Recent conflicts have required the armed forces to engage in what has been termed ‘war amongst the people’. Such conflicts increasingly require a type of soldier deployed to function as an ‘armed social worker’, as was seen most recently in operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this increased focus on societal relations has – and should – become the area of prime concern for contemporary armed forces, this poses a series of conceptual and practical questions regarding the ‘people’ concerned and the nature of the society amongst which war is conducted.
Scholars and practitioners come together in this volume to explore how armed forces can make sense of such complexity in conceptual terms and how military actors have practically interacted with local power structures and relations, with both positive and negative effects. It examines armed forces’ engagement at the local level in a contemporary context and contextualises this within the broader political, strategic, tactical and legal implications this engagement has had at home and overseas.
About the author
Whitney Grespin has worked in contingency contracting, professional military education, and international development on five continents. She received her Ph D from King’s College London at the UK Joint Services Command and Staff College, is a Lecturer at American University, and Director at Sloan Manor Consulting. Previously, she worked as an embedded advisor to the Somali Ministry of Defense, before which she supported the U.S. Army War College’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) as a Peace Operations Analyst and lead for the U.S. Army’s Women, Peace and Security agenda. Whitney is a Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations and is a member of the United Nation’s Security Sector Reform Advisory Network.111,894 Ebooks in this category
