Turnley / Michael / Ben-Ari Special Operations Forces in the 21st Century

Perspectives from the social sciences
Erscheinungsjahr 2017
ISBN: 978-1-351-80268-0
Verlag: Taylor & Francis
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 326 Seiten

Reihe: Cass Military Studies

This volume sets out an agenda for the social scientific study of Special Operations Forces in Western industrial democracies, using case studies from around the world.

Despite consistent downsizing, over the past two decades the armed forces of the industrial democracies have seen a huge growth in special operations forces (SOF). Whether in terms of personnel and units, the number of commands and supporting forces, or budgets and technologies at their disposal, SOF have seen unprecedented rates of expansion. This is the result of developments in the complex environments within which today's armed forces operate, and the geopolitical dynamics of industrial democracies. These developments have lead to the emergence of "new" or "hybrid" wars (interweaving high-intensity encounters, terrorism, insurgencies or other forms of violence), an emphasis on precision warfare (derived from social expectations regarding casualties), technological advances (which allow small units to deploy massive firepower), and budgetary constraints (small units are cheaper to maintain than massive formations). However, there is relatively little sustained social scientific research on these forces. In fact, apart from scattered articles (and a very occasional volume), the scholarly social sciences community knows relatively little about SOF and their political impact.

SOF present rather unique problems for the social scientific study of the armed forces and civil-military relations. While certainly a part of the armed forces, SOF inhabit rather autonomous spaces within militaries with their own recruitment systems, budgets and decision-hierarchies. While increasingly seen as a key solution to many security problems by political and military decision-makers, SOF nevertheless pose potential problems in terms of political control for political leaders since their relative autonomy from the military hierarchy and the covert nature of many of their missions make oversight difficult. While SOF are ready units capable of being dispatched around the world, we know relatively little about the policy processes that lead to their deployment.

Against this background, this book explores the distinctive features of SOF in terms of the classic questions posed by the social sciences in the study of the military: questions about the political control of the agents of organized armed violence; how SOF are used in the creation and maintenance of legitimacy for national policies; and explorations of the internal organizational dynamics by which these special units are generated, trained, selected for and deployed. It is arranged along an axis leading from the macro-sociological level of civil-military relations and policy-related concerns, through the mezzo-level of organizational dynamics and on to the micro-level of small group dynamics and individual characteristics. No less important, as almost all extant social scientific research about SOF has been carried out on American and (to an extent) British forces, our volume adds cases from Belgium, Canada, Israel, The Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. The structure of the volume and the inclusion of a variety of national cases allow contributors to ask comparative questions about the differences between such forces and the "regulars", the similarity between SOF within and between national contexts, and about the global community of such forces.

Filling a clear gap in the literature, this book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, civil-military relations, irregular warfare, security studies, and International Relations.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Turnley, Jessica Glicken

Michael, Kobi

Ben-Ari, Eyal

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Militärwesen Nationale und Internationale Sicherheits- und Verteidigungspolitik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Militärgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Militärwesen Spezialeinheiten und Elitetruppen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction: A Social Scientific Agenda for the Study of SOF, Jessica Glicken Turnley, Eyal Ben-Ari and Kobi Michael

Part I: Specialness and the Emergence of Special Operations Forces

2. What is Special about Special Operations Forces?, Anthony King

3. A Social Scientific Agenda for the Study of SOF, Eyal Ben-Ari, Jessica Glicken Turnley and Kobi Michael

Part II: The Emergence of Special Operations Forces

4. The Rise of SOF Power, Bernd Horn

5. Warrior-Diplomats and Ungoverned Spaces: Narratives of Possibilities, Jessica Glicken Turnley

6. The 'Specials' and the Regular Army, Asaf Hazani

Part III: Civilian Control and Public Imagery

7. SOF and the 'Silver Bullet': A Reflection of Weakening Civilian Control – A Theoretical Approach, Kobi Michael

8. Trust But Verify: Civil-Military Relations between Special Operations Forces (SOF) and Political Elites, James Kiras

9. The Route to Special Operations: The Relationship between Commanders of Special Operations and Political Decision-Makers, Dov Tamari

10. The Many Faces of Special Operations Forces, Emily Spencer

Part IV: Micro-Social Dynamics

11. The Seaman's Council: A SOFish Way of Making Decisions, Tone Danielsen

12. Scripts of Service Culture – A Hidden Dimension in the Successful Joint Operations of the Israeli Air Force and Special Forces, Uzi Ben-Shalom and Yuval Tsur

13. Dutch Forward Air Controllers in Afghanistan: Aspects of teamwork, courage, targeting, decisiveness and… people getting killed, Wout Jansen and Sjo Soeters

Part V: Organizational Processes

14. In Search of Intelligence: The Dutch Special Forces in Mali, Sebastian Rietjens and Jelle Zomer

15. Aiming to Punch above Their Weight: the Belgian Special Forces, Delphine Resteigne

Part VI: Innovation, Entrepreneurship and the Military Institution

16. Special Forces, Ethos and Technology: The Case of Israel's Haruv Reconnaissance Unit, Zeev Drory, Eyal Lewin and Eyal Ben-Ari

17. Organizational Entrepreneurship and Special Forces: The First Israel Helicopter Unit and the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (Matkal), Lior Brichta and Eyal Ben-Ari

18. The Self and the Mirror: Institutional tensions and Canadian Special Operations Forces, Eric Ouellet

Part VII: Psychological Perspectives

19. Integrating Men and Women within Naval Special Warfare Combat Teams, Deborah Gibbons, Alan Nelson and Jim Suchan

20. Risk, Safety Attitudes and Military Identity among Swedish Rangers, Marcus Börjesson, Johan, Österberg and Ann Enander

21. The Resilience of SOF Personnel, Irina Goldenberg and Mathieu Saindon

Afterword, Anna Simons

Über Autor(innen)

Jessica Glicken Turnley is President of Galisteo Consulting Group, Inc., and a Senior Fellow at the Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), US Special Operations Command.

Eyal Ben-Ari is currently Director of the Kinneret Center for Society, Security and Peace, Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee, Israel. He has written and edited over fifteen books.

Kobi Michael is a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) Tel-Aviv University, Israel.