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| 1 |
ID:
114866
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The prevailing explanation of the institutionalization of the principles of war is misleading. Although the introduction of the principles into Western doctrine coincided with total war and the need to train unprecedented numbers of soldiers and junior officers in tactics, the fact that the principles disappeared from doctrines immediately prior to and during the Second World War suggests that they were not institutionalized to meet an increased need to educate the military. Instead, we test two other explanations: one drawing on the principles' military effectiveness and one drawing upon the principles' explanatory power. We find that neither one of these hypotheses stand. Instead, we conclude by elaborating on how the institutionalization of the principles of war can be made understandable using non-rationalist frameworks, in particular the growth of a particular kind of identity of staff officers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. According to this framework, the two world wars interrupted-rather than promoted-the institutionalization of the principles, since the wars with their large death tolls and mass recruitment increased the difficulties of creating a separate and unique identity for the burgeoning corps of staff officers.
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| 2 |
ID:
116652
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Since the beginning of the Syrian crisis, there have been intermittent hopes that Moscow might play a constructive diplomatic role in resolving it. But the focus on Russia has been deeply misleading. Russia, for reasons that have little to do with Syria itself, was never going to be part of the solution to the crisis - at least on terms that the West and the Syrian opposition could accept. Further, Russia's centrality to international diplomacy on this issue and its seeming obstinacy expose deep flaws in post-Cold War Western doctrine on international intervention. Russia's centrality when it comes to Syria is more a function of those flaws than anything else.
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