Military doctrine, command philosophy and the generation of fighting power: genesis and theory

Military doctrine is one of the conceptual components of war. Its raison d’être is that of a force multiplier. It enables a smaller force to take on and defeat a larger force in battle. This article’s departure point is the aphorism of Sir Julian Corbett, who described doctrine as ‘the soul of warfare’. The second dimension to creating a force multiplier effect is forging doctrine with an appropriate command philosophy. The challenge for commanders is how, in unique circumstances, to formulate, disseminate and apply an appropriate doctrine and combine it with a relevant command philosophy. This can only be achieved by policy-makers and senior commanders successfully answering the Clausewitzian question: what kind of conflict are they involved in? Once an answer has been provided, a synthesis of these two factors can be developed and applied. Doctrine has implications for all three levels of war. Tactically, doctrine does two things: first, it helps to create a tempo of operations; second, it develops a transitory quality that will produce operational effect, and ultimately facilitate the pursuit of strategic objectives. Its function is to provide both training and instruction. At the operational level instruction and understanding are critical functions. Third, at the strategic level it provides understanding and direction. Using John Gooch’s six components of doctrine, it will be argued that there is a lacunae in the theory of doctrine as these components can manifest themselves in very different ways at the three levels of war. They can in turn affect the transitory quality of tactical operations. Doctrine is pivotal to success in war. Without doctrine and the appropriate command philosophy military operations cannot be successfully concluded against an active and determined foe.

From matron to matrix: gender, authority and (dis)embodiment in Beckett’s Theatre

An examination of Samuel Beckett's representation of women in a selection of his plays for stage and radio.

Ideological dominance in recreation provision: towards a theory of Local Authority response to Compulsory Competitive Tendering in Britain

This paper considers how the delivery of public leisure services in Britain has been affected by the imposition of Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) on the management of facilities. In particular, it focuses on the changing relationship between the central and local levels of government, theorising a tripartite local response to CCT, incorporating local statism, post-Fordist rejection of CCT and post- Fordist compliance with the aims of the central administration. The paper then discusses the actual implementation of CCT, relating the theorised responses to those witnessed in practice. This results in the delineation of a continuum of stances, ranging from pragmatic forms of local statism, such as the protection of the former direct labour force, to centrist attempts to combine the ethics of socialism with the mechanics of the market, to an outright rejection of state organisation and control. The paper concludes that although legitimate attempts have been made to protect local services, the outcome of the CCT process has undoubtedly been the regeneration of public leisure provision away from its service roots towards a market model of provision.

‘Warsaw Pact Military Doctrines in the 70s and 80s: Findings in the East German Archives’

This article draws on Warsaw Treaty Organisation and East German military archives to demonstrate that the WTO's military exercises until the mid-1990s always envisaged an offensive strategy with the aim of reaching the Channel in a few days. Only gradually did this change under Gorbachev and to include also defensive strategies, very much against the opposition of East Germany.

Denial of change: the 'Military Revolution' as seen by contemporaries

Writers on military matters from the 14th century until the late 18th century either regretted the decadence of their times compared with Antiquity, or they saw no great change in military affairs since Antiquity. Few saw a revolutionary change ushered in by gunpowder, although this number increased since the great "querelle" about the Ancients and the Moderns under Louis XIV. In the early 19th century, the balance tipped, and few would have denied that technology had profoundly changed warfare. All this is a far cry, however, from any contemporary perception of a "Military Revolution" in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Mutamenti politico-istituzionali nella Venezia Giulia e a Trieste tra Tito e gli americani alla luce delle nuove testimonianze documentarie da Washington, 1944-1954

“La questione di Trieste”, ovvero la questione del confine italo-yugoslavo all’indomani della seconda guerra mondiale costituisce da lungo tempo oggetto di attenzione e di esame da parte della storiografia italiana e straniera. Con alcune importanti eccezioni, la ricostruzione complessiva di quelle vicende ha visto il più delle volte il prevalere di un approccio storico-diplomatico che ha reso difficile comprendere con chiarezza i rapporti e le interdipendenze fra contesto locale, contesto nazionale e contesto internazionale. Attraverso la lettura incrociata dell’ampia documentazione proveniente dai fondi dei National Archives Records Administration (NARA) questo studio tenta una rilettura delle varie fasi di sviluppo della questione nel periodo compreso tra il giugno del 1945 e l’ottobre del 1954 secondo una duplice prospettiva: nella prima parte si concentra sulla politica americana a Trieste, guardando nello specifico a due aspetti interni tra loro strettamente correlati, la gestione dell’ordine pubblico e la “strategia” del consenso da realizzarsi mediante il controllo dell’informazione da un lato e la promozione di una politica culturale dall’altro. Sono aspetti entrambi riconducibili al modello del direct rule, che conferiva al governo militare alleato (GMA) piena ed esclusiva autorità di governo sulla zona A della Venezia Giulia, e che ci appaiono centrali anche per cogliere l’interazione fra istituzioni e soggetti sociali. Nella seconda parte, invece, il modificarsi della fonte d’archivio indica un cambiamento di priorità nella politica estera americana relativa a Trieste: a margine dei negoziati internazionali, i documenti del fondo Clare Boothe Luce nelle carte dell’Ambasciata mostrano soprattutto come la questione di Trieste venne proiettata verso l’esterno, verso l’Italia in particolare, e sfruttata – principalmente dall’ambasciatrice – nell’ottica bipolare della guerra fredda per rinforzare il sostegno interno alla politica atlantica. Il saggio, dunque, si sviluppa lungo due linee: dentro e fuori Trieste, dentro 1945-1952, fuori 1953-1954, perché dalle fonti consultate sono queste ad emergere come aree di priorità nei due periodi. Abstract - English The “Trieste question”, or the question regarding the Italian - Yugoslav border after the Second World War, has been the object of careful examination in both Italian and foreign historiography for a long time. With a few important exceptions, the overall reconstruction of these events has been based for the most part on historic and diplomatic approaches, which have sometimes made it rather difficult to understand clearly the relationships and interdependences at play between local, national and international contexts. Through a comparative analysis of a large body of documents from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park MD, this essay attempts a second reading of the various phases in which the question developed between June 1945 and October 1954, following a twofold perspective: the first part focuses on American policy for Trieste, specifically looking at two internal and closely linked aspects, on the one hand, the management of ‘law and order’, as well as a ‘strategy’ of consent, to be achieved through the control of all the means of information , and, on the other, the promotion of a cultural policy. Both aspects can be traced back to the ‘direct rule’ model, which gave the Allied Military Government (AMG) full and exclusive governing authority over Venezia Giulia’s Zone A. These issues are also fundamental to a better understanding of the relationships between institutions and social subjects. In the second part of the essay , the change in archival sources clearly indicates a new set of priorities in American foreign policy regarding Trieste: outside any international negotiations for the settlement of the question, the Clare Boothe Luce papers held in the Embassy’s archives, show how the Trieste question was focused on external concerns, Italy in particular, and exploited – above all by the ambassador – within the bi-polar optic of the Cold War, in order to strengthen internal support for Atlantic policies. The essay therefore follows two main lines of inquiry: within and outside Trieste, within in 1945-1952, and outside 1953-1954, since, from the archival sources used, these emerge as priority areas in the two periods.

Military competition and the emergence of nationalism: putting the logic of political survival into historical context

This essay aims to make a contribution to the conversation between IR and nationalism literatures by considering a particular question: What is the relationship between interstate military competition and the emergence of nationalism as a potent force in world politics? The conventional wisdom among international security scholars, especially neorealists, holds that nationalism can be more or less treated like a “technology” that allowed states to extract significant resources as well as manpower from their respective populations. This paper underlines some of the problems involved with this perspective and pushes forward an interpretation that is based on the logic of political survival. I argue that nationalism’s emergence as a powerful force in world politics followed from the “mutation” and absorption of the universalistic/cosmopolitan republican ideas that gained temporary primacy in Europe during the eighteenth century into particularistic nationalist ideologies. This transformation, in turn, can be best explained by the French Revolution’s dramatic impacts on rulers’ political survival calculi vis-à-vis both interstate and domestic political challenges. The analysis offered in this essay contributes to our understanding of the relationship between IR and nationalism while also highlighting the potential value of the political survival framework for exploring macrohistorical puzzles.