Left Face

Based on more than one hundred interviews and group discussions with low-ranking soldiers, conscripts, and volunteers, this volume provides a unique perspective on the history, and analyzes the current status, of soldier unions and resistance movements in more than twenty countries. Beginning with the isolated, spontaneous incidents that characterized military protest in the mid-1960s, the study traces the changing profile of resistance movements in the conscript armies of Europe; the volunteer forces of the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia; and the armed forces of Portugal, Chile, Iran, and the Phillipines. From the information and data collected, David Cortright and Max Watts hypothesize that resistance among low-ranking soldiers occurs only in countries with a high degree of capital accumulation, a new concept they refer to as the Threshold Theory of Military Resistance.

Support for the Threshold Theory is based on data extracted from in-depth descriptions of the origins and organization of military unions and protest movements in Holland, West Germany, Scandinavia, France, Italy, Spain, East Germany, and the Soviet Union, as well as in countries below the threshold. A detailed examination of the United States army's resistance activities after the Vietnam conflict, its attempted unionization, and its continuing struggle with lack of discipline and low morale completes the global scope of this work. It will offer military sociologists, scholars, social scientists, soldiers, and veterans a singular survey of the dynamics of protest within the military around the world.