Obstacles faced by healthcare providers during COVID-19 pandemic in Sudan

The impacts of COVID -19 pandemic have been quite significant on healthcare providers. I was particularly challenging for those in Low and Middle-Income Countries including Sudan . Unfortunately, the pandemic has hit Sudan on extremely difficult time for the country and its people. The country was coming out of long-brutal and devastating dictatorship and transitioning to new democracy with civilian leadership. In addition to the pandemic related issues, trying to rebuild the health system during socioeconomic crisis, healthcare providers in the country were challenged personally and professionally. These challenges include the stress of working in under-resourced settings with limited access to personal-protection equipment and testing kits raised the fear of contracting the virus and spreading it to their families. The professional, social, and personal life of healthcare providers have been dramatically changed by the ongoing pandemic, however, they are heroically accepting this change in a hope that, this will save the life of many more people. Nevertheless, their fights and sacrifices should at least be rewarded by governments and communities altogether strictly enforce the implementation of other preventive measures including vaccination, face masking, and social distancing and get all protected. We should all understand that, unless we are all protected no one is protected, so all must adapt to the new norm of life and collaborate not only on ending this pandemic but to prevent similar ones in the future.

The Chinese Armed Forces and the Challenges of Globalization

How did the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) react to the securitization act initiated by the civilian leadership? This chapter shows that the PLA was relatively hesitant to accept a more inclusive understanding of security beyond traditional territorial defense, and therefore of a broader role for itself in China’s peacetime foreign policy. The PLA’s approach to non-traditional missions was similar to that of other countries’ armed forces, as they did not look favorably on so-called interventionist uses of force. It was in the aftermath of the 2011 Libyan crisis that the position of the PLA changed in an unequivocal way and the soldiers’ attitude towards the expansion of their peacetime portfolio became very similar to that of the civilians. While the soldiers’ natural desire to contribute to the security of the people played an important role in this process, it is important to emphasize how crucial the establishment of a causal link between non-traditional security threats and inter-state conflict was in the debate within the PLA.

The Chinese Government, the Idea of Security, and Foreign Policy

How did the issue of sending the armed forces abroad and the defence of interests overseas enter and evolve in the Chinese foreign policy debate? The analysis in Chapter 1 of the speeches and documents released by the Chinese leaders and government institutions reveals three interconnected and important changes that have happened since the late 1980s. First, from Jiang Zemin’s New Security Concept to Xi Jinping’s Comprehensive National Security, the management of non-traditional security issues has consistently been the main driver behind the expansion of Chinese military activities overseas. Second, non-traditional security issues abroad changed from being seen as diplomatic opportunities to be considered, especially after the evacuation from Libya of almost 36,000 Chinese nationals, as threats to the regime’s legitimacy and China’s national security. Third, as overseas non-traditional security crises started to be perceived as threats, the orders from the civilian leadership to the foreign policy bureaucracy and, especially, the armed forces to prepare to play a larger role in peacetime foreign policy became increasingly urgent and clear.

Japan: The Culture of Insubordination in the Army, 1868–1945

The soldiers and sailors of Imperial Japan (1868–1945) are often presented in Western popular publications as obedient robots, unblinkingly following their commanders to certain death. In fact, however, the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy were among the most disobedient military forces in modern history. Structural flaws in the political code of the early Japanese state, as well as a series of misguided reforms to the Army, incubated an ideology of military independence from civilian rule. The Army, placed directly under the Emperor, did not institutionally believe it had to unconditionally obey the civilian government. Even worse, generals used their connections with the sovereign as an excuse for their individual disobedience. In the 1920s, this ideology of military independence converged with a subculture of insubordination from below, recalling revolutionary traditions of the mid-19th century. According to this ideology, prevalent among both officers and civilian activists, spontaneous political violence was justified when motivated by sincere patriotism and imperial loyalty. By the 1930s, insubordination from above and from below converged to produce a strong sense of military superiority, independence from any kind of civilian supervision, and endemic violence. The result was an unending series of unauthorized military operations, political assassinations, and coups d’état. These terrified the civilian leadership and eventually drove Japan to imperial overreach and disastrous, unwinnable wars.

Greece: From Overt Military Activism to Democratic Normality

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

Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations

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.

The Maldives: The Changing Dynamics of Civil-Military Relations

The Maldives’ strategic location in the Indian Ocean has elicited interest in its politics. While it is the smallest state in South Asia and a classic example of a microstate, with a population of less than 400,000, its strategic location in the Indian Ocean region (IOR) and large EEZ allow it to play an outsize role in the region. When it comes to civil‒military relations, the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) has traditionally accepted a subordinate role to the civilian leadership. However, there has been intermittent political turmoil and instability as civilian leaders—many of whom have been autocratic—resist democratic changes. There are three components that require attention in assessing the nature of the Maldives’ civil‒military relations. The first component is the great power rivalry between China and India operating in the region. While India has considered the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) to be within its sphere of influence, it has been challenged by recent Chinese activities in the IOR. The second component is the stability and turmoil in the domestic political structures in the Maldives as the country seeks to democratize. Finally, although it is the largest contributor to the Maldives’ GDP, a section of fundamentalist Muslims identify the tourism industry with a “decadent lifestyle” being promoted by the state solely for economic growth . Given that tourism is the primary economic sector in the Maldives, such opposition can pose both a security and an economic threat. Whether the growing radicalism has affected the military is unclear, but the possibility poses new threats to a country on the path of democratization.

The Evolving Role of the Military in China’s COVID-19 Response

The fear of political vulnerability stemming from an over-reliance on the military for containing COVID-19 led the civilian leadership to deploy the level and type of military support that were deliberately measured and technically specialised; the timings of this support were also carefully planned. The concern about COVID-19 causing significant infections among PLA (People’s Liberation Army) ranks that may hamper PLA response to the perceived external security challenges also proved to be premature.

The History of Guinea

Like most of post-colonial African nation-states, Guinea is the product of Europe’s colonial partition of the continent at the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. France followed up on the Berlin arrangements with military campaigns against West African rulers and treaties with other European colonial powers (Britain and Portugal) vying for territories in the region and the Republic of Liberia. However, the ancient communities whose descendants inhabit the Republic of Guinea were part and parcel of some of the greatest kingdoms and empires that marked West Africa’s history between the 6th and 19th centuries (Ghana, Mali, Songhay, Batè, Wassolon, and Futa-Jallon). Islam, which was introduced into the region through trans-Saharan trade, scholarship, and wars involving Muslim North Africa and Islamized elites of the Bilad as-Sudan, gained prominence and ultimately became the dominant religion in Guinea. The Atlantic Slave Trade spearheaded by the Portuguese, and the succeeding legitimate trade opened West Africa to colonial conquest and occupation in the late 19th to early 20th centuries. Under French occupation, Guinea underwent major political, cultural, social, and economic mutations brought about by events and processes such as its integration into the French West Africa Federation and its multifaceted participation in the World Wars, as well as in France’s colonial wars in Indochina and Algeria. In the process, a nationalist anti-colonial consciousness evolved and crystallized, leading to the country’s advent to independence in 1958. As the sole French colony to reject Charles de Gaulle’s Franco-African Community, its modern history is in many ways unique. Since independence, Guinea has gone through a pro-Soviet single-party regime, military rule, and a shaky transition to the current civilian leadership, whose record of democratic governance has been checkered at best. Economic development has also been largely elusive, despite the abundance of arable land and mineral resources. This notable uniqueness notwithstanding, the history of Guinea does epitomize in some respects that of the African continent.

Analysis of Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan: Evidence from Leading English Newspapers

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.