Articles (Peer Reviewed) by Montgomery McFate
Security and Defense Quarterly, 2024
The article focuses on the need for a paradigm shift in diversity management for sustainable peac... more The article focuses on the need for a paradigm shift in diversity management for sustainable peace and security. We discuss the bidirectional influence of security and defence organisations and society; the intersectionality of issues related to social justice, health, race, and ethnicity; sexual abuse and exploitation; and cultural factors that influence the functioning of LGBTQ+ personnel and the gender/technology nexus in the context of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). During the application of the Sustainable Security Paradigm to gender diversity management, we found that ecofeminism and the ideas of post-colonial theory should inform the transformational shift of contemporary security and defence organisational cultures. This approach was used by the multinational NATO Science & Technology Organization Exploratory Team ET-197 Gender, Peace and Sustainable Security (2022-23) and its successor, the NATO HFM-368 Research Task Group (2023-26). Our research efforts were triangulated by an analysis of doctrinal textual, audiovisual and art sources that relate to gender diversity and its management. Given the complexity of future warfare, there is a strategic imperative to develop an inclusive defence strategy that reconfigures the traditional white male-focused military paradigm. It is evident that the root cause of gender inequality cannot be solved solely by doctrine and training solutions-rather a transformational organisational culture shift is pivotal and critical to the future global security. This is the first article that addresses the issues of gender diversity management for sustainable security and peace in an interdisciplinary and holistic manner. Our approach is relevant to any organisation with internal gender and intersectional diversity and systemic discrimination.
Joint Force Quarterly, 2021
Lyme disease is now a serious epidemic in the US. Members of the US armed services are particular... more Lyme disease is now a serious epidemic in the US. Members of the US armed services are particularly at risk for Lyme disease because they live, work and play in places where Lyme is rampant. Although the disease itself has become shrouded in a number of myths, separating fact from fiction is critical for military personnel and their families. The majority of doctors in the US believe that Lyme disease is easy to diagnose, easy to treat and is only severe in rare cases. However, both the scientific evidence and the experience of patients demonstrate that Lyme disease can often be very challenging to diagnose and very difficult to treat. In many cases, the symptoms can be debilitating and in rare cases lethal. To address this public health crisis, the Department of Defense should institute a comprehensive tick-borne disease prevention and education program.
Small Wars & Insurgencies, 2020
Almost every war since the origins of the discipline at the beginning of the 19th century has inv... more Almost every war since the origins of the discipline at the beginning of the 19th century has involved anthropology and anthropologists. In some cases, anthropologists participated directly as uniformed combatants. Following the philosopher George Lucas, one might call this ‘anthropology for the military,’ having the purpose of directly providing expert knowledge with the goal of improving operations and strategy. In some cases this scholarship is undertaken, anthropologists have also studied State militaries, which following George Lucas might be
considered ‘anthropology of the military.’ Sometimes this scholarship is undertaken with the objective of providing the military with information about its own internal systems and processes in order to improve its performance. At other times, the objective is to study the military as a human group to identify and describe its culture and social processes. Both ‘anthropology for the military’ and ‘anthropology of the military’ tend to have a practical, applied aspect, whether the
goal is improving military effectiveness or influencing national security policy. On the other hand, anthropology as a discipline has also had a long history of studying warfare itself, known as ‘the anthropology of war.’ The papers in this special edition fall into these myriad categories of military anthropology.
Defense & Security Analysis , 2020
The US Navy’s roles (which have historically been bifurcated between warfighting and political us... more The US Navy’s roles (which have historically been bifurcated between warfighting and political use of force) manifest in its organisational culture as two different concepts of war: the US Navy as diplomatic actor and the US Navy as warfighting force. The conflict between these different concepts of war can be seen in the current debate about the definition and
function of presence. The debate about presence is not just theoretical, but represents a deep and enduring conflict within the Navy as an organisation about its concept of war. Since the end of WWII, the Navy has been designing its fleet architecture according to a Mahanian concept of war, despite the preponderance of non-lethal missions and activities. The result is a mismatch between platforms and tasks.
Orbis , 2019
Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1858-1936), a Dutch scholar of Islam, served as a “military anthropo... more Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1858-1936), a Dutch scholar of Islam, served as a “military anthropologist” during the Aceh war in the Dutch East Indies. The Acehnese fighters viewed their anti-colonial struggle against the Dutch as a jihad, construing themselves religious martyrs fighting “infidel invaders,” and carrying out suicide attacks with a machete or dagger. To combat this insurgency Snouck Hurgronje, one of the first Westerners to visit Mecca and author of many books on Islam, developed the so-called “Aceh method,” which became the basis of modern Dutch counterinsurgency strategy. This article addresses the question: what can we learn from the life and times of Snouck Hurgronje?
PRISM, vol. 2, no. 4, 2013
This article places HTS in historical context as one example of the military’s adaptation to the ... more This article places HTS in historical context as one example of the military’s adaptation to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then offers some reflections about the HTS experiment. We focus on the relationship between social science and military intelligence, the utility of social science for military operations, the importance of socio-cultural knowledge in Phase Zero, and the unintended consequences of current Army rotation policy.
Military Review, 2006
"The state is a relation of men dominating men, a relation supported by means of legitimate (that... more "The state is a relation of men dominating men, a relation supported by means of legitimate (that is, considered to be legitimate) violence. If the state is to exist, the dominated must obey the authority claimed by the powers that be. When and why do men obey? Upon what inner justifications and upon what external means does this domination rest?" --Max Weber. In 1918, MAX WEBER, the father of modern sociology, asked these questions; the answers reveal a key to conducting effective counterinsurgency operations (COIN). In the most basic sense, an insurgency is a competition for power. According to British Brigadier General Frank Kitson, "[T]here can be no such thing as [a] purely military solution because insurgency is not primarily a military activity." U.S. Field Manual (Interim) 3-07.22, Counterinsurgency Operations, defines insurgency as "organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through use of subversion and armed conflict. It is a protracted politico-military struggle designed to weaken government control and legitimacy while increasing insurgent control. Political power is the central issue in an insurgency" (emphasis added). In any struggle for political power there are a limited number of tools that can be used to induce men to obey. These tools are coercive force, economic incentive and disincentive, legitimating ideology, and traditional authority. These tools are equally available to insurgent and counterinsurgent forces.
American Intelligence Journal , 2006
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the intelligence community Congress, the executive br... more In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the intelligence community Congress, the executive branch and the intelligence community acknowledged the need to recalibrate our intelligence focus and to assess our strengths and weaknesses. A number of plausible explanations were subsequently offered for the so- called 9/1 1 intelligence failure: that the Cold War SIGINT paradigm had moved us too far away from analyzing intentions; that the intelligence community's bureaucratic cultures led to information-hoarding; that policymakers eschewed long-term analysis in favor of the "CNN effect." Perhaps the 9/11 Commission offered the best explanation when it identified a "failure of imagination" as a major contributing factor in the terrorist attacks. According to the Commission, a "cultural asymmetry" blinded senior policy
makers and intelligence officials to the nature and the gravity of the threat. Policy makers and intelligence officials were fixated on the idea of major wars fought by rational state actors with conventional weapons. Conflicts with non-state terrorist groups, led by charismatic, 'irrational' leaders were beyond the pale. Thus, even after bin Laden declared war on America in a 1998 fatwa , bombed U.S. embassies, and exhorted his followers to "abide by Allah's order by killing Americans . . . anywhere, anytime, and wherever possible," the Pentagon failed to recognize that we were at war.
Military Review, Jul 2005
Over the past few years, the need for cultural and social knowledge has been increasingly recogni... more Over the past few years, the need for cultural and social knowledge has been increasingly recognized within the armed services and legislative branch. While much of this knowledge is available inside and outside the government, there is no systematic way to access or coordinate information from these sources. McFate and Jackson detail how to mitigate the gap quickly and effectively by developing a specialized organization within the Department of Defense to produce, collect, and centralize cultural knowledge, which will have utility for policy development and military operations.
Joint Force Quarterly, vol. 38 (2005), 42-48. , 2005
Cultural knowledge and warfare are inextricably bound.
Knowledge of one’s adversary as a means to... more Cultural knowledge and warfare are inextricably bound.
Knowledge of one’s adversary as a means to improve
military prowess has been sought since Herodotus studied his opponents’ conduct during the Persian Wars (490–479
BC). T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) embarked on a similar quest after
the 1916 Arab rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, immersing himself
deeply in local culture: “Geography,
tribal structure, religion, social customs, language, appetites, standards
were at my finger-ends. The enemy I
knew almost like my own side. I risked
myself among them many times, to
learn.”1 Since then, countless soldiers
have memorized Sun Tzu’s dictum: “If
you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a
hundred battles.”
Although “know thy enemy” is
one of the first principles of warfare,
our military operations and national
security decision-making have consistently suffered due to lack of knowledge of foreign cultures.
Military Review, 2005
Why has cultural knowledge suddenly become such an imperative? Primarily because traditional meth... more Why has cultural knowledge suddenly become such an imperative? Primarily because traditional methods of warfighting have proven inadequate in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. technology, training, and doctrine designed to counter the Soviet threat are not designed for low-intensity counterinsurgency operations where civilians mingle freely with combatants in complex urban terrain. The major combat operations that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime were relatively simple because they required the U.S. military to do what it does best--conduct maneuver warfare in flat terrain using overwhelming firepower with air support. However, since the end of the "hot" phase of the war, coalition forces have been fighting a complex war against an enemy they do not understand. The insurgents' organizational structure is not military, but tribal. Their tactics are not conventional, but asymmetrical. Their weapons are not tanks and fighter planes, but improvised explosive devices (IEDs). They do not abide by the Geneva Conventions, nor do they appear to have any informal rules of engagement. Countering the insurgency in Iraq requires cultural and social knowledge of the adversary. Yet, none of the elements of U.S. national power--diplomatic, military, intelligence, or economic--explicitly take adversary culture into account in the formation or execution of policy.
Military Review, 2005
Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are among the deadliest weapons coalition forces face in Iraq... more Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are among the deadliest weapons coalition forces face in Iraq, and defeating their use by insurgents is both essential and extremely challenging. Thus far, U.S. defense science and technology communities have focused on developing technical solutions to the IED threat. However, IEDs are a product of human ingenuity and human social organization. If we understand the social context in which they are invented, built, and used we will have an additional avenue for defeating them. As U.S. Army Brigadier General Joseph Votel, head of the Pentagon's Joint IED Task Force, noted, commanders should focus less on the "bomb than the bomb maker." A shift in focus from IED technology to IED makers requires examining the social environment in which bombs are invented, manufactured, distributed, and used. Focusing on the bomb maker requires understanding the four elements that make IED use possible in Iraq: knowledge, organization, material, and the surrounding population.
Journal of Information Warfare, 2005
The deep structural and cultural changes taking place in North Korea provide an opportunity to co... more The deep structural and cultural changes taking place in North Korea provide an opportunity to conduct influence operations to shape that country’s culture and society, either to destabilize the government or to prepare the population for a regime change. This paper presents a conceptual model of how contradictions between top down, imposed culture and organic, indigenous culture can be exploited to destabilize the system, and eventually repattern the culture. The process includes the following steps: identification of the cultural type; understanding relevant cultural forms; identification of vulnerable targets; evaluation of the information system; identification of effective elements of persuasion; mapping of the architecture of social control; and introduction of new “attractors” to damage or destroy the constituent cultural myths.
Peace and Conflict Studies, 2000
On August 31, 1994, the Provisional IRA (PIRA) declared a cessation of military operations. For t... more On August 31, 1994, the Provisional IRA (PIRA) declared a cessation of military operations. For the past
thirty years, the conflict in Northern Ireland has been raging almost without pause.1 British security forces
have attempted to control the violence by establishing road blocks, conducting house searches, altering
the judicial system to allow conviction on informant testimony, instituting internment without trial for
paramilitary suspects, garrisoning over thirty thousand British soldiers in Northern Ireland, instituting
broadcasting bans of Sinn Féin, and conducting intensive interrogation of suspects. Despite the best
attempts of the British government over the past few decades to thwart PIRA, the conflict persisted. To
sustain a low-intensity war under these conditions requires more than guns and ammunition; it requires
the support of a political community, extensive organization of economic resources, and cultural values
that give meaning to the conflict.
California Western International Law Journal , 1999
Mercenary activity has not declined since the end of the Cold War. On the contrary, the internati... more Mercenary activity has not declined since the end of the Cold War. On the contrary, the international black market of military services is flourishing. While Cold War counterinsurgencies and covert actions were fought by
shadowy commandos with suspicious connections to the Pentagon, current
low-intensity conflicts are fought by mercenaries with impeccable resumes who negotiate contracts openly and give interviews to the press. A number
of different explanations have been offered for this increased mercenary activity, including the spread of armed conflicts associated with the formation of new States,' and the sale of military services by detachments of national armies in order to pay their members and avert dissolution. Worldwide military downsizing may have encouraged former career military personnel to view "any armed conflict [as] an opportunity to become involved in exchange for pay."' Or, as one mercenary explained, "this might be our only chance to see an honest-to-God shooting war on the European continent in
our lifetime and dammit, we were not going to miss it."
Yale Graduate Journal of Anthropology 8(1): 12-32 (1991).
Book Chapters by Montgomery McFate
U.S. Navy: Case Studies in its Past, Present, and Future, ed. Thomas-Durell Young (New York: Routledge, 2021)
Ethnographers Before Malinowski: Pioneers of Anthropological Fieldwork, 1870-1922, ed. Frederico Delgado Rosa and Han F. Vermeulen (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2022), pp. 307-332., 2022
In 1923, government anthropologist Robert Sutherland Rattray published Ashanti, a monograph based... more In 1923, government anthropologist Robert Sutherland Rattray published Ashanti, a monograph based on long-term participant observation in the British colony of the Gold Coast (now Ghana). Unlike many of his contemporaries, Rattray participated in the world of the Ashanti not just as an observer, but as a believer. He held somewhat radical views, given his time and place. In his monograph, for example, Rattray countered British assumptions about African centralized authority; argued for incorporating Ashanti women, the Queen Mothers in particular, in government; and was able to resolve armed conflict between the British and the Ashanti.
Considering Anthropology and Small Wars, ed. Montgomery McFate (New York: Routledge, 2020).
Warriors or Peacekeepers?: Building Military Cultural Competence, eds. Kjetil Enstad and Paula Holmes-Eber , 2020
The military’s interest in anthropology follows predictable cycles in the
US: anthropology holds ... more The military’s interest in anthropology follows predictable cycles in the
US: anthropology holds interest when the military must fight land wars against adversaries from a different culture. In off-cycles, anthropology reverts back to the special operations community and survives as an academic subject in the world of professional military education (PME). In the US, PME institutions exist as a kind of reservoir for the concept of culture and for the discipline of anthropology. PME institutions keep the concept of culture alive within the military domain by retaining a smattering of anthropology in their curriculum. Under these conditions, a professor teaching anthropology to military personnel must focus on anthropology’s professional relevance, offering insights that might be applied to operational problems. This chapter describes my haphazard journey in developing an anthropology course for senior military personnel. I describe some of epistemological benefits offered by
an anthropological approach (e.g., ‘ground up’ perspective, de naturalization of taken-for-granted cultural norms, and subjective thinking), and my discovery of the limitations of anthropology and military history for theorizing about transcultural war. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the central question that emerged from the course: What happens when two ‘culturally distant’ societies go to war, each having their own norms and ideas regarding the organized deployment of military force?
Uploads
Articles (Peer Reviewed) by Montgomery McFate
considered ‘anthropology of the military.’ Sometimes this scholarship is undertaken with the objective of providing the military with information about its own internal systems and processes in order to improve its performance. At other times, the objective is to study the military as a human group to identify and describe its culture and social processes. Both ‘anthropology for the military’ and ‘anthropology of the military’ tend to have a practical, applied aspect, whether the
goal is improving military effectiveness or influencing national security policy. On the other hand, anthropology as a discipline has also had a long history of studying warfare itself, known as ‘the anthropology of war.’ The papers in this special edition fall into these myriad categories of military anthropology.
function of presence. The debate about presence is not just theoretical, but represents a deep and enduring conflict within the Navy as an organisation about its concept of war. Since the end of WWII, the Navy has been designing its fleet architecture according to a Mahanian concept of war, despite the preponderance of non-lethal missions and activities. The result is a mismatch between platforms and tasks.
makers and intelligence officials to the nature and the gravity of the threat. Policy makers and intelligence officials were fixated on the idea of major wars fought by rational state actors with conventional weapons. Conflicts with non-state terrorist groups, led by charismatic, 'irrational' leaders were beyond the pale. Thus, even after bin Laden declared war on America in a 1998 fatwa , bombed U.S. embassies, and exhorted his followers to "abide by Allah's order by killing Americans . . . anywhere, anytime, and wherever possible," the Pentagon failed to recognize that we were at war.
Knowledge of one’s adversary as a means to improve
military prowess has been sought since Herodotus studied his opponents’ conduct during the Persian Wars (490–479
BC). T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) embarked on a similar quest after
the 1916 Arab rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, immersing himself
deeply in local culture: “Geography,
tribal structure, religion, social customs, language, appetites, standards
were at my finger-ends. The enemy I
knew almost like my own side. I risked
myself among them many times, to
learn.”1 Since then, countless soldiers
have memorized Sun Tzu’s dictum: “If
you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a
hundred battles.”
Although “know thy enemy” is
one of the first principles of warfare,
our military operations and national
security decision-making have consistently suffered due to lack of knowledge of foreign cultures.
thirty years, the conflict in Northern Ireland has been raging almost without pause.1 British security forces
have attempted to control the violence by establishing road blocks, conducting house searches, altering
the judicial system to allow conviction on informant testimony, instituting internment without trial for
paramilitary suspects, garrisoning over thirty thousand British soldiers in Northern Ireland, instituting
broadcasting bans of Sinn Féin, and conducting intensive interrogation of suspects. Despite the best
attempts of the British government over the past few decades to thwart PIRA, the conflict persisted. To
sustain a low-intensity war under these conditions requires more than guns and ammunition; it requires
the support of a political community, extensive organization of economic resources, and cultural values
that give meaning to the conflict.
shadowy commandos with suspicious connections to the Pentagon, current
low-intensity conflicts are fought by mercenaries with impeccable resumes who negotiate contracts openly and give interviews to the press. A number
of different explanations have been offered for this increased mercenary activity, including the spread of armed conflicts associated with the formation of new States,' and the sale of military services by detachments of national armies in order to pay their members and avert dissolution. Worldwide military downsizing may have encouraged former career military personnel to view "any armed conflict [as] an opportunity to become involved in exchange for pay."' Or, as one mercenary explained, "this might be our only chance to see an honest-to-God shooting war on the European continent in
our lifetime and dammit, we were not going to miss it."
Book Chapters by Montgomery McFate
US: anthropology holds interest when the military must fight land wars against adversaries from a different culture. In off-cycles, anthropology reverts back to the special operations community and survives as an academic subject in the world of professional military education (PME). In the US, PME institutions exist as a kind of reservoir for the concept of culture and for the discipline of anthropology. PME institutions keep the concept of culture alive within the military domain by retaining a smattering of anthropology in their curriculum. Under these conditions, a professor teaching anthropology to military personnel must focus on anthropology’s professional relevance, offering insights that might be applied to operational problems. This chapter describes my haphazard journey in developing an anthropology course for senior military personnel. I describe some of epistemological benefits offered by
an anthropological approach (e.g., ‘ground up’ perspective, de naturalization of taken-for-granted cultural norms, and subjective thinking), and my discovery of the limitations of anthropology and military history for theorizing about transcultural war. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the central question that emerged from the course: What happens when two ‘culturally distant’ societies go to war, each having their own norms and ideas regarding the organized deployment of military force?
considered ‘anthropology of the military.’ Sometimes this scholarship is undertaken with the objective of providing the military with information about its own internal systems and processes in order to improve its performance. At other times, the objective is to study the military as a human group to identify and describe its culture and social processes. Both ‘anthropology for the military’ and ‘anthropology of the military’ tend to have a practical, applied aspect, whether the
goal is improving military effectiveness or influencing national security policy. On the other hand, anthropology as a discipline has also had a long history of studying warfare itself, known as ‘the anthropology of war.’ The papers in this special edition fall into these myriad categories of military anthropology.
function of presence. The debate about presence is not just theoretical, but represents a deep and enduring conflict within the Navy as an organisation about its concept of war. Since the end of WWII, the Navy has been designing its fleet architecture according to a Mahanian concept of war, despite the preponderance of non-lethal missions and activities. The result is a mismatch between platforms and tasks.
makers and intelligence officials to the nature and the gravity of the threat. Policy makers and intelligence officials were fixated on the idea of major wars fought by rational state actors with conventional weapons. Conflicts with non-state terrorist groups, led by charismatic, 'irrational' leaders were beyond the pale. Thus, even after bin Laden declared war on America in a 1998 fatwa , bombed U.S. embassies, and exhorted his followers to "abide by Allah's order by killing Americans . . . anywhere, anytime, and wherever possible," the Pentagon failed to recognize that we were at war.
Knowledge of one’s adversary as a means to improve
military prowess has been sought since Herodotus studied his opponents’ conduct during the Persian Wars (490–479
BC). T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) embarked on a similar quest after
the 1916 Arab rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, immersing himself
deeply in local culture: “Geography,
tribal structure, religion, social customs, language, appetites, standards
were at my finger-ends. The enemy I
knew almost like my own side. I risked
myself among them many times, to
learn.”1 Since then, countless soldiers
have memorized Sun Tzu’s dictum: “If
you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a
hundred battles.”
Although “know thy enemy” is
one of the first principles of warfare,
our military operations and national
security decision-making have consistently suffered due to lack of knowledge of foreign cultures.
thirty years, the conflict in Northern Ireland has been raging almost without pause.1 British security forces
have attempted to control the violence by establishing road blocks, conducting house searches, altering
the judicial system to allow conviction on informant testimony, instituting internment without trial for
paramilitary suspects, garrisoning over thirty thousand British soldiers in Northern Ireland, instituting
broadcasting bans of Sinn Féin, and conducting intensive interrogation of suspects. Despite the best
attempts of the British government over the past few decades to thwart PIRA, the conflict persisted. To
sustain a low-intensity war under these conditions requires more than guns and ammunition; it requires
the support of a political community, extensive organization of economic resources, and cultural values
that give meaning to the conflict.
shadowy commandos with suspicious connections to the Pentagon, current
low-intensity conflicts are fought by mercenaries with impeccable resumes who negotiate contracts openly and give interviews to the press. A number
of different explanations have been offered for this increased mercenary activity, including the spread of armed conflicts associated with the formation of new States,' and the sale of military services by detachments of national armies in order to pay their members and avert dissolution. Worldwide military downsizing may have encouraged former career military personnel to view "any armed conflict [as] an opportunity to become involved in exchange for pay."' Or, as one mercenary explained, "this might be our only chance to see an honest-to-God shooting war on the European continent in
our lifetime and dammit, we were not going to miss it."
US: anthropology holds interest when the military must fight land wars against adversaries from a different culture. In off-cycles, anthropology reverts back to the special operations community and survives as an academic subject in the world of professional military education (PME). In the US, PME institutions exist as a kind of reservoir for the concept of culture and for the discipline of anthropology. PME institutions keep the concept of culture alive within the military domain by retaining a smattering of anthropology in their curriculum. Under these conditions, a professor teaching anthropology to military personnel must focus on anthropology’s professional relevance, offering insights that might be applied to operational problems. This chapter describes my haphazard journey in developing an anthropology course for senior military personnel. I describe some of epistemological benefits offered by
an anthropological approach (e.g., ‘ground up’ perspective, de naturalization of taken-for-granted cultural norms, and subjective thinking), and my discovery of the limitations of anthropology and military history for theorizing about transcultural war. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the central question that emerged from the course: What happens when two ‘culturally distant’ societies go to war, each having their own norms and ideas regarding the organized deployment of military force?
Lessons Learned and Lost in America’s Wars, is grounded in the literature
on strategic culture, which posits (roughly) that states have a relatively
coherent set of practices and preferences regarding policy, strategy,
and warfighting. Her objective is to examine the interplay between the
organizational culture of the US Marine Corps
International Perspectives includes several essays that examine the treatment of domestic violence under international legal instruments, such as the
1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women. Although violence against women occurs in the domestic sphere and is perpetrated by non-state actors, such violence should be
a concern of international law
US Army, Peter Campbell aims to challenge the orthodox view that the
US Army’s preference for large-scale conventional operations, offensive
theories of victory, and dislike of counterinsurgency (COIN) stem from
its organizational culture. Campbell, an associate professor of political
science at Baylor University, has previously written about military innovation, cyberspace, and the gap between academia and the military.
Military Anthropology without actually discussing the substance
of the book. Simons seems to believe my book is a marketing
pitch for anthropology. However, I am certainly not trying to “sell
anthropology to the Department of Defense,” nor am I promoting the
idea that “anthropology can—and even should—be reweaponized to
serve the Department of Defense today.” In fact, I state quite clearly the
purpose of this book is to understand how military organizations have
used sociocultural knowledge at the strategic, operational, and tactical
level in a variety of different conflicts, and how individual anthropologists
contributed their knowledge about the human condition to difficult
national security problems, so that if sociocultural knowledge plays an
important role in future conflict, some of the pitfalls of the past might
be avoided. If anything, my book is quite skeptical about the use of anthropology by the military since so much anthropological advice has been misused or gone unheeded.
to provide commanders with relevant
knowledge about local societies in a brigade’s
area of operations and assist brigade staffs in
developing courses of action that emphasize
the use of non-lethal tactics (e.g. negotiation,
infrastructure development and provision
of medical care) in order to achieve desired
effects (i.e. increased support for host nation
governments and decreased support for insurgent
groups). The Human Terrain Team (HTT)
represents the voice of local people on the brigade
staff – a perspective the military doesn’t
often take into account.
HTS was developed in response to calls
from the military for more cultural knowledge.
Recognizing that a lack of cultural understanding
had resulted in strategic, operational
and tactical errors in Haiti, Somalia, Iraq and
Afghanistan, members of the US military
hoped that by increasing their understanding of
those societies, future mistakes might be alleviated
or averted.
accusing others of committing 'ethical
transgressions' in what amounts to a proxy
discussion of US foreign policy. Apparently
Professor Gonzailez' efforts to polarize the
discipline do not leave much time for selfreflection:
if he is so concerned with 'building
bridges between peoples', as he has written
elsewhere (see Gonzalez 2007), then why is he
taking a position of intellectual isolationism
towards the military? One could argue that
Professor Gonzailez' attempts to drive a wedge
between anthropologists and the US national
security community - especially at a moment
when anthropologists have a real opportunity
for positive influence - represents a grave
ethical breach of the highest order. What are
the moral hazards of disengagement?
Coalition can influence portions of Iraq’s population. They have been used
successfully by Coalition forces as channels of influence, particularly in rural
areas. The limits of their power must, however, also be understood if the
Coalition is to make best use of limited resources.
Tribes are perhaps the oldest, most enduring and controversial social entity in
the Middle East. From centralizing polities in the agrarian age, down to the era of
industrialism and nation-states, tribes have sustained never-ending changes,
acting in and reacting to changing political, military, economic, and at times even
topographical environments.
any interest in armed conflict. Faculty and fellow students suggested that my
research might fit better in the political science department. I found this
suggestion disconcerting - why should war be excluded from anthropological
inquiry? How human beings fight is as much a matter of culture as table
manners, death rituals, or transgendered prostitution. And, after visiting
Northern Ireland for the first time, it was clear to me that Republicanism was
not just a political philosophy; it was a unique culture with its own norms,
narratives, symbols, rituals, and language. Decades of war (or hundreds of
years, depending on who is counting) had destroyed neither Republican
culture nor Republican political philosophy, but rather had strengthened,
clarified and deepened it. It was impossible not to empathize with these selfdisciplined, courageous people who continued to fight British forces despite
the fact that the consequence was likely to be death or imprisonment; despite
the fact that they had neither the manpower nor the firepower to secure a
military victory; and despite the fact that their political goal of unification of
Ireland’s 32 counties was absent from the political agenda of the Republic of
Ireland.