Classical geopolitics,realism and the balance of power theory

Since the end of World War II, classical geopolitics as a particular form of realism has been disengaged from the development of mainstream realist theories. This disengagement has not only concealed the value of classical geopolitics as a framework of analysis for policy and strategy, but also created an increasing rift between theory and policy in contemporary realist theories. This paper seeks to reengage classical geopolitics with mainstream realist theories by clarifying its realist traits and analytical characteristics, (re)stating its core propositions and probing into its potential contribution to the development of mainstream realist theories. This paper contends that classical geopolitics, while having a distinctive pedigree, can arguably be considered an integral part of the family of realist theories in view of its basic theoretical assumptions concerning international anarchy, the unit of analysis and power politics. As a framework of analysis, classical geopolitics incorporates three interrelated strategic propositions. Those three propositions not only constitute the theoretical core of classical geopolitics, but also manifest a peculiar balance-of-power conception that is essentially distinct from those proposed by mainstream realist theories. This paper argues that those three propositions combined promise to fill in prominent lacuna in the balance-of-power research programme, and also have significant implications for contemporary world politics.     

The Dilemmas of US Maritime Supremacy in the Early Cold War

After World War II, the US Navy confronted the challenge of adapting to dramatically altered geopolitical circumstances. Moscow did not have an ocean-going fleet, and early Cold War strategy was dominated by the salient position of nuclear strategic bombing – a mission thought to be outside the purview of the navy. Traditional roles, such as protecting sea lines of communication and supporting ground forces ashore, quickly proved indispensable. However, the navy eventually also succeeded in fielding dramatic technological and institutional innovations, for example, the strategic missile submarine, which enabled the US to successfully leverage maritime power against the continental power of the USSR.     

Is strategic studies narrow? Critical security and the misunderstood scope of strategy

Critical security advocates commonly portray strategic studies as crippled by its narrow focus on Cold War-era military issues, as state-centric and as Western-centric. I argue that this conception of the scope of strategy is flawed and I offer a comprehensive rebuttal by working out the logic of the theories advanced by Carl von Clausewitz and Thomas Schelling. The proponents of critical security overlook the striking expansion of strategy during the Cold War, its longstanding inclusion of competing political actors not just states, as well as its capacity to put Western and non-Western actors in a common analytic frame. By breaking out of the conceptual jails in which strategy has been incarcerated, I seek to reconnect International Relations to strategic thought from which it has become increasingly estranged.     

Strategic hedging in Indonesia’s defense diplomacy

With the rapid pace of regional arms modernization and unresolved territorial disputes, Indonesia is increasingly susceptible to the impact of emerging great power rivalry in Asia-Pacific. Rather than pursuing a robust military build-up, Indonesian policy-makers assert that diplomacy is the country’s first line of defense. This article argues that defense diplomacy serves two agenda of Indonesia’s hedging strategy – strategic engagement and military modernization. This way, Indonesian defense and security officials seek to moderate the impact of geopolitical changes while maintaining the country’s defensive ability against regional uncertainties.     

Why did Sudan Lose a small war in Southern Sudan?

ABSTRACT

When on the wrong end of an asymmetry in the projection of hard power, weaker sides countenance the grim arithmetic of avoiding direct and massed confrontations. Invariably, insurgents have over the ages tended to employ indirect tactical methods to render their stronger opponents ineffective. Ultimately – interest asymmetry, regime type, asymmetries of strategy, and external intervention – combine in a complex interplay and pattern, to militate against a strong side. In Sudan, these factors interacted throughout the civil wars to produce regional autonomy and finally an independent South Sudan in 2011. Similar strategic logic had confronted many large African states battling insurgencies in Ethiopia, Angola, Nigeria, Zaire, and apartheid-era South Africa. Oftentimes, weakening public resolve has caused these governments to accommodate, capitulate or withdraw even if they try not to blink. Notwithstanding the regime type, it can be concluded that the majority of strong actors are prone to fail in a protracted, asymmetric conflict. Hence, the notion of linking victory in counterinsurgency to the degree of openness (democratic polyarchies); or closeness (totalitarianism) – is still valid but highly contestable in the case of Africa’s large dysfunctional states.     

Expansion of Chinese maritime power in the Indian Ocean: implications for India

This paper examines the ongoing expansion of China’s maritime power in the Indian Ocean region and analyses its potential impact on the extant balance of Sino-Indian maritime power in the region. It posits that the expanding Chinese maritime power in the Indian Ocean could seriously challenge India’s geostrategic advantage in the near future and that India can no longer take for granted its strategic location at the centre of the Indian Ocean nor the strength of its historical ties with the various regional states. It further argues that the current Indian maritime strategy for the Indian Ocean region, to be the “net security provider” for the entire region, is unsustainable and thus needs to be reviewed and rebuilt leveraging the geographic advantage enjoyed by India over China in the Indian Ocean.     

‘Blackmailing the army’ – ‘Strategic Military Refusal’ as policy and doctrine enforcement: the formation of a new security agent

The study shows how ‘strategic military refusal’ in Israel developed as a rational and institutional means to influence security policies. As opposed to the perspective that sees military refusal as a spontaneous individual act, the study illustrates how organizations operate to distribute military refusal in order to pressure decision-makers to change their military policies. This strategy has proven to be effective when the military is involved with groups that threaten it with refusal – which threatens the military's operational ability and its official and apolitical image. These include soldiers whose civilian authorities, rather than their military commanders, are perceived as an epistemic authority regarding security issues. The case study refers to the impact of strategic military refusal in Israel on security policies and the military doctrine. This was influenced by leftist groups, which, although they belonged to the parliamentary opposition, had dominant presence in the military ranks. Furthermore, the study examines the effect of the use of strategic military refusal on the model of military recruitment.     

Deterring ‘Able Archer’: Comments Arising from Adamsky’s ‘Lessons for Deterrence Theory and Practice’

This is a short commentary on Dmitry Adamsky’s recent article ‘The 1983 Nuclear Crisis – Lessons for Deterrence Theory and Practice’. First, it teases out nuances in the relationship between deterrence and strategy and considers deterrence to be both a strategy and an effect. Second, it explores the culminating point of deterrence in theory and considers it untenable, as it does not conform to the logic of, or to any logic analogous to, Clausewitz’s culminating point of victory. Deterrence logically cannot culminate. Moreover, any culminating point of deterrence would ignore why the potential deteree should perceive the actions of his deterrer in such a way as to render strengthened strategies of deterrence counterproductive. It is the deteree who is the only strategic actor to determine whether the deterrer is actually practising a successful strategy of deterrence or not.     

非对称相互依赖下的美日军事同盟机制分析——以奥巴马政府“重返亚太”为视角

2012年1月5日,美国国防部发表了《保持美国的全球领导地位:21世纪的防务重点计划报告》,在"重返亚太"战略的战略背景下,重点针对美国未来的军事力量结构、全球部署态势、军事战略目标等进行了重新规划。新军事战略调整对整个国际格局和地区性大国产生深远影响。随着美国重返亚太的战略调整,军事上的相互依赖程度体现在美日同盟之间尤为突出。本文仅从军事战略角度,运用《权力与相互依赖》中部分理论对其调整下的美日军事同盟机制进行分析。     

Building Stability Overseas: Three case studies in British defence diplomacy – Uganda,Rhodesia–Zimbabwe,and Sierra Leone

In 2011, the Department for International Development, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, and the Ministry of Defence launched the Building Stability Overseas Strategy (BSOS). This document sought to integrate cross-government activity as it related to conflict and security so as to ‘take fast, appropriate and effective action to prevent a crisis or stop it escalating and spreading’. At the heart of the strategy was the recognition that addressing instability and conflict overseas was morally right and in the UK's national interests. This confluence of foreign policy realism and ethical outlook most clearly found harmony in the acknowledgement that it was cheaper for the international community to avoid conflict than it was to try to manage it. Through an examination of three historical case studies (Uganda 1964–1972, Rhodesia–Zimbabwe 1979–1981, and Sierra Leone 2000–2007), this article seeks to demonstrate just how difficult this seemingly sensible strategic outlook is. In particular, the article shows there are historical parallels in British postcolonial history that very closely resemble contemporary policy choices; that these can be used to define what is different about past and present practice; and, which in turn, can be used to – at least tentatively – mark out the potential strengths and weaknesses in BSOS.     

Counterinsurgency as armed reform: The political history of the Malayan Emergency

Despite the emphasis in doctrine and academia that counterinsurgency is in its essence political, these operations are all too commonly discussed and approached as primarily military endeavors. Informed by the need to refocus counterinsurgency studies, this article revisits a foundational case of the canon – the Malayan Emergency – to discuss its political (i.e., not military) unfolding. The analysis distinguishes itself by emphasizing the diplomatic processes, negotiations, and deals that gave strategic meaning to the military operations underway. In so doing, the article also generates insight on the use of leverage and elite bargains in creating new political settlements and bringing insurgent conflicts to an end.     

Rethinking strategic culture: A computational (social science) discursive-institutionalist approach

ABSTRACT

The strategic culture approach has been suffering from a prolonged theoretical stalemate, despite a surge in case studies, which culminated in the Johnston-Gray debate and subsequent schism. The present paper outlines a new approach designed to overcome this deadlock, and consists of three arguments. First, the three previous generations of strategic culture studies have failed to explain how strategic culture influences behaviour. Second, aligning strategic culture theory-building with discursive institutionalism offers a way to overcome this fundamental fallacy. Third, a research programme for strategic culture should draw on computational social science to enable it to present and test middle-range theories.     

Strategy selection: an info-gap methodology

The evaluation and selection of military strategy requires consideration of myriad factors – social, historical, political, geographical and technological – together with vast uncertainties encompassing all these domains. Info-gap decision theory is a conceptual framework that can support these deliberations and that has substantive implications for the formulation, evaluation and selection of strategic goals and of the means to attain them. In particular, while the analyst may desire to reliably achieve the best possible outcome, info-gap theory provides a critique of, and alternative to, the paradigm of optimizing the outcome of a decision. In selecting between strategy alternatives, the analyst must sometimes choose between one alternative that is purportedly better than another, but also more uncertain. Such a choice is a dilemma whose resolution requires the analyst to balance between the different predicted qualities of each alternative and their different vulnerabilities to uncertainty. The dilemma can be managed with the info-gap methodology of robustly satisfying critical requirements.     

The art of net assessment and uncovering foreign military innovations: Learning from Andrew W. Marshall’s legacy

ABSTRACT

Andrew W. Marshall, who shaped the way in which contemporary international security experts think about strategy, has been mostly associated with the invention of net assessment. The intellectual sources of this analytical technique, and of the related competitive strategies concept, could be traced to Marshall’s efforts to uncover Soviet post-World War II defense transformations. This article outlines the essence of these Soviet innovations – the empirical frame of reference that inspired Marshall. It provides a new perspective on the history of the net-assessment methodology, advances the debate within strategic studies over the nature of military innovations, and offers insights for experts examining defense transformations worldwide.     

Boko Haram’s increasingly sophisticated military threat

ABSTRACT

This paper evaluates Boko Haram’s military capabilities and details the process of how its standing army, driven by these capabilities, came to pose a phased threat between 2013 and 2015 in particular. This was a period when military fighting dominated the insurgency in north-east Nigeria. Whereas there is an abundance of literature on Boko Haram’s histories and the impact of its insurgency on north-east Nigeria, analysis of Boko Haram’s military campaigning is still deficient. Attempting to fill this gap, this paper uses field findings and battlefield case studies from north-east Nigeria to highlight how Boko Haram’s overt front – its standing army – came to supplant its guerrilla operations as the main security threat to the frontier area.

This pivot towards military fighting, for a group initially composed of a few ragtag combatants, on the surface might seem surprising. Yet, whereas Boko Haram may lack the popular support required for ‘people’s war’, classic insurgency theories nevertheless hold some explanatory power for this deliberate shift: away from guerrilla warfare as the expedient of the weaker side, and towards the use of a large standing army of locals to swarm, and sometimes successfully overrun, state forces.     

美军航天力量发展走势分析

美军一直奉行全球战略极度依赖天基信息支援。美军航天力量在夺取制天权,确保战时进入、利用太空自由,为海外军事行动提供信息支撑方面发挥决定性作用。美军认为航天领域颠覆性技术的应用将会迅速而深刻地颠覆传统战争规则,是应对新兴国家军事威胁,实施第三次"抵消战略"的核心技术。美军高度重视航天力量装备规划、体制编制、理论研究和人才培养的创新发展。研究近年来美军航天力量的建设发展重点,可以透过其一系列的航天力量发展规划,得出美军航天力量发展战略和走势,具有强的启示性。     

Counterinsurgency in Vietnam – schizophrenia until too late

ABSTRACT

Insurgencies remain political projects, and thus the American experience in Vietnam remains relevant in any search for approaches. A population-first strategy – with tactics compatible with protecting people and winning their willing support – is essential, as much for success in local pacification as in retaining support in the homeland which has deployed its personnel abroad to assist another state. In the actual area of operations, decentralization of effort is required to get as close as possible to the population base being targeted by the insurgents. This remains essential for all mobilization in support of a polity, regardless of the extent to which insurgent challenge is grounded in grievances or simply based on coercive power.     

大功率柔性互联设备的有功互济协调控制方法

针对以常规母联开关互联的交流电网线路变压器容量无法合理利用的问题,提出了依靠由背靠背电压源变流器组成的新型大功率柔性互联装置实现两侧交流电网有功功率互济的协调控制方法。介绍了新型柔性互联装置的拓扑结构与基本的控制原理,为实现两侧线路变压器容量合理的目标制定了一种生成有功功率参考的方法,并基于PSCAD/EMTDC搭建了一套仿真算例,对新型柔性互联装置的基本控制与所提出的有功互济的协调控制方法进行了验证。仿真结果表明,在柔性互联装置采用所提方法时能够实现两侧交流线路的有功功率互济,解决了线路变压器容量无法合理分配的问题。     

Enmeshed in insurgency: Britain's protracted retreats from Iraq and Afghanistan

Ten years of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan have produced little in Britain's national interest. This article examines the political objectives set in these wars and the reasons why they have proved elusive. The core foreign policy aim was to sustain Britain's position as a great power by assuming responsibility for global order. Alliances with the United States and NATO would be the diplomatic tool for pursuing this aim. These alliances brought obligations, in the shape of agreed common threats. Rogue regimes with weapons of mass destruction and international terrorists harboured in failed states were deemed the primary threats to British security. Military means were therefore used in Iraq and Afghanistan to attack them. Whether Tony Blair's vision of global order ever made sense is debatable, and it attracted scepticism from the outset. The article argues experience in Iraq and Afghanistan showed that a strategy to eliminate terrorism (the WMD threat turned out never to have existed) by expeditionary counterinsurgency could only fail. Therefore the attention lavished on operational-level performance by most studies is misplaced, because no amount of warfighting excellence could make up for strategic incoherence. Finally, the article proposes the more important question arising from the last ten years is why the UK pursued a futile strategy for so long. The difficulties associated with interpreting events, a malfunctioning strategic apparatus, weak political oversight, and bureaucratic self-interest are posited as the most significant explanations.     

Colombia: Changing strategy amidst the struggle

From 1965 to the present, Colombia has been confronted by the insurgency of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The threat reached a new level in 1996 with the advent of mobile warfare, whereby large units sought to neutralize the military in an effort to seize power and institute a Marxist-Leninist regime. Unlike Vietnam, what followed was a regaining of the strategic initiative by the government and a decimation of the insurgent threat. This was accomplished with US assistance but from first to last was driven by Colombian leadership and strategy. The strategy which led to this signal change, ‘Democratic Security’, unfolded under the leadership of President Álvaro Uribe. It was a civil–military partnership, which sought to expand the writ of Colombian democracy to all elements of society. Securing the population provided the shield behind which economic, social, and political life could occur as driven by the will of the people. It was the agreement upon legitimacy as the strategic goal and reform as the route to that goal which allowed the Colombians and the Americans to work so well together.