Is Russia a revisionist military power in the Arctic?

In contrast with a widespread perception of Russia as an expansionist power in the Arctic, this article argues that Moscow does not seek military superiority in the region. Rather, Moscow's military strategies in the Arctic pursue three major goals: first, to demonstrate and ascertain Russia's sovereignty over its exclusive economic zone and continental shelf in the region; second, to protect its economic interests in the High North; and third, to demonstrate that Russia retains its great power status and still has world-class military capabilities. The Russian military modernization programs are quite modest and aim at upgrading the Russian armed forces in the High North rather than providing them with additional offensive capabilities or provoking a regional arms race. The Russian ambitions in the Arctic may be high, but they are not necessarily implying the intentions and proper capabilities to confront other regional players by military means. On the contrary, Moscow opts for soft rather than hard power strategy in the Arctic.     

Defense policy in Brazil: bridging the gap between ends and means?

This article aims to analyze the Brazilian Defense Policy in terms of its ability to reduce the gap between ends and means. Since 2003, the Brazilian defense policy has evolved along with Brazil’s increased role in the international system. Sustaining this process depends on institutional, economic, and operational conditions that are yet to be fully guaranteed. They require negotiations, reforms, and strategic perspective. By identifying specific challenges emerging from the national security institutional framework, the combat capability building process, the budgetary cycle, as well as from the defense industrial base, we sought to explain their rationale and to offer concrete policy pointers to overcome obstacles. As a general conclusion, the Brazilian defense policy was strengthened by the 2008 National Defense Strategy (END) due to its clearer strategic goals. Bridging the gap between those ends and the proper means is a continuous effort for any given country, but in the case of Brazil it has been addressed with firmer steps since the END, even in the face of harder economic and political conditions.     

美军装备维修改革现状与发展

近些年来,美军为有效适应高新武器装备发展需要和军事转型挑战,持续在装备维修领域进行了一系列深度改革。着重从维修思想、维修技术、维修手段和维修体制4个方面系统分析了相关改革现状,阐释了这些改革的动因、内容、成效和发展趋势。研究表明,美军装备维修改革促成了信息化条件下美军装备维修保障的新优势。     

以党在新形势下的强军目标为牵引扎实推进军队院校保密工作科学发展

习主席提出的党在新形势下的强军目标,为进一步推进军队院校保密工作科学发展提供了根本遵循。院校保密工作必须以强军目标为牵引,铸牢强军之魂,牢牢把握军队院校保密工作发展的正确方向;扭住强军之要,切实提升搞好军队院校保密工作的能力水平;夯实强军之基,积极适应军队保密工作新要求抓好落实。     

新形势下公安边防部队政治工作定位的思考

改革开放的深入和社会主义市场经济体制的逐步确立,给公安边防部队政治工作带来了一系列新情况、新问题、新挑战,大大加重了政治工作的任务和难度。要积极应对这种挑战,进一步加强部队政治工作,首先应从指导思想上对新形势下公安边防部队政治工作的地位、目标、任务、内容、作用以及方式方法等问题进行全面准确的定位。     

Domestic political and external security determinants of the demand for greek military expenditure

By European Union and NATO standards, Greece consistently allocates substantial human and material resources to defence. The Greek defence burden (i.e. military expenditure as a share of GDP) has invariably been appreciably higher than the EU and NATO averages. The paper applies an autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) to present cointegrated estimates of the demand function for Greek military expenditure, in which domestic political factors and external security determinants are incorporated. Our empirical findings suggest that Greek defence spending over the period 1960-1998 has been influenced by both external security concerns, namely Turkey, as well as changes in the domestic political scene.     

Regular and irregular forces in conflict: nineteenth century insurgencies in South America

ABSTRACT

In the decades following independence from Spain, ‘civil wars’ ravaged the newly established polities in South America. Former vice-regal capitals inherited a larger portion of the colonial administration and had larger economic resources and a hegemonic project they were able to have permanent and professional armed forces, capable of leading the offensive and giving battle following the European rules of military art. The central hypothesis of this work is that there is a necessary relationship between the shape of these asymmetrical conflicts, their outcome and the political territorial configuration of each country in post-revolutionary Spanish America. When permanent armies took over from local militias, the capital kept the integrity of its territories and there was a tendency towards political centralization. When this did not happen and the militias managed to find a way to defeat their centralizing enemies, the local powers had an opportunity to renegotiate their participation in the political body, and sought to maintain their independence, which was manifest in federal agreements, otherwise a process of territorial fragmentation began. More than a difference between regular and irregular forces there was one between intermittent, and permanent mobilization.     

Equality and diversity in the British armed forces: progress,challenges and prospects

The UK's changing political and legal landscape since 2000 reflecting transformations in wider society have elevated equality and diversity (E&D) issues to prominence in the public sector, including in the British armed forces. This research highlights key developments in the British military in relation to E&D, focusing both on areas of progress, and on the challenges still confronting the Forces. The findings reveal that the Forces have made significant strides in advancing E&D through the implementation of a range of policy initiatives but the persistence of discrimination, developments in the wider environment and the dilemmas raised by the strands of age and disability pose challenges. The value of this research is to increase our understanding of diversity management in a public sector institution that has been under-researched and views itself as “different,” and will be of interest to policymakers, E&D practitioners and academics in the field.     

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.     

Budget allocation,national security,military intelligence,and human capital: a dynamic model

This study develops a dynamic model that integrates military intelligence into the defense capability of the country and the optimal allocation of its government budget. We assert that the effectiveness of the country’s military intelligence is contingent on the quality of its human capital, which, in turn, implies a long-term positive relationship between the government’s various civilian expenditures and its capacity to achieve a cost-effective intelligence and, hence, military capability. This relationship is developed within a multiple-period arms race model between two rivals. Using this model and stylized data for the Israeli–Syrian arms race, we show that an appropriate budget shift from defense to civilian expenditures during the initial periods of the planning horizon will gradually (over a decade, say) increase the quality of human capital in the country and, thus, the effectiveness of its intelligence, which, in turn, will increase the country’s future security and welfare.     

Hoping for the Best,preparing for the worst: China's response to US hegemony

In the post-Cold War strategic environment, Beijing could plausibly have opted for Soviet-style geostrategic competition with Washington, but it has not. Chinese leaders have not thus far, and almost certainly will never, amass thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert or deploy significant forces to a network of bases spanning the globe. Nevertheless, the below assessment of China's increasing hard and soft power yields the conclusion that a Chinese challenge to US hegemony cannot be ruled out. The United States must prudently maintain military forces appropriate to facing a potential peer competitor. At the same time, however, Washington must engage in a process of creative diplomacy that simultaneously matches China's soft power and engages seriously with Beijing to create areas of consensus and cooperation.     

The socialization of military power: security cooperation and doctrine development through multinational military exercises

Multinational Military Exercises (MMEs) are often viewed by states as opportunities to increase interoperability, improve cooperation, and solve common security problems. We argue that in addition to this, MMEs work as tools to shape the shared beliefs of coalition partners surrounding threat. Specifically, MMEs allow multinational forces to identify best practices, consolidate beliefs, and codify behavior through doctrine, typically by means of some institutional process. We examine our argument on MMEs through an analysis of various multinational and coalition partner efforts to identify security threats and cooperate through the development of common doctrine at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of warfare. Our analysis suggests that the use of MMEs for doctrine development does help to socialize states in terms of identifying common threats and subsequently sharing a process by which to address them.     

Causal analysis of Australian economic growth and military expenditure: A note

Chowdhury (1991) applied Granger causality methods to military expenditure and economic growth series in 55 developing countries. This note applies a similar approach to Australia and finds no causal relationship between military expenditure and growth in either direction.     

任职院校国防生自尊、自我效能感及个性特征的研究

调查任职院校国防生自尊、自我效能感状况及其个性特征,为任职培训期间开展教育和管理工作提供参考。采用自尊量表（SES）、一般自我效能感量表（GSES）、艾森克人格问卷（EPQ）以及自编问卷方法,对535名任职院校国防生进行调查。结果显示：任职院校国防生自尊水平与专业、是否学员骨干等因素有关;自我效能水平与居住地等因素有关;任职院校国防生人格特征与军校生和军人群体相对接近,但与大学生群体有所不同。可见,对任职院校国防生进行教育管理时,应该重点从提高国防生的自尊和自我效能感水平入手,更好地维护和提高国防生在任职培训期间的心理健康水平。     

The Obama administration's phased-adaptive architecture: technological,operational and political issues

In 2009, the Obama administration announced a new missile defense strategy, termed a phased-adaptive architecture (PAA) focused primarily on countering the growing threat from theater ballistic missiles. The success of this strategy is predicated on the rapid development and fielding of successive increments of defensive capability in a manner adapted to the specific requirements for missile defenses in different regions of the world. The administration is committed to building a European regional missile defense system, the European PAA or EPAA between now and 2020. The first elements of the EPAA were deployed in late 2011. However, much progress is still required in order to reach the goals set for the PAA. This article addresses the technological, operational and political issues confronting the Obama administration in its efforts to make the PAA a reality.     

Russia,America and missile defense

Russia has sharply objected to US plans for ballistic missile defense. The Russian official explanation is that the real purpose of the US missile defense plan is to make it impossible for Russia to retaliate against a US nuclear (or massive conventional) attack, thus making Russia subject to military blackmail by the US. The Russian response has been the result of a sum total of various factors, mostly political and cultural, while the technical capabilities of the proposed system have played a secondary role.     

Similar Strategies,Dissimilar Outcomes: an Appraisal of the Efficacy of Turkey's Coercive Diplomacy with Syria and in Northern Iraq

Several countries have used coercive diplomacy to dissuade sponsor-states from supporting non-state armed groups. This study argues that when a sponsor-state and a non-state armed group's common identity creates common aspirations and motives, coercive diplomacy towards the sponsor-state is unlikely to succeed in the long-term. To assess its efficacy, this research examines Turkey's strategy towards Syria in 1998 and in northern Iraq from 2007 onwards. Under the abovementioned conditions, it concludes that there has been no conclusive evidence for Turkey's assumption that its approach would succeed; therefore, it should utilise alternative strategies to coercive diplomacy.     

The Scandinavian Triangle: Danish-Norwegian-Swedish military intelligence cooperation and Swedish security policy during the first part of the Cold War

This article deals with Scandinavian intelligence cooperation and its significance for Swedish security policy during the first part of the Cold War. First, the development of the cooperation is described. Second, it is related to a wider context. Third, intelligence in Swedish security policy-making is discussed. Common security interests caused the cooperation. For Sweden, it represented an important part of the wider contacts with the West. Although military intelligence was important for Swedish security policy-making in some respects (e.g. military readiness), it did not have a significant influence in others (e.g. the politicians' threat perceptions). One important reason is the Swedish tradition of weak connections between the political and military leadership.