Reclaiming the Party’s Control of the Gun: Bringing Civilian Authority Back in China’s Civil-Military Relations

ABSTRACT

Since emerging as China’s top leader following the 18th Party Congress, Xi Jinping has moved swiftly to consolidate his formal authority as Central Military Commission chairman over the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. In redressing the civil-military imbalance wrought by Dengist economic reforms, the commander-in-chief has combined institutional mechanisms with the use of fear to impose authoritative civilian control over the military. This paper proposes that a combination of changes to the Chinese strategic environment has contributed to Xi’s utility of the anti-corruption campaign to purge the regime’s coercive forces of its previous underpinnings, and advances that the war on military malfeasance has given rise to a new set of dynamics in civil-military relations in post-Reform China.     

The People’s Liberation Army and China’s Smart Power Quandary in Southeast Asia

Abstract

China has a strong interest in pursuing a smart power strategy towards Southeast Asia and has worked laboriously to engage with regional countries economically, socially, and politically. But China has been only partially successful in achieving its goals in the region. This paper argues that China’s security policy towards Southeast Asia significantly contradicts many other objectives that Beijing wishes to accomplish. Given the deep-seated, narrowly-defined national interests of the Chinese military in the South China Sea disputes, it is likely that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will continue to pose the main obstacle to the effective implementation of a Chinese smart strategy in Southeast Asia.     

Space,the New Domain: Space Operations and Chinese Military Reforms

ABSTRACT

The Chinese military has embarked on a series of organizational and doctrinal reforms intended to better enable it to fight modern war. Prominent among these reforms is the growing emphasis on space to enable long-range precisions strikes and on counterspace to deny space capabilities to an adversary. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has officially designated space as a new domain and established an organization to command space forces. With this increased focus on space, the PLA may begin to develop a doctrine to govern the use of space in military operations. The higher priority given to space, especially space control, by the PLA coincides with similar actions by the US military, increasing the possibility of warfare in space and the risks of escalation.     

《军语》选词范围的变异与规范问题浅析

《军语》选词对象的范围是军队各专业领域，包括各级指战员必须掌握的综合性用语和需要了解的专业性术语。在《军语》的实际编纂中，其选词范围的变异与规范并存。根据《军语》的性质，从主观和客观两方面的原因分析，《军语》选词范围变异主要涉及三个规范化问题。     

Civil–military relations and organisational preferences regarding the use of the military in Chinese foreign policy: insights from the debate on MOOTW

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the positions of the Chinese civilian leaders and military elites on Military Operations Other Than War in order to shed light on their preferences about the use of the armed forces in foreign policy between the late 1990s and the early 2010s. Over time, a significant divergence developed between civilians and soldiers until 2011, when the Libyan crisis happened. The study also prompts important considerations about our understanding of civil–military relations in China and future role of the People’s Liberation Army as a tool of statecraft in foreign policy.     

Peacetime military innovation through inter-service cooperation: The unique case of the U.S. Air Force and Battlefield Air Interdiction

ABSTRACT

Military doctrine assures a nation’s survival. Yet even when faced with a security threat that requires change, militaries rarely innovate but instead adhere to old doctrines that enhance autonomy, reduce uncertainty and claim resources. Existing theories cannot explain an important case of peacetime military innovation when the U.S. Air Force adopted Battlefield Air Interdiction to support the Army’s AirLand Battle doctrine. A revised theory of peacetime military innovation through inter-service cooperation resulting from external and internal threats explains not only why innovation occurred with Battlefield Air Interdiction but also why such successful cases are so rare.     

Shots per casualty: an indicator of combat efficiency for the first Australian task force in South Vietnam

ABSTRACT

In combat, the ratio of shots fired per casualty inflicted can provide a measure of the combat effectiveness of a force. The shots per casualty ratio achieved by the 1st Australian Task Force in Vietnam is shown to change according to factors including marksmanship, tactics and combat type. While, over the course of the campaign, 1ATF fired an increasing number of shots to achieve a casualty, this is explained by improvements in the quality of Viet Cong and People’s Army small arms. Australian Task Force and US Army shots per casualty ratios are briefly compared..     

Operational idealism: doctrine development of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army under Soviet threat, 1969–1989

This article analyses the doctrine development of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) coping with the Soviet military threat between 1969 and 1989. In the 1970s, the PLA applied a doctrine of ‘active defence and luring the enemy into depth’ based on its traditional operational art. In 1980, the PLA decided to focus its doctrine on positional defence. In 1986, the PLA introduced ‘integrated operations and prioritised strike’, a generalised doctrine that originated from its war history. Many organisational and intellectual challenges in peacetime doctrine development contributed to the PLA’s operational idealism, including its aging leadership, command structure, attitude towards its previous experience, limited analysis of contemporary military developments, and failure in test and validation of doctrines. In the post-Cold War decade, many of these challenges persisted in spite of military modernization efforts. The ongoing military reform has to address these challenges and improve the PLA doctrine development in peacetime.     

A case study in early joint warfare: An analysis of the Wehrmacht's Crimean campaign of 1942

Military theorists and commentators believe that joint operations prove more effective in most circumstances of modern warfare than operations involving only one service or involving two or more services but without systematic integration or unified command. Many see Nazi Germany's armed forces, the Wehrmacht, as early pioneers of ‘jointness’.

This essay demonstrates that the Wehrmacht did indeed understand the value of synchronising its land, sea and air forces and placing them under operational commanders who had at least a rudimentary understanding of the tactics, techniques, needs, capabilities and limitations of each of the services functioning in their combat zones. It also shows that the Wehrmacht's efforts in this direction produced the desired result of improved combat effectiveness.

Yet it argues that the Wehrmacht lacked elements considered by today's theorists to be essential to the attainment of truly productive jointness ‐ a single tri‐service commander, a proper joint staff and an absence of inter‐service rivalry ‐ and that, as a result, it often suffered needless difficulties in combat.     

China’s Search for a ‘Strategic Air Force’

Once dismissed by many outside observers, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) has undergone an impressive transformation over the past two decades, emerging as one of the world’s premier air forces. As it continues to modernize, it is focused on becoming a ‘strategic air force.’ PLAAF strategists suggest this means it should play a decisive role in protecting Chinese national interests, field modern capabilities commensurate with China’s standing as a major power, and enjoy the institutional status befitting its role as a ‘strategic service,’ an important consideration given the historical dominance of the ground force in China’s military.     

Acrimony,asymmetry, and the Sino-Indian nuclear relationship

ABSTRACT

While most contemporary analyses of South Asian nuclear dynamics acknowledge the presence of a strategic triangle between the region’s three nuclear players, the primary focus usually remains on the rivalry between India and Pakistan. Discussions of Sino-Indian relations remain limited. This is likely attributed to the stability in the two countries’ relations, yet it is worth asking why this stability exists and whether it is likely to continue in the future. Although China and India have an acrimonious relationship, their asymmetric nuclear capabilities and threat perceptions mitigate the danger of a traditional security dilemma. India may perceive China’s nuclear aggrandizement to be a security threat, but the same is not true of China, which has a vastly superior nuclear force and is largely shaping its nuclear-force structure in response to the threat it perceives from the United States. This dynamic makes a serious conventional or nuclear conflict highly unlikely.     

New Evidence on the Original Setup of the ‘Tilbury Group’, Formerly in the Tower of London

Abstract

An argument is presented that Valentine Green’s mezzotint engraving ‘Queen Elizabeth at the Head of her Army at Tilbury-Fort, A.D. 1588’ (1792) was inspired by the late 18th-century life-sized group of three figures representing the same subject that was formerly on show at the Tower of London. The mezzotint presented in Acta Historica Reginarum Angliae is the only known image of the original pre-1828 setup of the display, showing the figure of the queen in a skirt-like piece of armour that has since been re-identified as King Henry VIII’s tonlet armour.     

Accounting for army recruitment: White and non-white soldiers and the British Army

A statistically based enquiry into recruitment into the British Army over the period 1987-2000 shows that two factors tend to induce young men to enlist: high levels of unemployment in the civilian sector and positive signals from the authorities that the Army is in a recruiting phase. The same result obtains, broadly speaking, in the context of both white and non-white (ethnic minority) recruitment, although the willingness of ethnic minority young men to contemplate an Army career is only about a quarter of that of white men, other things being equal. Correspondingly, the Army shows no signs of reaching the target agreed with the Commission for Racial Equality in 1997 for a 1 percentage point increase annually in the percentage of recruits being drawn from the ethnic minorities. This article has something to say about how the Army might improve its performance in this regard by offering more in-service training and education to otherwise underqualified recruits and concentrating recruitment effort on regions of high ethnic minority unemployment.     

The day Stalin died: American plans for exploiting the Soviet succession crisis of 1953

One of the effects of Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms is the steady erosion of the ideological integrity of Marxism‐Leninism‐Maoism. To compensate for that erosion, the Chinese Communist Party has turned to patriotic nationalism for a new source of legitimacy. China's new nationalism transcends mere rhetoric but is manifested in the behavior of its armed forces ‐ which makes an understanding of the nationalist ideology of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) important. As revealed in PLA and related military publications, that ideology is a potentially problematic mix of wounded pride, historical resentment, and irredentism.     

Ho Chi Minh and the origins of the Vietnamese doctrine of guerrilla tactics

In a very important sense, the Vietnamese military history of the communist era began in 1941, when Ho Chi Minh prepared ‘Guerrilla Tactics’ (Cach Danh Du Kich).1 ?1. Ministry of Defense Center for the Military Encyclopedia Ministry of Defense Center for the Military Encyclopedia. 1996. Tu Dien Bach Hoa Quan Su Vietnam, Hanoi: People's Army Publishing Company.  [Google Scholar], Tu Dien Bach Hoa Quan Su Vietnam, 69. The publication of this essay, which was a manual on the tactics, techniques, and procedures of guerrilla warfare, preceded the founding of the first armed propaganda unit (Tuyen Truyen Doi Vo Trang) on 22 December 1944, which later became the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN, Quan Doi Nhan Dan); as well as the revolutionary writings of Truong Chinh (1946–1947) and Vo Nguyen Giap (1959). The fact that ‘Tactics’ was published by the Viet Minh reinforces the claim made by the PAVN that it was the first authoritative Vietnamese writing on this important subject.     

From Civil War Victor to Cold War Guard: Positional Warfare in Korea and the Transformation of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, 1951–1953

This article analyses the impact of the Korean War on the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), particularly the period of positional warfare from 1951 to 1953. In the war of movement between October 1950 and June 1951, the PLA relied on its civil war era weapons and experience, including the doctrine of ‘battle of annihilation’. Operations in early 1951 suggested that the civil war legacies of the PLA no longer applied to the realities of combat in Korea. Based on both Soviet aid and domestic mobilisation, the PLA managed to build the material foundation for positional warfare and rapidly improved its logistics. Operationally, on the defensive, the PLA developed combined operations integrating infantry, artillery, and armoured forces. The PLA learned the lessons of the Korean War and strengthened its ties with the Soviet armed forces in order to modernise itself. The Korean War thus transformed the PLA from Civil War victor to Cold War guard.     

做好新版《军语》推广工作的思考

由于推广工作做得不够，《军语》应用情况还不乐观，许多官兵没见过、没用过《军语》，也制约着《军语》服务国防和军队建设作用的发挥。今年，新版《军语》将颁布实施。在新版《军语》推广上应注意提高思想认识、健全推广机构、完善推广规划、改进推广方式。     

Auxiliary Force or National Army? Afghanistan's ‘ANA’ and the Counter-Insurgency Effort, 2002–2006

Afghanistan's fifth effort to form a central army started in 2002, following the fall of the Taleban regime. Mainly run by the US armed forces, the formation of the so-called ‘Afghan National Army’ run into several difficulties, ranging from initially slow recruitment, low educational level of troops and officers, high attrition rates. As the new army began to take shape, it lacked many of the characteristics which had been associated by the promoters with a ‘national’ army. It also showed a low level of commitment and a lax discipline. As of 2006, it looked more like an auxiliary force at the service of the US army and its allies than like a ‘national’ army.     

Being there: US Navy organisational culture and the forward presence debate

ABSTRACT

This article argues that the US Navy’s roles (which have historically been bifurcated between warfighting and political use of force) manifest in its organisational culture as two different concepts of war: the US Navy as diplomatic actor and the US Navy as warfighting force. The conflict between these different concepts of war can be seen in the current debate about the definition and function of presence. The debate about presence is not just theoretical, but represents a deep and enduring conflict within the Navy as an organisation about its concept of war. Since the end of WWII, the Navy has been designing its fleet architecture according to a Mahanian concept of war, despite the preponderance of non-lethal missions and activities. The result is a mismatch between platforms and tasks.     

Ruminations of a pachyderm or what I learned in the counter‐insurgency business

The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has created a pervasive climate of fear in northern Uganda. This study addresses the purpose of this conduct. Diverging from the traditional ‘greed-grievance’ approach to the study of new wars, the LRA's behaviour is analyzed from a strategic perspective. Specifically, the article focuses on the LRA's use of mutilation, abduction, surprise, and unpredictable attacks. The conclusion is that the LRA is strategically using fear as a force multiplier, to further its organizational survival, and as a way to fight a political ‘dirty war’.