Koprcanje u vodi: žene, feminizam i oružane snage

This paper consists of five parts. Part I argues that, contrary to common perceptions, the attempt of modern feminism to put relations between men and women on a new and equal basis is not going anywhere. Part II extends the argument to the military and war, suggesting that women have only made limited inroads into “the last bastion" of male superiority and that what inroads they did make have often been more illusory than real. Part III argues that, even to the very limited extent women have succeeded in penetrating the military, the process has peaked and may now start going into reverse. Part IV suggests that, both in civilian life and in the military, what achievements feminism can show have been bought at such heavy cost as to be counterproductive. Finally, part V sums up the argument by suggesting that, both in civilian life and in the military, feminism’s quest for liberation has been both a myth and a cul de sac. And the faster women realize it, the better both for them and for men.Rad se sastoji iz pet dijelova. U prvom se dijelu dokazuje da, suprotno ustaljenim predodžbama, pokušaj modernog feminizma da odnose između muškaraca i žena postavu na nove temelje jednakosti ne vodi nikamo. Drugi dio ovaj argument proširuje na oružane snage i rat, pokazujući da su žene ostvarile samo ograničeni ulazak u “posljednji bastion” muške nadmoćnosti te da je taj ulazak u više slučaja iluzoran nego stvaran. U trećem se dijelu tvrdi da je proces - usprkos vrlo ograničenim razmjerima ženske penetracije u oružane snage - dosegao vrhunac i da bi sada mogao početi ići u obratnom smjeru. Četvrti dio zagovara tezu da je za sva postignuća feminizma plaćena tako visoka cijena da je cijela stvar kontraporoduktivna. Konačni, peti dio zaključuje raspravu tvrdnjom da je feministička borba za oslobođenje, kako u civilnom tako i u vojnom životu, bila i mit i slijepa ulica. Što to žene brže shvate, to će biti bolje i za njih i za muškarce

Through a Glass, Darkly

Confronted with its own supreme product, nuclear weapons, large-scale interstate war as a phenomenon is slowly but surely being squeezed below the historical horizon. What will arise in its place

Preface. The Study of War

Preface to the Estonian Yearbook of Military History 7 (13) 201

War Craft: The embodied politics of making war

This article makes the case for examining war from what Stephanie Bunn calls a ‘making point of view’. Makers and their material production of and for war have been neglected in our accounts of war, security and international relations. An attention to processes of making for war can reveal important things about how such processes are lived and undertaken at the level of the body. The article focuses on the particular phenomena of martial craft labour – the recreational making of ‘stuff’, including hats and pillowcases, by civilians for soldiers. To explore embodiment within this social site, an ethnographic method is outlined that enables the reading of objects as embodied texts, the observation of others in processes of making, and the undertaking of making by the researcher. Analysing embodied registers of aesthetic expression and the social values that attend such crafting for war reveals how this making is a space through which intimate embodied, emotional circulations undertake work for liberal-state and military-institutional logics and objectives, obscure violence, normalize war, and produce the military as an abstract social cause. Beyond the immediate empirical focus of this article, a much wider political entanglement of violence, embodiment and material production necessitates a concerted research agenda

The British Army, information management and the First World War revolution in military affairs

Information Management (IM) – the systematic ordering, processing and channelling of information within organisations – forms a critical component of modern military command and control systems. As a subject of scholarly enquiry, however, the history of military IM has been relatively poorly served. Employing new and under-utilised archival sources, this article takes the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) of the First World War as its case study and assesses the extent to which its IM system contributed to the emergence of the modern battlefield in 1918. It argues that the demands of fighting a modern war resulted in a general, but not universal, improvement in the BEF’s IM techniques, which in turn laid the groundwork, albeit in embryonic form, for the IM systems of modern armies. KEY WORDS: British Army, Information Management, First World War, Revolution in Military Affairs, Adaptatio

The Impact of Mercenaries and Private Military and Security Companies on Civil War Severity between 1946 and 2002

Research has long abandoned the view that only states wage war. On the contrary, civil war research has produced an impressive body of literature on violent non-state actors. Still, a particular group of actors—mercenaries—has been widely neglected so far, although they have participated in numerous conflicts in the second half of the twentieth century. Whether their presence aggravated or improved the situation is a matter of dispute. Some believe that the additional military capabilities provided by mercenaries help to end civil wars quickly without increased bloodshed, while others deem mercenaries greedy and bloodthirsty combatants who contribute to making civil wars more brutal, while a third opinion differentiates between different types of mercenaries. This article tests the impact of mercenaries on civil war severity. The evidence indicates that the presence of both mercenaries and private military and security contractors increases its severity