During the period 1990–2013 the Swedish Armed Forces made a number of organisational and material changes. This raises the question of whether these changes also led to tactical adaptations, and if so, if there is a correlation between those adopted in higher and lower levels of field manuals. The purpose of this thesis is to study adaptations in field manuals of Swedish army tactics during 1990–2013. The study also aims to investigate the level of correlation between lower and higher level field manuals. Marcus’ and Farrell’s research on military adaptation and bottom-up change sets the thesis’s theoretical framework. The method used includes a comparative and qualitative text analysis. The study’s result indicates that adaptations in Swedish field manuals show a tendency to decrease the role of artillery support, and increase the role of offensive operations. The results also show a correlation between adaptations made in higher and lower levels of field manuals. The results cannot establish a causal link between the adaptations identified and Marcus’ and Farrell’s research, they do however correlate with their theories. This thesis recommends further studies of the reasons behind the adaptations regarding the use of artillery, as well as the reasons behind the adaptations identified.

Before 1950, the United States intervened in large scale counterinsurgencies twice as often and intervened almost exactly as long as interventions after 1950. Yet, U.S. supported states developed before 1950 tended to survive an average thirty years after U.S. withdrawal. In contrast, U.S. supported states after 1950 have tended to survive only three years. The central question of this examination is why did U.S. military counterinsurgency (COIN) interventions before 1950 produce host-nation governments and host nation security forces that tended to endure ten times longer than interventions after 1950? My central argument is that when the U.S. military deeply embeds within and inhabits host-nation institutions (institution inhabiting strategies) then, state longevity improves in the course of counterinsurgency (COIN) interventions. Inversely, when the U.S. military employs strategies of lower embeddedness (institution influencing strategies) then, state longevity decreases in the course of counterinsurgency (COIN) interventions. I compare cases of intervention in tabula rasa or erased governance in the Philippines 1898-1913 and Iraq 2003-2010. The former employed high degrees of embeddedness in both governance and security development and the latter low degrees in both. I also compare cases of intervention in existing governance in Nicaragua 1912-1933 and Vietnam 1964-1972. The former employed a high degree of embeddedness in host-nation security force development and a low degree in host-nation government development while and the latter employed low degrees in both. My research finds a correlation between degree of embeddedness in developing security and governance and state longevity after withdrawal of U.S. forces. The implications for this study are salient today. Where state fragility has progressed to the point where intervention by conventional military force is required to arrest it, institution influencing strategies like Advise and Assist are insufficient. And while trusteeship forms of relation have been largely dismissed since decolonization, the apparent efficaciousness of neo-trusteeships and shared sovereignty relationships in places like Kosovo, East Timor, and Sierra Leone hold out the promise of more effectual strategies for state building in counterinsurgency interventions. / PHD

Following state-building campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the UK has increasingly eschewed large-scale intervention in favour of local proxy forces. Whilst this strategy might appeal to the war-weary and cash strapped interventionist, frequent use of military capacity building as a tool of foreign policy inevitably raises questions about the accountability of those local forces being trained. This thesis examines the exportation of Western concepts of civil-military relations into the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces (RSLAF), carried out by the British-led International Military Advisory and Training Team (IMATT) during intervention and post-conflict stabilisation in Sierra Leone. It argues that external interventionists can reshape local military culture, to promote both democratic civil-military norms and professional military effectiveness, but only through extensive institutional change. In Sierra Leone, IMATT attempted to change the organisational culture of the RSLAF by reforming its institutional mechanisms for socialisation, training, education and promotion. By inculcating a new normative ethos in a cohort of junior RSLAF officers, IMATT sought to promulgate cultural change throughout the military via a structured process of intra-service competition and generational replacement. This novel blend of internal and external processes of military change challenges existing scholarship on military innovation and adaptation, advancing our understanding of the relationship between military culture, military change, and external intervention. However, this process of institutional redevelopment and cultural change in the RSLAF proved to be both heavily contested and deeply political, ultimately leading to partial results. Consequently, IMATT’s experience of RSLAF reform holds important implications for the study of civil-military relations and security sector reform, and with it, the conduct of contemporary military capacity building and liberal intervention.