Thesis (Master of Military Studies)-Marine Corps Command and Staff College, 2008. / Title from title page of PDF document (viewed on: Jan 12, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

Why has international society been unable to develop political and judicial collective-security arrangements to limit external aggression? The thesis argues that efforts to limit aggression in moral and legal theory have created an unjust order in which great powers have used these theoretical traditions to reinforce their power in the global order. The thesis argues that is not a new development but can be found in one of the oldest traditions of moral reflection on war, the just war tradition. To substantiate this point, the thesis critically surveys the philosophers of the ancient Greek, Roman, Medieval Christian Renaissance, and early modern theorists of just war and demonstrates that their just war ideas contain assumptions about exclusion, identity and power reflecting their cultural superiority which underlie the practices and theories of the leading states and justifications of their aggressive wars. The thesis connects these moral reflections to the emergence of modern international law and the European pluralist international society of states based on mutual respect for sovereignty and the norm of non-intervention, highlighting how justifications of its colonial aggression against non-Europeans established an unjust solidarist order against them which persists in the post-Cold War era. To conclude it presents suggestions for improvement in the current pluralist international arrangements to address the issue of aggression.

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

After conquering Belgium and the Rhineland in 1794, the French Army of the Sambre and Meuse faced severe logistical, disciplinary, and morale problems that signaled the erosion of its capabilities. The army’s degeneration resulted from a revolution in French foreign policy designed to conquer the natural frontiers, a policy often falsely portrayed as a diplomatic tradition of the French monarchy. In fact, the natural frontiers policy – expansion to the Rhine, the Pyrenees, and the Alps – emerged only after the start of the War of the First Coalition in 1792. Moreover, the pursuit of natural frontiers caused more controversy than previously understood. No less a figure than Lazare Carnot – the Organizer of Victory – viewed French expansion to the Rhine as impractical and likely to perpetuate war. While the war of conquest provided the French state with the resources to survive, it entailed numerous unforeseen consequences. Most notably, the Revolutionary armies became isolated from the nation and displayed more loyalty to their commanders than to the civilian authorities. In 1797, the Sambre and Meuse Army became a political tool of General Lazare Hoche, who sought control over the Rhineland by supporting the creation of a Cisrhenan Republic. Ultimately, troops from Hoche’s army removed Carnot from the French Directory in the coup d’état of 18 fructidor, a crucial benchmark in the militarization of French politics two years before Napoleon Bonaparte’s seizure of power. Accordingly, the conquest of the Rhine frontier contributed to the erosion of democratic governance in Revolutionary France.

This dissertation examines British munitions procurement chronologically from 1914 through early 1916, the period in which Britain's war effort grew to encompass the nation's entire industrial capacity, as well as much of the industrial capacity of the neutral United States. The focus shifts from the political struggle in the British Cabinet between Kitchener and Lloyd George, to Britain's Commercial Agency Agreement with the American banking firm of J. P. Morgan and Company, and to British and German propaganda in the United States.

Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de Guibert (1743-1790) dedicated his life and career to creating a new doctrine for the French army. Little about this doctrine was revolutionary. Indeed, Guibert openly decried the anarchy of popular participation in government and looked askance at the early days of the Revolution. Rather, Guibert’s doctrine marked the culmination of an evolutionary process that commenced decades before his time and reached fruition in the Réglement of 1791, which remained in force until the 1830s. Not content with military reform, Guibert demanded a political and social constitution to match. His reforms required these changes, demanding a disciplined, service-oriented society and a functional, rational government to assist his reformed military. He delved deeply, like no other contemporary writer, into the linkages between society, politics, and the military throughout his career and his writings. Guibert exerted an overwhelming influence on military thought across Europe for the next fifty years. His military theories provided the foundation for military reform during the twilight of the Old Regime. The Revolution, which adopted most of Guibert’s doctrine in 1791, continued his work. A new army and way of war based on Guibert’s reforms emerged to defeat France’s major enemies. In Napoleon’s hands, Guibert’s army all but conquered Europe by 1807. As other nations adopted French methods, Guibert’s influence spread across the Continent, reigning supreme until the 1830s. This dissertation adopts a biographical approach to examine Guibert’s life and influence on the creation of the French military system that led to Napoleon’s conquest of Europe. As no such biography exists in Anglophone literature, such a work will fill a crucial gap in understanding French military success to 1807. It examines the period of French military reform from 1760 to the creation and use of Napoleon’s Grande Armée from 1803 to 1807, illustrating the importance of Guibert’s systemic doctrine in the period. Moreover, the work argues that Guibert belongs in the ranks of authors whose works exerted a primary influence on the French Enlightenment and Revolution by establishing Guibert as a “Great Man” of the Republic of Letters between 1770 and his death in 1790.

In 1950, the leader of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Walter Ulbricht, began a policy of connecting foreign threats with domestic policy failures as if the two were the same, and as if he was not responsible for either. This absolved him of blame for those failures and allowed Ulbricht to define his internal enemies as agents of the western powers. He used the state's secret police force, known as the Stasi, to provide the information that supported his claims of western obstructionism and to intimidate his adversaries. This resulted in a politicization of intelligence whereby Stasi officers slanted information so that it conformed to Ulbricht's doctrine of western interference. Comparisons made of eyewitness' statements to the morale reports filed by Stasi agents show that there was a difference between how the East German worker felt and the way the Stasi portrayed their attitudes to the politburo. Consequently, prior to June 17, 1953, when labor strikes inspired a million East German citizens to rise up against Ulbricht's oppressive government, the politicization of Stasi intelligence caused information over labor unrest to be unreliable at a time of increasing risk to the regime. This study shows the extent of Ulbricht's politicization of Stasi intelligence and its effect on the June 1953 uprising in the German Democratic Republic.

On 1 February 1793, the National Convention of Revolutionary France declared war on Great Britain and the Netherlands, expanding the list of France's enemies in the War of the First Coalition. Although British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger had predicted fifteen years of peace one year earlier, the French declaration of war initiated nearly a quarter century of war between Britain and France with only a brief respite during the Peace of Amiens. Britain entered the war amid both a nadir in British diplomacy and internal political divisions over the direction of British foreign policy. After becoming prime minister in 1783 in the aftermath of the War of American Independence, Pitt pursued financial and naval reform to recover British strength and cautious interventionism to end Britain's diplomatic isolation in Europe. He hoped to create a collective security system based on the principles of the territorial status quo, trade agreements, neutral rights, and resolution of diplomatic disputes through mediation - armed mediation if necessary. While his domestic measures largely met with success, Pitt's foreign policy suffered from a paucity of like-minded allies, contradictions between traditional hostility to France and emergent opposition to Russian expansion, Britain's limited ability to project power on the continent, and the even more limited will of Parliament to support such interventionism. Nevertheless, Pitt's collective security goal continued to shape British strategy in the War of the First Coalition, and the same challenges continued to plague the British war effort. This led to failure in the war and left the British fighting on alone after the Treaty of Campo Formio secured peace between France and its last continental foe, Austria, on 18 October 1797.

This is an analysis of the U.S. Army's personnel decisions in the Second World War. Specifically, it considers the U.S. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall's appointment of generals to combat command, and his reasons for relieving some generals while leaving others in place after underperformance. Many historians and contemporaries of Marshall, including General Omar N. Bradley, have commented on Marshall's ability to select brilliant, capable general officers for combat command in the war. However, in addition to solid performers like J. Lawton Collins, Lucian Truscott, and George S. Patton, Marshall, together with Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lesley J. McNair, often selected sub-par commanders who significantly underperformed on the battlefield. These generals' tactical and operational decisions frequently led to unnecessary casualties, and ultimately prolonged the war. The work considers six case studies: Lloyd Fredendall at Kasserine Pass, Mark Clark during the Italian campaign, John Lucas at Anzio, Omar Bradley at the Falaise Gap, Courtney Hodges at the Hürtgen Forest, and Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. at Okinawa. Personal connections and patronage played strong roles in these generals' command appointments, and often trumped practical considerations like command experience. While their superiors ultimately relieved corps commanders Fredendall and Lucas, field army and army group commanders Clark, Hodges, and Bradley retained command of their units, (Buckner died from combat wounds on Okinawa). Personal connections also strongly influenced the decision to retain the field army and army group commanders in their commands.

Existing literature identify betrayal as one of the major challenges that former SADF soldiers face in the “new” South Africa, and identify a need for studying the nature and types of betrayal and the effects it has on relationships. This study aimed to describe and interpret former SADF soldier‟s lived experience by focusing on the psychology of betrayal. A cross-sectional qualitative research methodology was used, guided by an interpretive phenomenological approach. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews, and the data was analysed using Heidegger‟s hermeneutical principles. The identified themes are (1) in the belly of the beast, (2) different agendas, (3) volte-face, (4) keeping the score (5) and just carry on. The findings offer deeper insights and understanding into how former SADF soldiers experience betrayal and the impact it has on their everyday lives. / Psychology / M.A. (Psychology)