Armed Forces & Society: An Interdisciplinary Journal articles from December 1995

Armed Forces & Society: An Interdisciplinary Journal archives from December 1995

Saddam surprises the United States: learning from "the revolution of August 2." (Saddam Hussein)
December 22, 1995... The military aspects of the campaign to oust Iraq from Kuwait have dominated the discussion of the Gulf War.(1) Secondary skirmishes have been fought over whether allied forces should have liberated Baghdad with the help of the Kurds and...

Peacekeeping doctrine and conflict resolution techniques.
December 22, 1995... It is time to take a long term view of conflict management, recognize the serious limitations of military intervention, and begin work to improve and develop other more viable options.(1) This article describes the evolving contributions of...

Proliferation and peace: an agnostic view.
December 22, 1995... At the moment, three alternate perspectives guide studies of the relationship between nuclear weapons and international stability. Choosing among these approaches is not merely an intellectual exercise. The choice has serious implications for...

Military service and racial attitudes of white veterans.
December 22, 1995... The U.S. military, unlike civilian America, has enjoyed relatively peaceful and harmonious working relations among its racial and ethnic groups since the late 1970s. This is evidenced in the relative lack of openly expressed racial hostility...

Soldiers and marines at Chosin Reservoir: criteria for assignment to combat command.
December 22, 1995... The U.S. Army is headed for a strength of 500,000 soldiers. The last time it approached 500,000, in 1948-1950, it did not expect to go into combat. When it had to fight in Korea in 1950 it initially suffered repeated defeats and heavy...

Science and the magic eye: innovations in the selection of Canadian Army officers, 1939-1945.
December 22, 1995... A Canadian army war diary contained the following entry for the fall of 1942. "The rapid expansion of the Canadian Army has made the discovery of suitable officer material, elimination of manpower wastage and proper selection of officers...

The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World.
December 22, 1995... The editors have done an outstanding job of presenting a revision of a series of public lectures delivered in the fall 1991 semester at Yale University. They state in the preface that the purpose of the book is "... to examine both formal...

Landmines: A Deadly Legacy.
December 22, 1995... Attempts to control, and even ban, conventional weapons are not new. The dum-dum bullet was outlawed at the end of the last century. While not a new idea, the control of conventional weapons - particularly those that have been in active use for...

Warrior Dreams: Violence and Manhood in Post-Vietnam America.
December 22, 1995... The violent nature of American society is an increasingly frequent topic of conversation. From police precincts to school PTA meetings, from board rooms to university sociology classes, from the gymnasium to the supermarket, people are troubled...

Ragged War: The Story of Unconventional and Counter-Revolutionary Warfare.
December 22, 1995... With the advent of the Reagan administration, senior policy makers and officials rediscovered the importance of unconventional warfare as they engaged in surrogate warfare against the Soviet Union. With the dissolution of the former Soviet...

Gays and Lesbians in the Military: Issues, Concerns, and Contrasts.
December 22, 1995... The U.S. military's ban on homosexuals has been the subject of a heated, emotionally charged debate since about 1988. That was the year the Defense Personnel Security Research and Education Center completed a study (co-authored by Ted Sarbin,...

Women in the Military.
December 22, 1995... No social issue has been more contentious in the contemporary armed forces of the United States than the role of women. Even the homosexual controversy does not compare because it is (as of this writing) still virtually impossible for an open...

Buying for Armageddon: Business, Society, and Military Spending Since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
December 22, 1995... In his examination of defense spending from 1962-1986, John Boies offers a useful overview of several sociological theories of defense spending, a clear explanation of his methods and analyses, and a straightforward discussion of the findings....

Certain Victory: The U.S. Army in the Gulf War.
December 22, 1995... This book was first published as an official document by the U.S. Government Printing Office. The GPO volume sold for $113.00. For this reason alone - and it is not the only one - military historians and defense analysts, in and out of uniform,...

War, Chaos, and History.
December 22, 1995... This is an important book for historians, and not only military historians. Although it focuses on emerging research in chaos-complexity-nonlinearity and the study of war, its implications for historical research extend to virtually every...

Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance.
December 22, 1995... In our local school, third-grade social studies begins with the distinction between fact and opinion. Students learn that facts are true statements (e.g., "There are fifty states" is a fact), while it is impossible to assess the truth of...