“Nothing Short of Murder”: How Leaders Can Diminish Military Capacities

IF 2.2 2区社会学 Q1 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Security Studies Pub Date : 2022-03-15 DOI:10.1080/09636412.2022.2072235

S. Piccolo

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract This article contends that civilian leaders can adversely affect military capacity in the realm of technology. I argue that if civilian leaders have personal biases that blind them to military effectiveness, and if they have the power to make unilateral procurement decisions, then military capacity will be hampered. With a main plausibility probe of Canada’s disastrous World War I Ross rifle, I suggest that Minister of Militia Sam Hughes ensured that Canadians fought with the gun 18 months after its first wartime failures, failures so egregious that one officer said it was “nothing short of murder” to send soldiers into battle with it. I assess two shadow cases on rifle development and procurement involving Union war secretary Simon Cameron and British war secretary Hugh Arnold-Foster, both of which support my theory. I suggest that civilian control over specific military technologies is not desirable, and that civilian control of militaries in general may be strengthened by limiting control of these means of war.

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《简直就是谋杀》:领导人如何削弱军事能力

摘要本文认为，文职领导人可以在技术领域对军事能力产生不利影响。我认为，如果文职领导人有个人偏见，使他们看不到军事效能，如果他们有权单方面作出采购决定，那么军事能力就会受到阻碍。我对加拿大在一战中灾难性的罗斯步枪进行了主要的合理性调查，我建议民兵部长萨姆·休斯(Sam Hughes)确保加拿大人在第一次战争失败18个月后使用这种枪，这种枪的失败是如此令人震惊，以至于一名军官说，把士兵派上战场“无异于谋杀”。我评估了两个关于步枪开发和采购的影子案例，涉及联邦战争大臣西蒙•卡梅伦(Simon Cameron)和英国战争大臣休•阿诺德-福斯特(Hugh Arnold-Foster)，两者都支持我的理论。我认为文官对特定军事技术的控制是不可取的，文官对军队的控制可以通过限制对这些战争手段的控制来加强。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Security Studies INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS-

CiteScore

2.70

自引率

16.70%

发文量

期刊介绍： Security Studies publishes innovative scholarly manuscripts that make a significant contribution – whether theoretical, empirical, or both – to our understanding of international security. Studies that do not emphasize the causes and consequences of war or the sources and conditions of peace fall outside the journal’s domain. Security Studies features articles that develop, test, and debate theories of international security – that is, articles that address an important research question, display innovation in research, contribute in a novel way to a body of knowledge, and (as appropriate) demonstrate theoretical development with state-of-the art use of appropriate methodological tools. While we encourage authors to discuss the policy implications of their work, articles that are primarily policy-oriented do not fit the journal’s mission. The journal publishes articles that challenge the conventional wisdom in the area of international security studies. Security Studies includes a wide range of topics ranging from nuclear proliferation and deterrence, civil-military relations, strategic culture, ethnic conflicts and their resolution, epidemics and national security, democracy and foreign-policy decision making, developments in qualitative and multi-method research, and the future of security studies.