Showing papers on "Military threat published in 1976"

On the psychology of military incompetence

Abstract: This unique and penetrating book surveys 100 years of military inefficiency from the Crimean War, through the Boer conflict, to the disasterous campaigns of the First World War and the calamities of the Second. It examines the social psychology of military organizations, provides case studies of individual commanders and identifies an alarming pattern in the causes of military disaster.

Politicians in Uniform: Military Governments and Social Change in the Third World

Abstract: This paper examines three arguments about the impact of military regimes on social change (i.e., economic growth and social reform) in Third-World countries. The first asserts that military governments are progressive; the second claims that they are conservative or reactionary; while the third states that the impact of military regimes on social change varies by level of development. An analysis of covariance model is specified and used first to reanalyze data previously examined by Nordlinger. The results provide no support for any of the three hypotheses, but limitations of the data prevent this from being a convincing test. The model is therefore tested with a second set of data covering 77 politically independent countries of the Third World for the decade 1960 to 1970. Again, the estimates are inconsistent with all three hypotheses and suggest instead that military regimes have no unique effects on social change, regardless of societal type. The paper concludes that the civilian-military government distinction is of little use in the explanation of social change.

The Changing Role of the Military in Nigeria, 1900-1970

Abstract: The development of the Nigerian army must be seen in its political context. As the British government imposed its colonial rule on the people of Southern Nigeria, in the second half of the Nineteenth Century, each colonial administrative unit raised its own local force. Thus, after Lagos was acquired by the British in 1861, the administrator of Lagos, Captain J. Glover, R. N., raised the Lagos Constabulary in 1862.1 After the Royal Niger Company was granted a charter in 1886, which enabled it to administer areas under its control it raised in the same year the Royal Niger Constabulary.2 Although, the British declared parts of the area east of the Niger a protectorate in 1885,3 yet the actual establishment of a colonial administration came early in the 1890s and was quickly followed by the setting-up of a colonial force, in 1892,4 known as the Niger Coast Protective Force (or Constabulary). The title constabulary as applied to these local forces belied the fact that they were all essentially military forces which possessed artillery and were used to buttress the authority of the governments which they served. At first, these forces were, even for their small size, considered adequate to undertake both military and police duties in their locality. Later, however, as the governments began to expand their influence into the hinterland, and consequently came into military conflict with the inhabitants, they found it necessary to increase substantially the sizes of their forces in order to cope with their larger military commitments. To take but one example, in 1892, the Niger Coast Protective Force numbered about 40 other ranks (its depredations and brutality earned for these soldiers the title, "forty thieves"). But by 1900 this force had risen to a strong battalion of nearly 1000 men. The suggestion, in 1898, that the Niger territories should be amalgamated,5 coincided with the thinking going on in the War Office and the Colonial Office in London for a more effective force to be established in West Africa through the amalgamation and the expansion of the existing colonial forces. A committee

The Transition From Threat Situations to International Crises

Abstract: : A new orientation to pre-crisis study is developed drawing upon concepts from international systems analysis, empirical research on international crises and insights from cybernetics about monitoring change in a system. Conceptions of threat are divided into threat as behavior and threat as perception. Threat as behavior is determined by monitoring international event/ interactions. Threat as perception is determined by the cognitive appraisals of international affairs analysts. Analyzing threat situations is viewed as a new criterion for anticipating international crises. A threat recognition model is proposed.