Search results

According to Kümmel, the military is a highly complex social phenomenon touching several different contexts and is thus subject to multiple processes of interpretation (Kümmel, 2003). For this reason, the military is studied from a trans- or interdisciplinary perspective. Historically, the military function could be synthesised in the protection of the entire nation from external invasion and the ruling regime from domestic unrest as well as the conduct of wars for foreign policy objectives. This function raises a basic peculiarity of the military that makes it a special institution: the legitimate management of violence. Such as every organisation, the military changed over time and the changes ask for a revision of the management modalities of many aspects of its operations. From here the idea of a research about the collective representation of military personnel in Italy started. This article is intended to present the planned research. The survey is divided into three parts. To begin, I will analyse some aspects of the military changes, in order to know the context in which the need for an empirical research about this matter is placed. Next, I will examine the structure of the Italian collective representation of the military, pointing out some of the problems of the actual system. To conclude, I will briefly present the research.

In asymmetrical wars the asymmetry does not refer to a quantitative difference in belligerants’ strength or power, but to the qualitative differences in means, behavioral standards, goals, and values of conflicting parties. In the asymmetrical conflicts it seems that war functions have changed.

The purpose of this paper is to put in evidence the various expertises and skills that a soldier must have to operate in such a changed context.

In order to reach this purpose, the diversity model has been applied to the new conflicts, as already used to analyze the difference between CROs and the traditional soldiers’ job. To these respect, the definition of the further evolution of the role of a soldier called upon to intervene in the new operational environments can be considered as a preliminary finding: such a soldier must always be flexible and able to operate in a Constabulary context, but with more points in common with the warrior ideal type than with the peacekeeper one. A soldier who has to be able to gear his action in terms not of “dissymmetry” but of asymmetry as defined above. This implies a perception of the qualitative as well as quantitative differences in their own characteristics and in those of the adversary. In particular behavioral style, values, and strategic culture. However, there is no question of a return to the past, but the latest evolution in the range of flexible soldier that is so important in the asymmetric conflicts.

Practical implications of this analysis are bound to offer a deeper understanding of the events concerning asymmetrical conflicts, in the education as well as training of soldiers deployed in these kinds of conflict theaters.

This first part of the book is devoted to the forms of conflict that are characteristic of the start of the twenty-first century. As I document in the first essay, the newest and most significant form of struggle of our times is asymmetric warfare, which has had an enormous development as shown also by the great number of studies dedicated to it (see the bibliographies of the chapters focussed on this form of conflict).