A predisposition to brutality? German practices against civilians and francs-tireurs during the Franco-Prussian war 1870–1871 and their relevance for the German ‘military Sonderweg’ debate

ABSTRACT

The German Sonderweg thesis has been discarded in most research fields. Yet in regards to the military, things differ: all conflicts before the Second World War are interpreted as prelude to the war of extermination between 1939–1945. This article specifically looks at the Franco-Prussian War 1870–71 and German behaviour vis-à-vis regular combatants, civilians and irregular guerrilla fighters, the so-called francs-tireurs. The author argues that the counter-measures were not exceptional for nineteenth century warfare and also shows how selective reading of the existing secondary literature has distorted our view on the war.     

试论构建我军遂行非战争军事行动的科学机制

我军拥有丰富的遂行非战争军事行动理论总结和实践经验,但总体来说,还缺乏一个遂行具体任务的科学机制。从构建我军遂行非战争军事行动的操作机制、运行机制和保障机制入手,构建我军遂行非战争军事行动的科学机制,为新形势下我军更好地遂行非战争军事行动提供理论指导。     

Civil Wars,International Conflicts and Other Determinants of Paramilitary Strength in Sub-Saharan Africa

Previous research on African military spending suggests the existence of civil strife as the best predictor of high levels of military spending. However, little is known about why some African nations maintain strong ‘auxiliary’ or paramilitary organizations while others do not. This study finds that the presence of civil or interstate war does not strengthen reserve or irregular forces. Civilian governments promote strong paramilitary organizations to counter any threat the regular military might pose to regime survivability as a form of clientelist politics.     

How do wars end? A multidisciplinary enquiry

ABSTRACT

The cessation of military confrontations rarely coincides with the end of war. Legal and political matters continue after the last shot has been fired, civilians driven from their homes try to rebuild their houses and their lives, veterans need to adapt to their new role in civil society, and the struggle to define the history and the significance of past events only begins. In recent years, in particular, the changes in the character of contemporary warfare have created uncertainties across different disciplines about how to identify and conceptualise the end of war. It is therefore an opportune moment to examine how wars end from a multidisciplinary perspective that combines enquiries into the politics of war, the laws of war and the military and intellectual history of war. This approach enables both an understanding of how ‘the end’ as a concept informs the understanding of war in international relations, in international law and in history and a reconsideration of the nature of scientific method in the field of war studies as such.     

基于多栅格的基建营房保障信息耦合研究

合理利用军地资源实施一体化保障是现代战争或非战争军事行动基建营房保障的重要内容，然而，包含大量此类信息的商用网络、行业网络和平时基建营房业务管理网络的信息如何能被有效利用却是一个令人头疼的问题。依托军事信息栅格和地方多个行业信息网络，研究、设计缓冲数据库和数据订制服务软件，安全可靠地将分布在多个信息栅格中的基建营房保障所需信息耦合到军事后勤信息网络中，为快速、科学制定基建营房保障计划和实施战时基建营房一体化保障提供强有力的信息支持。     

Escalation in Irregular War: Using Strategic Theory to Examine from First Principles

Abstract

If all violence is intended to achieve political effects, what is distinctive about escalation in irregular war? Indeed, what is irregular war? To answer such fundamental questions this analysis employs the principles of strategic theory in an attempt to offer a theoretical and practical framework that will facilitate an appreciation of the subsequent contributions to this special issue. The assessment seeks to articulate how the escalation process in conditions of so-called irregular war might be conceptualized and, via examples, illustrate how certain broad observations may be held to be true. Ultimately, though, the argument emphasizes that the process of escalation cannot be distinctive or follow predictable patterns given that all wars are unique to their time and place and will be affected in their conduct by the contingent forces of passion, chance and reason.     

Mirror,mirror on the wall,who is the most offensive of them all? – Explaining the offensive bias in military tactical thinking

This article explores why the offensive predominates military tactical thinking. With survey results showing an offensive bias among 60 per cent of senior Swedish officers and as many as 80 per cent in the case of the army, it is clear that this is not just a problem of the past but is equally relevant today. The article asks why there is a tendency to perceive and understand offensive tactics as the preferred choice and the way to conduct battle that should be encouraged and preferred. Drawing on existing research and the findings of a pilot study, ten propositions for why the offensive bias exists are tested using a mixed-method approach. Based on the findings, the article develops a model to understand why the offensive dominates military tactical thinking. It is found that the two key constitutive factors behind the offensive bias are military culture and education. These factors most directly and profoundly influence an officer’s identity, perceptions, and thinking. Military culture and education, in turn, work as a prism for four other factors: military history, the theory and principles of war, doctrine and TTPs, and psychological factors.     

Carlo Bianco and Guerra per bande: an Italian approach to irregular warfare

Since the end of the Cold War, a huge debate over how war has been changing has emerged; a common feature is that modern conflicts are not state vs. state wars, but ‘irregular wars’. In order to better understand modern irregular warfare, it is important to analyse past authors and ideas. Carlo Bianco’s concept of Guerra per bande highlights elements of mobility with different cooperating units, of terror, and of complex terrain. The present study offers the first English analysis of Carlo Bianco and underlines the similarities of his work to the hybrid warfare concept.     

JUST WAR AND CYBERWAR

My aim in this paper is to reflect on a very narrow question: under what conditions might a cyber-attack provide a just cause for war? I begin by articulating what makes for a just cause, briefly address the problem of attribution, and then discuss three broad categories of cyber-attack: those that clearly do not satisfy the just cause requirement, those that clearly do satisfy the just cause requirement, and three ambiguous cases – the destruction of property, the emplacement of logic bombs, and the failure to prevent cyber-attacks. My conclusions are exploratory and suggestive rather than definitive, partly by virtue of the extreme paucity of literature on the moral assessment of cyberwar.     

The sixteenth-century antecedents of special operations ‘small war’

The first conceptual, theoretical treatises about small war (la petite guerre) as special operations appeared only from the middle of the seventeenth century. The term is not used in the eighteenth-century sense of ‘special operations’ in older sources. The supposed absence of any treatment of the subject is surprising considering the obsession with the ‘art of war’ in the Renaissance, but other authors attribute it to a supposed antinomy between chivalric ideals and irregular warfare. But the absence of explicit manuals on the subject is not evidence of absence of advanced reflection on this kind of operations in the Middle Ages and in Early Modern times. We should thus look elsewhere, in other genres, for writings that contain and pass on military knowledge. Epics, romances, educational and military treatises, and memoirs in fact contain elements of a theory of special operations, even though these genres differ from our conception of rationality inherited from the Enlightenment.     

What Goes Up Must Come Down: Military Expenditure and Civil Wars

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of civil war on military expenditure. We employ two measures of military expenditure: the share of military expenditure in general government expenditure and the logarithm of military expenditures. We would reasonably expect a priori that military expenditure as a share of general government expenditure increases during a civil war and that such increases would taper off over the duration of a civil war. We also explore whether the termination of a civil war induces a decline in the share of military expenditure as a share of the general government expenditure in the short-run. We find evidence the of share of military expenditure increases during a civil war and falls in the year succeeding the end of a civil war, and, in particular, if a war ends in a peace treaty. The level of military expenditures, however, rises during civil wars and does not appear to decline in the short-term after the end of a civil war.     

关于加强“4＋1”模式学员军事素质基础培养的研究

现代战争对军人的军事素质提出了更高的要求,而优良的军事素质,是靠平时严格、艰苦的训练来实现的.我院高度重视培养提高学员的军事素质,主要通过3个途径实现培养目标.这里重点阐述了我院对学员军事素质培养的实践经验及效果,对军事工程院校学员军事素质基础的提高,具有一定的指导作用和参考价值.     

贴近实战的外军军事训练

"仗怎么打,兵就怎么练,"这是军事训练的基本规律,也是战争对军事训练的基本要求。文章研究了各国军队以实战化为目标,进行作战仿真实验模拟,基地化、一体化军事训练及联合实兵演习,贴近作战任务、作战环境、作战对象的主要做法。显然,军事训练实践的全部意义和目的在于提高军队战斗力。     

WARFARE IN A NEW DOMAIN: THE ETHICS OF MILITARY CYBER-OPERATIONS

While most normative evaluations of military cyber-operations have emerged from the legal community, this article assesses the legitimacy of such operations from a philosophical-ethical perspective. After reviewing the relationship between rights forfeiture and the jus ad bellum and jus in bello criteria of the just war tradition, it applies these criteria to several aspects of cyber-operations, including responses to cyber-activities, the use of cyber-capabilities affecting combatants and civilians, and the use of these capabilities by contractors. Finally, it briefly addresses the legitimacy of limiting rights to privacy and anonymity in service of preventing cyber-harm.     

毛泽东军事思想对古代兵学文化的传承与发展

毛泽东军事思想植根于中国古代兵学文化的土壤,它的战争观、军事伦理价值观、战争谋略法等思想,与中国古代社会"仁战"、"义战"、"以民为本"、"以奇制胜"、"以礼治军"等战略方法、战略思想一脉相承,同时也是对古代兵学文化的创造性发展,是中国革命战争实践、马列主义军事思想和古代兵学文化相结合的产物。     

Initiating insurgencies abroad: French plans to ‘chouannise’ Britain and Ireland, 1793–1798

Secret French plans to launch guerrilla-style raids on the British Isles devised in the spring of 1796 were referred to as ‘chouanneries’. The name and concept behind these small-war operations were modelled on the irregular tactics used by the Chouan rebels in the Vendée, which the French state army had brutally quashed, but some wished to transfer into their institutional practice. Part of France's ongoing military strategy in the war against Britain, which included fomenting insurrection in Ireland, these irregular operations were to be manned partially by pardoned deserters and released convicts and prisoners of war. Of these, only Tate's brief invasion of Wales in 1797 was realised, but the surviving plans provide insightful historical lessons into an Anglophobic mindset shared by a small network of practitioners and policy deciders on the effectiveness of such shock and awe tactics. Largely motivated by the desire to take revenge for Britain's support of counter-revolutionaries in the Vendée, these plans could more aptly be referred to as counter-‘chouanneries’.     

关于法律战的若干问题研究

在军事斗争中,我军应准确把握法律战的含义,使军事斗争与法律战有机结合。在信息化战争条件下,法律战正面临着前所未有的挑战。法律战只有与舆论战、心理战相结合,才能发挥出“三战”整体效益。军事优势是法律战获胜的前提和关键。武警部队应结合军事工作的基本特点,努力提高法律战的作战能力。     

How Probable is Cyber War? Bringing IR Theory Back In to the Cyber Conflict Debate

Many well-established explanations for war suggest that cyber weapons have a greater chance of being used offensively than other kinds of military technologies. This response article introduces a research agenda for the study of cyber war, and offers an example – principal-agent problems in cyber operations – to demonstrate how rigorous theoretical and empirical work may proceed.     

归因理论对英语教学的启示

本文通过对归因理论的阐述和对学生学业状况的归因倾向分析,提出了归因理论对英语教学的启示:一要关注学生的归因反应;二要研究学生的归因倾向,引导学生正确归因;三要重视培养学生的情感智力和认知技能;四要对教师自身的教学工作进行正确的归因。     

Conceptualizing the War in Afghanistan: Perceptions from the Front, 2001–2006

Analytical focus on military operations in Iraq continue to overshadow analysis of the war in Afghanistan as it enters its sixth year. It is now possible to discern several clearly-delineated periods of coalition counterinsurgency and stabilization operations. What is the nature of the war and how has it evolved? Has there been success so far in Afghanistan?