Building Military Doctrine based on History and Experience: 20th century examples from Germany, France, Israel and the US

The paper will address the role (or lack thereof) of military history and past experience in military doctrine building. The analysis will be based on four case studies: the Reichswehr/Wehrmacht 1919– 1940, the French army 1919–1940, the IDF 1948–1973, and the US Army 1973–1991. In the synthesis, the author will present the role of military history in building efficient military doctrine on three levels of war: tactics, operational art, and strategy. Several kinds of abuses and misuses of military history will be singled out as a warning sign for con- temporary policy and military decision makers

A study on the future sustainability of Sejong, South Korea’s multifunctional administrative city, focusing on implementation of transit oriented development

Since the appearance of steam engines in the late 18th century, cities have been growing with the development of transportation and the consequent increase of its urban population and economic activities. Presently, cities accommodate more than half of the world population and are expected to be responsible for 73% of the world’s energy use in 2030. Cities come to the fore as a problem, being also the roots of solution for current environment and energy-related problems. The Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems applied in Latin American cities have shown the possibility of establishing efficient urban transport networks and sustainable urban structures at low cost. Meanwhile, Asian cities are anticipated to accommodate 54% of the world urban population by 2050. Sejong city, South Korea is the newest planned city in the region aiming to see its completion in 2030. The aim of this paper is to assess the future urban sustainability of Sejong city by analyzing first the Master Plan of the construction of the city in accordance with PEBOSCA (Physical, Economical, Biological, Organizational, Social, Cultural, and Aesthetical) resources, and second its implementation in general with a focus on the expected role of Transit-Oriented Development in particular looking at BRT. Putrajaya’s case is referred for anticipated shortcomings which Sejong should be prepared for. Secondary data and interpretations from books and articles regarding contemporary urban problems are comprehensively reviewed to systemically analyze the influences of implementation of TOD upon urban sustainability. This study revealed that planned actions derived from TOD will play an important role in resolving urban problems in Sejong city by relieving urban traffic congestion, CO2 emission and fossil fuel consumption. And systemic influences on improvement of business activities, government tax income, social activities and equity, and olfactory quality of the city are expected. Therefore, TOD is deemed to be a better option for existing cities and is necessary for newly developing planned cities in Asia and Africa

A study of human factors that affect combat effectiveness on the battlefield.

This study was designed to provide empirical data which would show what relationship existed among nine human factors and combat effectiveness of soldiers on the battlefield. These human factors were: leadership, training, combat experience, perception of survival possibility, acceptance by the unit, fatigue, hunger, the ability to withstand fire, and a soldier's belief in what he was doing was right. The study focused upon a sample of fifty Army infantry battalion commanders within the continental United States who had served as small-unit combat leaders in Vietnam. Data was obtained by the use of a mailed survey. The respondents tended to agree that among all of the human factors, leadership was strongly related to combat effectiveness. Among the nine human factors, respondents felt that leadership and training were the most important human factors relating to combat effectiveness. The respondents commented extensively that cohesion, training, belief in what they were doing, and leadership were the main motivators behind the soldier's willingness to fight.http://archive.org/details/astudyofhumfacto1094520357Captain, United States ArmyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Habsburg’s Last War: The Filmic Memory (1918 to the Present)

A divergent survey of scholarship on World War I cinema produced in succession countries of the Habsburg Empire. This untapped body of film records a contentious phase in world history, from the perspective of an often misunderstood, yet pivotal, region. The volume gathers scholarly essays exploring the intersections between the political, historical, and aesthetic, as expressed in the region’s various “moving pictures,” with sustained attention to the relationship between artistic representation and collective memory.https://scholarworks.uno.edu/hlw/1000/thumbnail.jp

Closer Than You Think: The Implications of the Third Offset Strategy for the U.S. Army

The Defense Innovation Initiative (DII), begun in November 2014 by former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, is intended to ensure U.S. military superiority throughout the 21st century. The DII seeks broad-based innovation across the spectrum of concepts, research and development, capabilities, leader development, wargaming, and business practices. An essential component of the DII is the Third Offset Strategy—a plan for overcoming (offsetting) adversary parity or advantage, reduced military force structure, and declining technological superiority in an era of great power competition. This study explored the implications for the Army of Third Offset innovations and breakthrough capabilities for the operating environment of 2035-2050. It focused less on debating the merits or feasibility of individual technologies and more on understanding the implications—the second and third order effects on the Army that must be anticipated ahead of the breakthrough.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1403/thumbnail.jp

Soundscapes of the Urban Past: Staged Sound as Mediated Cultural Heritage

We cannot simply listen to our urban past. Yet we encounter a rich cultural heritage of city sounds presented in text, radio and film. How can such "staged sounds" express the changing identities of cities? This volume presents a collection of studies on the staging of Amsterdam, Berlin and London soundscapes in historical documents, radio plays and films, and offers insights into themes such as film sound theory and museum audio guides. In doing so, this book puts contemporary controversies on urban sound in historical perspective, and contextualises iconic presentations of cities. It addresses academics, students, and museum workers alike

The Rise and Fall of Infrastructures: Dynamics of Evolution and Technological Change in Transport

This book tries to merge two streams of analysis: diffusion research, a relatively recent interdisciplinary field, and the long established disciplines of transportation planning and the economic history of transport systems. After World War II, diffusion research emerged simultaneously from a number of disciplines, including sociology, geography, and the economics of technological change. For over a hundred years economic historians have provided many detailed, but often fragmented studies of the development and socio-economic impacts of individual transport systems. At a conference held at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in 1989 on Diffusion of Technologies and Social Behavior it became clear that while many valuable theories and models have been developed, a unifying theoretical framework has not yet emerged in diffusion research. This is related to the fact that research has almost exclusively concentrated on a micro-level analysis of technological or social/cultural change. This book makes a contribution toward bridging the different fields of diffusion research. First, by providing an overview of the different theoretical streams within the discipline, and secondly by studying diffusion phenomena for technological change at the sectoral level up to the macro-level diffusion of pervasive transport systems. The economic history of transportation has provided many prominent examples of the fruitfulness of blending macro theory with a strong empirical basis at the sectoral level. It was not the objective of this work to develop a new comprehensive theory of infrastructure development. Instead, the study aimed at combining the methodological apparatus developed within diffusion research with the empirical research tradition of the economic history of transportation. Its objective was to provide a synthetic description, covering all successive transport modes both individually in their historical evolution, and in their integration into a holistic view of the whole transport sector. The analysis is international and spans about 200 years, i.e., the developments in a number of countries are studied to highlight similarities and differences in development patterns. With such objectives, this work is both a risky and a necessarily limited effort, but it has been undertaken in the hope of providing some new perspectives for people working in, or interested in both fields

Visualizing Fascism

Visualizing Fascism explores various ways of tracing, displaying, viewing, and interacting with fascism, examining fascism as both a global and aesthetic phenomenon during the twentieth century. It emphasizes transnational and visual qualities in order to refigure ways of establishing visual languages, articulate commentaries on the dynamic nature of national identity, and form both supportive and challenging attitudes about the global right. In particular, this volume seeks to challenge the notion that fascism is primarily a national product of Italy, Japan, and Germany; rather it seeks to locate the rise of fascism and the global right in transnational networks connected by capitalism and imperialism