Military Society Research Articles

Research Paper - Power and (in)equality in the UK's Armed Forces: Implications for working with ex-military clients

AimsThis study explored British ex-military clients’ experiences of psychological therapy, with a view to informing the practice of those working with this client group, and others from similar set-apart institutions.BackgroundThis research contributes much-needed qualitative findings to a field dominated by quantitative methods, especially given the recent increase in the numbers of serving and ex-military personnel seeking psychological help.MethodsSemi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 participants. Narrative analysis was applied to the transcripts.FindingsParticipants identified with the military long after leaving the armed forces. Perceptions of social hierarchy based on previously held rank and status played a significant role in the negotiation of power and control in therapy. Participants felt disempowered by the withholding of information, whereas therapist selfdisclosure and a relational approach facilitated engagement. Therapy was hindered by the experience of a ‘language barrier’ with civilians, both at the level of verbal communication and at the deeper level of cultural misunderstanding. Participants described a sense not only of separateness from civilians, but superiority to them. The strong belief in a military/civilian divide was accompanied by disorientation, alienation and isolation on return to civilian life. This carried into therapy, where fear of misunderstanding and judgment often led to participants omitting their military experiences.ConclusionPractitioners working with ex-military clients should gain an understanding of military society and culture and appreciate its lasting influence, particularly in terms of power dynamics. They should be sensitive to significant cultural differences between the military and civilian worlds, and watchful for the concomitant risks of misunderstanding and judgment.

Cultural self-awareness as a crucial component of military cross-cultural competence.

The military forces in the United States represent a unique culture that includes many subcultures within their own military society. Acculturation into the military often deemphasizes the influence of personal narrative and thereby establishes the primacy of military culture over personal cultural influences. The authors make the argument that military personnel need to further develop an understanding and appreciation of personal cultural narrative as well as organizational culture. The increased integration of military personnel with interagency partners, along with cooperative efforts between relief organizations, and nongovernmental organizations in politically/economically unstable areas around the globe serves to make cross-cultural interaction unavoidable in the future. Military medical personnel are especially likely to interact with others who have culturally different values. These interactions can occur between organizations as easily as they can during patient care. They must be able to step outside of their military culture and develop cross-cultural competence that is grounded in cultural self-awareness. Without an appropriate level of cultural self-awareness, military and medical personnel run the risk of being unable to communicate across dissimilar cultures or worse, alienating key stakeholders in collaborative operations between military services, coalition partners, and nonmilitary organizations. It is the authors? contention that unless military personnel, especially those in the medical arena, are able to appropriately self-assess situations that are impacted by culture, both their own and the other personnel involved, the resulting cultural dissonance is more likely to derail any significant positive effect of such collaborations.

Ghosts of the Japanese Imperial Army: The 'White Group' (Baituan) and Early Post-war Sino-Japanese Relations

In the immediate post-World War II disorder of East Asia redrafted alliances offered a potentially new grammar to an old conversation between former belligerent parties. While the shifting landscape did not necessarily create the means for complete reconciliation, exigent circumstances nudged enemies toward novel forms of negotiation. The Japanese might have been sanguine about their military defeat but the nation was psychologically schizophrenic about the loss of empire. Leaders of the former imperial army and navy still intensely coveted Japan’s role in East Asia, and most importantly China, even after the surrender. The Chinese Nationalists, initially in a superior position over the Communists, found themselves by 1948 on the verge of defeat and in need of new partners as the US appeared poised to withdraw support. The focus of this article centres on a discussion of how the Japanese military and civilian society responded to defeat and the changing nature of Japan’s relationship with the Chinese Nationalists (KMT). The goal is to provide a transnational grasp of the setting of a key region where Japanese power collapsed and the Chinese took over. My research suggests that we need further analysis of how wars end and that the idea of unconditional surrender constantly referenced in western scholarship concerning the end of Japan’s war might not fit so neatly into the actual circumstances that evolved in East Asia at the periphery of Japan’s failed empire. 2 Such an approach dovetails with the parameters set out in the introduction to this supplement where the authors call for new analytical approaches that privilege the non-western world. In addition, this ambiguous notion of defeat, when examined from outside the tidy confines of national history, demonstrates the porous nature 1 This research was assisted by a grant from the Abe Fellowship Program administered by the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies in cooperation with and with funds provided by the Japan Foundation Center for Global

ACTIVITY OF PARACHUTE TRAINING DEPARTMENT’S CADRE (MECHANISED INFANTRY OFFICER SCHOOL) IN PARACHUTE SECTION OF MILITARY SPORTS CLUB „ŚLĄSK”

The authors present a brief history of parachute sport in Poland, with special focus on the activity of the Parachute Section of Military Sports Club “Śląsk” in Wroclaw. The history of the Parachute Section starts in 1964 along with the beginning of parachute training at the Mechanized Infantry Officer School.The Parachute Section played an important role in the military parachute society for over 20 years, winning numerous national and international championships and competitions.The article can be useful to support lessons on Polish military history.

The Long-Term Career Outcome Study (LTCOS): What Have We Learned From 40 Years of Military Medical Education and Where Should We Go?

The work of the Long-Term Career Outcome Study (LTCOS), F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) has been a multidisciplinary effort spanning more than 5 years. Borrowing from the established program evaluation and quality assurance literature, the LTCOS team has organized its evaluation and research efforts into three phases: before medical school, during medical school, and after medical school. The purpose of this commentary is to summarize the research articles presented in this special issue and to answer two fundamental questions: (1) what has been learned from LTCOS research conducted to date, and (2) where should the LTCOS team take its evaluation and research efforts in the future? Answers to these questions are relevant to USU, and they also can inform other medical education institutions and policy makers. What is more, answers to these questions will help to ensure USU meets its societal obligation to provide the highest quality health care to military members, their families, and society at large.

The emergence of dominant political party systems in unrecognized states

In this paper, we address the question of why in some de facto states something like “dominant party” politics has emerged, whereas in others there at least appears some form of real political competition. We empirically assess some of the commonly cited factors that affect the character of politics within de facto states (the wealth of the entity, the militarization of society, the level of ethnic homogeneity, and political institutional features). Using Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), a method developed specifically to deal with the “small N problem” in empirical inquiry, we apply this framework to 13 post-secessionist unrecognized states.

British civil-military relations and the problem of risk

Drawing primarily on the experience of the UK since 2001, this article examines the increasing prevalence of risk as an organizing concept for western defence and security planning and its implications for civil—military relations and strategy-making. It argues that there may be tensions between such approaches and the principles of good strategy-making, which aim to link means and resources to ends in a coherent manner. Not only does risk potentially blur the relationship between means and ends in the strategy-making process, it also exposes it to contestation, with multiple interpretations of what the risks actually are and the strategic priority (and commitment) which should be attached to them. The article examines these tensions at three levels of risk contestation for British defence: institutions, operations and military—society relations. In the case of the UK, it contends that the logic of risk has not been able to provide the same national motivation and sense of strategic purpose as the logic of threat. In this context, calls for a reinvigoration of traditional strategy-making or a renewed conception of national interest may be missing a more fundamental dissonance between defence policy, civil—military relations and the wider security context. More widely, the strategic ennui that some western states have been accused of may not simply be a product of somehow falling out of the habit of strategy-making or an absence of ‘political will’. Instead, it may reflect deeper social and geostrategic trends which constrain and complicate the use of military force and obscure its utility in the public imagination.

Frontiers of Violence in North-East Africa: Genealogies of Conflict since 1800 (review)

Reviewed by: Frontiers of Violence in North-East Africa: Genealogies of Conflict since 1800 Edmond J. Keller (bio) Frontiers of Violence in North-East Africa: Genealogies of Conflict since 1800, by Richard J. Reid New York: Oxford University Press, 2011; pp. 310. $99.00 hardcover. This is an excellent exercise in the historical interpretation of one of the most significant contemporary regions of Africa. Not only does Richard Reid focus on the states of the region, but more importantly he focuses on its peoples. Others have written about these matters, but the author approaches his subject in a novel and refreshing manner. He relies on both primary and secondary data to write about state formation and the construction of expanded political communities in the Horn of Africa throughout history. Reid uses as his analytical focus the violent way in which these polities were historically constructed. He concentrates on military struggles that took place in broadly conceived frontier zones—domestic and regional. The book begins with a prologue that lays out the broad outlines of the theory that guides Reid's analysis. He argues that we clearly need a fuller appreciation of la longue durée (the long view of history) in terms of the history of violent conflict in the Horn of Africa region. This is portrayed as a history that represents the evolution of several cultures of violence among the peoples of the region. To an extent this is a useful approach to reinterpreting history as it highlights the fact that most if not all states were formed through conquest and violence. In a sense, there is nothing new here; but this is the first time that the Horn region has been framed from such a comprehensive perspective. Part 1 of the book lays out the context of the analysis that follows and focuses on the relevant extant literature on the subject. Reid seeks to interpret the region by concentrating on its peoples from an innovative historiographical perspective. He paints a picture that places at the center of the "zone of violence" the Tigrinya of highland Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, the Amhara of central Ethiopia, and the Oromo and Somali of southern and eastern Ethiopia. He argues for a new historiography, based not on the typical "center-based" analysis but on the "peripheries" or the borderlands of the historic Ethiopian Empire. Reid argues that frontiers frequently produce highly militarized societies—they are fault lines or contested zones. Further, he contends that the Eritrean-Ethiopian frontier zone is the epicenter of much of the region's violence. One is left wondering what [End Page 139] Reid means by "epicenter." This is a matter of perspective. However, what is revealed is the author's continued bias toward state-centered research. In this case, he is most interested in the manner in which the Ethiopian state was consolidated and changed over time. Like a good number of books focusing on this region, this book traces the history of the region to antiquity: the Axum city state, the development of the habasha polity (the nation of the chosen people), and the new Zion. Ethiopian mythology claims that the habasha people are the descendants of the Israelites and the House of David. The new center of Zion, then, has become the Ethiopian heartland. The book goes on to focus on the interaction of the heartland with peripheral regions including the Oromo frontier. Reid, however, seems not to view as important, as others have, the way that the inhabitants of the Oromo frontier penetrated or were invited into the Ethiopian heartland and in fact became central to it rather than peripheral. One exception is Reid's treatment of Lij (Prince) Yasu and his endorsement of Islam. This made Yasu a heretic in the eyes of the Ethiopian (Abyssinian) nobility (129-31), and thus unfit to inherit the throne. Part 2 of the book focuses on the "long" nineteenth century and the emergence and consolidation of the imperial state, beginning with Emperor Tewodros in the middle of the century and continuing on for almost 100 years to the demise of the last Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie I, in the late twentieth century. Reid in rich historical...

The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society

The twenty-first century heralds the unprecedented acceleration and convergence of multiple, interconnected global crises – climate change, energy depletion, food scarcity, and economic instability. While the structure of global economic activity is driving the unsustainable depletion of hydrocarbon and other natural resources, this is simultaneously escalating greenhouse gas emissions resulting in global warming. Both global warming and energy shocks are impacting detrimentally on global industrial food production, as well as on global financial and economic instability. Conventional policy responses toward the intensification of these crises have been decidedly inadequate because scholars and practitioners largely view them as separate processes. Yet increasing evidence shows they are deeply interwoven manifestations of a global political economy that has breached the limits of the wider environmental and natural resource systems in which it is embedded. In this context, orthodox IR's flawed diagnoses of global crises lead inexorably to their ‘securitisation’, reifying the militarisation of policy responses, and naturalising the proliferation of violent conflicts. Global ecological, energy and economic crises are thus directly linked to the ‘Otherisation’ of social groups and problematisation of strategic regions considered pivotal for the global political economy. Yet this relationship between global crises and conflict is not necessary or essential, but a function of a wider epistemological failure to holistically interrogate their structural and systemic causes.

All Watched over by Machines of Silent Grace?

August 1, 2011When discussing the place of robotic system in civilian and military society,typically two opposing key themes will emerge: dreams of robot heaven andnightmares of robot hell. And it was in the 1960s, in this dual context—the robot asfacilitator, the robot as destroyer—that the poet Richard Brautigan highlighted avision of humans and robots working together to build a new society, a utopiancybernetic world ‘all watched over by machines of loving grace’ (Brautigan 1967).In the intervening four decades since Brautigan's poem was first published, anumber of core technologies required to underpin such cybernetic utopias have beensuccessfully developed, even if the concomitant social changes he promised have yetto materialise. In the civilian world, current examples of the forecast army of 12million plus

Imagining Soldiers and Fathers in the Mid-Victorian Era: Charlotte Yonge's Models of Manliness (review)

Reviewed by: Imagining Soldiers and Fathers in the Mid-Victorian Era: Charlotte Yonge's Models of Manliness June Sturrock (bio) Imagining Soldiers and Fathers in the Mid-Victorian Era: Charlotte Yonge's Models of Manliness by Susan Walton; pp. 239. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. $71.35 cloth. In her rich and entertaining study of Charlotte Yonge's representations of the masculine, Susan Walton draws on her dual training as both historian and literary scholar. The resulting book is a valuable contribution to discussions of Victorian concepts of gender. As she says, By an examination of some of [Yonge's] work in an exact historical context, it is possible to understand better the standpoints, anxieties and values of important sections of Victorian society and to consider the ways whereby she provided prototypes of male behaviour as well as guidance on the formation of manly character. (2) Walton draws on Yonge's non-fiction and historical fiction, as well as her novels of contemporary life, and also on material from The Monthly Packet (which Yonge edited for nearly fifty years), reviews of her writings, and a wealth of biographical materials. Walton is also alert to the different readerships and expectations of the periodicals in which Yonge published. Indeed, much of the pleasure of reading this study comes from its basis in thorough research, Walton's numerous sources, and her wide knowledge of Victorian fiction—she makes interesting comparisons between Yonge's Henrietta's Wish (1850) and Charles Kingsley's Yeast (1848), for instance, as well as between Yonge's TheYoung Stepmother (1861) and Dinah Mulock Craik's A Life for a Life (1859). Yonge's devotion to her father is well known, and, as Walton notes, she had a "deep respect" (20) for his career as an officer in the Oxford Light Infantry and for the military in general, as the repeated presence of brave and intelligent soldiers in her five decades'-worth of novels indicates. Walton makes good use of this biographical material, and the chapters on Yonge and Victorian ideas of the military are perhaps the strongest in her book. In them, she discusses the changing cultural attitudes toward the soldier, beginning with Joanna Bourke's controversial work, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth Century Warfare (1999) and Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War (1998), then moving back into the Victorian period, showing how attitudes toward the army were already changing by the late 1840s, when Yonge started to publish. Walton argues that this new "acceptable knightly model" of the soldier gave Yonge's narratives an appeal they might otherwise have lacked (27). One character in The Young Stepmother, a weak but well-intentioned young man who becomes a Crimean War hero, provides a focus for her discussion, though she could have spent more time on the divergent models of the good soldier featured in the same book—career-centred General Ferrars, boyish Fred Ferrars, resourceful Brian O'More, gentle Gilbert Kendall. (Similarly, The Clever Woman of the Family [1865] presents contrasting versions of the heroic officer in Colin Keith and his [End Page 199] witty and ironic cousin Alexander Keith.) Walton might also have considered Yonge's persistent rejection of the notion of military society being frivolous and unintellectual, not only in The Clever Woman of the Family, which Walton deals with rather summarily, but also through characters such as Aubrey May in The Trial (1864), John Harewood in The Pillars of the House (1874), and Sir Jasper Merrifield in the Merrifield saga (1885, 1888, 1893, 1895, 1900). Yonge regarded missionaries as well as soldiers as exemplars of Christian chivalry. Walton's chapters on missionary work include much useful material. She shows how, as editor of The Monthly Packet, Yonge published letters from the wives of missionaries, using them to establish "shared humanity" with indigenous peoples (165). Yonge made large financial contributions to missionary ventures, but Walton argues convincingly that, even so, "her more substantial contribution ... was to reposition the missionary story within functioning, attractive families ... strongly embedded in English soil but stretching their branches across the world" (159). She also argues that "strong familial nurturing" is essential to the "Christian knights" (173) that...

The Policies and Politics of Control: Countering Argentina's Uniformed and Unemployed Protesters

AbstractLike many new democracies, Argentina has struggled with contentious movements that have challenged its precarious stability. Two very different sectors have led particularly powerful opposition movements: the military—associated historically with the abuse of power—and the unemployed workers, with important support from prestigious human rights organizations. This article looks both at how the political standing of the sector (military versus civil society) influences policy choices and at how these policy choices influence whether opposition movements remain mobilized and contentious. It argues that situation-alleviating policies—those that successfully address interests of the sector as a whole—tend to be more successful in defusing contentious movements than policies relying on coercion, concessions, or co-optation of mobilized opposition groups. Situation alleviation depletes the contentious groups of possible recruits, while policies targeting the mobilized opposition may inadvertently motivate those actors to remain mobilized.

The impact of aid chains: relations of dependence or supportive partnerships for community-led responses to HIV/AIDS?

In the context of increasing global emphasis on partnerships between international, governmental and civil society organisations in the distribution of international aid, this paper examines the ways in which the resulting aid chains promote and undermine community-led responses to HIV/AIDS. The impact of the aid-granting system is examined using an ethnographic case study of an HIV/AIDS prevention programme with Cambodian military families. The case study draws on observations of stakeholder meetings and programme activities, interviews with stakeholders (the donor, NGOs and military community) and textual materials (programme guidelines, policies and reports). Campbell et al.'s interrelated concepts of relational, symbolic and material context are used to frame the analysis. The establishment of a relationship with a more powerful international NGO is shown to be beneficial to the military community and civil society groups. The international NGO uses its significant material and economic leverage to improve the community's relational context (by ensuring the support of the military high command), symbolic context (by strengthening the position of community and civil society partners in relation to government bodies) and material context (through increasing access to health services). However, material and symbolic asymmetries between partners in the aid chain persist, curtailing the community's involvement and leadership. At the material and relational levels, the hierarchical flow of aid encourages accountability to the demands of the donor while excluding grassroots groups from directly accessing funding. At the symbolic level, problem-focused representations of the military further reinforce the community's position as recipients of intervention, which undermines recognition for the community's knowledge, strengths and right to fully participate. Thus while aid chains can be supportive of community-led responses, this analysis highlights how the structures and dynamics of international aid continue to position marginalised communities as recipients, not leaders, of HIV/AIDS programmes, raising particular dilemmas for intermediary international NGOs.

German liberalism and the militarisation of civil society, 1813–1848/49

From the beginning of nineteenth century German liberals endeavoured to reform the armies of different German states, subject them to constitutional authorities, open their ranks to members of civil society and turn military service into a civic obligation. After the Wars of Liberation and during the Vormärz years, the liberals struggle for democratically oriented armed forces was combined with their opposition to restorative regime and their hopes for the national unification of Germany and the formation of civil society. The liberals campaign, however, turned military service and military values into authentic manifestations of the ideal civil society. Military service was admired for the qualities it bestowed on those who bore arms and the values guiding its members as citizens. Paradoxically, military service became the founding institution of civil society. This process found further expression upon the renewed establishment of the civil militias (Bürgerwehren) during the Vormärz and the central role they played in the 1848 revolution. They were intended to introduce alternative forces into the army, but they ended up performing popular military and policing activities. Through this process, the Bildung ideal in the formation of civil society declined considerably, and the liberals actually contributed to the militarisation of society.

A Basic Study on the Jamming Mechanisms and Characteristics against GPS/GNSS Based on Navigation Warfare

It has been recognized that the risk from the vulnerability of GPS can lead to the extreme damage in the infrastructure of the civil and military in recent years. As an example, the intentional interference to GPS signal, named GPS jamming, was really performed to misguide GPS guided weapons during Iraq war in 2003, and the fact has also followed by the serious issues on GPS in civilian community. In the modernized military society, the navigation warfare(NAVWAR) based on the GPS jamming has been emerged and introduced as a military operation. The intentional interference to the future global navigation satellite system(GNSS) involving GPS must be also an important issue to civilian users in near future. This study is focused on the fundamental research prior to the research on "Potential principle of NAVWAR" under NAVWAR of the future warfare. In this paper, we would study on the investigation of NAVWAR based on electronic warfare(EW) and analyze characteristics of the jamming against GNSS's receivers. Then the general mechanism on GNSS jamming is proposed.

Embodying the garrison state? Everyday geographies of militarization in American society

This study evaluates the garrison state hypothesis ( Lasswell, 1941, 1962), which posited that the United States and other democratic states were becoming militarized societies, dominated by military culture, values, and goals. Building on the work of various scholars who have more recently identified the militarization of U.S. policies and other actions emanating from the formal state apparatus, we have explored the everyday geographies of the nation-state, with particular emphasis upon the experiences and activities of people in local settings. Considering the contingency of how everyday geographies of the state are constituted, two towns (Hopkinsville, Kentucky and Clarksville, Tennessee) neighboring Fort Campbell, Kentucky are analyzed using interviews, participant observations, and documentary evidence to examine manifestations of militarism and ongoing processes of militarization. Despite their common adjacency to Fort Campbell, the agency of actors in Hopkinsville and Clarksville has at times resulted in different bases for resistance to, and acceptance of, militarizing processes. We conclude that the construction of a ‘friendly’ or democratic ‘garrison state’ does not emerge in a simple, top-down manner, but rather is possible only with the people and practices who constitute the everyday geographies of the state, though this process is negotiated differently in different settings due to the complex central–local relations occurring within them.

‘It is not the heroes who need this, but the nation’ – the latent power of military decorations in Israel, 1948–2005

This study examines the nature of the power manifested by military decorations, a phenomenon that lies on the boundary between the military and civil society. The study exposes the latent power of this cultural site and the various ways in which it reinforces a militaristic ethos, defined here as the ‘ethos of living by the sword.’ My central hypothesis is that the distribution of decorations is an effective symbolic act that promotes and justifies the use of military force. The practice of military decoration is conceptualized and analyzed first as part of an ideological mechanism and then as a discursive mechanism. The article suggests methodological tools for the analysis of power and dominance that can be applied to verbal and non‐verbal practices alike.

Educators and Armaments in Cold War America

This essay was written prior to the end of the Cold War. It may very well be the last scholarly essay that peace movement historian Charles DeBenedetti wrote prior to his death. Charles sent it to me in 1984, and for many years it was kept in one of my files. It is a historical commentary about the nuclear arms race based upon a thorough reading of education journals. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that in the very early years of the Cold War educators paid particular attention to the militarization of society and the construction of weapons of mass destruction. What is most telling is that from 1945 to the early 1950s concerned teachers voiced their worries regarding a race between catastrophe and education. However, by 1953, educators had dropped out of the race, falling victim to McCarthyism and the national government’s concern for civil defense. This scholarly article points out that educators had a responsibility to teach the public about the horrors of nuclear armaments as an overwhelming threat and danger to humankind, but failed to do so as prosperity and government pressure silenced their voices. By the time of Sputnik in 1957, DeBenedetti tells us, they considered “nuclear weaponry as the very symbol of the uncharted ocean that separated advancing scientific and technological revolutions from the hoary human politics that made for an intractable Cold War.” How can educators today rekindle that awareness and replace complacency with determination? What historical lessons can peace educators today learn from DeBenedetti’s research on peace educators of the Cold War period?

Dibattito politico e gestione della trasformazione: Vienna 1848-1891

- The plan for the Ring in Vienna is one of the most significant examples of urban transformation of a European capital in the nineteenth century. The plan was chosen from entries in a competition published in the Wiener Zeitung in 1858. It raised a number of issues that completely upset the existing balances between various opposing power centers: military authority vs. civilian society, municipal vs. state power, public vs. private property, and financial management tools vs. building codes. As opposed to the model plan in Paris, Vienna's plan was successful because the land involved was public and thus the government was not forced to use the politically dangerous means of expropriation by eminent domain. The financial crisis of 1873 that followed the collapse of the stock exchange did not leave any immediate effect on the city. The Christian Social Party won the 1885 elections and pushed for the creation of Greater Vien- na (GroB Wien) and for the public management of urban transportation, including the construction of a subway system. This was a turning point for urban development.

Army rolls through Indianapolis: Fieldwork at the Virtual Army Experience

This essay takes an ethnographic look at the individuals and institutions associated with the development, production, and implementation of the Virtual Army Experience (VAE), a mobile mission simulator that travels across the United States to venues such as state fairs and air shows. As an explicit aid to Army recruitment and interaction with the public, the VAE is an interesting nexus point that often channels public anxieties surrounding the medium of the video game and its role in the militarization of society. Here, I present my own experience of doing ethnography at this site, describing how it is received by visitors and interpreted by its employees. By means of the example of the VAE, I argue that polarizing media reports and academic criticisms that pit the processes of militarization against critical reflection of those processes are counterproductive and result in silencing more nuanced and thoughtful critical reflection that is already present at sites such as the VAE.