Author: WarScholar

Modern warfare history book – “Building Militaries in Fragile States” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) – Mara Karlin interview

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Dr. Mara Karlin started her career working in the Middle East. She then went to graduate school and interned in the Pentagon on strategic issues. Eventually she served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy & force development in the Department of Defense. She is now a professor at Johns Hopkins University where she teaches in the field of Strategic Studies. This is her first book.

1:54 – Dr. Karlin was a policymaker in the Pentagon in the aughts and she worked on building militaries in Pakistan and Lebanon. She had an early interest in Middle East issues and ended up getting an internship in the Pentagon while studying at Johns Hopkins.

3:55 – The book tries to answer the question of how the US can be successful when it builds militaries in fragile states. The US is adverse to sending in its own military into fragile states. The US tries to work with the militaries in these fragile states. Dr. Karlin looked at various case studies from history.

5:19 – She looked at Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The big failure example is the South Vietnam in the 1950s. If the US had succeeded in building the South Vietnam military then the war could have been avoided.

7:15 – Two other failures are Lebanon in the 1980s and in Iraq in recent years. The closest thing to success is US efforts in Greece after WWII.

9:06 – The US got deeply into Greece’s military affairs. That transformed the Greek military and enabled them to beat guerillas and the US didn’t have to send in troops.

15:13 – There were different levels of cooperation. Institutional and strategic versus operational and tactical. People think that the US only started developing foreign militaries after 9/11.

17:28 – More desperation in a government makes foreign countries more willing to listen to what the US has to say.

21:23 – The US goes through stages of increased and decreased support for foreign militaries. However, the US shows consistency in security goals since WWII. Only recently have security issues been inconsistent.

25:25 – Bipartisan agreement on security affairs has recently begun to diminish.

29:38 – The document she found that hit heard the hardest was finding a declassified CIA agency study of a gap in Beirut where attackers were sneaking through to attack their enemies. She also found information on a US official who wanted to stage a coup in Lebanon.

33:31 – She really enjoyed studying the development of the Lebanese military work she had done years before.

36:35 – Body count ideas developed in the Vietnam War has affected how the US has approached building foreign militaries. Recently, the US is shifting away from this quantitative approach to this issue.

39:00 – Dr. Karlin had to apply a paradigm shift to her initial hypothesis.

42:30 – Dr. Karlin discusses Reagan’s decision to have the USS New Jersey launch strikes in Lebanon.

45:35 – Dr. Karlin discusses why Lebanon and its military development is important to the US.

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar1945 and on Instagram @crisalvarezswarscholar

Guests: Dr. Mara Karlin

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, United States, France, Lebanon, Vietnam, Greece, Iraq, Syria, stabilization, strategic studies

Modern warfare history book – “Military Cultures in Peace and Stability Operations” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) – Chiara Ruffa interview

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Dr. Chiara Ruffa has recently published a book about military culture. It’s based on her research with French and Italian military units that had deployed to Lebanon and Afghanistan. I spoke to her about the book.

2:20 – In 2006, Chiara was working for the UN in the Central African Republic in support of the peacekeeping mission. This inspired her interest in the topic this book is about and in her graduate studies.

4:04 – While the book focuses on current events, it traces the military cultures of France and Italy from the 19th century. These cultures affects how militaries carry out their mandates.

8:00 – Peacekeeping operations are a very particular type of operation in that there is much more latitude in interpreting the mission and how to carry it out.   This is important because of the high volume of peacekeeping operations being carried out.

13:53 –Chiara would like multi-national forces to be more open in talking about cultural characteristics of units that are deployed.

17:00 – Military culture is most important at the service level.

25:00 – NATO has standardized much of the ways in which peacekeeping is done however cultures create variations.

26:05 – French military culture has revolved around assertiveness since the Revolution. But this was modified when de Gaulle in 1962 reaffirmed the idea of civilian control over the military.

30:18 – Italy had a shift in military culture that was affected by WWII and by the Cold War. Italian officers push for using the Italian military for peacekeeping. Italy has a change in the culture in the 1990s.

34:13 – Chiara’s first problem in the research was how she would collect data on these militaries. She didn’t have much access to begin with. She started by going to Lebanon and working with French and Italian troops.

46:50 – Chiara had to learn about military organizations from scratch when she started her research.

48:30 – Chiara still wonders how cultures shape Standard Operating Procedures.

1:01:00 – The book will hopefully cross the gap between security studies and peace studies in Europe.

1:05:45 – She’s on twitter at Ruffa.Chiara.

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar1945 and on Instagram @crisalvarezswarscholar

Guests: Chiara Ruffa

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, France, Italy, Afghanistan, Lebanon, peacekeeping, stability, operations

World War I history book – “California at War” (University Press of Kansas, 2018) – Diane North interview

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Dr. Diane North teaches history at the University of Maryland. She grew up in the Washington, DC area, fascinated by history. She earned her Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Davis and has recently written “California at War” about California’s experience during WWI. I interviewed her about the book.

2:05 – Diane was enthralled by history from an early age and from growing up in Washington, DC. She would listen to debate in the House and Senate after her chores.

3:09 – The WWI centennial was approaching when she began her research so she focused on the war. She wanted to understand what happens to people when the nation goes to war. California had a huge economy and was a trendsetter so she wanted to write on it.

8:01 – She created a new course at the University of Maryland on WWI because of her interest in the war.

9:11 – The book starts on the 1916 parade bombing in San Francisco with 40 injured and ten killed. The first chapter talks about the US men who fought in WWI before the US entered the war. Many Californians served in Siberia from 1918 to 1920.

11:45 – Chapter 2 looks at the women who served overseas during the war.

13:20 – Chapter 3 looks at how the army and navy spend considerable money building facilities in California. Chapter 4 looks at the economy of war. The war accelerated the process of corporate organization and a dramatic rise in industrial employment. She then looks at what people did in the home front to support the war.

14:40 – She also looks at how minorities participated in supporting the war in the home front. Then she touches on how the state and military dealt with the influenza problem.

15:57 – Chapters 7 and 8 deal with the rise of the security state and the role of government. Private organizations were given the power to spy on citizens without government oversight.

18:00 – California also promoted scientific and agricultural development. But these groups also spied on fellow citizens. Colleges, staff and students were also required to sign oaths of loyalty. German language and literature also could not be studied.

20:46 – Efforts were made to keep the press from writing about the IWW and also to get members arrested. Later rights of fre speech, press and assembly were restricted.

22:49 – The navy split the feet after the war and put the pacific fleet in San Diego. This helped in California’s post war boom.

24:01 – One of California’s Senators was a pacifist and he was appalled by US entry into WWI. Berkley enacted an anti-free speech ordinance. California had a real connection with the war effort before the US entered the war because of its trade with Europe.

26:30 – California did have a strong peace movement that quickly got squashed by Federal efforts. The Post office began curtailing free speech and free press by restricting the delivery of certain newspapers.

28:45 – She started her research with the National Archives in DC, Maryland and California.

30:37 – Hollywood was considered vital for the war effort by the Federal government and this boosted the film industry.

33:39 – Diane came across paintings done by an Army officer while in France. Some US forces didn’t return until 1921 or 22 because they were occupying the Rhine.

35:00 – Californians pushed the Federal government to pass many anti-Asian laws and there were many anti-Asian films put out by Hollywood at this time. There were also may pacifist films. But many were also very patriotic. Many of these films were distributed internationally.

37:20 – Diane found interesting documents from Sydney Coe Howard. He was an airplane pilot and he won an Oscar for his screenplay of Gone With the Wind. His letters are amazing and include vivid descriptions of dogfights and the war. She unearthed many journals, letters, photos and drawings from the war.

41:40 – California women do not get the recognition they deserve for their efforts in WWI.

44:00 – Ship and boat building increased considerably in California during this time. The two major universities were the University of California and Stanford University. A committee was formed to examine and organize scientific research at the time to help the California economy.

47:30 – California’s efforts to organize and improve statewide scientific research was held up as an example by the Federal government for other states to follow.

51:42 – Californians were strongly patriotic and believed President Wilson when he said the war would be the war to end all wars.

52:36 – HG Wells wrote a series of lectures before the war that a good war will end all wars and many people including Wilson bought this idea. However the country was very racist and Wilson had re-segregated parts of the Federal government that had been integrated so the soundness of this idea was questionable.

56:00 – The book will be discounted during the month of July.

Links of interest

https://www.californiaatwar.com/

From the Publisher: https://kansaspress.ku.edu/home/new-notable/978-0-7006-2646-5.html

From your local Independent Bookstore: https://www.indiebound.org/indie-bookstore-finder

From Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/California-War-State-People-during/dp/0700626468/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1527174595&sr=1-1&keywords=California+at+War&dpID=51C5WTuV4dL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

From Target Books: https://www.target.com/p/california-at-war-the-state-and-the-people-during-world-war-i-by-diane-m-t-north-hardcover/-/A-53530392 

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar1945 and on Instagram @crisalvarezswarscholar

Guests: Diane North

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, California, WWI world war one, Wilson, Berkley, Stanford, San Francisco, San Diego, Hollywood, US Navy