Concept
Military
Overview
A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. Militaries are typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with their members identifiable by a distinct military uniform. They may consist of one or more military branches such as an army, navy, air force, space force, marines, or coast guard. The main task of a military is usually defined as defence of their state and its interests against external armed threats.
In broad usage, the terms "armed forces" and "military" are often synonymous, although in technical usage a distinction is sometimes made in which a country's armed forces may include other paramilitary forces such as armed police.
Beyond warfare, the military may be employed in additional sanctioned and non-sanctioned functions within the state, including internal security threats, crowd control, promotion of political agendas, emergency services and reconstruction, protecting corporate economic interests, social ceremonies, and national honour guards.
A nation's military may function as a discrete social subculture, with dedicated infrastructure such as military housing, schools, utilities, logistics, hospitals, legal services, food production, finance, and banking services.
The profession of soldiering is older than recorded history. Some images of classical antiquity portray the power and feats of military leaders. The Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC from the reign of Ramses II, features in bas-relief monuments. The first Emperor of a unified China, Qin Shi Huang, created the Terracotta Army to represent his military might.
The Ancient Romans wrote many treatises and writings on warfare, as well as many decorated triumphal arches and victory columns.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Military is discussed.
If the state has recourse to the first of those two expedients, its military force is said to consist in a militia; if to the second, it is said to consist in a standing army. The practice of military exercises is the sole or principal occupation of the soldiers of a standing army, and the maintenance or pay which the state affords them is the principal and ordinary fund of their subsistence. The practice of…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
names the idea; opens on it
The horror makes the thrill; and when the question is of getting the extremest and supremest out of human nature, talk of expense sounds ignominious. The weakness of so much merely negative criticism is evident--pacificism makes no converts from the military party. The military party denies neither the bestiality nor the horror, nor the expense; it only says that these things tell but half the story.
William James, Memories and Studies
names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
But there were among them many soldiers and young officers, chiefly ensigns, resolute, and with heart and soul devoted to the Revolution, who had passed through Kerensky's prisons in July and August. All of them had placed themselves at the Military Revolutionary Committee's disposal and were being assigned to the most responsible fighting posts. However, it would not be superfluous to remark that precisely the…
Leon Trotsky, From October to Brest-Litovsk
names the idea; opens on it
Should not the military, finally, in and for its own interest, play the game of “state of siege,” and simultaneously besiege the bourgeois exchanges? Moreover, it must not be forgotten, and be it observed in passing, that Col. Bernard, the same President of the Military Committee, who, under Cavaignac, helped to deport 15,000 insurgents without trial, moves at this period again at the head of the Military Committees…
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
names the idea; opens on it
Diderot and D’Alembert, therefore, in their _Arbor scienciæ_, have placed military architecture in the department of elementary geometry. Naval architecture teaches the best form and construction of vessels; for which best form it has recourse to the question of the solid of least resistance; a problem of transcendental geometry.
Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4
names the idea; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed Military
Related ideas
- Germany
- Treatise
- Greece
- Government
- Industrial Revolution
- Julius Caesar
- Byzantine Empire
- Middle Ages
- Netherlands
- Portuguese Empire
- Geneva Conventions
- Mughal Empire
- Classical antiquity
- Renaissance
- Scientific method
- Cold War
- World War II
- War
- Prussia
- Society
- Islamic Golden Age
- Napoleonic Wars
- World War I
- Sun Tzu
Place in the tradition
Part of Conservatism.