Military Effectiveness Research Articles

Civilian Control and Military Effectiveness

This article gives an overview of how civilian control of the military in Slovenia is implemented in practice. It utilizes the perspective of the controlled entity itself, that is, the Slovenian Armed Forces. The findings show the type and characteristics of civilian control in Slovenia and how they hinder military effectiveness. As one of the European transition countries to have concluded the democratization of its civil–military relations, civilian control over Slovenia’s Armed Forces is now in place; however, the control mechanisms have had several debilitating effects on the country’s armed forces—the democratization of civil–military relations has been achieved at the partial expense of military effectiveness. Because of this experience, the Slovenian case could serve as an example of how successful democratization of civil–military relations can sometimes produce negative outcomes, or collateral damage, for the military, especially when the employers of the control mechanisms are not aware of the effects that the exercise of their control might have on the military’s ability to execute core missions. Methodologically, this article brings an approach for analyzing interrelations between civilian control and military effectiveness.

Democratic Peace Theory after 9/11

An analysis of the democratic peace theory in the context of the events of the past decade is limited in the literature and this paper aims to fill this gap by summarizing and examining the validity of each of the arguments. Based on the events from 2001 to 2011, the main components of the democratic peace theory — that democratic dyads rarely go to war with each other but, nevertheless, democracies are as war-prone as autocracies — remain valid although the causal mechanisms that uphold the contention that democracies usually win the wars they fight are still a point of debate. In the Iraq war case (2003), the selection effects show that autocratic leaders face grave consequences, such as being executed, if they lose a war, which makes them more careful about choosing the wars they fight. In contrast, democratic leaders merely suffer from negative electoral consequences if the outcome of a war is unfavorable. Lastly, I conclude that military effectiveness based on cultural explanation/individual soldiering could be more advantageous for the soldiers following a religious doctrine as exhibited by the Taliban’s use of the concept of jihad.

Book Review: Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought: The Red Army’s Military Effectiveness in World War II by Roger R. Reese

Book Review: <i>Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought: The Red Army’s Military Effectiveness in World War II</i> by Roger R. Reese

Reese, Roger R. Why Stalin's Soldiers Fought: The Red Army's Military Effectiveness in World War II (review)

Reese, Roger R. Why Stalin's Soldiers Fought: The Red Army's Military Effectiveness in World War II (review)

The Point of the Bayonet

This article investigates the continued presence of the bayonet in the face of rapid and sustained military-technological change, and argues that the technical characteristics of this simple weapon are minimally implicated in its longevity. Rather, the bayonet’s continuing military effectiveness is conjured out of a collection of social practices amongst which the physical artifact is embedded during the process of training soldiers. The purpose of these practices is to forge strong associations between bayonet and aggressive behavior, thereby bolstering the moral fortitude of soldiers in times of battlefield crisis. The real “point” of the bayonet is therefore psychological, as opposed to material, in character.

Spice, Bath Salts, and the U.S. Military: The Emergence of Synthetic Cannabinoid Receptor Agonists and Cathinones in the U.S. Armed Forces

Designer drugs are synthetic compounds that contain modified molecular structures of illegal or controlled substances. They are produced clandestinely with the intent to elicit effects similar to controlled substances while circumventing existing drug laws. Two classes of designer drugs that have risen to recent prominence are "spice," synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists that mimic the effect of tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in cannabis, and "bath salts," synthetic cathinones, stimulants structurally related to amphetamines that have effects similar to cocaine and methamphetamine. Although these substances have only gained prominence recently, service members of the U.S. armed forces have not been immune to spice and bath salt abuse. These substances are often perceived as safe and are available via the Internet, in head shops and from dealers. Spice and bath salt abuse is increasingly associated with serious medical and psychiatric problems. Military health care providers must be familiar with these important new classes of drugs. This article discusses the background, current civilian and military legal status, clinical effects, pharmacology, and clinical management of synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists and synthetic cathinones.

Efficient, Efficacious and Humane Responses to Non-European Bodies in British Military Medicine, 1780–1815

An examination of manuscript and printed evidence from correspondence, reports, journals and treatises reveals that the attention afforded to the non-European (male) body within military medicine during the period from 1780 to 1815 stemmed from a combination of strategic, economic, medical and humanitarian concerns. Military medical practitioners were highly aware of bodily, as well as situational, differences between groups of people, and many of these men believed that an understanding of such differences might assist in improving the military effectiveness of British forces in hot climates. One of the recommended methods for promoting greater efficiency within the military in such regions was to supplement or even to replace Europeans with non-Europeans, especially Africans in the West Indies and West Africa. This article contends that, although such strategies (and policies when implemented) were aimed at preserving the lives of white Europeans, increased focus on the health of non-Europeans became a fundamental, albeit perhaps unintended, consequence. The extant records divulge a sustained dialogue about how best to safeguard the health of, and provide ‘necessities’ and efficacious medical care for, the non-European body. In addition to revealing medical opinions and advice concerning aspects such as food, alcohol, hygiene, clothing and lodgings, the sources also highlight the specific challenges that arose within medical encounters between British practitioners and their non-European patients, including those relating to language, religion and native customs and medical practices. Military medical practitioners habitually expressed negative sentiments regarding the health, customs and capabilities of particular non-European groups due to a combination of cultural preconceptions, professional viewpoints and personal predilections and/or prejudices. Yet, as this article demonstrates, many medical men also simultaneously argued that these groups deserved efficacious, compassionate and humane treatment in the context of military medicine.

The Bear's New Wheels (and Tracks): US-Armored and Other Vehicles and Soviet Military Effectiveness during the Great Patriotic War in Words and Photographs

Using a range of Soviet archival sources and memoirs this article examines the contribution made by US-supplied tanks and other armored and unarmored vehicles to the Soviet war effort, focusing on examples in Soviet archival photographs reproduced alongside the text.

I Will Survive: Coup-Proofing, Military Effectiveness, and Strategic Substitution

In order to counter the threat of a coup, states often undertake a number of strategies to coup-proof their militaries, such as creating institutional redundancy, severely limiting interbranch communications, and basing promotions on loyalty rather than merit. As a result of such policies, however, the fighting effectiveness of these armed forces is degraded and the marginal return on military investment is greatly reduced. We argue that leaders who have coup-proofed their militaries undertake several substitution policies in order to offset their military weakness when faced with external threats. These policies include: pursuing chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, and forging alliances. We find support for these theoretical predictions in quantitative tests on data with global coverage between 1970 and 2001.

The Bad, the Good, and the Ugly

Does civil–military conflict harm military effectiveness? Most previous empirical literature on the effects of civil–military conflict has utilized dichotomous indicators of the presence or absence of overall civilian control. However, the extant theoretical literature is clear that mid-levels of civil–military conflict could be good for innovation and overall decision making. In line with these arguments, the author argues that we should not expect all civil–military conflict to harm military effectiveness and, by extension, international crisis bargaining outcome. Instead, some civil–military conflict should have a positive effect on the overall success of the military. Utilizing new events data that captures the level of civil–military conflict cross nationally from 1990 to 2004, the author examines how civil–military conflict actually has an inverse U-shaped relationship with crisis success. This project also adds to the theoretical literature by examining variations across different degrees of civil–military conflicts, drawing attention to the usefulness of mid-range civil–military “friction.”

Do Democracies Engage Less in Coup-Proofing? On the Relationship between Regime Type and Civil-Military Relations1

The existing literature on military effectiveness established the robust claim that democracies are more successful and effective in winning interstate wars. One mechanism that explains this relationship heavily draws upon the underlying effect of regime type on civil—military relations. Still, this relationship has not yet been explored systematically, and rigorous empirical research on this issue remains surprisingly scarce. In order to address this shortcoming, this study investigates the patterns of civil—military relations according to different regime types, that is, democracies and nondemocracies. More specifically, the authors examine whether and how democracies invest in coup-proofing, that is, strategies employed to prevent the military from seizing power. The main argument is derived from a principal-agent logic and claims that coup-proofing is both a relatively less attractive and necessary instrument for democratic principals. By analyzing newly compiled time-series cross-sectional data on states' coup-proofing efforts in 1975–1999, the core hypothesis is tested in a quantitative framework.

Adopting a Recipe for Success: Modern Armed Forces and the Institutionalization of the Principles of War

The prevailing explanation of the institutionalization of the principles of war is misleading. Although the introduction of the principles into Western doctrine coincided with total war and the need to train unprecedented numbers of soldiers and junior officers in tactics, the fact that the principles disappeared from doctrines immediately prior to and during the Second World War suggests that they were not institutionalized to meet an increased need to educate the military. Instead, we test two other explanations: one drawing on the principles’ military effectiveness and one drawing upon the principles’ explanatory power. We find that neither one of these hypotheses stand. Instead, we conclude by elaborating on how the institutionalization of the principles of war can be made understandable using non-rationalist frameworks, in particular the growth of a particular kind of identity of staff officers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. According to this framework, the two world wars interrupted—rather than promoted—the institutionalization of the principles, since the wars with their large death tolls and mass recruitment increased the difficulties of creating a separate and unique identity for the burgeoning corps of staff officers.

Victory for hire: private security companies' impact on military effectiveness

At peak utilization, private security contractors (PSCs) constituted a larger occupying force in Iraq and Afghanistan than did U.S. troops. Yet, no book has so far assessed the impact of private security companies on military effectiveness. Filling that gap, Molly Dunigan reveals how the increasing tendency to outsource missions to PSCs has significant ramifications for both tactical and long-term strategic military effectiveness-and for the likelihood that the democracies that deploy PSCs will be victorious in warfare, both over the short- and long-term. She highlights some of the ongoing problems with deploying large numbers of private security contractors alongside the military, specifically identifying the deployment scenarios involving PSCs that are most likely to have either positive or negative implications for military effectiveness. She then provides detailed recommendations to alleviate these problems. Given the likelihood that the U.S. will continue to use PSCs in future contingencies, this book has real implications for the future of U.S. military and foreign policy.

Why Stalin's Soldiers Fought: The Red Army's Military Effectiveness in World War II by Reese, Roger R.

Why Stalin's Soldiers Fought: The Red Army's Military Effectiveness in World War II by Reese, Roger R.

The Problem of Metrics: Assessing Progress and Effectiveness in the Vietnam War

During the Vietnam War the complex nature of fighting an insurgency posed significant problems for US Army officers attempting to measure progress and military effectiveness. While much of the Vietnam historiography maintains that ‘body counts’ served as the primary, if not only, indicator of wartime success, such arguments overlook the vast numbers of reports attempting to measure progress and performance. Problems in evaluating progress stemmed not from a lack of effort on the part of army officers or from a single-minded commitment to counting bodies. Rather, complications arose from attempting to collect too many facts, figures, and statistics without evaluating how accurately such data reflected progress in a complex political-military environment.

Dynamic service integration for reliable and sustainable capability provision

The move towards network enabled capability (NEC) by the UK Ministry of Defence is designed to achieve enhanced military effect through the networking and coherent integration of existing and future resources including sensors, weapon systems and decision-makers to achieve a more flexible and responsive military. This article addresses the existing reliability and sustainability issues of large-scale military systems and proposes new architectural approaches of dynamic service integration for NEC to adapt to evolution occurring in services and capability for constructing next-generation software-intensive military systems. The reliability and performance of the proposed architectural approaches have been verified through modelling and simulation of service-oriented architecture for NEC and demonstrated through developing and testing a NEC system for a region surveillance capability scenario. The experimental results indicate that the proposed architectural approaches provide a high level of reliability and sustainability in the provision of NEC.

What Determines Military Victory? Testing the Modern System

This paper assesses the relative importance of force employment as a cause of military victory. It focuses on the adoption of the modern system in interstate wars since 1917. Using cases, contingency tables, and regression analysis, we find that war participants who use the modern system are significantly more likely to succeed in decisive battlefield engagements. However, the modern system does not predict victory at a higher rate than more traditional unit-level explanations for combat effectiveness, suggesting that it might function as a causal mechanism linking factors like regime type and material endowments with martial capabilities. Exploring the possible links between unit-level explanations of military power and the organizational-level force employment indicators, we find that more materially powerful states and democracies tend to implement the modern system at a higher rate than other types of actors, but more extreme autocracies also frequently adopt. Combined, these findings suggest the relevance of continuing to explore how organizational-level variables impact military effectiveness.

Sacred Time and Conflict Initiation

This article examines the manner in which rituals and symbols associated with sacred time have influenced conflict initiation. Leaders will time their attacks with sacred dates in the religious calendar if the force multiplying effects of sacred time, motivation, and vulnerability, outweigh its force dividing effects, constraint, and outrage. This is most likely to occur under three conditions: When conflict occurs across religious divides, when the sacred day is unambiguous in significance and meaning, and when rituals connected to that day will undermine an opponents’ military effectiveness. I illustrate these effects with twentieth century examples, including the timing of insurgent attacks in Iraq and the launching of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. By exploring the pervasive effects of religious calendars on modern combat, I hope to redirect the focus of the study of religion and violence away from the narrow preoccupation with fundamentalism and terrorism and onto the much broader range of cases in which religion shapes secular conflict in multiple—and often unexpected—ways.

Coup-Proofing and Military Effectiveness in Interstate Wars, 1967–99

This study examines the influence of civil–military relations on military effectiveness. More specifically, we investigate how coup-proofing, that is, the strategies and tactics employed to prevent the military from seizing power, affects battlefield performance. The main argument claims that coup-proofing has a negative impact on soldiers’ leadership qualities, initiative, and the ability to coordinate different military units. Ultimately, the higher a country’s coup-proofing efforts relative to its opponent, the worse its effectiveness on the battlefield. We test this hypothesis using data on battlefield outcomes and coup-proofing between 1967 and 1999.

Making a Gothic History: Does the Getica of Jordanes Preserve Genuinely Gothic Traditions?

This study analyzes the components of Jordanes’ History of the Goths , with the aim of identifying the contributions respectively of Ablabius, Cassiodorus, and Jordanes himself. It is argued that while much of the detail of the historical narrative is derived from classical Greek and Roman sources the early history also includes genuinely Gothic traditions that originated before the Goths entered the empire. There has been much recent discussion concerning the nature of the Goths and the other peoples that destroyed the Roman Empire. One view is that the sense of identity that gave the Goths and the other gentes their sense of cohesion, and their political and military effectiveness, only arose after their entry into the empire. This study takes a contrary view, arguing that when Goths entered the empire they were already a gens, with its own evolving tradition and sense of identity, so that their history within the empire was a continuation of a much longer history that is scarcely documented because theirs was not a literate culture.