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Can private military and security personnel be tried for war crimes in the same way as ‘classical’ military personnel acting in armed conflicts? Might they enjoy exemption from liability because of their unclear formal status under international humanitarian law? Private military and security personnel often act in hostile environments and frequently operate alongside state troops. While private military and security companies (PMSCs) usually claim their compliance with international humanitarian law standards, it cannot be excluded that their employees become involved in criminal conduct under the laws of war. Reported violations range from murder of civilians to inhuman treatment and use of warfare methods prohibited under international humanitarian law. To date, however, no private contractor has been sentenced for committing war crimes. This chapter seeks to understand to what extent such ‘immunity’ might depend on legal conditions, both substantive and procedural, rather than on extra-legal factors.

This chapter focuses on the employers of private military force. In doing so, it considers the differing ways of organizing the military. It first outlines and defends the ‘Cumulative Legitimacy Approach’ and argues that this approach should ultimately be used to assess the legitimacy of the military, rather than the prevailing theories of civil–military relations. Second, the chapter assesses the use of PMSCs according to this approach. It argues that, although the use of PMSCs does not necessarily threaten the primary understanding of the legitimacy of military force on this approach, employing private military force poses several serious moral concerns, including the lack of expected effectiveness, the undermining of democratic control, the poor treatment of PMSC personnel, and the undermining of communal bonds.

This chapter explores whether and to what degree private military and security companies' (PMSCs') contractors may be labelled mercenaries under current international law. On the basis of thorough analysis of recent practice, it reviews whether the established concept of ‘mercenary’ can be adopted to meet the challenges arising from what has been called the ‘privatization of war’. It finds that only a very limited number of PMSCs' contractors fall within the definitions of mercenary laid down in treaty law and stresses the need for new international regulations in order to cope with this new phenomenon.

This chapter analyzes the construction of masculinities in the military. Historically, war has enforced an extreme version of male behavior as the ideal model for all such behavior, by emphasizing the physical prowess of military men enhanced by machines, and by distilling national identity into the abrupt contrast between winning and losing. The more technologically advanced war has become, however, the less plausible battlefield action has been as a source of traditional military honor and masculine identity. The question then emerges of what might constitute heroism and how constructions of militarized masculinity work in a military that has not been involved in combat since its very foundation. For many male service members, joining the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) is marked by a sense of defeat in some area of their lives: a failed entrance exam at a regular university leaves some with no choice but to enter the National Defense Academy; a low-income background closes doors to costly formal technical training, which some hope to receive in the SDF; or a vague feeling of disappointment in their job situation or the lack of job alternatives in their community leads them to the SDF. In an effort to overcome this sense of defeat, the SDF uses gender politics to establish service members as “true men” and heroes of a new kind. Rather than privileging the combat soldier, however, it is argued that negotiations around militarized masculinities draw on a number of existing modes of masculinity.

This chapter covers deaths, injuries, and mental and somatic disorders among military personnel during war and veterans after war. With regard to mental disorders, it describes the occurrence of posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and suicide among military personnel. The chapter describes communicable disease threats for military personnel. It covers respiratory disorders, neurological disorders (including Gulf War Illness), morbidity due to toxic chemicals, and sensory impairment among combatants. The chapter provides information about some of the long-term consequences of war in military personnel, such as hypertension and obesity. Finally, the chapter describes the various approaches to preventing morbidity and mortality among military personnel.

This chapter describes the intervention of the USSR in the Spanish Civil War as the most extensive Soviet military action since the close of the Russian Civil War. More troops had been involved in the domestic campaigns against Muslim rebels, finally subdued by 1936, and more had also been used in the conquest of Outer Mongolia and in the Manchurian operation, while other actions such as those in Iran and Sinkiang had involved no more than a handful of troops. Altogether, the number of military personnel was limited, and Soviet sources recognize little more than 3,000 in all, of whom 200 were killed. The Soviet manpower involved in Spain was far exceeded by the approximately 16,000 Germans and 70,000 Italians who at one time or another served in Spain.

This chapter provides a microanalysis of the rhythms of everyday life on a Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) base. Specifically, it takes a close look at the internal mechanisms of a GSDF base through the lens of a week of basic training. Narrating this experience allows for the identification and introduction of some of the key sites, people, and issues that make up a base and characterize the everyday lives of Japanese service members.

This chapter argues that in contrast to male service members, female service members' militarized femininity is less molded by historical female warrior figures, who largely have been forgotten, than by their male peers, their families, and representations of female soldiers in popular media. It describes how some female service members subscribe to the contradiction between womanhood and motherhood and their integration into the military. Yet others see the expanded military participation of women as evidence of women's achievement of equality. For many, however, this contradiction differs little from the pursuit of a career in any male dominated realm. Many ascribe specific meanings to their lives by holding on to the dictum to “not give up without a fight.”. Their male peers, as well as the mass media, measure them against the foil of a normative ideal type and find them to be transgressors.

The concluding chapter synthesizes insights from the individual chapters, identifying six overarching lessons: civilian control of the US military is complex and understudied; norms are essential for healthy civil-military relations; the relationship between society and the military is less than healthy; partisanship is corroding civil-military relations; public scrutiny of the military is essential to military effectiveness; and the fundamental character of civil-military relations is changing. In turn, it proposes several questions for future research, suggesting that more could be known about public accountability of military activity; the nature and measurement of military politicization; and changing actors and roles in civil-military relations.

This chapter explores the medical and scientific experiments that were conducted on army personnel between 1939 and 1945. These included trials of therapeutic drugs, synthetic stimulants and exposure to chemical agents. It examines the aims and objectives of agencies like the Medical Research Council and the Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment at Porton Down, which conducted wartime research. These provide glimpses into the mind-set and decisions made by experimenters regarding the types of bodies that were considered most useful and the levels of risk to which they were to be exposed. The chapter then explores how servicemen encountered medical and scientific experiments. It shows that while some men were forced to take part in human trials by military superiors, many others willingly volunteered. They did so for extra money, time off or to enjoy an enhanced sense of status. Participants also had clear ethical expectations for their bodies, such as being informed about the nature of tests, providing voluntary consent and receiving safeguards to protect their health. This chapter therefore highlights the active role that soldiers played in shaping wartime research as they engaged, and indeed withdrew, their bodies in the demands of experimental science.

Until World War II, the primary peacetime job of the U.S. Army was not to be ready to fight instantly, but to provide a core of military expertise that would enable a wartime force of citizen-soldiers to be built up after war began. Wars were infrequent. Since the end of the Cold War, the Army has become a force that deploys and fights on a regular basis. The true citizen-soldier who serves only for a few years, usually in wartime and often involuntarily, and remains, at heart, a civilian, is no longer with us and is not likely to return in the foreseeable future, despite nostalgia for his passing. In the midst of a civilian society that is increasingly pacifistic, easygoing, and well adjusted, the Army (career and noncareer soldiers alike) remains flinty, harshly results-oriented, and emotionally extreme. The inevitable and necessary civil-military gap has become a chasm.

This chapter examines the possible ways that defence professionals form opinions on the impact of war crimes issues. These war crimes issues centre on the ability to do one’s job, strategy, and the relations between civilians and military personnel. An analysis of how these war crimes issues affect and impact upon operational considerations is included. This analysis centres on the response of the military towards the pressures created by accusations of war crimes, and is composed of three stages. The first looks at the degree to which senior military personnel are able to perceive an increase in the attention towards war crimes. The second stage focuses on the relevance of context, while the third stage of the analysis is about judgement and making decisions.

This chapter discusses the start of the anthrax outbreak from the viewpoint of a military officer, first studying the huge reformations of the Yeltsin era and the equally large turnover in military personnel. From here the discussion turns to the meeting with General Yevstigneyev, where he related what he knew about the anthrax outbreak and suggested alternate scenarios for the outbreak. It considers the erosion of the military's science and technology and the vaccine research or production conducted in Compound 19 in 1979. The chapter also discusses the aerosol challenges, identifies the strain being used in Compound 19 at the time of the outbreak, and reviews the communications that led to the presidential decree for pensions to the victims' families.

This chapter focuses on the arrival of thousands of Roman military personnel in the northern part of Dura-Europos, one of the best preserved and most extensively excavated sites of ancient Rome, and how the military occupation affected local inhabitants as well as the urban form of the site. It considers the conversion of many of Dura's houses into a type of military garrison and the ‘billeting’ of soldiers in private houses, as well as the extent to which the garrison was physically segregated from the urban population. It also describes the precise form of architectural modifications and the artefact records from houses across the site before concluding with a discussion of the ‘Palace of the Dux Ripae’, or ‘Roman Palace’, and the military structure called the ‘House of the Prefect’ that were built by the Roman military at Dura.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the relationship between information technology and military power. Digital systems now mediate almost every effort to gather, store, display, analyze, and communicate information. As a result, military personnel now have to struggle with their own information systems as much as with the enemy. Local representations of the world must be coordinated with whatever distant reality they represent. When personnel can perceive things that are relevant to their mission, distinguish friend from foe, predict the effects of their operations, and get reliable feedback on the results, then they can fight more effectively. When they cannot do these things, however, then tragedies like friendly fire, civilian deaths, missed opportunities, and other counterproductive actions become more likely. If military organizations are unable to coordinate their representations with reality, then all of their advantages in weaponry or manpower will count for little. The chapter describes the organizational effort to coordinate knowledge and control as information practice. It argues that the quality of practice, and thus military performance, depends on the interaction between strategic problems and organizational solutions.

This chapter examines British courts' findings on the responsibility of Japanese military and civilian authorities for the mistreatment of POWs. The analysis focuses on five trials: the trial of Colonel Tokunaga Isao, who served as commandant of all POW camps in Hong Kong for almost the entire period of the Pacific War (January 1942–August 1945); the trial of Colonel Nakano Jun'ichi, the first of the three Japanese officers to serve as commandant of all POW camps in colonial Taiwan (July 1942–June 1943); the trial of Colonel Sazawa Hideo, successor of Nakano (July 1943–March 1945); the trial of Major Uete Taichii, successor of Colonel Sazawa (March–September 1945); and the trial of Toda Mitsugu, General Manager of the Japan Mining Company at Kinkaseki, Taiwan, during the Pacific War — Toda and eight company employees were accused of collaborating with the Army in making unlawful and criminal use of POW labour.

In this essay, Berube shifts his focus toward military policy and the Selective Service System, which he describes as “a stigmatizing machine.” He recounts the ways that lesbian and gay military personnel were “fighting two wars,” one against the external enemy and the other against a set of policies that led to courts-martial, witch hunts, imprisonment, and dishonorable discharges. As with his historical accounts of police repression and arrests in San Francisco, Berube is at pains to argue that repression also breeds resistance. “The current spirit of resistance,” he writes, “was born under fire.” The essay can be seen as an attempt to create cross-generational links between those who fought back against the military policies of the war years and those who gave birth to gay liberation in the 1970s.

The author denounces the war because of the ugly psychological effects of war. He first describes some of the day's casualties in Camp Bastion, including a seven-year-old bilateral amputee, a fifteen-year-old shot in the chest by NATO troops after he failed to heed warning shots, and a U.S. marine who died on the operating table. He then wonders how surgeons and nurses are affected by nonstop exposure to death and dying and goes on to cite the psychological costs of war such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicides among military personnel. He says exposure to the consequences of war was personally traumatic to the surgical team in Camp Bastion. The author concludes with an overview of the coping mechanisms used by the field hospital's medical staff in an attempt to protect themselves from psychological anguish, namely: “avoidance coping” and “escape coping.”

Privation and disease have mainly killed soldiers until very recently. Now that enemy action predominates, faster and better control of bleeding and infection before and during evacuation spares ever more lives today. This chapter focuses on psychological war wounds, placing them in the context of military casualties. The surgeon’s concepts of primary wounds in war, and of wound complications and contamination, serve as models for psychological and moral injury in war. “Psychological injury” is explained and preferred to “post-traumatic stress disorder,” being less stigmatizing and more faithful to the phenomenon. Primary psychological injury equates to the direct damage done by a bullet or shell; the complications—alcohol abuse, for example—equate to hemorrhage and infection. Two current senses of “moral injury” equate to wound contamination. As with physical wounds, it is the complications and contamination of mental wounds that most often kill service members and veterans, or blight their lives.

As this chapter traces the development of Britain’s Atlantic Empire, it shows how the authority of what was originally an English state began to rely upon support from the ever-more diverse populations coming under British control. While Scots were the only ones to achieve equality with English people, initially in the Ulster Plantation and later, following the Act of Union of 1707, throughout Britain’s overseas empire, the chapter shows that many of the Protestant and Catholic populations of Ireland also prospered from, and served, the empire, and that many Native Americans and African American slaves were enlisted to serve its cause at moments of crisis. The chapter also addresses the extent to which the governance of the British state and empire was managed by people from military backgrounds, which is unsurprising given Britain’s successive military engagements in Ireland, in Continental Europe and, latterly, in defending its empire.