Settler Military Politics: On the Inclusion and Recognition of Indigenous People in the Military

After decades of refusal, neglect, and tacit admittance, the service of Indigenous people in the national armed forces of settler colonial states such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States is finally gaining acknowledgment. Indigenous people are now integrated in the regular forces and represented in national war commemoration. This article maintains that while inclusion and recognition of Indigenous military service is a positive transformation in the direction of post-colonial reconciliation, it still operates within the logics of settler colonialism intended to eradicate Indigenous stories of connection to land and assimilate Indigenous people in settler society. Using the case study of Indigenous militarization in Australia, this article argues that, under conditions of settler colonialism, the inclusion and recognition of Indigenous people in national militaries advances the settler colonial project intended to dispossess Indigenous people from their land and assimilate them in the new settler society. It highlights that historically, military organization has supported settler colonialism, and positions the present inclusion and recognition of Indigenous people in the military as a continuation of this history.

Military Politics

This chapter is concerned with military politics. It views the kingdoms as family states and weighs the domestic threats they face from conflicts pertaining to succession and intra-family divisions. The downsides of one of the structural aspects of these states—for example, the immense power of a few individuals to make weighty decisions—is critically examined. Attention is also devoted to the weakness of domestic political opposition, threats from abroad, and the methods GCC states have employed to repress them. In the last section, the focus shifts to civil-military relations as the methods Gulf monarchies have developed to keep their armies loyal are assessed such as the creation of privileged units and forces, the fostering of institutional rivalries between various elements, and the exclusion of certain sectarian communities from security sector employment. In short, this chapter is devoted to institutional analysis and explores how political and structural factors impede the Gulf armies’ effectiveness.

Burundi: Assessing Military Institutional Reforms Post-Arusha

Military politics have been entangled with the trajectory of Burundian public institutions, experiences of violence, and the army formation. From 1994 to 2009, the peace process brought together different political parties, security forces, and rebel groups to negotiate ceasefires and major institutional reforms. Adopted in 2000, the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement contained some of the most ambitious and sophisticated security reforms. While most literature emphasizes mostly on the Arusha Peace Agreement, 22 agreements were signed by different sets of parties, including political parties and rebel groups during these 15 years of peace meditation. The Arusha Peace Agreement provides for complex security arrangements: (a) a strictly defined role, structure, and mandate of the army and other security forces; (b) sophisticated power-sharing arrangements for both leadership and composition of the army and other security forces; (c) demobilization, disarmament, integration, and training of armed forces; (d) transformation of armed groups into political parties; and (e) ceasefires. The peace talks integrated various armed political groups into Burundian institutions. Responding to four decades of violence and military dictatorship, these reforms of the military and other security forces aimed to disentangle the military from politics. Initially contested, the agreements shaped the reading of the historical contexts that justified these institutional military reforms. Indeed, provisions of these agreements also framed a narrative about violence and imposed fixed interpretations of political mobilization of violence. These imposed interpretations neglected key elements that enabled and, continue to enable, the political use of violence as well as the emergence of new forms of military politics. The main institutional approaches adopted to tackle issue of inclusion and correct imbalances in armed forces was the introduction of power-sharing arrangements based on ethnic dimensions. The formulation and further implementation of ethnic quotas reinforced the binary elements of ethnic identities, rather than promote a more fluid understanding that would appreciate intersecting elements, such as gender, political affiliation, and class and regional dimensions in the undertaking of power, alliance, and relations between executive and military institutions. Security reforms continue to affect the functioning of public institutions, with limited effects for disentangling politics and military.

Australia – a strategic alliance of the US in the period of Vietnam War (1954-1975)

Although located in a region having close historical-cultural relations with the area of Southeast Asia, Australia always considers itself and is considered a special outpost of the West in Asia-Pacific. Since World War II up to now, the strategic alliance between Australia and the US has been developed comprehensively and deeply. Particularly, with the purpose of getting the protection in terms of security from the US towards the Near-North region, it's obvious that Australia had to accept the fact that the number of killed and wounded soldiers, advisories, and military workers during the period of the Vietnam war was equivalent to that of the killed and wounded ones of the two World Wars when Australia participated along with the British troops. To illustrate the aforementioned content, this article focuses on analyzing some objective factors including the development of the movement of national liberation, the founding and rising of Chinese socialism, and the policies of Southeast Asia of the US during the period of post-World War II, along with some subjective factors influencing the founding and development of the strategic alliance between Australia and the US such as the national interest and the role of Australia during the Vietnam war, the economiccultural- political platforms of the US-Australia relations, and three-key factors expressing the depth of these relations including military, politics and diplomacy, culture and education, science and technology.

The Diversity of Disobedience in Military Organizations

Disobedience among military personnel is common and can be highly consequential, given the military's centrality to the conduct of foreign policy and war. Despite this, scholars of international affairs typically assume that subordinates in the military obey their orders. While scholarship on military politics acknowledges the prevalence of disobedience, it focuses on group-level forms of resistance and characterizes all such behavior as undesirable. Both of these analytical choices obscure the fact that individuals in the military can respond to orders they do not like in any number of ways. Building on existing work on civil–military relations and military decision-making, this article develops a novel conceptual typology of individual-level disobedience in military organizations. Drawing on dozens of diverse examples, it shows how such resistance is best categorized into four broad types: defiance, refinement, grudging obedience, and exit. Further, it demonstrates the advantages of adopting this typology. In particular, it highlights how military disobedience can be either disloyal or loyal; disobedience can be productive by fostering innovation, adaptability, or cohesion in military organizations. In addition to providing new variables for research on military politics, this typology also points to underexplored linkages between behaviors that have so far been studied separately, such as desertion, surrender, and mutiny. La désobéissance du personnel militaire est courante et peut avoir de lourdes conséquences selon la centralité de l'Armée dans la conduite de la politique étrangère et de la guerre. Malgré cela, les chercheurs en affaires internationales présupposent généralement que les subordonnés de l'Armée obéissent aux ordres qui leur sont donnés. Bien que les recherches sur la politique militaire admettent la prévalence de la désobéissance, ces dernières se concentrent sur les formes de résistance au niveau Groupes et caractérisent toutes un tel comportement comme indésirable. Ces deux choix analytiques obscurcissent le fait que les individus de l'Armée peuvent réagir aux ordres qui ne leur plaisent pas de bien des façons. Cet article s'appuie sur des travaux existants portant sur les relations entre civils et militaires et sur la prise de décisions militaires pour développer une nouvelle typologie conceptuelle de la désobéissance au niveau Individus dans les organisations militaires. Il s'inspire de dizaines d'exemples divers pour montrer à quel point il est préférable de classer une telle résistance en quatre grands types: Défiance, Peaufinement, Obéissance à contrecœur et Sortie de l'Armée. De plus, cet article montre les avantages qu'offre l'adoption de cette typologie. Il met en particulier en évidence la mesure dans laquelle la désobéissance militaire peut être soit loyale, soit déloyale; la désobéissance peut s'avérer productive lorsqu'elle encourage l'innovation, l'adaptabilité ou la cohésion dans les organisations militaires. En plus de fournir de nouvelles variables pour les recherches sur la politique militaire, cette typologie montre également des liens insuffisamment explorés entre des comportements qui ont jusqu'ici été étudiés séparément, tels que la désertion, l'abandon et la mutinerie. La desobediencia entre el personal militar es común y puede tener consecuencias de importancia debido al lugar central del ejército en la conducción de la política exterior y la guerra. A pesar de esto, los estudiosos de los asuntos internacionales suelen dar por sentado que los subordinados en el ejército obedecen las órdenes. Si bien los estudiosos de la política militar reconocen la prevalencia de la desobediencia, se centran en las formas de resistencia a nivel de grupo y caracterizan todo ese comportamiento como indeseable. Ambas opciones analíticas ocultan el hecho de que las personas en el ejército pueden responder de muchas maneras a las órdenes que no son de su agrado. A partir de trabajos existentes acerca de las relaciones cívico-militares y la toma de decisiones en el ejército, este artículo desarrolla una novedosa tipología conceptual de la desobediencia a nivel individual en las organizaciones militares. A través de numerosos ejemplos diversos, muestra cómo esa resistencia se clasifica mejor en cuatro categorías amplias: desafío, perfeccionamiento, obediencia de mala gana y retirada. Además, muestra las ventajas de adoptar esta categorización. En concreto, destaca cómo la desobediencia militar puede ser desleal o leal. Puede ser productiva al fomentar la innovación, la adaptabilidad o la cohesión en las organizaciones militares. Además de proporcionar nuevas variables para la investigación en materia de política militar, esta categorización también señala vínculos poco explorados entre comportamientos que hasta el momento se han estudiado por separado, como la deserción, la rendición y el motín.

Syria: Coup Politics, Authoritarian Regimes, and Savage War

Why did the Syrian army play such a crucial role in the country? How did it change over the years after independence? At first glance, one would look at the post-independence history of coups d’état for an explanation. Such path dependence helps us to understand how the army positioned itself close to politics and how the surge of the military in the state (cor)related with huge changes in Syrian society. The political role of the Syrian military, however, is much more complex to decipher. The officer corps that acted behind many different regimes became a crucible for political scripts in Syria. The military or politicized cliques within it came to control (civilian) politics in Syria. Yet, quite differently from other Arab countries where coups took place, such as in Egypt, the Syrian army was much more subjected to broad social trends active in the modernizing of Syrian society, in particular the role of ethnicity and confessionalism. Closeness to politics had blowback effects on the (civilian) political system and even on the army institution itself, as it literally imploded in politics. Syrian politics was later “de-militarized” in a very specific sense, that is, politics was rebuilt on different grounds larger than just military politics, namely authoritarianism. The coup in November 1970 by Hafez al-Assad was a real break and not just another coup in a long series. A new political system was rebuilt by Hafez, himself an officer, with the army as a crucial pillar of his regime, much more focused on internal security functions than on waging wars with Israel. At the same time, however, Hafez pushed the officer corps away from direct politics and relied on other pillars, especially networks of power in the security services and the state bureaucracy. The Syrian military was transformed and adapted to this new enduring regime, quite a novelty in Syria when compared with the 1950s–1960s. The military was part of the enduring status quo of the Assad regime for 40 years and benefited from it—at least the high officers did. No wonder that in March 2011 and at times of Arab uprisings spreading from Tunisia to Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain, and Syria, the army was pulled by the regime into repression. The role of the Syrian military became all the more crucial as Syria treaded the path toward full-scale civil war after 2012, or after the latter took the form of a proxy war around Syria with huge regional and international interventions. After a substantial number of individual defections, the military was rebuilt during the conflict with Russian and Iranian support, and this support will be a key component of regime reformation in Syria.

Ho Si Duong – Lord’s grand counsellor – and prominent merits to Dai Viet in 17th century

In the Le - Trinh period, particularly under the reign of Emperor Le Hy Tong and Lord Trinh Tac, Ho Si Duong was a well-known historical figure. Assuming the position of Tham tụng (参 從), which had equal power to a prime minister (宰相), Ho Si Duong has left eminent marks in a range of fields, comprising military, politics, diplomacy, social-culture, especially in the aspect of “institutional reform”. He is considered a talented mandarin in the political history of Dai Viet (大越) in the seventeenth century. Based on diverse sources, including history written by the imperial court, official regulations, the information inscribed on the stela (translated version), folk material, the article will shed light on Ho Si Duong’s critical marks and influential contributions to his homeland – Nghe An province in particular as well as to the Dai Viet’s history in general.

Military Politics and Democratic Transition: Combining Rationality, Culture, and Structure

Rationality, culture, and structure provide useful insights into military politics by stressing self-centered motivations, norms, and large impersonal forces, respectively. The armed forces can transform popular uprisings into democratic transitions, or, alternatively, uphold the status quo. Furthermore, officers can allow nascent democratic experiments to consolidate, or they can resurrect authoritarianism. Whatever they choose to do, multiple material and ideational factors will inform their agency, and by extension, the political dynamics unfolding in transitional times.