Epidemics,national security,and US immigration policy

What are relationships between epidemics, national security, and US immigration policy? This question is important because it sheds light on transnational or nontraditional security areas, American immigration policy, and a pressing issue for US leaders who have recently faced epidemics such as the West Africa Ebola outbreak that began in 2013. This article answers it and lays ground in the area by reviewing epidemics in world history, using International Relations and Security Studies works to specify dangers of contagions for states, and identifying three general immigration measures that American leaders have utilized from the seventeenth century to the present day to protect against contagions, which are (1) policies restricting entrance of foreigners thought to carry specified diseases, (2) the isolation or quarantining of immigrants with contagious disease, and (3) delegating the President with authority to stop immigration in the event of an epidemic abroad. This study has implications for research and contemporary US immigration policy.     

Women,peace and security in Africa

This article highlights and critiques the underlying conceptualisations and assumptions of the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda that emerged with the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000. The main argument is that we need to rethink the WPS agenda to produce more holistic and groundbreaking responses for the types of challenges encountered, i.e., that gender inequality and insecurity are deep rooted and multi-layered, and thus negate mechanistic responses that do not deal with cultural and structural issues. It specifically focuses on gender and peace-making and gender and peacekeeping to point to the pitfalls in the current conceptions and practices in this arena.     

Maritime security and capacity building in the Gulf of Guinea: On comprehensiveness,gaps, and security priorities

It is widely acknowledged that maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea is a highly complex phenomenon involving a variety of issues (legal deficiencies, inadequate military equipment, and challenges like corruption, political unrest and youth unemployment) as well as a multiplicity of external responders. To make sense of the impact that external actors have when they address this complex problem through various maritime capacity building endeavours, this article argues that there is a need to understand the attractiveness of capacity building vis-à-vis the widely acknowledged need for a comprehensive approach, as well as the difficulties of translating the potential for comprehensiveness into practice (as important aspects of the problem remain largely unaddressed). Further, it is argued that it is important to appreciate that even if these gaps – i.e. the aspects that maritime capacity building currently leaves unaddressed – represent a ‘failure’ to deliver a comprehensive response, they are at the same time illustrative of how the maritime capacity building activities of various external actors also ‘succeed’ in having an impact on this regional security landscape – for instance, by influencing how certain aspects of this multifaceted problem are prioritised, whilst others are only marginally addressed, if at all.     

Explaining the security paradigm shift: strategic culture,epistemic communities,and Israel’s changing national security policy

The paper’s main argument is that Israel’s security policy, which traditionally focused on defending its territorial integrity against regular Arab armed forces, was, by the 2010s, transformed into one that focuses on facing a variety of state- and non-state-based threats. Neo-realist explanations could neither account for the contested nature of the security debate during this period, nor the inconsistent evolution of the policy. The present study aims to solve this conundrum by introducing an alternative approach known as 4th generation strategic culture research. The paper is comprised of four parts. First, the origins and evolution of strategic culture are reviewed, with emphasis placed on the commonly accepted weaknesses that, to date, have prevented it from being used as a testable theoretical concept, and subsequently as an explanatory factor for security policy changes. The second part presents the “modernist constructivism” approach that bridges the gap between traditional constructivism and hypothesis-driven research design. Next, the paper introduces the emerging fourth generation in strategic culture literature, followed by a conceptual framework designed to resolve the inherent weaknesses of the more traditional approaches. Finally, this conceptual framework is applied to analyse the transformation of Israel’s security policy between 1982 and 2014.     

Terrorism,insurgency, kidnapping,and security in Africa's energy sector

Energy continues to serve as the bedrock of modern economies and the main driver of modern society. For Africa, the production and supply of energy resources such as crude oil, natural gas, uranium, coal, biomass, biofuels and other renewables are an important source of employment, rents, taxes, royalties and profits. This sector brings in several tens of billions of dollars of revenue annually. The production and delivery of such resources, however, depend on critical infrastructures such as pipelines, refineries, processing plants, terminals, rigs, electrical energy pylons, substations, pump stations, vessels, and tankers. These infrastructures have been attacked by terrorists, insurgents, vandals and saboteurs, all of whom see them as targets against which to register their grievances and extract concessions from the state. This paper is a chronological account of some of the documented incidents of terrorism, insurgency, kidnapping, destruction, sabotage, and human casualties suffered in the oil and gas sectors in Africa between 1999 and 2012. It is based on data extracted from the databases of the RAND Database of World Terrorism Incidents and the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database (GTD).     

The management of security incidents by private security

This article is about the management of security incidents in organisations and companies which are under the protection of private security personnel, whether in-house or contracted. Incidents can be defined as accidental or anecdotal (bird flies into a camera) to a violation of law or company policy. Managing security incidents is one of the key functions of a private security service provider. The purpose of this study is to explore the management of security incidents and the information related thereto, identify shortcomings and find solutions for managing these shortcomings. Interviews were used to gain insight from personnel within the private and government sectors which are served by the private security industry. It was found that security incidents are handled in a routine way by organisations from the different sectors. One major shortcoming is that security incidents and the information related thereto are not managed by security service providers according to an operational framework or model with the required infrastructure and resources. The significance of this study is for security incidents to be managed correctly, so that the information related thereto may be captured accurately, analysed and used proactively and reactively to improve physical protection systems, develop preventative strategies and provide actionable information products in order to reduce crime, increase detection rates and prevent losses.     

National security,military spending and the business cycle

This paper develops a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model where national security is an argument in the agent’s utility function and the government chooses optimally the level of military spending to maximize social welfare. National defense depends on military expenditure and on the strategic environment reflecting a potential hostile external threat. We use aggregate data on consumption, investment, and military spending for the US economy to estimate the parameters of the model. Estimation results suggest that consumption and national defense are complements and that military spending variability is mainly explained by external threat shocks although it also depends on the macroeconomic conditions. We compute impulse response functions of the main macroeconomic variables to several shocks: a total factor productivity shock, a defense technology shock, and a strategic environment shock. Surprisingly, we find that the optimal response to an increase in the external threat (a worsening in the strategic environment) will rise output by reducing consumption and increasing investment.     

文化安全中的心理与认知空间安全

文化安全是国家安全的重要组成部分,是全球化时代每一个国家都需要面对的重要课题。在新的时期,文化安全的领域内涵增加,而且出现新的重要形式,其中心理与认知空间的安全已经上升到国家安全的重要层面,它又可以分为心理空间和认知空间层面。在心理空间层面,良好的国民心理、民族认同与归属感、爱国情怀、跨文化心理素质是影响文化安全的重要因子;在认知空间层面,核心概念与概念系统、语言与话语模式、认知与思维模式、思维与精神自主性是影响文化安全的核心要素。心理与认知空间的安全由于是非显性的,因而对文化安全的影响更为重要。重视心理空间和认知空间重要因子的培塑,对当前文化安全的维护和研究颇为重要。     

浅谈警卫情报工作在现代警卫指挥中的作用

警卫情报工作既属于警卫部门经常性的基础工作范畴,又是贯穿于警卫指挥全过程的不可缺少的重要内容.它是警卫指挥中制定警卫方案、随机决策、挫败暗杀阴谋活动的依据,必须提高对情报信息工作重要意义和作用的认识.     

Arms trade,arms control,and security: Collective action issues

This article puts forth collection action as a unifying theme for the conference essays on arms trade, control, and production. For each of these topics, collective action failures are related to group size and group composition considerations. Other issues are also examined including the manner in which individual contributions determine the overall level of the associated collective good ‐ the so‐called aggregation technology of public supply. Based on alternative aggregation technologies, the game‐theoretic underpinnings of these arms issues are explored.     

一种实时告警分析的网络安全风险评估方法

提出了一种实时告警分析的网络安全风险评估方法。该方法整合了入侵检测、漏洞扫描等多种安全技术,通过对实时告警分析的结果,动态地计算出量化的网络安全风险值,并图形化地展示目标资产的当前网络风险状况。实验结果表明:该方法能有效地计算出当前网络系统量化的风险级别,帮助管理员对安全风险进行评估。     

Russian military reform: institutional,political and security implications

This critical comment examines the incentives, major priorities, difficulties and first results of the Russian military reform that is being implemented since 2008. The authors conclude that despite numerous drawbacks and barriers to the reformist efforts certain successes can be identified. Particularly, there is a clear shift from the old-fashioned, Soviet-type army to a more compact, mobile, better equipped and combat-ready armed forces that are capable to cope with today's challenges to Russian national security.     

浅论警卫对象视察民营企业时的警卫工作

我国民营经济的发展,引起了党和政府的高度重视,党和国家领导人到民营企业参观、视察、调研活动日益增多.研究警卫对象视察民营企业的警卫工作,确保警卫对象视察、调研的安全,是警卫部门的一个新课题.     

浅析知识警卫的特点

人类进入信息时代,伴随着知识经济浪潮的冲击,一种建立在以警卫人员智力和技能为支柱,信息技术为依托,创新为灵魂,新知识、新技术、新思维为战斗力增长点的新型警卫形态--知识警卫已初现端倪.知识警卫主要特点是警卫人员的高度知识化,警卫人员具备崭新的知识化思维方式,警卫人员富有强烈的知识、信息、创新意识,运用信息创新、知识创新、技术创新、观念创新、现代管理、科学决策、智能指挥,实现警卫工作的最终目标--确保警卫对象和目标的绝对安全.