The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is not debt trap diplomacy; rather, it is an effort by China to coalesce and capitalize on the sentiments of its participants who have expressed concurrence with China’s view of international relations. At a time when the dominant international relations narrative is being challenged, specifically by China, the BRI has provided China with an opportunity to obtain affirmation for its foreign interests and principles. This claim is made evident by evaluating, as metrics of geopolitical influence, United Nations resolutions representing China’s interests and how BRI participant nations voted on them, as well as official BRI statements that these nations have made regarding China’s foreign policy stances.
In 2013, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta removed the ban on women serving in combat roles in the US military. This policy decision effectively opened all positions in the military to women. Decades of scholarship inform us that military service leads to long-term socioeconomic benefits, but this research has focused on male veterans. This earning advantage holds true for all male veterans but is more significant for racial minority groups. As the original equal-pay institution, the military has long been an attractive option for women on their career path, and today female enlistment rates are rising faster than any other group. This study analyzes how military service affects women who elect to serve, across several economic and social variables, and how that has evolved for different cohorts of female service members. Conducting regression analysis on multiple census data sets, we find that women who join the military gain significant long-term socioeconomic benefits in comparison to their civilian counterparts, that military service affects social variables including marriage, and that these effects are stable over time.
In the wake of the War in Ukraine, the need for Armed Forces organizations to focus on recruitment and retainment and to attract, educate and maintain their future leaders has reentered the agenda. As organizational identification is known to strengthen retainment, this study examines antecedents of military identification, focusing on the role of intrinsic motivation and military socialization. Thus, through cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of a unique dataset with Danish cadets, we show, first, a close link between intrinsic motivation and military identification. Second, while military socialization seems to play a role, we also find that the difference that can be ascribed to intrinsic motivation remains: Regardless of the method of analysis pursued, strongly motivated cadets just identify stronger with the military. These findings have obvious recruitment implementations and should also give rise to considerations regarding the Armed Forces’ prioritization of retainment initiatives.
At the end of the Cold War, a lively public and academic debate arose on the nature of contemporary armed conflicts, their transformations, and their supposed novelty compared to previous wars. Numerous definitions were coined to mark these changes: ethnic, predatory, criminal, postmodern, hybrid, asymmetric, etc. By analysing a long-term model based on the historical dynamics of organised violence developed by the sociologist Malešević, we seek to show that the exponential growth of bureaucratic and ideological apparatuses within modern societies are at the root of the steady increase in organised violence, and consequently that the phenomenon of war, as the case of the Russian-Ukrainian war demonstrates, has not undergone such radical transformations as to justify any paradigm shift.
The personnel selection based on ethnoreligious factors, with the readoption of Fulani herders, bandits, and unknown shooters into the defense organization, has challenged Nigerian troops’ perceived individual employability, perceived work ability, and fit between person and vocation. Also, these have made personnel career adaptability a severe challenge for Nigerian soldiers. We examined person-job fit as a moderator in the associations of perceived individual employability, perceived work ability, and career adaptability. Two hundred and fifty-two Nigerian military personnel between eighteen and sixty years of age (M = 39; SD = .964) participated in the study. Through purposeful and convenient sampling techniques, we collected data using the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale, the Self-Perceived Individual Employability Scale, the Perceived Work Ability Scale, and the Person-Job-Fit Scale. Our findings showed that individual employability, perceived work ability, and person-job fit significantly predict military personnel’s career adaptation. Person-job fit moderated the association of perceived individual employability and military career adaptation. However, it did not influence the association between perceived work ability and military career adaptation. Our study showed that person-job fit, individual employability with work ability, and career adaptation are prerequisites for enlistment, deployment for combat, and well-being after combat experiences. Practical implications are that the insecurity challenges in Nigeria would have been mitigated if defense organizations had selected enlisted personnel for military work and deployment based on work ability, employability, and person-job fit so that they could quickly adapt to their careers and fight these insecurity challenges. Also, our study suggests that educational qualifications are not essential for military enlistment and deployment. We highlighted our study’s limitations and suggested further work on the topic.
In response to a number of military failures in a rapidly changing war environment, the Department of Defense put forth major efforts to incorporate social science research into the US national defense strategy. Three such efforts—Project Camelot, Human Terrain Systems, and the Minerva Research Initiative—represent iterative Department of Defense efforts to better understand and change their organizational environment through legitimate academic knowledge production. Our investigation of these efforts demonstrates that when the Department of Defense wants specific information and has a difficult time obtaining it, it eventually finds a way to produce it, in this case by employing tactics similar to those employed by economic elites when they want to develop knowledge that will help them achieve their goals.
In a democratic state, it is expected that a balance exists between civil and military power. While the military’s role has been traditionally defined as safeguarding a country’s national sovereignty and security, the modern concept of civil-military relations encapsulates a broader engagement of the military in advancing a country’s diplomacy as well. This article, taking the broader understanding into consideration, probes into the Bangladesh military’s expanding role. While civil-military relations went through much turbulence during the first few decades in Bangladesh’s history, with the restoration of democracy in 1991 the military has been one of the key participants in advancing defense diplomacy. Using several case studies, the article addresses vital questions such as the role of colonial legacies in Bangladesh’s military, how the military has gradually embedded itself in Bangladesh’s social, political, and economic milieu, and how unique civil-military relations have emboldened Bangladesh’s defense diplomacy.
The Republic of Korea (ROK) is making efforts to switch to a technology-intensive military that introduces advanced technology to prevent a security vacuum caused by a shortage of troops due to population decline. This study analyzed the replacement rate of military job performance ability by branch according to the development of science and technology (S&T). In addition, the following conclusions could be derived. First, S&T will significantly replace the human personnel’s job performance by 2040. Second, the degree of replacement by S&T will be high for the troop-intensive branches. Third, low-skilled and standardized jobs are easy to replace by S&T, and high-skilled atypical jobs are difficult to replace. Therefore, the ROK military’s aim of a military with advanced technology needs a customized policy that identifies low-skilled, standardized jobs, replaces them with S&T first, and gradually introduces super-technical skills that fit the attributes of the branches to which those jobs belong.
This review article elucidates concepts related to sea power, the social construction of the ocean, and maritime transformation. It begins with Mahan’s and Mackinder’s classic understanding of sea power, arguably the source of all traditional perspectives on the subject. Although this article accepts Till’s definition of sea power, it maintains that conventional wisdom does not offer a clear distinction between sea power as “a means of social power” and sea power as “states with powerful navies.” Furthermore, this article discusses Lambert’s conception of seapower identity, contending that his perspectives on seapower-state establishment are not based on relationships between the state, military, and the oceans. Lambert’s analysis of seapower states focuses on the activities that people engage in on land for seapower identity. His account suggests that maritime transformation could only occur in cases in which sea states transform into seapower states. However, this article claims that Steinberg’s concepts and theory of the social construction of the ocean provide a useful approach to examining the maritime transformation required for a transition from tellurocracy to thalassocracy.
This article views military service through the lenses of legal and gender approaches. With the reinstatement of compulsory military service being debated in many Western countries, the factors contributing to draft evasion are relevant. This article explores policy aiming to address draft evasion through a case study of post-EU-accession Cyprus. It shows that in Cyprus, policy attempts to reinvigorate military values are flawed. Draft evasion points to social, political, and economic developments that call for the military ideology of the armed forces to be redesigned to render a fairer institution toward conscript soldiers. When the draft evasion phenomenon becomes intensified, armies should consider a fairer form of military service, such as “giving back” to soldiers for the time spent in the army through the development of skills and educational and professional qualifications.
Several studies focusing on public attitudes toward transgender people have been conducted, but there has been minimal research on how heteronormativity might influence military-affiliated respondents’ attitudes toward transgender service members. In this qualitative study, seven United States veterans participated in phone interviews from July 2020 to January 2021, in which they shared their thoughts about working with transgender service members. Findings also included their opinions regarding transgender service as it relates to unit cohesion, military effectiveness, and national security. Overall, this study uniquely contributes to the scholarly literature by providing a firsthand account of transgender military service from the service members themselves. The findings also lay the groundwork for future and more extensive studies related to the current integration of transgender service members as they workalongside their cisgender colleagues.
This article explores “revolutionary etatization,” defined as the process of revolutionary organizations evolving into embryonic proto-states even before they have seized power. The article focuses on the period between the end of World War I and the present day. While the situation of inescapable violent competition (Tilly) represents the Darwinian driver of the process, we need the ideologicaland strategic dimensions to account for the variety of revolutionary proto-states. Embryonic revolutionary states come in two main types: the multi-department civil-administration apparatus, and the agglomerate of organs of popular representation, corresponding, respectively, to “constructive” and “co-optive” modes of state formation. Revolutionary etatization is a universal experience holding true not only for rural guerrillas controlling “liberated territories” but also for urban guerrillas and urban insurrectionists.
This article analyzes “National Defense Courses” textbooks that were used to disseminate defense information to the political, social, and administrative elite in Finland. Textbooks from 1967 to 2018 provide qualitative historicaland sociological data, showing how Finland has prepared for war and other security contingencies for the past five decades. The main shift in fostering the population’s allegiance to the state has gone from addressing the management of political heterodoxy as a patriotic endeavor to one of cultivating apolitical resilience in the face of adversity. Both patriotism and resilience appear in the texts as forms of civic piety, in which people’s individual preferences give way to collective interests.
Conscription is a political institution that may socialize individuals to acquire such values as a sense of patriotism and duty toward state. In democratic countries, public support for conscription is vital. In this article we study the effects of public opinion on Swedish and Finnish politics from 2008 to 2010 and from 2017 to 2021. Based on an analysis of political language, we argue that the use of such language is central to seeking legitimacy for controversial issues. To that end, political discussions and interpretations of public opinion are central ways of creating and legitimizing policy. By conducting a qualitative, conceptual, and contextual analysis of digitized parliamentary documents in Sweden and Finland, this article suggests that in both countries political elites have spoken about public opinion to support the crafting of defense policy, particularly when speaking about the necessity to reform conscription so as to maintain citizens’ engagement with defense and their acceptance of conscription as a core institution of national defense.
To strengthen Swedish patriotism during World War II, representatives of the Swedish Parliament and the Church of Sweden gathered at Stockholm’s City Hall and issued the motto “The Swedish principle is the Christian principle.” This study analyzes the role of Christianity in Swedish patriotism as expressed at that meeting. Using Viroli’s theories of nationalism and patriotism, this unifying message is found to contain a variety of understandings regarding the relationships between the Swedish people, Christianity, and the Church of Sweden. Christian faith was presented as part of both nationalism and patriotism and as both an instrument for increasing national loyalty and an objective in itself.
What makes individuals willing to defend their (adopted) homeland as their own? This is an essential question for all diverse societies. We turn to the case of Estonia, which inherited a sizable Russian-speaking population after the fall of the Soviet Union. Using recent polling data, we test demographic and attitudinal predictors of defense willingness among the first generation of males that have been raised in the republic since the restoration of independence. The results enable us to unpack differences between Estonian-speakers and Russian-speakers, as well as disagreements among the latter, which shed light on the state of social cohesion in Estonia’s national fabric.
The year 2020 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the May 4th tragedy at Kent State University. This article reviews the use of the National Guard in campus disorders from 1965 through June 1970 in order to identify factors that contributed to its effectiveness and to the likelihood of Guard violence. The Guard was most successful in dealing with disorders that most resembled urban riots earlier in the 1960s. The Guard was successful in controlling more complex situations only when the official enforcement code was altered to suit the unique situation of the campus. The difficulties the Guard encountered at Kent State are seen to be typical of the campus unrest incidents of that period where the campus was kept open, while the unjustifiable Guard violence at Kent State was quite exceptional.
How do national security interests influence outbound foreign direct investment (FDI)? FDI is a major part of the global economy, and a great deal of research has been devoted to understanding the economic and sociopolitical factors that make a country a more (or less) attractive recipient of FDI. However, less attention has been paid to the role of home-country interests, particularly in the realm of national security, in influencing such investment. Seeking to better understand the ways home-country interests and policies influence the locational decisions of their firms, in this study we examine the impact of two policy tools—military aid and state-sponsored political risk insurance—on outflows of US FDI to developing countries.
This study asks the question, How do police commanders view leadership in ad hoc formations during assigned operations? In the era of a post-heroic society, security organizations have adopted the negation of risk and the avoidance of violence as important principles. These principles are reflected in the perceptions of those leading ad hoc teams. This article presents an analysis of thirteen in-depth interviews with experienced members of the Israel Border Police who are in command of companies up to the level of battalion. The narratives of the commanders reveal a distinction between a “mission” and an operational “event” as they acknowledge the “flammability” of tasks during command operations in both Israel and the West Bank. We conclude that much of the commanders’ confidence during such operations stems from their close knowledge of the operational arena as well as the practical operational experiences they have had. Specifically, the article concludes that commander competence is manifested by the combination of their leadership style and the intimate knowledge they possess about the professional qualities of the participants in the diverse ad hoc teams they command made up of personnel from military, police, and security organizations.
