Browsing by Subject "Military"
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Item Open Access American Civil-Military Relations and the Political Economy of National Security(2021) Tier, DavidIn this dissertation I analyze aspects of American civil-military relations and the political economy of national security policymaking. Specifically, I examine efforts to balance the military power necessary to secure American interests while considering the economic implications towards the national debt, veteran behavior in congressional resource allocation, and how civil-military relations relate to military effectiveness. I employ qualitative, quantitative, as well as mixed-methods research in examining policymaker rhetoric, voting records and bill sponsorship data, as well as a list of military use-of-force decisions. I find that policymakers deliberately consider the tradeoffs between debt and defense spending, that veterans demonstrate a small yet distinct behavior on military issues considered by Congress, and that operational outcomes were not more likely to be better when military authorities applied their preferences than when civilians asserted theirs. This dissertation helps fill important underexplored gaps in American civil-military relations and political economy of security studies.
Item Open Access Conscript Nation: Negotiating Authority and Belonging in the Bolivian Barracks, 1900-1950(2012) Shesko, ElizabethThis dissertation examines the trajectory of military conscription in Bolivia from Liberals’ imposition of this obligation after coming to power in 1899 to the eve of revolution in 1952. Conscription is an ideal fulcrum for understanding the changing balance between state and society because it was central to their relationship during this period. The lens of military service thus alters our understandings of methods of rule, practices of authority, and ideas about citizenship in and belonging to the Bolivian nation. In eliminating the possibility of purchasing replacements and exemptions for tribute-paying Indians, Liberals brought into the barracks both literate men who were formal citizens and the non-citizens who made up the vast majority of the population. This study thus grapples with the complexities generated by an institution that bridged the overarching and linked divides of profession, language, literacy, indigeneity, and urbanity.
Venturing inside the barracks, this dissertation shows how experiences of labor, military routines, punishment, teasing, and drinking led to a situation in which many conscripts became increasingly invested in military service, negotiated its terms, and built ties that transcended local power structures. In addition to examining desertion, insubordination, and mutinies, it provides an explanation of the new legal categories created by military service, such as reservist, omiso, remiso, and deserter. It then points to the 1932-1935 Chaco War and its aftermath as the period when conscription became a major force in tying an unequal nation together. The mass mobilization necessitated by the war redefined the meaning and terms of conscription, even as the state resorted to forcible mass impressment throughout the national territory while simultaneously negotiating with various interest groups. A postwar process of reckoning initiated by the state, combined with mobilization from below by those who served, added a new hierarchy of military service that overlaid and sometimes even trumped long-standing hierarchies based on education, language, profession, and heritage.
This study thus explores conscription as a terrain on which Bolivians from across divides converged and negotiated their relationships with each other and with the state. The unique strength of this work lies in its use of unpublished internal military documents, especially court-martial records. These sources are further enriched by extensive use of congressional debates, official correspondence, reports of foreign military attachés, memoirs, and published oral histories. Through an analysis of these sources, this dissertation reveals not only elites’ visions of using the barracks to assimilate a diverse population but also the ways that soldiers and their families came to appropriate military service and invest it with new meanings on a personal, familial, communal, and national level. In the process, a conscript nation would eventually emerge that, while still hierarchical and divided by profound differences, was not merely a project of an assimilationist state but rather constructed in a dialectical process from both above and below.
Item Unknown Follow and Tweet: The Partisan Tilt and Political Ideology Preferences of Army Officers on Social Media(2021) Kim, Eric Tae HyoungThis study seeks to describe the political profiles of Army officers through data scraping the Twitter Application Programming Interface (API) and LinkedIn platforms. After creating and analyzing a database of 500 Army officers, the thesis finds that (1) the majority of Army officers on Twitter are not partisan and are not extreme in its political views; (2) most Army officers on Twitter appear to tilt to the Republican Party over the Democratic Party; (3) a slight majority of field grade officers on Twitter, specifically majors and lieutenant colonels, appear to tilt to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party; (4) politically interested officers express more politically liberal sentiments than conservative sentiments; (5) female officers appear to tilt to the Democratic Party and express more liberal sentiments compared to male officers.
These findings were the result of data scraping the number of Democratic or Republican politicians each officer follows and the political content of what each officer tweets to determine partisan tilt and ideological preferences. These findings demonstrate little evidence of a politicized and partisan Army officer corps. Army officers are also unaware of how much political and personal information they expose on social media platforms. Army organizations and officers may benefit from reconsidering their use of social media as the information they provide may degrade the leadership of their units and bolster our adversaries’ information operations capabilities.
Item Unknown Partnering with Employers to Build a Sustainable Operational Reserve in the United States Marine Corps(2011-05-01) Peterson, RobertPolicy Question This paper explores policy options available to the United States Marine Corps that strengthen its ability to sustain the Reserve Component as an operational force, by asking: How should the United States Marine Corps partner with civilian employers of reservists to implement an “operational” reserve that is sustainable during peacetime? Background The reserve component of the United States Marine Corps will continue to fill an operational role after the drawdown of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The concept behind the operational reserve envisions the deployment of reservists in a periodic and sustained fashion to support theater security engagements and cooperative security agreements. When put into practice, reservists will be required to regularly deploy overseas. Reservists are only part-time members of the military and most depend on a civilian employer for their livelihood. While businesses have generally been supportive of deployments during periods of conflict, it is unclear how they will view continued deployments, absent an existential crisis. Since reservists depend upon civilian employers for their livelihood, their support is necessary to sustain a peacetime operational reserve.Item Open Access Presidential Preparation: The Influence of Military Service on the Management Styles and Policy Decisions of U.S. Presidents(2012-08-20) Schulte, TimothyPeople are shaped by their backgrounds, and military service is arguably one of the most impactful experiences in which one can partake. Thirty-one of America's forty-three different presidents have served in the armed forces (twenty-one having seen combat). Like all other veterans, the service of these men impacted the rest of their lives — the decisions they made; the ways they interacted with others; and their views of America, its allies, and its enemies. Through critical analysis of the Public Papers of the Presidents, memos, letters, and personal reflections, along with the support of secondary sources, the impact of military service on the management styles and policy decisions of United States presidents becomes evident. The following American presidents are used to frame the analysis: - Dwight D. Eisenhower, a career soldier who rose to the top of the Army's hierarchy - John F. Kennedy, a Naval lieutenant who served valiantly for less than four years - William J. Clinton, an academic and career politician who actively avoided military service By exploring how the styles and decisions of these men are the product of their pre-presidential training, the unique effects of military service on those who served in the Oval Office is made clear. At a deeper level, distinguishing characteristics of military service — such as rank achieved, length of service, and combat experience — are addressed when relevant. The study identifies connections between the priorities, politics, and decision-making techniques of the presidents who were members of the nation's armed forces, and it compares these trends to the presidency of one who did not serve in the military.Item Open Access The Politics of Foreign Military Basing(2020) Brown, Joseph WForeign military bases are anomalies in a world of sovereign states. Why do major powers station their finite military forces to protect other countries and how does the distribution of these bases relate to a country’s grand strategy? Why do host-nations give up their sovereignty and allow foreign forces, capable of existential violence, to deploy within their borders? This dissertation takes a mixed method approach to each of these questions. For the first, I combine descriptive case studies relating the basing postures of five major powers and to their respective grand strategies with a quantitative analysis of the correlates of the US military basing network. To answer the second, I test the role of host-nation security conditions on US military access and then conduct an in-depth process tracing of US-Philippine basing relations. I find that foreign military bases are essential for super-power status and are an arena for great power competition. I conclude that the US foreign basing posture is strongly aligned with American trade relationships and against US enemies. For host-nation motivations, I conclude that security threats to the host-nation matter, but not uniformly. External threats have the greatest influence in increasing foreign military access, but low-intensity revolutionary threats actually tend to decrease a host-nation’s willingness to accommodate foreign forces.
Item Open Access The Sexual Economy of War: Regulation of Sexuality and the U.S. Army, 1898-1940(2012) Byers, John AndrewThe United States began to look beyond its continental boundaries and acquire a new, far-flung empire in the late nineteenth century. Two decades later, a national draft and mobilization program brought millions of men into the army when the United States intervened in the First World War. The U.S. Army also experienced several major changes in the first four decades of the twentieth century, including massive growth in the size of the army's forces, changes in the demographics of soldiers and a related effort "Americanize" the army, and increased professionalization and internal reform as the army attempted to improve its performance and increase its standing in the nation. Along with these changes came the efforts of influential Progressive social and moral reformers who sought to reform the U.S. Army and inculcate newly enlisted soldiers with middle-class values and behavior. Over time, army leaders and War Department officials found that they needed to address the perennial set of problems that soldiers' sexual relationships created for the army and its new long-term missions in Asia and Europe. While the U.S Army was initially interested in the sex lives of soldiers primarily for utilitarian reasons, it eventually assumed an institutional interest in cultivating particular kinds of masculine identities for soldiers.
This dissertation explores how the U.S. Army of the early twentieth century conceived of a host of issues related to sexuality: marriage and family life, prostitution and venereal disease, rape and sexual violence, same-sex sexuality, and conceptions of masculinity, among others. It examines how the army sought to regulate and shape the sexual behaviors of soldiers and the civilians with whom they came into sexual contact. The sexual cultures, practices, and behaviors of soldiers and their partners, along with the U.S. Army's efforts to regulate their sexuality, constitute what it describes as the "sexual economy of war." This dissertation argues that the U.S. Army first attempted to gain control of almost all aspects of soldiers' sexuality and then tried to carefully manage and regulate that sexual economy to best fulfill the army's missions. The army suppressed soldiers' sexual behaviors and expressions that it perceived as running counter to the good of the service or creating inefficiencies. It encouraged those aspects of sexual identity that the army believed benefited the service - for instance, hypermasculine demeanor and actions - eventually purging soldiers who engaged in same-sex sexual activities because these practices became linked with effeminacy and mental disorders and producing a set of militant masculinities among soldiers.
These issues are explored through five case studies of specific time periods and geographic areas: Fort Riley in Kansas from 1898-1940; the Philippines from 1898-1918; Camp Beauregard in Louisiana, 1917-1919; the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in France and the American Forces in Germany (AFG), 1917-1923; and Hawaii, 1909-1940. The army's new position in American society, especially after World War I, and its overseas operations opened up a host of new and different kinds of sexual politics, possibilities, and relationships for all those touched by the U.S. Army's regulation of sexuality.
Item Open Access Time Horizon and Fiscal Balance in Authoritarian Regimes(2014) Tsang, AaronIn this paper, I explore the implications of a dictator's time horizon on the fiscal balance of an authoritarian regime. A dictator with a longer time horizon will discount the future less, thus is more responsible in spending. Since a dictator's time horizon is not directly observable, I discuss the factors that would affect a dictator's time horizon and their influence on the fiscal balance of an authoritarian regime. Testing the results using OLS regressions, limited evidence is found to support my hypotheses. Possible reasons for the inconclusive results are explored and further improvement and future research possibilities are discussed.
Item Open Access Veterans and the Inter-Branch Tension Over Use of Force Decisions(2022) Barnes, JacobThe tension between Congress and the president over which branch controls the use of military force abroad has existed since America’s founding. Congress' constitutional powers over declarations of war and military funding constantly push against the president’s role as commander in chief of the American armed forces. Scholars today largely accept the president’s preeminent role in use of force decisions, but they still recognize that Congress influences this all-important policy realm. While many scholars have studied the various ways that Congress influences the use of military force abroad, very few have attempted to model the conditions under which that influence takes place. Even fewer include a logically relevant variable in their models despite scholarly evidence of its potential impact, the personal military experience of the most elite members of the executive and legislative branches. Using a list of uses of force compiled by the Congressional Research Service, this paper develops a unique measure of formal influence over use of force decisions and tests that influence against a simple difference in veteran proportions between Congress and the Cabinet to determine if veterans impact this inter-branch tension. Ultimately, this paper finds no statistically significant relationship between these two variables; indeed, when considering deliberate decisions to engage in combat operations, the president is just as likely to initiate force without Congress’ approval as he is with it.
Item Open Access Visualizing Zones of Occupation: Making Tangible the Violent Infrastructures in the Global Economy of Fear.(2017) Tauschinger-Dempsey, MichaelIn our capitalist world-economy, fear has become the primary source material for wealth production. Fear underwrites regimes of limited access and various systems of occupation. Occupation as a strategic operational paradigm extends into civilian life of the dark and unresolved colonial, imperial and totalitarian legacies. The domestic and international exclusion of certain populations is grounded in age-old, mostly violent self/other distinctions that have been re-activated from their latent state and again made into viral political discourse material. An array of complex infrastructures, which include legal architectures and the built environment, have acquired operational importance. Such infrastructures are characterized by a built-in violence designed to control, contain, and redirect the massive population flows created by the globally destabilizing and denaturalizing affects of contemporary capital. Access to opportunity, vital resources, and security have become the crucial equity that populations compete for in the early 21st century. The very nature of capital has been transformed into actual economies of fear. Whereas parts of the world’s population will have the chance to live a dignified life, other parts will be indefinitely deprived of such fortunes and left to perish. The end result of such economies is the death-world.
The analysis proposed by this dissertation blurs the disciplinary boundaries between art, cultural anthropology, sociology, military history, economics, political science, psychology, architecture, urban studies, philosophy. This transdisciplinary methodology originates from the understanding that an effective critique of global capital as the dominant economic world-system can no longer be explained via a single knowledge field or academic specialty. Moving a step beyond interdisciplinary studies to bona fide informational crossovers between textual and visual archives allows for a more encompassing and thick investigation. The multi-sited approach of this study examines the visual traces found in the built environment and the controversial social realities expressed in current global geopolitics. The resulting synthesis between theory and practice offers new pathways for citizen participation and for potential solutions to collective grievances and global risks. This transdisciplinary approach gives art a leading role in establishing a new sense of place in which people are empowered to articulate their ideas—a new place built from a rehabilitated understanding of trust in self, trust in collective institutions, and trust in reality and truth. Above all, this new place holds the promise of a future worth living and fighting for.