Suchergebnisse

The murder of George Floyd by a police officer in the United States in May 2020 and the subsequent turmoil, as well as the violence against migrants on the US-Mexican border, have drawn major public and media attention to the phenomenon of police brutality (see, e.g., Levin 2020; Misra 2018; Taub 2020), which is often labeled as 'militarization of police'. At the same time, in recent years military forces have been increasingly involved in policing missions in civilian environments, both domestically (see, e.g., Kanno-Youngs 2020; Schrader 2020; Shinkman 2020) and abroad. The convergence of military conduct and policing raises intriguing questions regarding the impact of these tendencies on the military and the police, as well as on their legitimacy.

Determinants of the death hierarchy -- How to identify variations in risk transfer -- Risking one's own soldiers in Jenin and Basra -- Passive force protection in Iraq and Gaza -- Strategic transfer of risk in the Kosovo War -- Tactical transfer of risk in Fallujah and Gaza -- Re-risking one's own soldiers in the surge in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Whose life is worth more? That is the question that states inevitably face during wartime. Which troops are thrown to the first lines of battle and which ones remain relatively intact? How can various categories of civilian populations be protected? And when front and rear are porous, whose life should receive priority, those of soldiers or those of civilians? In this book, the author uses Israel as a compelling case study to explore the global dynamics and security implications of casualty sensitivity. Israel, he argues, originally chose to risk soldiers mobilized from privileged classes, more than civilians and other soldiers. However, with the mounting of casualty sensitivity, the state gradually restructured what Levy calls its death hierarchy to favor privileged soldiers over soldiers drawn from lower classes and civilians, and later to place enemy civilians at the bottom of the hierarchy by the use of heavy firepower. The state thus shifted risk from soldiers to civilians. As the Gaza offensive of 2009 demonstrates, this new death hierarchy has opened Israel to global criticism.

This article is conceptually motivated to show how instrumental rationality is reflected in the military domain. Instrumental rationality refers to the adoption of suitable means to achieve particular ends. However, this conception was criticised by the Frankfurt School for focusing on means rather than on ends. Based on this critique, I present specific categories of instrumental rationality in the military domain. I will argue that instrumental rationality, or at least its faulty application, is reflected in means-centred thinking whereby the means justify the ends. This approach may create specific categories in the military domain: means justify the ends just because they are available, and they can also expand the ends. The means-centred approach may be expanded from subordinating ends to means to focusing on the objects to be attacked, thus developing an objects-centred approach that may also develop into a focus on the direct outcome of the operation of means, thus becoming a tool of legitimation. A similar legitimising impact is produced by the process of moralisation implicit in the focus on means. Finally, a means-centred approach may be translated into overconfidence in the omnipotence of means, and can thereby be elevated to the belief that weapons can obviate the need for political settlement. « Ces compétences. . . devaient être utilisées simplement parce qu'elles étaient là »: La rationalité instrumentale dans le domaine militaire

AbstractThe Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were deployed extensively relative to other democracies' militaries to combat the coronavirus during 2020–1. Ostensibly, the military's engagements are instrumental in addressing the pandemic due to its resources and hierarchical discipline, and especially in light of its centrality in Israel. However, problems remain concerning this deployment, the most prominent and relevant to the case of Israel being the high legitimacy that the Israeli public afforded this policy, especially given the alternative options available to the government. Motivated by this conundrum, I present a circular argument: securitisation legitimised the deployment of the military and in turn, this deployment, constitutive of the discourse of securitisation, further legitimised securitisation. Consequently, Israel could legitimately adopt an enemy-oriented approach to deal with the crisis, an approach that 'enemises' the population.

Since the 2000s, a fundamental structural change has led to the development of two armies within the IDF. In co-existence with the 'official' army, a 'policing' force has emerged in the West Bank. Ostensibly subordinated to political authority, it has evolved into a quasi-militia force, enacting policies that often deviate from the official line. The question of who controls this policing army is central to this article. I argue that this policing army, unlike the official army, is controlled by a matrix rather than a hierarchical structure. Characterized by a web of mostly extra-military mechanisms, it is embedded within the civilian communities of the Jewish settlers, and this embeddedness shapes the form of control by creating several control mechanisms. Therefore, this policing army is only partially controlled by the official echelon of command.

Mainstream scholars of IR favor policy-relevant research, that is the agenda to influence government policymakers by offering policy recommendations. In this article, I offer a different perspective by presenting alternative arguments about social scientists' responsibility to influence. By drawing on themes of public sociology and critical sociology, security studies and public policy, I argue that the core of this responsibility is to seek to influence policy via engagement with the public rather than with policymakers.

"Israel: A Politically Monitored Military in a Militarized Society" published on by Oxford University Press.

This article addresses scholarly deficiencies in identifying the conditions under which the desecularization of militaries takes place. To theorize this process, two militaries are studied, the United States and Israel. Arguably, six drivers sequentially generate the desecularization of the militaries: (1) Militaries largely mirror the growing influence of religion in the broader society. However, intramilitary drivers play their role in promoting/mitigating the extra-military mechanisms of desecularization. Thus, (2) organizational interests along with external constraints drive militaries to promote religious diversity, which may (3) lead to the empowerment of religious actors, and thereby to further desecularization through religious intolerance, and to (4) reliance on the spiritual and religious services provided by military chaplains, and jointly stimulate (5) the use of religion to motivate military sacrifice. By religiously increasing the symbolic value of military sacrifice, (6) religiosity becomes more naturally associated with good soldiering, thereby reshaping intramilitary hierarchies and, hence, further triggering desecularization.

This article presents the spectrum of the bereavement discourse, namely, how various social groups interpret the loss of their children's lives or the potential risk to their lives posed by their military service and translate it into public discourse, as a spectrum of attitudes. It is argued that this spectrum ranges from subversive to submissive approaches. Furthermore, within the confines of the declining casualty tolerance, two variables cumulatively determine the actors' choice of discourse: the level of enforcement of recruitment, ranging from conscription to voluntary recruitment, and the social position of the group to which the agents belong. Given that conscription brings powerful, high-status groups into the ranks who may be unwilling to make sacrifices for war, subversive responses are more likely to occur in conscript militaries than in volunteer forces and vice versa. This article maps this spectrum and hypothesizes about its determinants.

The question of what constitutes the legitimacy of using force targeting an external adversary, has become especially relevant since the wars that followed the 9/11 events and the post-Cold War's interventions in human crises. However, international relations is the main field in which this issue is discussed while political scientists tend to mix legitimacy with supportive public opinion. This paper is conceptually motivated. It begins by defining the concept of the legitimacy of using force. It then analyzes the two components of this legitimacy: the first represents the constant, socially constructed component, and the second is a dynamic component, on which the paper focuses. It is constituted by several mutually related variables which are critical for increasing or decreasing the constant component of this legitimacy and can be circumstantially and contextually used by leaders to mobilize support.

This article attempts to fill a gap in the literature about civilian control by presenting the concept of control from within the military and investigating its determinants. Control from within is the intentional action taken by soldiers tasked with missions with which they disagree in an attempt to affect how the military implements politically based directives. The forms of control from within include restraining the aggressiveness of other soldiers, whistle-blowing, selective and gray refusal to deploy, foot-dragging, collective bargaining about deployments, and documentation and testimonies. By drawing on the cases of the US and Israeli militaries, I argue that the interplay of two variables determines the choice made by soldiers tasked with missions with which they disagree: the level of presence of potentially subversive soldiers belonging to the same social group; and the group's social status within and outside the military. These variables are strongly affected by the type of manpower system. Under conscription, both variables exert a powerful effect, encouraging the exercising of control from within. In contrast, a volunteer system reduces the influence of the two variables, so control from within is more restricted, and dissatisfied soldiers may favor other forms of action with a limited impact on military policies.