Military Revolution

"Over the centuries, strategic theorists, military professionals and historians have sought to analyse and understand warfare. The causes and principles of war, the role of leadership, the conditions of battle as well as the mutation and ethics of war, have all been part of a perpetual quest to understand war. The purpose of this monograph is similar. The aim is to define warfare in the information age, to identify the socio-political, military-technical and operational factors that influence the waging of Information Operations (IO) and to question whether war has changed, whether war has been transformed under the conditions imposed by the information revolution.
The last two decades, many countries have invested in a style of warfare that builds on the technologies of stealth, electronic surveillance and target acquisition, precision engagement and network communications. The assumption was that all-pervasive surveillance and precision were enough to dispel the fog of war, avoid the need for protracted ground combat and lead to a new type of warfare. These limited and ‘quick-fix’ type of operations that demanded small and technologically sophisticated armed forces were reflecting the risk-averse culture of western societies. This trend, based on the notion of a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and labeled as Information Warfare (IW), called for a new era in warfare.
The RMA proponents and the IW enthusiasts were right, but they were also wrong. The conflict environment of the last decade does indeed represent a new era in warfare, but not the one they quite expected. There are developments in surveillance and reconnaissance, but there are still cases of deception and information overload. Instead of Network Centric Warfare (NCW) based upon electronic sensor-to-shooter networks and precision targeting systems, Coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are engaged in netwars, based on flexible human networks. There is progress in the collection and analysis of information, but friction and noise are still with us. Instead of enjoying Information Superiority (IS) and having a transparent and digital battlespace, Coalition forces are increasingly drawn into highly complex and lethal campaigns in urbanised terrain, against irregular enemies.
Therefore, is the information revolution truly transforming warfare or not? Are we witnessing a true revolution or just an evolutionary process that takes advantage of the developments in command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and precision warfare? Is warfare becoming frictionless and virtual? Is there a revolution taking place only at the military-technical level, in the way war is conducted, or also at the socio-political level, in the way society views and responds to warfare? Has warfare moved away from the Clausewitzian paradigm and closer to a postmodern one?
In order to answer the above questions, this monograph will focus on the latest military transformation and analyse the main arguments of the IW concept. Chapter One provides a review of the relevant literature and proceeds with the formation of three alternative paradigms for the analysis of war in the information age. In Chapter Two the study will test the IW concept in two military campaigns - Operation Allied Force and Operation Iraqi Freedom - by examining not only the operational aspects, but also the socio-political context of warfare. The result will be a holistic understanding of warfare in the information era.
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""The book - The Upheavals in the Middle East: The Theory and Practice of a Revolution is a book that tries to theoretically challenge one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East – its revolutions and social protests. The book offers theoretical paradigms that are culturally, religiously and historically suited to the conditions that prevail in the Middle East. The book deals with seventeen case studies taken from all the Muslim and Arab states and provides a theoretical framework for the study of other cases from all over the world and also from the recent Arab Spring.
Revolution, as a political action, can occur in all societies but it has appeared more frequently in the Middle East than in other places. What are the reasons for the Middle East being more vulnerable to revolution than other modern societies in other regions? What makes the Middle Eastern revolution unique and surprising? And is this going to be the fate of the Middle Eastern countries in the future? This book tries to answer these questions and provide some theoretical understanding for the phenomenon together with an examination of cases of revolution that have been successful and those that were doomed to fail. ""

Dans cette étude prosopographique, je me propose de présenter un certain nombre de personnalités françaises ayant contribué au débat sur la motorisation et la mécanisation des armées. Leur action a connu parfois un rayonnement à l'échelle européenne. Dans le sillage des pionniers de la Grande Guerre, une pléiade d'officiers s'efforce de penser l'adaptation de l'outil militaire - personnels et armements - issu de la période de conflagration, dont aucune institution ne sort inchangée. En exploitant les dossiers individuels des officiers conservés au SHD Vincennes, je m'efforcerai de mettre en parallèle articles publiés dans des revues et appréciations de la hiérarchie, croisant littérature ouverte et archives. Dans les parcours de chacun de ces hommes, il sera peut-être possible d'estimer le moment d'entrée en contact avec cet engin alors contesté qu'est le char de combat. L'état-major prend le parti de le considérer comme une arme supplémentaire, subordonnée à l'infanterie, compatible avec les habitudes tactiques éprouvées. L'héritage du vainqueur de Verdun, incarné par le maréchal Pétain, a dans une certaine mesure tendance à freiner les innovations, du fait du vieillissement de cadres inamovibles, et du corsettement réglementaire auquel doit se plier tout officier qui souhaite publier sur les événements de la guerre mondiale. Cependant, des généraux relativement âgés mais clairvoyants, comme Buat et Maitrot, pressentent les nouvelles formes de combat induites par l'utilisation de machines sur le champ de bataille, alors que d'autres plus jeunes demeurent hermétiques aux courants novateurs, souvent associés à l'excentricité insulaire des Britanniques. J'essaierai de restituer la dynamique d'émergence et de diffusion des idées à travers les strates générationnelles. Peu de partisans de la modernisation prennent place parmi les rédacteurs des deux grands textes doctrinaux qui balisent la période étudiée, l'Instruction provisoire sur l'emploi tactique des grandes unités de 1921 et l'Instruction sur l'emploi tactique des grandes unités de 1936. Si comme l'assure la Revue Militaire française dans l'immédiat après-guerre,  les militaires français sont les plus qualifiés pour assumer la direction intellectuelle des diverses armées du monde, cette volonté se heurte à la réalité du terrain, européen ou colonial (la conflit du Rif, où les Français se trouvent malmenés par des adversaires d'un niveau de développement très inférieur en ce qui concerne l'art de la guerre), et surtout au manque de renouvellement conceptuel  et matériel. Cette étude sera l'occasion d'évoquer les servitudes et grandeurs du métier d'officier à une époque dominée par la rigueur budgétaire et une dévalorisation de l'armée. Ce sera l'occasion de mettre en valeur une galaxie de noms un peu oubliés du grand public qui ne retient que la figure de De Gaulle comme promoteur du char, allant à l'encontre d'une hiérarchie réputée sclérosée. Il s'agit de restituer la situation de l'époque dans toute sa complexité institutionnelle, technique et naturellement humaine.

Selección de artículos presentados al IV Congreso de la Asociación Española de Estudios del Pacífico, con laborposterior de edición y demás, como ocurre en las editoriales académicas. Participan algunos de los principales especialistas en la región, como Barbara y Leonard Andaya o Alfred McCoy.

The government of kidnapped Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry, Fiji's only Indo-Fijian prime minister in 30 years of independence, had achieved a modest economic success in its first year in office. Indo-Fijians make up 44% of the islands' 800,000 population. But on Friday 19 May, failed businessman and kailoma (part-Fijian) George Speight, along with renegade soldiers from the elite Counter Revolutionary Warfare unit, stormed Parliament and took the Chaudhry government hostage in the name of indigenous Fijian paramountcy'.

The third (attempted) coup in the Fiji Islands in 13 years led to an extraordinary symbiotic relationship between the terrorist leader, failed businessman George Speight, and the news media. Few journalists in the Fiji media industry (who have a median age of 22 and media experience of 2.5 years) had experienced the two successful military coups in 1987 staged by Sitiveni Rabuka. Nor did many of them have experience of covering other major political crises.Local journalists quickly embraced a political regime in Parliament with no legitimacy while the lives of the elected government hostages remained in danger. The arrival of the international media juggernaut affected the coverage and analysis of events, not always in ways appreciated by the Fiji media and public. Fiji's civil society was given scant coverage and attention compared with the 1987 coups.

The conflict on the Irish seaboard between the years 1641 and 1653 was not some peripheral theatre in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. As this first full-length study of the war at sea on the Irish coast from the outbreak of the Ulster rising in 1641 to the surrender of Inishbofin Island, the last major royalist maritime outpost, in April 1653, shows, it was instead the epicentre of naval conflict with important consequences for the nature and outcome of the land conflicts in Ireland and elsewhere. The book provides a clear and comprehensive narrative account of the war at sea, accompanied by careful contextualisation and a full analysis of its Irish, British and European dimensions. This includes the strategic importance of Irish ports, conflict between organised navies and formidable bands of privateers and pirates, the adoption of new naval technologies and tactics and the relationship between conflict on land and sea. Moving beyond traditional accounts of naval campaigns, it integrates warfare at sea into the wider dimension of political and economic developments in Ireland, England and Scotland. Extensive use is made of a wide range of archival material, in particular the High Court of Admiralty papers held in the National Archives at Kew.

On 19 May 2000, an insurrection led by failed businessman George Speight and seven renegade members of the élite 1st Meridian Squadron special forces engulfed the Fiji Islands in turmoil for the next three months. Speight and his armed co-conspirators stormed Parliament and seized the Labour-led Mahendra Chaudhry Government hostage for 56 days.On Chaudhry's release from captivity, he partly blamed the media for the overthrow of his government. Some sectors of the media were accused of waging a bitter campaign against the Fiji Labour Party-led administration and its rollback of privatisation. In the early weeks of the insurrection, the media enjoyed an unusually close relationship with Speight and the hostage-takers, raising ethical questions. Dilemmas faced by Fiji and foreign journalists were more complex than during the 1987 military coups. As Fiji faces a fresh general election in August 2001, this article examines the reportage of the Coalition Government's year in office, media issues over coverage of the putsch, and a controversy over the author's analysis presented at a Journalism Education Association (JEA) conference in Australia.

On 19 May 2000, an insurrection led by failed businessman George Speight and seven renegade members of the elite 1st Meridian Squadron special forces engulfed Fiji in turmoil for the next three months. Speight and his armed co-conspirators stormed Parliament and seized the Labour-led Mahendra Chaudhry government hostage for 56 days. The crisis posed a pedagogical challenge for a group of University of the South Pacific students who voluntarily chose to cover the events for their own newspaper, Wansolwara, and website while the university closed down.