Suchergebnisse

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The utility of land mines on the modern battlefield has come into question in recent years, largely because of their potential for causing unintended casualties and affecting U.S. forces' maneuverability. These concerns were raised during the Persian Gulf War. U.S. land mines of all types--nonself-destructing and self-destructing, antipersonnel and antitank--were available for use if needed in the Gulf War from U.S. land mine stockpiles, which contained 19 million land mines. U.S. forces sent to the Gulf War theater of operations took with them for potential use over 2.2 million land mines. U.S. war plans included plans for the use of land mines if required by the tactical situation. According to Department of Defense (DOD) documents, no nonself-destructing or "dumb," land mines were used; and the reported number of self-destructing, or "smart," land mines used by the services totaled approximately 118,000. DOD did not provide information on the effect of U.S. land mine use against the enemy. According to U.S. service records, of the 1,364 total U.S. casualties in the Gulf War, 81, or 6 percent, were killed or injured by land mines. Concerns about land mines raised in DOD lessons-learned and other reports included the fear of fratricide and loss of battlefield mobility. These concerns led to the reluctance of some U.S. commanders to use land mines in areas that U.S. and allied forces might have to traverse."

this article examines the impact of parliamentary involvement in troop deployment decisions on restrictions on military mandates by examining the belgian contribution to the 2011 libya intervention and the coalition against the self-proclaimed islamic state. More specifically, we analyse (1) the effect of party ideology on mandate preferences, and (2) the impact of bargaining between majority and opposition parties on the outcome of mandate negotiations. Our case study demonstrates that left-wing parties show a strong inclination toward imposing restrictions on the use of military force beyond humanitarian goals, while right-wing preferences tend to depend on the national interests at stake in the operation. With regard to majority-opposition bargaining, our study shows that the impact of opposition parties is dependent on the degree of contention between government and opposition parties, as well as on the extent to which the executive needs to seek support across its own majority.