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The U.S. military is designed to take on a similarly constructed foreign military located across some line of demarcation. The goal of such conventional warfare is to incapacitate or annihilate the enemy military, whereupon victory is achieved – a task for which the U.S. military has no peer on the current world scene or the foreseeable future. However, the U.S.'s adversaries since the end of the Cold War have not been conventional forces, as evidenced most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Consequently, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps recently have become volcanoes of change in order to adapt their operational styles to this reality. In the past, departures from the conventional mode in similar circumstances have been temporary. Currently, there is considerable discussion in the U.S. defense establishment about how persistent these types of nonconventional threats are likely to be in the future and whether it is necessary to change the configuration of the U.S. military accordingly. A centerpiece of this discussion is a new Counterinsurgency (COIN) Field Manual 3-24 addressing issues related to the postures the military and support establishments may take. This paper discusses some events prior to the writing of the new COIN Manual, comments on issues raised by the Manual and its doctrine, and offers some social science implications for thinking about and implementing the doctrine.

Since women were first admitted to the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) in 1976, gender integration has been an important issue. This chapter reviews the works of two social scientists that researched and documented the gender integration efforts of that time. It then summarizes more recent gender climate data, presents data from our study of correlates of cadet perceptions of females at USAFA, and discusses implications of these findings for gender climate and leadership development programs. In the early years of gender integration, male cadets had more traditional attitudes toward women in society than civilian males or female cadets; views that changed little by the time of graduation. Also, they often were vocally opposed to the integration of women at the Academy and in the military and viewed female cadets and officers as less capable leaders. In contrast, the females in the first cohort were less traditional in their attitudes and backgrounds and were very positively supportive of women in nontraditional roles. Nevertheless, they were “feminine” in their gender identities and, unexpectedly, became “more feminine” over the course of their Academy experience.

Despite vast improvements in the past 30 years or so, some gender integration issues remain; there continue to be gender-related jokes and comments, and a small but substantial portion of men do not believe that women belong at the Academy.

In the present study, we looked at what variables predicted men's and women's agreement with the statements: “female cadets can hack it (succeed) here” and “I have no trouble taking orders from a female officer.” We also looked at how cadets rated leadership scenarios featuring either male or female officers.

The findings revealed that different variables predict men's and women's attitudes toward females at USAFA.

Results are discussed in terms of continuing efforts to improve the gender climate at USAFA as well as to enhance leadership development programs.

I first met Charles C. Moskos back in 1983, at the first international conference in which I had the fortune to participate, and, since my history of relations with him parallels those of many colleagues and friends who study the military and who, like me, remember him, it seems worthwhile to introduce these studies in his honour with a personal recollection.

I first met Charles C. Moskos back in 1983, at the first international conference in which I had the fortune to participate, and, since my history of relations with him parallels those of many colleagues and friends who study the military and who, like me, remember him, it seems worthwhile to introduce these studies in his honour with a personal recollection.

President John F. Kennedy navigated through the Cuban missile crisis with the help of his advisers in the so-called ExComm. While ExComm attendance was very stable and its goal, the removal of the missiles, clear, true to the garbage can model the options available were socially constructed and were ambiguously related to the objective they purportedly served. An analysis of the recorded discussions reveals that Kennedy's choice of a blockade required the ExComm to suppress talk about the perils it entailed; his decision not to intercept a Soviet tanker was based less on caution than unsustainable indecision; and when Kennedy squared off against his advisers regarding the best way to respond to Khrushchev's conflicting offers on October 26 and 27, the latter worked to exclude him from the very decision he was about to make. The analysis points to a natural affinity between the garbage can model and ethnomethodological attention to the fine-grained details of deliberative talk.

This section deals with asymmetric warfare and its nature as well as the issues that it creates. The reason for devoting such a large part of the Seoul conference and of these proceedings to this type of warfare derives from the fact that it has changed many rules of the game of conflict.

This change has imposed a profound transformation on the military, not only tactical but also structural, preparatory and mental.

The commitment to adaptation, to change, to the broadening of mentalities and horizons that asymmetric warfare requires of the military today thus motivates the plurality – and also the heterogeneity – of the studies presented in the chapters of this section.