Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item WARFIGHTING: JOHN BOYD’S THEORY OF CONFLICT, THE ORIGINS OF MANEUVER WARFARE, AND THE COMPLEX PROCESS OF DOCTRINAL CHANGE IN THE U.S. MARINE CORPS, 1975-1989(2023) Callahan, Shawn Patrick; Sumida, Jon T; Chung, Patrick; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation analyzes the origins of the American concept of maneuver warfare and the process through which that concept was first encoded as military doctrine in 1989 by the U.S. Marine Corps in Fleet Marine Force Manual 1 (FMFM 1), Warfighting. Examining the process through which these ideas were incepted, matured, and encoded in doctrine makes it clear that the prevailing narrative is deficient in several important ways, and these misconceptions obstruct an accurate understanding of what maneuver warfare is and how military organizations deal with radical new ideas. A detailed examination of the ideas advanced by John Boyd, the man commonly thought to be the creator of maneuver warfare based upon his Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) Cycle theory, shows that neither of those concepts was ever his central argument. Rather, Boyd was developing a much more expansive theory of competition and conflict, and his method and ideas are widely misunderstood. It was a military reform colleague of Boyd’s named William S. Lind who originated the concept of maneuver warfare based on his own interpretation of German military history. He promoted this style of fighting through a dichotomous model contrasting it with firepower/attrition warfare in an effort to help the U.S. Army understand how it needed to change its approach to warfare. Ultimately, Lind’s ideas about maneuver warfare found better reception within the U.S. Marine Corps, where he worked with Marines in several different organizations to further develop the concept. The way that Lind incorporated Boyd’s early ideas to promote maneuver warfare has much to do with why Boyd’s role and theory are misunderstood today. The Marines who interacted with Lind, and to a lesser degree Boyd, meanwhile, played an important role in developing the supporting concepts and techniques needed to make maneuver warfare an actionable approach to war. Efforts to incorporate the new ideas in Marine Corps doctrine were limited less by simple institutional conservatism than they were by the inability of the service’s bureaucracy to incorporate fundamentally new concepts, which required a particular new, shared understanding of war. The most important achievement of FMFM 1 was not that it formally adopted maneuver warfare, but its definition of a common conception of war within which maneuver warfare made sense, emphasizing moral and mental factors, the inherent nonlinearity of warfare, and the fundamental uncertainty that surrounded military decision-making. This, defining a new way of thinking about war that all Marines would share, was the most significant accomplishment of FMFM 1. However, this accomplishment has been undercut by several misconceptions about maneuver warfare, all of which were byproducts of the process through which the concept was formed and promoted.Item A MIXED METHODS STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF GENDER INTEGRATION ON PERCEPTIONS OF WOMEN IN U.S. ARMY COMBAT UNITS(2022) Miller, Catherine J.; Reuter, Peter H; Kleykamp, Meredith A; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 2013, the Ground Combat Exclusion Policy (GCEP) for the United States military was eliminated, and in December 2015 Secretary of Defense Ash Carter opened all ground combat military specialties and positions to women without exceptions. Using primary survey data that I collected in 2021 from the 33 active-duty Army brigade combat teams (BCTs), this dissertation explores the effects of exposure to serving with women on male opinions about gender integration in the combat arms, perceptions of women’s capabilities (physical fitness and mental toughness), and predicted effects of gender integration on unit cohesion and unit performance in the formerly all-male Infantry and Armor branches of the Army. This mixed methods study explores the following question: To what extent does exposure to serving with female soldiers and officers in combat units help explain differences in male support for gender integration, and perceptions about its effects? Since the policy change is fairly new, a natural experiment in military assignments provided an opportunity to learn about how exposure impacts male soldier opinions in formerly all-male units. Women have been assigned in clusters to some Army Infantry and Armor units but not others due to their small numbers. At the time of the survey, there was still significant variation in exposure to serving with women in Infantry and Armor units, so exposure is examined as a treatment variable to determine if male opinions differ by unit level of exposure. The women in these newly integrated units, as well as the men and women in the associated combat support units that have been gender integrated for decades, are also included in the analysis for comparison. The findings demonstrate that the presence of women within a formerly all-male Infantry or Armor platoon or squad, and exposure to a female leader, predict that a male respondent is significantly more likely to support gender integration in the combat arms, perceive that female soldiers in their units are physically fit and mentally tough enough to be effective in their military jobs, and is less likely to worry about gender integration effects on unit cohesion and performance.Item Assessing Motives for Russian Federation Use and Non-use of Force: An Approach to Improve the Strategic Planning and Policy of the United States(2021) Hickey, Christopher John; Gallagher, Nancy W.; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this dissertation is to inform scholarship and improve U.S. policy and strategy to prevent the Russian Federation from using military force against U.S. interests. It does this by exploring and answering the question, what explains the Russian Federation’s choices on the use of military force? The dissertation developed and demonstrated an approach to translating policy debates into sufficiently rigorous sets of competing explanations of strategic behavior for expectations about future behavior under various conditions to be stated and tested. The explanations developed and tested used motives derived from The Rational Theory of International Politics by Glaser and The Logic of Political Survival by Bueno De Mesquita, Smith, Siverson, and Morrow. Systematic analysis of competing explanations attempted to find incongruence between the expectations if a motive was a plausible explanation and the behaviors actually observed since 1991. This dissertation found that the Russian Federation’s choices on the use of military force are explainable by the balancing of three motives. These choices have prioritized first the motive of the president’s political survival, then Russia’s self-protection/security motive, and then Russia’s domination/greed motive. This suggests that the Russian Federation calculates risks when making these choices differently than currently assumed. The most important risks influencing these decisions are those related to the future of the Russian president’s political winning coalition. These findings allow the U.S. to take a game theory-informed approach to strategic planning that seeks to prevent the use of military force against U.S. interests at a lower level of costs and risks than the current approach. The United States should develop a strategy to foster three somewhat contradictory calculations simultaneously. The U.S. strategy needs to communicate that the negative consequences of using force would outweigh whatever potential benefit might tempt the domination/greed motive. At the same time, the strategy needs to communicate that if Russia acts with restraint, then Russian self-protection/security motive concerns will be addressed cooperatively. Most importantly, the strategy needs to influence the Russian president’s calculations about whether using or not using force against U.S. interests would be better for personal political survival.Item Send in the Reserves! The Development and Significance of the Reserve Dilemma in Military History(2021) Chadwick, Andrew Lewis; Sumida, Jon T; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the origins and evolution of the trained reserve—a 19th-century military institution that most states continue to depend upon for national defense. In doing so, it argues that the rising complexity, speed, and lethality of warfare over the last century challenged the viability of industrial era reservist personnel and training policies, which many states retain today. Such policies have largely proven incapable of providing reservists with the time and resources to keep up with changing technical and tactical character of warfare, as evidenced by the poor performance of many reservists in the conflicts of the past century. However, armies preparing for large-scale combat operations generally could not reduce their reliance on reservists because of a combination of political, military, and socio-economic constraints and compulsions. Namely, they lacked the financial means, military resources, and, in some cases, the political capital to rely solely on full-time soldiers who often are better resourced to keep up with the rising complexity of modern warfare compared to part-time reservists.Thus, as this dissertation reveals using archival sources, recently declassified intelligence reports, and a host of other printed primary sources, armies confronted a dilemma regarding reserve policy over the past century. They could, as the U.S. Army has done since the 1970s, increase reserve training standards, but risk incurring higher overhead costs or sparking a political backlash from reservists who often resisted efforts to increase their service obligations. Alternatively, they could reduce their dependency on reservists, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have done since the late 1980s. But doing this threatened to overstretch active duty units who, as this dissertation shows, generally cannot fight protracted or large-scale wars without reservists. In short, this dissertation shows how the dynamics of reserve policymaking and the combat performance of reservists can—and often had—significant political, strategic, operational, and tactical effects throughout recent history.Item Coming Home as "Wounded Warriors": Identity, Stigma, and Status among Post-9/11 Wounded Veterans(2018) Montgomery, Sidra; Kleykamp, Meredith; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Increased public attention on wounded and injured veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has popularized the term "wounded warrior.” This defining phrase is used as both a colloquial term and an official status. This dissertation traces the symbolic meaning of “wounded warrior” in the lives of post-9/11 wounded veterans. Specifically, I examine how this socially constructed status is defined, its impact on the community of wounded veterans, and how it has come to shape the everyday experiences of post-9/11 wounded veterans. I rely on two forms of qualitative data, content analysis and in-depth interviews, to capture public discourse and personal experiences of being a “wounded warrior.” In the content analysis I use news media coverage from 2001 to 2013 to analyze the broader construction of wounded veterans as “wounded warriors.” Secondly, I conducted in-depth interviews with 39 wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to examine how veterans see themselves and their injuries and how they craft their personal and social identity within the “wounded warrior” framework. In both sets of data I attend to the role of visibility, whether a veteran’s injuries are readily seen, as a significant factor affecting both the portrayal and experience of veteran’s status as a “wounded warrior.” Post-9/11 wounded veterans are a socially valued group, benefiting from civilians who want to “support the troops” after the hostile homecoming of Vietnam veterans. “Wounded warrior” is a status connected to material benefits, social esteem, and symbolic capital, but the definition of who qualifies shifts and changes depending on the context. Combat wounded veterans use social and symbolic boundaries to establish themselves as the real “wounded warriors.” Wounded veterans employ social closure, a strategy of social stratification, for distinction using expectations and community norms to position themselves as the most worthy “wounded warriors”, protecting the meaning of their service and sacrifice. The visibility of a veteran’s injuries conditions their experience as a “wounded warrior”, impacting their relationship to the wounded veteran community, the experience of stigma, and their own identity. Overall, I find that post-9/11 wounded veterans actively shape and are shaped by their status as “wounded warriors.”Item Exploring Predictors of Military Spouses’ Comfort Seeking Military-Provided Counseling Services(2017) Brown, Christye Yvonne; Beck, Kenneth; Zanjani, Faika; Public and Community Health; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Over 1.2 million (approximately half) of the service members deployed in support of the Global War on Terror were married at the time of their last deployment (Department of Defense, 2013). Data from the study of military and veteran families suggests that both stress and the process of coping with or overcoming exposure to adversity or stress resonate across the family system (Meredith L. S., et al., 2011), and that the impact of war and its consequences are experienced by partners and families in addition to service members (Lester, Blair, Saltzman, & Klosinski, 2013). The purpose of this study was to determine predictors of spouses' comfort in seeking military-provided counseling services when service members are deployed, by examining spousal coping behaviors, mental health status, and social support and demographics (rank and gender), as reported from the 2012 Active Duty Spouses Survey (ADSS). Analyzing survey data from 10,574 participants, we determined that 82.5% of the participants had spouses who were deployed for more than 30 consecutive days, and 64.3% of the participants felt comfortable using military-provided services for counseling. Statistically significant predictors of comfort-seeking, military-provided counseling services included positive coping behaviors, mental health status, social support, and the rank of the spouse’s partner. Spouses of officers were less likely to feel comfortable using military-provided services for counseling compared to spouses of enlisted service members. The level of psychological stress experienced by the spouses correlated with all predictors of comfort seeking, military-provided services for counseling. The results were consistent with previous studies on the predictors and outcomes of psychological stress among military spouses, and supported the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping. The results have practical significance because they will help planners tailor programs to optimize the uptake of counseling services for military spouses who are in need. We recommend that future research incorporate measures of the service members’ extended deployments in combat zones to determine if extended combat-related deployment predicts spouses’ comfort seeking military-provided services for counseling. Qualitative research may also be useful to provide more insight into why some military spouses feel comfortable using military-provided services for counseling while others do not.Item Factors in the Reporting of Unethical Conduct: The Importance of Trust in Leaders(2017) Norton, Michael Andrew; Lucas, Jeffey W; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My research investigates factors related to the reporting of unethical conduct. While accounting for known individual, organizational and situational correlates, I focus particularly on leaders and especially on trust in leaders as whistle-blowing research to date has neglected the well-developed sociological literature of trust. Leveraging the benefits of multiple methods, I analyze recent secondary data on federal civilian employees, collect and analyze interview data at four civilian and military sites, and conduct a factorial vignette study to test factors and themes identified in the first two sections of my research. My secondary data analyses support previous whistle-blowing research in relating supervisor status, greater importance placed on anonymity, greater organizational support for anonymous reporting, greater organizational protection for whistle-blowers and greater severity of observed misconduct to increased reporting. Contrary to what previous literature theorizes, I find more observed leader misconduct and in-group location of misconduct relate to increased reporting. With the exception of an expressed in-group preference, my qualitative analyses reinforce these findings and identify a peer-oriented culture and self-preservation as reasons why unethical conduct may go unreported. My interview data also reveal that participants prefer to report unethical conduct to a trusted leader, although the severity of such misconduct may moderate this preference. My vignette analyses find greater trust in leaders is related to increased reporting only for non-supervisors, highlighting the additional importance trust plays for lower-status individuals. Also, good behavior by the leader accepting a report is related to increased reporting for all participants. My vignette data bolster previous findings, including relating a lesser orientation towards Machiavellianism to increased reporting, and find the severity of observed misconduct has the largest relative effect on the reporting outcome. Counter to my prediction, vignette participants are less likely to report unethical conduct perpetrated by a supervisor supporting the notion that fear of retaliation may factor into the reporting decision. By highlighting obstacles to reporting, I assist leaders in addressing such barriers possibly contributing to the identification and correction of unethical conduct. I conclude with implications for federal employees and all leaders seeking to increase the reporting of unethical conduct in their organizations.Item JOINT CULTURE IN THE U.S. MILITARY: ACCOMPLISHING THE MISSION BY ADAPTING TO ORGANIZATOINAL DIVERSITY(2017) Krizan, Martin; Paolisso, Michael; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation develops the concept of joint culture by analyzing the experiences of military service personnel who served in joint assignments through the perspectives of organizational and cognitive anthropology and the application of participant observation, semi-structured interviews and schema analysis grounded in interviewee narratives. This dissertation uses a logical framework to organize and conduct interviews and guide the analysis of interviewee narratives. Concepts and themes from interviews are systematically examined following the logical framework to posit a set of cognitive structures associated with joint culture. At least two joint cultural schemas are present in the accounts of joint service that interrelate to form a cultural model of jointness that prepares personnel to function in a joint cultural environment. First, a schema of joint culture, the tacit cognitive structures focused on the priority of mission accomplishment that motivates personnel to work through the inter-organizational differences encountered in the joint environment. Second, a schema for joint culture, the more procedural or process focused explicit cognitive structure that informs how service personnel figure out the steps before, during and after a joint assignment. These schemas dynamically interrelate and are intersubjectively shared in adaptive ways as service personnel navigate their joint assignments. This dissertation finds that while military service personnel may not understand formal joint concepts or benefit from formal joint credit for each of their joint assignments, they believe joint service is valuable as an opportunity to learn from the other services and because of the organizational diversity that brings complimentary capabilities together to accomplish the mission. This dissertation adds to the growing body of literature that deals with anthropology of the military and may represent the first cognitive anthropological research into an important cultural context for many military personnel and illustrates how anthropological methods can be applied to military cultural contexts.Item The Propensity to Serve in the Armed Forces: An Examination into the Factors Associated with Military Propensity During the Post-9/11 Era(2016) Yastrzemsky, James Ross; Segal, David R.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The end of military conscription and the rise of the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) in 1973 forced the armed forces to compete in the civilian labor market with other employers and colleges for desirable young workers. As a consequence, the Department of Defense and the individual services began large-scale programs of market research designed to monitor the quantity and quality of personnel in the civilian labor force who might be eligible and inclined to volunteer for military service. One element of these research programs has been microdata analysis based upon large-scale longitudinal surveys of America’s youth. The University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future (MTF) project is one particular program that has been surveying high school seniors since 1975 and tracking their subsequent life-course trajectories up to the age of thirty-five. Although originally intended for use as a drug and alcohol use study, there are numerous demographic and attitudinal questions on various forms of the MTF study that have been previously used by scholars and military practitioners to describe trends and predict factors associated with the propensity to serve in the armed forces. However, scholars have not extended this research since 9/11. My research bridges this gap in knowledge by employing cross-sectional data from MTF to examine the various macro-social and social-psychological factors associated with military propensity during the post-9/11 era (2002-2013)- a period marked by sustained war in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the macro-social level, I find that the propensity to serve in the military is negatively related to public support for war and U.S. casualties, but is positively related to a rise in unemployment. Black youth continue to have a higher propensity to serve compared to Hispanic and white youth, although their propensity is relatively lower compared to years prior to 9/11. Further, the gap in propensity between race and ethnic groups disappears after controlling for socioeconomic factors. Significant attitudinal differences are observed between youth with and without propensity and between racial and ethic groups who have the propensity to serve. Youth with propensity are more likely to affiliate with the Republican Party and to possess a conservative political ideology. Youth with propensity are more likely to have greater institutional orientations toward work, although occupational orientations also exist among youth with propensity during the post-9/11 era. Youth with propensity are likely to possess more traditional attitudes toward gender roles and are no less egalitarian in their attitudes toward race relations compared to youth without propensity. Women continue to have lower propensity than men, but women’s overall propensity levels do not significantly decrease during the post-9/11 era compared to years earlier. Findings have important implications for life course studies of the post-9/11 era, recruitment and retention in the military, for research on the integration of women into combat positions, and for research on civil-military relations concerning the nature and extent of a civil-military gap.Item A Worldwide History Spanning Genocide for the Sake of Corporate Profit(2016) Eckstein, Jacob Daniel; Mitchell, Emily; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A Worldwide History Spanning Genocide for the Sake of Corporate Profit is the title of a thesis consisting of four stories. Crosky’s Knife is presented first for the sake of allowing potential readers to embrace a sense of amiable audience engagement and is based on a true story of a veteran of one of the many global conflicts currently raged on behalf of freedom. The three pieces following this feint are reworked versions of stories written from the heart and delivered to machines. As it presents numerous aspects of reality that the average person may not wish to consider, doing so with shockingly casual acceptance of such horror and/or banality, the conscious reception of the duty of engagement and possible appreciation of the text is not advised. Knives, rabid dogs, severed tongues, and a downpour of malnourished Iraqi babies are components intrinsic to the direction of this thesis.