Armed Forces & Society

The late 1980s was probably the golden age of East-West security/arms control negotiations. Treaty-producing talks, such as the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) negotiation between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, went right to the heart of issues of national survival and stature. Partly due to this importance, the negotiating behavior of individual West European states during this time was highly consistent and utilitarian. Powerful influences stemming from geography, historical commitments, economic competition, domestic instability, and political vision cross-walked directly to predictable state negotiating stances. Despite the murkiness of the nature of the New World Order, these and other emerging influences or factors seem to still lend coherence to a modified self-help framework for understanding national security interests and their negotiated pursuit.

Using data from the "1988 DoD Survey of Sex Roles in the Active-Duty Military," this research focuses on individual experience and understanding of sexual harassment in the military work environment as well as impacts of organization context on this behavioral arena. Our results indicate that there is a pervasive pattern of sexual harassment, especially of women, that spans rank and work site contexts. Because the survey was conducted prior to the extensive publicity associated with the Clarence Thomas hearings and the Tailhook scandal, it is possible that respondents understated the extent of different types of harassment. We find that a general harassment environment is highly predictive of individualistic harassment experiences of women and men. We conclude that controlling overt sexual commentary and public behavior is essential for producing a positive nonharassing work situation.

The Palestinian uprising (intifada) in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 has created a moral dilemma for at least some Israeli soldiers who are assigned to participate, however reluctantly, in the military effort to suppress it. The dilemma consists in strong commitment to the army, on the one hand, and objections to its tactics of repression on the other. In an attempt to observe the processes of coping with the resulting dissonancewidely assumed to result in the surrender to some sort of routinization-conversations were initiated with soldiers from an upper-middle class background. Their discourse reveals that coping takes the form of searching for (1) cognitive reorganization through frames that reduce inconsistency and justify obedience; and (2) improvising behavior and negotiating with external reality so as to make the dilemma more livable. But while the findings, on the whole, are in line with the axiom that dissonance is reduced even when inconsistency is maintained, it is proposed here that in certain cases where two ego-involving commitments conflict, an individual may willfully attempt to preserve the pain of dissonance rather than to alleviate it.

In many parts of Africa, dictatorships and the blatant violation of human rights are under challenge by democratic reforms. The potential for a serious conflict between democratic pressures and brutal and selfish militarism abounds in many parts of the continent. The events that have been unfolding in Togo and Zaire since the latter part of 1991 serve as a grim warning that the trend towards democracy and its accompanying emphasis on respect for human rights is not irreversible. The transitional governments or democratic forces may have to deal with a large, powerful, and disgruntled military that perceives itself as losing its exclusive privileges acquired under the old order. This article focuses on how and to what extent human rights observance could be threatened by: (1) the inevitable interaction and clash between political and economic democracy; (2) the tension created between the intersection of domestic African economic policies and external major power requirements; and (3) institutional insecurity emanating from the actual and potential conflicts between entrenched privileges (the desire to protect and enhance corporate interests) enjoyed by the military and the current push for economic and political human rights embedded in the drive towards democracy in Africa.

Renewed attention to the role of public opinion on foreign policy outcomes in quantitative correlational studies indicates that opinion influences foreign policy. However, authors of these studies note that their conclusions could be flawed if elites simply manipulate public opinion, rather than responding to it. Both realist and neorealist perspectives on public opinion are consistent with a manipulation perspective.

As urged by those using quantitative data, this article examines a case using declassified archival information in order to examine responsiveness in a situation ripe for manipulation. Specifically, U.S. reactions to Soviet Sputnik launches are scrutinized. President Eisenhower was much less concerned about Soviet actions than was the general public but nonetheless substantially altered many defense programs in order to meet perceived public demands. The President acknowledged privately that at least two-thirds of a spending supplement was used to meet public fears, not real security needs. This finding is inconsistent with prevailing realist theories and standard historical interpretations.

The home-basing or relocation of military units from Outside Continental United States (OCONUS) to Continental United States (CONUS) and the proposed increase in time from three to six years at CONUS locations is hypothesized to generate considerable socioeconomic benefits. Analysis of the Survey of Army Families, 1987, and Army Family Survey Research data reveal that home-basing is likely to improve quality of spouse employment and the quality of family life of soldiers. An increase in time at a location by three years is likely to increase spouse earnings by 14 percent. An increase in spouse employment due to home-basing is also associated with an increase in spouse's satisfaction with Army life which, in turn, tends to increase spouse's desire for soldier-husband's retention in the Army. The home-basing is also likely to reduce child care costs to the Army and to the soldiers because of lower child care costs in CONUS relative to OCONUS. Three limitations of home-basing and Army policy measures for mitigating them are also discussed.

During the second half of World War II, U.S. and Allied military and civilian scientists cooperated in helping the armed forces combat malaria. They worked through the Offices of the Surgeon General of the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy, the National Research Council, the Board for the Coordination of Malarial Studies, the Office of Scientific Research and Development, the Australian Military Mission, and the British Medical Research Council, all in Washington, D.C. The Board for the Coordination of Malarial Studies, which the National Research Council established in November 1943 to guide research expansion and coordinate joint efforts, became the focal point for collaboration on research. These alliances produced hundreds of malaria studies and thousands of new compounds, some of which tested superior to traditional antimalarial drugs. This cooperative effort improved chemotherapy for the prevention and treatment of malaria after years of neglect in the development of antimalarial drugs.

This article focuses on the establishment of the Board for the Coordination of Malarial Studies, the development of new antimalarial drugs, and collaboration with allies on drug research. The latter produced special U.S.-Australian and U.S.-Britain relationships.