Should Strategic Studies Survive?

1997 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard K. Betts
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Military Studies ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Strategic Studies

Political science attends to causes and consequences of war but only fitfully welcomes study of its conduct, because few grasp how much the dynamics of combat shape politics. Bernard Brodie called for development of strategic studies on the model of the discipline of economics, because neither the military nor academia treated the subject rigorously. His call was answered in the early cold war, with mixed results. Theories about nuclear deterrence burgeoned while empirical studies of war lagged. The late—cold war impasse in nuclear strategy, rooted in NATO doctrine, shifted attention to conventional military operations and empirically grounded theory. Since the cold war, research on general theoretical questions about war and peace has been prospering, but education in military matters has been eroding. Interdisciplinary strategic studies integrate political and military elements of international conflict, but there is no recognized discipline of military science; military analysis is smuggled into political science and history departments, where it is resisted by calls to conceptualize security broadly or focus on purely theoretical work. If serious military studies are squeezed out of universities, there will be no qualified civilian analysts to provide independent expertise in policy and budget debates, and decisions on war and peace will be made irresponsibly by uninformed civilians or by the professional military alone.

Defining–Redefining Security

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Buzan ◽  
Lene Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Military Technology ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Political Rivalry ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Strategic Studies

International security studies (ISS) has significantly evolved from its founding core of “golden age” strategic studies. From the onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s through to the 1970s, strategic studies virtually was ISS, and remains a very large part of it. The fact that it continues to stand as the “mainstream” attacked by widening/deepening approaches further speaks to its status as a “core.” This core consists of those literatures whose principal concern is external military threats to the state, and the whole agenda of the use of force which arises from that. This core was originally focused on nuclear weapons and the military-political rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union, but has since adapted its focus to changes in the salience and nature of military threats caused by the end of the Cold War and 9/11. It includes literatures on deterrence, arms racing, arms control and disarmament, grand strategy, wars (and “new wars”), the use of force, nuclear proliferation, military technology, and terrorism. Debates within ISS are structured, either implicitly or explicitly, by five questions: (1) which referent object to adopt, (2) whether to understand security as internally or externally driven, (3) whether to limit it to the military sector or to expand it, (4) what fundamental thinking about (international) politics to adopt, and (5) which epistemology and methodology to choose.

Reluctant Cold Warriors

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Kontorovich
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Soviet Economy ◽  
Accurate Analysis ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Us ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The academic study of the Soviet economy in the US was created to help fight the Cold War, part of a broader mobilization of the social sciences for national security needs. The Soviet strategic challenge rested on the ability of its economy to produce large numbers of sophisticated weapons. The military sector was the dominant part of the economy, and the most successful one. However, a comprehensive survey of scholarship on the Soviet economy from 1948-1991 shows that it paid little attention to the military sector, compared to other less important parts of the economy. Soviet secrecy does not explain this pattern of neglect. Western scholars developed strained civilian interpretations for several aspects of the economy which the Soviets themselves acknowledged to have military significance. A close reading of the economic literature, combined with insights from other disciplines, suggest three complementary explanations for civilianization of the Soviet economy. Soviet studies was a peripheral field in economics, and its practitioners sought recognition by pursuing the agenda of the mainstream discipline, however ill-fitting their subject. The Soviet economy was supposed to be about socialism, and the military sector appeared to be unrelated to that. By stressing the militarization, one risked being viewed as a Cold War monger. The conflict identified in this book between the incentives of academia and the demands of policy makers (to say nothing of accurate analysis) has broad relevance for national security uses of social science.

The Handbook of European Defence Policies and Armed Forces

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
National Defence

The armed forces of Europe have undergone a dramatic transformation since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Handbook of European Defence Policies and Armed Forces provides the first comprehensive analysis of national security and defence policies, strategies, doctrines, capabilities, and military operations, as well as the alliances and partnerships of European armed forces in response to the security challenges Europe has faced since the end of the cold war. A truly cross-European comparison of the evolution of national defence policies and armed forces remains a notable blind spot in the existing literature. This Handbook aims to fill this gap with fifty-one contributions on European defence and international security from around the world. The six parts focus on: country-based assessments of the evolution of the national defence policies of Europe’s major, medium, and lesser powers since the end of the cold war; the alliances and security partnerships developed by European states to cooperate in the provision of national security; the security challenges faced by European states and their armed forces, ranging from interstate through intra-state and transnational; the national security strategies and doctrines developed in response to these challenges; the military capabilities, and the underlying defence and technological industrial base, brought to bear to support national strategies and doctrines; and, finally, the national or multilateral military operations by European armed forces. The contributions to The Handbook collectively demonstrate the fruitfulness of giving analytical precedence back to the comparative study of national defence policies and armed forces across Europe.

The Soviet Factor in the US-China Military-Technical Cooperation during the Cold War

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 12-47
Author(s):  
Yinan Li
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Active Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Technical Cooperation ◽  
Arms Sales ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The development of the PRC’s armed forces included three phases when their modernization was carried out through an active introduction of foreign weapons and technologies. The first and the last of these phases (from 1949 to 1961, and from 1992 till present) received wide attention in both Chinese and Western academic literature, whereas the second one — from 1978 to 1989 —when the PRC actively purchased weapons and technologies from the Western countries remains somewhat understudied. This paper is intended to partially fill this gap. The author examines the logic of the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States in the context of complex interactions within the United States — the USSR — China strategic triangle in the last years of the Cold War. The first section covers early contacts between the PRC and the United States in the security field — from the visit of R. Nixon to China till the inauguration of R. Reagan. The author shows that during this period Washington clearly subordinated the US-Chinese cooperation to the development of the US-Soviet relations out of fear to damage the fragile process of detente. The second section focuses on the evolution of the R. Reagan administration’s approaches regarding arms sales to China in the context of a new round of the Cold War. The Soviet factor significantly influenced the development of the US-Chinese military-technical cooperation during that period, which for both parties acquired not only practical, but, most importantly, political importance. It was their mutual desire to undermine strategic positions of the USSR that allowed these two countries to overcome successfully tensions over the US arms sales to Taiwan. However, this dependence of the US-China military-technical cooperation on the Soviet factor had its downside. As the third section shows, with the Soviet threat fading away, the main incentives for the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States also disappeared. As a result, after the Tiananmen Square protests, this cooperation completely ceased. Thus, the author concludes that the US arms sales to China from the very beginning were conditioned by the dynamics of the Soviet-American relations and Beijing’s willingness to play an active role in the policy of containment. In that regard, the very fact of the US arms sales to China was more important than its practical effect, i.e. this cooperation was of political nature, rather than military one.

scholarly journals The soviet school system in Central Intelligence Agency estimates at the initial stage of the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 192-197
Author(s):  
Zaur Imalverdi oglu Mamedov
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
School System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Soviet School ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
Comprehensive Knowledge ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The paper is devoted to the analysis by the Central Intelligence Agency of the USSR school system. The US was in dire need of information about its new adversary. The situation was aggravated by the closed nature of the Soviet state and the absence of a long continuous tradition of intelligence activities of American intelligence. The president and other government bodies wanted to have comprehensive knowledge of any processes and phenomena in the world. US intelligence should have been able to solve this problem. In this regard, the first stage of the Cold War for the CIA was largely due to an analysis of official and semi-official sources, as well as the development of various strategies. In order to find out about various areas of the life in the USSR, analysts extracted information from Soviet scientific literature, press, radio, legislation and interrogations of former German prisoners. The National Assessment Bureau, led by William Langer and Sherman Kent, compiled reports on Soviet military capabilities, industry, agriculture, the political system, etc. The Soviet school system was considered by American intelligence specialists in the framework of the military and economic potential of the enemy, as well as the strategy of psychological warfare. The paper analyzes the reports concerning the educational system in the USSR in the aspect of school education, its strengths and weaknesses. The results allow us to conclude that the information about the Soviet school system contributed to the formation of the foreign policy and domestic policy of the United States.

Violent Origins of Authoritarian Variation: Rebellion Type and Regime Type in Cold War Southeast Asia

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Slater
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
The State ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Critical Question ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Historical Case ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

AbstractDictatorships are every bit as institutionally diverse as democracies, but where does this variation come from? This article argues that different types of internal rebellion influence the emergence of different types of authoritarian regimes. The critical question is whether rebel forces primarily seek to seize state power or to escape it. Regional rebellions seeking toescapethe state raise the probability of a military-dominated authoritarian regime, since they are especially likely to unify the military while heightening friction between civilian and military elites. Leftist rebellions seeking toseizethe state are more likely to give rise to civilian-dominated dictatorships by inspiring ‘joint projects’ in which military elites willingly support party-led authoritarian rule. Historical case studies of Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam illustrate the theory, elaborating how different types of violent conflict helped produce different types of dictatorships across the breadth of mainland and island Southeast Asia during the Cold War era.

Algeria: Military Past as Prologue

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul E. Lenze, Jr.
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The State ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
Military Rule ◽  
Military Involvement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

Algeria is a state in the Maghreb that has been dominated by military rule for the majority of its existence. The National People’s Army (ANP) used nationalism to justify its intervention into politics while ensuring that withdrawal would occur only if national identity were protected. Algeria, similar to other Middle Eastern states, underwent historical trajectories influenced by colonialism, the Cold War, and post-9/11 politics; briefly experimented with democracy; and as a result, experienced the military as the dominant institution in the state. The resignation of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika after 20 years of rule in April 2019, following six weeks of popular protest, has raised questions as to whether democratization is possible. Algeria’s history of military involvement in politics, the strength of the military as an institution, and its cooperative links with domestic elites and international actors portend the endurance of authoritarianism for the foreseeable future.

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