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This paper aims to argue that the Global Political Economy (GPE) theory of neomercantilism provides a sound explanation to the American military involvement in the Persian Gulf. Accordingly, this paper also proposes the concept of “Neomercantilist War” which analyses the use of military force to protect a strategically vital economic resource (such as Gulf oil). Neomercantilist War is a point of similarity between the GPE school of neomercantilism and the International Relations (IR) school of realism.

The 1991 Gulf War and the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 are two major events of American military involvement to protect and/or seize Gulf oil. These two events will be tested for neomercantilism, in addition to the concept of “Neomercantilist War” as presented in the paper. The first feature, or definitional component, of neomercantilism is the major role of the state, the second is the preponderance of security/geopolitical goals over economic goals and the third is the zero-sum, relative gains mentality to dealing between states IR.

The GPE school of neomercantilism and the concept of Neomercantilist War do offer a sound explanation of American military involvement in the Gulf.

The American military involvement in the Gulf region has been analysed using the IR schools of realism and liberalism, but never using GPE theory. Even though GPE is mostly concerned with economic activity, the scope of GPE should be expanded to include military policies if they affect economic resources and activity.

Aims to explains the mismatches between political discourse and military momentum in the US handling of the Cuban missile crisis by using the model of the potential autopoiesis of subsystems. Under wartime conditions, the codes of political and military communications can increasingly be differentiated.

The model of a further differentiation between political and military power is developed on the basis of a detailed description of the Cuban missile crisis. The concept of a “semi‐dormant autopoiesis” is introduced for the difference in the dynamics between peacetime and wartime conditions.

Several dangerous incidents during the crisis can be explained by a sociocybernetic model focusing on communication and control, but not by using an organization‐theoretical approach. The further differentiation of the military as a subsystem became possible in the course of the twentieth century because of ongoing learning processes about previous wars.

Politicians should not underestimate autonomous military processes or the significance of standing orders. In order to continually produce communications within the military, communication partners are needed that stand outside the hierarchy, and this role can be fulfilled by an enemy. A reflexively imagined enemy can reinforce the autopoiesis of the military subsystem.

The paper shows that civilian control over military affairs has become structurally problematic and offers a sociocybernetic explanation of the missile crisis. The potential alternation in the dynamics under peacetime and wartime conditions brings historical specificity back on the agenda of social systems theory.

The goal of this chapter is to reexamine the nature and structure of the military–industrial complex (MIC) through the works of John Kenneth Galbraith. MIC, or military power as he prefers, is a coalition of vested interests within the state and industry that promoted the military power in the name of “national security” for their interests. Galbraith’s theory of giant corporations helps us understand the role of military corporations in the MIC. Moreover, he is a critical scholar in examining this topic because he was a political insider in the Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations and a prominent public intellectual against the Vietnam War. Against this background, this chapter has three parts. After explaining the development of military Keynesianism with respect to the main economic thoughts, it examines the history of the MIC and its impact on economic priorities during and after the Cold War through Galbraith’s works. Finally, this chapter discusses MIC’s relevancy today and evaluates Galbraith’s prophecies.

This chapter proposes a sociological reconstruction of the emergence of citizenship as a source of legitimacy for political institutions, and it focuses on examining the historical processes that first gave rise to this concept. It explains how citizenship has its origins in the transformation of feudal law, a process that culminated in patterns of military organization that characterized the rise of the early modern state in Europe. On this basis, it describes how the growth of constitutional democracy was integrally marked by the militarization of society and explains that military pressures have remained palpable in constitutional constructions of citizenship. In particular, it argues that, through the early growth of democracy, national citizenship practices were closely linked to global conflicts, and they tended to replicate such conflicts in national contexts. It concludes by showing how more recent processes of constitutional norm formation, based largely in international human rights law, have acted to soften the military dimensions of citizenship.

The Burmese military has been successful in maintaining its authoritarian rule in the past decades. In 2011, however, the junta shifted its power to civilian government despite the absence of severe political pressure from inside or outside. Since then, the new government has introduced many reforms that allow greater political liberty in Burma. This chapter locates the junta’s power shift as part of a wider process of the military consolidating political legitimacy. It argues that as the junta’s power consolidation reached its bottleneck in the 2000s, political reform was imperative as the pre-condition for international legitimacy and economic development. Yet, regarding aspects of the content of the new constitution, military-civilian power relationships, and ethnic minority-central government relations, it remains to be seen whether Burma will move toward actual democratization. For President Thein Sein, one of the big challenges will be satisfying the high expectations of the international community and domestic opposition parties while still being able to control the pace of reform and maintain power.

While most West European nations were formed around pre-existing entities that could be called “countries” before the modern age, this was not the case in the Middle East. Some entities, like Egypt, did have a clear political and cultural identity before colonialism, others, like Algeria, did not. This chapter discusses the four states of the Maghreb: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, through the perspective of “country creation” going into and coming out of colonial rule. We can see here two “models” of fairly similar types of historical development, one showing a gradual process through a protectorate period to relatively stable modern nations, another through violent conquest and direct colonization ending in violent liberation and military and wealthy but fragile states. The article asks whether these models for the history of country creation and the presence or absence of pre-colonial identities can help explain the modern history and nature of these states in the Arab Spring and the years thereafter. Then, a more tentative attempt is made to apply these models to two countries of the Arab east, Syria and Iraq. While local variations ensure that no model can be transferred directly, it can show the importance of studying the historical factors that go into the transition from geographical region to a country with people that can form the basis of a nation.

This study employs Stein Rokkan's methodological approach to analyse state formation in the Greater Middle East. It develops a conceptual framework distinguishing colonial, populist and democratic pacts, suitable for analysis of state formation and nation-building through to the present period. The framework relies on historical institutionalism. The methodology, however, is Rokkan's. The initial conceptual analysis also specifies differences between European and the Middle Eastern state formation processes. It is followed by a brief and selective discussion of historical preconditions. Next, the method of plotting singular cases into conceptual-typological maps is applied to 20 cases in the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey). For reasons of space, the empirical analysis is limited to the colonial period (1870s to the end of World War 1). Three typologies are combined into one conceptual-typological map of this period. The vertical left-hand axis provides a composite typology that clarifies cultural-territorial preconditions. The horizontal axis specifies transformations of the region's agrarian class structures since the mid-19th century reforms. The right-hand vertical axis provides a four-layered typology of processes of external intervention. A final section presents selected comparative case reconstructions. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time such a Rokkan-style conceptual-typological map has been constructed for a non-European region.

Using long-run trend data for US tactical and bomber aircraft, Norman Augustine’s Law 16 famously suggests continuously rising US armament unit costs. By the year 2054, the country’s entire defence budget would be expended on a single aircraft, which an industry colleague dubbed as the Battlestar Galactica. However, while it is thought provoking, what does Law 16 in fact entail? It appears that the mechanics of Augustine’s ‘Law’ has never been examined in detail. To help disentangle the matter and assess its relevance in the context of today’s battlefield technology, which is increasingly focussed on the application of large numbers of small, cheap, expendable, electronically linked, yet highly autonomous systems, this chapter introduces the concept of an Augustine weapons system.

State leaders’ decision-making calculus is often attributed to external factors. The political arena, international community pressure and a country’s military stance all take centre stage in the analysis of national security decisions. Little weight is given to personal aspects of a leader’s psyche in explaining these decisions; this is true to the bulk of the research regarding this topic. This study theorizes and tests a positive link between Israeli leaders’ combat military experience and their propensity to enter into ‘peacemaking’ decisions namely, peace talks, cease fires and unilateral withdrawals. This research uses a new database comprising all peacemaking decision points in Israel’s history, looking at the pressure put on a leader from outside factors and his military experience to explain the decision taken. It finds a strong significant link between combat experience and the tendency to enter in a peacemaking decision with little regard to ideological affiliation, shedding a new light on Israeli politicians from both sides of the aisle.