Long considered the masters of counterinsurgency, the British military encountered significant problems in Iraq and Afghanistan when confronted with insurgent violence. In their effort to apply the principles and doctrines of past campaigns, they failed to prevent Basra and Helmand from descending into lawlessness, criminality, and violence.By juxtaposing the deterioration of these situations against Britain's celebrated legacy of counterinsurgency, this investigation identifies bo...

This book explores the impact of different civil-military structures on operational effectiveness in complex peace operations. Recent operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia are examples of grand failures to enforce peace and to promote democracy and development through international interventions. A missing variable in analyses of these conflicts hitherto has been the nature of the civil-military interface and its impact.The principal argument of this book is that the civil-mi...

Women and Gender Perspectives in the Military compares the integration of women, gender perspectives, and the women, peace, and security agenda into the armed forces of eight countries plus NATO and United Nations peacekeeping operations. This book brings a much-needed crossnational analysis of how militaries have or have not improved gender balance, what has worked and what has not, and who have been the agents for change.The country cases examined are Sweden, the Netherlands, Can...

This volume connects the study of statebuilding to broader aspects of social theory and the historical study of the state, bringing forth new questions and starting-points, both academically and practically, for the field.Building states has become a highly prioritized issue in international politics. Since the 1990s, mainly Western countries and international institutions have invested large sums of money, vast amounts of manpower, and considerable political capital in ventures of...