Politics of Civil-Military Cooperation

Christopher Ankersen lives in Southeast Asia and his current research interests include civil military relations, post-conflict reconstruction, and risk analysis. He has written widely on international relations, strategic studies, and defence policy, and has taught at the London School of Economics, the London Centre for International Relations, King's College London, Carleton University, and the Royal Military College of Canada. He has also been a consultant to militaries, governments and private firms in the UK and Canada and, from 1988 to 2000, was an officer in the Canadian Forces, serving with Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.

• Author's Preface 1. Introduction: The Politics of Civil-Military Cooperation 2. Missing Pieces: Thinking about Civil-Military Cooperation 3. The Evolution of Civil-Military Cooperation in Peace and War 4. A Clausewitzian Framework for Analysis 5. The People: Ambivalent Support 6. The Government: Delicious Ambiguity 7. The Military: Ambitious Institution, Ad lib Individuals 8. Putting it all Together: Building an Effective Strategic Narrative 9. Conclusion: The Many Whys of Civil-Military Cooperation

"Using a Clausewitzian framework and a broad interpretation of civil-military cooperation Ankersen has opened a door to civil-military cooperation in practice. From a valuable soldier's perspective (with experience in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Afghanistan), he shows that the Canadian forces and civilian partners drew on the culture of peacekeeping to understand the meaning of military-civilian interactions." - Michael Pugh, Emeritus Professor, University of Bradford and Visiting Professor, Radboud University, Nijmegen "Much has been written about the importance of improving civil-military relations in peace support operations over the past twenty years, though not enough of the literature on the subject has sought to test and develop sophisticated theoretical insights against a fine-grained analysis of actual operations. This fine book does just that. It represents an important contribution to the literature." Mats Berdal, King's College London "This is not a how-to manual for civil-military cooperation. Instead, Ankersen provides an in-depth examination of the political processes that underpin an important aspect of contemporary military operations. The book sheds light on this topic and explains why what happens 'on the ground' is often based more on assumptions and myths than on objective, material conditions. This book will provide scholars, policy-makers and practitioners - in and out of uniform - a framework with which to analyze the real politics at play between the people, the government, and the military thousands of kilometres away from the battlefield." - Stuart Gordon, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK "This book is a revealing account of what happens when soldiers try to be humanitarians and nation-builders without relevant training or doctrine and with high public expectations. The focus is Canadian but the story has considerable relevance for our understanding of what goes wrong in international interventions." - Mary Kaldor, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK