a secondary source, in particular historiographical research on the symbols, hymns, and history of each unit, of the French and Italian armies more broadly, and of civil-military relations in France and Italy.
Main Findings
Although the French and Italian troops in the NATO mission in Afghanistan and the UN mission in Lebanon were deployed under similar circumstances, they displayed consistent and systematic variations in behavior. The French troops emphasized operational activities and displayed high force protection levels, while the Italian troops focused on humanitarian and “hearts and minds” activities, such as implementing development projects and distributing toys to children. These traits were consistent across rotations and remained broadly similar across missions. Preliminary data suggests that these behavioral variations could have influenced the level of violence in each unit’s AO. I find that these variations in behavior can be traced back to the respective traits of French and Italian military cultures, and that competing explanations are less convincing.
The perceptions of soldiers in each military unit were in line with the observed behavioral variations. French soldiers in Lebanon and Afghanistan understood their missions as more combative than the Italian soldiers did and clearly identified an enemy, while Italian soldiers did not. I find that these variations in perception can be traced back to the respective traits of French and Italian military cultures, and that competing explanations are less convincing. Before World War II, the French military culture was strongly based on assertiveness, while its Italian counterpart evolved based on the belief that Italian soldiers are “good people.” Despite some remarkable differences, both countries displayed a similarly uneven military record in both world wars, with the disbandment of both armies in the aftermath of World War II.24 However, the different domestic conditions in the 1950s and 1960s resulted in the partial transformation of the core tenets of military cultures in Italy and France. In France, the disbandment of the officer corps in 1960–1961 and De Gaulle’s forceful reaction to it (re)introduced a strong element of “obedience” and an overemphasis on executing orders to the letter into the inherited assertiveness culture. In Italy, by contrast, the army tried to overcome the consequences of its disbandment after the fascist dictatorship and World War II through humanitarian activities. The contemporary French military culture is thus one of “controlled assertiveness,” while the Italian one is based on the belief of being “good humanitarian soldiers.” Military culture thus adapted to new conditions, and their new versions within each of those military organizations eventually became inertial and deeply ingrained via processes of socialization.
Contributions
Security studies scholars have written extensively about military culture in recent decades. My work builds on this tradition, namely on the third generation of studies on strategic and military culture, which defines culture as distinct from behavior.25 However, by considering military culture in a new field—peace and stability operations—my work tries to make three contributions.26
First, and in line with recent scholarship, I reintroduce military culture as an important factor in explaining variation in military behavior, building on the third generation of strategic culture studies.27 I advance the “culturalist” debate in security studies by adding to existing empirical contributions about military cultures: I suggest a plausible causal mechanism of how military culture influences military behavior—via individual-level perceptions about the context in which soldiers are embedded. The existing literature has focused on how military culture influences doctrines, inadvertent escalation, or norms of restraint—factors that are crucial to understanding military behavior at the tactical level—but few studies have focused on understanding how military culture influences military behavior or explored the underlying causal mechanisms.28 This book makes a first step in this direction by showing how military culture is consistent with individual-level perceptions in the contexts of operations and soldiers’ interpretations of the mission, and how these are in line with military behavior in ways that are partly independent of doctrines, training, and SOPs.
Second, the book engages with the debate about the sources of military culture and suggests that military culture is not a monolithic and overdetermined variable, as it is often depicted. Military culture consists of long-lasting and deeply ingrained beliefs, attitudes, values, and norms that do adapt to new domestic conditions. Members of the organization internalize modified military cultures that emerge after changes in domestic conditions (post-World War II in this context). Although several scholars have demonstrated that military culture matters,29 how much (and why) it matters has rarely been the subject of systematic analysis. Without examining the specific domestic political conditions under which a given military culture emerges, one cannot understand the dominant traits of the culture, how this culture guides soldiers’ actions, or how it is distinct from domestic conditions. This book answers the question “Where does military culture come from?” that was raised in the epilogue of Elizabeth Kier’s famous book Imagining War; it finds that military culture emerges from specific domestic political conditions, namely traditions of civil-military relations and societal beliefs about the use of force.
Third, the book is the first study to systematically document strong behavioral differences across military contingents deployed under identical mandates, with similar troop numbers and material resources, and to propose a way to assess these differences. By studying the determinants of military behavior, which is considered to strongly influence military effectiveness, this book fills an important gap in the security studies and peacekeeping literatures.30
The book thus seeks to connect two strands of related (but, until now, disconnected) literatures: peace research and security studies. While the study of peacekeeping operations is sophisticated and advanced in the peace research literature, few studies have considered how military organizations actually operate within their missions. It is, however, crucial to study the determinants of soldiers’ behavior, as they are critical agents in these operations. Exploring cross-national variations is an important first step in this regard.
The literature in security studies has traditionally focused on conventional military operations or, more recently, counterinsurgency operations, which still have traditional military objectives at their core. There is a surprising lack of cross-referencing between military and peace research scholars.31 Undoubtedly, security studies and peace research originate from two profoundly different (and often conflicting) intellectual and normative traditions. However, their practical fusion in multidimensional peacekeeping operations, which comprise a relevant component of modern military operations, makes it imperative to reconnect the two traditions. Such a holistic approach can promote greater awareness among soldiers about the nonconventional context in which they are operating and, similarly, encourage a better understanding by peace scholars of the factors that guide the behavior of soldiers—the primary implementing agency in a peacekeeping operation.
Finally, this book can shed light on other kinds of military contributions in today’s political and social climate. Despite the winding down of support to ground operations and the greater acceptability of more secretive operations, such as drone or special forces operations, it is still important to try to understand the conditions under which military organizations operate in foreign missions, and how domestic political configurations shape their military cultures and subsequent actions on the ground.
Structure of the Book
The remainder of the book is divided into four chapters and a conclusion. Chapter 1 outlines the book’s main theoretical contribution, proposing the theory to be tested and developed in the subsequent empirical chapters. It reviews the literature on peacekeeping operations and demonstrates that variations in behavior across units and AOs have never been systematically explored. Next, the central argument of the book is put forward: that military culture shapes soldiers’ behavior. In explaining the argument,
