What made American Civil War soldiers fight?

James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp.xv + 237, appendix, notes, index. £20 (cloth); $13.95 (paper). ISBN 0–10–512499–5     

Iraq's role in the 1973 Arab‐Israeli War

The events of the 1973 Arab‐Israeli War serve as an early indicator of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's willingness to use military power to address foreign policy concerns. In that war, Iraq intervened on the Syrian front with an armored division, other supporting units, and over 100 aircraft. This intervention, which occurred despite severe political and military difficulties, was larger than any previous Iraqi contribution to the anti‐Israeli struggle. Baghdad later asserted that Iraqi forces had saved Damascus from possible Israeli occupation, and these claims have been widely repeated by a variety of authors of different nationalities with various degrees of agreement or skepticism. Nevertheless, Iraqi claims to have saved Damascus from Israeli capture are false since the Israelis did not view the seizure of the city as important to their strategy for victory. Rather, the Iraqi presence on the Golan Heights was useful to the Arab war effort as one of many factors helping to delay the Israeli advance and prevent some important Syrian targets from being placed within artillery range of the Israeli force. Iraqi military shortcomings were well highlighted in this conflict, and many were repeated in the early stages of the war with Iran.     

‘What Kind of War is This?’

This article explores the nature of the American war in Vietnam in an effort to determine whether it was a response to an indigenous uprising or an external effort by the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) to use a wide array of policies and programs to unite North Vietnam and South Vietnam under the party’s leadership. It argues that, although there initially were elements of the South Vietnamese population that rose against the southern leadership, the CPV gained control of their resistance and relegated it to a secondary role in the CPV war effort.     

The Korean War: A 50‐year critical historiography

Scholarly research and publication in many countries has made the Korean War not only remembered, but also better understood. Material from Russia and China have been especially helpful in adding nuance and detail to now‐dated writing about the war's causes. Much more work needs to be done on Korean politics and the 1952–53 period, but in all the scholarship simply confirms the shared responsibility of all the belligerents ‐ including the Koreans ‐ in starting and continuing the war.     

A Criterion for Settling Inconsistencies in Clausewitz’s On War

On War’s unfinished state has been a source of difficulties for interpretation for 180 years. By establishing a hierarchy of revision among the parts, we propose a criterion that can bring any part of On War in line with the most advanced stage of Clausewitz’s thinking. We exemplify the utility, illustrate the underpinnings and appreciate the potential of this criterion. We argue that the criterion offers the prospect of a shared, coherent, fully consistent and faithful rendering of Clausewitz’s theory of war.     

War’s Horizon: Soldier-Led Adaptation in Iraq and Vietnam

Wartime adaptation is a process of adjustment from the war you planned for to the one you have. This process of adjustment is done, in part, by the practitioners of war in the theater of conflict–soldier-led adaptation. Drawing upon two case studies of gun truck development in Iraq and Vietnam I argue that soldiers created networks in order to adapt to battlefield challenges and that the pattern of those networks carries implications for the likelihood of formal adoption by the organization. Simply put, the pattern of the flow of ideas, resources, and skills across the battlefield may affect the likelihood of bottom-up adaptation.     

People's War? Self-Interest,Coercion and Ideology in Nepal's Maoist Insurgency

This paper analyses the micro-level processes by which ordinary rural Nepalis came to support the Maoist insurgency. Working through the implications of orthodox collective action theory, it finds that Maoist cadres are unlikely to have been strongly motivated by considerations of acquisitive self-interest. However, the participation of many may have been partly secured through various forms of coercion. Non-instrumental motivations for participation that are not accounted for by the rational choice premises that underpin conventional collective action theory are also identified. These are found to have been of particular significance in the violent and uncertain context of contemporary Nepal.     

The Uneven Application of the ‘Civil War’ Label to Iraq

Many scholars and policy practitioners believe that the US invasion of Iraq triggered a civil war. Several major scholarly data-sets, however, do not code a civil war, due to the challenge of coding multiple simultaneous patterns of violence. Further, many political actors have resisted the term, due to obvious political and public relations concerns. This paper analyses these discrepancies in the use of the label, arguing that, for scholars, the coding problem could limit or even bias models of civil war, while for policymakers, the failure to see Iraq’s civil war as such has contributed to major policy failures, from the Bush administration’s state of denial early in the war to the Obama administration’s withdrawal and the subsequent reescalation of violence.     

From Civil War Victor to Cold War Guard: Positional Warfare in Korea and the Transformation of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, 1951–1953

This article analyses the impact of the Korean War on the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), particularly the period of positional warfare from 1951 to 1953. In the war of movement between October 1950 and June 1951, the PLA relied on its civil war era weapons and experience, including the doctrine of ‘battle of annihilation’. Operations in early 1951 suggested that the civil war legacies of the PLA no longer applied to the realities of combat in Korea. Based on both Soviet aid and domestic mobilisation, the PLA managed to build the material foundation for positional warfare and rapidly improved its logistics. Operationally, on the defensive, the PLA developed combined operations integrating infantry, artillery, and armoured forces. The PLA learned the lessons of the Korean War and strengthened its ties with the Soviet armed forces in order to modernise itself. The Korean War thus transformed the PLA from Civil War victor to Cold War guard.     

French Military Adaptation in the Afghan War: Looking Inward or Outward?

ABSTRACT

For some, a specific feature of the French armed forces' adaptation process in the adaptation process would be the capacity to look inward instead of outward in order to identify relevant solutions to tactical/doctrinal problems. This article questions such a narrative, and argues that the French armed forces are as quick as any to borrow from other countries’ experiences. In order to do so, this article introduces the concept of ‘selective emulation’, and compares the French and German military adaptation processes in Afghanistan. The article argues that there is indeed something distinctive about French military adaptation, but it is not what the fiercest defenders of the French ‘exceptionalism’ usually account for.     

Sir Robert Thompson,Strategic Patience and Nixon’s War in Vietnam

Counter-insurgency scholars have long been familiar with Sir Robert Thompson’s classic work Defeating Communist Insurgency, which combined analysis of the insurgencies in Malaya and Vietnam with advice for counter-insurgents that emphasised the drawn-out nature of insurgency and the importance of focusing on population security. While historians have called attention to his role with the British Advisory Mission in South Vietnam and his later criticism of the US counter-insurgency campaign in Vietnam in his various books, less has been written about his subsequent role as a pacification advisor to the Nixon administration. This article explores Thompson’s relationship with Kissinger and Nixon and his views on the war in Vietnam from 1969 to 1974. An examination of Thompson’s thinking on Vietnam in the Nixon years reveals a theorist whose optimism on US prospects there was based on assumptions about elite and public patience for lengthy wars that were ultimately misplaced.