bringing leaders of civilian trauma care to Landstuhl to participate in the care of injured soldiers and to serve as mentors and advisors to those in the military care system. This report provides a view of the collaborative efforts to optimize trauma care for critically injured soldiers.

The politics of the apolitical: private military companies, humanitarians and the quest for (anti-)politics in post-intervention environments

This article aims at exploring some of the political processes related to the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. These interventions include private actors such as private military and security companies (PMCs and PSCs) on the one hand, and humanitarian organizations on the other, being mobilized in the war effort. The main theoretical argument is that the theory of securitization might be instrumental to the comprehension of the concept of the political. Such a conceptualization of the political facilitates the analysis of the outcome of the social practices involved in military interventions. It allows for a different interpretation of the political processes induced in ‘local’ societies by the private and civilian actors — PMCs and PSCs on the one hand, and humanitarian organizations on the other — involved along with the military in the civil–military ‘assemblage’ of contemporary interventions. In this way, I argue against international policies without local politics and conflict-resolution without political solution.

A SERS-BASED ANALYZER FOR POINT AND CONTINUOUS WATER MONITORING OF CHEMICAL AGENTS AND THEIR HYDROLYSIS PRODUCTS

Protection of military personnel and civilians from water supplies poisoned by chemical warfare agents (CWAs) requires an analyzer that has sufficient sensitivity (μg/L, ppb), specificity (differentiate the CWA from its hydrolysis products), and speed (less than 10 minutes) to be of value. In an effort to meet these requirements, we have been investigating the ability of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to detect cyanide and sulfur mustard in water. In our work, we have developed a novel SERS-active material that consists of a porous glass with trapped metal particles. Previously, we coated the inside walls of glass vials and measured cyanide at 1 mg/L in water in as little as 1 minute. However, measurements of sulfur mustard have only been measured to 10 mg/L. Recently, we filled glass capillaries with the SERS-active material. Here we describe measurements of cyanide, sulfur mustard, and it's hydrolysis product, thiodiglycol, using these capillaries and a portable Raman analyzer suitable for point and continuous water monitoring.

Development and Evaluation of an Intuitive Operational Planning Process

Although formal planning procedures are key parts of military doctrine, they may not be well suited to highly dynamic, time-pressured environments. The authors describe an intuitive planning process developed as an alternative to the procedure used by the Canadian Forces (CF). The Intuitive Operational Planning Process (IOPP) treats planning as a highly iterative process of incremental refinement in which a single course of action is elaborated and continually evaluated for its suitability. To examine the effectiveness of the IOPP, 12 members of a reserve CF Civil Military Cooperation unit of Land Force Central Area acted as planning staffs and created plans for two simulated planning exercises. Participants employed the IOPP for one scenario and the existing CF Operational Planning Process (OPP) for another. The teams were able to successfully employ the IOPP to develop acceptable plans; however, it was not possible to determine statistically that the quality of these plans surpassed that of plans generated with the OPP because of limitations of the data set. The IOPP was judged to be very easy to use, but teams expressed less trust in it than the existing OPP. The IOPP may foster greater collaboration and commander involvement in planning than the OPP.

Rewiring Interventions? UK Provincial Reconstruction Teams and ‘Stabilization’

This article explores developments in the UK's institutional arrangements for managing ‘stabilization’ operations. It suggests that ‘stabilization’ activity takes place within a different framework of priorities from either ‘development’ or military-led ‘hearts and minds’ frameworks. It argues for a sharpening of, and to some extent a returning to basics for, Civil–Military Cooperation (CIMIC) while creating capabilities for a more developed form of ‘stabilization CIMIC’. It also highlights the need for new and widely understood institutions that enhance the capacity for comprehensive and integrated (rather than sequential or coordinated) interdepartmental operational planning. It stresses the difficulties with stabilization models that imply a generic sequencing of activities, rather than approaches that represent a mixture of simultaneity and ‘critical path analyses. The debates framed in this article are rooted in institutional developments witnessed in 2006 and 2007.

Civil–Military Relations—Who Are the Real Principals? A Response to “Courage in the Service of Virtue: The Case of General Shinseki's Testimony before the Iraq War”

This response to Coletta's “Courage in the Service of Virtue: The Case of General Shinseki's Testimony before the Iraq War” argues that too much significance is attributed to Shinseki's remarks. The larger question is whether military leaders should speak up when their civilian leadership's plan is grossly inadequate. Second, the response considers questions about the middle levels of power. The authors suggest that the principal–agent argument is Shinseki's defense and the ultimate principals are the American public. Third, a table is offered as a means of comparing and contrasting the Huntington–Janowitz positions with new theoretical focuses. Fourth, the conclusion suggests that concerns touched on in the tables (the obligation to speak up, the public space, the implications of economic development, and the changing nature of warfare) overshadow the Shinseki issue and that social action theory and type construction methodology are of service in addressing civil–military relations.

Living in the Shadow of Violence: Local Civil–Military Engagement during Anti-Communist Insurgency Operations in the Philippines

The Philippine approach to the anti-communist insurgency after 1986 has featured peace talks with the rebels, amnesty and livelihood packages, and strengthened security forces. While the military has remained central to the counterinsurgency campaign, the government has also institutionalized police involvement in conducting operations and requested input from local civilian authorities in paramilitary recruitment and human rights monitoring. Legal restrictions against human rights violations by soldiers were also established. The experience of 20 frontline communities in central Philippines reflects these changes. Local civil-military interaction has moved from confrontation to consultation and accommodation. However, tension remains because the military and civilian leaders disagree on the gravity of the insurgent threat.

The Greening of the Brass: Taiwan's Civil–Military Relations since 20001

Since the Democratic Progressive Party's stunning victory in the 2000 presidential election, Chen Shui-bian has accelerated the process of creating an officer corps without strong party inclination toward the KMT. What is the impact of Taiwan's democratization on its civil–military relations? What is the prospect of transitioning from a party-army to a “national army”? Will the DPP's zealous advocacy for Taiwan's independence be incompatible with the military's long-held belief in “China-centered” nationalism, straining relations between the military and the new administration? The analyses, implications, and conclusions of this study will shed light on the general role of the military in Taiwan's democratic transition and consolidation.

Die Allgemeine Wehrpflicht in Russland: Zwischen militärischem Anspruch und zivilen Interessen

Universal Conscription in Tsarist Russia: Between Military Demands and Civil Interests Universal conscription was introduced in Russia in 1874 and completed the »Great Reforms» which had been started in 1861. After controversial debates war minister Dmitrij Alekseevič Miljutin wanted conscription to have as little effects as possible on civil life in the world's largest country, in order to prevent social unrest. A system of exemptions was applied to recruits considered to be indispensable in civil life. Any education obtained before mustering automatically reduced the duration of military service. In general, the conscription law made no exemptions for recruits of non-Russian or non-Orthodox origin. The principle of moving soldiers far away from their home towns and the ratio of 75% Russians and 25% non-Russians in the composition of military units were intended to respond to the army's multiethnic character. However, Jewish recruits suffered from systematic discrimination. Although Russia's imperial status was primarily based on its military power, universal conscription never included more than 30% of the annual number of potential recruits. Despite Miljutin's reform attempts, the fatal belief in the power of the seemingly inexhaustible human resources overshadowed all necessary reforms until the end of the Tsarist regime.