Defense Establishment Research Articles

קיבוץ ניצנים במלחמת העצמאות: ההיבט האנושי

In this study, I examine new aspects regarding the state of Kibbutz Nitzanim during the First Arab-Israeli War. Based on a microhistory approach of bottom-up and inside-out research, this article sheds light on the day-to-day reality in the Kibbutz, which included enthusiastic work and anxiety; feelings of discrimination and pride; bitterness and elation; all woven together to reflect people's natural – and occasionally touching – reactions. Most surviving documents of that time, such as official letters, journals, telegrams, and personal memoires, can be found at the Massuah Archive, the IDF and Defense Establishment Archives, and the Kibbutz Archive, and these have been the basis of my study. This archival material, as well as the nature of the connections that kibbutz members had with each other and themselves, shed light on the relations they formed with the enforcements, the regional brigade (Givati), and the political-security establishment. These relations deeply affected the spirit of Nitzanim residents during the siege and played a big part in determining the results of the battle over the position. Over the years, many profound discussions were held over the 1948 battle of Nitzanim. Thus far, this dispute over the reasons for the fall of Nitzanim and who was to blame for it, has left out a description of the 'simple people's' daily lives in the kibbutz. In this article, I aim to mend this. According to my findings, ordinary life (during this emergency) was highly influential and affected the endurance of soldiers there. For example, we can find descriptions of shows of leadership and solidarity alongside disciplinary infractions and despair. This polarity would eventually be conducive to the downfall of Kibbutz Nitzanim, which was captured on June 7th, 1948.

Воинский этос GI в культурном коде США (на материале прецедентных текстов армейского идиома)

The paper scrutinizes professional image of the American serviceman’s world from the axiological perspective. It focuses on US national values as well as the moral and ethical image of the military cohort. The object of the study is the axiosphere of the US military society expressed in the official register of the military sublanguage. The subject area of our research embraces precedent texts of military officialese, which set forth the basis of military ethos. This research aims to identify unique value orientations attributed to the US military cohort’s members. On the one hand, these values constitute the professional ethos and, on the other hand, however, they collide with generally accepted axiological standards of the civilian mother culture. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the fact that the comparison of maternal culture values and the values of its socio-professional group of service members is conducted for the first time. Despite the abundance of publications on this issue (mainly works in sociology, psychology, medicine, and history), the phenomenon of the identity of a serviceman’s professional ethos is still insufficiently examined from the standpoint of linguocultural studies and sociolinguistics. The research findings demonstrated a partial identity of the value orientations compared. The professional environment reveals a number of values that are largely not inherent in the “civilian world”. The latter include messianism, a sense of belonging to the highest values of the nation, sacrifice of military service, collective spirit (esprit de corps), and others. This paper represents the first attempt to dissect the axiosphere of the GI through textual works of officialese. The contrastive analysis allowed us to identify the key values declared by the US defense establishment.

The Meaning of ‘Strategic’ in US National-security Policy

How is the term ‘strategic’ used today within the US Department of Defense? To address this question, the article explores the evolution of the term ‘strategic’ from the interwar period to the end of the Cold War era, when Strategic Air Command was responsible for anything deemed strategic. The contemporary use of the term is a manifestation of a growing need to integrate the activities of various commands, capabilities and operations across the Defense Department that can produce significant military or political effects. Several problems could emerge due to a lack of clarity, integration and synchronisation across the US defence establishment. The Pentagon should and could establish greater clarity in defining strategic threats, operations, systems, command relationships and deterrence.

Sources of military change: Emulation, politics, and concept development in UK defence

Judging by its doctrinal publications, the UK Defence establishment stands poised to begin a process of unprecedented change. The language of ‘multi-domain’ thinking is prominent within this discourse and is identified as being a key vehicle via which UK Defence will deliver upon its programme of reform. This article seeks to offer an initial evaluation of these claims and to assess them in light of the burgeoning literatures on Western defence ‘transformation’ and military innovation that have emerged since the early 2000s. We argue that ‘multi-domain’ thinking reflects a form of ‘cosmetic’ emulation by the British Defence establishment and that its appearance within UK doctrine has been driven more by internal politics than by a clearly thought-through adoption of a new form of military practice.

Assessment of portable FTIR and Raman spectroscopy for the detection of 2,3-dimethyl-2,3-dinitrobutane (DMDNB) in plastic explosives

The Marplex Convention was established to prevent the manufacture of unmarked plastic explosives and stipulates that a volatile detection agent must be added at the time of manufacture. However, to-date, laboratory testing remains the internationally accepted practice for identifying and quantifying the taggants stipulated in the Convention. In this project, portable FTIR and Raman instruments were tested for their ability to detect 2,3-dimethyl-2,3-dinitrobutane (DMDNB), the chemical marker incorporated in plastic explosives that are manufactured within Australia. While both FTIR and Raman instruments detected solid DMDNB (98% purity), field analysis of plastic explosives at an Australian Defence establishment showed that both FTIR and Raman spectra were matched the relevant explosive (RDX or PETN), rather than the DMDNB taggant. For all three plastic explosives tested, the concentration of DMDNB was measured by SPME-GC-MS to be between 1.8 and 2%, greater than the minimum 1% concentration stipulated by the Marplex Convention. Additional testing with a plastic explosive analogue confirmed that the minor absorption peaks that would characterize low concentrations of DMDNB were masked by absorption bands from other compounds within the solid. Thus, while both FTIR and Raman spectroscopy are suitable for detection of plastic explosives, neither rely on the presence of DMDNB for detection. It is likely that similar results would be found for other taggants stipulated by the Marplex Convention, given they are also present in concentrations less than 1%.

Cross-Talk between Iron Deficiency Response and Defense Establishment in Plants

Plants are at risk of attack by various pathogenic organisms. During pathogenesis, microorganisms produce molecules with conserved structures that are recognized by plants that then initiate a defense response. Plants also experience iron deficiency. To address problems caused by iron deficiency, plants use two strategies focused on iron absorption from the rhizosphere. Strategy I is based on rhizosphere acidification and iron reduction, whereas Strategy II is based on iron chelation. Pathogenic defense and iron uptake are not isolated phenomena: the antimicrobial phenols are produced by the plant during defense, chelate and solubilize iron; therefore, the production and secretion of these molecules also increase in response to iron deficiency. In contrast, phytohormone jasmonic acid and salicylic acid that induce pathogen-resistant genes also modulate the expression of genes related to iron uptake. Iron deficiency also induces the expression of defense-related genes. Therefore, in the present review, we address the cross-talk that exists between the defense mechanisms of both Systemic Resistance and Systemic Acquired Resistance pathways and the response to iron deficiency in plants, with particular emphasis on the regulation genetic expression.

Deterrence and Defence: The US Military and International Partnering for Peace in Outer Space

Summary International military alliances have developed to deter potential foes from initiating war and, when deterrence fails, to defeat enemies. From the earliest days of spaceflight, US military leaders have partnered with other nations for various purposes. With the space domain becoming more congested and contested in the early 21st century¸ the US defence establishment has begun expanding and strengthening space-related relationships with like-minded international partners to deter irresponsible, adversarial space behaviour and perpetuate peaceful uses of the outer space domain for civil and commercial purposes.

It Is About Protection. Defence in Finland’s Steps to NATO

After Russia invaded Ukraine, Finland quickly applied for NATO membership. This step is not necessarily that drastic should Finland’s security policy development in the long term be examined with one’s focus set on a gradually-developed defence policy. It represents an important continuity in security policy, but also played a central role in advancing Finland’s steps to becoming NATO members. On the basis of different studies and accounts, the following points seem to be critical in constructing a preliminary narrative about Finland’s road to the Alliance. After the Second World War, Finland’s western relations became dependent on its bilateral relations with the Soviet Union. Finland was aware that it could not expect any support from the West as regards its security. Despite a security policy based on recognising facts, and the FCMA Treaty with the Soviet Union, the eastern neighbour was seen as the main, and, later on, the only military threat on the basis of history and Finland’s vulnerable geopolitical position. The threat, however, was concealed by so-called “doubletalk” in security policy discourse until the 2010s. In this context, state defence was developed to be an independent and modern territorial defence, ultimately there to defend against a large-scale invasion. Finland’s defence enjoyed high legitimacy and confi dence in society, especially from the 1970s. Security policy was raised above normal politics to be a kind of super-politics with a strong political consensus. When the Cold War ended and Finland joined the European Union, defence policy and the defence establishment got a leading role in working an approaching NATO. Finland’s opportunities to conduct stabilisation policy in its close neighbourhood were seen as being limited, especially after Russia adopted a self-asserting foreign and security policy towards theWest after 2007. At the same time, the subsequently increased cooperation, networking, and integration stimulated perceptions about western defence dependence. This increased emphasis on defence actually turned people’s attention to the extra security that NATO membership might provide. Applying for NATO, however, required the shock of a Russian invasion of Ukraine before the Finnish public was ready to see the risks of NATO membership as being less than that of its benefits.

Fighting for Time: Rhodesia’s Military and Zimbabwe’s Independence by Charles D. Melson

<i>Fighting for Time: Rhodesia’s Military and Zimbabwe’s Independence</i> by Charles D. Melson

Quasi-civilian defence minister and civilian authority: The case study of Indonesia's Ministry of Defence during Joko Widodo’s presidency

The President of the Republic of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, appointed two former military generals, Ryamizard Ryacudu (2014–2019) and Prabowo Subianto (2019–present), for the first- and second-term defence minister positions consecutively. The appointment of military officers – either retired or active – as defence ministers has been perceived as a recipe for potential democratic setbacks. Current studies on the quasi-civilian defence minister mainly focused on explaining the logic behind such appointments. On the other hand, our study attempts to test the argument about whether the decision to select former military figures to lead the Ministry of Defence undermines civilian control. This article examines: (1) the institutional arrangement of the defence establishment; (2) the composition of the Indonesian Ministry of Defence's leadership structure; and (3) the leadership activities and key initiatives. The findings are that military officers have indeed dominated the ministry's organisational structure. Nevertheless, such domination did not automatically translate into the deterioration of civilian supremacy as the institutional arrangement limits those quasi-civilian defence ministers’ manoeuvres.

Civic Service and the Question of Extra-Military Missions of the Army in Franco-Ivorian Military Relations (1960–1970)

Abstract With a negotiated decolonisation and a steadfast friendship between Félix Houphouët-Boigny and General Charles de Gaulle, Côte d’Ivoire, which had become independent, maintained excellent relations with France, its former colonial power. These close relations allowed it to benefit, within the framework of the Franco-Ivorian cooperation agreements, from French military assistance in setting up its armed forces. With this help, the Ivorian Army and Gendarmerie were thus taking their first steps under France’s military leadership. But divergences appeared at certain levels and the question of extra-military tasks or, more precisely, the importance granted to them in the missions of the Ivorian Armed Forces was the subject of heated debates between the two partners. The crux of the issue was the establishment and development of the Ivorian Civic Service, for which Abidjan had turned to Israel in the belief that this would not jeopardise French influence in the Ivorian defence establishment. This article revisits this issue by highlighting the intricacies and challenges in the creation of the Ivorian Civic Service.

Some Assembly Required: Explaining Variations in Legislative Oversight over the Armed Forces

AbstractLegislatures vary widely in how they affect democratic civil–military relations. In some countries, legislative oversight plays a critical role in guiding their defense establishment. In others, legislators are largely ignorant and happily so. In this article, we explain the sources of these variations in fifteen democratic states. After discussing the importance of the legislature's role in democratic civil–military relations, we clarify what we mean by oversight. We argue that variations in oversight are explained by the number and scope of legislative committees charged with military oversight and party politics within those committees. After reviewing alternative explanations, we present oversight patterns in fifteen democratic countries across the world. We then briefly examine Germany's Bundestag and Japan's Diet, as the comparison of these cases challenges most existing explanations of legislative oversight and serve as hard cases for our argument. We conclude with implications of legislative oversight for broader debates about civilian control of the military.

The politics of grand strategy in an emerging state: a case study on Philippine diplomacy toward China

ABSTRACT Some observers expected a drastic change in the Philippines’ diplomacy toward China when Rodrigo Duterte said goodbye to the United States in 2016. However, after six years, the Philippines has remained an allied partner of the United States. The Philippines’ defense establishment bolstered its maritime domain awareness capacity thanks to financial and technical support from the United States. Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) maintained the award from the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) favoring the Philippines over China. This paper sheds light on the Philippines’ policymaking process by framing the politics of grand strategy in an emerging state. The grand strategy is an intellectual architecture to clarify the general direction of foreign policy shaped by multiple state actors who are not limited by the foreign affairs office. Neither asymmetrical power relations nor presidential power can dominate the direction of the Philippines’ diplomacy. The president, the DFA, and the defense establishment have developed institutional foundations to craft particular policies. Once they designed the grand strategy in the 1990s, successive policymakers did not remove it but rather incrementally changed it, especially in the 2010s, when they faced a series of assertive actions from China. In an emerging state with limited state capacity, Filipino policymakers do not always coordinate well with each other but still maintain a certain level of autonomy to create particular policies. Against the dominant framework of the weak state, this paper argues that Filipino policymakers demonstrate the state’s capacity to achieve their policy goals, even with limitations.

Wargames Resurgent: The Hyperrealities of Military Gaming from Recruitment to Rehabilitation

Abstract While games are commonly viewed as frivolous fun, their rapid proliferation across the US defense establishment compels us to think again. Spanning spheres as diverse as total immersion training, near-peer/cyber conflict, and future force strategies, a gaming renaissance is currently underway across the US military. Surprisingly, given international relations’ (IR) interest in the production and projection of military power, the discipline has neglected to engage with this revival. This article argues that hyperreal games—that is, games that produce realities—play an increasingly important role in the attraction, production, management, and recovery of warfighters. Drawing upon one hundred hours of interviews undertaken with US military games designers, trainers, trainees, and veterans between 2017 and 2019, the article documents first-hand experiences of hyperreal gaming in warfighter recruitment, training, deployment, and rehabilitation. The core argument developed is that unlike simulations, which model scenarios, games are productive of people, values, and identity. If it is to understand games’ use as a tool of warfighter subjectification, the article argues, IR must renew its focus on military gaming disaggregated from the broader hyperrealities of modeling, simulation, and exercises with which it has hitherto been conflated.

The politics of future war: Civil-military relations and military doctrine in Britain

AbstractTensions between civil and military authorities over issues such as budgets and strategic posture are unavoidable in pluralistic societies. Scholars of Civil-Military Relations (CMR) have identified a range of practices through which civil-military contestation occurs, and examined their implications for issues such as military effectiveness. This literature, however, has yet to incorporate critical approaches to knowledge into its analysis. Seeking to fill this gap, this article explores how the British military's presentation of its professional knowledge has been increasingly shaped by the political context of British defence policy. More specifically, it argues that the British armed forces’ presentation of opaque imaginations of future war in military doctrine has sought to entrench the role of Defence in an environment of increasingly integrated governmental responses to security challenges. To do this, the article focuses specifically on two concepts that have become increasingly significant in the British defence establishment's articulation of its professional authority and strategic purpose – Multi-Domain Integration (MDI) and the Integrated Operating Concept (IOpC). The article therefore contributes to the literature a fresh perspective of the role of military doctrine and epistemic practices in civil-military contestation, as well as a critical account of the politics of knowledge in British defence.

Pandemic-Related Challenges and Organizational Support Among Personnel in Canada's Defense Establishment.

In the final week of March 2020, 2.8 million Canadians were away from their usual places of work and engaging in remote and/or telework to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 (Statistics Canada, 2020). The Government of Canada's Department of National Defence (DND) and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) were no exception, with most members from the regular force (Reg F), the primary reserve force (P Res), and the DND public service (DND PS) working from home. The COVID-19 Defence Team Survey was administered from April 29th, 2020, and May 22nd, 2020, to gain insight into work, health, and family-related challenges since the onset of the pandemic and change in work arrangements. Responses from five open-ended questions were qualitatively analyzed to determine general themes of concern regarding work, personal, and family related challenges, stress-management and coping strategies, and recommendations for improving the work situation and personal well-being. Given the different roles and conditions of employment, responses of the different groups or “components” of respondents (Reg F, P Res, DND PS) were compared to identify common and unique challenges to inform targeted organizational responses. A total of 26,207 members (Reg F = 13,668, 52.2%; P Res = 5,052, 19.3%; DND PS = 7,487, 28.6%) responded to the survey's five open-ended questions, which yielded a total of 75,000 open-ended responses. When asked about work-related challenges, respondents' most common challenges included dissatisfaction with technology/software, work arrangements, ergonomics, work-life balance, communication within the organization, and the uncertainties regarding career development. In terms of personal and/or family-related challenges, the most common challenges included social isolation, the impact of the pandemic on mental health, school closures and homeschooling, caring for vulnerable family members, and childcare concerns. The most common stress-management and coping strategies included exercise, spending time outdoors, communicating or spending time with family members, household chores/projects, mind-body wellness exercises, and playing games. The most common recommendations made by respondents to improve their work- or personal-related situations included improving technological capabilities, streamlining communication, providing hardware and software necessary to ensure comfortable ergonomics, the provision of flexibility in terms of telework schedules, return-to-work decisions, and the expansion of benefits and access to childcare services. In terms of differences among the components, DND PS personnel were most likely to report dissatisfaction with technological changes and ergonomics, and to recommend improving these technological limitations to maximize productivity. Reg F members, on the other hand, were most likely to recommend increased support and access to childcare, and both Reg F and P Res members were more likely to mention that increased benefits and entitlements in response to the COVID-19 pandemic would be ameliorative. The results of this study highlight several important facts about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on personnel working in large, diverse organizations. For example, advancements in organizational technological capabilities were highlighted herein, and these are likely to grow to maintain productivity should remote work come to be used more extensively in the long-term. This study also highlighted the importance of flexibility and accommodation in relation to individual needs – a trend that was already underway but has taken on greater relevance and urgency in light of the pandemic. This is clearly essential to the organization's role in supporting the well-being of personnel and their families. Clear and streamlined communication regarding organizational changes and support services is also essential to minimize uncertainty and to provide useful supports for coping with this and other stressful situations.

The star and the scepter: a diplomatic history of Israel

Surprisingly few books have been written, especially in English, on Israeli foreign policy and diplomatic history. This may be a function of the academic and policy focus on specific national security issues, especially those caused by Iran, the Arab–Israeli conflict, Palestine and relations with the United States, regarding all of which much ink has been spilled. It may be due as well to the historical overshadowing in Israel of diplomacy (and of the Foreign Ministry), by military and security affairs and the pre-eminence of the defence establishment. In Israel, many of those activities which in other countries fall under the purview of foreign ministries are handled by the Defence Ministry, the defence forces (IDF) and the intelligence services. In any case, diplomacy is too often given short shrift in Israel and in the study of Israel. Emmanuel Navon's book contributes to closing that gap. Navon tries to place Israeli foreign...

Armed with Expertise: The Militarization of American Social Research during the Cold War

This book adds to a library of material on social science and U.S. foreign policy after 1945. Joy Rohde examines the origins and growth of the Special Operations and Research Office (SORO) that the U.S. Army established in the mid-1950s. SORO was formally a social science institute of American University in Washington, DC, but it did contract work for the military. The organization was of midrank among the proliferating groups of social scientists who served the national security interests of the United States during the Cold War. But Rohde effectively shows how SORO embodied the convictions, hopes, and tensions that many historians have found in the dominant trends of social science from 1945 to 1974. The experts of American University–SORO believed that their know-how could benefit the world and enhance free societies. To some extent, moreover, the armed forces took the researchers at their word. The men and women of SORO also often worried that the government could co-opt them, and they fretted about their moral responsibilities to their profession and to the state. These scholars tried to work out the cognitive status of their enterprise: to what extent, and how, was it related to the culture in which it had emerged? Finally, and not least, Rohde explores the supremacy of the army in this marriage; the essential message is that social science was “militarized.”SORO was officially disbanded in 1966 after only ten years of doing business, when the radicalism of the Vietnam War began to shake up national politics. The erudite were embarrassed when activists publicized the connection of the generals to higher education, and SORO collapsed. In various guises, however, the institution survived into the 1980s, although it had fewer and fewer traceable ties to ordinary university life. Rohde tracks SORO’s successors in the 1970s before she offers a final chapter offering provisional ideas about the trajectory of social investigation, post–Cold War, in the interventions of the United States into the Middle East from the early 1990s on.Rohde intimates that the 1960s triumphs of radicals in exposing the links between social science and the military were ambiguous at best. Not wanting to give up on the quest for operational information, the defense establishment funded other entities less coupled to the collegiate system. Social-scientifically trained PhDs were employed in ways that allowed the brass to avoid the scrutiny Americans associated with academic transparency. The victories of critics in the 1960s may have led, Rohde claims, to less oversight than existed when warriors’ social science was more ensconced in universities. She will get no argument from me with this observation. Nonetheless, she finishes up by saying that in the 21st century militarized social science has taken over and fosters the opposite of freedom in foreign policy. This conclusion speaks more to her own liberal politics than anything else.Armed with Expertise is intelligently argued and fluently written, and its set of theses is clearly stated. Yet it is, initially, only the story of SORO from 1956 to 1970, followed by 30 pages of informed speculation on the national security enterprise and social science from the 1980s through the Global War on Terror. Hence, the subtitle is more than misleading.Rohde also exhibits the shared assumptions of intellectual historians of policymaking—assumptions that are questionable. Three of them are relevant here.First, Rohde takes us down a one-way street. The social scientists and their projects are continually “militarized.” No thought is given to the notion that the thick, mal-educated, and non-reflective soldiers may have craved some aspects of the cerebral prestige of the professoriate. The military may have been civilianized as much as the professoriate was militarized.Second, Rohde truly thinks that the social scientists had something to teach the Army and that they advanced the aims of soldiers. At times she allows us to believe that specific research reports are blather but that overall the scholars produced useful “knowledge.” We have little consideration of the idea that, in general, what was manufactured may have been just some kind of informed verbiage. More important, the effusions of social science may have had little effect on U.S. foreign policy and little influence on what the military did. High-ranking military personnel may have simply gotten new names for old ways of thinking.Finally, with a historian’s hindsight, Rohde is easily able to make out how affairs of state influenced Cold War social science. Yet she does not so clearly grasp that her own left-liberal ideas have swayed her thinking, especially her ideas about recent foreign policy. For her and those she has studied, scholarship is too often the carrying on of politics by other means.

Reexamining Threat Perception in Early Cold War Japan

This article discusses whether Japanese military and political elites perceived the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (PRC) as threats during the Cold War. Realist scholars have argued that Japan's security alliance with the United States and the global balance of power were such that most Japanese officials did not perceive either of the Communist giants as a serious military threat. Reaching a similar conclusion but for starkly different reasons, constructivist scholars have argued that cultural, normative, and identity factors explain why Japanese elites did not perceive the Soviet Union or China as militarily threatening. Neither of these arguments holds up. Archival data and oral history collections from Japan's Self-Defense Force and National Diet Library reveal that Japan's defense establishment and political leaders perceived both the Soviet Union and the PRC as extremely threatening and that these perceptions fluctuated in intensity over time, across sectors, and among actors. Psychological factors, including affect, behavioral tendencies, and cognitive beliefs (the ABC model), may better explain why Japanese judged the intensity and source of perceived threats in the manner that they did. These findings underscore why threat perception in the international system is best evaluated by aggregating individual judgments and their distribution among larger groups.

Religious Zionism – theology and social integration

ABSTRACT This article explores the theology behind the integration of religious Zionists in all spheres of activity in Israel, from commerce and industry to agriculture, academia, and the defence establishment. It argues that religious Zionism is not a combination of religiosity and Zionism but a movement motivated by a distinct theology of integration that espouses a combination of Torah and work, not as part of one’s natural duties to support one’s family but as an integral part of one’s religious duties.