Introduction

Abstract

The Research Committee (RC) 01 of the International Sociological Association is carrying out a broad cross-national research on civil–military relations in democratic countries and, particularly, on the cultural dimensions of this relationship. In this chapter several country papers on that theme are presented, but before giving the floor to the reports of the findings from the national researches, let me introduce the research itself. The issue of a cultural gap between the armed forces and the parent society is an old one and on this theme we can say that two main positions are present in the literature; one is that there is a necessary cultural gap between the military and the civilian, and that a particular gap is not negative. Another side also accepts the idea that the military has a culture different from civilian society, but argues that traditional military culture now serves a less essential purpose: according to them the military has no functional imperative to retain a culture contrary to the prevailing civilian values. On this subject, we can cite what John Hillen (1999, pp. 43, 58), for instance, writes for the US:“To many observers, the values and social mores of 1990s America – narcissistic, morally relativist, self-indulgent, hedonistic, consumerist, individualistic, victim-centered, nihilistic, and soft – seem hopelessly at odds with those of traditional military culture.” Despite that, “Whether politically motivated by the agenda pushers or not, there is now [in the US] an inexorable momentum to ‘close the gap’ between the military and society without clearly identifying the nature of the gap, the extent to which it might in fact be healthy and desirable.”

Citation

Caforio, G. (2005), "Introduction", Caforio, G. and Kümmel, G. (Ed.) Military Missions and their Implications Reconsidered: The Aftermath of September 11th (Contributions to Conflict Management, Peace Economics and Development, Vol. 2), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 79-82. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1572-8323(05)02005-9