The Potential Role of Functional Motor Competence to Promote Physical Military Readiness: A Developmental Perspective

ABSTRACT Decreased physical fitness in military recruiting populations is problematic for the development of physical military readiness (PMR) and presents a threat to national security. The demonstration of low levels of fitness may be an indicator of a more foundational problem in the physical development of military recruits. We propose the development of functional motor competence (FMC) across childhood and adolescence as a necessary antecedent to advanced PMR training and military-specific tasks (i.e., rucking and obstacle course navigation) and as an integral part of sustained PMR. The development of FMC supports increases in cardiovascular and muscular endurance through repeated efforts performed during practice and in sport, as well as muscular power as many FMC movements mimic plyometrics in a strength in conditioning sense. We posit that an inadequate foundation in FMC will serve as a barrier to achieving sufficient PMR and combat success of the fighting force. We propose three possible solutions to ensure sufficient PMR levels through the implementation of developmentally appropriate FMC-based training. First would be promoting FMC-based training in junior reserve officer training corp and ROTC programs. Second would be a more global approach, on the scale of the National Defense Education Act, specifically focusing on promoting quality daily physical education that could reach millions of children. Third, individual branches could begin promoting the tenets of foundational FMC training concepts in their physical training manuals, which ideally would address FMC before and throughout basic training, as well as subsequent active duty training.

F. et Cs. avagy A’ Reményhez és A’ Pillangóhoz Fazekas-módra

In the article I demonstrate the connection between Fazekas and Csokonai through two poems. Fazekas’s Az érzékenységek énekben (The Senses in Song) was written in imitation of Csokonai’s A’ Reményhez, and A serdűlő bajuszhoz (To the Pubescent Moustache) was written similarly after Csokonai’s A’ Pillangóhoz, in these two poems by Fazekas Csokonai’s influence can be observed from formal characteristics through themes to intertextuality. However, this influence is not merely a copy of form, but it is an expression of Fazekas’s poetic irony and his polemic mentality with Csokonai. Both poems target the Lilla-affection and the love cult of sensitive poetry, as opposed to which, as poetic banter, Fazekas depicts on the one hand, an ordinary woman character who requites love, and on the other hand, a woman of easy virtue. The subtle irony is present on multiple levels in both poems due to the verbunkos (a Hungarian dance originated in military recruiting) and sensibility-classical melody.

Democracy, Conscription, and War: The Effects of Political Regimes and Types of Military Recruiting on the Initiation of Militarized Interstate Disputes

This paper presents an analysis of the impact of political regimes and type of military recruitment on the probability of the occurrence of international conflicts. In the last few years, the (re) introduction of military conscription has been a focus of public debate, but empirical analysis of the issue remains limited. We argue that democratic nations with conscription-based military recruitment in place are less likely to initiate international conflicts than those with voluntary recruitment because public opinion will estimate a higher probability of direct involvement in disputes, causing political leaders to refrain from conflicts, even though stable military resources are in place. On the other hand, authoritarian nations with conscription-based recruitment systems are more likely to engage in conflicts than those with voluntary recruitment systems because political leaders are not accountable to the people, even though the cost of war is calculated in the same manner as that in democratic nations. To test this reasoning, we use directed-dyadic data from 1816 to 2005. Our analysis strongly supports our theoretical expectations.

Bureaucracy, Propaganda and the Conscription Crisis

This chapter discusses the propaganda organisations established in Ireland during the First World War. Tasked with organising military recruiting in Ireland, these bodies included the Central Council for the Organisation of Recruitment in Ireland (CCORI), the Department of Recruiting in Ireland (DRI), and the Irish Recruiting Council (IRC), which were in existence at various stages across the war, from May 1915 until its termination. It addresses how these bodies were set up, organised, and, ultimately, how successful they were. It places these organisations into the unique Irish context, as propaganda activities operated in the context of Irish Home Rule in 1914-15, during the Easter Rising in 1916, and the Conscription Crisis in 1918. It also places their activities within the wider British context, particularly drawing comparisons with the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee (PRC).

LIFE EXPECTANCY: A Brief International Comparison

Life-expectancy data are essential to many fields, notably demography, health care, insurance, military recruiting, and forensic economics. Professionals using global rankings find life expectancy data misleading. Policymakers need a standard protocol to measure and track life expectancies. A case study comparing four countries’ life-expectancy data against the U.S. found skewed population data caused by different definitions and different formulas across different countries. Only the U.S. Life-Expectancy Tables made adjustments for both infant mortality and fertility rates. Absent a standard protocol to measure and track life expectancies, policymakers will continue to reach wrong conclusions. A worldwide standard protocol would require all counties to define life-expectancy data in the same way, calculate life expectancy values in the same way, and uniformly adjust for rates of both infant mortality and fertility. The significant changes called for will not come quickly, but we surely can suggest a starting basis.

Churn: Mobilization–demobilization and the fungibility of American military life

This article posits an analytic of mobilization–demobilization that attends to the instrumentalization and fungibility of military lives as both a primary source of embodied war-related harm and an undertheorized logic of the US war-making apparatus. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among post-9/11 military veterans in a US military community, the article explores mobilization–demobilization across three registers. First, I contrast it with dominant scholarly framings of ‘transition’, ‘reintegration’, and ‘militarization’, terms that analytically compartmentalize war in space and time. Second, I show how mobilization–demobilization drives the uptake and release of military labor and accounts for continuities between war violence and ‘war-like’ domestic political relations in 20th- and 21st-century US military recruiting, welfare, and personnel practices. Finally, I describe the trajectory of one veteran caught up in some elements of mobilization–demobilization, including injury, post-traumatic stress, substance use, and law-breaking, which are structured by the military’s management of his labor. These dynamics demonstrate crucial empirical links between the domestic and global faces of US war-making, and between war and nominally non-war domains.