Inescapable Entrapments?
The Civil-Military Decision Paths to Uruzgan and Helmand
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Leiden University Press
Published:4th Mar '21
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
"Military involvement in foreign policy decision-making, and its role as a driving force in that process, has long been anathema to both academic and practitioner circles. Without wanting to pursue the quest for principles or ultimate predictions this study looks specifically into the role of the military in foreign policy decision-making. It does so by carefully reconstructing and comparing the sequential series of decisions of a group of British and Dutch senior civil and military decision-makers which have led to the deployment of their militaries into to Afghan provinces of Helmand and Uruzgan. One of the most prominent findings of this analysis is the shaping ability of military initiatives on the series of decisions and the consequent path dependent reasoning during political deliberations on the deployment of military forces: the decision of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands to deploy their troops to southern Afghanistan was based on an emergent case that largely built itself. "
“The book offers a fresh and illuminating interpretation of how, by whom, and when decisions were made in the Netherlands and United Kingdom as they sought to take part in the NATO operation in Afghanistan. The analysis is original and shows convincingly that the practice had little relationship to the theory upon which political and military processes for the use of armed force are structured.” -- General Sir Rupert Smith
“In this book, Mantas proposes a radical and subversive thesis. She shows that the Dutch and British decision to deploy to the NATO mission in southern Afghanistan in 2006 was not made independently by the respective governments of these countries, as might be expected. Rather, both countries were mutually committed to the operation by their transnational military interconnections and obligations. The book represents a major contribution not just to understanding NATO's campaign in Afghanistan but strategy in the twenty-first century.” -- Anthony King, University of Warwick
ISBN: 9789087283643
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
294 pages