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

• Author: Ilmari Käihkö
• Published date: 01 July 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X20974768
• Date: 01 July 2021
• Subject Matter: Commentaries

Commentary

Toward Strategic

Cohesion: A Reply to

King’s Criticism of the

Call for a Broader View

of Cohesion

Ilmari Ka

¨ihko

¨

1

Abstract

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 perfor-

mance, 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.

Keywords

cohesion, combat, Eurocentrism, strategy

1

Department of Security, Strategy and Leadership, Swedish Defence University, Stockholm, Sweden

Corresponding Author:

Ilmari Ka

¨ihko

¨, Department of Security, Strategy and Leadership, Swedish Defence University, Box 278 05,

115 93 Stockholm, Sweden.

Email: ilmari.kaihko@fhs.se

Armed Forces & Society

2021, Vol. 47(3) 596-603

ªThe Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X20974768

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