Papers on civil–military relations and the armed forces presented at EISS conferences and workshops, newest first. 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z https://eiss-europa.com/feeds/themes/civil-military-relations-and-the-armed-forces.xml European Initiative for Security Studies https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-assisting-to-win-military-assistance-and-coercion-in-war 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Kersti Larsdotter

Coercion is a central strategy for states in an increasingly competitive and hostile international environment, and there are several military means or tools they can use to coerce an opponent into submission, such as, air power, invasions and land grabs, or even nuclear threats. Military assistance, i.e. the training, equipping and advising of foreign state and non-state armed forces to enhance their capability to fight wars, is usually not understood as one of these tools. Instead, research on military assistance tends to focus on the utility of military assistance for the receiving actor, for example, if it contributes to peace, or if it increases the strength of armed forces in the receiving state. Despite the quite extensive use of military assistance in contemporary international relations, we know precariously little about the strategic utility of military assistance for the sponsor state. Do the strengthening of friendly foreign state and non-state armed forces contribute to the coercive power of the sponsor state? Is it a waste of resources? Or could it in fact, contribute to a higher level of threats against the sponsor state? By understanding military assistance as a tool in the strategic toolbox, we can begin to tease out the strategic logic and scrutinize the utility of military assistance for increasing the coercive power as well as security of the sponsor state. In this paper, I will develop the logic of military assistance as a coercive tool and use a plausibility probe to study these dynamics through empirical case studies. In addition to the conceptual elaborations, the paper will demonstrate the general logic of military assistance as a coercive tool as well as the particular mechanisms of its individual subtypes in a number of short empirical case studies.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-military-intervention-in-foreign-policy-making-principal-agent-analysis-of-us-tr 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Juhong Park

After the Vietnam War, the United States attempted to reduce its troop levels, which led to a deterioration of the South Korea-US alliance. However, little attention has been paid to the Carter administration's ultimately unsuccessful attempt at withdrawal. This paper examines why civil-military preferences clashed and how this led to the failure of President Carter's complete withdrawal of US ground forces from Korea. Previous studies suggesting that US foreign policy patterns and strategic interests determined the withdrawal of US forces stationed abroad have not provided a coherent account of the domestic determinants of withdrawal failure, in particular the intervention of military elites. An alternative but essential factor to consider is civil-military relations. Even in mature democracies such as the United States, the foreign and national security policy preferences of civilian leaders and military elites can differ significantly. In such cases, military elites have resisted presidential foreign policy leadership through various political tactics and alliances with Congress. This paper develops a dual principal-agent model and causal process tracing to trace the trajectory of strategic interactions between the president, Congress, and military elites. In doing so, this paper demonstrates how US military elites can undermine presidential supremacy over US foreign policy.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-can-passions-help-to-justify-war-the-case-of-revenge-and-fear 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Marie Robin

Can passions be used strategically to justify wars? To justify their violent endeavors, actors design strategic communications aiming at convincing others – their community, the international community, international jurisdictions – of the validity of their violent project. From Menelas who “had to” get his revenge against Pâris, to contemporary jihadists of the likes of the Kouachi brothers who mention that they fight to “avenge the Prophet”, desires for revenge seemingly constitute one of such strategies. In fact, Richard Ned Lebow sees in revenge one of the four main justifications of wars from the 19th to the 21st centuries. Centuries before them, Just War thinker Gratian had declared, quoting Cicero's De Republica, that “those wars are unjust which are undertaken without cause. For aside from vengeance or for the sake of fighting off enemies, no just war can be waged” (Rep. III. 35a). Vengeful passions are thus strategically mobilized, at the discursive level, to posit the morality of a war cause, i.e., to justify taking up arms. Other passionate outbursts also seemingly play a role in justifying political violence. In international law, preventive and preemptive self-defenders seem justified to act because they “fear” that something may happen. Similarly, States may be justified in acquiring nuclear capacities because they “fear” that others, non-liberal actors, may own them too. Realist accounts of war, additionally, justify the accumulation of capabilities around the fear that others may be preparing for attack. In the history of conflicts, therefore, actors who feel vengeful and/or afraid may arguably be justified in going to war. How is that so? What is the status of passions as justifications for war? Can they ever be used strategically to justify violent endeavors and what are the ethical underpinnings behind such use?

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-civilian-control-of-the-military-performance-management-reforms-and-its-effects 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Sofia Ledberg

The relationship between civilian control over the armed forces and military effectiveness is a central focus in studies of civil-military relations. Both the characteristics of political control and its intensity is thought to affect the maneuverability of the armed forces and their performance. Previous research has suggested that recent reforms, conducted to increase effectiveness of the public administrations in many liberal democracies, has rather led to an increased bureaucratization of the military. This bureaucratization, in turn, is argued to affect negatively the possibility of the military profession, e.g. the officer corps, to exercise its professional judgement in the running of everyday affairs. It is not uncommon to describe this as a 'deprofessionalization' of the armed forces that has detrimental consequences both for the application of military expertise and the social control of individual officers. Yet such conclusions are generally drawn based on a select number of examples and exactly what such a deprofessionalization might entail is for military profession is seldom addressed in any detail. In this paper, I rely on surveys with military officers conducted over the past 25 years to investigate how the past decades of public management reforms in Sweden have affected the Swedish officer corps, both regarding its ability to exercise professional judgement and how it perceives its maneuverability. The conclusions of the study points to a need to update the understanding of professionalism within the armed forces.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-cognitive-warfare-as-part-of-society-a-never-ending-battle-for-minds 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Robin Burda

Russia has been attempting to influence politics and society in various European and NATO countries in recent years, aiming at the minds of the citizens. Decades ago, Jacques Ellul (1973) described propaganda as a social phenomenon that grows within society and is intrinsically intertwined with it. In recent years, a new concept has been emerging and is even being described as the sixth operational domain – Cognitive Warfare (Cluzel 2021). The implications on the information domain were not yet explored in depth. Without a look back into the historical experience, it is impossible to assess what should be done in the long term by organizations such as the EU or NATO in the information environment. As Cognitive Warfare can be considered a relatively new phenomenon, albeit not dissimilar to Ellul's (1973) view of propaganda, the experience of nations involved in protracted conflicts of the 21st century, including Russia's hybrid warfare campaigns, is invaluable. Therefore, an inductive approach is utilized to draw inferences from available data from such countries. One of the nations used for the analysis is the Czech Republic, a country with a quite significant pro-Russian segment of society, which Russia has exploited for many years. The other is Ukraine, which is now in a full-out war but has been a victim of Russian hybrid warfare since at least the 2010s. The paper aims to assess the importance of continuous effort of organizations such as NATO or the EU in the cognitive, human-oriented domain. I expect the Czech and Ukraine's experiences to show that being on the defence in the cognitive domain might prove to be a mistake with a significant impact on the future of democracy for any country.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-from-the-bottom-up-ai-and-military-officers-in-defence-alliances 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Vicky Karyoti

For the past decade, scholars, practitioners, and policy makers have been focusing on the possible uses of AI and the automation of weapon systems. Largely drawing attention to applications of lethal AI, public discourse and scholarly work is endeavouring to answer questions of legality, ethicality, strategy, and politics. Military officers, especially in positions which are closely tied to the application of technological systems are viewing the possibility of increased automation with concern and suspicion. Increased automation means lowered human control, more uncertainty and unpredictability, possible disrupted chains of command, and unnecessary risk. These concerns focus on the possible commission of war crimes by lethal AI systems which cannot distinguish between combatants and civilians, the fear of escalation, and the real threat of technologically based vulnerabilities. There is a distinct gap in examining what higher automation might mean for one's own forces (for example, automated systems going awry against their own structure) and most importantly, what it might mean in an alliance context. The way military officers feel about using/cooperating with autonomous technologies can impact decision making on a strategic/political level. The research project connects military innovation studies – which looks into change in military organizations vis-à-vis new technologies, warfighting concepts, and organizational configurations – and alliance theory in order to investigate how policy choices by civilian leadership are informed by military officers and their viewpoints on AI technologies in their duties, and essentially what that means for the future of defence cooperation within alliances like NATO.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-ngo-military-cooperation-and-civilian-protection-policies 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Daphné Charotte Francesca Colli Yf Reykers

It is increasingly acknowledged that civil society actors and the military can establish cooperative relationships, not only in implementing security policies, also in actual policy design. We see this clearly in the design of Protection of Civilians policies, where non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as PAX or the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) are organizing trainings for military staff, both national and international, to raise awareness and improve policies. Yet, we do not know when and why the military is receptive to such cooperation with NGOs. We answer this question by studying a typical case of NGO-military cooperation towards policy improvement, which is the relationship between NATO military staff and NGOs PAX and CIVIC in the development of the NATO Policy for the Protection of Civilians. Theoretically, we borrow from resource exchange theory, which makes us hypothesize that NGO-military cooperation depends on the awareness of military staff that NGOs can contribute scarce resources, such as expertise about on-the-ground repercussions of the use of force. Empirically, we follow a dual-track approach, relying on interviews with NGO staff to gain insights in their supply of expertise, and with NATO military staff to explore their demand for expertise. The findings of this paper contribute to the civil-military relations literature by demonstrating that NGOs can take part in military affairs when military staff lack the adequate resources to formulate their policies.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-the-approach-avoidance-tension-a-fundamental-question-of-military 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Samuel Zilincik

Classical strategic studies literature posits that sound strategic practice ought to be guided by appropriate answers to two kinds of questions. The first kind of questions relate to an inquiry into the character of the war at hand. Strategists ought to ask about the respective political objectives of the belligerents, the means at their disposal etc. The second line of questions concerns the anticipation of the consequences of strategic performance. The “so what?” question, which directs attention to the consequentialist logic of strategy, is the prime example here. This article advocates for strategists to adopt the approach/avoid tension as the third crucial question in the strategist’s toolkit. The approach/avoid tension forms the most fundamental question of human psychology, especially its motivational system. Consequently, everything strategists do can be understood with reference to either approach or avoid motivations. Most importantly, the approach/avoid tension gives meaning to the first two questions. It only makes sense to ask about the character of the war at hand if one intends to approach or avoid it. Similarly, it only makes sense to ask about the consequences of one’s actions if one intends to take those actions or to avoid them. Contemporary psychological research further indicates that the approach/avoid tension can improve our understanding of how particular choices change strategist’s character in the long term. Drawing on the relevant literature from evolutionary psychology, the article discusses the many relevant implications of the approach/avoid tension for our understanding and navigation of strategic affairs.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-the-psychological-social-and-strategic-value-of-care-during-crises-and-its-limit 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Claire Yorke

From the conflict in Ukraine, to the global pandemic, and the rise of violent extremism, crises can generate uncertainty, trauma, and insecurity. Strong and intense emotions often accompany such events. Sometimes these emotions can cloud strategic vision, compelling swift action at the cost of long-term strategy, whereas at others they can help to mobilise society and generate shared feelings and connections that contribute to resilience and help societies to withstand shocks. For leaders and strategists there is an imperative to manage these emotions and harness them successfully to guide citizens and military forces alike through the crisis. Despite the prominent image of strong leaders at such times, growing evidence points to the power of care. From Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand during the pandemic, to President Vlodomyr Zelensky in Ukraine during Russia's war in the country, leaders are finding value in demonstrating consideration for how their people feel. Yet it is not without problems. Depending on its focus, and its expression, care can be perceived as weakness or a form of excessive control, undermining long-term policy efforts. A tension exists that is deserving of further study. This paper explores the concept of care by examining its psychological, social, and strategic function during times of crisis. Care is considered to encapsulate ideas of empathy, compassion, and consideration of others, reflecting an approach that puts people first. It argues that different crises require different forms of care, and that it has to be situated within a broader context of the political environment, policy efforts by government, and other qualities and characteristics of leaders. Critically, given the growing discourse around its value, this paper analyses the potential limits of care and the challenges it presents to security, politics, and strategy.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-what-are-defence-agencies-supposed-to-do-oversee-or-protect-the-armed-force 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Stephen Saideman

Defence agencies—ministries and departments of defence—play a key role in the civil-military relations of modern democracies, but what role is that? This paper explores the possibilities from overseer of the armed forces to supporter to protector. After developing the typology, the paper then develops several explanations for why particular roles develop for a variety of democracies. It then suggests the implications of different roles for the behavior and influence of the armed forces. This paper presents a preliminary set of case studies to illustrate the dynamics shaping the defence agencies' roles and then the impact of those roles on the making of defence and foreign policy.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2022-military-politics-on-the-battlefield-strategy-and-effectiveness-in-war 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z Carrie Lee

Huntingtonian norms that advocate for a sharp divide between military strategy-making and its execution are increasingly being challenged today. While much of the analysis has focused on the implications for civilian control and democratic health, less attention has been paid to their implications for battlefield effectiveness. Those that do address effectiveness in war overwhelmingly cite the emergence of 'gray zone warfare' and modern war as the forces behind the need to re-evaluate the civil-military relationship. This article uses an historical lens to argue that the Huntingtonian norms have, in fact, never been effective at ensuring battlefield success for three reasons. First, military strategies must be tied to political objectives, even and especially as they change over time. Second, the ends-ways-means strategy-making process requires integrating both decisions about resources – a fundamentally political decision – and military objectives. Third, in democracies, military leaders must be aware of the constraints that public opinion places on elected leaders and ensure that military strategies can sustain public support for victory. Using evidence from the invasion of North Africa during World War II (also known as Operation Torch), the paper shows that even in the most conventional conflicts, the most effective military commanders are those who take the political constraints and strategy-making process seriously.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2022-military-professionalism-under-political-polarization 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z Lindsay Cohn

Traditional conceptions of military professionalism tend to emphasize the need for service-members to be 'apolitical' or at least non-partisan. These professional norms, however, tend to assume that members of the military can 'just say no' to being political or partisan, and provide little guidance on how to avoid or resist political pressure. This lack of guidance becomes particularly problematic in a context of high and increasing partisan polarization, as more issues become partisan and thus theoretically out of bounds for military members to engage in. This paper explores precisely why partisan polarization creates significant problems for normative civil-military relations theory, and attempts to offer an alternative concept of a professional ethic that provides more guidance for military members under conditions of polarization.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2022-the-democratic-military-in-internal-missions-professionalism-in-an-era-of-climat 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z Risa Brooks

Many conceptions of military professionalism in democracies assume that the military's role is primarily to address external challenges and confront foreign adversaries. Yet, militaries in democracies are increasingly being drawn into addressing internal crises. This has been especially evident in the COVID-19 pandemic, in which military personnel have been involved in everything from administering vaccines and testing to border control, and in some cases public advocacy and legitimatization of a government's policies. In recent decades militaries in democracies have also increasingly been involved in counterdrug, immigration, counterterrorism and policing functions. This trend is unlikely to reverse any time soon, given the growing climate crisis, the popularity of militaries in many democracies, and civilian politicians' inclinations to call upon them to manage domestic challenges. These internal missions are particularly worrisome in that research suggests they may politicize the military and draw it into domestic politics in new ways. Given these trends, this paper argues that new and more robust conceptions of military professionalism need to be developed. Its aim is to outline the particular challenges that come from military involvement in internal crises and to propose several key principles that could underpin a conception of professionalism adapted to the contemporary era.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2022-what-does-military-professionalism-mean-a-contested-concept-in-the-post-heroic-s 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z Kristine Eck Chiara Ruffa

Notwithstanding its widespread use, what military professionalism means remains unclear. Some have used it as a synonym for an all-volunteer force, while for others its key ingredient is a technologically modern military or a military organization subordinate to civilian control. In this paper, we review and critically discuss the most common usages of the term military professionalism and conclude that the concept has become severely over-stretched, hampering the production of cumulative knowledge and of military assistance projects. We propose four mid-range concepts to capture in more precise ways the components of military professionalism. For each, we propose definitions that should also help deconstructing deeply-ingrained Western-centric assumptions attached to the concept.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-keeping-pace-technological-change-and-military-innovation-in-the-italian-armed-f 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Leopoldo Nuti Niccolò Petrelli

This paper analyses the ability of the Italian Armed forces to innovate in the face of rapid technological change in the post-1945 European “long peace” by investigating two case studies in two different timeframes. In the first section, we look at how the Italian Navy reacted to the challenge posed by the introduction of the military exploitation of nuclear energy – both as a propellent and as an explosive - in the late 1950s and in the 1960s. Faced with the opportunity of a rapid transformation of its role, the Navy reacted with a host of interesting initiatives both in the 2 theoretical and in the technological field. Such a creative outburst, however, petered out in the following years due to a number of different obstacles. In the second section of the essay, we explore how the Italian Air Force has, up to this moment, addressed the challenges associated with the introduction of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The analysis shows that the IAF largely anticipated the challenges and the opportunities brought about by procurement of 5th generation aircraft and has, accordingly, steadily and continuously pursued innovation in both conceptual and technological terms. To conclude, we discuss the similarities and the discontinuities between the two cases focusing on how the Italian Armed Forces approached military innovation (bottom-up/top-down, centralized/decentralized), the kinds of innovation they were able to generate (technological, conceptual, long-cycle/short cycle) and the major driving factors (civil-military relations/alliances/culture/threats/bureaucratic politics). These will be then employed to draw broader inferences regarding the implication of the armed forces’ innovation for Italian defense policy.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-masculine-cultures-exclusion-mechanisms-and-retention-of-female-personnel-in-the 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Chiara Ruffa

Presented at EISS 2019. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-neoliberal-governmentality-and-military-recruitment-governing-the-working-class 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Matthew Kearns

Presented at EISS 2019. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-the-visuality-of-military-recruitment-us-and-uk-militaries-and-pmscs-compared 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Eugenio Cusumano

Military sociology and international relations have extensively written about the transformation of the military profession and the changing motivations underlying military service. The ways in which military recruitment strategies have evolved in response to these changes, however, is much less investigated. Although some scholars have examined the evolving discourses surrounding recruitment, existing literature has primarily examined written texts, overlooking the visual component of recruitment strategies. Moreover, existing scholarship has almost exclusively examined the military recruitment strategies of public military organizations, largely disregarding the increasing role played by private military and security companies (PMSCs) as potentially alternative employers. This paper draws on Peircean semiotics to systematically compare the visual dimension of public and private military organizations’ recruitment strategies in the US and in the UK between 2001 and the present day. By examining whether and to what extent states’ armed forces and PMSCs rely on similar visual identity systems, this paper provides novel insights into the recruitment strategies and shifting role conceptions of both public and private military organizations contributing to private and visual security studies alike.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-we-are-army-after-all-military-recruitment-in-the-netherlands-and-germany 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Jutta Joachim Andrea Schneiker

How do militaries ensure their monopoly of force when they have to compete with commercial employers? This paper addresses this question by comparing the Royal Army of Netherlands with the German Bundeswehr. While both have moved from being conscription armies to all- volunteer forces, they have done so at different times and exhibit differences with respect to their historical evolution and international engagement. Both armies offer therefore interesting laboratories to examine what are, thus far, largely theoretical but related arguments in connection with military recruitment practices, including the claims that armed forces in light of heightened competition from the private sector increasingly show signs of marketization and are losing their unique character. Based on a content analysis of recruitment videos of the German and Dutch militaries and an organizational culture model, we suggest that marketization appears not the only strategy to react to dwindling numbers in personnel. Instead, and depending on their military culture and competitive pressures, armed forces may also respond by amplifying their military character.