The Reluctant Civilian

The Reluctant Civilian
Author: Chilla Nasmyth
Publisher: Australian Self Publishing Group
Total Pages: 524
Release: 2015-06-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1925346021

Frank is a decorated Vietnam combat soldier who returns to civilian life with few skills and an uncertain future. An orphan with no ties, he embarks on an itinerant journey doing odd jobs to support a meagre existence. During his travels, he finds himself caught unwittingly in an armed roadhouse hold-up resulting in murder. Unarmed and unable to assist, he flees in the bandits’ unattended getaway vehicle. In fear for his life, he finds himself ensconced in a sub-alpine wilderness, sparking a police manhunt. During his lonely eight year self-imposed incarceration, he witnesses a light plane crash and rescues the sole survivor, Skye, a young female graphic artist and nurses her back to health. Romance blossoms so they resolve to leave the wilderness together. As they set out, they’re confronted by the bandits from the roadhouse incident eight years prior in search of missing loot. With help from an unlikely alliance, they escape to an iconic regional guest house where they meet celebrated journalist Libby Lucero who pledges to clear Frank’s name. Whilst there, the guest house is held up by the same desperados and a short siege ensues but Frank is instrumental in thwarting them. The incident makes headlines and the two crimes, eight years apart are successfully linked.

Reassuring the Reluctant Warriors

Reassuring the Reluctant Warriors
Author: Stefano Recchia
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2015-09-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 150170155X

Why did American leaders work hard to secure multilateral approval from the United Nations or NATO for military interventions in Haiti, the Balkans, and Libya, while making only limited efforts to gain such approval for the 2003 Iraq War? In Reassuring the Reluctant Warriors, Stefano Recchia addresses this important question by drawing on declassified documents and about one hundred interviews with civilian and military leaders.The most assertive, hawkish, and influential civilian leaders, he argues, tend to downplay the costs of intervention, and when confronted with hesitant international partners they often want to bypass multilateral bodies. America's top-level generals, by contrast, are usually "reluctant warriors" who worry that intervention will result in open-ended stabilization missions; consequently, the military craves international burden sharing and values the potential exit ramp for U.S. forces that a handoff to the UN or NATO can provide.Recchia demonstrates that when the military speaks up and clearly expresses its concerns, even strongly pro-intervention civilian leaders can be expected to work hard to secure UN or NATO approval—if only to reassure the military about the likelihood of sustained burden sharing. Conversely, when the military stays silent, as it did in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War, bellicose civilian leaders are empowered; the United States is then more likely to bypass multilateral bodies, and it may end up carrying a heavy stabilization burden largely by itself. Recchia's argument that the military has the ability to contribute not only to a more prudent but also to a more multilateralist U.S. intervention policy may be counterintuitive, but the evidence is compelling.

Civilian Participants in the Cultural Revolution

Civilian Participants in the Cultural Revolution
Author: Francis Mok
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2019-11-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429960433

In the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, political persecutions, violation of rights, deprivation of freedom, violence and brutality were daily occurrences. Especially striking is the huge number of ordinary civilians who were involved in inflicting pain and suffering on their comrades, colleagues, friends, neighbors, and even family members. The large-scale and systematic form of violence and injustice that was witnessed differs from that in countries like Chile under military rule or South Africa during apartheid in that such acts were largely committed by ordinary people instead of officials in uniforms. Mok asks how we should assess the moral responsibility of these wrongdoers, if any, for the harm they did both voluntarily and involuntarily. After the death of Chairman Mao, there was a trial of the Gang of Four, who were condemned as the chief perpetrators of the Cultural Revolution. Besides, tens of millions of officials and cadres who were wrongly accused and unfairly treated were subsequently cleared and reinstated under the new leadership. However, justice has not yet been fully done because no legal or political mechanism has ever been established for the massive number of civilian perpetrators to answer for all sorts of violence inflicted on other civilians, to make peace with their victims, and to make amends. The numerous civilians who participated need to come to terms with the people they wronged in those turbulent years. Justice in general and transitional justice in particular may still be pursued by taking the first steps to clarify and identify the moral burden and responsibility that may legitimately be ascribed to the various types of participant. This book will be of interest to anyone who studies the Cultural Revolution of China, especially those who are concerned with the ethical dimension.

Civilian Control of the Military

Civilian Control of the Military
Author: Michael C. Desch
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2001-03-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801866395

"Power and Military Effectiveness is an instructive reassessment of the increasingly popular belief that military success is one of democracy's many virtues. International relations scholars, policy makers, and military minds will be well served by its lessons."--BOOK JACKET.

Germany as a Civilian Power?

Germany as a Civilian Power?
Author: Sebastian Harnisch
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780719060427

Drawing upon a multi-disciplinary methodology employing diverse written sources, material practices and vivid life histories, Faith in the family seeks to assess the impact of the Second Vatican Council on the ordinary believer, alongside contemporaneous shifts in British society relating to social mobility, the sixties, sexual morality and secularisation. Chapters examine the changes in the Roman Catholic liturgy and Christology; devotion to Mary, the rosary and the place of women in the family and church, as well as the enduring (but shifting) popularity of Saints Bernadette and Thérèse.Appealing to students of modern British gender and cultural history, as well as a general readership interested in religious life in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century, Faith in the family illustrates that despite unmistakable differences in their cultural accoutrements and interpretations of Catholicism, English Catholics continued to identify with and practise the 'Faith of Our Fathers' before and after Vatican II.

Allied Air Attacks and Civilian Harm in Italy, 1940–1945

Allied Air Attacks and Civilian Harm in Italy, 1940–1945
Author: Matthew Evangelista
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2022-12-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000833933

Tens of thousands of Italian civilians perished in the Allied bombing raids of World War II. More of them died after the Armistice of September 1943 than before, when the air attacks were intended to induce Italy’s surrender. Allied Air Attacks and Civilian Harm in Italy, 1940–1945 addresses this seeming paradox, by examining the views of Allied political and military leaders, Allied air crews, and Italians on the ground. It tells the stories of a little-known diplomat (Myron Charles Taylor), military strategist (Solly Zuckerman), resistance fighter (Aldo Quaranta), and peace activist (Vera Brittain) – architects and opponents of the bombing strategies. It describes the fate of ordinary civilians, drawing on a wealth of local and digital archival sources, memoir accounts, novels, and films, including Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and John Huston’s The Battle of San Pietro. The book will be of interest to readers concerned about the ethical, legal, and human dimensions of bombing and its effects on civilians, to students of military strategy and Italian history, and to World War II buffs. They will benefit from a people-focused history that draws on a range of eclectic and rarely used sources in English and Italian. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

Protection of Civilians

Protection of Civilians
Author: Haidi Willmot
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2016-04-14
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0191045497

The protection of civilians is a highly topical issue at the forefront of international discourse, and has taken a prominent role in many international deployments. It has been at the centre of debates on the NATO intervention in Libya, UN deployments in Darfur, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and on the failures of the international community in Sri Lanka and Syria. Variously described as a moral responsibility, a legal obligation, a mandated peacekeeping task, and the culmination of humanitarian activity, it has become a high-profile concern of governments, international organisations, and civil society, and a central issue in international peace and security. This book offers a multidisciplinary treatment of this important topic, harnessing perspectives from international law and international relations, traversing academia and practice. Moving from the historical and philosophical development of the civilian protection concept, through relevant bodies of international law and normative underpinnings, and on to politics and practice, the volume presents coherent cross-cutting analysis of the realities of conflict and diplomacy. In doing so, it engages a series of current debates, including on the role of politics in what has often been characterized as a humanitarian endeavour, and the challenges and impacts of the use of force. The work brings together a wide array of eminent academics and respected practitioners, incorporating contributions from legal scholars and ethicists, political commentators, diplomats, UN officials, military commanders, development experts and humanitarian aid workers. As the most comprehensive publication on the subject, this will be a first port of call for anyone studing or working towards a better protection of civilians in conflict.