Entering the war machine: on construction of order in a multinational NATO headquarters

This article concerns organisational decision-making in a multinational military NATO headquarters. Despite widespread criticism of its mechanistic and bureaucratic tendencies, empirical research on the daily practices of military planning remains surprisingly scarce. Drawing on fieldwork in an operational NATO headquarters and interviews with commanders and staff officers, this article utilises an assemblage framework to unravel the construction of order. Within the military headquarters, war is generally imagined as a managerial problem – a rational, procedural endeavour of aligning means and ways to achieve military ends. The article shows how standardisation efforts designed to increase interoperability can paradoxically relegate staff officers to the status of cogs in the war machine focused on processing (“feeding the beast”) rather than inspiring creative or innovative thinking. This approach risks alienating segments of the multinational staff when imposed standards diverge from contemporary NATO doctrine. Since professional military education is the domestic responsibility of member nations, NATO commanders cannot assume a uniform understanding of doctrine and planning; individual headquarters must therefore bridge this gap if staff officers are not to be left with the inescapable obligation to adhere to procedures.

Reversing the tide: analysis of the offense-defense balance in Ukraine’s counteroffensive operations during the Russo-Ukrainian War

In the trajectory of armed conflict, a critical juncture emerges when the initially defensive party transitions to mounting a successful counteroffensive against the aggressor, thereby reclaiming previously ceded territory. This strategic shift represents a pivotal consideration in analyzing warfare dynamics and the evolution of military engagements. This study examines the Russo-Ukrainian War to evaluate how Western military aid to Ukraine reshapes the balance between offensive and defensive capabilities, elucidating its impact on the conflict’s progression. To substantiate this perspective, it compares two key cases: the successful 2022 Kharkiv counteroffensive and the less effective 2023 summer counteroffensive. Through this juxtaposition, we scrutinize the logical underpinnings of the offense-defense balance theory. This research aims to elucidate specific criticisms and ambiguities within the ongoing debates over this theoretical framework. By investigating the factors that influenced the outcomes of these counteroffensives, this study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how external support shapes modern conflict dynamics and challenges established paradigms in military strategic theory.

A new autocratic way of war? Autocracy, precision strike warfare and civilian victimization

This article scrutinizes precision strike technologies in modern warfare and sets forth the thesis of a new autocratic way of war that – in contrast to the “new Western way of war” – is not characterized by the use of precision strike technologies for restrained civilian targeting, but by the use of these technologies for precise and deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure. We explain this by the specific characteristics of autocratic political systems, such as the restriction of effective political participation and state control of the media, which shield autocratic leaders from the domestic political costs of civilian victimization in war. Our analysis of the warfare conducted by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen shows that both autocracies did use precision strikes for systematic civilian victimization. Comparing this to their warfare within the US-led coalition in Syria suggests that the presence of a democratic state leading the coalition has a constraining effect. Israeli bombing in Gaza appears to be a counterexample to the argument. However, we show that Israeli warfare – while reminding us that democracies kill many civilians in war, too – does not contradict our argument.

The semiotic remediation of hardtack biscuits during World War One

This study offers the first detailed examination of the materiality of World War One hardtack biscuits – a dense biscuit made from flour, water and salt, which was a key component of ration packs for both Australian and British soldiers. It is specifically concerned with the types of repurposing – or acts of semiotic remediation – that take place, their broader sociocultural functions and the semiotic resources drawn upon to make meaning. Using a combination of multimodal analysis and archival research, it identifies five key acts of semiotic remediation by soldiers – declarations of ownership, letters, diary entries, photo frames and objets d’arts – which showcase hardtacks as unique, unmediated resources for understanding WW1 experiences. It also notes the frequent use of humour as a coping mechanism, as well as the important memorialisation function of hardtacks, acquiring symbolic values disproportionate to their everyday value for bereaved families. Hardtacks, thus, stand as a testimony to the resourcefulness of humans in trying circumstances, holding a wealth of knowledge on the aestheticisation of war that no living person possesses.

Graphic journeys: virtual dark tourism in Joe Sacco’s Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza

The article examines how Joe Sacco’s war comics Palestine (1993) and Footnotes in Gaza (2009) engender virtual dark tourism experience for its readers through the Occupied Territories using the unique possibilities of the graphic medium such as sequential arrangement of panels, cartographic representation, sonic effects, focalization, shifting perspectives, and recurring visual motifs, among others. Espousing the identity of a Western tourist in search of stories of collective suffering and depravity, Sacco navigates the refugee settlements of West Bank and Gaza Strip to illustrate the anxious everyday existence of Palestinian residents, which is often disregarded by mainstream media narratives. Appropriating the multimodality and visual language of the comics medium, Joe Sacco, this paper argues, turns his readers into fellow dark tourists on his journeys across the contested lands of West Asia in order to witness and experience the woes of the marginalized and oft misrepresented Palestinians under occupation. Furthermore, the study underscores how the graphic medium can be a potent tool to emulate the experientiality of a dark tour.

The global pontificate of Pius XII. War and genocide, reconstruction and change, 1939-1958 by Simon Unger-Alvi and Nina Valbousquet, New York/Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2024, 380 pp., £107, ISBN 9781805396086

Decentring narratives of (de)globalization and crisis: Uzbekistan’s ‘everyday’ political economy amidst Russia’s war in Ukraine

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is commonly considered a global crisis, reinforcing deglobalization. However, Uzbekistan’s experience challenges this conventional wisdom, as Uzbekistani actors have renounced both economic decoupling and geopolitical alignment. I employ a critical and constructivist ‘everyday’ International Political Economy (IPE) approach, drawing on 54 fieldwork interviews in Uzbekistan, statistics, and public opinion surveys. I argue that Uzbekistani actors challenge Eurocentric narratives of deglobalization through normative agency at three levels: state, business, and ‘everyday’. I also explore the normative conflict between these three levels in interaction with global (post)colonial capitalism, which I describe as ‘conflictual hybridity’, with a specific focus on the normative power of micro-actors, including labourers and migrants. In a context of ‘double coloniality’ between material/geographical and normative/political Russo-Uzbekistani postcolonial hybridity and Western normative power, I aim to debunk elite-centric geopolitical imaginaries of non-Western agency during crises, or lack thereof, by foregrounding the ‘everyday’ of the Global Majority.

This Rustic Muse: Developing a Political Voice in the Poetry of Patrick Brontë

This article examines a range of the Reverend Patrick Brontë’s poetry—a much neglected body of work in Brontë criticism—and argues that it was here that Brontë was able to develop a political voice and a sense of literature as a vehicle for political exploration and debate. In considering Brontë’s two collections, Cottage Poems (1811) and The Rural Minstrel (1813), in the contexts of war abroad and industrial, economic and social unrest at home, this article explores what the poetry tells us about Brontë’s political thinking, his relationship with political structures and hierarchies, and his anxieties about political cohesion and security. What emerges is a poet whose work, written under the guise of his ‘rustic muse’, offers fascinating interventions into contemporaneous political debates regarding poverty, industrialisation, the city, community, the place of religion in society, nation-state formation and the nature of liberty and equality more generally.

The development of South African operational doctrine in the 1990s: from an African way of war to the practice of operational art

The paper provides an exposition of the evolution of the operational doctrinal development of the South African military in the 1990s. From a historical perspective, the doctrine was influenced by the South African military as a product of British regimentalism, Afrikaner pragmatism, and African irregularity. Although there is a strong irregular undercurrent, the South African operational doctrine was largely the product of the regular conventional operations of the South African military during the Cold War; raising questions as to the utility thereof for the current African strategic realities that are predominantly irregular and unconventional in nature and alignment with the current institutional South African military context. The shift in emphasis from a combined arms capability and acquisition in the South African military to peace missions and the politics of transformation seems to have rendered any approach to operational doctrine abstract and disconnected from operational realities and activity.

Defence preparedness and readiness

The defence preparedness and readiness of NATO allies is increasingly being challenged not only by Russia, but since recently doubted also by some of its long-standing allies. This study examines how prepared are NATO allies to address a protracted conflict and war in Europe, and what strategies could enhance its readiness. Assessing the current state of two strategic readiness dimensions empirically – mobilisation readiness and sustained whole-of-society resilience – reveals that particularly the defence industrial preparedness faces structural challenges, also vis-à-vis historical defence readiness during the Cold War. A scenario analysis of a hypothetical worst-case scenario reveals a sizeable cross-country heterogeneity in whole-of-society resilience. The simulation results suggest that today's existing problems will only be amplified in a protracted conflict or war scenario. To ensure NATO strategic readiness under the most demanding conditions, it is imperative that allies embark on a rapid de-risking trajectory well before the worst-case scenario has realised.