Counterinsurgency as armed reform: The political history of the Malayan Emergency

Despite the emphasis in doctrine and academia that counterinsurgency is in its essence political, these operations are all too commonly discussed and approached as primarily military endeavors. Informed by the need to refocus counterinsurgency studies, this article revisits a foundational case of the canon – the Malayan Emergency – to discuss its political (i.e., not military) unfolding. The analysis distinguishes itself by emphasizing the diplomatic processes, negotiations, and deals that gave strategic meaning to the military operations underway. In so doing, the article also generates insight on the use of leverage and elite bargains in creating new political settlements and bringing insurgent conflicts to an end.     

Varieties of defection strategies from multinational military coalitions: Insights from operation Iraqi freedom

How do states defect from multinational military coalitions? The question deserves considerable academic scrutiny, as states increasingly rely on coalitions to prosecute military missions. Yet to the extent that coalition defection has been explored, the extant literature tends to see defection as a binary undertaking – states are either in or out. In practice, however, defection is an act of risk minimization in a manner that forces other coalition partners to fill resulting operational gaps. A coalition can therefore appear stable due to a constant number of flags associated with the mission, but in practice be much less coherent and capable. After defining defection as a non-routine abrogation of operational responsibility at other coalition partners’ expense, significantly prior to mission conclusion, this article explores several states’ participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom and the various manners by which they defected from that coalition. It concludes with implications for future scholarship.     

Mission Command in the Information Age: A Normal Accidents Perspective on Networked Military Operations

Theory on the use of information technology in military operations assumes that bringing together units in an information network helps units to work together. Decentralized command systems such as mission command have been proposed for these networks, so that units can adapt to changes in their turbulent working environments. Others have proposed centralized command systems that permit higher organizational levels to closely direct military operations. This article uses Perrow’s (1984, 1999) Normal Accidents Theory to propose that increasing interdependencies between units in information networks places incompatible demands on the design of networked military operations. It is concluded that networked military operations require decentralized command approaches, but only under the condition that interdependencies between modules of networked units are weak rather than tight. This precondition is essential for retaining control over networked military operations.     

Self-Defense Militias,Death Squads,and State Outsourcing of Violence in India and Turkey

What explains the variation in states’ nonstate partners in civil warfare? States often use nonstate actors to do what their regular military forces cannot do well – navigate the local population. Some of their nonstate partners are ordinary civilians, while others are battle-hardened fighters with a rebellious or criminal past. The choice of proxy carries serious implications for the patterns and effects of violence during civil war, human rights, and international security. This article is the first to disaggregate the nonstate counterinsurgents and offer an explanation for why and how states use each type. It brings together the politics of collaboration with the politics of exploitation. The article shows that the state’s use of nonstate proxies is shaped by the supply of willing collaborators, the state’s ability to exercise control over them, and the trade-offs underlying the use of the different types of nonstate actors. The empirical evidence used to support this argument comes from a novel, comparative study of Turkey’s counterinsurgency campaign against Kurdish separatists and India’s counterinsurgency against Kashmiri separatists. The original data were collected through fieldwork in the disputed territories of each country.     

North European security after the Ukraine conflict†

Russia’s illegal occupation and annexation of the Crimean peninsula in February–March 2014, and the country’s well-documented involvement in the separatist conflict in Eastern Ukraine, have led to a significant worsening of Russia’s relations with the West. Vladimir Putin’s move to redraw Russia’s southern borders through the use of military force and subversive measures has given rise to an uncertainty that goes well beyond the post-Soviet space. Since 2014, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has had to reassess many aspects of its relationship with Russia. The alliance has also initiated various measures to strengthen the military security of its eastern member states, particularly the Baltic states, Poland, and Romania. Further to the North, NATO’s northernmost member – Norway – is following developments in Russia with a heightened sense of awareness. The same goes for non-aligned Sweden and Finland, which are trying to adapt to the emerging, and increasingly complex, security environment in Northern Europe.     

Conditional commitments: Why states use caveats to reserve their efforts in military coalition operations

Why do states make substantial military contributions to coalition operations, while at the same time apply reservations, or caveats, to how the coalition can use the military contributions? Caveats rose to prominence in defense and policy circles with NATO’s campaign in Afghanistan. In the scholarly security literature, the term remains a buzzword for all types of reserved efforts by states in coalition warfare, but there are few theoretical accounts addressing caveats. This article contributes to the knowledge gap on caveats through a comparative case study of Denmark’s, the Netherlands’, and Norway’s contributions to NATO’s intervention in Libya in 2011. It demonstrates that caveats can occur through three different causal pathways: compromises from domestic bargaining, handling of alliance commitments, and implementation and civil–military relations. Insights into the complexity that causes caveats are highly relevant for both political and military decision-makers that are trying to coordinate states’ effort in coalition operations.     

Threats and civil–military relations: explaining Singapore’s “trickle down” military innovation

This article explains why Singapore, despite its small size and semi-authoritarian regime, retains one of the best military forces in the Indo-Pacific. It unpacks Singapore’s ability to continuously innovate since the 1960s – technologically, organizationally, and conceptually – and even recently joined the Revolution in Military Affairs bandwagon. Drawing from the broader military innovation studies literature, this article argues evolutionary peacetime military innovation is more likely to occur in a state with a unified civil–military relation and whose military faces a high-level diverse set of threats. This argument explains how the civil–military fusion under the People’s Action Party-led government since Singapore’s founding moment has been providing coherent and consistent strategic guidance, political support, and financial capital, allowing the Singapore Armed Forces to continuously innovate in response to high levels and diversity of threats.     

The Nepalese Army: From counterinsurgency to peacekeeping?

Can peacekeeping participation help reform military institutions in democratizing states? Drawing on evidence from Nepal – one of the world's largest troop contributors to UN peacekeeping operations – this essay illustrates that participation in peace missions can sometimes undermine security sector reform and deteriorate civil–military relations. Furthermore, this analysis shows that peacekeeping participation will not necessarily reorient troops away from their conventional internal roles (such as counterinsurgency) or improve civilian control over the armed forces. Hence, civilians can lose control over soldiers just as frequently when they are deployed overseas as when they are at home.     

Network structure of insurgent groups and the success of DDR processes in Colombia

We argue that organizational structure of insurgent organizations influences the prospects for success in a disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration process (DDR). In essence, we argue that more cohesive, tighter networks have higher levels of supervision and control on its military units and increase the probability of successful DDR processes. In order to evaluate our hypotheses, we use the theory of networks to map and characterize the network structure of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Our results suggest that armed military units grouped in smaller and more isolated components on the network remilitarize with higher probability with respect to other units on the network. Also, we find that military units with high degree of centrality on the network play an important role for the risk of conflict recurrence and success in a DDR process.     

“Effing” the military: a political misunderstanding of management

The use of commercial business management techniques is widespread in all government departments, including the Ministry of Defence. This article examines the use of popular management techniques in the Armed Forces and argues that their application is misplaced. It looks at what the “effs” – “efficiency” and “effectiveness” – mean in the business world and to the Armed Forces. It compares the definitions both in business and the Armed Forces and finds that there are few, if any, situations where the same measurements can be applied. Whilst many management techniques are suited for business, the function of the Armed Forces and its output cannot be measured in the same way, complicated by the different metrics of “efficiency” in peace and in war. This difference may not be clearly understood by some politicians, or indeed by some senior military personnel. Using examples from some of the most popular management techniques such as “Lean” and “Agile” it is possible to see that their use might actually diminish the capabilities of the Armed Forces when it comes to performing their principal role – the use of force to achieve political objectives.     

Nigeria in ECOMOG: Political undercurrents and the burden of community spirit

This article considers why the British Army of today holds to the conviction that its peace support operations be conducted with an emphasis on the concept of minimum force. Evidence is presented here to show that the origins of this concept lie in two particular historical determinants: first, the moral parameters set by a religious sentiment refined through interaction with Victorian sensibilities; and, second, the pragmatic necessities of imperial policing. This article goes on to indicate how both these factors shaped – and, most significantly, why they continue to shape – a particularly British approach to the question of low-intensity conflict and, in particular, to the question of the use of military technology in such conflict.     

Maritime security and capacity building in the Gulf of Guinea: On comprehensiveness,gaps, and security priorities

It is widely acknowledged that maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea is a highly complex phenomenon involving a variety of issues (legal deficiencies, inadequate military equipment, and challenges like corruption, political unrest and youth unemployment) as well as a multiplicity of external responders. To make sense of the impact that external actors have when they address this complex problem through various maritime capacity building endeavours, this article argues that there is a need to understand the attractiveness of capacity building vis-à-vis the widely acknowledged need for a comprehensive approach, as well as the difficulties of translating the potential for comprehensiveness into practice (as important aspects of the problem remain largely unaddressed). Further, it is argued that it is important to appreciate that even if these gaps – i.e. the aspects that maritime capacity building currently leaves unaddressed – represent a ‘failure’ to deliver a comprehensive response, they are at the same time illustrative of how the maritime capacity building activities of various external actors also ‘succeed’ in having an impact on this regional security landscape – for instance, by influencing how certain aspects of this multifaceted problem are prioritised, whilst others are only marginally addressed, if at all.     

Coping with the refugee and migrant crisis in Slovenia: the role of the military

Approximately 470,000 refugees and migrants passed through Slovenian territory between September 2015 and March 2016, creating a crisis that required a great deal of organisational and field work on the part of many governmental and non-governmental institutions. In the social sciences, a discourse on “security versus humanitarian approach” on the refugees and migrant issue appeared; however, the article goes over such a discourse and deals with roles and problems of different institutions – mostly the military – that responded to the crisis. Namely, coping with the crisis was characterised by significant institutional adjustments, difficult co-ordination, and intense public debate. The Slovenian Armed Forces were included in this process as support for Civil Protection and Police. The military’s role followed the military missions defined by the Defence Act; however, the government also proposed some changes to the act that were met with some doubts on the part of the public and different institutions.     

A nation-in-the-making,in arms: control of force,strategy and the Ukrainian Volunteer Battalions

At the core of waging war and strategy is the creation, control and use of force. This article investigates the volunteer battalions that mobilized in Ukraine during the spring of 2014. It contextualizes the volunteer phenomenon and focuses on the state strategies to establish control over these militias. As ambiguous entities arising from a situation characterized by rapid social change – revolution and war – the volunteer battalions threatened existing hierarchies and questioned state authority. The situation was exacerbated by the war, which deviated from the expectations of Ukrainian combatants and Western military observers alike. The state nevertheless enjoyed a modicum of success in reining in the militias through four strategies of undermining, co-option, incorporation and coercion. While predominantly integrated into a more rigid category of paramilitary forces, the volunteers continue to play a role in both the Ukrainian society and security sector to the unforeseeable future.     

An evolving state of play? Exploring competitive advantages of state assets in proliferation networks

Illicit procurement networks often target industry in developed economies to acquire materials and components of use in WMD and military programs. These procurement networks are ultimately directed by elements of the proliferating state and utilize state resources to undertake their activities: diplomats and missions, state intelligence networks, and state-connected logistical assets. These state assets have also been utilized to facilitate the export of WMD and military technologies in breach of sanctions. While used in most historic proliferation cases, their role has seen limited consideration in the scholarly literature. This article seeks to systematically contextualize state resources in proliferation networks, arguing that their use lies between state criminality and routine activity in support of national security. Considering the competitive advantages of these assets compared to similar resources available in the private sector, the article argues that nonproliferation efforts have caused states to change how they use these resources through an ongoing process of competitive adaptation.     

Misapplying lessons learned? Analysing the utility of British counterinsurgency strategy in Northern Ireland, 1971–76

This article examines the British Army's deployment in support of the civil power in Northern Ireland. It argues that the core guiding principles of the British approach to counterinsurgency (COIN) – employing the minimum use of force, firm and timely action, and unity of control in civil–military relations – were misapplied by the Army in its haste to combat Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorism between 1971 and 1976. Moreover, it suggests that the Army's COIN strategy was unsuccessful in the 1970s because commanders adhered too closely to the customs, doctrine, and drill applied under very different circumstances in Aden between 1963 and 1967, generally regarded as a failure in Britain's post-war internal security operations. The article concludes with a discussion of the British government's decision to scale back the Army's role in favour of giving the Royal Ulster Constabulary primacy in counter-terrorist operations, a decision which led ultimately to success in combating IRA violence.     

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.     

Colombian Military Thinking and the Fight against the FARC-EP Insurgency, 2002–2014

This article attempts to place in historical perspective the latest effort by Colombia’s military (Colmil) to defeat the now half century old insurgency of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP). It argues that the ‘surge’ initiated under President Álvaro Uribe in 2002 with the assistance of the United States can only be fully analyzed in the context of the Colmil’s intellectual framework for counter-insurgency. Specifically, this article will explain how the protracted engagement with counter-insurgency has shaped the Colmil’s understanding of the nature of the conflict, as well as its attitudes towards its adversary, civil authority and the instrumentality of force. An understanding of the Colmil’s strategic tradition can also help to explain their apprehensions about the ongoing peace negotiations with the FARC-EP.     

New sources of military change – armed forces as normal organizations

The literature on how European states have adapted to the post-cold war security environment ffocuses invariably on different understandings of military transformation, a process which is seen as inherently different from other forms of organizational change. However, as this paper argues, new management practices, going back to the introduction of so-called New Public Management (NPM) reforms throughout Europe in the 1980s, have eventually penetrated also the last bastion of the old state – the defense sector. Taking a critical approach to the idea of military transformation and existing theories of military change, the paper demonstrates how other international developments have pushed towards what may be seen as a “normalization” of Europe’s defense sectors. This has important implications for how we approach and understand change in contemporary defense organizations.     

Information Is Not a Weapons System

ABSTRACT

While many militaries have tried to capitalize on the potential of information operations in internal war, few have succeeded. I argue that military information campaigns fall short of expectations for two reasons. First, the theory of influence militaries generally embrace – communications as a non-lethal weapons system – is largely invalid. While treating information as a weapons system makes it easier to integrate it into the existing military planning system, this overstates the independent effects of communications on behavior and understates the importance of interactive effects of what commercial marketing theory refers to as the “marketing mix” – product, price, promotion, and placement. It would be more appropriate to treat military information operations as a form of marketing: a composite effort to induce a specific behavior in a target audience by applying a combination of material and ideational instruments. The marketing model suggests that the efficacy of information operations will depend not simply on the message and its delivery (promotion) but on the behavior the sender seeks to induce (the product), the costs of that behavior (the price), and the opportunities available for such behavior (the placement).