scholarly journals A YEAR OF IMPORTANT ANNIVERSARIES

2014 ◽  
pp. 11-13
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War I ◽  
National Security ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Topical Issue ◽  
World War ◽  
Member States ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
The Past

We have entered the sixteenth year of the publication Contemporary Military Challenges with a wish to mark a few important anniversaries. In 2004, Slovenia joined the European Union and became a NATO member. Slovenia has thus been an active member of two distinguished international organisations for ten years. At the same time, this denotes a decade of active participation of Slovenian Armed Forces members in international operations and missions organised by the Alliance. In addition, it is the year in which the Slovenian Armed Forces reached the full age of its presence in the international environment. Eighteen years ago, in May 1997, twenty five members of Slovenian Armed Forces medical unit were deployed to a peace operation ALBA in Albania. If we look deeper into the past, Slovenian General Rudolf Maister was born one hundred and forty years ago. He significantly influenced the evolution of developments before World War I, but mostly Slovenian national consciousness. This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the beginning of World War I. The anniversary itself or the reasons for it are certainly not motivational – quite the opposite. It was an event on a worldwide scale which caused a great number of deaths and thus represented a devastating catastrophe. At that time, people did not even imagine what wars could bring for the future generations. All these anniversaries, and more could be found, impacted the substantive premise of this year’s issues. This is, of course, not because we would wish to turn backwards and deal with the historical issues. After all, we are the “Contemporary Military Challenges”. What mainly interests us is what have we learned from these examples and experiences. Is today’s situation any different because of them? Are we any better? For this purpose, we have published on our Slovenian (http://www.slovenskavojska. si/publikacije/sodobni-vojaski-izzivi/) and English (http://www.slovenskavojska. si/publikacije/sodobni-vojaski-izzivi/) websites an invitation for authors who would wish to deal with this subject. We are an interdisciplinary scientific and technical publication, which publishes articles on topical issues, research and expert discussions, as well as on technical and social science analyses covering the fields of international and national security and defence; global security challenges; crisis management; civil-military cooperation, and operations, development and transformation of the armed forces. The main topics that entertain our interest have been incorporated into the titles of individual issues. This year’s second issue will be entitled “Recent education and training trends in security, defence and military sectors”, the third one “Ten years of Slovenia’s NATO membership”, and the fourth one “100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I - have we learned anything from the conflicts in the past 100 years”. This year’s first issue was reserved for the topics suggested by the authors and we have received some very interesting articles. Ljubo Štampar in his article entitled Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in armed forces of EU member states: approaches, practices and mechanisms presents, in relation to the armed forces, the human rights and freedoms as the foundations of modern democratic societies. He compares freedom of speech, right to announce candidacy in the election or join political parties, freedom of association, freedom of trade unions and right to strike in individual EU member states. Vinko Vegič in his article The role of armed forces in Europe: from territorial defence to various security tasks establishes that two of the most important changes in the role of the armed forces include the need for a defence of the territory, and the appearance of some relatively differing and often poorly defined tasks. Countries have to adapt their defence doctrines and military structure to these two subjects, whereby the public (potentially) plays a decisive role. The young, patriotism and national security: armed forces as a pillar of patriotic structures is the article by Vladimir Prebilič and Jelena Juvan. The authors base their findings on the circumstances already described by Vinko Vegič, and establish the relation among the system of national security, values and patriotism among young people in Slovenia. Do the results of the survey represent a cause for concern? The transformation of armed forces has been a topical issue, especially in the recent two years, and has intrigued Mihael Nagelj enough to verify the theoretical and practical understanding of this notion in the defence system. His findings are presented in the article entitled Defence sector transformation: as understood in the world and Slovenia. Tomaž Pajntar, the author of the article Security of buildings in the event of a terrorist bomb attack writes about a blast as a result of an explosion and its effects on the buildings and their security. He carefully analyses and illustrates the laws of explosions, the knowledge of which is very important in the provision of building security. In her article entitled Information management and network collaboration in the Slovenian Armed Forces – a necessity or only a topical issue, Dragica Dovč presents the theory and practice of terms that at first seem very familiar. However, the results of her survey based on the case of the Slovenian Armed Forces, reveal that this field of work is still fairly unexplored. So, here is one more reason for other friends of defence and military topics to join the group of writers.

PREPAREDNESS REVISITED: CIVILIAN SOCIETIES AND THE CAMPAIGN FOR AMERICAN DEFENSE, 1914–1920

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 663-676
Author(s):  
Manuel Franz
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
National Security ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
World War

Civilian societies advocating a bold defense program were arguably the most visible manifestation of the American preparedness campaign in World War I. Though historians have acknowledged the significance of the broader preparedness movement in a number of studies, they have often marginalized its civilian branch in general and defense societies in particular. This article examines the structures, activities, and objectives of two major organizations active in the movement in order to challenge historiography's traditional view on preparedness. Exploring the key role of the National Security League and the American Defense Society between 1914 and 1920, the article presents two main arguments: First, civilian societies were not merely the appendix to a centralized campaign dominated by military professionals and politicians associated with the defense cause but acted as principal agents of preparedness. Second, the historiographic time frame of preparedness cannot be limited chronologically to America's years of neutrality but must include the period after April 1917.

scholarly journals ILLEGAL MIGRATION AND THE ROLE OF THE SLOVENIAN ARMED FORCES

2020 ◽  
pp. 67-86
Author(s):  
LILIANA BROŽIČ
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Illegal Migration ◽  
Migration Flow ◽  
Member States ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Military

Povzetek Slovenska vojska pomaga Policiji pri varovanju zunanje schengenske meje od evropske migrantske krize leta 2015. Čeprav krize ni več, število ilegalnih migracij leta 2020 ne pojenja. Slovenska vojska še intenzivneje podpira Policijo pri preprečevanju ilegalnih prehodov meje tudi na notranji evropski meji z Italijo. Vojska pomaga pri preprečevanju ilegalnih migracij tudi v drugih državah članicah EU. V prispevku poskušamo ugotoviti, katero vlogo imajo oborožene sile pri preprečevanju ilegalnih migracij, ali je njihova uporaba na mejah pri preprečevanju ilegalnih migracij pravi odgovor na nacionalni in evropski ravni ter kako to vpliva na opravljanje njenih temeljnih nalog. Ključne besede EU, ilegalne migracije, oborožene sile, Slovenska vojska, Policija. Abstract The Slovenian Armed Forces have been assisting the police in protecting the Schengen external border since the European migrant crisis of 2015. Despite the fact that the crisis is over, the number of illegal migrations in 2020 is not decreasing, and the Slovenian Armed Forces is supporting the police even more intensively at the internal European border with Italy. The military also helps to prevent illegal migration flow in other EU Member States. In this paper, we try to analyze the role of the armed forces in the prevention of illegal migration, and determine whether their use at the borders in the prevention of illegal migration is the right answer both at the national and the European levels, and what effects it has on the SAF's ability to do its primary job. Key words EU, illegal migration, military, Slovenian Armed Forces, Police.

scholarly journals 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF WORLD WAR I – HAVE WE LEARNED ANYTHING FROM THE CONFLICTS IN THE PAST 100 YEARS

2014 ◽  
pp. 9-11
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
World Order ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
100Th Anniversary ◽  
Chemical Weapons ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Security

With this thematic issue the editorial board wishes to commemorate this important anniversary. Our objective was not to discuss military history, for we, as the name says, deal with Contemporary military challenges. However, we cannot avoid mentioning certain military topics and facts, as it is rather difficult to assess what we have learnt from the conflicts in the past one hundred years without examining and presenting the framework of certain events. It has been a long and dynamic century. A lot has been written about this period, especially from the security as well as military and defence aspects. World War One and Two were unexpectedly extensive in political, security, defence, economic, societal, geographical and geopolitical sense. The twentieth century was also marked by two other wars: the Cold War and the fight against terrorism. The latter was gradually renamed into combat against terrorism. In Slovenia, however, we came to an agreement that this area in fact refers to counter terrorism. The aforementioned wars were strongly influenced by developments in various fields, such as technology, informatics, civil engineering, logistics, engineering, aviation, armament, transport and so on. A lot of interesting individuals influenced the course of events in this period. It all started with Gavrilo Princip who fired at the heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand on that fatal Sunday, 28 June 1914. This eventually resulted in Austria-Hungary's decision to attack Serbia. A lot of names found their place on the historical timeline; some of them with a positive and others with a negative connotation. For Slovenians, the best symbol of that time is undoubtedly the first Slovenian General Rudolf Maister, even though some generations never even heard of him in school. The times are changing, and so are our views on certain historical memories and the facts related to them. It is therefore appropriate to remember certain things, persons and events, and it is also appropriate to analyse and to assess them in order to learn from them. Especially with the intent of not repeating that which is seen throughout the eyes of the history as wrongful, bad or harmful to an individual, nations, nature, states and the world. As the answer to our question whether we have learnt anything in the past one hundred years, Uroš Tovornik prepared a paper titled The time of the formation of a new world order, in which he claims that modern security issues originate, in particular, from the decisions adopted at the Versailles Peace Conference and the events that followed. In the conclusion, the author sums up that modern geopolitical situation differs substantially from the one a hundred years ago or, on the other hand, resembles it very much. In her paper Chemical weapons – particularity of World War I or a still imminent danger, Valerija Bernik takes us through the history of the use of different types of chemical weapons. The latter were first tested by the Austro-Hungarian soldiers on the Isonzo Front in combat with their Italian opponents. Further on she presents all efforts the international community invests in the prevention and limitation of the use of chemical weapons as well as in protection against them. It is nowadays difficult to imagine that a Slovenian would voluntarily engage in a war far from their homeland and fight in the region that lies on the border between Romania and Bulgaria. Jože Rozman writes about this particularity in his paper titled Military geographical dimension of Dobrogea and (Slovenian) volunteers in this battlefield in World War I. What was once a territory where severe combats took place, is now an area important for the allied forces combating the crisis in Ukraine. In the paper titled Market Garden – the epic and the tragedy of allied paratrooper units in the Netherlands, Mircea Tănase presents and analyses the mentioned allied operation in World War One in detail, assessing what went according to plans and what went wrong. Tănase concludes the paper by stressing the importance of intelligence both in the present and in the future. Viktor Potočnik writes about Slovenian Armed Forces size and character. A lot has already been written, in general, about how many members and which types of units the Slovenian Armed Forces should have. In this paper, the author confronts us with facts. His overview and the calculations are very simple and transparent. Is there anyone among the readers who does not share his opinion and would be willing to write an article about it? In her paper titled Military medical intelligence with limited resources in the case of small countries, Tanja Kremžar Kovač states that essential to this sub-type of intelligence and security activities is the acquisition of data on medical and environmental hazards and the medical capabilities in the international area in which members of the armed forces are engaged. Integrating her experience in the paper, the author also explains why this is an important topic and how this activity takes place. Maja Garb read the book of Thomas R. Mockaitis Soldiers of Misfortune? and wrote a peer review titled The challenges of military and security contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. With this issue, we conclude the year of important anniversaries, as we have named the year 2014 at the very beginning. We invite you to write on and read about the topics for which we have prepared an open invitation for articles for 2015, which is published on our website http://www.slovenskavojska.si/en/publications/.

The Rank and File of the Colonial Army in Nigeria, 1914–18

1977 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Barrett
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
South African ◽  
Relative Size ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
World War ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Administrative Control ◽  
Local Impact

In the first full-scale fighting between white forces on African territory, the Boer War, Africans had been cast by the opponents in the rôle of an animated geographical background.3. When, however, the European struggle of 1914–18 was projected onto the continent, Africans were enrolled by both sides into the dramatis personae of the conflict. World War I resulted in a European mobilisation of African manpower on a scale unknown until that time,4 with the possible exception of the South African mines. The Nigerian Administration alone recruited 13,980 troops,5 and supplied approximately 10,000 carriers,6 so that the British armed forces in this period even outpaced the tin mines and railways as an employer of Nigerian manpower.7 Indeed, given the relative size of the population and degree of British administrative control it is arguable that the effect of this scale of recruitment was equivalent in its local impact to the later military mobilisation of 10,000 Nigerians during World War 11.8

PRICE OF ALCOHOL IN EU MEMBER STATES – AFFORDABILITY OF ALCOHOLIC PRODUCTS AND ROLE OF EXCISE DUTIES

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Fanta ◽  
◽  
Radek Soběhart ◽  
Aleš Rod ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Alcohol Consumption ◽  
European Commission ◽  
Alcoholic Beverages ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Member States ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Excise Duties

This research paper focuses on alcoholic beverages and their price affordability between 2000-2016 in the member states of the European Union. Based on the data from OECD, WHO, Eurostat, and the European Commission, the paper primarily discusses development of prices and consumption of alcoholic products, level of excise duties, and the development of average wages. Overall alcohol consumption has decreased in most EU member states over the past two decades, even though price affordability has increased due to relatively dynamic development of average wages. As consumption of alcohol products is decreasing, producers of alcoholic beverages are now pushed to increase the prices of alcoholic products to keep their level of revenues, which means that the price of alcohol is growing naturally. Those facts raise a question about the role of excise duties on alcohol, whether it is an effective tool for reducing alcohol consumption or just a fiscal tool, whose further increases might lead to market distortions.

The difficult relationship between nationalism and built heritage: the case of late nineteenth-century Krakow

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 410-424
Author(s):  
Piotr Kisiel
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historic Buildings ◽  
Historical Buildings ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Built Heritage ◽  
Central Commission ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This paper examines the debates that surrounded the renovation of the royal castle in Krakow during the last decade before World War I. When the Galician crownland took over the castle in 1905, it bore little resemblance to a royal seat, having been used as military barracks since 1846. The debate that followed focused on what should be preserved, what demolished, and what recreated. In this discourse the “meaning” of a historical monument was examined and different interpretations within the circles of architects, preservationists, and artists were propagated. The debate conducted during the meeting of the Central Commission for Research and Conservation of Historic Buildings revealed that the division was not along national lines, but rather among different philosophies of preservation of built heritage. The point made by the paper is that the discourse conducted 100 years ago allows us today to draw conclusions about the role of historical buildings in a national(istic) worldview and examine its inherent contradictions. That is because, I argue, the past as such matters little in the national(istic) understanding, despite its ostentatious interest in history. What matters is the usefulness of historic symbols in the present.

THE PEDIATRICIAN AND THE PUBLIC

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1950 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 475-480
Author(s):  
MARY E. PARKER
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
World War ◽  
Nursing Service ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
Salutary Effect

For the past few years, many patients have been unable to secure adequate nursing care because there are not enough nurses in the whole world to give it. Unfortunate as this is, it has had one salutary effect. It aroused the public, the administrators of institutions, the physicians and the nurses to the need for doing "something" so that this situation will not continue and will not occur again. This is very similar to the situation in World War I and immediately following. At that time also there was a shortage of nurses, and a committee of outstanding people in medicine and nursing sat down to try to find out what was wrong and to make recommendations to make things right. Out of this in 1923 came the Goldmark Report. The recommendations were excellent and are still good today, but little was done about them. Then came the depression, and there were too many nurses for the people who could afford to pay for this service. This situation gradually improved until we had reached the other extreme, a shortage of nurses due to expansion of nursing service in hospitals and public health agencies and the needs of the armed forces. Much criticism was leveled at the nursing profession, some of it justified, some of it not justified.

Archive partisans: Forbidden histories and the promise of the future

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-265
Author(s):  
Sonja Hegasy
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
World War ◽  
Western Sahara ◽  
The Past ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Past Injustices

Remembering past injustices has been regarded as central to overcoming intra-societal conflicts with the end of World War II. Since, memory has increasingly been charged as a means to achieve reconciliation. But only in recent years have archives, and here especially human rights archives, in the Mashreq and Maghreb moved from being semi-functional repositories for academics to become important loci for political activists to reappraise violence and injustice. The role of the archive in preserving or erasing personal memories is critically investigated by such activists. This article covers an emergent discourse on the memory milieus of violent conflict, war, and occupation extant in this region. In a selective overview covering Morocco, the Western Sahara, Lebanon, and Egypt, it asks what the visibility of violent experiences means for the wider social context and how traumatic pasts are re-socialized through private and public archiving initiatives. The author investigates the archive less as a place of storage than as a milieu around which various actors conceptualize the past and struggle over future justice.

Provision of Remedies for Violation of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: A Comparative Study of the United Nations, Inter-American and African Human Rights Systems

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 298-318
Author(s):  
Roman Girma Teshome
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Regional Monitoring ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
To Receive

The effectiveness of human rights adjudicative procedures partly, if not most importantly, hinges upon the adequacy of the remedies they grant and the implementation of those remedies. This assertion also holds water with regard to the international and regional monitoring bodies established to receive individual complaints related to economic, social and cultural rights (hereinafter ‘ESC rights’ or ‘socio-economic rights’). Remedies can serve two major functions: they are meant, first, to rectify the pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage sustained by the particular victim, and second, to resolve systematic problems existing in the state machinery in order to ensure the non-repetition of the act. Hence, the role of remedies is not confined to correcting the past but also shaping the future by providing reforming measures a state has to undertake. The adequacy of remedies awarded by international and regional human rights bodies is also assessed based on these two benchmarks. The present article examines these issues in relation to individual complaint procedures that deal with the violation of ESC rights, with particular reference to the case laws of the three jurisdictions selected for this work, i.e. the United Nations, Inter-American and African Human Rights Systems.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document