{"title":"Reflecting on America’s Withdrawal from Afghanistan: The View From Southeast Asia","authors":"Terence Lee","doi":"10.1177/0095327x221102475","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327x221102475","url":null,"abstract":"This essay reflects on the broad contours of the war in Afghanistan from Southeast Asia’s perspective. While the United States’ withdrawal from Kabul was calamitous, the pessimism about America’s role in Southeast Asia has been overstated. The United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan was largely inconsequential for the region. Southeast Asian states deftly mixed their support for America’s campaign in Afghanistan and the broader war on terror without being seen as too sympathetic, including, in some instances, condemnation of America’s attacks on Islam. Regional governments balanced their domestic political interests with their foreign policy objectives. The abrupt Afghan withdrawal may instead have positive outcomes, as the United States boosted its courtship with countries of Southeast Asia and the broader Indo-Pacific region through new security arrangements such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) and the Australian, U.K., and U.S. trilateral pact (AUKUS).","PeriodicalId":47332,"journal":{"name":"Armed Forces & Society","volume":"25 1","pages":"1013 - 1026"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89747238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"American Civil–Military Relations and Presidential Power of Removal","authors":"Neil Snyder","doi":"10.1177/0095327X221100270","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X221100270","url":null,"abstract":"Under what conditions are presidents more likely to remove senior defense officials from office? Using a novel data set of all senior U.S. defense officials, both civilian and uniformed military from 1947 to 2021, this article explores whether anticipated support in Congress, partisan factors, or institutional protections for the military affect observed patterns of removal for defense officials. The results suggest that presidents are more likely to remove their own appointees (or their co-partisans’ appointees), but provide little evidence that presidents premise removal on anticipated partisan support for a replacement nominee in Congress. Moreover, the results suggest that military officials may have some insulation from politicization by strong forms of removal, though that protection may weaken an important aspect of civilian control of the military, the threat of punishment by removal, raising profound questions for how civilian control endures.","PeriodicalId":47332,"journal":{"name":"Armed Forces & Society","volume":"11 1","pages":"559 - 592"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90356189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Elizabeth Savarese, Jessica Collazo, Wyatt R. Evans, Kimberly F Balsam
{"title":"LGB Service Members’ Relationship Status, Satisfaction, and Well-Being: A Brief Report","authors":"Elizabeth Savarese, Jessica Collazo, Wyatt R. Evans, Kimberly F Balsam","doi":"10.1177/0095327X221098455","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X221098455","url":null,"abstract":"Recently, the legal landscape for sexual minorities in the United States has changed dramatically, prompting empirical research on lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) couples and LGB service members. This study examined the relationship characteristics and mental health of LGB service members in couple relationships and compared partnered and single LGB service members. A total of 238 LGB service members completed an anonymous survey, including questions about demographics, identity, military experiences, and mental health symptoms. Results of descriptive and exploratory analyses revealed no significant differences in mental health between partnered and single participants. However, partnered individuals reported higher outness and lower internalized homophobia compared with their single counterparts. Analyses also revealed negative associations between relationship satisfaction and mental health symptoms among partnered participants. Among the first to examine LGB service members’ romantic relationships, the results of this study have important clinical and policy implications and inform next steps in researching this population.","PeriodicalId":47332,"journal":{"name":"Armed Forces & Society","volume":"1 1","pages":"831 - 845"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83062409","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Why Did the Taliban Win?","authors":"A. King","doi":"10.1177/0095327X221096702","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X221096702","url":null,"abstract":"On October 7, 2001, 3 weeks after 9/11, U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan; bombers struck Taliban headquarters and Al Qaeda training sites. By early December, the Taliban and Al Qaeda have been defeated and had fled. However, a war that began so successfully in 2001, eventually ended ignominiously on August 30, 2021, almost exactly 20 years later, with a U.S. withdrawal and a total Taliban victory. The speed of the Taliban’s triumph shocked everyone. The entire campaign, costing US$2.3 trillion and 2,488 U.S. lives, had failed—utterly. The United States had lost its longest-ever war. How is it possible to explain a defeat of that magnitude? This article seeks to address this question. Although numerous factors played a role, this article identifies three principal factors: the environment, the local politics, and the Taliban. Afghanistan is a very difficult place to conduct large-scale military operations. The West never came to terms with the local politics and consequently undermined their own efforts. Finally, although they were not militarily sophisticated, the Taliban were politically astute and very resilient.","PeriodicalId":47332,"journal":{"name":"Armed Forces & Society","volume":"329 1","pages":"923 - 938"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77610330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Erika L. King, Hla Myint, Tawney R. Gardner, Morgan R. Mitchell, Kristin A. Beitz
{"title":"Gender Disparities in Active Duty Air Force Parents’ Childcare Access: Pre-Pandemic Costs, Utilization, and Career Impacts","authors":"Erika L. King, Hla Myint, Tawney R. Gardner, Morgan R. Mitchell, Kristin A. Beitz","doi":"10.1177/0095327X221094646","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X221094646","url":null,"abstract":"Past reports indicate that enduring Department of Defense (DoD) childcare shortfalls may disproportionately affect women, but details regarding gender effects are unknown. This exploratory study sought to uncover the military childcare system’s pre-pandemic state by analyzing two Air Force (AF) survey datasets—the 2017 AF Community Feedback Tool and 2020 AF Childcare Survey—to examine gender gaps in active duty AF parents’ childcare access, cost and utilization, and perceptions of childcare impacts on career progression and retention. Results reveal that women—particularly those in the lowest ranks with less time on station—report more difficulties accessing childcare than male counterparts. Furthermore, fathers paid nothing for childcare and relied on spouses for childcare at higher rates, while mothers paid for care, relied on DoD childcare programs, were on DoD waitlists, reported childcare-related career impacts, and reported childcare affected their retention decisions at higher rates. Policy recommendations to improve childcare across the force are discussed.","PeriodicalId":47332,"journal":{"name":"Armed Forces & Society","volume":"1 1","pages":"776 - 797"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90357607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Veterans Affairs Hospital Productivity Change and the Policy Implications: A Research Note","authors":"D. Oh, A. Han, Keon-Hyung Lee","doi":"10.1177/0095327X221094647","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X221094647","url":null,"abstract":"As a reaction to the Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital scandal in 2014, the Veterans Choice Act of 2014 was enacted to enhance veterans’ access to health care. This study evaluated the productivity change of a panel of 102 VA hospitals from 2011 through 2019 to examine how the Act influenced the overall VA hospital productivity. The results revealed that the overall productivity of VA hospitals declined over the period and VA hospitals were not operating at an optimal scale to produce maximum outputs due to a decrease in the number of veteran patients after the Act was implemented. In addition, the technical change value less than 1 implies that VA hospitals produced fewer outputs with the given input resources over the period due to lagged adoption of innovative health care technology.","PeriodicalId":47332,"journal":{"name":"Armed Forces & Society","volume":"25 1","pages":"866 - 879"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83260375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Cult of the Irrelevant or Political Narrative?","authors":"R. Schiff","doi":"10.1177/0095327X221089336","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X221089336","url":null,"abstract":"This commentary discusses Michael Desch’s book The Cult of the Irrelevant: The Waning Influence of Social Science on National Security. Desch offers a respectable and important overview of the history of national security within the social sciences from World War I through current times. He focuses on the gradual irrelevancy of political science and particularly the field of international security. Desch, however, neglects the recent university activism and political narratives infusing academic writings and classroom discussions. This review argues that what contributes to the irrelevancy of social science and particularly national security is the new “cult” itself: demands placed on academia and students to become political activists, and not social scientists nor theorists who contribute rigorous academic research affecting domestic and foreign policy. It is the political advocacy narrative itself, embraced by university cultures, that pushes social science and the study of national security down the path of irrelevancy.","PeriodicalId":47332,"journal":{"name":"Armed Forces & Society","volume":"69 1","pages":"41 - 47"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89343304","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"State-Building 101: Hard Lessons From Afghanistan","authors":"Michael Miklaucic","doi":"10.1177/0095327X221088873","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X221088873","url":null,"abstract":"The American war in Afghanistan was originally an act of retaliation and retribution. Over time it assumed the moral burden of state-building. The state-building effort however was undermined by inadequate planning, inadequate knowledge, and inadequate understanding of the complexity and difficulty of the state-building process. Ultimately, the Afghanistan state-building effort failed. The commentary assumes the premise that even in an era of great power competition, the West cannot escape the challenge of state-building as fragile and failing states will continue to threaten global security. The commentary suggests a set of considerations for those responsible for the inevitable state-building challenges of the future.","PeriodicalId":47332,"journal":{"name":"Armed Forces & Society","volume":"38 1","pages":"982 - 988"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80940924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Afghanistan Influenced the Content of Armed Forces & Society: An Editor’s Reflection","authors":"P. Shields","doi":"10.1177/0095327X221088024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X221088024","url":null,"abstract":"This commentary examines the influence of the Afghanistan war on the content of Armed Forces & Society. My 20-year tenure as editor of Armed Forces & Society overlaps completely with the war. Using the lenses of the postmodern or post-Cold War military, I reflect on how the articles of this journal were influenced by the war. The postmodern military relies more heavily on volunteers, is more likely to engage in unconventional missions, and more likely to use multinational forces. I found an increase in articles devoted to reserve forces and contractors. In addition, many articles investigated the unique management challenges of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The multiple deployments and brutal nature of the war led to a large increase in health/mental health articles and also contributed to changes in the scope of the military family and veterans’ literature. The limited civil–military relations literature was affected indirectly.","PeriodicalId":47332,"journal":{"name":"Armed Forces & Society","volume":"110 1","pages":"893 - 912"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79148397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"My Commander in Chief is Black! The Mental Health Significance of Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential Election for Military Veterans","authors":"Quintin Gorman, Tony N. Brown, Julian Culver","doi":"10.1177/0095327X221082211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X221082211","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigated the mental health significance of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election for military veterans. Many believed his election signaled a progressive shift in race relations and crucial challenge to White supremacy. Furthermore, many argued his election generated hope, especially among Blacks. We therefore hypothesized Black and Hispanic veterans would experience improved mental health after installment of the nation’s first Black commander in chief. We also hypothesized White veterans would experience no change in their mental health. With nationally representative survey data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), we tested these hypotheses by predicting poor mental health days self-identified Black, Hispanic, and White veterans experienced preelection and postelection in fall 2008. Net of established social determinants of health, we estimated Black and Hispanic veterans, respectively, experienced approximately 2.01 and 2.17 fewer poor mental health days postelection, whereas White veterans experienced no significant postelection change. Sensitivity analyses seemed to corroborate these findings.","PeriodicalId":47332,"journal":{"name":"Armed Forces & Society","volume":"76 1","pages":"846 - 865"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80180878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}