United Nations rapid reaction mechanisms: Toward a global force on standby?

This article analyses the main challenges and future prospects of creating United Nations (UN) rapid reaction mechanisms, particularly in the light of past attempts and current discussions about a “UN Vanguard Force” in the wake of the High-Level Panel on Peace Operations report. The article reviews major initiatives (in particular lessons from the Standby High Readiness Brigade for UN Operations) and assesses the main achievements, failures, and challenges related to past UN-led rapid reaction mechanisms. In line with the overall aim of this special forum, the article highlights the future potentials and institutional, operational, financial, and political challenges that need to be overcome in order to design and create a pragmatic and effective rapid reaction tool at the disposal of the UN.     

Ideoscapes in the World Society: Framing Violence in Somalia

The article uses the example of the Somali war to analyse how globally travelling ideas and political concepts are adapted to local settings and translated into frames that promote collective action and feature violence. It outlines how two ideas with universal claim, nationalism and modernisation were combined with an anti-colonial rhetoric and evolved into the meta-narrative of Somali history. This meta-narrative changed little, and keywords such as (pan-Somali) nationalism, anti-colonialism, development, sovereignty structure most of the discursive repertoires of political actors in Somalia. The main difference is that politicized clan affiliations were during the war dragged out of their shadowy existence and placed in the spot-light of political practice. They alone were however not sufficient to justify claims to power, but were complemented by ‘injustice’, ‘modernisation’ and ‘territorial’ narratives that justified violent deeds as ‘liberation’, ‘defence’ or ‘territorial rights’. Islamists employed similar key narratives and revived the pan-Somali anti-colonialist nationalism, but rooted it in a religious rational. Their ability to abandon culturalised frames contributed to their success.     

How do wars end? A strategic perspective

ABSTRACT

This article gives an overview of the literature on war termination both in the fields of behaviouralism social sciences and policy-oriented strategic studies. It identifies shortcomings and problems related to both lines of research. The main problem is the undifferentiated and indiscriminate use of the term ‘war’. The article proposes a categorisation of wars that could form the basis for more thorough research on the topic of war termination.     

Twittering for talent: Private military and security companies between business and military branding

Private military and security companies (PMSCs) play an increasingly important role in the provision of security-related services. In their attempts to win new clients and find suitable personnel, they take on different identities by presenting themselves as conventional businesses, military actors, and humanitarians. In this article, we examine how PMSCs deploy these identities when they recruit new personnel through social media. Our computer-assisted content analysis of Twitter messages posted by two major United States-based companies—CACI and DynCorp International—shows that while both PMSCs amplify their business and military identities to attract the most talented personnel, they construct and communicate these identities in different ways with CACI branding itself as a sophisticated, modern, and patriotic business and DynCorp as a home-grown, traditional military provider. In addition, our analysis lends force to scholars suggesting that state militaries and the private security sector compete increasingly for prospective employees using similar strategies.