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Begin New Search Topic Crisis Management Journal Journal of Military and Strategic Studies

1. “Open for Summer:” The Political Failure of Alberta’s COVID-19 Response

Author:
Duane Bratt
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
This paper assesses the response by the Alberta government. This case was chosen because Alberta, outside of the first wave, has been hit harder from a per capita basis (and sometimes in absolute terms) by COVID-19 than other provinces. Alberta, despite a good performance in the first wave, has been harder hit in terms of cases, hospitalizations, those in intensive care, and deaths than other provinces (especially the disastrous fourth wave). This paper argues that this performance can be traced to two inter-related factors: 1) the ideology of Premier Jason Kenney (and many of his UCP MLAs, cabinet ministers, and political staffers) and 2) the desire of Kenney to keep the UCP united and himself as leader. Ultimately then, it is politics that best explains why Alberta, despite its wealth and education levels, has done worse responding to the health aspects of COVID-19.
Topic:
Crisis Management, Public Health, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Canada, North America, and Alberta

2. The Realm of More or Less: Critical Infrastructure and Public Order Factors for Pandemic Strategy

Author:
William McAuley
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
The critical infrastructure and public order dimensions of pandemic response provide subplots to the ends-ways-means calculations made by Alberta’s policymakers to supress and mitigate COVID-19. Commencing from a strategic studies perspective, key drivers of pandemic decision making that encroaching on the security sphere are explored. Security realm considerations are found to be interwoven three broad undertones, précised as a preappointed evidence problem, a Cynefin circumstance, and a collective-to-individual cognitive arc. Rather than being a report card on pandemic response strategies, sensitivity to the range and complexity of factors that decision-makers were forced to contend with is projected towards the discovery of some strategic principles of pandemic response. Paramount among these is an appreciation for understanding as being something beyond mere situational awareness. This is recognition of a particular knowledge and application problem that parallels military strategic theory and is heavily reliant on insight and foresight as foundations for complex decision making. Potential areas of focus for further strategic studies inquiry are presented, with a view to addressing indicators of concern relevant to longer-term pandemic recovery.
Topic:
Crisis Management, COVID-19, Critical Infrastructure, and Public Order
Political Geography:
Canada and North America

3. From the Great Influenza to COVID-19: Epidemics of Scale through a Historical Lens

Author:
Fedir Razumenko
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
COVID-19 has galvanized changes in the economy of patient-doctor relationships and technological interfaces across the healthcare system. A rapid adoption of technologies that were previously slow to take hold opened more diverse and accessible spaces for care. At the same time, some persistent barriers in pivoting to scientific-medical advances in managing the pandemic revealed stark inequities in both access to care and exposure to risk. Political and organizational responses to the crisis often excluded the perspectives of vulnerable groups bearing more burdens than others. Some patients and healthcare providers suffered in isolation, however these experiences have escaped public attention due to the fragmented Canadian health information infrastructure. The social meanings of and collective responses to the pandemic nationally are rooted in historical developments. Comparative analyses of epidemic crises along with their consequences have the potential to inform our critical evaluations of problem-solving approaches and policymaking when what we do not know about the issue exceeds what we know. This article demonstrates that historical analysis serves an important role in examining the complex interaction of social and biological forces that constitute epidemic disease. By linking the past and present of epidemic crises we can better understand how social and scientific-medical responses to epidemics shift following the epidemic experience. To be forewarned is to be forearmed acquires a definite meaning as historical contexts set a background for assessing new situations. The COVID-19 pandemic has not emerged out of thin air, so tracing its origin and development is simultaneously a scientific and an historical undertaking.
Topic:
Crisis Management, Public Health, Pandemic, COVID-19, and Epidemic
Political Geography:
Canada, North America, and Global Focus

4. The short road from the COVID-19 pandemic to the information warfare pandemic

Author:
Vasile Popescu and Cristi Ichimescu
Publication Date:
10-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
We have reached the level where we are already talking about an “infodemia” related to COVID-19. Not only the virus is spreading around the world, but also an increasing amount of information, real information warfare. The COVID-19 pandemic and the medical crisis that came with it are an opportunity for the world's major players already waging a wider information warfare, a campaign to show how well they manage the situation in their own states, and how they help globally. From here come the great failures, the great defeats and losses of those who tried to fish in troubled waters and to capitalize politically and as an image a crisis where there is extreme pain, many sick and where no one swallows this type of behavior, under any circumstances. In this respect, the present study represents a systemic and multidisciplinary research of the COVID-19 pandemic at different levels such as the political, economic, psychosocial, medical and information warfare one. Eventually, this research came up with an integrated strategic communication proposal which raises the attention regarding a more judicious involvement of the competent institutions of each EU country in the “information warfare” and, implicitly, in the related public communication.
Topic:
Crisis Management, COVID-19, Disinformation, and Information Warfare
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. Military Operations Planning and Goal-management: A Philosophical Perspective, Thoughts on how decision theory and ethics can help improve military goal-management

Author:
Robert Frisk and Linda Johansson
Publication Date:
05-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
This paper discusses and reviews some previous research concerning what we denote as ‘goal-management’, in other words how to set, apply and evaluate goals when conducting military operations planning. We aim to explain and answer the following question: In what way could a review of previous philosophical thoughts on goal-management, decision theory and ethics improve contemporary military operations planning concerning goal-management? We suggest a guideline (a planning tool) for how to conduct goal-management when planning military operations and exemplify our guideline with two fictive examples concerning the development of an Operational advice and Appreciation of Rules of Engagement. The paper concludes that the application of decision theory and ethics, i.e. important parts of philosophy, can contribute to military operations planning by focusing on three perspectives: an axiomatic, an ethical and a deliberative perspective.
Topic:
Military Affairs, Ethics, and Crisis Management
Political Geography:
Global Focus