Download or read book Soldiers Politicians and Civilians written by David Pion-Berlin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-31 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are interactions between soldiers, politicians, and civilians improving? Every nation has to come to grips with achieving a more enduring harmony between government, the armed forces, and society if it aspires to strengthen its democracy. While there is an abundance of studies on civil-military affairs, few examine all three of these actors, let alone establish any standards with which to assess whether progress is being made. This ambitious book devises a novel framework equipped with six dimensions, each of which opens a unique window into civil-military affairs, and which form a more integrated view of the subject. Those dimensions are accompanied by a set of benchmarks and metrics that assess progress and compare one country against another. The framework is applied to case studies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, with the conviction that insights could be gleaned that may be relevant elsewhere. Ultimately, by unpacking the civil-military relation into its various dimensions, this study has shed light on what it takes to transform what was once a politically-minded military into an organization dedicated to serving a democratic state and society.
Download or read book Soldiers and Civilians written by Peter Feaver and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays on the emerging military-civilian divide in the United States.
Download or read book Our Army written by Jason K. Dempsey and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-12-07 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional wisdom holds that the American military is overwhelmingly conservative and Republican, and extremely political. Our Army paints a more complex picture, demonstrating that while army officers are likely to be more conservative, rank-and-file soldiers hold political views that mirror those of the American public as a whole, and army personnel are less partisan and politically engaged than most civilians. Assumptions about political attitudes in the U.S. Army are based largely on studies focusing on the senior ranks, yet these senior officers comprise only about 6 percent of America's fighting force. Jason Dempsey provides the first random-sample survey that also covers the social and political attitudes held by enlisted men and women in the army. Uniting these findings with those from another unique survey he conducted among cadets at the United States Military Academy on the eve of the 2004 presidential election, Dempsey offers the most detailed look yet at how service members of all ranks approach politics. He shows that many West Point cadets view political conservatism as part of being an officer, raising important questions about how the army indoctrinates officers politically. But Dempsey reveals that the rank-and-file army is not nearly as homogeneous as we think--or as politically active--and that political attitudes across the ranks are undergoing a substantial shift. Our Army adds needed nuance to our understanding of a profession that seems increasingly distant from the average American.
Download or read book Civil Military Relations in Latin America written by David Pion-Berlin and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2003-01-14 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The armed forces may no longer rule nations throughout Latin America, but they continue to influence democratic governments across the region. In nine original, thought-provoking essays, this book offers fresh theoretical insights into the dilemmas facing Latin American politicians as they struggle to gain full control over their military institutions. Latin America has changed in profound ways since the end of the Cold War, the re-emergence of democracy, and the ascendancy of free-market economies and trade blocs. The contributors to this volume recognize the necessity of finding intellectual approaches that speak to these transformations. They utilize a wide range of contemporary models to analyze recent political and economic reform in nations throughout Latin America, presenting case studies on Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, and Venezuela. Bridging the gap between Latin American studies and political science, these essays not only explore the forces that shape civil-military relations in Latin America but also address larger questions of political development and democratization in the region. The contributors are Felipe Aguero, J. Samuel Fitch, Wendy Hunter, Ernesto Lopez, Brian Loveman, David R. Mares, Deborah L. Norden, David Pion-Berlin, and Harold A. Trinkunas. Latin American Studies/Political Science
Download or read book Supreme Command written by Eliot A. Cohen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-04-17 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An excellent, vividly written” (The Washington Post) account of leadership in wartime that explores how four great democratic statesmen—Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion—worked with the military leaders who served them during warfare. The relationship between military leaders and political leaders has always been a complicated one, especially in times of war. When the chips are down, who should run the show—the politicians or the generals? In Supreme Command, Eliot A. Cohen expertly argues that great statesmen do not turn their wars over to their generals, and then stay out of their way. Great statesmen make better generals of their generals. They question and drive their military men, and at key times they overrule their advice. The generals may think they know how to win, but the statesmen are the ones who see the big picture. Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion led four very different kinds of democracy, under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. They came from four very different backgrounds—backwoods lawyer, dueling French doctor, rogue aristocrat, and impoverished Jewish socialist. Yet they faced similar challenges. Each exhibited mastery of detail and fascination with technology. All four were great learners, who studied war as if it were their own profession, and in many ways mastered it as well as did their generals. All found themselves locked in conflict with military men. All four triumphed. The powerful lessons of this “brilliant” (National Review) book will touch and inspire anyone who faces intense adversity and is the perfect gift for history buffs of all backgrounds.
Download or read book American Civil Military Relations written by Suzanne C. Nielsen and published by Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM. This book was released on 2009-10-05 with total page 649 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Civil-Military Relations offers the first comprehensive assessment of the subject since the publication of Samuel P. Huntington’s The Soldier and the State. Using this seminal work as a point of departure, experts in the fields of political science, history, and sociology ask what has been learned and what more needs to be investigated in the relationship between civilian and military sectors in the 21st century. Leading scholars—such as Richard Betts, Risa Brooks, James Burk, Michael Desch, Peter Feaver, Richard Kohn, Williamson Murray, and David Segal—discuss key issues, including: • changes in officer education since the end of the Cold War • shifting conceptions of military expertise in response to evolving operational and strategic requirements • increased military involvement in high-level politics • the domestic and international contexts of U.S. civil-military relations. The first section of the book provides contrasting perspectives of American civil-military relations within the last five decades. The next section addresses Huntington’s conception of societal and functional imperatives and their influence on the civil-military relationship. Following sections examine relationships between military and civilian leaders and describe the norms and practices that should guide those interactions. What is clear from the essays in this volume is that the line between civil and military expertise and responsibility is not that sharply drawn, and perhaps given the increasing complexity of international security issues, it should not be. When forming national security policy, the editors conclude, civilian and military leaders need to maintain a respectful and engaged dialogue. Essential reading for those interested in civil-military relations, U.S. politics, and national security policy.
Download or read book The Deaths of Others written by John Tirman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans are greatly concerned about the number of our troops killed in battle--33,000 in the Korean War; 58,000 in Vietnam; 4,500 in Iraq--and rightly so. But why are we so indifferent, often oblivious, to the far greater number of casualties suffered by those we fight and those we fight for? This is the compelling, largely unasked question John Tirman answers in The Deaths of Others. Between six and seven million people died in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq alone, the majority of them civilians. And yet Americans devote little attention to these deaths. Other countries, however, do pay attention, and Tirman argues that if we want to understand why there is so much anti-Americanism around the world, the first place to look is how we conduct war. We understandably strive to protect our own troops, but our rules of engagement with the enemy are another matter. From atomic weapons and carpet bombing in World War II to napalm and daisy cutters in Vietnam and beyond, our weapons have killed large numbers of civilians and enemy soldiers. Americans, however, are mostly ignorant of these methods, believing that American wars are essentially just, necessary, and "good." Trenchant and passionate, The Deaths of Others forces readers to consider the tragic consequences of American military action not just for Americans, but especially for those we fight against.
Download or read book A People at War written by Scott Reynolds Nelson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-16 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Claiming more than 600,000 lives, the American Civil War had a devastating impact on countless numbers of common soldiers and civilians, even as it brought freedom to millions. This book shows how average Americans coped with despair as well as hope during this vast upheaval. A People at War brings to life the full humanity of the war's participants, from women behind their plows to their husbands in army camps; from refugees from slavery to their former masters; from Mayflower descendants to freshly recruited Irish sailors. We discover how people confronted their own feelings about the war itself, and how they coped with emotional challenges (uncertainty, exhaustion, fear, guilt, betrayal, grief) as well as physical ones (displacement, poverty, illness, disfigurement). The book explores the violence beyond the battlefield, illuminating the sharp-edged conflicts of neighbor against neighbor, whether in guerilla warfare or urban riots. The authors travel as far west as China and as far east as Europe, taking us inside soldiers' tents, prisoner-of-war camps, plantations, tenements, churches, Indian reservations, and even the cargo holds of ships. They stress the war years, but also cast an eye at the tumultuous decades that preceded and followed the battlefield confrontations. An engrossing account of ordinary people caught up in life-shattering circumstances, A People at War captures how the Civil War rocked the lives of rich and poor, black and white, parents and children--and how all these Americans pushed generals and presidents to make the conflict a people's war.
Download or read book Warriors and Citizens written by Jim Mattis and published by Hoover Press. This book was released on 2016-08-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A diverse group of contributors offer different perspectives on whether or not the different experiences of our military and the broader society amounts to a "gap"—and if the American public is losing connection to its military. They analyze extensive polling information to identify those gaps between civilian and military attitudes on issues central to the military profession and the professionalism of our military, determine which if any of these gaps are problematic for sustaining the traditionally strong bonds between the American military and its broader public, analyze whether any problematic gaps are amenable to remediation by policy means, and assess potential solutions. The contributors also explore public disengagement and the effect of high levels of public support for the military combined with very low levels of trust in elected political leaders—both recurring themes in their research. And they reflect on whether American society is becoming so divorced from the requirements for success on the battlefield that not only will we fail to comprehend our military, but we also will be unwilling to endure a military so constituted to protect us. Contributors: Rosa Brooks, Matthew Colford,Thomas Donnelly, Peter Feaver, Jim Golby, Jim Hake, Tod Lindberg, Mackubin Thomas Owens, Cody Poplin, Nadia Schadlow, A. J. Sugarman, Lindsay Cohn Warrior, Benjamin Wittes
Download or read book Civilians in the Path of War written by Mark Grimsley and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Antologi. Bogens 9 historikere har gennemgået mere end 2.500 års befolkningskonflikter og deres forskellige indflydelse på det civile samfund. Hvert behandlet afsnit undersøger ikke alene, hvad de militære styrker gjorde ved civilbefolkningen i operationsområdet, men hvorfor de gjorde det og hvorledes de retfærdiggjorde deres handlinger.
Download or read book Military Missions in Democratic Latin America written by David Pion-Berlin and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates through country case studies that, contrary to received wisdom, Latin American militaries can contribute productively, but under select conditions, to non-traditional missions of internal security, disaster relief, and social programs. Latin American soldiers are rarely at war, but have been called upon to perform these missions in both lethal and non-lethal ways. Is this beneficial to their societies or should the armed forces be left in the barracks? As inherently conservative institutions, they are at their best, the author demonstrates, when tasked with missions that draw on pre-existing organizational strengths that can be utilized in appropriate and humane ways. They are at a disadvantage when forced to reinvent themselves. Ultimately, it is governments that must choose whether or not to deploy soldiers, and they should do so, based on a pragmatic assessment of the severity and urgency of the problem, the capacity of the military to effectively respond, and the availability of alternative solutions.
Download or read book Whose Life Is Worth More written by Yagil Levy and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern democracies face tough life-and-death choices in armed conflicts. Chief among them is how to weigh the value of soldiers' lives against those of civilians on both sides. The first of its kind, Whose Life Is Worth More? reveals that how these decisions are made is much more nuanced than conventional wisdom suggests. When these states are entangled in prolonged conflicts, hierarchies emerge and evolve to weigh the value of human life. Yagil Levy delves into a wealth of contemporary conflicts, including the drone war in Pakistan, the Kosovo war, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the US and UK wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cultural narratives about the nature and necessity of war, public rhetoric about external threats facing the nation, antiwar movements, and democratic values all contribute to the perceived validity of civilian and soldier deaths. By looking beyond the military to the cultural and political factors that shape policies, this book provides tools to understand how democracies really decide whose life is worth more.
Download or read book Soldiers Politicians and Civilians written by David Pion-Berlin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-31 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that for a nation to become fully democratic, it must strengthen the interactions between its soldiers, politicians, and civilians.
Download or read book Becoming Men of Some Consequence written by John A. Ruddiman and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2014-12-15 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Young Continental soldiers carried a heavy burden in the American Revolution. Their experiences of coming of age during the upheavals of war provide a novel perspective on the Revolutionary era, eliciting questions of gender, family life, economic goals, and politics. "Going for a soldier" forced young men to confront profound uncertainty, and even coercion, but also offered them novel opportunities. Although the war imposed obligations on youths, military service promised young men in their teens and early twenties alternate paths forward in life. Continental soldiers’ own youthful expectations about respectable manhood and their goals of economic competence and marriage not only ordered their experience of military service; they also shaped the fighting capacities of George Washington’s army and the course of the war. Becoming Men of Some Consequence examines how young soldiers and officers joined the army, their experiences in the ranks, their relationships with civilians, their choices about quitting long-term military service, and their attempts to rejoin the flow of civilian life after the war. The book recovers young soldiers’ perspectives and stories from military records, wartime letters and journals, and postwar memoirs and pension applications, revealing how revolutionary political ideology intertwined with rational calculations and youthful ambitions. Its focus on soldiers as young men offers a new understanding of the Revolutionary War, showing how these soldiers’ generational struggle for their own independence was a profound force within America’s struggle for its independence.
Download or read book Civilians and Modern War written by Daniel Rothbart and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-06 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the issue of civilian devastation in modern warfare, focusing on the complex processes that effectively establish civilians’ identity in times of war. Underpinning the physicality of war’s tumult are structural forces that create landscapes of civilian vulnerability. Such forces operate in four sectors of modern warfare: nationalistic ideology, state-sponsored militaries, global media, and international institutions. Each sector promotes its own constructions of civilian identity in relation to militant combatants: constructions that prove lethal to the civilian noncombatant who lacks political power and decision-making capacity with regards to their own survival. Civilians and Modern War provides a critical overview of the plight of civilians in war, examining the political and normative underpinnings of the decisions, actions, policies, and practices of major sectors of war. The contributors seek to undermine the ‘tunnelling effect’ of the militaristic framework regarding the experiences of noncombatants. This book will be of much interest to students of war and conflict studies, ethics, conflict resolution, and IR/Security Studies.
Download or read book The Armed Forces Officer written by Richard Moody Swain and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2017 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1950, when he commissioned the first edition of The Armed Forces Officer, Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall told its author, S.L.A. Marshall, that "American military officers, of whatever service, should share common ground ethically and morally." In this new edition, the authors methodically explore that common ground, reflecting on the basics of the Profession of Arms, and the officer's special place and distinctive obligations within that profession and especially to the Constitution.
Download or read book Civilian Warriors written by Erik Prince and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-10-28 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The founder of Blackwater offers the gripping true story of the world’s most controversial military contractor. In 1997, former Navy SEAL Erik Prince started a business that would recruit civilians for the riskiest security jobs in the world. As Blackwater’s reputation grew, demand for its services escalated, and its men eventually completed nearly 100,000 missions for both the Bush and Obama administrations. It was a huge success except for one problem: Blackwater was demonized around the world. Its employees were smeared as mercenaries, profiteers, or worse. And because of the secrecy requirements of its contracts with the Pentagon, the State Department, and the CIA, Prince was unable to correct false information. But now he’s finally able to tell the full story about some of the biggest controversies of the War on Terror, in a memoir that reads like a thriller.
