What role has sourcing for the logistical outcome when Swedish Armed Forces (FM) plan for and conduct Peace Support Operations (PSOs)? What are the logistic needs to support the operating units? Can logistics in itself contribute to the overall goals with the PSOs? It depends of course on how the logistics are organised and what is required in order to support the military operations. The research on military logistics in general is limited and within the conduct of small nations forces almost non-existent. The role of sourcing depends on the military supply chain and FM decisions on make or buy, choice of market, number of suppliers and relations with the supplier. Therefore this thesis addresses how the sourcing decisions impact the military logistics in FM PSOs and the achievement of short-term and/or long-term objectives. The short term objectives represent the operational needs and the long term objectives represent the overall goals for PSOs. In order to understand the military logistics in PSOs a thorough review of the literature in the field was conducted. A second review was done with the focus on the four sourcing decisions. FM PSOs during the period 2002-2010 were studied. The case focused on  two on-going operations, in Liberia and in the Bay of Aden, and complementary information was collected from a third operation, in Afghanistan. Also the central processes in the headquarters and the connections upstream to the Swedish government and the international relations were studied. The case was built up by interviews, field visits and secondary data. For military logistics in PSOs, three areas on different levels, with in total twelve constructs of importance were developed. Of special importance is the logistic tier structure. The sourcing was one of four logistic key decisions. The sourcing decisions turned out to change between different logistic phases. One of the findings was that the decisions proved to be of importance for the logistic outcome. The make or buy decision enabled responsiveness in the logistics system in a hostile environment. Proximity between customer and supplier showed to be important for all phases in an on-going Peace support operation. Due to the security situation in PSOs, dual sourcing showed to be important in order to create redundancy in the supply chain. The supplier relations changed from arm’s length to partnership when an operation was initiated, which improved the responsiveness. The Swedish Public Procurement Act placed limitations on the procuring organisations to utilise the possibilities to be efficient and effective.

The thesis makes an overall contribution to the qualitative research on soldiers’ experiences from service primarily in low-intensity mission areas, this operational environment being placed within a framework of emotion sociology. The central argument put forward states that even on this type of mission the emotional demands are considerable, and that the need for emotional management in Peace Support Operations (PSO) should therefore generally follow other demarcations than the formal military divisions of high and low intensity conflicts respectively. In contrast to the prevalent view stating that the successful soldier is someone with emotional control in the sense that he ‘lacks’ feeling towards what he is doing, this thesis argues that soldiers’ emotion management work when choosing, modelling, managing, and displaying the ‘right’ emotional expression is what it takes to get the job done. Further, the thesis argues that emotion management demands are not restricted to the tour of service. Returning home often involves feeling both cognitively and emotionally disorientated, even if the mission has been militarily quite uneventful. A new theoretical concept, Post-Deployment Disorientation (PDD), is introduced to explain and highlight the origin of these feelings. PDD is not a diagnosis, however, but a term reserved for a phenomenon invisible in statistics that likely confronts the majority of Swedish soldiers on return. The thesis comprises four essays and draws on qualitative data collected mainly from soldiers deployed to Kosovo and Liberia in 2006/2007. Two of the essays also include data from Afghanistan. Jointly, the four essays help us understand that from an emotion management perspective, serving abroad is both a varied and challenging experience. Nevertheless, the informants seem to muddle through many difficulties and the study broadly confirms Bolton’s (2005) accounts of the multi-talented emotional actor, who is quite capable of handling contradiction while negotiating feeling rules. However, this does not mean an adjustment with negligible effort or without substantial emotional costs.

The overall aim of this thesis is to contribute to the knowledge on how formal education gives cognitive support to informal learning at work. The ambition is to combine different theoretical perspectives on learning. Formal learning, mostly within institutions for education, is usually seen from a cognitive or constructivist perspective, and informal learning from situational or socio-cultural perspectives. Combining these perspectives, this thesis is based on a case study of how a formal training program for Swedish military personnel, going on a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, gives cognitive support to their informal, experiential learning during the mission. The case study has an ethnographic research design where 17 military leaders at different levels are interviewed, observed and “shadowed” during three field periods during training in Sweden and during work in Kosovo. The empirical material and the different theoretical perspectives on learning are used to construct a perspective-integrating conceptual model of how the formal training, through different learning resources, helps the leaders to develop a subjective understanding of their coming work. This understanding is then used by the leaders to mentally frame the specific experiences and actions they encounter at work. This mental framing is also prevalent in their reflections in and on their work, and their informal learning at work can be shown to be heavily influenced by the understanding the leaders developed during formal training. However, most of this understanding cannot be related to formal learning resources, but to learning resources the military leaders themselves bring to the training in the way of their earlier experiences, their military professional orientation, and their internal discussions in free time. The main conclusions are that 1) contrary to prevailing dogma, different perspectives on learning can be brought together, and 2) if formal education is going to give cognitive support to learning at work, it needs to address the question of how the conceptual structure of the training content can be integrated with the often private concepts the workers themselves have of their work.

Participating in peace support operations has been and remains a significant part of the Swedish defense and security politics. Since the end of the Cold War, the Swedish national defence has been more and more dismantled, in favor of international peace support operations which have become an increasingly important task for the Swedish defence. Why then, is Sweden so engaged in conflicts so far from home? Using two classic theories of international politics, realism and liberalism, this study aims to shed light on arguments from the Swedish parliament on why it is important for Sweden to participate in international peace support operations. After analyzing arguments of the Social Democrat Party, the Moderate Party, the Green Party and the Liberal Party concerning three different peace support operations which Sweden has participated in, the result shows that although both realism and liberalism are influencing the parties’ argumentation, liberalism is the theory which is used more often. Thus, the answer to why Sweden participates in peace support operations is to be found in arguments that clearly express views of liberalism, rather than views of realism.

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The United Nations has a long history of peacekeeping missions. These have evolved over time but since the end of the Cold War there has been rapid growth in those missions where the remit placed on the peacekeepers, both military and civilian, is more complex and demanding. In trying to define these missions and their mandates a wide range of terminology has been developed in an effort to describe the exact nature of the mission. Since many of these deployments take place into theatres where there is no peace to keep, or where a fragile peace reverts to a conflict situation such tight definitions often lead to the troops involved no longer having an appropriate mandate. More recently some of these larger missions constitute in fact interventions to impose peace. Attempts to find a `peace¿ classification for such deployments often confuse the issue rather than bring clarity. In reality these missions are not peacekeeping at all. The almost forgotten doctrine, principles and practices of Counterinsurgency provide a better framework for defining these missions, the respective roles of the key players and the factors necessary to bring success.

no / A deconstruction of the role of peace support operations suggests that they sustain a particular order of world politics that privileges the rich and powerful states in their efforts to control or isolate unruly parts of the world. As a management device it has grown in significance as the strategic imperatives of the post-industrialized, capitalist world have neutered the universal pretensions of the United Nations. Drawing on the work of Robert Cox and Mark Duffield, this essay adopts a critical theory perspective to argue that peace support operations serve a narrow, problem-solving purpose - to doctor the dysfunctions of the global political economy within a framework of liberal imperialism. Two dynamics in world politics might be exploited to mobilize a counter-hegemonic transformation in global governance. First, a radical change in the global trade system and its problematic institutions will create opportunities to emancipate the weak from economic hegemony. Second, future network wars are likely to require increasingly subtle and flexible teams, similar to disaster relief experts, to supply preventive action, economic aid and civilian protection. This might only be achieved by releasing peace support operations from the state-centric control system, and making them answerable to more transparent, more democratic and accountable multinational institutions.

In this thesis, I explore everyday militarisation in UN peace operations by studying how Sweden's s 'peace nation' narrative is possibly militarised by participating in the robust peacekeeping operation in Mali. The aim is to increase understanding around how militarisation occurs in modern peace operations, domains that are meant to be peaceful but are becoming increasingly war-like. The Swedish narrative is generated through interviews with Swedish peacekeepers that have previously been deployed to Mali and through readings of the Swedish Armed Forces blog Malibloggen. The material is analysed through a narrative analysis inspired by Mieke Bal (2009). I find that the Swedish narrative is partly militarised during participation in the mission, as it can be argued that Sweden arranged its sense of belonging around military values and chose military modes of conflict resolution over civilian to some extent. The soldiers were also cognitively preparing for war and military measures were partially normalised. This result illustrates that when countries that regard themselves as 'peace nations' take part in militarised UN PSOs, their narrative can become militarised to some extent as they arrange their sense of belonging around values of war and military force. This, in turn, has implications for the spread of militarisation across the globe, potentially leading to a lower threshold of war.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Educational Leadership / W. Franklin Spikes / The United States (U.S.) response to events in Africa in the 1990s—warlords in Somalia, the genocide in Rwanda, the crisis in Burundi, and the destruction of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania—was the development of the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI) followed by the African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) program. This study examined the impact of the command and staff operational skills portion of the ACOTA program to determine how well it prepared Ghanaian commanders and staff officers to conduct peace support operations under the auspices of a legitimate mandate. The importance of this program was revealed in its wide acceptance by the African leaders of 24 participating nations, by its ongoing support by the U.S. State Department, and by the budgetary increases it has received from the U.S. Congress over the years. This case study used qualitative methods to capture and analyze the self-reported perceptions of the course participants. Findings discovered that the students perceived the program as effective; team building was a perceived strength; U.S.-Ghanaian cultural differences were not perceived as effecting training; the teaching methodology instilled confidence to perform the mission; and course reference material, books, and CD-ROMs were valued. Results also showed that the time allowed for the course was insufficient; contingency training did not familiarize students with their mission area; students required timely notification to attend the course in order to properly prepare; and the course benefited the junior officers more than the senior officers.

Participation in Peace Support Operations (PSOs) is one of the most common military duties assigned to present-day Western soldiers. Previous research concerned with the psychological effects of these missions on the individual soldier has focused on issues of mental health and how to ensure military effectiveness. This study takes a different perspective, and examines how PSOs affect the political psychology of the peace soldier, asking: how and to what extent do the sociopolitical psychological orientations of the individual soldier change as a consequence of peace support operations? The study combines theory from clinical, social, and personality psychology to construct a framework for understanding how and why the values and the attitudes toward violence of the soldier may be affected by PSO deployments. It is argued that although combat exposure may cause changes in attitudes and values, these variables will overall remain stable across the deployment. Stability is predicted to be the norm due to the importance of certain attitudes and values to the soldierly identity, and owing to the good person-environment fit that the deployment provides for the soldiers. It is also argued that the individual’s personality traits will predict levels of change and stability. Empirically, two Swedish contingents deployed to northern Afghanistan under the auspices of NATO’s ISAF mission are analyzed. Change and stability are examined by combining statistical analyses of surveys with in-depth interviews carried out at both the pre- and post-deployment stages. As hypothesized, the study finds that both values and attitudes exhibit high levels of stability across the mission. Contrary to expectations the soldiers’ experiences of combat exposure had little to no effect on attitudes and values. Combat exposure was, however, limited during the deployments studied. Finally, the individual’s personality traits are identified as being relatively potent factors for inducing change and stability. By demonstrating that low-exposure PSOs have only minor effects on the sociopolitical psychological orientations of soldiers, the study advances knowledge of the political psychology of the peace soldier and provides additional contributions to the fields of value and personality psychology. Among other things, the study demonstrates the stability of values in a very challenging environment, and how personality traits affect change and stability in values.