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During the summer of 1992, Senator Sam Nunn, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, initiated legislation to enhance civilian and military cooperative efforts in meeting critical domestic needs. In a speech before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he called for a major reexamination of the roles and missions of the nation's Armed Forces to help solve these problems. The political context of Senator Nunn's speech is as important as its content. The cold war was over, domestic crises were manifesting themselves, and the Armed Forces, especially after the Gulf War, enjoyed unprecedented prestige and unique capabilities and efficiencies. These efficiencies, Senator Nunn believes, can be turned on domestic difficulties. As budgets were cut, the broad area of roles and missions also became the vehicle for scrubbing the budget and revalidating missions and force structures. The revalidation process continues and, in simple terms, the defense budget will see dollars being taken out or new missions added. This paper details Senator Nunn's ideas for new missions. It sets forth his speech, the relevant materials from reports of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House-Senate Conference Committee (Appendix A), and the final text of the legislation as enacted in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1993 (Appendix B). ; https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1902/thumbnail.jpg

Why did the members of the Russian Armed Forces support the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Vladimir Zhirinovsky in the December 1993 Russian elections, abandoning Boris Yeltsin at the polls and confounding observers who had until then assumed that the army was under firm political control? This article examines the depth of military support for Zhirinovsky, and explains that support as (1) a result of residual "Sovietism" in the military that resulted in strong affinity for Zhirinovsky's calls for a Soviet/Imperial restoration; (2) a reaction against being used by Yeltsin against the Parliament in October 1993; and (3) general military agreement with the tone and substance of Zhirinovsky's attacks on the Russian political establishment. The article suggests that the Russian military has already emerged as an independent political force, and there is little hope in the near future that Yeltsin will be able to reestablish full political control.

This article addresses the evaluation of organizational changes in the Dutch armed forces. Increasingly, megatrends in the risk society affect the organization of all armed forces. To cope with these trends, new strategic ideas are being developed that will change organizations fundamentally. The question, however, is the way these ideas are dealt with at the operational level. From this perspective, evaluation is needed. Evaluation of changes in large-scale, specific organizational settings is discussed here as an integrated approach using summative, formative, normative and constructivist elements. Pitfalls and challenges of this approach are discussed.

The Commonwealth of Independent States is struggling to create a central military command at the same time that individual members of the Commonwealth are forging their own national armies. Although the former task appears to be more daunting, the difficulties in creating stable, functional territorial armies should not be underestimated. Difficulties will arise because the states themselves are multinational in makeup and will have to contend with ethnic problems among their servicemen. Utilizing data from a survey of former Soviet citizens, the author tested two competing hypotheses about the impact of the Soviet military on ethnic relations in the now defunct Soviet empire in order to increase understanding of some of the difficulties that the newly independent states will confront as they establish their own militaries. The impact of ethnic tensions on military performance was also examined. The results provide no basis for claims that the Soviet military either exacerbated or mitigated ethnic conflict. However, ethnic relations had a profound impact on military performance. This article discusses the implications of these findings for the successor states to the Soviet Union.