Peacekeeping is a means by which international or regional organizations control conflict situations that are likely to endanger international peace and security. Most scholars have viewed the contributions of peacekeeping forces only in terms of failures, and they have not investigated fully the political-military circumstances" under which conflict control measures succeed. This dissertation is an attempt to bridge this gap and to show how the OAU compares with the UN in carrying out peacekeeping missions. The method of research was the case study method in which primary and secondary data was used to describe the situations in which six peacekeeping forces operated. The content of resolutions, official reports and secondary data were examined for non-trivial evidences of impediments to implementation of mandates. Findings from the research indicate that peacekeeping missions not properly backed by political efforts at settlement of disputes, cooperation of the superpowers, and financial and logistic support were ineffective and usually unsuccessful. Lack of consensus and pursuit of national interests have resulted in ambiguous or unrealistic mandates and have reduced the effectiveness of peacekeeping operations. Moreover, parties to a conflict were interested only in solutions that favored their interests and were often skeptical about the role and credibility of peacekeeping forces. But the continued violations of ceasefire agreements in defiance of the presence of peacekeeping forces were due partly to the force's inability to use force except in self-defense , Most of the forces operated under serious operational and logistical difficulties and they were inadequately funded. But none of the three factors has been responsible alone for the failure of peacekeeping missions. The coordination of UN operations has been better than that of the OAU. In civil war situations, national governments have requested peacekeeping forces because they could not, unaided, put down their opponents. The UN has deployed its forces only as a means of relaxing tensions while member-states have pursued other interests.

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Electronic Warfare has, in recent years, become a key field in modern armed forces. After wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and experience from conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, Western armed forces turned their attention to the field of Electronic Warfare. The most powerful armed forces of the world are being modernized under the Network-Centric Warfare and Multi-Domain Operations concepts based on real-time data-sharing and communications in the Electromagnetic spectrum. This master thesis deals with Great Powers perspectives (the US, Russia, and Israel), lessons learned from the conflicts mentioned above in Ukraine and Syria, compares it with doctrinal documents of the Czech Armed Forces, and identifies lessons for Czech Armed Forces. The main goal of this thesis is to identify lessons learned for the Czech Armed Forces and key priorities in modernization for the Czech Armed forces to be prepared for future threats and battlefield. Based on the discussed approaches and conflicts, the author identifies the following implications. There is a need to update Czech doctrinal documents. Czech Armed Forces should not focus only on the modernization of special Electronic Warfare units but to introduce the field of Electronic Warfare across the Armed forces. Czech Air Force needs to be equipped with offensive...

Throughout the long nineteenth century, the European Great Powers and, after 1865, the United States competed for global dominance, and they regularly used their armies to do so. While many historians have commented on the culture of these armies’ officer corps, few have looked to the acculturation process itself that occurred at secondary schools and academies for future officers, and even fewer have compared different formative systems. In this study, I home in on three distinct models of officer acculturation—the British public schools, the monarchical cadet schools in Imperial Germany, Austria, and Russia, and the US Military Academy—which instilled the shared and recursive sets of values and behaviors that constituted European and American officer cultures. Specifically, I examine not the curricula, policies, and structures of the schools but the subterranean practices, rituals, and codes therein. What were they, how and why did they develop and change over time, which values did they transmit and which behaviors did they perpetuate, how do these relate to nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century social and cultural phenomena, and what sort of ethos did they produce among transatlantic army officers? Drawing on a wide array of sources in three languages, including archival material, official publications, letters and memoirs, and contemporary nonfiction and fiction, I have painted a highly detailed picture of subterranean life at the institutions in this study. The reader will find that although practices, rituals, and codes varied from one type of school to the next, the values and behaviors they inculcated were quite similar . . . and quite anachronistic for the liberalizing societies that the products of the schools were meant to serve.

Even after the introduction of the UNSCR 1325 and subsequent resolutions, women’s leadership in the context of the WPS Agenda remains very low, despite the clear stance of the UN towards a support of an increased participation of women in peace and security processes. The aim of this thesis is to specifically address women’s leadership in the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) in the framework of peacekeeping operations, looking at the way the gender perspective is applied in the SAF through the introduction of the Handbok Gender, adopted in 2016. Since the focus of this research is on women, the theoretical perspective utilised as reference point is feminism and specifically a feminist constructivist approach with an institutional focus. Mixed research methods have been applied in order to collect the data, while the main centre of attention of this project has been a critical discourse analysis of the mentioned gender policy. Sweden has been chosen as case study because of the relevance of its singular feminist policies (Wallström’s statement that Sweden is pursuing a feminist foreign policy is a clear example), nevertheless the conclusions appear to be quite contradictory because even in a country which officially identifies as feminist women’s leadership in peacekeeping operations is very low.

The struggle for an equal society in terms of equal rights, opportunities, and obligations has long been fought in Sweden and has resulted in Sweden emerging as one of the world most equal societies according to UN rankings. This paper attempts to, with the knowledge of Sweden´s pre-eminence on the equality rankings, to examine why the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) remain a male-dominated workplace, despite decades of stated equality aims. There is thus a question left unanswered as to the nature of this apparent discrepancy. This paper aims to examine the nature of this discrepancy, what has been done to implement equality and what challenges lie ahead for the SAF on the issue of gender equality. Through a theoretical base primarily consisting of an institutional disposition this paper uses a qualitative text analysis study of the public material which is available regarding the SAF´s gender equality work, mainly the official appropriations documents for the SAF, as well as the annual reports from the SAF to the government. Gender and equality have been studied in the past in numerous political science journals both in the context of western armed forces in general and the SAF in particular. Remaining is a need for more research problematising the concept of gender equality within the armed forces and in its relationship to the government, which this paper attempts to explore. Indications indicate that the challenges the government and the SAF must face involve defining what they mean by equality as well as clarifying what the policy objectives are as there is a risk that the implementation of the policy will fall completely or partially if they remain abstract, unclear and/or contradictory.

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In studying the experiences of Muslim Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members by way of ethnographic interviews, I investigate both religious accommodation and feelings of belonging among individuals in this minority faith group. Interviews demonstrate that the CAF and its Chaplain Branch are generally equipped and willing to accommodate the practice of Islam by personnel. I argue, however, that as a result of accommodation, which marks Muslim CAF as “different,” as well as military culture, which conflicts with certain aspects of Islamic doctrine and practice, the experience of unity that is fundamental to the Canadian Armed Forces is limitedly available to Muslim members. This research is the first ethnographic study of a specific minority religious experience in the CAF. It builds on a small, but growing discourse about religiosity and spirituality in the Canadian military that includes the development of the Chaplain Branch as a multifaith service. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

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This study examines how The Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) communicates via their commercials and how this may affect their brand. The Swedish Armed Forces has always been an important authority and their priority is to prevent war and crisis in Swedish society. According to SAF themselves, one of their strategies with using commercials frequently is to attract potential recruits. Even though this is their goal, the SAF hasn't always been as open minded as today. In fact it’s been a relatively closed authority in earlier years, according to previous research. This has created a lack of knowledge among the public regarding what they do. This study compares two time periods to see if their commercials have changed. The first time period extends from 2011 until 2016 and the second period extends from 2017 to 2022. The theories that are applied to this study are semiotics, framing and representation theory and the methods that are used are a quantitative content analysis and a semiotic analysis. By using these theories and methods it might be possible to discover similarities and differences in the commercials and also to seek for a greater meaning in the empirical material. The reason why this topic is interesting to research is because the SAF is one of the most important authorities in Sweden and also because Sweden re-introduced compulsory conscription in 2017. Because of that it is of importance that the SAF appears as an attractive brand and a good employer. The result of the study states that the commercials have developed a lot over years and that they nowadays exhibit several parts within the SAF and that they represent diversity. In earlier years only one type of human was represented in their films but by the years they have included humans with different ethnicities, gender, sexuality and lifestyles within their films. They also show parallels between daily life and the life within the armed forces. By doing this they appear to be closer to the people which creates a feeling of safety and importance towards their work.