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The US military depends on women to meet recruiting goals, but women participate at lower rates than men. Theorists suggest that military and family policies affect women’s lower participation. Research has confirmed the impact of policy changes on women’s military service during specific time periods. The purpose of this paper is to examine how and when military policies affecting women developed over the course of history, exploring two related hypotheses: first, when women’s military participation is vital, policies affecting their military and family roles punctuate in tandem, and second, cultural values impact policy solutions to reconcile women’s roles.

Punctuated equilibrium and a women’s military participation theory informed the hypotheses. US Census and Defense Department data were used to identify periods of service when women’s military participation was vital. Historical policies were mapped and analyzed to identify policy patterns and themes affecting women’s military participation 1895–2015.

Evidence supports both hypotheses. When women are needed during wartimes, policies simultaneously encourage their service and regulate their family roles. However, policies evolved from separating servicewomen’s roles prior to the 1970s (e.g. prohibiting motherhood), to supporting their families (e.g. maternity leave) – a shift precipitated by sweeping changes in broader society and the military’s change from the draft to an All-Volunteer Force.

Findings elucidate the link between military and family policies affecting US women’s military participation and retention. Results may inform policy advocacy aimed at optimizing the US Department of Defense’s diversity efforts.

Sexual misconduct (sexual assault and sexual harassment) in the US military is a long-standing problem. The military has implemented many policies and programs to address sexual misconduct in its ranks. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the processes of military sexual misconduct policy and programs have evolved since the 1940s.

Punctuated equilibrium and multiple streams theories were the guiding frameworks for this process analysis of the policies and programs implemented to address military sexual misconduct based on existing literature, news media and press.

Three punctuations are found in military sexual misconduct policy that demonstrate large-scale departures from the periods of equilibrium as the result of either a significant sexual misconduct allegation or new survey findings revealing sexual misconduct prevalence rates. In between these major-issue defining events, incremental policy change has occurred resulting in a period of stasis or return to the status quo requiring correction. Despite returns to stasis, each policy punctuation has built on the prior punctuation, generating new military directives, policies and programs.

Using the lenses of punctuated equilibrium and multiple stream theories, this paper shows how the processes of US military sexual misconduct policies and programs have evolved. The US military and militaries globally can utilize these policy frameworks to help predict future patterns of military sexual misconduct and improve responses to these problems.

The conclusion of the Cold War rivalry between the United States and former Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s created new areas of opportunity and concern for U.S. national security policy. No longer menaced by the threat of nuclear war from Soviet military might, the United States emerged from the Cold War as the world's preeminent military power. Successful developments such as this often produce elation in the pronouncements of U.S. officials as a recent Clinton administration declaration demonstrates:

Donald Trump entered the presidency in 2017 with an electoral mandate to reduce US military involvement around the world and to abandon the trade and investment treaties that empowered global corporations. Yet he mostly continued the foreign policies adopted by previous administrations. In recent decades, those policies have increasingly served particularistic elite interests at the expense of the US ruling class as a whole, and they have also been unsuccessful in stemming the decline of US imperial power. This chapter explores the factors that explain this continuity of policy. In analyzing the reasons for policy stasis, it offers an analytical basis to evaluate what might change under President Biden. It also assesses what strategies might be most effective for those who hope to resist US militarism and to undermine the US capacity to enforce a hegemony based on rapacious capitalism.

In 1969, Warren Nutter left the University of Virginia Department of Economics to serve as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Nixon administration. During his time in the Defense Department, Nutter was deeply involved in laying the groundwork for a military coup against the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende. Although Nutter left the Pentagon several months before the successful 1973 coup, his role in Chile was far more direct than the better-known cases of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, and Arnold Harberger. This chapter describes Nutter’s role in Chile policymaking in the Nixon administration. It shows how Nutter’s criticisms of Henry Kissinger are grounded in his economics, and compares and contrasts Nutter with other economists who have been connected to Pinochet’s dictatorship.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse supply chain network management (SCNM) in the context of emergency preparedness management (EPM). The results of this study revealed that civil-military relations are essential for EPM to function as a coordinated approach to safety and security, and are necessary to respond effectively to complex emergencies and mitigating threats to developed countries. Civil-military relations are still a concern in the context of communication, the exercise of authority, and the coordination of emergency supplies (ES) to emergency operations.

This qualitative study is based on field observations, with attention focused on the EPM of Sweden, Finland, and Poland. The analysis of a broader SCNM through EPM was supported by semi-structured interviews among civil-military actors in Sweden, information collected from informal conversations known as “hanging out”, and secondary materials. Empirically, the analysis included a variety of civil-military relationships and identified implications for management, policy, and planning that are applicable to developed countries.

The management of civil-military relations is a meaningful resource when used as an overall approach for safety and security. The integration of civil-military relations in EPM in the planning of ES is a long-standing and complex matter. The management of Swedish civil-military relations in EPM is recognising that implications for management are imbedded in continuous policy changes in, for example, the Swedish policy history. Civil-military relational complications that arise in the field of operations are impossible to anticipate during emergency planning, as those complications are grounded in policy changes.

Escalating threats to developed countries are highlighted. The study underlines the primary measures used in studying military involvement in EPM. An understanding of SCNM as a choice for management can be obtained in future research that focuses on a broader role of the military in EPM. Sweden has emphasised a clearer role for the military by reactivating total defence planning and by evolving common practices and processes with civil actors in civil defence. Meanwhile, Poland and Finland are increasing their focus on supporting the management of civil-military policies on safety and security regarding communication, authority, and developing coordination. Consistent with findings from previous reports on SCNM, civil-military relations are essential for EPM. This study confirmed the importance of civil-military coordination, the management and practice of authority, and shared forms of communication.

The USA and China have had a complex relationship since the 1949 establishment of the People’s Republic of China. This relationship has gone from hostility to guarded friendliness to increased tension at the beginning of the new millennium. Recent years have seen the emergence of literature stressing China’s potential emergence as a national security threat to the USA. This article will look at books, government documents, and Internet resources examining the current and possible future national security relationship between these two countries from 1995/1996 to the present. This literature presents US and international perspectives representing a variety of viewpoints on a subject that may have a major impact on international relations during the twenty‐first century.

The chapter presents comparative analysis of data from two representative sociological surveys carried out in the Bulgarian armed forces in June–July 2000 and October–November 2007.

The goal of the chapter is to investigate how possible organizational and cultural barriers operate and influence the successful development and implementation of equal opportunity policy and practices in the military and to suggest options for the improvement of policy decision-making.

In addition, the chapter analyses advantages and possible disadvantages as well as implications of the concept of diversity for the military organization from the perspective of units’ effectiveness, cohesion and teamwork and to suggest recommendations for improvement of the performance of diverse military teams.

Institutional structures of professional career paths often support breadwinner–homemaker families, with a stay at home wife available full time to support the professional (and children), so the professional can devote complete energy and time to developing a career. This research examines how two partners in the same narrowly structured, fast track occupational culture such as those occurring for dual military officer couples shape how women and men negotiate decision making and life events. Data from interviews with 23 dual U.S. Navy officer couples build upon Becker and Moen’s (1999) scaling back notions. With both spouses in these careers, placing limits on work is extremely difficult due to fast track cultures that demand higher status choices and structures that formally do not reliably consider collocations. Trading off occurs, but with distress due to the unique demands on two partners in the fast track culture, which means career death for some. Two partners in fast track careers may not yet have given up on two careers as many peers may have, but they lose a great deal, including time together and their desired number of children. But they ultimately posit individual choice rather than focusing on structural change. The pressured family life resulting is likely similar to that for partners in other narrowly structured, fast track cultures such as in law firms and academia.