Military Missions and their Implications Reconsidered: The Aftermath of September 11th: Volume 2

The definition of a nation-state has changed markedly over the last 50 years. In developing nations, the process of state formation is following a similar pattern as Europe, where several long and brutal wars preceded the creation of the modern nation-states. In particular, the dissolution of Pakistan (formerly East and West Pakistan) in 1971, is an example of this volatile process, which is being repeated in many Asian, African, and even some European countries like Yugoslavia and the former Soviet republics. After the disintegration of Pakistan, the evolution of civilian–military relations in that nation presents an excellent case study about the civilian–military balance and directed democracy. The question that arises is whether this scenario, which started initially in some Southeast Asian countries such as Taiwan and Korea, will continue in the emerging countries in other parts of Asia and Africa. Only time will tell whether the institutional development of these fragile new nations will someday achieve the same stability as the developed world.

Since the suicide terrorist attacks of September Eleven, security issues have become more prominent again. There is also an increased interest in the military since the military was and still is seen as a major instrument in the so-called ‘war on terror’. The current international situation has thus increased the importance, significance and urgency of a correct, broad-based research effort on the part of the social sciences to study the emergence and development of conflicts with an eye on the means of conflict resolution. In this context, it is also appropriate and necessary to analyse one, albeit ambivalent, instrument of conflict resolution, the armed forces. Today, the military is said to face new and broader tasks than in the past.

Although political conflict and war are as old as humanity itself, in the twentieth century, it peaked. In recent years, most of the conflicts were intrastate conflict rather than interstate conflict. A new element of terrorism has been associated with the conflict. These conflicts are not only resulting from internal political disturbances, it is also intermingled with ethnicity, resources, migration, and above all extreme poverty.

Since their independence from the European colonial powers, most of the countries of the American region have been unable to build solid, stable democracies. Only a few countries in the region today have solid and effective democratic processes, and some of them are even involved in unpredictable situations, such as Bolivia or Venezuela. As a result, the historical march of our democracies has been one of advances and retreats, all of them interrupted at some time in the 20th century.

Two trends mark the contemporary international scholarship on conflict and resolution. The scholarship on conflict has begun to look systematically at intra-state conflicts and track the role of non-state actors, along with the more established trend of analysing inter-state conflict. Conflict resolution has also moved beyond looking at states and national and global-level NGOs to the role of local, non-state actors in preventing and/or minimising conflict. While the “mainstream” scholarly work emphasises a linear process of reaching resolutions in the aftermath of a conflict (e.g. Burton, 1990; Galtung, 1965), a range of “related” scholarship has begun to focus on factors that prevent conflict and their rapid diffusion over wider areas, as well as factors that contribute to longer term, peaceful, resolution (e.g. Das, Kleinman, Lock, Ramphele, & Reynolds, 2001; Sabet, 1998; Varshney, 2001). These related literature look beyond political solutions such as conflict management, boundary adjustments, and treaties, and the role of international and national formal bodies to resolve and manage conflict; their emphasis is on conflict prevention, the healing of conflict victims, and building and sustaining peace. With the recognition, in the 21st century, of the escalating production and spread of weaponry, the power of non-state actors to generate significant conflict, as well as the rapidly growing proportion of people who suffer from and cope with the aftermath of such conflict, the expanded frames for understanding conflict and resolution, requires further attention.

The Research Committee (RC) 01 of the International Sociological Association is carrying out a broad cross-national research on civil–military relations in democratic countries and, particularly, on the cultural dimensions of this relationship. In this chapter several country papers on that theme are presented, but before giving the floor to the reports of the findings from the national researches, let me introduce the research itself. The issue of a cultural gap between the armed forces and the parent society is an old one and on this theme we can say that two main positions are present in the literature; one is that there is a necessary cultural gap between the military and the civilian, and that a particular gap is not negative. Another side also accepts the idea that the military has a culture different from civilian society, but argues that traditional military culture now serves a less essential purpose: according to them the military has no functional imperative to retain a culture contrary to the prevailing civilian values. On this subject, we can cite what John Hillen (1999, pp. 43, 58), for instance, writes for the US:“To many observers, the values and social mores of 1990s America – narcissistic, morally relativist, self-indulgent, hedonistic, consumerist, individualistic, victim-centered, nihilistic, and soft – seem hopelessly at odds with those of traditional military culture.” Despite that, “Whether politically motivated by the agenda pushers or not, there is now [in the US] an inexorable momentum to ‘close the gap’ between the military and society without clearly identifying the nature of the gap, the extent to which it might in fact be healthy and desirable.”

The world of military uniforms has always attracted attention by the rest of society. The film and literary image of the military in the history lays stress on power, honour, discipline, privileges, high social position of warriors and also dependence of the social welfare on military power and military campaigns. Those images impose to our minds that the military was an important institution and also that it was something really special. How does the society see the military today? And how does the military regard itself and its functions? Since the development of military sociology in the middle of the 20th century, there have been two opposing views on civil-military relations: one that strictly differentiates the military and society and the other that seeks the similarities between them. The recent military-sociological debate in the United States has also been devoted to the issue of the relationship between the military and its parent society. The experts found important differences between the US military and US society (including cultural ones) and some are very concerned about a growing gap between them. The classical antagonism between Huntington's uniqueness of the military and Janowitz's convergence of the military and civil society is renewed in debates about a so-called civil-military gap (e.g., Ricks, 1997; Holsti, 1998; Cohn, 1999; Snider, 1999; Hillen, 1999; Feaver, Kohn, & Cohn, 2001).

The Bulgarian sample of the international civil–military gap project comprised 30 cadets in the National Defence University (I and III course) and 91 students from the University of Sofia (law and political science department), the New Bulgarian University (psychology department), and the University for National and World Economy (economy of defence and security department). According to the gender of the respondents, the sample is divided as follows: cadets – 67% male, 33% females; students – 38% males, 62% females. Data was collected in the period March–June 2004.

Since more than one decade, the German armed forces are undergoing massive modifications in structure, size and mission, which can be traced back to the transformation of the international security environment and globalisation effects after the end of the Cold War (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, & Perraton, 1999). As the threat scenarios changed from mutual deterrence to a multitude of risks and dangers, including violent internal conflict, international terrorism and global ecological crisis, the threat perceptions within wider society underwent simultaneous changes. Today, ‘security’ and ‘insecurity’ are terms with totally different connotation than only 20 years ago. Clearly, these alterations also initiated a new era of civil–military relations in Germany after 1990. Besides the rather obvious transnational effects described by the changing security context as well as the trend towards globalisation and to new security regimes, perpetual societal changes within West European societies evenly took place during the last thirty years. These societies are therefore becoming ‘post-traditional societies’ (Giddens, 1994)¹ or – as far as the armed forces are concerned – ‘post-military’ societies (Shaw, 2000). This study aims at examining the current state of civil–military relations and deals with the question of the existence of a civil–military gap in Germany. Therefore, empirical data stemming from an international project will be examined. After a sketch of the patterns of civil–military relations in Germany, a brief description of the methodology of the German part within the Civil–Military-Gap-project is given. Afterwards, some key findings of the project data, concerning a set of questions relating to security, war and peace issues, are presented and discussed.

The state of the relations between the armed forces and society in Italy displays some general features that should be described before going on to the analysis of the research data. The first is the presence of a very broad-based pacifism that has two different origins which, although quite different from each other, often end up by uniting or allying. These two traditions are a Marxist-anarchic, or a more generically leftist one, and a Catholic one that is still very strong in our country. Since the end of the Second World War, the extent of this pacifism, often with a good dose of antimilitarism, has always made relations between the country and its armed forces difficult. This situation has shown some rather significant changes in the last decade, however. Italy's ever-increasing participation in peace support operations (PSOs), which is very extensive in proportion to the commitments of other comparable countries, has given new popularity to the armed forces, both because of their use in functions more easily reconciled with pacifist ideals and because, finally put to the test,¹ they have demonstrated capabilities and skills that for many have been a revelation. The transition from conscription to voluntary service, although certainly heralding other problems in the relationship with public opinion, has also allowed the armed forces to shed the unpopularity due to the sacrifices required of male citizens. Added to these aspects is the rapid change of the international situation which, with the materialising of a significant threat from Islamic fundamentalism, has brought the problem of security² to the attention of everyone. All of the surveys conducted in the last decade, therefore, have recorded an increased level of social acceptance of the armed forces in Italy.

Romania has experienced a dramatic transition, after 1989, starting from one of the fiercest communist regimes and trying to build a democratic regime and to join the Western institutions, such as NATO and EU. The issue of democratisation of civil–military relations ranked high on the reform agenda of both Romanian policymakers and international donors that offered assistance for transition. The main reason was – for the Romanian public – the concern that the military could seize the power and institute dictatorship, while – for the Western countries – it was the perception that the military was a pillar of a socialist state and the neo-Kantian assumption that democracies do not fight each other, so a civilian control over the military is desirable to be instituted in Eastern Europe. However, the relations between the Romanian military and its parent society present some particular features that should be acknowledged before the presentation of research results.

Slovenian society was historically very ambivalent towards the military. In former Yugoslavia many people understood the military as the socialising agent, the organisation that would help their sons to grow up, and as provider of help in cases of natural catastrophes. The role of defence of the homeland was perceived as a legitimate task of the military, but the expectation of a foreign military threat was gradually decreasing. The Yugoslav policy of active participation in the non-alignment movement helped people to believe that they lived in a neutral country, in a country without foreign enemies. The perception of a low military threat in the public clashed with the very tough enemy-searching of the former Yugoslav military. This caused tensions between Slovenian civil society and Yugoslav military elites. The associations of civil society asked for recognition of conscientious objection, which was not permitted in former Yugoslavia until the mid-1980s. Even then, the status of conscientious objectors was given to religious believers only, and they had to serve within the military without arms. In 1991, the Slovenian public verified its decades-old hypothesis that there is no enemy outside the country, but the biggest enemy is its own military. The war in Slovenia, although the decision to form an independent state was encouraged by Serb nationalism and the totalitarian perception of the Yugoslav Federation, was clearly a war between the Slovenian people, military, and police against the Yugoslav Peoples’ Army and not against other nations or republics of former Yugoslavia.

The South African armed forces have undergone profound changes over the past decade in almost every aspect of organisation and structure. With the end of the Cold War and the subsequent demise of Apartheid, the South African armed forces moved away from a defence posture focused on national security, to one focused on regional and non-military threats. In terms of force structure, all-white male conscription was replaced with a volunteer system and for the first time the military became representative of a broader society. However, unlike the previous era, where there was a clearly defined threat, the armed forces were obliged to operate under strict budgetary constraints, in an environment where security became subservient to other more pressing socio-economic priorities. (For a historic overview see Cilliers & Heinecken, 1999.) After the first democratic election in 1994 and the acceptance of the new Constitution and Bill of Rights, everything from the country's foreign, domestic and defence policies were revised. In terms of the tasks of the newly formed South African National Defence Force (SANDF), the final Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Article 200 (2), described these as “to defend and protect the Republic, its territorial integrity and its people in accordance with the Constitution and the principles of international law regulating the use of force”. The first and primary role of the SANDF is “defence against external aggression”, but it was for its secondary function, “to defend and protect its people in accordance with the Constitution and principles of international law”, that the SANDF has been most operational, both internally in law and order functions, and more recently, in peace support operations in the region.

Contemporary relations between the military and society in Spain can be traced back to the civil war period. Following 3 years of cruel, fratricidal combat, the victory of the insurgent troops led to the Spanish republic being converted into a totalitarian regime headed by Franco. The dictatorship of Franco was not a military dictatorship, but rather the dictatorship of a military man who built up a triangular structure of power at the apex of which he felt protected and from which he controlled society from all angles: the army, the church and the single fascist party FET-JONS.¹ Throughout almost 40 years of a totalitarian regime, millions of Spanish men spent a period of their lives as conscripts in military service under the orders of a fascist military and under the influence of an oppressive political power. The death of the dictator, in 1975, marked the start of the transition to democracy that represented a break with the stigmas of the past and, for the first time in Spanish history, ushered in a period of peaceful coexistence for the entire population. In the military domain, the reforms initiated by General Gutiérrez Mellado – the first Vice-President of the Government of Adolfo Suárez – are worthy of mention. It was through these that efforts were made to modernise the Armed Forces (hereafter AF) in Spain by distancing them from political power, transforming them into a military force administered to serve political structures, and reducing their size to a more coherent one in relation to the needs and threats of a democratic state surrounded by its partners in the same economic community. However, among the military, a small but still powerful nucleus existed, whose rejection of democracy and whose nostalgia for the Franco dictatorship led to a failed attempt at a coup d’état in 1981.

The past ten to fifteen years have been a turbulent period for the Swedish military. The collapse of the Soviet Union, which was the primary potential enemy, the end of the Cold War, the establishment of the independent Baltic States and Swedish membership in the European Union all combined to render the Swedish defence forces hopelessly outdated. However, although the need for change has been obvious for many years, now many think the progress has been very slow. Some say we should have changed the defence forces dramatically back in the early 1990s. Instead, we chose to implement a series of reorganisations, closing down piece after piece of the old invasion-oriented defence force, while trying to retain as much as possible. What we have today is an eroded conscription system, where military service has become more a question of choice. Despite all this, the public is still quite supportive, thinking that we might need a defence “just in case”, especially as new threats arise. A new trend is that quite many, according to public opinion polls, now think that those who actually do serve as conscripts should get extra compensated with money for this service to society.

This paper serves to present the Swiss data in the framework of the international project “Civil–Military Gap” of ERGOMAS Working Group “Military Profession”. Its theoretical basis has been developed in a common working paper (Jelusic, Caforio, Haltiner, Moelker, & Szvircsev Tresch, 2003) and will be presented in a more detailed way in a forthcoming common cross-national analysis. The main research hypothesis and its implied research questions refer to the existence of a growing cultural gap between the military and its parent democratic society: Is there such a gap between the armed forces, mainly its professional bodies and democratic society? If yes, what is the nature of that gap? According to the planning of the research project, the following research steps are carried on in the participating countries: (1) investigate the political culture of future (civilian and military) elites by simultaneously surveying cadets at military academies and students at civilian universities; (2) carry out semi-structured interviews with present elites (an expert survey) in order to assess changes in civil–military relations over time; and (3) elaborate and compare results at cross-national level and compare and contrast them with data from the American (Feaver, Kohn, & Cohn, 2001) research. This paper first outlines some peculiarities of the Swiss military system, considering them as somewhat important for the question of the nature of a possible civil–military gap. It then presents the methodological procedure and the main findings of Switzerland.

All of these cases are evidence of violence committed against women, for the reason that they are women, i.e. because the status that society accords to their gender permits men (for the most part) to behave violently against women (for the most part). It is obvious that other groups of the population may be affected in a similar manner, but female victims of gender-based violence deserve special attention, not only because they represent the majority of victims, but also because, as opposed to children or the elderly, women can fight the violence both actively and effectively.² Gender-based violence is both of a physical and psychological nature and cuts through all cultures and societies. It is committed within the family (battering, sexual abuse of female children, dowry-related violence, marital rape, female genital circumcision, and other traditional practices that have proven to be harmful to women; non-spousal violence, and violence that accompanies various forms of female exploitation), in communities (sexual abuse, harassment, and intimidation in the workplace and educational institutions, trafficking in women, and forced prostitution), as well as in society at large (see Table 1).

Sexual abuse of women during armed conflict has always been taken for granted; in modern times, it is still viewed as a regrettable part of war. History books have brought forward vivid images of women in chains in or behind chariots as spoils of war. Rape was not considered a crime, but an inevitable ‘collateral damage’ to part of the population solely because of their gender. Since women were considered property, they were automatically viewed as the prize of victory. Historians have traced attempts to regulate rape in war in earlier centuries, but even if such an initiative was taken, it had little impact upon actions. Only recently with emphasis on human rights and progress in equating women's rights with men's human rights have there been serious efforts to come to grips with bringing to justice those who committed mass rape during armed conflicts. Though there was evidence of widespread rape during World War II, there were no efforts to find or prosecute the perpetrators during the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan has observed that “gender based harms including rape during conflict have historically been viewed as less serious transgressions than their non-gender equivalents.”

Trauma has become a buzz term, and the responses to trauma are slick and swift. Teams of mental health professionals can now be dispatched within hours of a catastrophe, and psychological intervention is fast becoming an industry. A more penetrating look at the state of trauma intervention reveals a less impressive picture. In spite of the heightened interest in the effects of trauma, mental health professionals are in fact a long way from fully understanding the impact of such trauma, and from providing responses to victims that are effective. Not only do we lack a psychotherapeutic antidote that can be distributed to the hundreds of thousands of victims of conflict across the globe, but to date we have failed to provide scientifically evaluated, evidence-based treatment guidelines for the psychological rehabilitation of victims.

When the German armed forces came into being in the mid-1950s, as a result of the international tensions due to the Cold War, few considered female soldiers. It took another decade until this issue began to be discussed in society and in politics. This discussion of the 1960s was shaped by a wide-ranging democratisation and significant socio- and politico-cultural changes. Starting with the so-called student movement, various parts of German society became important social movements that called for political and societal participation. Among these were various women's movement groups that criticised the patriarchically structured German society and sought emancipation and gender equality as laid out in various UN documents. Of course, during this endeavour, some parts of them also demanded equal access and participation to professions that had hitherto been male-exclusive domains. Shortly thereafter, the male-dominated soldierly profession and the Bundeswehr viewed pressure from society, which soon translated into the political sphere and put the issue of women in the military on the agenda (Kraake, 1992; Albrecht-Heide & Bujewski-Crawford, 1991; Fischer, 1997).

The United States military, like most militaries, has traditionally been a male-dominated organisation. Contemporary military historians argue that wars and the militaries that fight them are “an entirely masculine activity” (Keegan, 1993, p. 76) and “[b]efore it was anything else, war was an assertion of masculinity. When everything else is said and done, an assertion of masculinity is what it remains” (Van Creveld, 2001, p. 161). Because the military's “core activity” is combat (…), a task viewed primarily in masculine terms because it has generally been defined as “men's work”, a “deeply entrenched cult of masculinity pervades US military culture” (Dunivin, 1997, p. 2). Language has codified the long history of the masculine warrior paradigm. Van Creveld notes that the Old Testament utilises the same term for “adult man” and “warrior” while medieval Germans used “becoming a man” and “carrying a sword” interchangeably (Van Creveld, 2001, p. 164). James Webb, former Secretary of the Navy in the late 1980s, called combat the “quintessentially male obligation in any society” (Webb, 1997, p. 4). If societies have obligated men to combat, they have rewarded them by connecting combat to the achievement of manhood. Men bestow manhood on one another: men are made, not born (Goldstein, 2001). According to Kimmel (2000a, p. 214), “What men need is men's approval (…) we test ourselves, perform heroic feats, take enormous risks, all because we want other men to grant us our manhood.”

The need to care for families has been a command focus within the United States military for a number of years. Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the resulting risk and family separation, have made the care of families and their satisfaction with military life enormously important due to their impact on retention, morale, and readiness. The US Army has taken a two-pronged approach to caring for families: (1) family friendly leadership; and (2) family friendly programs and policies. Like many other organisations, the Army has invested heavily in family friendly policies and programs, such as family support groups, affordable childcare, medical care, and systems so spouses can communicate during periods of separation. Over the last 15 years, the Army's focus on families has produced a much improved system of support, resulting in almost two-thirds of spouses rating the Army's family support as excellent or good during the war in Iraq.¹ (Ricks, 2004, p. 9) While family friendly policies and programs are important in reducing work–family conflict and developing commitment, they are only part of the solution, and are much more effective when combined with supportive leadership. By themselves, policies and programs offer an incomplete solution that would achieve only partial success at best, particularly as the level of demands made by the organisation increase.

With the French Revolution that brought the formation of mass armies based upon conscription of all male citizens, it became inconceivable in Europe that armies were composed otherwise than by subjects of the own country. Service in the armed forces became a national duty to comply with, either voluntarily or compelled, since loyalty to the country or its sovereign did require so. Soldiers were submitted to a purely national power of command, they tendered an oath on their country and, during several wars, even risked their lives for it. This narrow link between the nation-state on the one hand and the armed forces on the other had been lasting until World War II, and only then did it successively become looser and looser. It even obscured the fact that there had also been times when armies comprised soldiers from different countries.

In 1992 and 1993, I published several articles on the “Total Force” armies of Canada and the US in an attempt to evaluate the worthiness of the concept (see Thompson, 1993). Ideally, a Total Force Army is one in which both regular and reserve units are supposed to be equals, well-integrated, harmonious, synergistic, functional, and interdependent. To achieve this, the two components must work together, train together, respect each other, and function seamlessly with identical equipment, training, and procedure. Since most reserve units in the US, Canada, and the UK, for example, train mostly on weekends, and typically have older equipment, this would necessarily involve the improvement and maintenance of reserve force training, retention, and equipment. It also really means that reserve forces will need time to reach these standards, but for some reason, some governments do not think about this basic fact. This is true not only for the US, but for the Canadian, UK, and other allied forces, as well.

This paper examines Korean reserve forces with respect to their missions, roles and utilisation. Korea has a huge standing army of 686,000 and reserve forces of 3,040,000. The Korean peninsular is the last spot of the cold war. In spite of mutual efforts by South and North Korea to keep peace in this region these days, there has been no sign yet to downsize military manpower and equipments by either side. It is generally believed that in the future, as the international security environment and inter-Korea relations change, the size of the standing army will be downsized and the role of reserve forces will increase instead. The Korea Institute of Defence Analyses (KIDA) estimated that the appropriate military strength of Korea be around 500,000 in the year of 2015, 200,000 less than the present size. In particular, the number of draftees will be reduced, while the number of officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) will be kept at the present level (Lim, 2001). The reduction of the standing army, as has been observed in other nations, may require proper utilisation of reserves.

After September 11th the defence community of the United States of America has been trying to adapt to the threats of the 21st century. Since 2001, many specialists have devoted themselves to explaining the concept of security, while the Federal government in Washington has organised a Transformation Office attached to the Defence Department. There has been much progress in the intervening years, and two wars plus a cunning terrorist attack have helped to definitively shape the concept.

Reports from the Bundeswehr Institute of Social Sciences (SOWI) (Biehl, Keller, Kozielski, Reinholz, & Tomforde, 2004; Biehl, vom Hagen, & Mackewitsch, 2001) about the motivation of German soldiers in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo have already clarified that no longer only patriotism, political ideas, the identification with an ideology or charismatic leaders count as motivating factors for soldiers to risk their lives in combat or in peacekeeping missions abroad (see also Moskos, 1968). Also, it is not – as long proclaimed within military sociology – only cohesion between comrades, which will motivate soldiers to fight (see Segal & Kestnbaum, 2001). Instead, factors which concern the soldier as an individual, such as family support and the soldier's social environment influence greatly whether or not a soldier is willing to risk his or her life, or less drastically speaking, whether or not, he or she is willing to endure the hardships of peacekeeping missions.

Slovenia has joined the club of peacekeepers in 1997. The decision was made under pressure of foreign expectations that a country which strives for NATO membership should prove its willingness to co-operate in common defence efforts. First military units, sent to UN-led peacekeeping operations, comprised volunteers on an ad hoc basis and were very small (platoon level). There were also a few policemen who joined missions abroad, first under WEU leadership in Albania. The governmental need ‘to show the flag’ in many operations increased the number of soldiers needed for peace operations and the number of policemen. Currently, there are around 200 soldiers and 30 policemen in different operations abroad. In the period 1997–2001 all soldiers and policemen entered the missions on a voluntary basis. In 2002, there was the first contingent of Slovenian SFOR soldiers that used its home military structure (infantry motorised company) in a peace mission. It marked the end of ad hoc units, comprised to serve the goals of the mission only, and the start of more organised, and also more ordered co-operation of soldiers in missions. They could still refuse participation in the mission, but that would have led to risks of losing unit cohesion. In the transition from voluntary peacekeepers to peacekeepers on duty, or by order, the Slovenian Army realised the need to understand what helps soldiers to fully accept the terms of operations abroad.

In June 1999, the Swiss government made its decision to support the Austrian contingent (AUCON) – serving in the German KFOR Brigade – with the so-called “Swiss Company” (SWISSCOY). This overview offers insight into Swiss soldiers’ motivation during their deployment to Kosovo from October 2001 to April 2002. SWISSCOY is a predominantly unarmed logistical unit integrated into the Austrian KFOR Battalion (AUCON). It supports AUCON primarily in the domains of transportation, water preparation, fuel, and civil-military co-operation. The primary goal of this research project was to monitor the motivation of 130 Swiss soldiers. How motivated were they at the beginning, at half-time, and shortly before the end of their mission? In addition to this descriptive approach, we also aimed at examining crucial independent variables supposedly related to motivation (such as perceived quality of infrastructure, perceived quality of training, financial incentives, social support at home, attractiveness of daily activities, perceived benefit of the mission, etc.).

Britain is now one of the few EC countries without some form of military representative body. Yet, probably the first military trade union was formed in the British Armed Forces in 1919. At the outset, the organisation grew rapidly with the formation of 49 branches and an estimated membership of 10,000 (Englander, 1989, p. 10). But the efforts of the Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Airmens’ Union (SSAU) to organise the armed forces and secure a right of representation were short-lived. The authorities were quick to react to the perceived socialist threat by demobilising and discharging “men who [were] largely imbued with unionism tinged with socialism” (Englander, 1989, p. 11) and, following a raid by the intelligence services on the SSAU headquarters, the union rapidly disappeared.

Unlike many militaries in Europe, the Canadian Forces (CF) have no union or representative association. Although two separate studies have shown that more than one-third of military members think positively about forming a union (Bradley & Charbonneau, 2004; Deneumoustier, 1971), there has traditionally been little movement towards any form of associationism within Canada's military. While there is no formal ‘contract’ between the CF and the government of Canada, an informal social contract has appeared to be successful in maintaining the status quo. Critics of the social contract argue the agreement is one-sided; that is, the responsibilities of the member to Canada are well defined in the National Defence Act and Queen's Regulations and Orders but there is “no such articulation of the responsibilities of the Government of Canada to the men and women of the CF” (Milner, 1998, p. 10).

According to Kümmel, the military is a highly complex social phenomenon touching several different contexts and is thus subject to multiple processes of interpretation (Kümmel, 2003). For this reason, the military is studied from a trans- or interdisciplinary perspective. Historically, the military function could be synthesised in the protection of the entire nation from external invasion and the ruling regime from domestic unrest as well as the conduct of wars for foreign policy objectives. This function raises a basic peculiarity of the military that makes it a special institution: the legitimate management of violence. Such as every organisation, the military changed over time and the changes ask for a revision of the management modalities of many aspects of its operations. From here the idea of a research about the collective representation of military personnel in Italy started. This article is intended to present the planned research. The survey is divided into three parts. To begin, I will analyse some aspects of the military changes, in order to know the context in which the need for an empirical research about this matter is placed. Next, I will examine the structure of the Italian collective representation of the military, pointing out some of the problems of the actual system. To conclude, I will briefly present the research.

Up until 1993, the South African armed forces were an essentially all-white conscript force, fighting a war ‘in proxy’ in neighbouring states and within the country, against a perceived communist onslaught. During this period, the former South African Defence Force (SADF) was central to state functioning and funding. With the end of the Cold War and the subsequent demise of Apartheid, the armed forces were forced to adapt not only to the new security environment, but to the imperatives spelt out in the newly forged Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. This was to be a traumatic time for the newly established South African National Defence Force (SANDF), which came into being in April 1994. The challenge of having to integrate seven former enemies into one cohesive force has been no mean task, and the legacies of past loyalties continue to divide the forces. The challenges stretched beyond just the need to integrate, thereby swelling the size of the SANDF, but to downscale the forces to affordable levels in years to come. As Seegers (1996, p. 280) states, “the SANDF encountered two big problems simultaneously, integration and a desperate popular need for employment”. Therefore, rationalisation would inevitably be met with some collective resistance. Adapting to the principles enshrined in the Constitution also meant that the SANDF had to adapt its policies and practices to meet the democratic imperatives spelt out in the Bill of Rights. Without doubt, one of the most contentious issues was the pressure exerted on the SANDF, even before 1994, to amend its labour relations mechanisms for uniformed personnel. The Constitution provided the legal sanction for military unions and despite vehement resistance, the SANDF eventually had to concede to this right when it lost the case in the Constitutional Court in 1998. Even so, the shock of having to deal with trade unions within its ranks and to bargain with the unions over “all matters of mutual interest” has been no mean feat.

A few of the variables of the postmodern framework that we have used are the definition of major mission and public attitudes towards the military. Defining the mission of the Turkish Armed Forces can broadly be compared to that of many other countries. In addition to preparing its forces for in-country counter-terrorism operations, gendarmerie missions and peacekeeping operations abroad, it also acts as a ‘finishing school’ for young Turkish males. This includes a wide range of areas such as literacy skills and sex education. As regards the public attitudes towards the military which offer another possible research area it may be said that the Turkish military is seen as a rite of passage for young men. This can be witnessed at any bus terminal when young soldiers are sent-away for service. The commotion created by this is unparalleled to any other social event in Turkey. These are only a few of the variables of the postmodern framework, but they show the abundance of research questions related to the Turkish Armed Forces. It is believed that the Turkish Armed Forces present a ripe and unique opportunity for military sociological research.

In this paper we present the findings of a study on the differences or the harmony of Turkish military vs. Turkish national culture. We approached this issue by using work-related value orientations. Hofstede's research provided an organisation-based look into national cultural differences and we used his work to evaluate the Turkish national culture and its compatibility with the Turkish military culture. The data about the characteristics of the Turkish military culture are based on observations.

In this paper we will focus on the perceptions of the relations between civil society and the armed forces in Turkey. This is a bundle of complex relationships and it has many direct and indirect effects on the development of civil society in Turkey. The Constitution of 1961 that followed the 1960 military intervention brought a very suitable political environment for the development of organisational life in Turkey. Particularly unions, as semi-public organisations, developed and became the pioneers of civil society. However, this period was characterised by ideological polarisation that divided these so-called ‘democratic mass organisations’ into opposite political camps. The 1980 military coup stopped this process, constrained the rights of organisations and closed many democratic mass organisations. Due to the strict controlling mechanisms of the post-coup period, democratic mass organisations, mainly unions and chambers, such as the Turkish Union of Chambers of Engineers & Architects and Confederation of Revolutionary Labour Unions, lost their power. The labour union was closed and many of its leaders were imprisoned after the coup. On the other hand, during the post-1980 era, the central cleavage of left-right politics and ideologies was transformed into more diffused and fragmented cleavages.

When we look at the theories about the integration process and the roles of women in the military both in Turkey and worldwide, this issue comes forth as controversial and problematic. Although Turkey is the first country which accepted women to military academies, the process of women integration has never been prolonged and there has not been a consensus on women's positions in the military. The implications have always been changeable. The army is the mirror of society and, in Turkey, officers and soldiers come from all over the country and all socio-economic statuses. It is important to investigate the representation and position of women in the military because they will affect the government's policies towards all women in society. This issue is not only important for women's rights but also for citizenship rights of women.

Peace support operations and the role of the United Nations is getting important in changing the global power system. But generally peace support missions are creating new problems while trying to solve the original ones. In this presentation I will try to examine the relative effectiveness of the UN in the military observer missions, which is the most common type of UN peace support operations. The UN Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) is used to show their relative effectiveness in the current world system by means of differentiating the problems they are facing. After showing the common problems, I will give special emphasis to the genuine problems of UNOMIG. First of all we have to take a brief look at the origins of military observer missions. During the long Cold War, the UN had to engage in conflict resolution/management in a world widely divided between two superpowers. The Security Council (SC) suffered lots of problems to handle conflicts without jeopardising the interests of the superpowers. So in most of the cases (except Korea and Congo) the SC did not authorise the necessary military forces to the conflict areas. Instead the SC preferred to send interpositional forces with light arms or military observers without arms after getting the consent of the conflicting parties. Currently we are calling this approach traditional peacekeeping. By experiences gained on the ground and in the SC it was understood that the best and easiest reaction is establishing a UN military observer mission (UNMOM) (Mackinlay, 1996, pp. 9–11; British Army, 1995, pp. 1–2/2–7). According to this limited and conservative logic this process must follow standard steps: First an armed conflict between two states; second a stalemate that nobody is able to defeat the other side completely; third conflicting states ask the UN to enforce a ceasefire; fourth the SC authorises neutral military observers to monitor a ceasefire and to achieve some other limited objectives, according their mandate; fifth conflicting states try to reach a peaceful solution by diplomatic negotiations with the help of the UN; sixth agreement is reached and end of UNMOM. In short, the duty of the military observers is to monitor the ceasefire and the restrictions agreed to by both parties in a geographically limited area for a limited time. But in reality, diplomatic negotiations often do not provide fast and lasting solutions. UNMOMs have remained and temporary missions turned into permanent ones. The answer to the question why is that they are economically cheap operations and politically easier to maintain than to remove. Most of the UNMOMs that were established in different continents are still going on without an end in sight (Brahimi et al., 2000, p. 3).