Toward Strategic Cohesion

A Reply to King’s Criticism of the Call for a Broader View of Cohesion

Dados Bibliográficos

ID11630286
AutoresIlmari Käihkö (0000-0003-0462-6679, Swedish Defence University, autor correspondente)
Ano2020
Volume47
Fascículo3
Páginas596-603
Data de publicação2020-12-11
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoArmed Forces & Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0095-327X • E-ISSN: 1556-0848
EditoraSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0095327x20974768
OpenAlexW3111425977
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas15

In October 2018, Armed Forces & Society published a special issue that called for a theoretical and methodological broadening of the study of cohesion. In a response, King accuses me of ignoring his 2013 book The Combat Soldier, which he feels had already made this call redundant. This answer explains why this is not the case. The Combat Soldier ticks the three boxes of modern, Western, and state military that have dominated the study of cohesion. The resulting narrow vantage point affirms problematic assumptions of Western concepts as absolutes with universal validity with little room for other models of sociopolitical interaction. This becomes especially problematic when King defines cohesion as tactical-level combat performance, the be-all and end-all of what makes, and decides, war. The answer concludes with an appeal for truly interdisciplinary future studies of war that a broader understanding of cohesion, among other things, depends on

Appeal · Cohesion (chemistry · Criticism · Epistemology · Law and economics · Political science · Sociology · European and Russian Geopolitical Military Strategies · Law · Military History and Strategy · Peacebuilding and International Security · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology