Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. How Western Soldiers Fight
  • Cited by 18
      • Cornelius Friesendorf, Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH)
      Show more authors
      • You may already have access via personal or institutional login
    • Select format
    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      24 May 2018
      07 June 2018
      ISBN:
      9781108554091
      9781108429108
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108554091
      Dimensions:
      (228 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.59kg, 320 Pages
      Dimensions:
      Weight & Pages:
      • Subjects:
      Politics and International Relations, International Relations and International Organisations
    You may already have access via personal or institutional login
    • Selected: Digital
    Add to cart View cart Buy from Cambridge.org
    Subjects:
    Politics and International Relations, International Relations and International Organisations
    Information

    Book description

    In contemporary missions, soldiers often face unconventional opponents rather than enemy armies. How do Western soldiers deal with war criminals, rioters, or insurgents? What explains differences in behavior across military organizations in multinational missions? How does military conduct impact local populations? Comparing troops from the United States, Britain, Germany, and Italy at three sites of intervention (Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan), this book shows that militaries in the field apply idiosyncratic organizational routines. Friesendorf uses the concept of routines to explain, for example, why US soldiers are trigger-happy, why British soldiers patrol on foot, and why German soldiers avoid risk. Despite convergence in military structures and practices, militaries continue to fight differently, often with much autonomy. This bottom-up perspective focuses on different routines at the level of operations and tactics, thus contributing to a better understanding of the implementation of military missions, and highlighting failures of Western militaries to protect civilians.

    Reviews

    ‘Why are some militaries better at policing, peace operations and counterinsurgency than others? Looking at how the Americans, British and Germans fared in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, Cornelius Friesendorf finds that the answer lies in routines which embody each army's biases and practices. This outstanding book exemplifies the importance of organisational analysis in security studies.'

    Theo Farrell - Executive Dean of Law, Humanities and the Arts, University of Wollongong, Australia

    ‘This book is a superb example of why we need more micro-level, ‘bottom up' analysis in the study of international relations. As Friesendorf persuasively demonstrates in his study of western interventions in war-torn countries, governmental agencies implementing policy - in this case militaries - are not merely tools of grand strategists in distant capitals and headquarters but have agency themselves, and their routine everyday practices should therefore be placed more front and center in our analysis. Only with this type of ground-level work can international relations scholars ‘see' the important nuances that are otherwise missed from the armchair grand-theorizing that defines so much of the field.'

    Peter Andreas - John Hay Professor of Political Science and International Studies, Brown University, Rhode Island

    ‘Anyone wondering why the US Army applied warfighting templates to multinational missions in the Balkans and Afghanistan whereas British soldiers patrolled on foot, Germans stayed inside their camps and Italians prioritized crime-fighting should read this book. Unlike most accounts of military interventions, How Western Soldiers Fight uses micro-level routines and behaviour patterns to reveal what really shapes missions.'

    Alice Hills - Durham University

    Refine List

    Actions for selected content:

    Select all | Deselect all
    • View selected items
    • Export citations
    • Download PDF (zip)
    • Save to Kindle
    • Save to Dropbox
    • Save to Google Drive

    Save Search

    You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

    Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
    Cancel
    ×

    Contents

    Contents

    Metrics

    Altmetric attention score

    Full text views

    Total number of HTML views: 0
    Total number of PDF views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    Book summary page views

    Total views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    * Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

    Usage data cannot currently be displayed.

    Accessibility standard: Unknown

    Why this information is here

    This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.

    Accessibility Information

    Accessibility compliance for the HTML of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.