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Archive: Working Group "Military Profession"

Co-ordinator: Associate Professor, Morten Brænder

 

About 

The W.G. "The Military Profession," was founded in 1988 in Vienna during the first biennial conference of ERGOMAS. The group was created by Giuseppe Caforio, who was one of the founding fathers of ERGOMAS, in Le Levandou, France, 1986. The purpose of the group is the study of the military profession especially in the aspects of adapting to changes in the strategic and operational environment. Joint transnational research and intercultural comparisons thematically oriented constitute the core of the WG "The Military Profession." activities. In this context, the group has carried out extensive research in the field, always in a cross-national dimension. The main searches carried out were: 

  1. A survey conducted in 1991-92 among 4659 active duty military officers in eight European countries. It focuses on several issues reflecting continental change in the role and function of the military officer and the armed forces. Its results had been published in Current Sociology, Vol. 42, No. 3, Winter 1994.

  2. An enquiry conducted in 1995-96 in educational institutions of ten European armed forces with the purpose of verifying both the world of values and attitudes of cadets and changes produced by the education period. Its results had been published in the book The European cadet: professional socialization in military academies., Baden-Baden, Nomos, 1998.

  3. A study conducted in 1998-99 in twelve European countries with the purpose to collect and compare the selection procedures for entrance to military academies, as well as the educational training received during the academy years. Its results had been published in the book The European officer: a comparative view on selection and education, Pisa, ETS, 2000.

  4. A survey conducted in the year 2000 in nine countries among 371 military officers with experience of MOOTW .The aim of the research was to determine whether and how the professional preparation of officers appeared adequate to the new tasks assigned to the armed forces. Its results had been published in the book The flexible officer: Professional education and military operations other than war. A cross-national analysis, Gaeta, Artistic and Publishing Company, 2001.

  5. A survey conducted in 2003-04 in thirteen countries among 1327 military cadets and 1676 university students with the purpose to investigate the cultural gap between the military professionals and the parent society in democratic countries. Its results had been published in the book Cultural differences between the military and parent society in democratic countries, London, Elsevier, 2007

  6. A survey conducted in 2010- 11 in nine countries among 542 militaries of every rank and service. Its purpose was to acquire data on experiences in the fields of asymmetric warfare by interviewing soldiers who took part in missions carried out in this type of contest. Its results had been published in the book Soldiers without frontiers: The view from the ground. Experiences of asymmetric warfare, Acireale, Bonanno 2013. 

 

News and activities  

 

1. NEWS 

1.1. Torino interim meeting

Working Group “The Military Profession”

The WG has carried out its planned interim meeting from 5 to 8 February in the impressive setting of the "School of Management and Economics" of the University of Turin.
22 scholars attended the meeting, coming from 9 different countries; They, in addition to the presentation of their papers, have ventured into extensive discussions on the topics of the meeting.
It is worth to emphasize that participation in the meeting was not limited to members of the WG who have had the opportunity to come to Turin, but was enlarged to scholars not belonging to ERGOMAS but invited  because of their specific expertise.

The Coordinator ofWG in fact thereby intended to broaden the horizons of the WG looking for the collaboration of colleagues never met before, but selected for their expertise in the issues of the interim-meeting.
The result has been a much wider debate in which the new invitees have brought a useful contribution of thought and experience.
Also this was a chance for them to became in touch, know and appreciate the existence of ERGOMAS and of its way of promoting research.
During the meeting was then held a workshop to make the point on the research "Officer and Commander" that this WG has in progress, and that resulted in an advanced state of completion.

 

Conference Program

 

European Research Group on Military and Society

INTERIM CONFERENCE

Working Group “The Military Profession”

Torino (Italy) February 5th-8th, 2015

  “Armed Forces and Operations in Asymmetric Warfare Environment”

 

Thursday, February 5th 2015

ARRIVAL DAY

Participants are invited to a Welcome Reception with Registration:

 

6.00pm – 8.00pm University of Torino

School of Management and Economics

Corso Unione Sovietica 218bis

Aula Azzurra (Blue Room)

 

Friday, February 6th 2015

 

9.00am-10.15am Opening Session (Plenary)

PRESENTATION OF THE VOLUME “SOLDIERS WITHOUT FRONTIERS”

Chair: Giuseppe Caforio (WG Coordinator)

10.15am-10.30am  Coffee break

 

  10.30am-12.30am - Session 1- LEADERSHIP AND MILITARY BEHAVIOR IN ASYMMETRIC ENVIRONMENTS. EXPERIENCES FROM THE  FIELD

Chair: René Moelker (Royal Military Academy, Breda)

 

1.     Eyal Ben-Ari (Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee, Zemach), The Dynamics of Emerging (Tactical) Leadership: Israeli Forces in the Second Lebanon War

2.     Chiranjibi Bhandari (Tribhuwan University of Nepal), Rise and Fall of Military Leadership with Reference to People’s Liberation Army in Nepal

3.     Fatima Farina (University of Urbino Carlo Bo),The few, The operatives…Italian Military Women from the Afghan Front.

4.     Eraldo Olivetta (University of Torino),Factors Influencing Unit’s Morale: Suggestions for Leadership  from the Case Study on Italian Units in Afghanistan

5.     Giovanni Ingrosso (Italy), Theoretical and Practical Aspects of Military Leadership

 

12.30pm-2.00pm  Lunch

 

2.30pm-4.30pm- Session 2 - ASYMMETRIC ENVIRONMENTS:           INNOVATION  IN TRAINING AND BEHAVIORS

Chair: Arthur Gibb III (U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis)

 

1.     Uzi Ben-Shalom  (Ariel University, Israel) , Changes in Training for the Military Profession in Israel. The Case Study of Tactical Command College (TCC)

2.     Rosalie Arcala Hall (University of the Philippines Visayas), The Military’s functional or dysfunctional Role in the International Humanitarian Intervention and State-building

3.     David Walker (University of Birmingham ),  Asymmetric Warfare: Implications for the Character of the British Soldier

4.     Leslie V. Advincula-Lopez (Ateneo de Manila University), The Ethos of Obedience among the Members of the Philippine Marines

5.     Emanuela C. Del Re (Niccolò Cusano University, Rome), Female Combatants: the complex case of the role of women in the Syrian conflict and in the Islamic State

6.     Giovanni Ingrosso (Italy), Aspects and Problems of Death in Action

 

4.30pm-4.50pm  Coffee Break

4.50pm-6.50pm – Session 3 - CULTURAL FACTORS AFFECTING  MILITARY STRATEGY AND PRACTICAL BEHAVIOR IN ASYMMETRIC OPERATIONS. DOES SOCIAL SCIENCE APPROACH MATTER?

Chair: Marina Nuciari (University of Torino)

 

1.     Charles Kirke (Cranfield University,  Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, Shrivenham),  Four Services in Harmony?

2.     Paul Joseph  (Tufts University),  Human Terrain Teams and US Military Strategy in Iraq and   Afghanistan.

3.     Marenne M. Jansen (Royal Netherlands Military Academy, Breda), The Social Construction of Military Leaders

4.     Blaise Nkfunkoh Ndamnsah (Ljubljana University), Diversity and Cultural Issues in Multinational Operations: Case of the Italian-Slovenian-Hungarian Multinational Land Force (MLF) “Battle group” with Headquarters in Udine-Italy.

5.     Duraid Jalili  (Defence Studies Department of King’s College, London), Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice in Intercultural Professional Military Education (PME)

6.     Laila Bushra (Lahore University of Management Sciences - LUMS, Pakistan), East and West as Careers: the Pakistan Army in Informal Theatres of War.

 

8.30pm  SOCIAL DINNER

Saturday, February 7th 2015

 

9.00am-10.15am– WORKSHOP of WG “The Military Profession” for the research   project “OFFICER AND COMMANDER”

Chair: Giuseppe Caforio (WG Coordinator)

10.15-10.30  Coffee Break

10.30am-11.45am – Session 4 - CIVIC-MILITARY RELATIONSHIPS IN ASYMMETRIC THEATRES: ACTORS, VALUES AND PRACTICES

Chair: Eraldo Olivetta (University of Torino)

 

1.     Meytal  Eran-Jona (IDF BSC Behavioral Sciences Center, Israel)& Eyal Ben-Ari (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Military Relations with local Civilians: Multiple Logics and Organizational Transitions

2.     Kenneth Holland (Ball State University Muncie, Indiana, USA) , Provincial Reconstruction Teams as an Instrument of War: the Cases of Afghanistan and Iraq

3.     Arthur Gibb III (U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis),  Military-led  Development in Afghanistan: Successes and Failures of American Provincial Reconstruction Teams.

4.     Aide Esu  (University of Cagliari),Breaking the Silencein the Israeli Public Sphere. A Call for New People’s Army?

 

11.45am - Meeting Closure and coming appointments

Chairs: Giuseppe Caforio and Marina Nuciari

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Giuseppe Caforio 2013 Publications: 

As I have already announced in the Newsletter 2013, the results of our last field research, aimed to analyze the human aspects of the soldiers participation in the operations of asymmetric warfare, have been published by the publisher Mauro Bonanno in November 2013, with the title Soldiers without frontiers: The view from the ground (Bibliographic & ordering information: 416 pages, publication date: Nov. 2013. ISBN-13: 978-88-96950-57-9, inprint Bonanno publisher, price € 35.00, www.bonannoeditore.com; or http://www.ibs.it).In the Appendix No. 1 you can find the flyer of the book.

 

Other Caforio's 2013 publications: 

  • “ITALIAN EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ON ASYMMETRIC WARFARE: DATA FROM SOLDIERS EXPERIENCES”, Rivista di Studi Militari, No. 2/ 2013, pp.187- 201.

  • “THE CONCRETENESS OF ASYMMETRIC WAR: FRAGMENTS OF EXPERIENCE.” In Connections, The Quarterly Journal, vol. XI, No. 3, 2013, pp.21 – 40.

  • “OFFICER AND COMMANDER IN ASYMMETRIC WARFARE OPERATIONS”, Journal of Dfense Resources Management, Vol. 4, Issue 1 (6) 2013, pp. 9- 26

  • ANSIETÀ E STRESS NELLA GUERRA ASIMMETRICA:LA ESPERIENZA DEI PARTECIPANTI, Informazioni della Difesa No. 2, 2013, pp 8 – 17.

  • “L’ARMA AERONAUTICA NELLA GUERRA ASIMMETRICA, Rivista Aeronautica, No. 4, 2013, pp. 120- 121

  • THE ASYMMETRIC WARFARE ENVIRONMENT AS DESCRIBED BY THE PARTICIPANTS, Connections, Vol. XII, No. 2, Spring 2013, pp 51- 66

  • LA GUERRA ASIMMETRICA TRA TEORIA E REALTA’, in AMERICAN LEGACY, edited by “Società Italiana di Storia Militare”, Quaderno 2012- 2013, 2013: pp 637- 658

  • THE NATURE OF SECURITY THREATS IN THE PERCEPTIONS OF FUTURE CIVIL AND MILITARY ELITES in THINKING AND ACTING IN MILITARY PEDAGOGY, H.Annen, C. Nakkas, J.Maekinen, Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang Edition, 2013: pp. 205- 220.

 

 2. ACTIVITIES 

Our WG is now committed to start a new search , entitled Officer and Commander in asymmetric warfare operations , and whose purpose is to answer the following question: what are the changes in the command action in an environment of asymmetric warfare and how and how much they affect the professional preparation of commanders ?

You can read in the following lines the criteria and the methods of research, involving , at present, colleagues of the following countries : Bulgaria , Denmark , Finland , Italy, Lithuania , the Netherlands , Philippines , Slovenia , Spain , Turkey . Other colleagues can be added at the last minute as late birds , but they have to announce their intent immediately . The beginning of the research is planned for 1st may 2014. 

E.R.G.O.M.A.S.

Working Group “Military Profession”

RESEARCH PROJECT

OFFICER AND COMMANDER IN ASYMMETRIC WARFARE OPERATIONS

 

Framework of the research

Asymmetric warfare operations (1) require soldiers, but especially officers with command responsibilities, to make deep changes of mentality, professional attitude and also of tactics (2) with respect to the traditional preparation for conventional war operations.

For commanders at all levels, operating in an asymmetric warfare environment means being prepared to act “in the presence of civilians, against civilians, in defence of civilians where civilians are the targets, objectives to be won, as much as an opposing force” (Abrahamsson, 2008: 148); it means forgetting some fundamental principles of combat and accepting to use minimal force and only when strictly necessary (Janowitz, 1960); it means acquiring the ability to motivate one’s men and to apply these limitations, accepting greater personal risk (Petraeus, 2006); it means being able to assume governance roles in local realities that have very different cultures, norms and customs from those of one’s home country (Carafano, 2009; Nagl, 2002); it means being prepared to manage a multiplicity of functions, not only military, simultaneously (Dake, 1999; Fitzpatrick, 2009); it means acquiring an interoperability with military contingents of nations that are very different from one’s own (Strom, 2008); it means having to expand one’s professional baggage into sectors and disciplines that are far removed from one’s education and training (Blomgren, 2008; Caforio,2001; Nuciari, 2007); it means to acquire an intercultural communicative approach and the ability to develop “third cultures” features in leadership as well as in negotiation in order to efficiently manage culture clashes (Nuciari, 2013). It means all this and even more which, from time to time and mission to mission, proves to be important and necessary.

In this framework of profound change of the international military context and of commanders’ professionalism (see Kaldor, 1999; Nagl, 2002; Mazarr, 2008; Caforio, 2008), my idea is to check the answers that commanders with concrete experience in the field give to this challenge, their remarks to the existing doctrine and directions, their proposals, suggestions, experiences.

 

NOTES

  1. According several authors (see for instance Richard H. Shultz and Andrea J. Dew, 2006), since the end of the Cold War conventional militaries and their political leaders have confronted a new, brutal type of warfare in which non-state armed groups use asymmetrical tactics to successfully fight larger, technologically superior forces.

  2. Military professionals thus find themselves faced today with a situation that requires not a simple update, but a substantial change in their preparation and professional performances. Indeed, “the change from an invasion defence towards a defence based on flexible response puts the military profession under the strain of changing large parts of its expert base, as well as ethical norms and corporate traditions” (Abrahamsson & Weibull, 2008: 13). What capabilities, then, are needed to deal with these demands? All the authors (see Moskos, 1976; Blomgren, 2008; Gentile, 2008; Nagl, 2009) agree in believing that the traditional military preparation for conventional conflicts constitutes the indispensable base also for the vast range of operations in asymmetric warfare. This preparation is no longer sufficient, however, and other skills appear necessary for the military professional faced with a new scenario (see also Caforio, 2012).

    REFERENCES

  • Abrahamsson, B. (2008). “Restraint, unbridled emotion and war amongst the people.” In: A. Weibull & B. Abrahamsson (eds.), The Heritage and the Present: From Invasion Defence to Mission Oriented Organisation. Karlstad: Swedish National Defence College, pp. 147-168.

  • Blomgren, E. (2008). “Is military praxis in international missions reforming the profession?” In: A. Weibull & B. Abrahamsson (eds.), The Heritage and the Present: From Invasion Defence to Mission Oriented Organisation. Karlstad: Swedish National Defence College, pp. 233-242.

  • Caforio, G. (2001)(ed) The flexible officer: Professional education and Military Operations Other Than War, a cross-national analysis, Gaeta, Artistic & Publishing Company.

  • Caforio, G. (2008). “The asymmetric warfare: In search of a symmetry.” In G. Caforio, B. Puarkayastha and G. Kümmel (eds.), Armed Forces and Conflict Resolution: Sociological Perspectives. Bingley (UK): Emerald Group, pp. 7-23.

  • Caforio,G. (2012).“The military profession and asymmetric warfare.”In Gerhard Kümmel and Joseph Soeters(eds.),New Wars, New Militaries, New Soldiers. Bingley (UK): Emerald, pp. 3- 18.

  • Carafano, J. (2009).20 Years Later: Professional Military Education.Testimony before theSub-Committee on Oversight and Investigations, Armed Services Committee, United States House of Representatives, published on May 20, 2009.http://www.heritage.org/Research/Testimony/20-Years-Later-Professional-Military-Education.

  • Dake, T.R. (1999). “The city’s many faces” (Keynote). In: R.W. Glenn (ed.), Proceedings of the RAND Arroyo-MCWL-J8 UWG Urban Operations Conference, April 13-14. Washington, The Arroyo Center, pp. 197-224.

  • Fitzpatrick, N. E. (2009). The Challenges of Modeling and Analyzing Stability Operations. Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College.

  • Gentile, G. P. (2008). “A (slightly) better war: Anarrative and its defects.”World Affairs, Vol. 171, No. 1 (Summer), pp. 57-64.

  • Janowitz, M. (1960). The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait. New York: Free Press.

  • Kaldor, M. (1999). New and Old Wars. Cambridge: Polity Press.

  • Kaldor, M. (2003). Global Civil Society. An Answer to War. Cambridge: Polity Press.

  • Mazarr, M. J. (2008). “The folly of asymmetric war.”Washington Quarterly, (31)3, pp. 33-53.

  • Moskos, Ch. C. (1976). Peace Soldiers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

  • Nagl, J. A. (2009).Let’s Win the Wars We’re In. Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security.

  • Nuciari, M., (2007). “Coping with Diversity: Military and Civilian Actors in MOOTWs”, International Review of Sociology, (17) 1, pp. 25-53.

  • Nuciari, M. (2013), “Third Culture In Multinational Military Units. Some Experiences Referring To Italian Soldiers”, forthcoming.

  • Petraeus,D. H. (2006). “Learning counterinsurgency: Observations from soldiering in Iraq.”Military Review(January-February), pp. 2-12.

  • Shultz, R. H. and A. J. Dew (2006).Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat. New York: Columbia University Press.

  • Strom, M. (2008). “Cognitive warfighting.” In: A. Weibull & B. Abrahamsson (eds.), The Heritage and the Present: From Invasion Defence to Mission Oriented Organisation. Karlstad: Swedish National Defence College, pp. 217-232. 

 

Guidelines of the research

The main research question is: what are the changes in the command action in an environment of asymmetric warfare and how and how much they affect the professional preparation of commanders?

The steps of the research are those already defined in the first draft of the project, namely:

  1. Examining the existing literature on the subject

  2. Looking at public manifestations of thought and opinions by those officers having been in command in this type of operations (newspaper and journal articles, books of memories, public conferences, etc.)

  3. Interviewing an adequately sized group of officers with concrete command experiences at every level: platoon, company, and battalion (or equivalent).

  4. Collecting and analysing cases of problematic situations in theatre, different adopted solutions and outputs.

A cross-national comparison of data should complete the work.

 

Pisa November 2013                                                             The W.G. Coordinator

                                                                                              Giuseppe Caforio

 

 


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