The Second World War was the most devastating conflict in human history and one which provides innumerable lessons - military, political, and moral. Across the globe, both soldier and civilian endured suffering on a scale previously unknown to humanity as nations grappled with the demands of total war.

Peacebuilding debates increasingly revolve around questions about knowledge and expertise. Of particular interest is what (and whose) knowledge(s) ends up authoritative in interventions. This article addresses a problem in the literature on the epistemics and epistemic authority of peacebuilding interventions: the acknowledgement of but lacking attention to plural knowledges, the transgressive character of expertise, and knowledge struggles. It does this by discussing recent suggestions that peacebuilding epistemic authority can be fruitfully analysed as a Bourdieusian field. The article identifies a tension in Bourdieu’s own thinking about fields, which has shaped some of these recent proposals. This tension, nevertheless, also enables a reconsideration of fields and struggles, and thereby an analysis that takes plurality and transgressiveness into account. By developing such an alternative conceptual position, the article sees peacebuilding epistemic authority as object- and struggle-bound; conditioned and dependent on dynamics that go beyond peacebuilding as a distinct field of practice. This position is illustrated in an analysis of the emergence and (temporary) establishment of epistemic authority in peacebuilding interventions on informal economies.

This article explores what is considered by some to be a dangerous pathway:the development of a theory of special forces. The world is now inthe third age of special forces and these secret military units are atthe forefront of the use of force in international relations. This research identifies a large theory-knowledge gap concerning these military “first responders” for modern nation-states and offers a tentative theory of special forces that goes beyond traditional annihilation/attrition models of wartoward a new anaphylaxis model. It makes the case that the theory pathwayis not dangerous, but emancipatory.

This paper addresses the research question of what kind of leadership, processes, and work climate best support employee-driven/bottom-up innovation in SOF. It starts with the suggestion that the term, Special Operations Forces (SOF), needs to be intellectually unpacked and its diverse elements (of which Special Forces are just one part) disaggregated in order to elicit definitional clarity. From this conceptual starting point, it becomes immediately clear that Special Forces represent the ‘special’ component in the SOF designation. This research contends they are a new type of soldier (and a product of modern warfare) that is defined by differentness in relation to conventional forces and activities within a battlespace, working in traditionally restricted areas. David Stirling, one of the founders of the famed British Special Air Service (SAS), is highlighted as an exemplar of the sort of leadership that provoked rare operational level effects. The paper also suggests that unorthodox forces operating in a unique operational environment demand unusual personality types and atypical command/control processes encapsulated by the so-called ‘Chinese Parliament’ that emerged in the SAS.

This study suggests that the world is now in a third age of Special Forces and one that in all likelihood will witness an increasing utility of these unusual military units in orthodox and unorthodox warfare in international relations.

This paper discusses and reviews some previous research concerning what we denote as ‘goal-management’, in other words how to set, apply and evaluate goals when conducting military operations planning. We aim to explain and answer the following question:

• In what way could a review of previous philosophical thoughts on goal-management, decision theory and ethics improve contemporary military operations planning concerning goal-management?

We suggest a guideline (a planning tool) for how to conduct goal-management when planning military operations and exemplify our guideline with two fictive examples concerning the development of an Operational advice and Appreciation of Rules of Engagement. The paper concludes that the application of decision theory and ethics, i.e. important parts of philosophy, can contribute to military operations planning by focusing on three perspectives: an axiomatic, an ethical and a deliberative perspective.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s military contribution to deter Russian aggression in the Baltic region should begin with an overall strategic concept that seamlessly transitions from deterrence through countering Russia’s gray zone activities and onto conventional war, only if necessary. NATO should augment its ongoing program to enhance the denial-based deterrence for the region with threats of punishment that demonstrate to Russian leaders they cannot achieve their aims at acceptable costs. Rather than forward-position military forces in the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), NATO should consider keeping forces further back to take advantage of strategic depth to limit vulnerability to Russian attack and increase operational flexibility. To support the overall denial-based deterrence concept, the Baltics must commit wholeheartedly to the concept of total defense including significant increases to their active and reserves forces.

Uppföljning och utvärdering av militära operationer utgör ett sammanhängande system som spänner över alla ledningsnivåer. Behovet av detta system har sitt ursprung i de ökade krav på spårbarhet och mätbarhet av resultat och progression vid genomförandet av militära operationer som ställs i Sverige, EU och Nato. Identifieringen av de parametrar som skall mätas med därför avsedda verktyg under den militära operationens genomförande är en process som tar sin början i de högre ledningsnivåerna, det givna uppdraget, samt operationens slutmål. Genomförandet är däremot en process som föds från de förband som är insatta i operationen, vars insamlade information samman­ställs enligt förberedda riktlinjer, aggregeras och tillvaratas på de olika militära ledningsnivåerna. Denna text beskriver inte bara uppbyggnaden av Sveriges och Natos system för uppföljnings- och utvärdering av militära operationer, samt introducerar de analysverktyg som används på olika ledningsnivåer för att mäta framdrivning och framsteg, den diskuterar även de utmaningar som är förknippade med att implementera en effektiv uppföljnings- och utvärderingsprocess.

The Baltic Sea and the Arctic have once again become scenes for geostrategic great power competition, influencing regional economic, military and environmental security. Here, international relationships span a spectrum from friendship to fear. We observe that a host of different units of analysis currently compete for our attention in this part of Europe. But while “Scandinavia”, “the Nordic area”, “the Baltic Sea region”, “the High North” and “the Arctic” help focus strategic analysis on important and sometimes overlapping components of this area, security complex theory prescribes that we must adopt a broader, multi-layered view in order to understand how great and small power interests play out in this part of the world today. Such analysis must consider China’s global role, NATO’s increasingly elaborate military planning and the Russian Federation’s perception of vulnerabilities and opportunities, in an area that stretches from the Suwalki gap in East-Central Europe to the Barents Sea. In addition, security complex analysis benefits from including the perspectives of small states that control key territories – such as resource-rich continental shelves and exclusive economic zones – and from taking relevant international bodies into account as enabling and constraining factors. As part of a larger project, this paper reviews several sets of open source documents indicative of the incentive structure of such key players, published over the past five years. We delve into the political, economic and military dimensions of aims and actions by three categories of actors, namely: i) China, Russia, the United States; ii) Denmark, Norway; Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Canada; and iii) the EU, NATO and the Arctic Council. We conclude that, while smaller units of analysis still make sense for limited research purposes, the concept of a Baltic-Arctic security complex is necessary for meaningful strategic analysis.