British civil–military relations and the problem of risk
British civil–military relations and the problem of risk
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英国军民关系和风险问题
DOI：
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发表时间：
2012
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
T. Edmunds
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
T. Edmunds
本文主要借鉴英国自2001年以来的经验，考察了风险作为西方国防和安全规划的组织概念日益普遍，及其对军民关系和战略制定的影响。它认为，这种做法与旨在以连贯的方式将手段和资源与目的联系起来的良好战略制定原则之间可能存在紧张关系。风险不仅潜在地模糊了战略制定过程中手段和目的之间的关系，而且还使其暴露于争论之中，对风险的实际含义和应该附加的战略优先级（和承诺）有多种解释。这篇文章从英国国防的三个风险层面探讨了这些紧张关系：机构、行动和军事社会关系。就英国而言，它认为风险逻辑无法提供与威胁逻辑相同的国家动机和战略目的感。在这方面，要求重振传统的战略制定或更新国家利益概念的呼吁，可能忽略了国防政策、军民关系和更广泛的安全背景之间更为根本的不协调。更广泛地说，一些西方国家被指责的战略倦怠可能不仅仅是某种程度上脱离了战略制定习惯或缺乏“政治意愿”的产物。相反，它可能反映了更深层次的社会和地缘战略趋势，这些趋势限制和复杂化了军事力量的使用，并模糊了其在公众想象中的效用。
Drawing primarily on the experience of the UK since 2001, this article examines the increasing prevalence of risk as an organizing concept for western defence and security planning and its implications for civil–military relations and strategy-making. It argues that there may be tensions between such approaches and the principles of good strategy-making, which aim to link means and resources to ends in a coherent manner. Not only does risk potentially blur the relationship between means and ends in the strategy-making process, it also exposes it to contestation, with multiple interpretations of what the risks actually are and the strategic priority (and commitment) which should be attached to them. The article examines these tensions at three levels of risk contestation for British defence: institutions, operations and military–society relations. In the case of the UK, it contends that the logic of risk has not been able to provide the same national motivation and sense of strategic purpose as the logic of threat. In this context, calls for a reinvigoration of traditional strategy-making or a renewed conception of national interest may be missing a more fundamental dissonance between defence policy, civil–military relations and the wider security context. More widely, the strategic ennui that some western states have been accused of may not simply be a product of somehow falling out of the habit of strategy-making or an absence of ‘political will’. Instead, it may reflect deeper social and geostrategic trends which constrain and complicate the use of military force and obscure its utility in the public imagination.