De-Constructing the French Wars: Napoleon as Anti-Strategist

The Emperor Napoleon I is regarded as one of the greatest generals of all time and, as such, he has attracted an immense bibliography. In spite of this, there have been few studies of him as a strategist: instead, it is simply assumed that it was enough for the Emperor to have conducted an operation for it to have had a logical strategic goal. In this article, however, Napoleon is shown to have been primarily an opportunist, who was frequently guided by the needs of the moment and swayed from his course by circumstance, while it is further suggested that, even considered on their own merits, many of his decisions were faulty in the extreme.     

International Involvement in Restructuring and Creating Security Forces: The Case of Haiti

The controversy over banning landmines in the past decade has removed matters of military technical expertise to the purview of civilian interest groups. According to a Huntingtonian perspective, this could be an indicator of unhealthy civil-military relations. Evidence of this includes political leaders' disregard of senior military advice and the initiation of a program to develop landmine alternatives after having already committed to banning them. The desire to ban landmines may represent a pragmatic revision of pacifist attempts to ban warfare altogether. Because of the development of self-destructing or deactivating mines, the landmine ban movement intrudes on technical military matters without redeeming humanitarian value. This intrusion may have further ramifications for civil-military relations.     

Traitor or patriot? Andrey Vlasov and the Russian liberation movement 1942–45

Catherine Andreyev, Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Emigre Theories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Pp.251; $34.50.

Sergej Froehlich, General Wlassow: Russen und Deutsche zwischen Hitler und Stalin (revised and edited by Edel von Freier). Koeln: Markus Verlag, 1987. Pp.403; DM.39.80.

Joachim Hoffmann, Die Geschichte der Wlassow‐Armes. Freiburg: Verlag Rombach, 1986. Pp.468; DM32.     

Expeditionary police advising: some causes of failure

ABSTRACT

The practice of dispatching teams of police advisors to other states to build or train foreign security forces began at the end of the nineteenth century, yet there exists no definitive history of the practice, or any definitive theoretical approach underpinning why such missions succeed or fail. Drawing upon their recent edited book on expeditionary police advising, and by examining the donor or sending states, the host nations, and the use of police in counterinsurgency situations, the authors present some key reasons why such missions fail, and lay some groundwork for additional study of this important subject.