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

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

The role of war in deep transitions: exploring mechanisms, imprints and rules in sociotechnical systems

This paper explores in what ways the two world wars influenced the development of sociotechnical systems underpinning the culmination of the first deep transition. The role of war is an underexplored aspect in both the Techno-Economic Paradigms (TEP) approach and the Multi-level perspective (MLP) which form the two key conceptual building blocks of the Deep Transitions (DT) framework. Thus, we develop a conceptual approach tailored to this particular topic which integrates accounts of total war and mechanisms of war from historical studies and imprinting from organisational studies with the DT framework’s attention towards rules and meta-rules. We explore in what ways the three sociotechnical systems of energy, food, and transport were affected by the emergence of new demand pressures and logistical challenges during conditions of total war; how war impacted the directionality of sociotechnical systems; the extent to which new national and international policy capacities emerged during wartime in the energy, food, and transport systems; and the extent to which these systems were influenced by cooperation and shared sacrifice under wartime conditions. We then explore what lasting changes were influenced by the two wars in the energy, food, and transport systems across the transatlantic zone. This paper seeks to open up a hitherto neglected area in analysis on sociotechnical transitions and we discuss the importance of further research that is attentive towards entanglements of warfare and the military particularly in the field of sustainability transitions

Think Again – Supplying War: Reappraising Military Logistics and Its Centrality to Strategy and War

This article argues that logistics constrains strategic opportunity while itself being heavily circumscribed by strategic and operational planning. With the academic literature all but ignoring the centrality of logistics to strategy and war, this article argues for a reappraisal of the critical role of military logistics, and posits that the study and conduct of war and strategy are incomplete at best or false at worst when they ignore this crucial component of the art of war. The article conceptualises the logistics–strategy nexus in a novel way, explores its contemporary manifestation in an age of uncertainty, and applies it to a detailed case study of UK operations in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001