The idea of the able-bodied soldier is discussed in this episode of SJMS Talks, with SJMS-contributor Christine Svop and host Daniel Møller Ølgaard. Svop published a study in 2021 about pregnant soldiers in the Danish army, offering several practice-oriented recommendations of gender mainstreaming, as well as discussing how the pregnant body poses a threat to the social identity of the soldier.
The backdrop of this episode is the recent revelations from Süddeutsche Zeiting, NDR an Delfi in Germany about the Russian Social Design Agency, planning to induce a nuclear psychosis in the Western population. One of our contributors, Carina Meyn, has been doing extensive fieldwork among security experts in the US, dealing with nuclear weapons. She joins our host Daniel Møller Ølgaard in the studio.
In this episode, Isabel Bramsen joins the studio with our new host, Daniel Møller Ølgaard – one of the chief editors of SJMS. The two political scientists discuss peace in the Middle East, and the benefits of a micro-sociological perspective on peace and conflict studies. SJMS-contributor Bramsen recently published the book The Micro-Sociology of Peace and Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
Contributor Professor David Betz visits the podcast to talk about the future of warfare. Rather than pointing to novel information technologies as war’s driving force, David turns to techniques from the past, such as citadel and marching forts, arguing that drivers of future warfare at best is technological in origin only secondary, and that rather than tactics of maneuvering, tactics of fortification is key when looking at the future of warfare.
There seems to be something true to the logistics experts saying: “In peace time we talk about war, in war time, we talk about logistics.” One of the most read articles in our journal tries to elaborate on the failing logistics on the Russian side early in the war. Contributors Thomas Ekström and Per Skoglund are in the studio to discuss what is their take on how Russian logistics have evolved throughout the war, and how it might evolve in the future.
Lessons from the war in Ukraine indicate that in future emergencies a kind of cyber militia might be useful to have. But what is a cyber militia? How should it be governed? And what roles can it perform? Contributor Dan Jerker Svantesson is invited to the podcast, to talk about cyber defence post Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Groups such as the Popular Resistance of Ukraine and the Atesh partisan movement of Crimea have taken credit for several attacks on Russian soldiers and military infrastructures. Is there anything new about these forms of popular resistance? And what is the future of unconventional warfare? To answer these questions, we have invited one of the world’s leading voices on irregular warfare and counterinsurgency, David Kilcullen.
Recently in Denmark, a survey showed that every fifth person in the Danish Army had experienced sexual harassment. This is a lot, but it is less than the general population. How come? Has the work with minimizing sexual harassment paid off? Or do people in the defense tend to report less, than others do? In the studio, contributor Iselin Silja Kaspersen joins Jeppe Teglskov Jacobsen on zoom to talk about how institutions such as the military shape and break our identity.
Light infantry are flexible, lightly equipped soldiers who engage in ground combat on foot. What are the dos and don’ts when considering investing in such units? Kristian Lindhardt is in the studio five years after Denmark got its first light infantry, and two years after he published his practice-oriented article on historical uses of light infantry in Vietnam, Rhodesia and Sierra Leone.
In this episode, we discuss foreign fighters – their motivation and use – historically, but also more specifically in the Ukraine War. Back in 2022, SJMS fast-tracked a special collection on Ukraine where Naman Karl-Thomas Habtom contributed, with an article on the demographic constitution, structure and role of the pro-Ukrainian foreign fighters. We met Naman at the SJMS conference at Södertörn University in august to ask him what’s currently going on with foreign fighters in Ukraine.
We continue our discussion on Arctic security politics, focusing on China and their interest in the Arctic Council. Camilla Sørensen, the foremost expert of China’s role in global politics at the Royal Danish Defence College joins us in the studio in Copenhagen. Camilla has recently published an article in SJMS with her colleague, Jørgen Staun. Read the full article at sjms.nu.
In this and the next episode, Arctic security politics is on the table, seen from the perspectives of Russia and China. To talk about Russia´s role in the Arctic, we have invited Jørgen Staun, expert on Russia’s role in global politics at the Royal Danish Defence College. Jørgen has recently published an article with his colleague, Camilla Sørensen. Read the full article at sjms.nu.
To talk about the future of military education in light of the new Danish Defence Agreement, SJMS Talks invites its contributor, Søren Sjøgren. He has written an article on military command and executive decision making, titled "What Military Commanders do and how they do it." Read the full article at sjms.nu.