scholarly journals The Protracted Civil War in Libya: The Role of Outside Powers

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-27
Author(s):  
Yahia H. Zoubir
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
The West ◽  
Specific Interests ◽  
The Military ◽  
2012 Election

The collapse of the Muammar Qaddafi regime was ostensibly the prelude to a democratic Libya. The 2012 election elicited much optimism. By 2014, the domestic situation had taken an unexpected turn for the worse, resulting in two governments, one in the east and one in the west, each supported by numerous militias. While the civil war has pitted Libyans against Libyans, foreign interventions on behalf of opposite side in the conflict have hindered the end of the civil war. Indisputably, foreign interference had begun well before the civil war; however, the military backing to the protagonists has become more pronounced since 2014. The foreign powers involved in the Libyan conflict aim to fulfill specific interests, some of which deriving from the rivalries between those countries. Unless those foreign powers have achieved their goals in Libya, an end to the civil war anytime soon remains unlikely, occasional ceasefires notwithstanding.

scholarly journals Western and East Asian Protection of Human Security

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Timo Kivimäki
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Northeast Asia ◽  
Human Security ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Strategic Orientations ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
The Military

One of the main trends in the international relations and international security, for the past two decades, has been the new eagerness to intervene into failed and autocratic countries if they fail to protect their own citizens. This trend has distinguished East Asia (including both Southeast and Northeast Asia) from the West. Generally, the distinction has been based on three differences in strategic orientations. First, the role of the military is seen differently in East Asia and the West. Secondly, the role of states as instruments of the protection of civilians is seen differently in the West and East Asia. Thirdly, there is a difference between East Asia and the West regarding to the expected role of the UN Security Council in the authorization of protection. This article investigates the consequences of the three different strategies on human security by reviewing existing literature and by combining new data on discourses of protection with conflict data on various indicators of human survival and welfare. While the Western strategic concept of human security is dominant and hegemonic in the global debate, it seems, on the basis of this investigation, that the East Asian strategy of self-restraint, non-militarism and respect for sovereignty is more effective in the protection of civilians.

scholarly journals ON THE ALANIAN HERITAGE IN THE WEST

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Р.Г. ДЗАТТИАТЫ
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
Gold Silver ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Great Migration ◽  
The Military

В результате процессов, сопровождавших Великое переселение народов, аланы, попав в Западную Европу, были ассимилированы, оставив во Франции, Северной Италии, Испании, Англии несколько сотен топонимов, связанных с ними. Следы пребывания алан на Западе впервые были обобщены В.А. Кузнецовым и В.К. Пудовиным. Появление труда американского ученого Б. Бахраха «Аланы на Западе» сняли скептицизм по отношению к роли алан в истории народов Западной Европы. О роли алан в исторических событиях Западной Европы раннего и зрелого Средневековья было отчетливо заявлено в трудах В.Б. Ковалевской, Франко Кардини, Говарда Рида, Скотта Литлтона, Линды Малкор. Особенно замечательна объемная работа Агусти Алемани «Аланы в древних и средневековых письменных источниках». У алан было заимствовано устройство конного войска, а вместе с этим, вероятно, и экипировка всадника, важной деталью которой был воинский пояс. Пряжка со щитком такого пояса служила у алан маркером статуса: в зависимости от того, из какого материала она была изготовлена (золото, серебро, бронза), она указывала на место в социальной иерархии. Трехлепестковый орнамент в результате модификаций вполне мог стать основой или прообразом особого знака-символа – так называемой «королевской лилии». Схему трансформации трехлепесткового узора в лилию можно проиллюстрировать рисунками пряжек. Надо полагать, что аланы оставили свой след не только в топонимике, организации конного войска, но и в орнаментике, фольклоре, антропонимике и других проявлениях культуры, которые необходимо тщательно исследовать. As a result of the processes that accompanied the Great Migration of Nations, the Alans, having fallen into Western Europe, were assimilated, leaving several hundred place names associated with them in France, Northern Italy, Spain, and England. The traces of the Alans' stay in the West were first generalized by V.A. Kuznetsov and V.K. Pudovin. The appearance of the work of the American scientist B.S. Bachrach "Alans in the West" removed skepticism regarding the role of the Alans in the history of the peoples of Western Europe. The role of the Alans in the historical events of Western Europe of the early and mature Middle Ages was clearly stated in the works of V.B. Kovalevskaya, Franco Cardini, Howard Reed, Scott Littleton, Linda Malkor. Particularly remarkable is the voluminous work of Agusti Alemany "Alans in ancient and medieval written sources." The Alans borrowed the device of the horse army, and with it, probably, the equipment of the horseman, an important detail of which was the military belt. The buckle with the shield of such a belt served as a status marker for the Alans: depending on what material it was made of (gold, silver, and bronze) it indicated a place in the social hierarchy. As a result of modifications, the three-petal ornament could very well become the basis or prototype of a special sign-symbol – the so-called “royal lily”. The transformation pattern of a three-petal pattern into a lily can be illustrated with buckle patterns. It must be assumed that the Alans left their mark not only in toponymy, organization of the cavalry army, but also in ornamentation, folklore, anthroponymy and other cultural manifestations, which must be carefully studied.

scholarly journals Skogler: Photography at the Service of Falangism (Zaragoza, July 1936)

Fascism ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-84
Author(s):  
Diego Navarro-Bonilla ◽  
Jesús Robledano-Arillo
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Physical Characteristics ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
Special Profile ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Military ◽  
The City

Abstract This article analyses the role of ‘Skogler’ (Ángel Cortés Gracia), a photographer who worked for the insurgent Falangist forces in the city of Zaragoza, the capital of Aragón, from the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Skogler’s strong and early ties to the fascist movement, going back years before the war, suggest a special profile of an individual who supported the Falangist party by means of visual propaganda and printed photographs. Most of the photographs selected for study here have never been published before. They were shot in the early days of the military uprising against the Republic and help give us a more accurate understanding of armed fascism in the Aragonese capital, which ultimately fell to the rebels. This paper is part of an ongoing research project and exhibition to analyse and describe the contents and physical characteristics of the Skogler Archive, composed of more than 3,500 negatives recovered in diverse chronological phases.

2. The struggle for military professionalism

2020 ◽  
pp. 24-51
Author(s):  
Joseph T. Glatthaar
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Military Culture ◽  
Military Power ◽  
West Point ◽  
The West ◽  
American Military ◽  
The Military ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
Military Professionalism

“The struggle for military professionalism” looks at the positive effect of the West Point Academy on American military expertise and the improved sense of professionalism among its graduating classes. During the American Civil War, non-graduates could make more progress in the military. The Union Army’s victory stemmed from their ability to convert their superior manpower and technology into military power. After the war, the Army and Navy suffered crises of mission. A curriculum was founded for the Navy, but at the end of the nineteenth century the Army and Navy were still not professionalized. The Navy lacked structure, and the Army had structure but suffered from an outdated military culture.

Occupation and Environment in the Civil War

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Thomas ◽  
Kaci Nash
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Transportation Network ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Spatial Arrangement ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Forthcoming Article ◽  
The Military

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. Please check back later for the full article. Recent studies of the Civil War have assessed the environmental impact of the war in broad terms and uncovered ways in which the war unfolded outside and apart from the intended directions of generals and politicians. In particular, historians have explored the role of nature as an active force in the Civil War, focusing on how the landscape was transformed as part of the military strategy and how Americans perceived, interacted with, and controlled nature. These historians suggest that the Union army targeted the South’s agricultural and cultural landscape, reduced it to a “wasteland,” and, in so doing, altered or interrupted its relationship with nature. They have depicted the war as a conflict characterized by massive displacement and movement. Scholars have also revised our understanding of the war’s destructiveness and total number of deaths. They have turned our attention away from the bifurcated approach of “home front and battlefield” to a more holistic approach, one that emphasizes the uniform continuum of movement and exchange along the axes between the home front and the battlefield. Because the environmental and biological disruption of the war occurred at different scales in different places, the flow of human, animal, biological, and material exchanges varied widely. In many zones of the Union army’s occupation, however, the mobility and scale of the war combined with the environmental conditions to produce especially significant effects, indeed, ones that persisted well beyond the end of the war. The spatial arrangement of the Union army’s occupation depended in part on the available transportation network and, as a result, several central places acted as funnels into and through the war. In these places, such as Alexandria, Virginia, a series of large-scale processes unfolded separate from but connected to the battlefields and the home front. The confluence of the movements of soldiers, civilians, refugees, and animals and the unleashing of microbes around them meant that the war took place in and with human bodies, in and with the natural features of the environment.

Review of A. B. Nikolaev, Revoliutsiia i vlast’: How Has Nikolaev Changed the Interpretation of the February Revolution?

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
The State ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
The West ◽  
The Military ◽  
Military Units ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
The Revolution

A.B. Nikolaev’s book has not received much attention either in the West or in Russia, but it is an important book that has significantly changed our understanding the February Revolution of 1917. Nikolaev’s meticulously researched monograph, based on a wide array of new sources, challenges the previously dominant interpretation that the Provisional Committee of the State Duma (Duma Committee) was forced to seize power only to stem the tide of the insurgency from below. He argues that the Duma Committee was from its inception clear about its intention to overthrow the old regime and to create a new power to replace it even before the Petrograd Soviet was formed. The Duma Committee played a crucial role in prompting military units to take the side of the revolution, in steering the insurgents to the State Duma, in creating the Military Commission to organize insurgents to occupy strategic positions in the city, in taking over the food supply commission to feed the insurgents, in attacking and destroying the tsarist police, while preventing and suppressing potentially dangerous anarchical pogroms, and in taking control over the imperial bureaucracy. Nikolaev also raises an interesting question about the relationship between the Duma Committee, the State Duma and the Provisional Government by arguing that the Provisional Government made a hasty and cardinal mistake in cutting its relationship with the State Duma. This book is a landmark in the interpretation of the February Revolution, and especially of the role of the Duma liberals in the revolution.

scholarly journals AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITING OF L. D. TROTSKY DURING THE CIVIL WAR: POLITICS AND STYLISTICS

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 93-100
Author(s):  
Aleksandr V. Reznik ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Russian Civil War ◽  
Autobiographical Writing ◽  
High Ranking ◽  
Leon Trotsky ◽  
The Military

Leon Trotsky was not only an outstanding writer and speaker amongst Marxist politicians of his time, but he also could be named as one of the most well-known (auto)biographer. It was not only politics, that differed him from other high-ranking Bolsheviks, but it was a culture as well. Many of Trotsky’s rivals accused Trotsky of being extreme individualistic, alien to collectivist ideology. However, if to consider Trotsky’s biographical narratives in complex, the individualism was somewhat correct characteristic, as Trotsky indeed pointed the role of real persons, including of his own, in the history. Until recently, scholarly treatments of this issue have largely taken on Trotsky’s autobiography titled “My life: An Attempt at an Autobiography” (1929), yet this celebrated book had a certain background. The aim of article is to re-examine Trotsky’s literary and political activity in the context of his (auto)biographical texts, taking the period of the Russian Civil War as a case-study. The balance of pragmatics and poetics in his texts was reflected by Trotsky himself during the early period of the Civil War, when he publicly emphasized that he did not like the “military style”, but “got used to using the style of a publicist in life and literature”. Trotsky’s subsequent activities demonstrated that the balance between the dynamics of these two styles was determined not only by politics, but also by the author’s deeply rooted ideas about the place of his own “self” in writing.

scholarly journals The Role of the Cultural Context in the Russian Military Revolution

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Olzacka
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Political System ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Socioeconomic Conditions ◽  
The West ◽  
Cultural Narrative ◽  
Military Revolution ◽  
Russian Military ◽  
The Military

This article examines military transformations in Russia between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries within the framework of the Military Revolution concept. This concept, introduced by the British historian Michael Roberts in 1955, was originally used to link changes in the purely military sphere (the introduction of gunpowder and the increased number of troops) with changes in state structures in western European countries. However, the concept can also be used to describe modernisation processes in non-European countries. Some historians have pointed out that military reforms often led to a holistic transformation of the socio-economic system. Others, including those dealing with the Military Revolution in Russia, focus primarily on the role of economic, social, and educational backwardness, which resulted in the construction of a modern military system and state different from that found in the West. This article attempts to complement this historical perspective by highlighting the importance of the cultural context in Russia’s military modernisation. It explores the traditional cultural narrative – rooted in Orthodoxy and a patrimonial socio-political system – which resulted in the emergence of specific beliefs about waging war and achieving victory, as well as practices which differed from those in the West. As a result, it is argued that the introduction of similar technological and organisational solutions in the state of the tsars was accompanied not only by different political and socioeconomic conditions, but also by different values, which were reflected in the various ways of reforming the troops and their subsequent use on the battlefield.

Nishi Amane—A Tokugawa-Meiji Bureaucrat

1959 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger F. Hackett
Keyword(s):  
Western Society ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The West ◽  
Meiji Japan ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Official Policy ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
The Military

In the transition of Japan into the modern world, the role of those who first introduced the techniques, institutions, and ideas of the West deserves special attention. Performing the service of what Toynbee has called “the human counterpart of the ‘transformer,’” these were the men who learned the secrets of a foreign civilization and adapted them to their own community to enable it to adjust its life to the intrusive Western society. To some degree the whole leadership of Meiji Japan carried out this function, for soon after the Restoration the pursuit and application of knowledge from the West was made official policy. For the most part the military and political leaders were concerned with the mastery of Western military techniques and administrative and economic forms. But among the intelligentsia there were those who performed the broader task of learning and teaching the manners and morals, customs, and beliefs of European society. As advocates of Westernization they were important agents of change before as well as after the Restoration.

Mutinies and Ethnicity

2021 ◽  
pp. 214-307
Author(s):  
Keith Grint
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Military Establishment ◽  
The West ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Foreign Labour ◽  
Contemporary Situation ◽  
The Military

The complexity of the causes of mutinies are captured in this chapter that focuses upon the role of ethnicity. Starting with the British West India Regiment in 1801, we examine the importance of the slave trade in supporting the recruitment to the British Army in the West Indies and consider how the ‘alternatives’ of slavery or forced recruitment are not regarded as alternatives by many ex-slaves. The chapter then moves on to the largest event to rock the early British Empire, the ‘mutiny’ or ‘1st War of Independence’ in India between 1857 and 1858. The nomenclature is a signal of the meaning of the events for different actors involved, and this ambiguity runs into the Curragh ‘Incident’ that has all the hallmarks of a mutiny, except it is staged by the military establishment not by the military subordinates. And if the British thought 1858 was the last time they would see Indian soldiers or sailors mutinying against them, they were wrong: in Singapore in 1915 and then in the Royal India Navy in 1946, the British Empire is forced to look at itself—but chooses not to. Finally, we consider the way British Foreign Labour Battalions were treated in France, compared to the treatment meted out to domestic units, and then consider the role of racism in the Port Chicago mutiny of 1944 which has echoes of the contemporary situation in the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.

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