Description
From time to time, military doctrinal concepts are adopted worldwide across distinct military organisations. The literature on military diffusion and political sociology have already identified this issue. Yet, most studies still concentrate excessively on the diffusion of technologies or organisational practices across allies or competitors. But how do military doctrines circulate to distinct strategic environments? We argue that military doctrines are not ‘lost in translation’ but rather translated to different organisational cultures. We employ the concept of ‘military doctrinal translation’ to illustrate how the same concept becomes distinct from the source with unique meanings depending on where they are assimilated. To tackle this complex research problem, we use the case study of how the U.S. Army concept of Full Spectrum Operations (FSO) was implemented by the Brazilian Army in the 2010s. The Brazilian version of FSO took centre stage on how the organisation adapted to new domestic roles and mission areas (e.g., law enforcement and crime-fighting, border patrolling, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief) and had overarching sociopolitical consequences. It thus represents a case of a Global South organisation with no formal military alliance ‘translating’ a foreign concept to adapt to new roles and missions.
