The growth in military expenditure in Germany 1951–2011: did parties matter?

We examine whether government ideology was correlated with the growth in military expenditure in Germany over the period 1951–2011. Using various measures of government ideology, the results do not show any effect. The exception is an ideology measure based on the Comparative Manifesto Project (left-right scale): using this measure, the results show that the growth in military expenditure increased by about 2.4 percentage points, when the ideology variable (right-wing) increased by one standard deviation. This effect, however, is based on observations until the early 1960s and cannot be generalized. The major political parties agreed on how to evaluate international risks and threats. Government ideology retired to the background. We conjecture that the consensus among the major parties will persist – even if military spending needs to be increased in response to new international risks and threats.     

Military expenditure and economic development in China: an empirical inquiry

Increases in military spending have a big impact on the socioeconomic conditions in any country. However, there is no consensus as to whether the rising military expenditure is beneficial or detrimental to economic growth. The present study chose China as a case study to empirically examine a complex relationship between military expenditure and economic development. The findings from the Johansen cointegration test indicated that there existed a long-run relationship between China’s military spending and economic growth. Furthermore, the Granger causality test detected a unidirectional causality from economic development to military expenditure. These results were further confirmed by the findings from the impulse response function. This means that China represents an example of a developing economy where the size of military expenditure expands in the process of economic transformation.     

Learning to Fight and Fighting to Learn: Practitioners and the Role of Unit Publications in VIII Fighter Command 1943–1944

A military cannot hope to improve in wartime if it cannot learn. Ideally, in wartime, formal learning ceases and the application of knowledge begins. But this is optimistic. In 1942, USAAF Eighth Air Force assumed it had the means necessary for victory. In reality, its technique and technology were only potentially – rather than actually – effective. What remained was to create the practice of daylight bombing – to learn. This article (1) recovers a wartime learning process that created new knowledge, (2) tests existing tacit hypotheses in military adaptation research, and (3) offers additional theoretical foundation to explain how knowledge is created in wartime     

军事工程技术院校争取基金项目的实践与思考

本文阐述了军校开展基金项目研究的重要性,论证了军校申报科学基金项目的可行性,探讨了获取基金项目立项工作的基础和有效途径,并针对军校特点,提出了加强基金申报工作的切实可行的措施和策略。     

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 Millenials’ war: dilemmas of network dependency in today’s military

This work is about how the United States military has become dependent on networked technology. As arguably the largest contributor to national security, it has become so dependent that its chief doctrine integrates networked technology into nearly every specialty, with particularly intense focus on Network Centric Warfare. As the military’s old guard is replaced by the highly technical Millenial Generation, there is cause to pause when assuming this techno-acuity brings nothing but advantage and success. Vulnerabilities stemming from such extensive dependence offer opportunities for exploitation that have not gone unnoticed. The first step to moving forward from this point is to fully understand the extent to which the military has become dependent on computer networks. It might be the Millenials’ war today, but it would be quite unwise for the United States military to think about it and fight it in a purely Millenial way.     

Meanings of military ranks

This paper studies what kinds of meanings reserve officers ascribe to military ranks. The study builds on existing literature on reserve forces and hypothesizes that military ranks among reserve officers are subject to rendering the ranks with multiple meanings, and which are bound to create ambiguity of interpretation. To elaborate these theoretical insights a survey among Finnish reserve officers was conducted (N = 6193). The data was analyzed using factor analysis and correlation analysis. The results show that military ranks are ascribed, in addition to the functionalistic, hierarchical meaning, also with meanings of prestige, proficiency, and identity. The main theoretical contribution of the paper is in complementing the previous literature on ambiguity of military ranks by specifying four different meanings in the interpretation of the ranks.     

Does military spending promote social welfare? A comparative analysis of the BRICS and G7 countries

Whether military spending is capable of promoting social welfare is currently a controversial issue. The aim of this paper is to investigate how military spending affects the input and output of social welfare (i.e. social welfare expenditures and social welfare index). A panel cointegration analysis and an impulse response function are conducted with multi-country panel data, over two time periods, 1998–2011 and 1993–2007. In addition, to extend a comparative analysis over different economies, BRICS (i.e. Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and G7 (i.e. the US, Japan, Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Canada) countries are selected as representatives of emerging economies and developed countries, respectively. The empirical results show that military spending enhances social welfare expenditures in developed countries, while the effect is ambiguous in emerging economies. Also, military spending is capable of promoting the social welfare index based on the FMOLS estimation. The comparative analyses indicate that unlike in the G7, the effect of the growth of military spending on the growth of social welfare expenditures is negative and shorter in the BRICS.     

Noncognitive skills and job match: evidence from military applicants

The study examines the effect of noncognitive skills on early career choices among young job seekers. Specifically, we analyze the influence of personality traits on the decision by military applicants either to choose the military or a civilian career option. We use a unique micro-level data-set of applicants to the US Navy and exploit the fact that many individuals who initially apply for military jobs eventually choose civilian careers instead. In this institutional setting, job candidates use new information to update their beliefs about the military job match. Personality traits are viewed as productive abilities that influence applicants’ expectations about the economic return to the job and occupational training offered by the Navy. The study finds that many of the 15 lower order personality facets associated with the Big Five traits are predictive of applicants’ job choices and provides suggestive evidence of a link between personality traits, job match expectations, and career choice.     

Measuring hard power: China’s economic growth and military capacity

China’s rapid economic growth is facilitating massive increases in its military spending and causing increased security concerns in Asia and the Western Pacific. But there is uncertainty over how large China’s military spending is relative to other countries, or how fast it is growing in real terms. We address this issue by deriving a relative military cost price index based on the relative unit costs of inputs. We find that China’s real military spending is much larger than suggested by exchange rate comparisons, and even larger than standard purchasing power parity comparisons. We also find, however, that the real growth of China’s military spending has been smaller than conventionally thought. This is due to rapidly growing wages in China and the large share of personnel in China’s military budget.