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).
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
No comments:
Post a Comment