Following the withdrawal of large scale military contingents from Afghanistan and Iraq, enthusiasm in the Western world for what has been called armed state-building seems to have sunk to an all-time low. This is not entirely surprising given the high stakes and the meagre results of the massive efforts …

Study of an exit dilemma from a defence economic perspective on alliances, more specifically against a background of burden sharing theories on NATO. We consider an international alliance, NATO, to be a community programmed to receive, as once membership has been obtained, no country has ever exited, …

Network Centric Operations is a promising command doctrine in both military operations and during civil disaster management. As both sectors started intensifying their joint operational capacity through civil-military collaboration, it becomes increasingly relevant to address the different command doctrines …

In this chapter, the relevance of a perspective on organizational vulnerability for improving safety in military taskforces is outlined. Research of the Netherlands Defence Academy has shown that military taskforces are systems with typical organizational vulnerabilities. More specifically, this research …

Increased military cooperation between member states of the European Union is a political given. The Netherlands and Germany form a spearhead in this process by integrating entire military units (i.e., brigades, battalions, companies) into higher-order units of the respective other nation (i.e., divisions, …

Defence supply chains (SC) are increasingly geared towards expeditionary operations. Organized on a short notice, they support the theatre in a flexible and efficient manner, relying on limited resources and sourcing from multiple suppliers. Defence SC face risks as they are susceptible to disruptions. …

This chapter addresses the remarkable disconnect between resilience literature and military theory. War puts high demands on the resilience of military organizations. Western militaries have adopted organizational and operational concepts to cope with the myriad challenges of violence, turbulence, uncertainty …

Historians and political scientists alike have confirmed a decline in inter and intra state violence. There is broad consensus regarding this decline. The world never will be perfectly safe, but many correlates of violence are known and therefore it is possible to manage safety and security. War, is …

Unconventional crises have gained the upper hand in todays international security environment. The numbers of Special Operations Forces (SOF) that most Western militaries have at their disposal do deal with these types of crises are limited; therefore increasingly regular troops are used to fill the …

Crew Resource Management (CRM) is a vision and method to work safer by fostering social and communication competences like leadership, adaptability, and situational awareness of team members. By applying these non-technical skills professionally teams work more effective and are more robust as well. …