The classical theoretical civil–military relations (CMR) perspective is traditionally concerned with how to obtain civil control of the armed forces. This theme is preeminent in the writings of Samuel Huntington and Morris Janowitz, the two most dominant voices in the debate of this subject field since the 1960s. By 2019, the character of the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) was heavily influenced, if not determined, by CMR, as CMR seems to be the only constant factor when trying to understand KDF. During British colonial rule in the East African protectorate, the use of force was primarily dedicated to securing the extraction of natural resources from Kenya and maintaining internal security. It was in this colonial context of exploitation and extraction that the KDF was born in 1902, in the form of the King’s African Rifles (KAR). Therefore, to understand the “genetics” of the present-day KDF, one has to understand the political context in which the KDF was born and raised. The surprising point here is that although Kenya has since undergone far-reaching political changes, the KDF still seems to be caught in King Edward VII’s long shadow of colonial repression. The effective, ethnically driven political system and Britain’s military guaranties have dominated CMR and kept an iron grip on the military for more than 100 years.
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Kenya: The King’s Shadow Army
Henrik Laugesen
Article
Kosovo and the European Union
Spyros Economides
The European Union’s involvement with and in Kosovo is of three main types. First, it participated in war diplomacy in the late 1990s in an attempt to find a peaceful solution to the Kosovo conflict between Kosovar Albanians and the Serb forces of the former Yugoslavia. This demonstrated of the Union’s limited ability to influence less powerful actors in its backyard through its Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). This resulted from the difficulty the EU found in attempting to forge a consensus among its member states on a significant matter of regional security with humanitarian implications, the limitations in effectiveness of the EU’s civilian instruments of foreign policy, and the low credibility and influence stemming from the lack of an EU military capability. Second, the EU took a leading role in economic reconstruction and state-building in Kosovo following the end of the conflict. Initially, this was in tandem with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). Subsequently, the EU became the lead organization, focusing its efforts not only on the physical and economic reconstruction of the territory but also on building human and administrative capacity and democratic institutions and establishing good governance and the rule of law, especially through its EULEX mission. Third, the EU attempted to help transform Kosovo beyond democratization toward EU integration through instruments such as the Stabilisation and Association Process (SAP). A significant part of this process has also been linked with EU-led mediation attempts at resolving outstanding issues between Kosovo and Serbia through a process of normalization of relations without which EU accession cannot be envisaged.
Throughout the post-war phases of the EU’s involvement in Kosovo, its efforts have been undermined by the most important outstanding issue, the disputed status of Kosovo. Kosovo was set on the path to increasing self-government and autonomy at the end of the conflict in 1999, but it was still legally part of sovereign Yugoslavia. In 2008, Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence. While over 100 states recognized Kosovo, it never acquired enough recognitions to be eligible for UN membership: Serbia does not recognize it and, most importantly, neither do five EU member states. This status issue has seriously complicated the EU–Kosovo relationship in all its aspects and slowed down the prospect of “Euro-Atlantic integration” for Kosovo.
Article
Land-Related Conflict and Electoral Politics in Africa
Catherine Boone
Land-related disputes and land conflicts are sometimes politicized in elections in African countries, but this is usually not the case. Usually, land-related conflict is highly localized, managed at the micro-political level by neo-customary authorities, and not connected to electoral competition. Why do land conflicts sometimes become entangled in electoral politics, and sometimes “scale up” to become divisive issues in regional and national elections? A key determinant of why and how land disputes become politicized is the nature of the underlying land tenure regime, which varies across space (often by subnational district) within African countries. Under the neo-customary land tenure regimes that prevail in most regions of smallholder agriculture in most African countries, land disputes tend to be “bottled up” in neo-customary land-management processes at the local level. Under the statist land tenure regimes that exist in some districts of many African countries, government agents and officials are directly involved in land allocation and directly implicated in dispute resolution. Under “statist” land tenure institutions, the politicization of land conflict, especially around elections, becomes more likely. Land tenure institutions in African countries define landholders’ relations to each other, the state, and markets. Understanding these institutions, including how they come under pressure and change, goes far in explaining how and where land rights become politicized.
Article
Latin American Labor Regulation in the 21st Century
Matthew E. Carnes
The labor market of the 21st century is evolving at a rapid pace, making traditional manufacturing and agricultural jobs increasingly precarious and generating significant pressure for turnover, retraining, and adaptation by workers. Latin America’s labor regulation, adopted in the middle of the 20th century to foster industrial development and incorporate urban workers, has been slow to adapt to these conditions. Its restrictive and costly hiring and firing rules offer stronger protections than in many other parts of the world, but they often apply to a diminishing minority of laborers. Despite a few exceptions, once-strong unions have been hollowed out in the region, and workers have become increasingly atomized in their job seeking. The region’s educational systems are plagued by underinvestment, and they struggle to provide the needed technical skills that could galvanize investment that would provide higher-wage employment. Large segments of the workforce—a majority in most countries—find themselves in the informal sector, in jobs that are not registered with the state and that do not make contributions to pensions and social security systems.
Why has Latin America—a region endowed with a variety of natural resources and a resilient entrepreneurial spirit—exhibited these patterns in its labor market regulation? The answer lies in an overlapping nexus of economic and political influences in the region. In this complex mix, one strand of scholarship has documented the lasting and recurrent alliance between organized labor and political parties on the left. Another strand has highlighted the concentrated power of business interests—both local and transnational—that have had the power to shape policies. And a third body of research concentrates on the electoral dynamics that have given rise to a growing set of politically motivated policies that seek to support informal sector workers, but may incentivize their remaining in that status. Finally, considerable attention has been given to the under-resourced state agencies that are not adequately monitoring labor regulations, allowing for widespread evasion of required payroll taxes.
A change-resistant cycle has predominated in the region, in which protected insiders in the unionized sectors seek to preserve a set of protections that apply to a shrinking few, while politicians court support among outsiders with direct benefits that address immediate needs but have not yet achieved long-term or intergenerational change. Business interests have largely benefited from the status quo of labor law evasion and social security avoidance, so they have been slow to invest in upgrading the workforce or changing technology that would inspire additional investment in education. Addressing this situation will require efforts at both the political and economic levels, perhaps loosening the partisan ties that lock in preferential policies, as well as increasing the skill levels that would attract higher-tech industries and higher-paying jobs.
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Lebanon: A Military in Politics in a Divided Society
Oren Barak
Since Lebanon’s independence in the mid-1940s, its military—the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF)—has played a pivotal role in the country’s politics. The political role of the LAF in Lebanon might seem surprising since the Lebanese state did not militarize, and its political leaders have continuously managed to keep their military relatively weak and small. Indeed, in this respect Lebanon has been markedly different from its close neighbors (Syria and Israel), but also from several other Middle Eastern states (especially Egypt and Iraq), where the military, which was large and powerful, was continuously involved in politics. Additionally, both Lebanon and the LAF have persistently striven to distance themselves from regional conflicts since 1949, particularly in relation to the Palestinian issue, albeit not always successfully. Still, and despite these ostensibly unfavorable factors for the military’s involvement in politics in Lebanon, the LAF has played an important political role in the state since its independence. This role, which has been marked by elements of continuity and change over the years, included mediation and arbitration between rival political factions (in 1945–1958, 2008, 2011, and 2019); attempts to dominate the political system (in 1958–1970 and 1988–1990); intervention in the Lebanese civil war (in 1975–1976 and 1982–1984); attempts to regain its balancing role in politics (in 1979–1982 and 1984–1988); and facilitating the state’s postwar reconstruction (since 1991). The political role of the military in Lebanon can be explained by several factors. First, the weakness of Lebanon’s political system and its inability to resolve crises between its members. Second, Lebanon’s divided society and its members’ general distrust towards its civilian politicians. Third, the basic characteristics of Lebanon’s military, which, in most periods, enjoyed broad public support that cuts across the lines of community, region, and family, and found appeal among domestic and external audiences, which, in their turn, acquiesced to its political role in the state.
Article
The Legal History of the European Union: Building a European Constitution
Morten Rasmussen
Attempts to analyze and understand how European law developed from a set of international treaties in the 1950s to a constitutional, proto-federal legal order, accompanied by a constitutional legal discourse today, has been a key concern in European studies in the last three decades. Legal scholars, political scientists, and sociologists have explored this from their specific disciplinary viewpoints and have produced a rich literature of sophisticated theoretical as well as empirical studies. Since the mid-2000s, historians have also finally—after years of negligence—taken an interest in European law and produced a new body of archive-based studies of the history of European law from 1950 to 1993. Based on primary sources drawn from private, national, and European archives, historians have contributed with much new empirical information and managed to uncover the social, political, and legal forces that have shaped European law in a qualitatively new way. The central argument is that the constitutionalization of European law was part of the broader battle over the political and institutional soul of the European construction. Even though the ECJ successfully constructed a European legal order that resembled and worked as a proto-federal constitution, the project ultimately suffered a defeat in not being able to codify this achievement in the Maastricht Treaty as part of a broader step toward a federal Europe.
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LGBTI Transnational Law: Sex as Crime, Violence as Control
Berta Esperanza Hernandez-Truyol
It is impossible to divorce the criminalization of LGBTI conduct from the social, institutional, and extra-legal violence to which individuals within this community are subjected, as laws are a mirror of a society’s values. The foundation for laws that punish non-hetero-normative sexualities and gender expressions are societal constructions of hetero-normativity. Lawmakers codify their generalized views about what roles persons should fulfill or perform based on preconceptions regarding the attributes, behaviors, or characteristics of a person, class, or group.
Non-hetero-normative sexual orientations and gender identities challenge traditional notions of sexuality and gender. Violence is used as a way to control the bodies of those who exhibit non-heteronormative traits and values, as well as a form of social control to reinforce sexual and gender norms. The distinctions countries create in the targeted illegality of “male” and “female” homosexuality demonstrate the conflation of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation.
Laws that ban expressive conduct and effectively eliminate lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) persons from public discourse have historical roots in Christian and Muslim religious traditions. Whether codified or not, violence against LGBTI individuals is a consequence of deeply embedded gender inequality. Such inequality manifests in social and physical violence that ultimately punishes, controls, and erases LGBTI persons. Although international bodies have reacted against such violence by ratifying legal instruments to protect the LGBTI community, changing social conditions and preconceptions has proven to be the most effective route to protecting LGBTI persons’ human rights.
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LGBT Military Service Policies in the United States
Andrew Goodhart and Jami K. Taylor
For most of its history, the U.S. military has maintained a policy of exclusion toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people serving in uniform. The justifications for these exclusions have included the view that being homosexual or transgender is a psychological disorder, that it undermines military morale and effectiveness, and a fear that LGBT people would be vulnerable to foreign espionage. Explicit policies banning consensual homosexual sex—and excluding from service those who engage in it—date to the period between World Wars I and II, but de facto efforts at exclusion have existed since the early days of the republic.
Regulations governing homosexuals in the military came under pressure in the 1970s and 1980s as societal views toward lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people changed, and those LGB service members discharged under the policy increasingly challenged their treatment in court. (Public pressure to change regulations governing transgender people in the military arose mostly in the 2000s, though litigation efforts date to the 1970s.) In addition to general shifts in public and legal opinion, the debate over LGB people serving in the U.S. military was affected by the experience of foreign militaries that allow LGB people to serve. United States law began to loosen formal restrictions on LBG people serving in uniform with the passage of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) in 1994, but it still required LGB people to serve in secret. Changing public perceptions of LGB people and problems implementing the ban galvanized support for eliminating such restrictions. In 2010, President Obama signed legislation repealing DADT and removing all restrictions on LGB people serving in the military. However, transgender people do not enjoy the same rights. The Trump administration has revised Obama-era rules on transgender service members to enable greater exclusion. The issue is being contested in the courts and appears ripe for further political and legal dispute.
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LGBT People as a Relatively Politically Powerless Group
Andrew Proctor
As a group engaged in struggles for representation and inclusion, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people have vied for access to social and political power. There is little dispute that LGBT people are a relatively powerless group in society, but the extent to which the group is powerless is subject to debate in political science. Scholars disagree over the extent of powerlessness because the definition of power is contested among political scientists. As such, scholars have examined the powerlessness of LGBT people in varying ways and reached different conclusions about the success the group has had in achieving rights and visibility.
LGBT powerlessness emerges from the group’s status as sexual and gender minorities. Over time, the boundaries that constitute the group have shifted in response to power asymmetries between LGBT people and cisgender, heterosexuals who control access to political and social institutions. In addition, power asymmetries have emerged within the LGBT community at the intersection of race, class, and gender as well as across subgroups of the acronym LGBT. Thus, the distribution of power and powerlessness vary within the group as well as between the group and dominant groups in society. These within- and across-group variations in power shape LGBT group boundaries, representation and public opinion, and voting behavior. The powerlessness of LGBT people must be understood in relation to these contingencies that define the group’s boundaries, and the ways in which power is distributed within and across groups.
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LGBT Rights and Theoretical Perspectives
Francis Kuriakose and Deepa Kylasam Iyer
The question of LGBT rights was first examined as part of gender and sexuality studies in the 1980s, predominantly in the United States. This was a result of the LGBT movement that had articulated the demand for equal rights and freedom of sexual and gender minorities a decade before. Since then, the examination of LGBT rights has traversed multiple theoretical and methodological approaches and breached many disciplinary frontiers. Initially, gay and lesbian studies (GLS) emerged as an approach to understand the notion of LGBT identity using historical evidence. GLS emphasized the objectives of the LGBT movement in articulating its identity as an issue of minority rights within the ambit of litigation and case law. However, the definition of LGBT identity as a homogeneous and fixed category, and the conceptualization of equality rights as the ultimate project of emancipation, was critiqued on grounds of its normative and assimilationist tendencies. Queer theory emerged in the 1990s as a counter-discourse to GLS, using the individual-centric postmodern technique of deconstruction as the method of analysis. This approach opened up scope for multiple identities within the LGBT community to articulate their positionality, and reclaim the possibilities of sexual liberation that GLS had previously obscured.
Subsequent scholarship has critiqued GLS and queer theory for incomplete theorization and inadequate representation, based on four types of counter-argument. The first argument is that queer theory, with its emphasis on self as an alternative for wider social interaction, concealed constitutive macrostructures such as neoliberal capitalism, as well as the social basis of identity and power relations. The second argument highlights the incomplete theorization of bisexual and transgender identities within the LGBT community. For example, understanding bisexuality involves questioning the universalism of monosexuality and postmodern notions of linear sexuality, and acknowledging the possibility of an integrated axis of gender and sexuality. Theorization of transgender and transsexual rights requires a grounded approach incorporating new variables such as work and violence in the historiography of transgender life. The third critique comes from decolonial scholarship that argues that intersectionality of race, gender, class, caste, and nationality brings out multiple concerns of social justice that have been rendered invisible by existing theory. The fourth critique emerged from family studies and clinical psychology, that used queer theory to ask questions about definitions of all family structures outside the couple norm, including non-reproductive heterosexuality, polyamorous relationships, and non-marital sexual unions. These critiques have allowed new questions to emerge as part of LGBT rights within the existing traditions, and enabled the question of LGBT rights to be considered across new disciplinary fronts. For example, the incorporation of the “queer” variable in hitherto technical disciplines such as economics, finance, and management is a development of the early-21st-century scholarship. In particular, the introduction of LGBT rights in economics to expand human capabilities has policy implications as it widens and mainstreams access of opportunities for LGBT communities through consumption, trade, education, employment, and social benefits, thereby expanding the actualization of LGBT rights.
Article
Liberation Movements in Power in Africa
Roger Southall
Liberation movements in Africa are nationalist movements that have resorted to armed struggle to overthrow colonialism, white minority rule, or oppressive postcolonial governments. Claiming to represent the national will, some are intolerant of opposition, others dubious of the legitimacy of multiparty democracy: this difference is a reflection of whether the military wing of the liberation movement dominates the political movement or whether the reverse situation applies. In the post–Cold War era, liberation movements espouse notions of the “developmental state,” continuing to ascribe the state a primary role in economic development event though they may simultaneously embrace the market. The extent to which they subordinate political considerations and freedoms to the pursuit of economic growth dictates whether they pursue paths of authoritarian development or developmental stagnation
Article
Luxembourg and the European Union
Robert Harmsen and Anna-Lena Högenauer
A founding member state of the European Union (EU) and a major European institutional center, Luxembourg has been a consistently strong supporter of the further development of European integration, often acting to facilitate compromises at critical moments. Its European policy rests on a broad political consensus and enjoys strong support in national public opinion. However, the country has also defended key national priorities on occasion, such as the interests of the steel sector in the early phases of European integration or its taxation policy in the early 21st century.
Historically, this openness toward cooperation can be explained by reference to Luxembourg’s long experience of cooperation with neighbouring countries. Luxembourg was a member of the Zollverein (German Customs Union) in the 19th century and formed an economic union with Belgium after the First World War.
European policymaking in Luxembourg is characterized by a pragmatic and informal policy style. The comparatively limited size of the national bureaucracy allows for an ease of internal communication and coordination. The typically long tenures and broad remits of national officials coupled with their multilingualism facilitate their integration into European policy arenas, where they often play pivotal roles.
Luxembourgish society is further highly “Europeanized.” As the country became one of the largest producers of steel in the world, it attracted high levels of immigration from other European countries. The economic transformation of the country from the 1980s onward—moving from an industrial economy to a service-based economy centered on the financial sector—would not have been conceivable without the parallel development and deepening of European integration. In 2018, foreigners made up 48% of the resident population of the country, with citizens of the other 27 EU member states accounting for around 85% of that foreign community. The country’s labor force is further heavily dependent on cross-border workers from the three surrounding countries. This unique national situation poses a range of distinctive policy challenges regarding both the national political system and the wider governance of an exceptionally dense network of cross-border relationships.
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Macedonia: Troublesome Relations Among Politics, Ethnicity, and the Military
Biljana Vankovska
At first sight, relations between politics and the military in Macedonia, one of the ex-Yugoslav republics that gained independence in 1991, seem to resemble the typical evolution of civil–military relations in other countries in transition. Yet, history in Macedonia is far from straightforward and simple. First, the country’s appearance on the world scene was unique: it was practically a demilitarized state with no army! Apart from that, amid the Yugoslav imbroglio it was known as an “oasis of peace.” Only 10 years later, in 2001, Macedonia found itself on the verge of an ethnic conflict, with a powerless (Macedonian-dominated) military that confronted apparently well-organized Albanian paramilitary forces. In March 2020, Macedonia became NATO’s 30th member state. Yet, the dilemma that affects civil–military relations at both the political-military and societal-military levels has not gone away. Theoretically and practically, any meaningful analysis requires detection of the troublesome aspects of each side of the triangle: state/politics/military/society/ethnicity. Though the society–state dimension is far from inconsiderable, on methodological grounds the analysis that follows is restricted to the other two dimensions.
NATO membership for a transitional country usually presupposes a successful democratic transition, internal stability, and societal consensus over key national values and interests. Macedonia’s case belies that assumption. The Macedonian military has been practically invisible in internal politics, while it has been widely cited as a key asset for bringing the country closer to NATO by direct involvement in military interventions launched by the United States or NATO, starting with Afghanistan and Iraq and extending to the plans for involvement in Mali’s affairs. Behind the façade, there is silent internal strife within the ranks along political and ethnic lines (i.e., the same lines that sharply divide the state and society, challenging the country’s internal cohesion and democratic prospects). In addition, the military has to make do with scant essential resources, while the military officers’ self-respect is severely diminished by the low societal rewards for their profession. Macedonia’s democratic transition is far from complete, since the country is going through a deep internal crisis related to its societal/security dilemma, and the military is just one of the institutions that suffer because of ethnic competition and unprincipled power-sharing bargaining.
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Madagascar: The Military in Politics
Juvence F. Ramasy
In many African countries, armies played a key public role in the aftermath of independence. For this reason, no study of African politics can overlook the militarization of the state. Postcolonial Madagascar, for example, was ruled for over two decades by personnel from its army. National armies often present themselves as neutral entities that can guarantee a country’s political stability. However, there is no such thing as neutrality, whether in Africa or elsewhere. The best hope for armies to become and remain as politically neutral as possible is the demilitarization of political power. The withdrawal of the military from politics and their subordination to civilian decisions is important but does not suffice to ensure the army’s political neutrality. Such a withdrawal was widely carried out through the third wave of democratization, the historical period during which there was a sustained and significant increase in the proportion of competitive regimes. Democratization processes cannot succeed without efforts toward neutralizing the military, and thus, toward demilitarizing the political society and depoliticizing the army. Post-transition regimes striving for democracy should bring about and preserve a formal separation of power between the political and the civilian spheres. For these regimes to establish a solid mandate, the army and the security apparatus need to be placed under democratic control. In Africa, the disengagement of the military from the public sphere came about with the political transitions of the 1990s. But changes in political regimes over the past decade have challenged the democratization process, as the return of praetorianism (an excessive political influence of the armed forces in the Sahel and Madagascar) testifies. Hence, demilitarizing politics, on the one hand and depoliticizing and reprofessionalizing the army on the other remain essential issues to be addressed.
Article
Mexico: The Evolution of a Multiparty State
Nora Hamilton and Patrice Olsen
Several distinct features have shaped Mexico’s political development, among them its geographic characteristics, including its proximity to, and shifting relations with, the United States; the existence of a significant indigenous population whose distinct cultures and interaction with the Spanish colonists helped determine the trajectory of Mexican history; and the Mexican revolution, which in turn shaped the political system and ideology of much of the 20th century. These in turn have influenced research issues and debates, including (a) conceptualizations of the indigenous populations and the impact of colonialism (caste system vs. mestizo/cosmic race), growing emphasis on size and identity of indigenous groups and other minorities, and the search for autonomy by indigenous communities; (b) foreign relations, and especially the impact of the United States, including annexation of half of Mexico’s territory following the Mexican–American War, foreign ownership and control of Mexican assets (dependent development, “triple alliance”), and the impact of globalization and neoliberalism (outward- vs. inward-oriented development, North American Free Trade Agreement, cross-border alliances); (c) the nature and impact of the Mexican revolution, including origins and goals of distinct revolutionary groups, the Constitution, reforms and their limits in the early postrevolutionary period, and the creation of a unique political system combining elements of flexibility and repression; (d) the role of the state, including debates regarding the independence of the state vs. class control, and its significance in the protection of national interests and promoting social reforms and economic development; and (e) migration, including U.S. recruitment of Mexican labor, increasing emphasis on the Mexican border and restrictions on migrants, contributions of Mexican migrants to Mexico (remittances, hometown associations and other associations linking Mexicans to their home communities), and cooperation of Mexico with the United States in controlling Central American migration.
International research issues, including concerns about human rights and the rights of women, minorities and other disadvantaged groups, as well as developments in Mexico in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, have also had an important impact on Mexican research, among them
(a) democratization, including the role of social groups, decentralization, and the limits to democracy (ongoing corruption, fraudulent elections, and continued poverty and inequality), and
(b) the drug issue, including the emergence of the cartels and increased violence with the militarization of the drug war under the Calderón presidency, policy concentrating on kingpin strategy, and the role of the United States as drug market and supplier of guns as well as a source of assistance in the drug war focused on military aid and the destruction of drug producing areas. These conditions present formidable challenges to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose anticorruption, proreform agenda and widespread support brought hope for change.
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Militaries’ Organizational Cultures in a Globalizing World
Joseph Soeters
Organizational cultures in military organizations consist of symbols, practices, habits, hidden assumptions, and beliefs about what needs to be done, and what is appropriate and what is not, before, during, and after operations. Generally speaking, organizational cultures in military institutions are similar to those in any other work organization. Upon closer examination, however, it appears that the military’s 24/7, communal life outside society, its emphasis on hierarchy and discipline, and in particular its license to use large-scale force make it different. Relatedly, the way in which the military’s organizational cultures are created and recreated has aspects and emphases that are less common in conventional work organizations. Recruiting and socialization patterns of new organizational members in the military have been studied frequently because they are so distinctive.
Military organizational cultures are not identical worldwide. Military organizations differ internationally, because military organizations are still strongly connected to their national backgrounds, including the languages, legal regimes, political atmospheres, and general ways of living in the many nations across the globe. National societies and their histories shape military organizational cultures in multiple ways. Dramatic experiences at the national level, for instance during World War II, may lead to a continuation or, just the opposite, the disruption, of armed forces’ organizational cultures. Yet, despite the differences, something of a world culture impacting on the use of force seems to emerge as well.
In an era when international alliances carry out most missions, different national backgrounds influence strategic decision-making and the way operations are conducted. Most of the time, national armed forces operate separately, in their own area (or time) of operations, sometimes guiding troops from smaller and less wealthy partnering nations. The coordination of actions between the various areas of operation is generally not very well elaborated. This applies not only to combat operations but also to peace missions. A full integration of national armed forces, such as in a United Nations security force or a European army, is an ideal that some may dream of, but it is still far from reality. The greatest degree of integration is likely to be found in international headquarters.
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Military and Absentee Voting in the United States: History and Modern Practice
Donald S. Inbody
The advent of absentee voting for American citizens began with the desire on the part of soldiers to participate in the electoral process. It was aided by politicians who wanted the support of those soldiers. The rise of absentee voting was later extended to nonmilitary Americans living overseas or otherwise away from their home precincts. Resistance to absentee voting was strong at first, largely on philosophical grounds (i.e., the question of why someone away from home would be interested in voting, or absentee voting inviting vote fraud). It was also resisted by political parties who were convinced that those voters may vote for the opposition candidate.
Gradually, in the post-World War II years, nearly all resistance faded but never disappeared. Vestigial perceptions of the voting habits of military personnel remained as late as the first years of the 21st century. Congress was convinced to pass several voting rights laws that eventually extended the right to vote to all Americans serving in the military or living overseas, although some barriers remain to be overcome.
Article
The Military in African Politics
Maggie Dwyer
Interstate conflict has been rare in sub-Saharan Africa and militaries often do not fit the image of a force focused on external threats. Instead, they have often been heavily engaged in domestic politics, regularly serving as regime protection. For many militaries on the continent, the continued internal focus of the armed forces has been shaped by practices under colonialism.
One defining feature of African militaries’ involvement in politics is the coup d’état. From the 1960s to the 1980s coups were the primary method of regime change, making the military central to the political landscape of the continent. By the start of the 21st century there were far fewer direct attempts at military control of African states, yet militaries continue to influence politics even under civilian leadership. While there are differences in the role of militaries based on the unique circumstances of each state, there are also general patterns regarding new missions undertaken by armed forces following the end of the Cold War. These include peacekeeping, counterterrorism, and humanitarian assistance, all of which generally involve international partnerships and cooperation. Yet these missions have also had domestic political motivations and effects.
Article
Military-Industrial Complexes and Their Variations
Marc R. DeVore
Dwight David Eisenhower delivered one final address to the American public on January 17, 1961, as he prepared to step down from the U.S. presidency. Often remembered as an inarticulate public speaker, Eisenhower surprised his audience with his clear warning that “in the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” Eisenhower’s words resonated with both his audience and subsequent generations because he gave voice to the growing level of popular anxiety over whether armaments’ increasing importance to national security would ultimately endow defense firms with a degree of power incompatible with liberal democracy.
Although Eisenhower’s concerns about defense firms’ antidemocratic potential echoed those of policymakers and scholars since the First World War, Eisenhower’s formulation of the military-industrial complex problématique followed on the heels of earlier analytic models—notably the “merchants of death” and “garrison state” hypotheses—and preceded later rearticulations, such as that of the “iron triangle.”
It is possible now, with a century of perspective on this literature, to assess which hypotheses about defense firms’ deleterious impact on society and government have been borne out by subsequent events and which have not. Within this context, many of the worst fears embodied in the earlier theories have not been borne out by subsequent events. Defense firms did not “cause” wars as per the merchants-of-death hypothesis, and democracy did not give way in states where it already existed to the authoritarian rule of “specialists of violence.” Nonetheless, the core insight of the military-industrial complex and iron triangle schools of thought—that defense industries and their allies in the military and politics will act as an interest group to promote procurement projects—has proven robust. The way that these dynamics occur, however, varies from state to state as a function of their institutions.
Even though the production of armaments by defense firms headquartered in one’s state exercises a distorting effect on national politics and military procurement, few states can escape this dynamic. The national security advantages of greater supply security and enhanced military adaptation, combined with the fear that once abandoned, defense-industrial capabilities cannot be quickly reconstituted, compels most states that can produce armaments to do so. A military-industrial complex, of some form, is thus a fatality for the modern state.
Article
Military Learning and Evolutions in Warfare in the Modern Era
Nathan W. Toronto
The way militaries learn has evolved over time, and the first two decades of the 21st century once again see military learning on the cusp of change. Since the start of the modern era in the early 18th century, military learning has evolved from a focus on technical, tactical skills relevant to specific combat branches to a generalized study of war and warfare that blends theory and practice. These changes have come about in response to developments in human capital, battlefield technology, and warfare, or how military forces fight. The early 21st century has witnessed a new shift in warfare, from networked warfare—in which information is synchronized across location, targeting, and precision guidance systems to find, fix, and destroy the enemy with deadly efficiency—to unconventional information warfare—in which non-state actors have access to many of the same information resources and, combined with cyber capabilities that rely on anonymity and occasional state support, negate many of the advantages of networked warfare. This portends a change in how militaries learn, to patterns of learning that can cope with a battlespace that is potentially omnipresent, where states must incorporate all elements of national power coherently in order to achieve success in war.
These changes are evident not only on the battlefield, but also in military schools. The theories of Napoleonic warfare born at the dawn of the modern era seem increasingly inadequate for the realities of modern combat. This calls for the generation of new bodies of knowledge by military officers and other specialists in the field. The notion that war itself is politics conducted by other means is increasingly under threat. Likewise, curricula at military schools bear an increasing resemblance to curricula at academic civilian programs in security studies, leadership, and international relations, and more and more civilians are sitting side by side with military officers in the classroom. Since the end of World War II, the bounds of the battlefield have bled into the traditionally civilian space of information, so the study of war and warfare is no longer the unique province of the military officer. This process has accelerated in the 21st century, and a range of defense analysts, scholars, and policymakers have commented on how military forces prepare to fight.
