Introduction to the Armed Forces & Society Forum on Broadening the Perspective on Military Cohesion

• Published date: 01 October 2018
• Date: 01 October 2018
• Author: Ilmari Käihkö
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X18763154
• Subject Matter: Forum on Cohesion

Forum on Cohesion
Armed Forces & Society
2018, Vol. 44(4) 563-570
Introduction to the
ª The Author(s) 2018
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Armed Forces & Society
DOI: 10.1177/0095327X18763154
journals.sagepub.com/home/afs
Forum on Broadening
the Perspective on
Military Cohesion
Ilmari Ka¨ihko¨1,2
Abstract
This Armed Forces & Society forum concentrates on broadening the perspective on
military cohesion. This introduction, and the five articles that it acts as a preamble to,
argues for the need to widen the scope of the recent debate on military cohesion,
which in part took place in this very journal. This debate narrowly focused on
Western state militaries during the 20th and 21st centuries and even then on the
microlevel. The articles in this issue contribute to this broadening by exploring
military cohesion in non-Western or nonmodern contexts, as well as through new
methods, thus individually and collectively suggesting new ways forward to further
our understanding of military cohesion.
Keywords
armed groups, Eurocentrism, military cohesion, military sociology
It is difficult to underestimate the importance of cohesion for armed groups, or
organizations specialized and engaged in organized violence. Cohesion is necessary
for any group, as it is needed to turn individuals into something more than their sum.
Yet the importance of cohesion is greatly magnified for those organizations engaged
1 Department of Security, Strategy and Leadership, Swedish Defence University, Stockholm, Sweden
2 Department of Sociology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
Corresponding Author:
Ilmari Ka¨ihko¨, Swedish Defence University, Stockholm, Sweden.
Email: ilmari.kaihko@fhs.se

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Armed Forces & Society 44(4)
in war, making them crucial cases for investigating cohesion. Facing violent inter-
actions not found during times of peace, the cohesion of the organizations that fight
wars is constantly tested. For these organizations, cohesion becomes a central prac-
tical issue to deal with due to their close connection with organized violence. Not
only do they need to build and maintain their own cohesion, but also ultimately and
often simultaneously, they even aim to disrupt the cohesion of their opponents. By
necessity, cohesion is thus central for all strategy.
Previous military literature has suggested that, with everything else being equal,
the side with more cohesion triumphs (Du Picq, 2013; Henderson, 1985; Richardson,
1978; but see also Fuller, 1990; MacCoun, Kier, & Belkin, 2006). Cohesion thus
wins wars and brings peace. More recently, its usefulness in the control of force has
extended from prevention of mutinies and implementing strategy to limiting
excesses during war (Chirot & McCauley, 2006). The importance of military cohe-
sion also extends from wartime to the postconflict period, as armed groups transition
into peacetime. Understanding what holds armed groups together in the first place is
crucial for understanding how armed movements turn into political parties (So¨der-
berg-Kovacs, 2008) but also for reintegrating combatants to civilian lives (Junger,
2016). Finally, the relationship of cohesion and control has also become important in
determining responsibility for war crimes committed by subordinates, as first seen in
Nuremberg and increasingly after. Consequently, cohesion is inherently relevant to
not only military practitioners but even policy makers and scholars across several
academic disciplines.
Despite its centrality to both war and peace, theory and practice, military cohe-
sion has received surprisingly little scholarly attention. During the past decades, the
study of cohesion in military context has furthermore employed a very narrow
perspective. Not only has the recent investigation of cohesion focused on particular
space and time—Western state militaries during the 20th and 21st centuries—but
also on microlevel explanations that either focus on battlefield performance or
interpersonal bonds of solidarity (Siebold, Crabb, Woodward, & King, 2016). In
the defense of these approaches, it could be argued that limiting the investigation to
familiar cases allows certain macrolevel factors to be taken for granted, and thus
justify the focus on the microlevel dynamics that influence cohesion. While this
argument is plausible, it simultaneously confirms the increasing criticism regarding
the inherent Eurocentrism of military studies to date (Barkawi, 2006). Even further,
focus on state militaries neglects the importance of nonstate actors, already recog-
nized by van Creveld (1991) immediately after the end of the Cold War.
The limitations of this narrow perspective have become clear during the recent
struggles in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. While especially Western state
militaries have...