Suchergebnisse

As long as China considers Taiwan as part of its sovereign territory, China will always be the primary security threat to Taiwan. The modernization of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) over the last two decades is certainly a threat to Taiwan's security. Yet, cross-Straits relation since 2008 has been relatively peaceful and less confrontational. In this article, I suggest that while Taiwan's military establishment has warned of the dangers and threats of China's increasingly modernized military capabilities, the dynamics of the Taiwanese domestic politics as well as the burgeoning economic and trade ties between China and Taiwan have jointly served to shift Taiwan's focus from the military to the political and economic aspect of its security. Resulting from this shift away from the military dimension of cross-Straits relation, then, China–Taiwan relationship while contentious has been decidedly less confrontational and more predictable.

This article gives an overview of how civilian control of the military in Slovenia is implemented in practice. It utilizes the perspective of the controlled entity itself, that is, the Slovenian Armed Forces. The findings show the type and characteristics of civilian control in Slovenia and how they hinder military effectiveness. As one of the European transition countries to have concluded the democratization of its civil–military relations, civilian control over Slovenia's Armed Forces is now in place; however, the control mechanisms have had several debilitating effects on the country's armed forces—the democratization of civil–military relations has been achieved at the partial expense of military effectiveness. Because of this experience, the Slovenian case could serve as an example of how successful democratization of civil–military relations can sometimes produce negative outcomes, or collateral damage, for the military, especially when the employers of the control mechanisms are not aware of the effects that the exercise of their control might have on the military's ability to execute core missions. Methodologically, this article brings an approach for analyzing interrelations between civilian control and military effectiveness.

When a young peasant in early nineteenth-century Russia was conscripted into the army from the taxpaying population, he underwent a fundamental change in juridical status: born into serfdom, he became a "free" man (vol'nyi chelovek) with a civic identity. He also entered a world of bureaucratic regulation that governed his daily routine and formalized his social relationships. While the master had unlimited control over his peasants, who were in fact his personal property, governmental regulation to some extent mediated relations between military commanders and their subordinates. In military society the state sought to legislate those paternalistic values that customarily defined relations between landlord and serf, relations conceived in the image of a father supervising his child. Theoretically this relationship combined paternal concern for the welfare of the soldiers with strict discipline and punishment. Like the biblical God, commanders were supposed to be both merciful and "terrible."

L'ouvrage propose une réflexion sur l'état civil, sur ses usages et ses évolutions, en prenant pour focale la transidentité qui est devenue un lieu majeur de son questionnement. La question du changement de la mention de sexe à l'état civil n'a eu pendant longtemps qu'une faible visibilité sur la scène publique. Elle a pourtant été l'objet de revendications nombreuses de la part des personnes trans qui contestaient notamment la lourdeur de la procédure judiciaire ainsi que sa médicalisation et qui refusaient la stérilisation qui leur était implicitement imposée pour obtenir une nouvelle identité civile. Ces contestations ont reçu une réponse législative à l'occasion de la loi de modernisation de la Justice du XXIe siècle de 2016 qui a démédicalisé la procédure sans pour autant la déjudiciariser. L'ouvrage aborde cette relation complexe entre état civil et transidentité par le biais d'une approche pluridisciplinaire afin d'en saisir les multiples facettes et enjeux. Dans un premier temps, il s'intéresse à la signification de l'état civil et à son évolution au regard du statut sexué des personnes. Puis il se focalise sur les acteurs mobilisés autour du changement de sexe à l'état civil et sur leur implication dans la dernière réforme. Il propose enfin une mise en perspective internationale des conceptions juridiques de la mention de sexe et de sa modification légale ainsi qu'une analyse de l'émergence de lois sur l'identité de genre dans deux pays latino-américains

International relations play out on multiple frequencies, where adversary states in one conflict may be partners in another. How do such shifting circumstances influence the conditions for ongoing international military operations? This paper seeks answers through an analysis of Operation RECSYR, the 2014 Danish-led naval intervention to remove chemical weapons from Syria. It was carried out by the UN and key states - including Denmark, Norway, and Russia. Yet this was also a period of highly tense relations between the West and Russia due to the latter's involvement with President Assad in the Syrian war, and the annexation of Crimea. Thus, the successful cooperation largely hinged on the tactical level, and the politics of the day needed to be set to one side. Drawing on Bourdieu's theoretical 'practice approach' to 'field analysis', this article opens up 'the black box' of the state to look at everyday international relations. It uncovers how military practitioners facilitated cooperation despite a conflict-ridden political context. The paper argues that the conditions for international operations neither leave military practitioners in a stalemate, nor are they impervious to strategic-level politicking. Rather, it is the capacity of the tactical level to shift between using and then decoupling its culture and practices from shifts and conflicts playing out on the strategic level that produces the everyday international relations.

Impact of the military on ethnic relations and of ethnic relations on military performance.

O artigo compila a trajetória institucional empreendida pela Revolução Bolivariana com vistas a adensar as relações cívico-militares no país, ou seja, a incorporar a civis em atividades até então restritas ao corpo militar nacional. Este projeto ancora-se em construções teóricas relacionadas aos conceitos de "guerra assimétrica" e de "pueblo en armas". O texto conclui que, mesmo representando uma interessante e inovadora estratégia de ampliação do escopo da defesa nacional, em especial no que concerne à utilização do aparelho militar como apoio para conferir maior escala e eficiência na implementação de programas sociais, a crescente inclusão de civis em atividades eminentemente militares resulta numa potencialmente problemática transferência de responsabilidades no âmbito das estruturas de poder do Estado.ABSTRACTThe article compiles the institutional trajectory taken by the Bolivarian Revolution in order to enhance the civil-military relations in the country, i.e., to incorporate civilians in activities previously restricted to the national military structure. This project is anchored in theoretical constructs related to the ideas of "asymmetric warfare" and "pueblo en armas." The paper concludes that, despite the fact that the initiative represents an interesting and innovative strategy of expansion of the scope of national defense, especially regarding the use of the military as a support to enhance the scale and efficiency in the implementation of social programs, the increasing inclusion of civilians in activities that are eminently military results in a potentially problematic transfer of responsibilities within the state power structures.Palavras-chave: Unidade cívico-militar – Guerra assimétrica – VenezuelaKeywords: Civil-military Integration - Asymmetric warfare – Venezuela DOI: 10.12957/rmi.2015.22162 Recebido em 24 de março de 2016 / Received March 24, 2016.Aceito em 20 de junho de 2016 / Accepted June 20, 2016

This book examines the motivations of military interventions in civil wars, with a focus on the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) and the arms trade. The book assumes a state-centric view of international relations, whereby states remain the dominant actors on the world stage. It breaks away from the conventional wisdom that military interventions for economic interests are a product of domestic corporate lobbying and instead argues that states intervene to protect (but not advance) existing corporate investments for national strategic interests. The work introduces new concepts of military interventions – proxy interventions and indirect interventions – which are determined by arms trade relationships between the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and recipient countries, and utilizes insights from principal-agent theory, whereby the permanent members of the UNSC delegate military interventions in civil wars to other countries. The book concludes by examining the transformative effect of FDI on the willingness of a state to intervene militarily in a civil war, focusing on the case of China in Sub-Saharan Africa. Provided that the current positive trends in FDI and arms trade persist, we are likely to see more and not fewer military interventions in the future.

This article details the background to the Algerian military establishment that assumed effective control of the country upon independence from France in 1962 and its subsequent internal power struggles between the likes of Iban Ramadan, Ahmad Ben Bellah and Houwari Boumedienne. While the Algerian adage that 'some states have an army, but in Algeria, the army has a state' has had a degree of applicability – especially throughout the 1960s and 1970s, there have been various attempts by Algerians to carve out a political sphere independent from the military. Chastened by the bloody experiences of the crucible in the wake of the abrogated 1992 elections – when the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) had emerged victorious, the army which had paid a heavy price in casualties and damage to its reputation sought to distance itself from the political sphere. The author also makes the case that while independence from France was won primarily through the fighting and sacrifices of the Algerian army of the interior, the Revolution was co-opted largely by elements of the army of the exterior – from the border regions – which participated little or not at all in the actual liberation, but which would subsequently go on to revise history to imply that their role had been crucial to the process. With many of the most prominent figures of the independence generation either deceased or stepping down, and with their replacement by younger generations of officers who are patriotic but less dogmatic and more sympathetic to the Algerian people, the article provides essential background to current events and suggests that the 'new' Algerian military is distinct from the previous and more receptive to an enlarged political and civil space.

"In 1964, when the Civil Rights Act was passed, Congress wisely created an agency based in the U.S. Department of Justice to help forestall or resolve racial or ethnic disputes evolving from the act. Mandated by law and by its own methodology to shun publicity, the Community Relations Service developed self-effacement to a fine art. Thus the accomplishments, as well as the shortcomings, of this federal venture into conflict resolution are barely known in official Washington, and even less so by the American public. This first written history of the Community Relations Service uses the experiences of the men and women who sought to resolve the most volatile issues of the day to tell the story of this unfamiliar agency."--Jacket

How do Europeans engage in military strategy? Throughdetailed comparisons of operational planning and exploring the framework of the EU,NATO and the UN, this book sheds light on the instrumental nature of military force,the health of civil-military relations in Europe and the difficulty of makingeffective strategy in a multinational environment