Swedish National Defence College

About: Swedish National Defence College is a education organization based out in Stockholm, Sweden. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Crisis management & Politics. The organization has 218 authors who have published 569 publications receiving 8074 citations.

Good sensemaking is more important than information quality for the quality of plans

Abstract: Good sensemaking is assumed to be central to military command. So is high quality information. This paper presents an experimental study investigating the effect of amount of information on the quality of the produced plans. It was also tested if plan quality could be predicted from the quality of the sensemaking process. Army captains served as participants. The task was to produce a part of a brigade order within six hours. The participants worked in 16 teams of 5-7 individuals, with one team member acting as brigade commander. Eight of the teams received full information about the location of all enemy units (as would be the case in a fully developed network enabled defense), while the remaining eight teams received the amount of enemy information that might normally be expected. The characteristics of each team’s sensemaking process were assessed from video recordings of their planning sessions. The quality of their plans was judged by military experts. The quality of the sensemaking process predicted the quality of the plans well, but plan quality was unaffected by the amount of enemy information. Apparently, good sensemaking is more important to military command than high quality information.

Interrelationship of emotional stability, hassles, uplifts, coping and stress-related symptoms in Swedish female and male military veterans

Abstract: Drawing on previous research, two hypotheses were tested: (1) the higher the frequency of daily uplifts and use of functional coping strategies, and the lower the frequency of daily hassles and use of dysfunctional coping strategies, the lower the prevalence of stress-related symptoms will be, and vice versa; and (2) the direct relationship between the personality dimension emotional stability and stress-related symptoms, will be moderated by daily hassles, daily uplifts and coping processes. A quantitative test of a qualitatively developed model was performed. A questionnaire was sent to all Swedish military veterans who had served in the period 2011-2015 and 1859 individuals (1,614 men and 199 women, 46 individuals did not mark gender) responded (40.5% total response rate). All analyses were made separately for men and women. Comparisons between theoretically favorable and unfavorable profiles across the model variables, daily uplifts, daily hassles, functional coping and dysfunctional coping (based on a cluster analysis), showed considerable differences regarding the prevalence of stress-related symptoms as predicted by the model and supporting the first hypothesis. Regression and moderation analyses yielded limited support for the second hypothesis. As predicted, female veterans reported a higher frequency of physical, emotional and cognitive stress-related symptoms than male veterans. The main conclusion is that the theoretical model stood up well when empirically tested and offers a promising approach to future studies on everyday stress and health. The results contribute with new knowledge of military veterans compared to the main stream PTSD, depression and drug abuse-oriented studies.

Protection of Personnel in Peace Operations 1

Abstract: Email: marketing@brill.com The 1994 Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel (Safety Convention) was the first multilateral convention to deal specifically with the protection of personnel engaged in peace operations. It should be viewed against the background of the increasingly volatile environments in which peace operation personnel were required to operate at the beginning of the 1990s. An Optional Protocol, extending the automatic application of the Safety Convention to new categories of operation, was adopted in December 2005. Protection, which a host government is responsible for securing for personnel in peace operations, may be categorised as general and special protection. The former includes, for example, human rights law and international humanitarian law. The latter comprises privileges and immunities accorded to agents of states or organisations. The contribution of the Safety Convention is mainly one of interstate penal law cooperation. States parties are obligated to co-operate in order to effectively prosecute the perpetrators of stipulated crimes. The protection afforded by the Safety Convention may therefore be categorised as being part of an emerging legal regime against impunity. An effective protection needs to address the specific challenges surrounding peace operations. Some of these challenges, identified in this study, are related to the interplay between the rules of peace and war as well as responsibility and accountability of protected personnel. It is also contended that there is a need for an effective implementation of existing rules, and a careful development of so-called status-of-forces agreements applicable in peace operations.

Repercussions of a weak ocean governance and a non-existent maritime security policy: The resurgence of piracy and Armed Robbery in the Gulf of Mexico

Abstract: This paper examines piracy and armed robbery in the Gulf of Mexico, under the framework of maritime security. The results indicate that piratic attacks are most likely underreported by the Governme...