John McCain and Lindsey Graham calling to send more troops to Afghanistan

By: Zhanara Omarova

American politicians John McCain and Lindsey Graham requested Trump to send more soldiers to Afghanistan. They claim that issue with Afghanistan should not receive less attention than before. However, they do not provide actual arguments. They claim that US should establish more troops there in order to protect US from terrorist attacks so that 9/11 event will not happen again but what they do not include in their report is that most of Al-Qaeda  people were killed  since 2001 and currently there is new generation of young people who even do not know what 9/11 event was. Moreover, there are other countries where terrorists can settle down. For example Iraq, Yemen and Libiya countries which suffered a lot from US intervention.

Desch in his book argues that when  there is a high level of external threat and low level of internal threat against a state, then there is the strongest civilian control. Terrorism is the most dangerous type of external threat which US has and as US does not face strong internal threats it should exercise the strongest civilian control over the military - which it does. However, here the question US will use their military power in order to defend their national interests. Will US continue deployment of soldiers to Afghanistan or it will choose another destination?


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Reference:
Desch, M. (2001). Civilian Control of the Military: The Changing Security Environment. Johns Hopkins University Press.

US military uses violent video games in order to train military soldiers.

Author: Zhanara Omarova

After the events of 9/11 violent video games where people are supposed to kill terrorists have became popular types of video games and they are even used in the military training. In order to understand overall opinion regarding these violent video games 15 military soldiers were interviewed. According to these soldiers, video games are very useful in terms of understanding general situation and creation of tactics and strategy. However, there is a question of whether this type of training is really useful. Normal theory of civil military relations is based on Huntington’ solution to civil military problematique how to rise military which provides security and obey civil (Cohen and Owens). According to Huntington this is only possible by objective control where military is professionalized and one of the main purposes of a professional officer is management of violence.  However, in video games there are a lot of violence and if someone dies in video games no one is responsible for that. In video games soldiers do not care if innocent civilians or their peers die. So this type of training according to Romananiuk and Burgers may teach soldiers behave irresponsibly and violently which is not management. Moreover, the author emphasizes that soldiers cannot apply the same tactics that soldiers use in video games in real life because real life is different and in real life soldiers and officers are responsible not for only their own lives but they are responsible for real lives of their peers. There are a lot of video games which do not only simulate real combat but also help to teach how to promote ideas of democracy, pro-Western and pro-democratic societies.  However, the journalist  Shaban  claims  that this is just “brainwashing” and has nothing to do with training (Shaban,2013).

References.

Romaniuk, S. and Burgers, T. (2017). How the U.S. military is using ‘violent, chaotic, beautiful’ video games to train soldiers. [online] Salon. Available at: http://www.salon.com/2017/03/11/how-the-us-military-is-using-violent-chaotic-beautiful-video-games-to-train-soldier/ [Accessed 12 Mar. 2017].

Hutington, S. The Soldier and The State https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6ZjdzIrVXhQZk80b3JEMEQyWjA/view

Owens, T. US Civil Military Relations after 9/11

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6ZjdzIrVXhQRmk1ekNsU2lqNFk/view

Politicization of Military by Social media and Trump’s politics

Author: Daniyar Tengelbay

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/pentagon-survey-twitter-facebook-military-politicization-235378

http://taskandpurpose.com/opinion-sorry-politico-but-social-media-and-trump-arent-responsible-for-politicizing-the-troops/

According to Huntington (1991), objective control of the military is better than subjective one. He highlights that it includes three main points: expertise, corporateness and responsibility. The aim of the military is to manage violence and serve the general society. And he argues that for achieving these aims professionalism of the military and objective civilian control over it are necessary. Military should be an autonomous institution that does not interfere into the politics, while civilians do not interfere into the military affairs. There should be a proper professional division of duties. One of the significant qualities of the military is political neutrality. People accept them as nonpartisan; and they are the most respectful institution. The author of the article, Bryan Bender (2017), argues that as a military officer person should be fully suspended from politics. While, as a person out of military he has full rights to represent election official, participate in political club, share his views, but not to be a part of political party.

            Bender’s main concern is the role of social media in recent civil-military relations. The rules that separate military from politics are old and social media was not concerned during that time. According to these rules a uniform officer cannot participate in any political actions, but there is nothing about social media in those rules. Meanwhile, sharing and reposting political posts or news can mean active participation in promoting certain political views and ideas. According to the poll, soldiers and officers actively practice such political participation. This leads to loss of the value of military professionalism. Military is high rated institution by public. However, if such “online” political participation will continue, military will lose both its value and public support. The idea of objective control will not matter anymore.  

            Moreover, author says that Trump’s embraces of military and use of retired military generals on his side will also diminish the brand of US military as nonpartisan and professional institution. He provides a link between those two things - the survey and Trump’s election. However, according to “Task and purpose” (2017), a site that analyzes veterans and military affairs, the survey was conducted in 2015, long before Trump’s election. They also argue that “Politico” is ironizing that military was fully out of politics and just started to be involved. It could be said that both are right to some extent. Social media is really a tool that affects people and helps to promote certain ideology or views and it is increasing the political involvement not only of military, but of general public as well. However, as “Task and Purpose” says, military was not fully out of politics as in administration of presidents there have always been retired officers and generals. This does not mean neither that military is politicized, nor that it fully out of politics. It keeps being professional prior of various changes in politics of the state. Therefore, it is wrong to say that Trump is politicizing the military, while the increasing role of social media is clear.

Women in Combat

Author: Dinara Khalelova



According to Kamarck (2016), in the whole history of the military, except Israel, only two countries opened all combat positions for women. First country was Russia, during the World War II in Russia all positions of the military were able for women. The United States is the second country, where in 2015 December 3, Ashton Carter, Secretary of Defense ordered to open all combat positions for women (Kamarck, 2016).  However, this issue raised a debate over women in combat. Obviously, the number of supporters is lower than opponents of allowing women being in combat.  For example, Davis in the survey he conducted, find out that male officers (in the US) were less supportive of women in combat (cited in Feaver and Kohn, 2001). Therefore, this short post will consider both benefits and limitations of women serving in combat.

The main argument of opponents is the lack of strength in women. According to Ladenson (1994), in 1989 the U.S troops hold an operation of invading Panama. He claims that Pentagon reported that 600 out of 26 000 troops were women, but finally none of them was killed. Basically, women are physically incapable handling military responsibilities. However, if women could join military, it increases the number of military of the state. Moreover, it is not only increases the number of officers, but also increases effectiveness.

In addition, Meelarp (2006) gives the statistics, where stated that 10 percent of troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are women. The point is that, despite the fact that 23 000 women are in combat, the U.S military is considered as the strongest one. Moreover, Ben Barry (2013), introduced another numbers of women working in military from different countries. For example, in France 19 percent, in Canada 17 percent, in New Zealand 12.5 percent comprise women.

Finally, it could be said that women should be allowed to participate in combat. The only reasonable argument against it is the lack of physical power. Nonetheless, I believe there are many strong women that are able to maintain military responsibilities in the same level with men.  Moreover, as long as women want to do it, it should not be banned.

Is the military in Kazakhstan professional?

Author: Aigerim Suleimenova

Soldiers in Kazakhstan

What does it mean to be a professional officer? According to Huntington (1991) we need to analyze the professional character of officers. There are three key features: expertise, corporateness and responsibility. Do all of these satisfy and enough for Kazakhstan officers be professionals?

In January 24, 2017 the military servant of Kazakhstani army was arrested in Aktau because he refused to perform h/is duties, in other words he disobeyed the higher rank officer. According to Criminal code, he was found guilty and arrested for 48 hours. The quite light punishment was because no one was harmed. This is an example of how military servants not obey the rules and this does not satisfy with corporate character of officer, where the priority is given to higher rank. Also being a professional military servant means give the responsibility to the state, where you cannot not broke the rule and impose decisions upon yourself, and all actions are controlled by the law.

In order to get a military education and get a military skills there are military schools, colleges and universities (ex. Zhas Ulan Republican school, Military Academy in Almaty etc). Moreover there are military Departments at universities which are responsible for military education. These can show that students who graduate these universities have a specialized knowledge and some experience. Also there is the Army (Military service contract) which is for 1 year, where people (both male and female) can join and under the contract have different positions (officer, soldiers, warrant officers). However from 2014 there is new type of military service –military technical school, where a man can pay 300.000 tenge and be under military conditions (real Army) for 1 month and this is instead of 1 year military service and they receive a lieutenant rank. Hence we can assume that what knowledge and experience can get a person for 1 month is not enough for professional officer, because professional officer need more intense and intellectualized knowledge and experience.

As Huntington (1991) argued “management of violence” is one of the important and central skills that professional officer obligate to do, however previous example (with soldier in Aktau) showed that this person cannot do his duties, and even not able to maintain control over himself.

From this one example we can see that nowadays our military is lack of professionals. Having a good, trained and professionalized military is one of the steps to development. The Ministry of Defense has stated that Kazakhstan was going to have a professional army by 2016 and we hope that this plan will be fulfilled near future.

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https://en.tengrinews.kz/military/Kazakhstan-to-have-professional-army-by-2016-23220/
https://tengrinews.kz/crime/aktau-soldata-arestovali-otkaz-vyipolnyat-prikaz-komandira-312971/
https://egov.kz/cms/en/articles/sluzhba_po_kontract

Army Chief in Pakistan promotes the idea of civilian control of the military.

Author: Viktoriya Malikova

Links: http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/pakistan-army-chief-asks-officers-to-read-book-on-success-of-indian-democracy/story-wa7Ii1EiHEkBYmmiHVZTmK.html

Shvetsova and Barany in their analyses of such countries as Russia, Romania and Slovenia, describe how depolarization of the military is difficult in the states which had a long history of autocracy. Barany, in particular, claims that as the support of military was vital for the soviet regime, possibility of military being apolitical was never mentioned. Therefore, after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, the depolitization of army takes a time to be changed. This process, however, can be even more difficult in the case of a country which went through a military type of the regime and experienced a number of coups. This can be clearly seen from the example of Pakistan. The author of the article explicitly emphasizes that “the fact that Pakistan is a country which has been ruled by the army for almost half its history” make the civil military relations in it very difficult.

The author also makes a hint that one of the reasons for why the previous army chief left his post because of his bad relations with the Prime Minister of Pakistan. It is another clear example of the tensions in the civil-military relations. The fact that this person is no longer in power may be example of government’s using one his tools to “punish” the disobedient armed servant by firing him.
 The current Army Chief Bajwa, seems to take this problem of civil-military relations very seriously and he makes certain attempts at tackling it. In particular, this article discusses Bajwa’s unusual public advice to the Pakistani officers to read a book called “Army and Nation: The Military and Indian Democracy since Independence” which, as it can be predicted from its name, discusses building of the civil-military relations in democratic countries, focusing on India example. This advice is twice unusual as Baija encourages Pakistani officers to learn from India – a country with which Pakistan has tense relations.

In general, such recommendation may demonstrate that the current Pakistani Army chief supports the classical Huntington’s theory about importance of the civilian control over the military. For example, his own words were that “competition between the civilians and the military is counter-productive for the country.” The practice, however, shows that, in spite of this beautiful rhetoric, the army in Pakistan continues to actively oppose the government. In the recent land disagreement, for example, Balja himself explicitly disagreed with the government. It follows that there is a gap between the military words and actions.

Therefore, Balja’s promise of supporting and assisting the government under the moto of “United we rise” should be followed by clear definitions of such assistance which should not imply intervention into the politics. Pakistan clearly has a long way ahead before finding the balance in the civil military relations and establishing of the civilian control.

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References:

Shevtsova L. 1996. “Russia’s Fragmented Armed Forces.” In Civil-Military Relations and Democracy. Edited by Diamond, Larry, and Marc F, Plattner. The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Barany Z. 2012. Chapter 7. in The Soldier and the Changing State. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.