Operational experiences, military role conceptions, and their influence on civil-military relations

Abstract

A considerable amount of research within security studies has explored the military's increasingly diverse and multifaceted tasks. However, this debate has been disconnected from the literature on civil-military relations to the effect that we still lack knowledge about how and why these operational tasks have consequences for the relations between the armed forces, civilian authorities, and society at large. In order to provide for a better understanding of these effects, this introduction to the Special Issue debates the concept of operational experiences to capture how the military's routine activities affect the equilibria, logics, and mechanisms of civil-military relations. The article then provides an overview of the Special Issue's six contributions, whose diverse and global perspectives shed light on different aspects of the relationship between military missions and the military's roles in society and politics. Among other factors, they highlight role conceptions – the military's shared views on the purpose of the institution – as crucial in shaping the dynamic relation between what the military does and what place it occupies within the state and society. The article concludes by describing potentially fruitful areas of future research.

Assessment of Space Junks — Organizational Origins, Current Status, and Economic Impacts

“…Whereby outer space is a projective sphere of planes from a state-centric notion of military-civil relations, the CPC contentions of military monopolization leave no room for a civil-military relation both in inter-state and international affairs [9,31]. With military capitals in some of the insurance companies in mainland China and prior reforms for judicial independence [32], the dictatorial downturn with the party-commissioned China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission became the core element in the "mismatches between individual and collective expectations and interpretations of operational experiences may influence civilmilitary relations" [31]. This means that separating the party power over the military without the military interfering in democratization processes is fundamental for PRC, with a key issue on the funding sources of the Chinese military in the conflict of interest in a separation of power doctrine.…”

“…With energy politics at the central game of Russia and CPC, energy preservation technologies are crucial both for the purposes of waste management solutions and dissecting the developed nations' reliance on powers resting upon raw material and resource monopolization through territorial controls. The CPC's dictatorial strategies targeted at organizational decoupling [31] with power over currency, which enabled the coup d'état [32], especially that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) does not have an élite tradition such as European militaries and American establishment. The composition of the PLA mainly out of poor families with commanding lines from the CPC members has deeply influenced the Chinese military culture to a comparatively populist one with operational functions.…”

Design and Build a Holomatrix-Based Tactical Combat Simulation Application

“…Today's technological advances are very rapid so that they affect many aspects of human life, both individually and in groups, from general aspects to strategic aspects. In the strategic aspect, especially in the field of defense [1] and security, advances in science and technology have provided the world community with an efficient and accurate integrated multimedia product [2], which in turn has changed the doctrine of defense and war [3]. However, this advantage has had a significant impact on users of defense products, namely personnel of an armed force or soldiers [4].…”

Rethinking Civil-Military Collaboration: A Relational Practice Approach to Total Defense in Sweden

“…The recently announced return to domestic territorial defense (Harig, Jenne & Ruffa 2022), or domestic defense taking on a new sense of urgency, has pushed civilian and military actors into new locations of interaction. This has been particularly evident in, for example, Sweden where planning for total defense, as formulated in policy, must enhance civil and military preparedness activities through collaboration.…”

“…Sundelius & Eldeblad 2023:104). Military officials were, during what they label the strategic timeout of total defense, working with community support, fighting organized crime and terrorism, peacekeeping, providing humanitarian aid and, for example, responding to the Covid-19 pandemic (see also Harig, Jenne & Ruffa 2022). In other words, the practice of the military was oriented around providing support to the civil management of various crises.…”