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21. Allies Yet Rivals: International Politics in 18th Century Europe.

Author:
Gavin Weins
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Alliances have, and likely always will have, a common feature of international diplomacy for a number of reasons. First, the primary objective of any government is defence and states will attempt to heighten security through international agreements. Second, military and economic power is unevenly distributed among states and weaker powers will unavoidably gravitate toward stronger powers in search of increased protection and commercial benefits. Third, an alliance can occasionally be the most effective means of tying the hands of a rival. Despite the variety of objectives that encourage the formation of alliances and the numerous forms that international agreements can assume, Marco Cesa argues that international relations theory has consistently recognized the existence of only one type of alliance: those agreements between states that are designed to confront an aggressive and dangerous “common enemy.” Above all, this viewpoint has one-dimensionally characterized alliances as unions of separate forces, policy-coordination organizations, or as takers of joint action against some third party. The “internal” dimensions of alliances, or the complex negotiations between allies, have consequently been overshadowed by the “external” dimensions, or the measures implemented by the allies to confront the threatening power. Nevertheless, states are almost always involved in ambiguous and clandestine diplomatic manoeuvres against not only enemies, but allies as well. Through an examination of this “darker side” of alliances, Cesa attempts to highlight the shortcomings of traditional international relations theory and, at the same time, offer an alternative framework for the examination of inter-ally relations.
Topic:
Economics and Government
Political Geography:
Europe

22. "In Considerable Doubt"? Canada and the Future of NATO

Author:
David G. Haglund
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
In so many ways, the attacks on New York and Washington of 11 September 2001 might have been expected to result in a diminution of NATO's importance to Canadian grand strategy. At the very least, the onset of what would be billed, alternatively, as the ‚Global War on Terror‛ (the GWOT) and the "Long War," heralded the beginning of a new strategic era, one in which Europe would become of even less strategic significance to Canada than during either the so-called "post-Cold War" era, which spanned the decade between the demise of the Soviet Union and 9/11, or the earlier, and long, Cold War era. And it followed that if the familiar cynosure of Canadian security and defence policy during that earlier era, namely Europe, was going to go on losing importance at an accelerated clip, then so too must the organization whose primary function had been, from its inception in 1949, the safeguarding of Western European security, and with it, of transatlantic security. That organization, of course, was and remains the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It is an organization that, for two decades now, has continued to defy expectations that it must soon fade into obscurity as a vehicle for advancing Canada's strategic interests.
Topic:
NATO and War
Political Geography:
New York, Europe, Washington, and Canada

23. "Military Doomsday Machine"? The Decisions for War 1914

Author:
Holger Herwig
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
On 28 June 1914 the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne was assassinated. The Austrian government alleged official Serbian involvement, issued an ultimatum, and, rejecting negotiation, began hostilities on 29 July with a bombardment of Belgrade. In a linked series of decisions, four other major European powers—Germany, Russia, France, and Britain—joined the struggle. Ultimately, twenty-nine nations, including Japan and the Ottoman Empire, would be involved. In all instances, the decision makers recognized the inherent hazards. They knew their choices could enlarge the conflict and significantly escalate the dimensions of the struggle.
Political Geography:
Britain, Russia, Europe, France, and Germany

24. Politics by other means: Canadian "Strategy" and the Italian Campaign, 1943

Author:
Christine Leppard
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
In 1939 Canada entered World War Two with a tiny military and obsolete kit. Four years later, Canada had raised a five division, two corps army that was defending the shores of Dover, although the immediate threat of German invasion had long since passed. Instead of joining the Allied war in North Africa the Canadian army remained, in the words of Army Commander Andrew McNaughton, the “dagger pointed at the heart of Berlin,” ready and waiting to go ashore in North-West Europe whenever the long-awaited invasion finally came. This posture pleased the Canadian public, who well versed in the laurels won by Arthur Currie and the Canadian Corps in the Great War, anticipated a similar role for the entire Canadian army in the liberation of Europe. Plus, Canada's expected role in the main invasion would bolster its esteem among its more powerful allies, Britain and the United States. Although Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King was speaking about Canadian public opinion when he told one of his cabinet minister's that “he laughed best who laughed last,” it surely also applied to Mackenzie King's view of what Canada's post-war role would be: one with a newly minted role for Canada as an independent ally, neither wholly British nor wholly American, standing independent and tall within the British Commonwealth and the United Nations.
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Canada, Germany, and United Nations

25. "Let them make SOUP:" The Essential Ingredients of Euro-American Grand Strategy and the Amerindian Conquest

Author:
Tony Mullis
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Grand strategy is a nebulous concept. It is virtually impossible to define the term in a meaningful and unequivocal manner. Some even doubt that it actually exists. Others acknowledge its existence, but avoid authoritative definitions because of the notion's elasticity. Grand strategy is somewhat akin to Carl von Clausewitz's idea of the culminating point. The concept makes sense in hindsight, but it is extremely difficult to identify when one is engaged in battle or in warfare. Grand strategy offers a similar dilemma. Because it consists of both physical and metaphysical components, grand strategy, much like Clausewitz's use of the paradoxical trinity to describe war, defies a simple, straightforward definition. Nonetheless, historians have a distinct advantage when trying to determine the components and forces that contributed to what can be described as grand strategy. This historical perspective is particularly useful when assessing sweeping paradigmatic changes involving multiple actors and dissimilar cultures over hundreds of years of interaction. The Roman and British Empires, for example, offer many opportunities to dissect the essential ingredients of imperial strategy. The persistent conflict between Amerindians and European and later American peoples provides another opportunity to break down the critical parts of a grand strategy. From first contact in the late fifteenth century to the tragedy of Wounded Knee in 1890, it is possible to distinguish the key elements of a grand strategy that guided Europeans and Americans, either consciously or subconsciously, in their conquest of the western hemisphere.
Political Geography:
Europe

26. The Legacy of the French Revolutionary Wars: The Nation-in-Arms in French Republican Memory

Author:
Matt Bucholtz
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Relying upon thousands of newly raised conscripts to augment the remaining professionals from the old monarchial army, Generals Kellermann and Dumouriez scored a decisive victory over the Duke of Brunswick and the forces of Prussia at the Battle of Valmy and thereby firmly established the foundation for the legacy of the volunteers of Year II and the military abilities of French citizen-soldiers. French victory at Valmy became the rationale for conscription laws across Europe in the following decades and served as the basis for a closer relationship between the military and society. Alan Forrest's book, The Legacy of the French Revolutionary Wars: The Nation-in-Arms in French Republican Memory, masterfully traces the evolution of the myths of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era through over 150 years of French and European military and political development. It stands as a concise single volume investigation of the nineteenth and twentieth century French political landscape and military affairs, as well as the ever-contested field of civil-military relations, expressed through a work centred on memory and myth.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Europe, France, and Prussia

27. Occupation Duty In The Dysfunctional Coalition: The Italian Second Army And Its Allies In The Balkans, 1941–43

Author:
Nicolas Gladstone Virtue
Publication Date:
10-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
The Axis in the Second World War has been dubbed a "dysfunctional coalition." Its members failed to develop unified political objectives, joint planning, or a coherent grand strategy for the conduct of the war. As Richard DiNardo demonstrates, the lion's share of the blame must fall on Germany's shoulders; Hitler's ideological ambitions left little room for others, the Germans balked at supplying their allies with much-needed technology, and German liaison officers frequently came across as arrogant. While historical studies of the Axis coalition tend to focus on strategy and frontline operations, the Axis partners also came into contact with one another in occupied territories throughout Europe. Here, well away from the main fighting, coalition relations were even worse.
Political Geography:
Europe, Germany, and Italy

28. A neglected story: German prisoners of war in Italy (1945-1947)

Author:
Federico Niglia
Publication Date:
10-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
The story of German military prisoners in the hands of the Allies at the end of the Second World War is progressively shifting out of living memory and becoming an interesting topic for both scholars and ordinary readers. For years, the experiences of German prisoners have been neglected by historians; rarely has it even been possible to discuss in a dispassionate way the difficult conditions in which the prisoners lived. The reason for this neglect is self-evident: the suffering of the Germans in the aftermath of their surrender could not be compared to the suffering of Germany's victims. Since the collapse of the Berlin wall, a barrier that in some ways symbolised the price that Germany had to pay to Europe for its guilt in the war, the self-perception of the German people has started changing. A new generation that has no memory of the war and Nazism has helped to move beyond the crippling guilt that haunted Germany until the 1980s. Beginning in the 1990s, a benign revival of German national pride occurred, affecting the historical memory of the country. The literary elite that once confined itself to harsh censure of the guilt and the wickedness of its own people, began also to tackle once taboo subjects, such as the suffering of German civilians during the Second World War; the romance of Günter Grass Im Krebsgang is, for example, extremely significant.
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

29. The Second War in Every Respect: Australian memory and the Second World War

Author:
Joan Beaumont
Publication Date:
10-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
The Second World War stands across the 20th century like a colossus. Its death toll, geographical spread, social dislocation and genocidal slaughter were unprecedented. It was literally a world war, devastating Europe, China and Japan, triggering massive movements of population, and unleashing forces of nationalism in Asia and Africa that presaged the end of European colonialism. The international order was changed irrevocably, most notably in the rise of the two superpowers and the decline of Great Britain.
Political Geography:
Britain, Africa, Japan, China, Europe, and Asia

30. The Battle of Tannenberg in 1410: Strategic Interests and Tactical Implementation

Author:
LTC (GS) Dr. Martin Hofbauer
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
The Teutonic Order dates back to the time of the Third Crusade (1189-1192). Around 1190, during the siege of Acre in the Holy Land an order of nurses was founded. This order was converted in 1198 into an order of knights, the so-called Teutonic Order. It was confirmed a year later by Pope Innocent III. The Order acquired its first properties in Palestine, Armenia and Cyprus, and from 1200 on also in Germany. Eventually it spread over large parts of Europe. The competition with older orders of knights in the Kingdom of Jerusalem as well as the failed crusades prompted the order to look for a new field of activity.
Political Geography:
Europe, Lithuania, Palestine, Germany, Armenia, and Cyprus