Civilian Decision Makers Research Articles

What Went Wrong? Israeli Misconceptions And the October 2023 Surprise

AbstractThis study examines Israel's failure to prevent Black October, the Hamas invasion that killed more than 1,100 people and sparked the Gaza war. The article synthesizes literatures of security and intelligence to advance three levels at which we must analyze Israel's missteps. The first is the intelligence level, where the state assessed threats. The second is operational, where officials devised military and security solutions, such as relying on technology to police the border with the Gaza Strip. The third level is political‐diplomatic, where the government pursued regional normalization agreements without focusing on solutions to the Palestinian file. Failures at all three levels were intertwined. The examination of these cascading mistakes opens a window into the interactions within and across these levels among military and civilian decision makers, and it suggests how they should be addressed going forward.

Staff Rides as Pedagogical Practice

ABSTRACTPolitical science instructors have started to make use of the “staff ride”—that is, the combined study of a military campaign, structured visits to related sites, and after-action analysis. Our study is the first examination of the potential utility of this pedagogical tool in civilian political science programs. Although the specific knowledge and skills that any given staff ride promotes depend on its content and structure, the potential benefits include four student learning outcomes: (1) staff rides show students how we might draw lessons from the past and apply them to present or future problems; (2) students may derive an enhanced ability to empathize with military and civilian decision makers; (3) staff rides can highlight the normative stakes in politics; and (4) they can foster connections among the participants. This article describes potential benefits of a staff ride, provides detailed instructional models based on the Battle of Gettysburg and the Tet Offensive, and considers ways to replicate these experiences in more accessible formats.

The Rohingya crisis and questions of accountability

ABSTRACT There is no obvious end to the ongoing tragedy that faces the Muslim Rohingya communities of western Myanmar. Yet, with two important international legal cases underway at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court there are now important opportunities to maintain pressure on Myanmar’s government. Myanmar’s current government – a fusion of militarist, democratic, ethno-nationalist and conservative interests – has consistently sought to downplay the seriousness of the situation. This attitude, and the fraught, but politically effective, nexus between Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) and the military, has done much to encourage a culture of impunity among military and civilian decision-makers. Nevertheless, with crucial national elections scheduled for November 2020, and an economy battered by the global COVID-19 shutdown, Myanmar faces a confluence of grave challenges. Under these conditions, key decision-makers in Naypyitaw may hope that international scrutiny of violence against the Rohingya will fade. Given these court actions, however, this is unlikely. Whatever sympathy we may have for Aung San Suu Kyi’s predicament, she will not recover her reputation. And she will forever face hard questions about her inability to prevent, and, more importantly, refusal to condemn, ethnic cleansing.

Power Sources of Military Helicopters

In the early 1940s the first practically usable helicopters rose into the sky. Their importance was quickly recognised both by the military and civilian decision makers. A good summary of their most important advantage is the next quotation: “If you are in trouble anywhere in theworld, an airplane can fly over and drop flowers, but a helicopter can land and save your life.” (Igor Sikorsky, 1947) Just after their appearance it immediately became an urgent problem to replace the relatively low-power and heavy piston engines, forwhich the much lighter and more powerful turboshaft engines offered a good alternative. Significant improvement of helicopter engines, which has embodied mainly in power to weight ratio, thermal cycle efficiency, specific fuel consumption, together with reliability and maintainability, of course, has influenced the technicaltactical parameters of helicopters. In this paper I introduce the evolution of helicopter turboshaft engines, the most important manufacturers and engine types. Through statistical analysis I display what kind of performance parameters the helicopter turboshaft engines had in the past and have in the present days.

Military Leadership, Institutional Change, and Priorities in Military Spending

How does political competition among domestic actors influence foreign policy choice? Studies examining these questions often focus on the role of economic or partisan interests, and how they influence the preferences of decision makers who are subject to electoral institutions and pressures of their constituents. Less attention has been paid to how the preferences of other influential but unelected actors influence state behavior. I examine the influence of one such group by looking at how American military leaders shape decisions on military spending and force structure, while also examining how these decisions have been affected by changes to the institutions governing civil–military relations. Results indicate that military leaders occupying key positions can influence defense spending priorities in favor of their respective branches. Results also suggest the influence of military leaders has changed and is conditional upon the institutions governing the relationships between civilian decision makers and military leaders.

Zivile Kontrolle des Militärs in jungen Demokratien: Agency, Struktur und institutioneller Wandel

This article integrates insights from historical institutionalism and arguments of strategic action in order to develop a new conceptual and theoretical approach to explaining changes in civil-military relations. In order to enforce civilian control over the military in new democracies, civilian decision-makers need to “break” stabilizing mechanisms of path dependence in civil-military relations. The ability of ‘change agents’ to overcome ‘path dependence’ depends on the concrete approach civilians take to reduce military power. Civilian choices, however, are structured by the specific structural, institutional and ideational contexts in which civil-military interaction takes place. These contextual factors also provide the constraints and resources for civilian actions. The civilian choices and the success of their control strategies are thus conditioned by the resources to which civilians have access and which allow them to initiate and consolidate changes vis-a-vis those actors opposing change in civil-military relations.

No Place for a Civilian?: Russian Defense Management from Yeltsin to Putin

Under the leadership of Presidents Yeltsin and Putin the authorities in the Kremlin have well understood that the armed forces need to be tightly controlled, but they have shown a consistent preference for control from the top with minimal societal intervention or influence. The army is subordinate to a civilian head of state, yet it is also largely free from civilian interference in the way it is managed. There are few civilian decision-makers of any consequence in the Ministry of Defense. At the same time, the military has deeply penetrated the various parliamentary and governmental bodies that are meant to provide civilian oversight of defense policy and expenditure. This calls into question the prospects of democratic consolidation in Russia.

The limits to military power: Institutions and defense budgeting in democratic Argentina

This article examines the reasons behind the dramatic decline in military budgets in Argentina under democratic rule. These trends were unexpected, given the, political power the armed forces of that country have wielded in the past. Here it is argued that within the democratic state, there were institutional arrangements that enabled civilian decision makers to trim defense expenditures, despite opposition from the military. The two key institutional traits were found to be the concentration of authority and the autonomy of decision-makers from outside pressures. Because budgetmaking was centered within a well-insulated civilian-run ministry, fiscal planners working at the behest of the president were able to design and implement budgets they wanted, over and above the objections of military officers, and without interference from other branches of government.

The Joint Chiefs and the Expanded War

What! Yet another article on the Vietnam war! Don't we know enough about it by now to avoid repeating it? The answer is no. We ought to, but we don't. In time there will be probing studies based on the Pentagon Papers and as yet unpublished documents and memoirs. But presently available evidence strongly indicates that the reigning explanations are one-sided and incomplete. So overwhelming has been the compulsion to blame the war on the mistakes of the civilian decision-makers that the military responsibility for beginning and prolonging the war has been virtually ignored.