US Navy Criminalizes Nude photo Sharing

Zhandos Bolatbek

The distribution of photographs containing nudity without the subject’s permission will now be considered as a criminal offense in the US Navy and Marine Corps.

The new regulation has been enacted after a scandal erupted when a closed Facebook group, “Marines United”, with about 30,000 members, featured on its page photos with female servicewomen featured nude. About 27 people are thought to have been directly engaged in distribution of these photographic materials featuring nudity. Another group of about 29 Marines face administrative punishment. The Marine Corps, prompted by the scandal, now considers distribution of nude photographs as “cyber-bullying and discriminatory” and the offenders are subject to prosecution under Article 92 of Uniform Code of Military Justice with the possibility of up to 2 years of confinement.

There has been considerable outcry, with Marine Corps spokeswoman Capt. Ryan Alvis stating: “The Marine Corps is deeply concerned about allegations regarding the derogatory online comments and sharing of salacious photographs in a closed website… This behavior destroys morale, erodes trust, and degrades the individual.” Republican House Representative Adam Smith has called the instance as “degrading, dangerous, and completely unacceptable”. One concern has been that the language prohibiting the circulation of nude photos is legally sufficient since it is hard to prove that images were shared without consent or if the image was taken with consent but not was not intended for the sharing widely.

The distribution of nude photos by military officers evokes civilian problem of “revenge porn” whereby a person circulates nude photographs of his or her ex-partner and distributes them without the person’s consent.

Engaging in these kind of immoral activities by the army personnel would go counter to the Huntington’s idea of professional army. Such disregard and disrespect for the human dignity of fellow servicemen contributes to the erosion of discipline. The move by the Navy to criminalize the act of distributing nude photos without consent will contribute to the oversight of army professionalization.

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Reference:

1. Huntington, Samuel P. 1957. The Soldier and the State the Theory and Politics of Civil- Military Relations.

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/03/05/lawmaker-calls-justice-marines-nude-photo-sharing-scandal.html

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/04/19/navy-acts-criminalize-nude-photo-sharing-sailors-marines.html

Chinese Military Modernization

Zhandos Bolatbek

Toronto in his article “Why Professionalize? Economic Modernization and Military Professionalism” argues that states with higher human capital, urbanization, and economic wealth levels are more likely to professionalize.

Toronto states: “Now, more than ever, states and societies are concerned with the efficient use of military resources, and the information age has made the adverse consequences of military operations even more acute.”

Annie Kowalewski puts forward why the world’s most powerful military, the US, should learn about military modernization from Chinese army.
China has been the most prominent state in the world in terms of its rate of accruing economic wealth and the swift rise of its middle class. Along with the economic modernization it has also been modernizing its army.

As this age of information demands, China has been investing its efforts at enhancing its asymmetrical technological advantage. US Department of Defense reported that China is “developing its counter-space, offensive cyber operations, and electronic warfare capabilities meant to deny adversaries the advantages of modern, information technology-driven warfare.” For the Chinese Army priorities now include winning “informational local wars” and merge cyber- and space-related training into its military program.

Since December 2015, Chinese Army, People’s Liberation Army, has altered its structure of command. According to the Chinese military reforms, 7 Theatre Commands have been established according to their geographical proximity. Each of these Theatre Commands are obliged to oversee potential threats in their own regions and have to coordinate their efforts with other Theatre Commands. The shift from Soviet-style centralized command allows for more flexibility and coordination in the defense efforts.

However, there has been long held view that Chinese military is a “Paper Tiger”, that is, Chinese military looks strong and capable at the first glance, but only to that extent. Those viewing Chinese army as Paper Tiger underscore that compared to the US Army, which has had extensive and intensive experience of fighting in combat, Chinese army lacks just that. And that gives US an upper hand.

On the other hand, for the past decade and more, the US army has mostly been used to fighting and containing insurgency threats. As the author of the article argues: “The training necessary to combat insurgent groups with limited weaponry greatly differs from the training necessary to operate and utilize high-end technologies against a modern adversary. The Department of Defense’s entrenched bureaucracy also makes it difficult to adapt to new types of threats that require a quicker response time.”

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Reference: 
Toronto, Nathan W. “Why Professionalize? Economic Modernization and Military Professionalism”. Foreign Policy Analysis.

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/what-america-can-learn-chinas-peoples-liberation-army-20239?page=3

Trump’s Decisions about the Military

Kamila Shurmanova

President Donuld Trump has made some debatable decisions, for which he faced a lot of criticism. He has filled main posts in the Cabinet with recently retired generals, with an aim to shape national security policies of the US, another issue is that Trump has not appointed some major civilian posts that are responsible for watch over military personnel and their decision. Recent US attack of Afghanistan has triggered new debates, authorities are not happy about the freedom Trump has granted to Defense cabinet that lacks civilian control.

"What I do is, I authorize my military,” he said. “We have the greatest military in the world, and they’ve done a job as usual. So we have given them total authorization, and that’s what they’re doing. And, frankly, that’s why they’ve been so successful lately."

“The commander-in-chief and the people immediately around him are somewhat malleable when it comes to national security," Smith said, pointing to Trump’s about-face last week in ordering a strike on the Syrian military for its use of chemical weapons. “You can’t imagine anyone more opposed to military action in Syria than President Trump right up until he ordered the strikes. I’m worried President Trump is going to go with such a military-heavy set of advisers."

A lot of people are worried about the autonomy military has faced recently and the amount of trust Trump entitles them with. Syria appears to be the most vivid example of the autonomy military has recently gained. U.S. troops are currently helping their local allies in Syria to get ready to an offensive attack of ISIS’s headquarter that is located in Raqqa.


Trump’s decision imply to the subjective/objective control theory proposed by Huntington (1957). Objective civilian control militarizes military and makes them a tool in the hands of the government. Even though Huntington (1957) claims that  generally objective control is a better approach to professionalize military, he emphasizes the importance of balance between civilians and military. Trump, on the other hand, has granted a complete authority to military by putting on the commander positions recently retired officers (which is against the law of 7 years gap between military and civilian administration service) and by failing to fill the posts that supervise military policies.

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http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/trump-military-strikes-generals-237214 

Increase in US Military Spending

Daniyar Tengelbay

Eshe Nelson in her article informs about Trump’s proposal to increase military spending by $54 billion next year. She compares proposed military spending with overall budgets of different states analyzing that this new spending would be higher than overall budgets of Israel, Canada, Taiwan, Turkey and Mexico combined. She also states that this will be race with Russian military spending which is approximately the same as proposed one.

In his turn, Bruce Gagnon, secretary and coordinator at the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, says that US is heading to rule the world increasing its military capacities. According to him, “The US is telling North Korea, Iran, Russia and China that you must surrender to our domination or we will destroy you.” US is dependent on military spending which could lead to the collapse of its economy.

According to Bruneau and Tollefson (2006), military spending is very important factor in civil-military relations. It is one of the factors on which directly dependent the civilian control over the military. Efficiency of the military control depends also on the amount of spending taking into account other spending beside the military as the outspending for defense sector could cause bankrupting the state and hurt its economy. However, the military spending is more likely to prevent the corruption and discipline loss in military, and provide more professionalized military. As Huntington stated civilian control over military leads to professional military.

In this case of increase of spending in defense sector US does not seem like there is lack of professionalism in their military and the issue could be Trump’s personal politics to provide himself military support. As it known, he already had some retired generals in his team. Thus one could suppose that he is politicizing military as he increases the spending and military would support him more. As the military spending would be more than some states’ overall budget both the world and locals will see the capacities of their country, this would provide local support and frighten the world. However, Trump is willing to rise military spending even there will be need for contraction in other sectors. Thus, this would work as far as it will not negatively affect overall US economy.

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http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/04/17/518328/US-addicted-to-war-military-spending 

https://qz.com/937285/donald-trumps-proposed-54-billion-boost-to-defense-spending-is-bigger-than-the-total-annual-military-budget-of-all-but-two-countries/