Pakistan in 2010

Asian Survey ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Christine Fair

The 2010 floods exacerbated Pakistan's lingering domestic weaknesses including fraught civil-military relations, perilous economic conditions, and the ineptitude of the civilian government. While a military coup is unlikely anytime soon, army chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani continues to consolidate his personal power, despite his cultivated democratic credentials, and that of the army, at the expense of the civilian leadership. The differences in the strategic interests of Pakistan and the U.S. seem stark, especially as the latter seeks to develop an exit strategy that would permit a cessation of its military action in Afghanistan.

Author(s):  
Dimitris Tsarouhas

Greek civil-military relations (CMR) have been fraught with tension and conflict for a long time, almost since the country’s independence in 1830. A high number of military coups and mutual mistrust between political elites and military officers characterized periods of civilian rule for most of the 20th century. However, and that is what makes the Greek case especially interesting, the restoration of democratic rule after the last military coup in 1967 has been both swift and successful. Ever since 1974, Greece’s CMR have stabilized along the archetypal examples of advanced Western democracies. Interpreting this impressive transformation of Greek CMR is an exercise that needs to bring together distinct factors: the country’s historical evolution, its political transformation, and its economic development. When in 1974 the Cyprus fiasco exposed the colonels’ regime as inept and incapable of defending the country’s national interests, the country was politically ready for a smooth transition to institutional normality. External factors, such as the prospect of European Union (EU) membership, assisted the country’s civilian leadership by offering Greece a path toward economic prosperity and political stability. For all of the country’s economic problems in the early 21st century, that path has been followed consistently ever since


This book explores contemporary civil-military relations in the United States. Much of the canonical literature on civil-military relations was either written during or references the Cold War, while other major research focuses on the post-Cold War era, or the first decade of the twenty-first century. A great deal has changed since then. This book considers the implications for civil-military relations of many of these changes. Specifically, it focuses on factors such as breakdowns in democratic and civil-military norms and conventions; intensifying partisanship and deepening political divisions in American society; as well as new technology and the evolving character of armed conflict. Chapters are organized around the principal actors in civil-military relations, and the book includes sections on the military, civilian leadership, and the public. It explores the roles and obligations of each. The book also examines how changes in contemporary armed conflict influence civil-military relations. Chapters in this section examine the cyber domain, grey zone operations, asymmetric warfare and emerging technology. The book thus brings the study of civil-military relations into the contemporary era, in which new geopolitical realities and the changing character of armed conflict combine with domestic political tensions to test, if not potentially redefine, those relations.


2009 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boubacar N'Diaye

ABSTRACTThe 3 August 2005 military coup was Mauritania's best opportunity to turn the page on decades of the deposed quasi-military regime's destructive politics. This article critically analyses relevant aspects of the transition that ensued in the context of the prevailing models of military withdrawal from politics in Africa. It also examines the challenges that Mauritania's short-lived Third Republic faced. It argues that the transition process did not escape the well-known African military junta leader's proclivity to manipulate transitions to fulfil suddenly awakened self-seeking political ambitions, in violation of solemn promises. While there was no old-fashioned ballot stuffing to decide electoral outcomes, Mauritania's junta leader and his lieutenants spared no effort to keep the military very much involved in politics, and to perpetuate a strong sense of entitlement to political power. Originally designed as an ingenious ‘delayed self-succession’ of sorts, in the end, another coup aborted Mauritania's democratisation process and threw its institutions in a tailspin. This only exacerbated the challenges that have saddled Mauritania's political system and society for decades – unhealthy civil-military relations, a dismal ‘human rights deficit’, terrorism, and a neo-patrimonial, disastrously mismanaged economy.


2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald S. Travis

How the U.S. military establishment interacts with other parts of the American government and the people impacts American national power. Because civil–military relationships are influenced by the context of the environment and the “kind of war” being waged, there are a variety of ways that military and civilian leaders can work together to improve the nation’s security. This article proposes an alternative civil–military relations model called pragmatic civilian control. It integrates Samuel Huntington’s objective civilian control theory with traditional American political philosophy and concepts established by Morris Janowitz, while accounting for current geopolitical conditions.


2019 ◽  
Vol IV (IV) ◽  
pp. 195-201
Author(s):  
Amna Zulfiqar ◽  
Zahid Yousaf

Civil-military relations in Pakistan are always in search of common ground. Historically, military forces and civilian leadership in Pakistan struggle to find the right balance and the civilian leadership has hardly commanded the gun. This study is intended to analyze that how the two selected daily English newspapers of Pakistan, i.e. Dawn and The News covered the major developments in civil-military relations, particularly during the regime of Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif, followed by the most sensitive event i.e., Zarb-e-Azb. The study employed the method of discourse analysis and has used the theoretical notion of agenda-setting and framing. The results of the study revealed that the slant, style, themes, and discourses used in the news stories of both the newspapers almost remained the same, appreciating the military institutions positively. Whereas condemning the civilian leadership for their lack of concern towards implementing the already approved Nation Action Plan.


The Forum ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Byron E. Shafer ◽  
Raymond J. La Raja

This issue of The Forum is focused on the military in American politics. It begins by reprinting the classic overview piece from Samuel Huntington. Damon Colletta then unpacks the state of our attention since Huntington, while John Griswold follows the evolution of Huntington’s organizing focus, the National Guard. Irving Louis Horowitz considers many of these same issues in light of the current role of the U.S. in the wider world. Beth Bailey introduces the biggest piece of civilmilitary involvement, in the form of the volunteer (and predecessor conscription) armed forces. Donald Downs raises the aspect of this politics that most closely touches the university, through ROTC. Lilly Goren considers the aspect that often absorbs the greatest number of congressmen, involving base closings. Matthew Holden and Gene Giannotta think about further, fresh ways to study civil-military relations, most especially between Presidents and their generals. And Jason Dempsey and Bradley Cooper introduce the newest program aimed at a crucial aspect of the military in American life, through “Joining Forces”, the military families initiative. Three book reviews close this issue of the journal: Kenneth Mayer on Jason K. Dempsey, Our Army: Soldiers, Politics, and American Civil-Military Relations; David Parker on David R. Mayhew, Partisan Balance: Why Political Parties Don’t Kill the U.S. Constitutional System; and Frances Lee on Gregory Koger, Filibustering: A Political History of Obstruction in the House and Senate.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Beni Sukadis

AbstrakReformasi bidang pertahanan yang dialami Indonesia sejak disahkan UU Pertahanan Negara dan UU TNI hingga kini belum selesai karena beberapa faktor yang cukup menghambat reformasi ini. Beberapa faktor yang menghambat, yaitu masih ada budaya paternalistik dalam birokrasi, masih ada ketidakjelasan kedudukan antara menteri pertahanan dan panglima TNI dalam pembagian wewenang khususnya terkait hubungan sipil-militer dan kepemimpinan sipil yang lemah dalam mengelola reformasi di Kementerian Pertahanan. Hingga saat ini implementasi supremasi sipil masih samar di Kementerian Pertahanan, walaupun secara faktual menteri pertahanan berasal dari sipil, tapi di sisi lain dominasi militer dalam jabatan pengambilan keputusan masih terjadi. Padahal supremasi sipil seharusnya direpresentasikan dalam wujud nyata bukan hanya dari hanya dari satu posisi pimpinan, yakni bagaimana otoritas sipil secara dominan dapat mengambil keputusan politik yang otonom sesuai dengan kebijakan negara yang dimandatkan oleh UU dan aturan yang ada.Kata kunci: reformasi pertahanan, hubungan sipil militer, supremasi sipil. Defense reform still underway since Indonesia passed the Law on State Defense and the TNI the reform law has not completed yet, because there are many factors that impede the reform process. Some of the factors are the paternalistic culture still exist in the bureaucracy, there is also ambiguity on the relations between the Defense Minister and the Commander of TNI in the division of labor especially to civil-military relations and weak civilian leadership in managing the reform at the Ministry of Defense. Until now, the implementation of civil supremacy within the Ministry is vague, although the ministers are civilian, but in fact the military domination in decision making process remains strong. Whereas, civil supremacy should not be exemplified on the top position, but the civilians authority take the lead in the decision making in accordance to the State Policy as stipulated by the law.Keywords: defense reform, civil-military, civilian supremacy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-162
Author(s):  
G. Lee Robinson ◽  
Joseph Amoroso ◽  
Isaiah (Ike) Wilson ◽  
Richard M. Yon

Scholars and media outlets that cover the U.S. Congress devote substantial attention to the rise in partisanship and polarization over the past few decades. The steady increases in partisanship and polarization coincide with a comparable decline in veteran representation in Congress. While there are many factors that influence a congressperson’s behavior, an understudied issue is whether these trends suggest that veterans are more likely to exhibit bipartisanship than their nonveteran colleagues. Using two different measures of bipartisanship, this article draws on data from 12 different Congresses to examine whether veterans are more likely to be bipartisan than nonveterans. Utilizing difference in means tests, the results provide only modest evidence that increasing veteran representation would lead to more bipartisanship when controlling for generational differences. This article suggests a research agenda to further assess these findings and discusses the implications of increasing veteran presence in Congress on civil–military relations.


Author(s):  
Peter Feaver ◽  
Damon Coletta

The United States boasts an enviable record regarding the military’s role in politics: never a coup and never a serious coup attempt. However, this does not mean that the military always played only a trivial role in politics. On the contrary, as the Framers worried, it is impossible for a democracy to maintain a military establishment powerful enough to protect it in a hostile international environment without at the same time creating an institution with sufficient clout to be a factor in domestic politics. The U.S. military’s political role has ebbed and flowed over the nearly 250 years of the nation’s history. The high-water mark of political influence came in the context of the gravest threat the country has faced, the Civil War, when the military enforced emergency measures approved by Congress, beyond the letter of the Constitution, including during Reconstruction when the military governed rebellious states of the former Confederacy. These were notable exceptions. For most of the 19th century, the military operated on the fringes of civilian politics, although through the Army Corps of Engineers it played a key role in state-building. When the United States emerged as a great power with global interests, the political role of the military increased, though never in a way to directly challenge civilian supremacy. Today, the military wields latent political influence in part because of its enormous fiscal footprint and in part because it is the national institution in which the public express the highest degree of confidence. This has opened the door for myriad forms of political action, all falling well below the red lines that most concern traditional civil–military relations theory. Military involvement in the American political system may be monitored and evaluated using a typology built around two columns that highlight the means of military influence—the first column is comprised of formal rules and institutions and the second encompasses the norms of military behavior with respect to civilian authority and civil society. While traditional civil–military relations theory focuses on military coups and coup prevention, theory based on this typology can help explain American civil–military relations, illuminating the warning signs of unhealthy friction under democratic governance and promoting republican vigilance at those moments when the U.S. military takes a prominent role and wades more deeply into domestic politics.


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