Mgmt2200 Critical Thinking & Analysis Assessment Answers

Critical reviews

Provide critical reviews for the following two articles:

1) Stanger, A. and Mark Williams 2006. “Privatizing Force: The Benefits and Costs of Outsourcing Security.” 

2) Kaplan, Robert D. 1994. “The coming anarchy: how scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet.“

Instruction: 

Each review must be titled, clearly written and organised in a couple of short paragraphs. To be able to produce a sound critical review, you need to have sufficient exposure to literature on the topics discussed by the articles under review.

Answers:

Critical Review of Journal 1

Kaplan, R.D., 1994. The coming anarchy. Globalization and the challenges of a new century:

Background of the article:The article in question has described in depth about the grave situation in the region of West Africa and how it has been infested by different criminal activities. The authorKaplan(1994), describes that this had claimed the social security of people living in the various parts of the African countries and even people coming to visit the area were not termed as safe. The entire article describes various real life incidents where the security as well as lives of different people has been claimed irrespective of their social statuses. The article further makes a premonition about the future, where the author describes that West Africa has slowly been on the verge of becoming a symbol of social stress worldwide including the environmental, demographic and social areas. It also identifies that it is just not because of the anarchy that cause this huge amount of criminal activities that happens to have a parasitic effect on the African Society but also there has been other distressful reasons behind it. The article identifies that exceeded overpopulation, diseases, overlooked criminal activities and erosion of the national states and borders would take the perilous situation to a much horrific level. The article also points out that it is just not the responsibility of the American influence that is causing the random attacks on the country, but it is also the responsibility of the internal political situation in the country that has been causing the army to behave in an unruly way, denying the criminal activities and disseminating the border crisis. Thus, the author predicts that this might create a problem for the later decades in making a remap in the political world and the author also makes a suggestion in handling  the situation better with the inclusion of starting the revamping with West Africa first.

Critical Review:Critically evaluating the journal, it can be said that the author was had predicted the security situation in the later phase of time right in most cases and it can also be pointed out that the author has been wrong as well in many instances. This can be due to the fact that the article was written in 1994 and not in any recent time. At that point of time, West Africa was in a situation of extreme turmoil and has ever since been in a constant frame of crime rates.

In another article Agozino (2017), has revealed that the crime rates in the entire Western Africa is not unidirectional, and there are chances that it can get better with time if proper political and operational measures are taken. The people of West Africa want to revolt against all the wrongdoings of the attackers and they also want to oust the people who are taking the political aspects to orchestrate the attacks (Banton 2018). However, in the recent times, it can be seen clearly that the entire crime rate situation in the regions of West Africa has not worsened though it is visible in some parts of it. Regions like Ghana, Angola, Senegal and others have been identified to be at a much stable state for people to live in whereas in some parts, the country is still facing criminal turmoil (Magnarella 2018).

Thus, analyzing all the different articles about this same topic, it can be said that the author had only discussed about the problems in a straightway negative and unified way, which does not portray a true sense of an article. An article should be presented in a way that would present the true sense of the article as well as try to put in a critical point of view about viewing the entire scenario.The author had predicted all these in the times of turmoil which is almost non-existent at this point of time. As per personal discretion, his point of view can be argued as seeing the matter in a different light altogether. With the betterment of the political, environmental and psychological prospects it can be clearly seen that the arguments that the author had put forward in the journal is not feasible given the latest times where it can be seen that the situation has not worsened, and otherwise it has been kept as stable as possible.

Critical Review of Journal 2

Stanger, A. and Williams, M.E., 2006. Private military corporations: Benefits and costs of outsourcing security.

Background of the article: This article focuses on the implementation of the Private Military Corporations by the American Military authorities and describes the effect they have had on the entire political, military, economic and social situation in the country as well as the entire world. The author points out the inevitable fact that American politics and military situations not only affect the country but the entire world. Being one of the key powerful countries in the world, the country has a huge responsibility of implementing proper ideals and policies while coming to a decision of establishing new ideas and implementing new technologies or policies (Stanger and Williams 2006). The author points out that the Private Military Corporation or PMC was established post Cold War due to the perilous situation in the country in order to make a few monetary advancements bringing in profit maximizing organizations which provide a varied range of military and security services to its customers. These services include strategic advising, intelligence gathering and analysis, military and tactical training, and technical, logistical, and operational assistance.  Ever since Cold War ceased to exist, there had been a situation in the country that needed the entire world to take into consideration about remodelling the military structure for each country. There had been several benefits in the country with the development and functioning of PMC as a decision making and service providing organization with cost outsourcings and benefitting from it.

Critically review: The authorstates in the journal thatPMC offers a huge amount of benefits to the country and in extension, to the entire world(Pattison 2014). This is because the country would be in favour of taking decisions for the military situations in every country in the world in the garb of making a suggestion.On the other hand, the author indeed acknowledges the imposed accountability costs for outsourcing in PMC, since the PMC policy implementation clouds major areas in the policy which otherwise should have been kept transparent. However, in another article, the authors Buzatu and Buckland (2015), states that, this has the potential to make the entire world be almost enslaved by the United States of America.The implementation of PMC had showcased a benefit by claiming that US casualties will lessen but this would only work in favour of US, not the entire world.

Analyzing the supplementary and referral journals, it can be said that, the authors Stanger and Williams (2006), could not clarify the fact that this entire situation is susceptible to major turmoil in the military as well political arena in the entire world. Therefore, the author has only described the development and benefits of PMC but does not put forward that it was solely focused on increasing the monetary benefits of USA post-Cold War, but would put the entire world in a much more dangerous situation (Avant 2016). Therefore, it can be said that the entire journal is unidirectional is describing the benefits and achievements of PMC, but could not acknowledge how the organization has been build up for taking up decisions for other countries for the sole reason of making profits for United States. 

References

Agozino, B., 2017. Pan-African issues in crime and justice. Routledge.

Avant, D.D., 2016. Pragmatic networks and transnational governance of private military and security services. International Studies Quarterly, 60(2), pp.330-342.

Banton, M., 2018. West African city: a study of tribal life in Freetown. Routledge.

Buzatu, A.M. and Buckland, B.S., 2015. Private military & security companies: Future challenges in security governance. Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces.

Kaplan, R.D., 1994. The coming anarchy. Globalization and the challenges of a new century: A reader, pp.34-60.

Magnarella, P.J., 2018. Justice in Africa: Rwanda's Genocide, Its Courts and the UN Criminal Tribunal: Rwanda's Genocide, Its Courts and the UN Criminal Tribunal. Routledge.

Pattison, J., 2014. The morality of private war: The challenge of private military and security companies. OUP Oxford.

Stanger, A. and Williams, M.E., 2006. Private military corporations: Benefits and costs of outsourcing security. Yale J. Int'l Aff., 2, p.4.