Army Leadership Research Articles

U.S. Department of Defense's Perspective on Funding for Research on Whole Grains and Health

The mission of military nutrition research is to identify and apply nutritional strategies to sustain and enhance physical and mental performance and maintain the health of military personal conducting extended operations in all environmental extremes. DOD’s nutrition research is conducted at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine’s (USARIEM) Military Nutrition Division (MND) located in Natick, MA. DOD’s combat ration R&D is conducted by the U.S. Army Natick Soldier RD&E Center in Natick, MA. DOD’s nutrition research and combat ration development programs are highly coordinated and mutually supportive. Combat rations for individual soldiers are designed to be low-weight, low-volume, of high nutrition density, ready-toeat, shelf-stable, and highly acceptable to our war fighters. Because of these design features, combat rations are limited in whole grains but usually contain a bread item. In 1985, the Army leadership requested USARIEM to conduct a series of studies to evaluate the effectiveness of dining facility initiatives to improve soldiers’ eating habits. The focus of the initiatives was to reduce consumption of total fats to not more than 35% of calories. The strategies used included serving low fat milk, educating cooks and diners, and modifying menus, recipes, and food preparation methods. As shown in Table I, these dining facility initiatives were very effective in reducing total fat intakes (% fat calories) in the military dining facilities (DFACs) studied from an average of 45% pre-initiatives to 32% post-initiatives. (1) As shown in Table II, total cholesterol intakes were also greatly reduced and total carbohydrate intakes correspondingly increased in both male and female West Point cadets. (3,4) During the past four years there has been a renewed interest in improving DFACs and the quality of food service. In August 2010, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) awarded a $10.3 M contract to AMARACK for a food transformation initiative (FTI) at six USAF bases. The FTI is a pilot program designed to improve the quality, variety, and availability of food operations and to increase utilization of DFACs by airman and their families. In December 2010, all the Services approved new DOD menu standards with the primary goal of promoting and incorporating healthier foods in the DFACs. All Army DFACs will follow the DOD Menu Standards to include offering sliced bread containing whole grains, whole grain waffles and French toast, whole grain cereals, and whole grain pasta. The Army incorporated the DOD menu standards into a soldier fueling initiative (SFI) announced by LT. General Mark Hertling, Deputy Commanding General for Initial Military Training (IMT) in September 2010. The SFI will modify Army garrison menu standards to promote healthier eating and it will prescribe standardized menus, recipes, preparation methods, and portion sizes at all IMT DFACs. The SFI will also market nutrition awareness and healthier food and beverage choices. A total of twelve Army installations with IMT DFACs will implement the program that is designed to increase IMT soldier fitness and

Seeing Like a Court: Documenting Histories of Armed Conflict through the Lens of Judging International Crimes

Seeing Like a Court:Documenting Histories of Armed Conflict through the Lens of Judging International Crimes Victor Peskin, Associate Professor (bio) Richard Ashby Wilson , Writing History in International Criminal Trials (Cambridge University Press 2011), 244 pages, ISBN No. 978-0-521-13831-4. Assessing how well international criminal tribunals document history has gained renewed scrutiny in light of two recent landmark Appeals Chamber decisions at the Yugoslavia and Rwanda tribunals. The November 2012 acquittal of Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markác for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 1995 Croatian military operation that retook the Krajina region from Serb forces may prove to be the most contentious appellate decision handed down by the tribunal. This is underscored by the extraordinarily strong dissenting opinions from the appellate bench, one of which criticized an aspect of the majority's reasoning as "grotesque" and the judgment itself as contradicting "any sense of justice." The appellate decision effectively rewrites the history of this crucial part of the war by overturning the Trial Chamber's decision that found the two former generals, along with then Croatian President Franjo Tuđman, were involved in a joint criminal enterprise to expel ethnic Serbs from Croatia. The Croatian attack, which led to the exodus of some 150,000 to 200,000 Serbs, has long been viewed in Croatia as the culmination of a just war of liberation, but criticized internationally as ethnic cleansing. This 2012 appellate decision, along with Appeals Chamber acquittals of the Kosovo Liberation Army leader Ramush Haradinaj and Bosnian Muslim Naser Oríc, challenges the prosecution's overall narrative which recognizes that serious violations of international humanitarian law were committed by all sides in the Yugoslav wars of succession. But from the tribunal's recent Appeals Chamber's decisions emerge a one-sided narrative that effectively exonerates the culpability of key high-level non-Serb suspects. The Rwanda tribunal's December 2011 Appeals Chamber and the December 2008 Trial Chamber decisions in the case of Théoneste Bagosora have also upended the dominant narrative of the Rwandan genocide as a carefully planned conspiracy directed from the top of the interim government that took power in early April 1994. The Trial Chamber's 2008 decision convicted Bagosora for genocide, but found he played no direct role in conspiring to organize it. The Appeals Chamber further diminished the culpability of Bagosora, the tribunal's prime genocide suspect, and reduced his sentence from life to thirty-five years. Genocide certainly occurred in Rwanda in 1994, but as Thierry Cruvellier wrote in the International Justice Tribune, with this appellate decision "[it seems] almost impossible to understand what's the narrative [End Page 769] of the genocide that has come out of the most important trials at the ICTR."1 By overturning key aspects of the dominant narratives of the Croatian and Rwandan conflicts, the Appeals Chamber decisions may well strengthen the arguments against international tribunals moving into the hazardous realm of documenting the histories of armed conflicts. Richard Wilson begins his groundbreaking book, Writing History in International Criminal Trials, by explaining the foundation of the scholarly consensus behind these arguments. Ever since Hannah Arendt's piercing criticism of the Eichmann trial's obsession with linking the Holocaust to the long history of anti-Semitism, many observers have been wary of seeing courtroom trials diverge from their legal mission of determining individual criminal responsibility. This skepticism, as Wilson explains, is informed by two distinct perspectives. The liberal legalism camp, of which Arendt belonged, argues that criminal trials should have the singular mandate of determining a defendant's guilt or innocence. Arendt was not only concerned that the prosecution's strategy in the Eichmann trial produced "bad history and cheap rhetoric,"2 but that it undermined the defendant's due process rights. Recent law-and-society scholarship cites different reasons for why courts that venture into history writing will inevitably produce impoverished accounts of past conflicts. Some in this camp argue that courts can only deliver partial truths because of their selective and limited focus. According to Wilson, others emphasize that "[l]aw's unique conventions, special categories, and exceptional rules impel courts to perceive historical events through a...

The Army Selected Reserve Dental Readiness System: Overview, Assessment, and Recommendations

The Army Selected Reserve Dental Readiness System (ASDRS) is a key dental program directed by the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Manpower & Reserve Affairs) starting in fiscal year 09. The Army National Guard and Army Reserve have steadily implemented ASDRS over the past 3 years as a means to improve the historically abysmal dental readiness of the Army Reserve Component (RC). Dental readiness is essential for sustaining an Army RC Operational Force. ASDRS is a tool for RC commanders to provide contract dental readiness care in support of over 558 thousand nonmobilized Selected Reserve Citizen-Soldiers dispersed throughout the 54 states and U.S. territories, at home station before alert, and if necessary after alert (throughout the Army force generation cycle). This article examines the status of ASDRS implementation, assesses its effectiveness in improving Army RC Dental Readiness, and provides Army leadership recommendations regarding the following focus areas: (1) command emphasis, (2) program execution, and (3) synergy with the Military Health System and Department of Veterans Affairs.

War Crimes, Wristbands, and Web 2.0: Exploring Online Justice Advocacy, Colonialism and ‘Civilizing Missions’ through <i>Kony2012</i>

On March 5, 2012, the advocacy organization Invisible Children released a short 30-minute film entitled Kony2012, on YouTube.com. Within days, the video had gone viral, gaining a mass global viewership. By December 2012, the video had received over 94 million views worldwide, attaining the unofficial status as “the most viral video of all time.” While Kony2012 raised awareness about the urgency of the manhunt for Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony and his exploitation of child soldiers in Uganda, the film generated much controversy. Commentators, both from within Uganda and beyond, raised serious questions about the oversimplified Colonial-style intervention (with its especial focus on military interven- tion) that the video seemed to promote. This article explores in-depth to what extent the Kony2012 phenomenon embodies both the material and discursive legacies of colonialism. It finds that, while fostering a digital citizenship that promotes the sharing of valuable information, such online advocacy may also unintentionally reproduce and rapidly disseminate ste- reotypes, bias, and racism. Thus, Kony2012 is a case study of the ways in which online media can be both productive and limiting in addressing hate and exploitation. While the Kony2012 campaign quickly and impressively raised popular awareness of child trafficking and exploitation, it nevertheless subtly marginalized the experiences and cultural perspectives of the Ugandan people and privileged a Western-centric interventionism.

The Person-Event Data Environment: leveraging big data for studies of psychological strengths in soldiers.

The Department of Defense (DoD) strives to efficiently manage the large volumes of administrative data collected and repurpose this information for research and analyses with policy implications. This need is especially present in the United States Army, which maintains numerous electronic databases with information on more than one million Active-Duty, Reserve, and National Guard soldiers, their family members, and Army civilian employees. The accumulation of vast amounts of digitized health, military service, and demographic data thus approaches, and may even exceed, traditional benchmarks for Big Data. Given the challenges of disseminating sensitive personal and health information, the Person-Event Data Environment (PDE) was created to unify disparate Army and DoD databases in a secure cloud-based enclave. This electronic repository serves the ultimate goal of achieving cost efficiencies in psychological and healthcare studies and provides a platform for collaboration among diverse scientists. This paper provides an overview of the uses of the PDE to perform command surveillance and policy analysis for Army leadership. The paper highlights the confluence of both economic and behavioral science perspectives elucidating empirically-based studies examining relations between psychological assets, health, and healthcare utilization. Specific examples explore the role of psychological assets in major cost drivers such as medical expenditures both during deployment and stateside, drug use, attrition from basic training, and low reenlistment rates. Through creation of the PDE, the Army and scientific community can now capitalize on the vast amounts of personnel, financial, medical, training and education, deployment, and security systems that influence Army-wide policies and procedures.

Development of an Army Water Security Strategy: Stateside Component

Abstract:In October 2010, the Army Environmental Policy institute initiated the development of an Army water security strategy, which was ultimately published in December 2011. The purpose of this effort was to; (1) provide a complete workable definition for Army water security, (2) conduct the first comprehensive study of water security management in the Army, and (3) identify the key issues on which Army leadership can focus to ensure that the Army has enough water of suitable quality for the foreseeable future. A review of key policy drivers was followed by a series of interviews of personnel inside and outside the Army. The culminating effort identified four major goal areas, three of which apply to stateside military installations: (1) water resources sustainability – preserve sources, protect rights, (2) reduce demand, and (3) maintain infrastructure integrity and security. This paper provides a condensed view of the objectives associated with each of these three goals.

The Enigma of Isaac Babel: Biography, History, Context (review)

Reviewed by: The Enigma of Isaac Babel: Biography, History, Context Lauren Kaminsky The Enigma of Isaac Babel: Biography, History, Context, edited by Gregory Freidin. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. 288 pp. $60.00. The Enigma of Isaac Babel is infused with a sense of loss: Babel’s manuscripts and correspondence were arrested with him, presumed lost in the wake of his execution at the age of forty-five. Laments of a life cut short, stories never written, and papers presumed gone forever contribute to a sense that there is much more to know about Babel, whose early fame with the publication of Red Cavalry in 1926 seemed to foretell a long and fruitful career. In the absence of [End Page 173] an archive, Gregory Freidin in his introduction compares Babel to the hackneyed Russian riddle inside an enigma, hence the title of this interdisciplinary volume. Comprising mainly essays presented at the Isaac Babel Workshop at Stanford University in 2004, the book is divided into three unequal parts: a short first section on Babel’s biography, a rich middle part on his works in their historical context, and a crowded third section on his stories in the context of world literature. Highlighting the complexities of what it meant for Babel to be a Jew from Odessa who wrote in Russian in the Soviet Union, the volume successfully demonstrates his centrality to European, Soviet, and Jewish literary and historical traditions. In Part One are essays by Patricia Blake and Freidin, both of whom are completing book-length biographies of Babel. Seeking evidence about Babel’s life in his own writing, their essays are by turns autobiographical as well. Blake tells a captivating story about her start as a Babel scholar in Moscow in 1962, when she was a journalist casting around for biographical sources while being tailed by a KGB motorcade. Freidin’s contribution is an account of the writer’s early influences and reference points, concluding with a reading of the play Maria, the last major new work published in Babel’s lifetime. Freidin, who organized the 2004 Babel Workshop, also invited theater director Carl Weber to stage a production of Babel’s Maria for the conference participants, and Weber’s statement about adapting the play for a contemporary American audience concludes the volume as a whole. Freidin and Weber’s essays stand on either side of the collection like bookends, reminders both of the value of reinterpretation and also of the event that occasioned the publication of the book itself. Parts Two and Three exceed expectations by providing a sustained and layered analysis of Babel as both a Jew and as a Soviet man participating in the creation of a new revolutionary culture. Reading Red Cavalry and Babel’s civil war diary for evidence of the Red Army’s attitudes toward the Jews, Oleg Budnitskii also examines press clippings and archival material to confirm that the antisemitism Babel documented as an “embedded” war reporter reached the highest levels of party, state, and army leadership. Similarly, Carol Avins offers a reading of “The Journey” as a record of the complex Jewish experience of the Russian Revolution. Babel occasionally concealed his own Jewishness behind an assumed name, while at the same time noting in his diary empathetic accounts of Jewish revolutionaries, and Avins reads a similar ambivalence in his story that has as its centerpiece the murder and mutilation of a Jew witnessed by a fellow Jew who narrowly escapes the same fate. Turning from the Jewish experience to the language of the Soviet state, Michael Gorham’s brilliant contribution juxtaposes Red Cavalry with Dmitrii Furmanov’s Chapaev, a [End Page 174] foundational text in the Soviet literary canon instrumental in developing a new revolutionary discourse. Concluding the section, Marietta Chudakova illuminates Babel’s impact on Soviet prose, arguing that diluted elements of his style became staples of Russian-language literature from the 1930s through the 1950s. Part Three asserts Babel’s place in the canon of world literary fiction, amassing an army of scholars to argue the importance of a relatively small body of work. Here Robert Alter situates Babel alongside luminaries like Tolstoy and Kafka in following Flaubert’s...

Photographs of Early Twentieth-Century Cuba by Sumner W. Matteson

In February 1904, American itinerant photographer Sumner W. Matteson, a native of Decorah, Iowa, visited Cuba for about four months. He travelled extensively throughout the island and took over five hundred photographs. It was the first time Matteson had left the United States and, upon reaching the island, he headed into the countryside and began to photograph a wide range of individuals. Matteson's documentary work represents an image of Cuba that was relatively unknown in the United States at the time. His photographs cut across racial, gender, class, and geographic lines, and portrayed Matteson's subjects with a sense of pride and agency. This paper will argue that Matteson portrayed Cuba and its people with an intimacy unlike that of any photographer before him — this during the founding years of the republic, shortly after a four-year American occupation, and at a time when Cubans were seen as exotic others. The photographs reveal a multi-hued population of blacks, mulattoes, and whites, male and female — subjects rarely portrayed sensitively in photographs of the time. This paper will offer some suggestions as to why this white, Midwestern male photographer did not fall into the potentially exploitative trap of representing the Cuban people in the customary way. Matteson's images provide depictions of the Cuban people that had been previously absent, and offered a face of the rural subaltern consisting of both blacks and whites, working-class Cubans, and even a former Rebel Army leader — all less than twenty years after the abolition of slavery in Cuba in 1886.

A Selective Review of Leadership Studies in the U.S. Army

This article provides an overview of Army leadership studies and highlights past, current, and future directions for military leadership studies within the U.S. Army. We discuss research on the conceptualization and measurement of military leadership, as well as leader development and situational leadership. Specifically, we note that the Army's conceptualization of leadership has evolved from job-analytic approaches toward competency-based approaches; that measurement of leadership has shifted from cognitive factors to interpersonal competencies; that leader development has focused on preparing leaders for the full spectrum of operations; and that focus on contextual factors has led to increased research in situational leadership.

Military aviation in Ireland 1921-45

This thesis initially sets out to examine the context of the purchase of two aircraft, on the authority of Michael Collins and funded by the second Dail, during the Treaty negotiations of 1921. The subsequent development of civil aviation policy including the regulation of civil aviation, the management of a civil aerodrome and the possible start of a state sponsored civil air service to Britain or elsewhere is also explained. Michael Collins’ leading role in the establishment of a small Military Air Service in 1922 and the role of that service in the early weeks of the Civil War are examined in detail. The modest expansion in the resources and role of the Air Service following Collins’ death is examined in the context of antipathy toward the ex-RAF pilots and the general indifference of the new Army leadership to military aviation. The survival of military aviation - the Army Air Corps - will be examined in the context of the parsimony of Finance, and the administrative traumas of demobilisation, the Anny mutiny and reorganisation processes of 1923/24. The manner in which the Army leadership exercised command over, and directed aviation policy and professional standards affecting career pilots is examined in the contexts of the contrasting preparations for war of the Army and the Government. The Air Corps’ active roles during the Emergency are assessed against the background of inadequate preparation, insufficient and inappropriate aircraft and improbable tasking by GHQ. Secondary roles in support of the RAF war effort are also elucidated. The Army’s investigation, into the inadequacies of the Air Corps, is examined against the background of the command exercised by an inexpert and disciplinarian officer. The investigation itself is assessed in order to highlight any the bias or prejudice that may have pertained.

The Army and Politics in Ancient Egypt

The Army and Politics in Ancient Egypt Toby Wilkinson (bio) To the student of Egypt’s ancient history, the pervasive influence of the army in the country’s current politics comes as no surprise. Throughout the pharaonic era, from the foundation of the Egyptian state (ca. 3000 B.C.) to its absorption into the Roman Empire (30 B.C.), military might played a role at least as important as hereditary succession in determining who ruled the Nile Valley. The first king of the First Dynasty, Narmer, won his throne by force and proclaimed his victory in a great commemorative stone palette decorated with scenes of military victory. Celebrated as Egypt’s founding document, the Narmer Palette stands today in the entrance of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, just yards from the site of the popular uprising that recently unseated President Hosni Mubarak. In the centuries and millennia following Narmer, the kingship of Egypt was always vulnerable to seizure by the strongman of the day, despite its presentation in art and writing as a sacred institution, god-given and immutable. More often than not, that strongman was an army commander. This pattern of succession is most apparent at times of political upheaval, for example the century of turmoil that followed the collapse of the Middle Kingdom in the 18th century B.C. In this uncertain time, when the kingship passed from one claimant to another with bewildering rapidity, one of the men who seized the throne (and ruled long enough to commission a stone statue of himself) was called Mermesha. His name simply means “overseer of the army.” Another ruler, King Sobekhotep III (ca. 1680 B.C.), started his career in the palace guard and rose through the ranks of the army to a position where he was able, successfully, to challenge for the throne. On his royal monuments he made a virtue of his background, openly flaunting his non-royal origins so as to distinguish himself from the tired and discredited royal family that, a generation or two earlier, had led Egypt into disunity and chaos. Sobkehotep III did not inaugurate a dynasty of his own, but instead in typical army fashion he left the throne to three brothers— Neferhotep I, Sahathor, and Sobekhotep IV—who shared his military backround (their grandfather was an infantry officer). Even in periods of strong central rule, such as the “golden age” of the Egyptian Eighteenth Dynasty (ca. 1539–1319 B.C.), a close study of the historical sources reveals the central role of the army in the succession to the throne. The founding kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty came to power as victors in a protracted civil war. Once established in the royal palace, they were keen to portray themselves in a new light: as kings by divine right, the guardians of Egypt’s religious traditions. Yet they never forgot their military origins. Thus when the childless Amenhotep I looked for an heir to succeed him, he chose an ambitious and dynamic army leader (the future Thutmose I) who would extend the borders of Egypt and forge an empire in the Middle East. Thutmose I’s surviving royal inscriptions betray his origins. In a tone of rampant militarism, they extol warfare as the righteous duty of an Egyptian ruler, and laud the king as a great warrior who is ready to roam the earth and take on any adversary: “He trod its ends in might and victory seeking a fight, but he found no one who would stand up to him.”1 Thutmose I’s empire building strengthened the military’s grip on power. In earlier ages Egypt had depended upon conscript armies, raised from the general population as and when occasion demanded and bolstered by mercenaries. But such a system could not meet the demands of forging and maintaining an empire. The annexation of large tracts of territory in Syria, Palestine, and Nubia necessitated permanent garrisons to enforce Egyptian control, backed up by the threat of overwhelming force in case of insurrection. Only a permanent standing army could deliver such a policy. The Eighteenth Dynasty thus witnessed the creation of a full-time army for the first time in...

Uganda: Army Leadership Reshuffle

Africa Research Bulletin: Political, Social and Cultural SeriesVolume 48, Issue 5 p. 18852A-18852A Uganda: Army Leadership Reshuffle First published: 16 June 2011 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-825X.2011.03893.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume48, Issue5June 2011Pages 18852A-18852A RelatedInformation

Courage, Careers, and Comrades: Theodore Roosevelt and the United States Army Officer Corps

Theodore Roosevelt made reform of the U.S. Army Officer Corps a priority during his presidency. He felt compelled to act because of the problems that the army experienced during the war with Spain. As a volunteer soldier, Roosevelt had witnessed the shortcomings of many of the top-ranking officers in meeting the physical and organizational demands of the fighting, but he also acted because he wanted high-minded, intelligent, and physically fit leaders who could inspire his fellow citizens to a greater sense of duty in post-frontier America. Roosevelt's efforts to promote promising army officers to top commands and mandate physical fitness standards would prove disruptive, as he elevated officers out of the normal line of promotion. These practices would, in turn, generate protests in Congress and from within the military. The resulting controversies would cause Roosevelt to fall short of his goals for improving army leadership, roil civil-military relations, and demonstrate his limits as a political leader.

COMOROS: Army Leader Assassinated

Africa Research Bulletin: Political, Social and Cultural SeriesVolume 47, Issue 6 p. 18440A-18440B COMOROS: Army Leader Assassinated First published: 02 August 2010 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-825X.2010.03326.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume47, Issue6July 2010Pages 18440A-18440B RelatedInformation

The Enigma of Isaac Babel: biography, history, context

The Enigma of Isaac Babel: Biography, History, Context, edited by Gregory Freidin. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. 288 pp. $60.00. The Enigma of Isaac Babel is infused with a sense of loss: Babel's manuscripts and correspondence were arrested with him, presumed lost in the wake of his execution at the age of forty-five. Laments of a life cut short, stories never written, and papers presumed gone forever contribute to a sense that there is much more to know about Babel, whose early fame with the publication of Red Cavalry in 1926 seemed to foretell a long and fruitful career. In the absence of an archive, Gregory Freidin in his introduction compares Babel to the hackneyed Russian riddle inside an enigma, hence the title of this interdisciplinary volume. Comprising mainly essays presented at the Isaac Babel Workshop at Stanford University in 2004, the book is divided into three unequal parts: a short first section on Babel's biography, a rich middle part on his works in their historical context, and a crowded third section on his stories in the context of world literature. Highlighting the complexities of what it meant for Babel to be a Jew from Odessa who wrote in Russian in the Soviet Union, the volume successfully demonstrates his centrality to European, Soviet, and Jewish literary and historical traditions. In Part One are essays by Patricia Blake and Freidin, both of whom are completing book-length biographies of Babel. Seeking evidence about Babel's life in his own writing, their essays are by turns autobiographical as well. Blake tells a captivating story about her start as a Babel scholar in Moscow in 1962, when she was a journalist casting around for biographical sources while being tailed by a KGB motorcade. Freidin's contribution is an account of the writer's early influences and reference points, concluding with a reading of the play Maria, the last major new work published in Babel's lifetime. Freidin, who organized the 2004 Babel Workshop, also invited theater director Carl Weber to stage a production of Babel's Maria for the conference participants, and Weber's statement about adapting the play for a contemporary American audience concludes the volume as a whole. Freidin and Weber's essays stand on either side of the collection like bookends, reminders both of the value of reinterpretation and also of the event that occasioned the publication of the book itself. Parts Two and Three exceed expectations by providing a sustained and layered analysis of Babel as both a Jew and as a Soviet man participating in the creation of a new revolutionary culture. Reading Red Cavalry and Babel's civil war diary for evidence of the Red Army's attitudes toward the Jews, Oleg Budnitskii also examines press clippings and archival material to confirm that the antisemitism Babel documented as an embedded war reporter reached the highest levels of party, state, and army leadership. …

Comprehensive Weight Management Program for Army ROTC Cadets

A comprehensive weight management program following evidence‐based guidelines was implemented to improve weight related measures in a class of Army ROTC cadets. The program was requested by ROTC officers because 13% of the class exceeded Army standards for BMI and percent body fat, which would prohibit acceptance into the Army's Leadership Development and Assessment Course (LDAC). All protocols were compliant with Institutional Review Board guidelines. 23 subjects were randomly assigned to a control (n=12) or treatment (n=13) group. Controls were given access to web‐based nutrition education. Treatment subjects were provided with 20 weekly individualized counseling sessions to improve dietary practices and increase physical activity (PA). All were assessed for height, weight, body fat (BODPOD®) and BMI at baseline, mid‐point and end. Repeated measures ANOVAs revealed a between group difference in fruit intake, with the treatment group consuming more servings/day (P<.05). Within group differences were found for % calories from fat (P<.02), % body fat (P<.05), PA (P<.007) and Army Physical Fitness Test scores (P<.001). At conclusion, all cadets met Army BMI and body fat standards. This weight management program was effective in improving cadets’ dietary intake and all subjects met the BMI and % body fat requirements for entry into LDAC. This research was funded by a grant from Texas State University.

Edward D. Churchill as a Combat Consultant

In World War II, Edward D. Churchill volunteered as a combat consultant. In this role, he mentored many junior surgeons and challenged the Army leadership to treat hemorrhagic shock with blood rather than plasma. These lessons have continued relevance for today's Senior Visiting Surgeons and our military medical corps.

The Application of a Model of Adaptive Performance to Army Leader Behaviors

To better understand the adaptive capabilities of junior Army leaders, we applied an existing nine-dimension adaptability model to critical incidents of leader behaviors. We examined interview data from two samples of U.S. Army leaders (40 combat veterans and 24 training facilitators). The adaptive behaviors performed most in combat reflected the Deals with Unpredictability and Handles Emergencies dimensions, whereas in training contexts they reflected the Leads Adaptive Teams and Solves Problems Creatively dimensions. The model represented all of the adaptive capabilities; however, the dimensions varied across the samples. To promote adaptability, the leaders recommended developing mental adaptability skills and adaptive teams.

The Generals and the Germs: The Army Leadership's Response to Nixon's Review of Chemical and Biological Warfare Policies in 1969

In 1969 President Richard Nixon took the unprecedented step of unilaterally eliminating an entire class of weapons, biological warfare agents, and retaining only a defensive research program. He also limited the nation's chemical weapons efforts to retaliation. Little research has been done into the policy review that led to the decisions, particularly the role of the Army, which oversaw the programs. Using recently declassified documents, this article analyzes the history behind the policy changes. It illustrates as well that the Army was cut out of the review, but that its mismanagement of the programs was, ironically, a key factor in their demise. It also shows that many in the service's leadership actually came to support Nixon's moves.

Aspects of disintegration: the reality of the new Iraqi military, its forces and institutions and prospects for reform

This paper provides a detailed, insider assessment of the new Iraqi security and military forces as organized under current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. It analyzes the recruitment, training and fielding of Iraqi police and regular armed forces with special attention to the volatile sectarian and ethnic allegiances – exacerbated through direct recruitment from partisan militias including the Kurdish Peshmerga, the Badr Corps and Ṣadrist groups – that obviate against a stable and reliable hierarchical chain of command. It contains a complete analysis of all current Iraqi Army divisions, their composition, leadership and deployment as well as recommendations for how all branches of the Iraqi armed forces may be restored to levels and readiness characteristic of effective national defense and security forces.