military units for temporary or long-term defensive or offensive operations.
Armies in a politically important sense are, with the exception of the Roman
legionary army, products of the post-medieval era. As long as a nation relies on
temporary, amateur troops, its army cannot be a threat to other social and
political institutions (seecitizen soldier). As soon as a permanent, bureau-
cratically organized, army comes into being, with its own legitimacy and
power base, it becomes a potential contender for control of the state. Thus the
Roman legions came to determine who should be emperor quite early in post-
Republican times.
The earliest politically important armies in the modern world included the
Cromwellian army in 17th-century England and the Napoleonic armies in
France. The politicians’ fear of the political power of standing armies is
exemplified by British and American policies in the 18th and 19th centuries.
As late as 1940 the USA kept its military establishment as small as possible.
Later, after the huge increase in the size of the military machine during and
after the Second World War, Dwight D. Eisenhower (who had been Allied
Supreme Commander in 1945), warned the USA, in his farewell address as
President, in 1961, of the potential threats posed to democracy by ‘the
military–industrial complex’. In Britain, the army was kept firmly under the
political control of the ruling classes by restricting membership of the officer
corps to those who could afford to buy their commissions from the Crown—a
system that survived until a series of military blunders in the Crimean War
(1853–56) forced a change of policy.
Nowadays armies tend to be of most importance in the politically undev-
eloped countries of the Third World, where military rule is a common feature.
In such countries the army usually has a near-monopoly of bureaucratically
efficient and disciplined personnel, often trained in the developed countries.
As civil services develop and civilian governments acquire an aura of legiti-
macy, the fear of militarycoups d’e ́tatwill diminish and armies will become
servants rather than masters of the state.
Since the end of thecold war, both Western and Eastern states have begun
to rethink their need for military forces, and a rich theoretical debate about the
nature of defence forces and the function of armies has developed. Increasingly,
military force is being thought of as addressed to new targets, for example
internationalterrorismand drug dealing. The development of increasingly
sophisticated and expensive high-technology weapons systems tends to conflict
with an increased need for large numbers of basically trained infantrymen to
carry out peace-keeping andhumanitarian interventiontasks. The role of
national military forces as part of international politics, through theUnited
Nationsand similar organizations, is becoming more important. The problem
for Western military systems is to redefine strategy away from the classic idea of
anation stateenemy which can be invaded and defeated.
Armies