Contemporary Military Culture and Strategic Studies: US and UK Armed Forces in the 21st Century

by Finlan; Alastair

• ISBN13: 9780415638425
• ISBN10: 0415638429
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-03-06
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book explores and compares the contemporary military cultures of the United States and the United Kingdom. This book tackles how contemporary American and British military culture is formed/sustained and how it influences the outlook, practices and force structures of armed forces in the US and UK today. As such the work focuses explicitly on looking closely at the six major military institutions (army, navy/marines, and air force) in the United States and the United Kingdom and their respective preferences for certain types of equipment and approaches to war. It devotes six substantial chapters with a common analytical framework to exploring the formation and sustenance US/UK military culture under the rubric of five major themes, which include social origins, transformative events, leaders, strategy, technology and contemporary identity. The nature of this topic demands an explicit analytical framework around which to pin down and illustrate the most important aspects of the military culture. The employment of five major themes is an attempt to emphasize the comparative nature of the research and to highlight cultural similarities and differences between the two sets of armed forces. A concluding chapter considers the impact of the War on Terror on the military cultures of the United States and the United Kingdom as well as likely directions for the future. This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, strategic studies, security studies and comparative politics.