Epilogue

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-156
Author(s):  
Ned Dobos
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Military Establishment ◽  
The Core ◽  
Defence System ◽  
National Defence

Whether or not the costs of a military establishment are worth bearing will depend on, among other things, the availability of alternative arrangements for national defence. Gene Sharp spent his career advocating for what he called a ‘post-military’ civilian-based defence system. It would perform the core functions currently entrusted to armed forces, including national defence against external aggression, but it would rely on non-violent means and methods—the very same that citizens might employ to depose a local dictator. Sharp envisaged a world in which the energies and resources currently spent on militaries would be redirected into these radically different-looking defence institutions. He called this process ‘trans-armament’, as opposed to disarmament, to emphasize that it would not involve throwing our weapons down, but rather replacing them with other (in Sharp’s estimation, better) ones. The epilogue examines Sharp’s proposal.

scholarly journals Framing Civil Defence Critique: Swiss Physicians’ Resistance to the Coordinated Medical Services in the 1980s

2021 ◽  
pp. 183-207
Author(s):  
Sibylle Marti
Keyword(s):  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Conscientious Objection ◽  
Medical Services ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
The Core ◽  
Defence System ◽  
Collective Effort ◽  
Discursive Strategy ◽  
Civil Defence ◽  
National Defence

AbstractThe Coordinated Medical Services, an emblematic organisation of Switzerland’s total national defence system, were operational at the beginning of the 1980s. Through the Coordinated Medical Services, Swiss authorities propagated a sociotechnical imaginary the core of which was that Switzerland was able to survive a nuclear war through a huge collective effort. This vision faced severe criticism, in particular, from members of the Physicians for Social Responsibility and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (PSR/IPPNW Switzerland). The chapter sheds light on their resistive actions, including conscientious objection, as well as on their effective discursive strategy of subjectivisation centring around the figure of the conscientious physician. This resistance contributed to a growing civil defence criticism that challenged the Swiss total national defence imaginary.

Premises, Policies and Multilateral Whitewashing of Broad Security Doctrines: A Southeast Asia-Based Critique of “Non-traditional” Security

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2019) ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
Delphine Allès
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Human Security ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Multilateral Cooperation ◽  
The Core ◽  
Political Roles ◽  
Policy Transformation ◽  
Semantic Evolution

This article highlights the formulation of comprehensive conceptions of security in Indonesia, Malaysia and within the framework of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), well before their academic conceptualisation. These security doctrines have been the basis of the consolidation of state and military apparatuses in the region. They tend to be overlooked by analyses praising the recent conversion of Southeast Asian political elites to the “non-traditional security”? agenda. This latter development is perceived as a source of multilateral cooperation and a substitute for the hardly operationalisable concept of human security. However, in the region, non-traditional security proves to be a semantic evolution rather than a policy transformation. At the core of ASEAN’s security narrative, it has provided a multilateral anointing of “broad” but not deepened conceptions of security, thus legitimising wide-ranging socio-political roles for the armed forces.

Serbia and Croatia

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filip Ejdus
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Democratic Transition ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Small States ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Defence Strategy ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
National Defence

During the cold war, the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia was a middle-sized power pursuing a non-aligned foreign policy and a defence strategy based on massive armed forces, obligatory conscription, and a doctrine of ‘Total National Defence’. The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s resulted in the creation of several small states. Ever since, their defence policies and armed forces have been undergoing a thorough transformation. This chapter provides an analysis of the defence transformation of the two biggest post-Yugoslav states—Serbia and Croatia—since the end of the cold war. During the 1990s, defence transformation in both states was shaped by the undemocratic nature of their regimes and war. Ever since they started democratic transition in 2000, and in spite of their diverging foreign policies, both states have pivoted towards building modern, professional, interoperable, and democratically controlled armed forces capable of tackling both traditional and emerging threats.

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.

scholarly journals VOJAŠKOMEDICINSKA OBVEŠČEVALNA DEJAVNOST Z OMEJENIMI VIRI NA PRIMERU MAJHNIH DRŽAV

2014 ◽  
pp. 105-122
Author(s):  
TANJA KOVAČ KREMŽAR
Keyword(s):  
Threat Assessment ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Healthcare Personnel ◽  
Health It ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
Threat Analysis ◽  
Effective Program ◽  
Available Information ◽  
Bio Engineering ◽  
National Defence

Slovenska vojska poleg nacionalne obrambe opravlja naloge v mednarodnih operacijah in na misijah v zahtevnih podnebnih in geografskih razmerah zunaj območja držav članic Nata in EU. Zavezniške sile, ki opravljajo svoje poslanstvo na ozemljih zunaj Natovega območja, so lahko izpostavljene različnim dejavnikom tveganja, ki vplivajo na njihovo zdravje. Za njihovo ustrezno zdravstveno zaščito je treba sprejeti in izvajati učinkovit program, ki naj bo namenjen tako zdravstvenemu osebju kot poveljnikom. Strokovno zdravstveno osebje pridobiva zdravstvene podatke, na primer ocenjuje okoljske in zdravstvene vire ogrožanja, prepozna tveganja in izdela analizo groženj, ter jih vključuje v upravljanje tveganj. MEDINT ima pomembno vlogo v razmerju med zdravstvenim sistemom in krovno obveščevalno dejavnostjo, uporablja zakonitosti njenega obveščevalnega ciklusa, saj se na nekaterih stopnjah obveščevalni ciklus MEDINT vključuje v obveščevalni ciklus krovne obveščevalne dejavnosti. Končni obveščevalni proizvod MEDINT, ki temelji na oceni zdravstvene ogroženosti, podpira poveljnikov namen in operacijo. In addition to providing for national defence, the Slovenian Armed Forces perform tasks in demanding climatic and geographical conditions in international operations and missions outside the territory of NATO and EU Member States. Allied forces performing their mission in the territories outside the NATO area may be exposed to various threats that affect their health. For the protection of the forces` health, it is necessary to adopt and implement an effective program, which should be aimed, both, at healthcare personnel as well as commanders. Professional medical staff obtains medical data, assesses environmental and medical threats, identifies the risks, carries out threat analysis and implements them in risk management. Medical intelligence (MEDINT) plays an important role in the relation between the health system and intelligence activities. It also uses the intelligence cycle to ensure that all available information for making assessments is processed. To be fully efficient MEDINT requires the cooperation of experts from different natural science disciplines (medical, scientific or bio-engineering). The final MEDINT product based on the health threat assessment supports the commander’s intent and the operation as such.

On Fear-Induced Aggression

2020 ◽  
pp. 62-79
Author(s):  
Ned Dobos
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
International Norms ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Military Establishment ◽  
Trade Off

Wherever there is a military establishment, there is a possibility that it will provoke the very thing that it is meant to deter. A foreign enemy might be driven to attack us not despite our armed forces, but because of them, in an act of fear-induced ‘defensive aggression’. What this tells us is that a military’s contribution to ‘national security’ is not unequivocally positive. There is a trade-off involved. States armed with militaries may be less likely to find themselves on the receiving end of ‘greedy’ or ‘opportunistic’ aggression, but they are more likely to find themselves on the receiving end of preventive aggression, motivated by feelings of insecurity and vulnerability. Thankfully, international norms against the use of preventive military force have limited the instances of defensive aggression over the last century. But today these norms are unravelling. If ‘defensive aggression’ becomes legitimized, we should expect to see more of it.

The National Defence College

2021 ◽  
pp. 162-198
Author(s):  
Vipul Dutta
Keyword(s):  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Military Officers ◽  
Roles And Responsibilities ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
The Military ◽  
Jawaharlal Nehru ◽  
National Defence

The final chapter looks at the National Defence College (NDC) in Delhi that was inaugurated by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1960. It is the last of the military institutional creations designed to meet the training needs of senior ranking Indian officers. This chapter will contextualise the emergence of the NDC in the changing perceptions, roles and responsibilities of the Indian Armed forces. It will dwell at length on the post-independence cohort of senior Indian military officers that represented the ‘constituency’ of the NDC, and re-look at their subsequent assignments which symbolised a paradigm shift in the mandate of the armed forces, thereby offering a fresh perspective on the post-independence phase of the military institutional ‘Indianisation’.

«Premature Resisters». Spanish Contribution to the French National Defence Campaignin 1939/1940

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Gaspar Celaya
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Internment Camps ◽  
Spanish History ◽  
Military Contractors ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World ◽  
National Defence

«Premature Resisters». Spanish Contribution to the French National Defence Campaign in 1939/1940 Thousands of Spaniards actively contributed to the defence of France in 1939/1940, whether as military contractors, legionnaires or soldiers of the Regiment de Marche de Volontaires Étrangers (RMVE). This paper focuses on three elements of their contributions. First, it investigates the importance of French internment camps for Spanish refugees’ that became key recruitment grounds for soldiers and labourers. Secondly, it will analyse the importance of the French General Staff's decision to veto the creation of Spanish autonomous units within the regular French armed forces, and how this compared to the situation of Polish and Czechoslovakian volunteers. Thirdly, the declaration of war on 3 September 1939 will be highlighted as a crucial turning point for French attitudes towards the recruitment of Spanish contractors and soldiers. Despite those changes in attitude, the Spanish contribution to France's defence in 1939/1940 – and to the French resistance – was never recognised by politicians in the post-war era. This is a fourth aspect of the entangled Franco-Spanish history of the Second World War that will be analysed in this paper, thereby highlighting how the memory battles between French Gaullists and Communists, reinforced by the context of the Cold War, left little space for the commemorative inclusion of «outsiders».

scholarly journals Upside down: Reframing European Defence Studies

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 378-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugo Meijer ◽  
Marco Wyss
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
National Level ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Defence Studies ◽  
Defence Policy ◽  
Added Benefit ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
National Defence ◽  
Made In

Since the end of the Cold War, the study of European defence has been dominated by a ‘Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP)-centric’ approach, while largely neglecting the comparative analysis of national defence policies. This article makes a conceptual and empirical case for turning the dominant research prism of European defence studies upside down by returning the analytical precedence to the national level. This approach privileges the comparative analysis of national defence policies and armed forces, before focusing on the trans-/supra-national level. The case for this analytical turn is made in three steps. Firstly, it addresses the different historical stages in European defence integration and the transformation of national armed forces and thereby brings to light the recent renationalization of defence in Europe. Secondly, it questions the predominance of the CSDP in the scholarly literature on European defence. Finally, it seeks to demonstrate the fruitfulness of such a démarche by empirically substantiating common patterns and intra-European divergences in the evolution of national defence policies and armed forces since the end of the Cold War. After having shown the need and added benefit of turning the analytical lense of European defence studies on its head, the conclusion suggests future avenues of research on national defence policies and armed forces in Europe.

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