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2. A Sociology of the Drone
- Author:
- Ina Wiesner
- Publication Date:
- 09-2017
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- Current discourses in science and public about combat drones usually employ arguments from the spheres of technology, strategy, international law and ethics. So far, sociologists have remained silent on this topic. But sociological analyses about the influencing factors of development and employment of combat drones could enrich the debate as well as studies about the effects of combat drone missions on individuals, organisations and societies. This article offers a comprehensive discussion of the sociological aspects of combat drones. A sociological view is not only indicated against the background of the present practice of targeted killings but also because drones appear as an intermediate step towards autonomous offensive combat systems which will change the type of warfare in the future.
- Topic:
- War, Military Strategy, Sociology, and Drones
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
3. Mike Martin. An Intimate War: An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict. London, UK: C. Hurst Co., 2014.
- Author:
- Rebecca Jensen
- Publication Date:
- 03-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- The historians of the Annales School developed an approach that emphasized long-term regional histories based upon social structures and worldviews, in part because they believed the narrowness of political and diplomatic history to be reductive. The first half of Mike Martin's An Intimate War: An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict, adapted from his doctoral research at King's College and drawing on his experience as an army officer in Afghanistan, evokes this approach, while the second half explores how the absence of such a grounding in the local dynamics of Helmand province resulted in a profound misunderstanding of parties to the conflict and their goals, and thus a flawed and sometimes counterproductive approach to military and political efforts there. An Intimate War makes a solid argument that the narratives driving the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) were largely mistaken, and that misperception accounted for poor policy and misguided operations; it also raises questions for future research, including why organizations and individuals adopted and hewed to inadequate models, and implicitly how this might be avoided in future military engagements.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution and War
- Political Geography:
- London
4. Preparing for Peace in Time of War: Canada and the Post-Hostilities Planning Committees, 1943-1945
- Author:
- Monique Dolak
- Publication Date:
- 06-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- During the Second World War, as the likelihood of Allied success grew, the Canadian Department of External Affairs (DEA) looked towards the post-war world. The increasingly international posture of the Canadian government, coupled with concerns over the shape of the post-war international structure, and Canada's role within it, inspired the Department of External Affairs (DEA) to focus its efforts on post-war planning. For the first time in the DEA's short history, it began to vigorously "plan for the future". This took the form of Post-Hostilities Planning (PHP) Committees. The PHP framework was not only an exercise in post-war planning, but inter-service and interdepartmental relations. While the three Canadian military services were active participants in the work done, it was dominated by the DEA. Considerations of the military often tended toward more immediate wartime concerns. The PHP committees also served as a means of bringing the services into closer contact and communication with one another. However, political and diplomatic considerations dominated and the services were often sidelined during meetings. Thus, while the Canadian Chiefs of Staff and their representatives sat on the Committees, their ability to shape policy proved limited.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Canada
5. Military Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change.
- Author:
- Rachael Bryson
- Publication Date:
- 10-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- In Military Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change Williamson Murray differentiates between innovation and adaptation. Innovation, the focus of a previous book (with Allan R. Millett, 1998), includes peacetime advancements and learning. In contrast, adaptation is comprised of wartime changes and battlefield lessons. Murray argues that militaries able to adapt to battle conditions have a higher probability of ending the conflict as the victor. He expands on this point, writing that the United States has demonstrated a lack of adaptability in recent conflicts, and therefore the purpose of this study is to glean lessons about adaptability that may be applied to the US military.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- United States
6. Millett, Allan R. and Williamson Murray, eds. Military Effectiveness, 3 volumes. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
- Author:
- Keith Hann
- Publication Date:
- 10-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- Cambridge University Press has seen fit to re-release this seminal three-volume work, produced under the stewardship of Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray and originally published by Unwin Hyman in 1988. This work, covering the armies of most of the major powers in the First World War (volume one), the Interwar Period (volume two), and the Second World War (Volume three), contains essay from a veritable who's who of military historians: Earl F. Ziemke, Brian Sullivan, MacGregor Knox, Paul Kennedy, Holger H. Herwig, and many more. Well regarded upon its original release, it has been cited again and again by scholars over the past twenty-five years, both by those looking to understand the nature of military effectiveness as well as by those seeking deeper insight into a particular nation's armed forces, and a reissue is more than welcome.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- New York
7. "In Considerable Doubt"? Canada and the Future of NATO
- Author:
- David G. Haglund
- Publication Date:
- 05-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- In so many ways, the attacks on New York and Washington of 11 September 2001 might have been expected to result in a diminution of NATO's importance to Canadian grand strategy. At the very least, the onset of what would be billed, alternatively, as the ‚Global War on Terror‛ (the GWOT) and the "Long War," heralded the beginning of a new strategic era, one in which Europe would become of even less strategic significance to Canada than during either the so-called "post-Cold War" era, which spanned the decade between the demise of the Soviet Union and 9/11, or the earlier, and long, Cold War era. And it followed that if the familiar cynosure of Canadian security and defence policy during that earlier era, namely Europe, was going to go on losing importance at an accelerated clip, then so too must the organization whose primary function had been, from its inception in 1949, the safeguarding of Western European security, and with it, of transatlantic security. That organization, of course, was and remains the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It is an organization that, for two decades now, has continued to defy expectations that it must soon fade into obscurity as a vehicle for advancing Canada's strategic interests.
- Topic:
- NATO and War
- Political Geography:
- New York, Europe, Washington, and Canada
8. Canada's Warlord: Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden's Leadership during the Great War
- Author:
- Dr. Tim Cook
- Publication Date:
- 05-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- “Sir Robert Borden may have been an outstanding figure in Canadian public life, being even a leader in Imperial councils during the war, but he seems to have lacked the arts which most appeal to the popular imagination,” wrote one journalist after Borden's retirement in 1920. “For example, one never hears and never will hear a personal anecdote about Borden. His biography, when written, will be dull. It will . . . bore the people to death.”
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Canada
9. Violent Conflicts as an impediment to the Achievement of Millennium Development Goals in Africa.
- Author:
- Dickson Ogbonnaya Igwe
- Publication Date:
- 01-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are an international commitment to the reduction of poverty and to promoting human development across the planet. The goals are measurable targets attached to a timeframe for making a difference in the lives of billions of people. In September 2000, over 189 member states at the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the MDGs. The goals are also recognition of the fact that 60 years after the end of World War II, the world remains far from achieving the ideals of peace and prosperity inspired by the end of that global conflict. The MDGs provide a strategic framework for developing, implementing and monitoring poverty-eradication programs at national and international levels.
- Topic:
- Development and War
- Political Geography:
- Africa and United Nations
10. The Patrol: Seven Days in the Life of a Canadian Soldier in Afghanistan
- Author:
- Ryan Flavelle
- Publication Date:
- 01-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- Nothing can prepare a person for the reality of bloody, concussive warfare. . . . Those who like war are aptly named warriors. Some, like me, are fated never to be warriors, as we are more afraid of war than fascinated by it. But I have the consolation that I have walked with warriors, and know what kind of men they are. I will never be a warrior, but I have known war.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan and Canada
11. Martin Kitchen, Rommel's Desert War: Waging WWII in North Africa, 1941-1943. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
- Author:
- Matt Bucholtz
- Publication Date:
- 01-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- While one could be forgiven for wondering if yet another volume concerning the North African campaign in the Second World War was truly needed, Martin Kitchen's book Rommel's Desert War: Waging WWII in North Africa, 1941-1943 is nevertheless a significant and worthwhile contribution to the field. Kitchen states early in his introduction that his aim is to produce a complete and comprehensive account of the desert war, and judged by this standard the author is, on the whole, quite successful. He does not pretend that his is the first, nor the last, work on the topic, but rather seeks to provide a detailed and balanced account of the campaign based on current historiography, examining each of the combatants, and spanning the entire length of the conflict in North Africa.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- North Africa
12. Strategy "in a microcosm": Processes of tactical learning in a WWI German Infantry Division
- Author:
- Christian Stachelbeck
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- Despite the defeat of 1918, the tactical warfare of German forces on the battlefields against a superior enemy coalition was often very effective. The heavy losses suffered by the allies until well into the last months of the war are evidence of this. The tactical level of military action comprises the field of direct battle with forces up to division size. Tactics – according to Clausewitz, the “theory of the use of military forces in combat” – is the art of commanding troops and their organized interaction in combined arms combat in the types of combat which characterized the world war era – attack, defense and delaying engagement.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Germany
13. The German Army and the Defense of the Reich: Military Doctrine and the Conduct of the Defensive Battle 1918-1939.
- Author:
- Matt Bucholtz
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- For decades historical research dedicated to the study of the German army, or Reichswehr, before the Second World War has been dominated by a single overriding question: How did the German army create Blitzkrieg? Studies, both popular and academic, have focused on German offensive doctrine and the leading figures responsible for its creation, in an attempt to understand the stunning German victories of the first half of the Second World War. While this has led to a fuller appreciation of the various characteristics of combined arms warfare, it has also generated a skewed vision of the German army that does not accurately portray its operation, activities, strategic outlook, and doctrinal breadth. Matthias Strohn's work, The German Army and the Defense of the Reich provides a much-needed counter-weight to the existing 'Blitzkrieg' centric historiography of the Reichswehr between the First and Second World Wars.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Germany
14. The Legacy of the French Revolutionary Wars: The Nation-in-Arms in French Republican Memory
- Author:
- Matt Bucholtz
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- Relying upon thousands of newly raised conscripts to augment the remaining professionals from the old monarchial army, Generals Kellermann and Dumouriez scored a decisive victory over the Duke of Brunswick and the forces of Prussia at the Battle of Valmy and thereby firmly established the foundation for the legacy of the volunteers of Year II and the military abilities of French citizen-soldiers. French victory at Valmy became the rationale for conscription laws across Europe in the following decades and served as the basis for a closer relationship between the military and society. Alan Forrest's book, The Legacy of the French Revolutionary Wars: The Nation-in-Arms in French Republican Memory, masterfully traces the evolution of the myths of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era through over 150 years of French and European military and political development. It stands as a concise single volume investigation of the nineteenth and twentieth century French political landscape and military affairs, as well as the ever-contested field of civil-military relations, expressed through a work centred on memory and myth.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Europe, France, and Prussia
15. Bismarck, Wilhelm II., and German Military Leadership
- Author:
- Dr. Michael Epkenhans
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- At least twice in the history of Imperial Germany, December seems to have been a rather critical month: On 17 December 1887, the ageing German Emperor, Wilhelm I, convened his military entourage at his bed in the castle of Berlin to listen to the reports of his generals about the military situation of the Empire. Under normal circumstances, these reports by Germany's highest-ranking generals, the Chief of Staff and his Quarter Master General, the Prussian Minister of War, and the chief of the Military Cabinet were by no means unusual. Against the background of a political situation which seemed to be deteriorating for several years now, this meeting, however, turned out to be a war-council. For many months the Quarter Master General of the Prussian Army, General v. Waldersee had been pleading for a preventive war against Russia. Germany's eastern neighbour had been quarreling with the nation's most reliable ally, Austria-Hungary, over the Balkans for more than two years now, and according to secret reports about the redeployment of troops on its western border seemed to prepare for a war against the powers of the dual alliance. From a military point of view a solution to this problem seemed urgent, not the least because of the hostile attitude of Germany's western neighbour, France. Waldersee's plea for war was supported by the 87-year-old Chief of the General Staff, Moltke the Elder, and Prince William, whose influence had become ever more important due to his father's fatal illness.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Berlin, and Prussia
16. Strategic Thinking: The French Case in 1914 ( 1940)
- Author:
- Dr. Eugenia Kiesling
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- A common military history examination question at West Point is "Discuss the proposition that good strategy always beats good tactics." I tell my cadets that if they cannot answer an examination question, they should modify it they can. Behind our eight stimulating "Workshop Questions" lies a world view which I would summarize as follows. Strategy is literally crucial—the crux of war. Military failures, failures of what my friend Wick Murray calls "military effectiveness," usually being at the strategic level—or stem from a failure to integrate strategy with sound policy. Strategic effectiveness requires not only clear and achievable goals but good policy, sound institutions, and political will.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Germany
17. Military Strategy in War and Peace: Some Conclusions
- Author:
- Holger H. Herwig
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- “Everything in war is very simple,” Prussia's premier military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, famously stated, “but the simplest thing is difficult.” Strategy falls into that description. Almost no other term in military terminology has been so much and so often abused. Even the most fleeting scanning of major journals and newspapers, the briefest listening to national news casts, reveals a horrendous application of the term: the “strategy” of crossing a desert, the “strategy of storming a hill, the “strategy” of pacifying a village, the “strategy of securing a road, the “strategy” of winning the hearts and minds of indigenous populations—these are but a few of the misapplications of the term with which we are constantly bombarded by both reporters and so-called experts in the field. Not that the military has been much better in applying the term: two well-known modern commanders, Erich Ludendorff in World War I and Bernard Montgomery in World War II, never quite understood it either; the former thought of strategy as the act of merely punching a hole in the enemy's lines, while the latter cautioned his staff that strategy was strategy only if and when he, Montgomery, said it was.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Prussia