"Nothing Short of Murder": How Leaders Can Diminish Military Capacities. (15th March 2022)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- "Nothing Short of Murder": How Leaders Can Diminish Military Capacities. (15th March 2022)
- Main Title:
- "Nothing Short of Murder": How Leaders Can Diminish Military Capacities
- Authors:
- Piccolo, Samuel
- Abstract:
- Abstract: This article contends that civilian leaders can adversely affect military capacity in the realm of technology. I argue that if civilian leaders have personal biases that blind them to military effectiveness, and if they have the power to make unilateral procurement decisions, then military capacity will be hampered. With a main plausibility probe of Canada's disastrous World War I Ross rifle, I suggest that Minister of Militia Sam Hughes ensured that Canadians fought with the gun 18 months after its first wartime failures, failures so egregious that one officer said it was "nothing short of murder" to send soldiers into battle with it. I assess two shadow cases on rifle development and procurement involving Union war secretary Simon Cameron and British war secretary Hugh Arnold-Foster, both of which support my theory. I suggest that civilian control over specific military technologies is not desirable, and that civilian control of militaries in general may be strengthened by limiting control of these means of war.
- Is Part Of:
- Security studies. Volume 31:Number 2(2022)
- Journal:
- Security studies
- Issue:
- Volume 31:Number 2(2022)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 31, Issue 2 (2022)
- Year:
- 2022
- Volume:
- 31
- Issue:
- 2
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2022-0031-0002-0000
- Page Start:
- 318
- Page End:
- 350
- Publication Date:
- 2022-03-15
- Subjects:
- Security, International -- Periodicals
International relations -- Periodicals
Arms control -- Periodicals
National security -- Periodicals
World politics -- 1989- -- Periodicals
Sécurité nationale -- Périodiques
Politique mondiale -- 1989- -- Périodiques
355.0305 - Journal URLs:
- http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/fsst20/current ↗
http://www.tandfonline.com/ ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1080/09636412.2022.2072235 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 0963-6412
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - 8217.219900
British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 22128.xml