‘Winston has gone mad’: Churchill,the British Admiralty,and the Rise of Japanese Naval Power

As Chancellor of the Exchequer during the late 1920s, Winston Churchill was at the center of British strategic decision making about how to respond to the naval challenge posed by Japan's rise as a rival sea power. Churchill downplayed the likelihood of war with Japan. The leadership of the Royal Navy disagreed: they saw Japan as a dangerous threat to the security of the British Empire. Examining this dispute between Churchill and the Admiralty highlights the awkward political, economic, and strategic tradeoffs confronting British leaders between the world wars.     

Carlo Bianco and Guerra per bande: an Italian approach to irregular warfare

Since the end of the Cold War, a huge debate over how war has been changing has emerged; a common feature is that modern conflicts are not state vs. state wars, but ‘irregular wars’. In order to better understand modern irregular warfare, it is important to analyse past authors and ideas. Carlo Bianco’s concept of Guerra per bande highlights elements of mobility with different cooperating units, of terror, and of complex terrain. The present study offers the first English analysis of Carlo Bianco and underlines the similarities of his work to the hybrid warfare concept.     

Lost through non-translation: bringing Clausewitz's writings on ‘new wars’ back in

While Carl von Clausewitz has generally been respected as one of the most profound philosophers of war, his expertise has been regarded as somewhat limited if not even irrelevant to the so-called ‘new wars’ of the post-Cold War world. Many scholars in international relations have claimed that ‘new wars’ are essentially ‘post-Clausewitzian’ and ‘post-trinitarian’ in nature, meaning that they are no longer fathomable through a Clausewitzian framework. However Clausewitz's earlier writings were nearly exclusively dedicated to guerrilla warfare, or what he called ‘small wars’. These writings have been largely overlooked by many analysts of contemporary conflicts. By drawing on his rare and untranslated writings, the article uncovers a critical part of Clausewitz's expertise in asymmetric warfare and shows that, far from being irrelevant in an age where interstate warfare is increasingly being replaced by conflicts between states and semi-/non-state actors, Clausewitz's philosophical writings actually shed new light into the particular interactive dynamics generated during wars waged under conditions of asymmetry.     

Basra's not Belfast: the British Army, ‘Small Wars’ and Iraq

This article examines British Army operations in Iraq. It focuses on the causes of the army's apparent failure to live up to its reputation for the conduct of small wars. The paper discusses the British experience of small wars in the context of Iraq, the influence of doctrine and strategy, and the political and moral factors that shaped the army's performance. The paper's conclusions suggest that the Iraq War may cause a significant reappraisal, not just of military doctrine and strategy, but also of Britain's role in future small wars.     

‘Outside their expertise’: The implications of Field Manual 3-24 for the professional military education of non-commissioned officers

Within the framework of classical theory, the joint US Army-Marine field manual Counterinsurgency (FM 3-24) described an ambitious set of skills required for success against guerrillas. But if counterinsurgency, as FM 3-24 describes it, is ‘the graduate level of warfare’, then these two military services have been for years systematically failing to train their talent in the appropriate fields. In today's small wars, NCOs serve as modern-day Mounties, and consequently require at least a modest undergraduate education in armed good governance.     

The Environment as a Factor in Small Wars*

This research paper analyzes the relationship between small wars, insurgency, and the natural environment. Existing literature and data are organized into four behavioral patterns: the resource-based wars accounts for the fight over natural resources; the warfare ecology paradigm refers to non-premeditated damage in preparation for as well as during and after conflicts; the environment as a target discusses intended attacks on the ecosystem; and the insurgency–climate intersection pattern denotes a deviation in climate change that increases the frequency of intergroup violence. The main premise is that small wars emerge when the ecosystem becomes a political asset.     

Sir Robert Thompson,Strategic Patience and Nixon’s War in Vietnam

Counter-insurgency scholars have long been familiar with Sir Robert Thompson’s classic work Defeating Communist Insurgency, which combined analysis of the insurgencies in Malaya and Vietnam with advice for counter-insurgents that emphasised the drawn-out nature of insurgency and the importance of focusing on population security. While historians have called attention to his role with the British Advisory Mission in South Vietnam and his later criticism of the US counter-insurgency campaign in Vietnam in his various books, less has been written about his subsequent role as a pacification advisor to the Nixon administration. This article explores Thompson’s relationship with Kissinger and Nixon and his views on the war in Vietnam from 1969 to 1974. An examination of Thompson’s thinking on Vietnam in the Nixon years reveals a theorist whose optimism on US prospects there was based on assumptions about elite and public patience for lengthy wars that were ultimately misplaced.     

Optimum sequential search with discrete locations and random acceptance errors

Much work has been done in search theory; however, very little effort has occurred where an object's presence at a location can be accepted when no object is present there. The case analyzed is of this type. The number of locations is finite, a single object is stationary at one location, and only one location is observed each step of the search. The object's location has a known prior probability distribution. Also known are the conditional probability of acceptance given the object's absence (small) and the conditional probability of rejection given the object's presence (not too large); these Probabilities remain fixed for all searching and locations. The class of sequential search policies which terminate the search at the first acceptance is assumed. A single two-part optimization criterion is considered. The search sequence is found which (i) minimizes the probability of obtaining n rejections in the first n steps for all n, and (ii) maximizes the probability that the first acceptance occurs within the first n steps and occurs at the object's location for all n. The optimum sequential search policy specifies that the next location observed is one with the largest posterior probability of the object's presence (evaluated after each step from Bayes Rule) and that the object is at the first location where acceptance occurs. Placement at the first acceptance seems appropriate when the conditional probability of acceptance given the object's absence is sufficiently small. Search always terminates (with probability one). Optimum truncated sequential policies are also considered. Methods are given for evaluating some pertinent properties and for investigating the possibility that no object occurs at any location.     

The German wars of liberation 1807–1815: The restrained insurgency

In the Age of Napoleon, ‘small wars’ and ‘revolutionary war’ were closely connected. There were, however, different strands of this phenomenon: speaking professionally, conservative officers condemned small wars as an irregular regression to previous less disciplined forms of warfare. The Prussian state continually tried to discipline and regulate spontaneous risings. Yet the irregular character of small wars offered the opportunities for a less complex way of fighting, thus enabling the arming of the ‘people’ to fight. Individual undertakings, such as Ferdinand von Schill's doomed campaign in 1809, were designed to spark off a general popular uprising. But they were cheered by many and supported by few. Meanwhile, Neidhardt von Gneisenau conceived guerrilla-style Landsturm home-defence forces, which were designed for an irregular people's war. These concepts were put into practice in the ‘war of freedom’ – or ‘war of liberation’ – in 1813. Eventually both the mobilisation and the tactics remained regular, however, despite the emphatic appeal to a national ‘people's war’.     

Stopping Nuclear Traffic

The exploits of the A.Q. Khan nuclear network have received significant attention in the last three years. Gordon Corera's recent book, Shopping for Bombs, is an important addition to the existing literature. In this book, the author explores how Khan became a nuclear supplier and why his network was able to flourish for so many years. In his analysis, Corera examines relevant domestic and international political circumstances that affected Khan's rise and ultimate fall. The author also gives a compelling account of the international investigation that shut down this network in 2004 and warns that Khan's network will not be the last to challenge international nonproliferation regimes. Despite a few gaps in the book's narrative and analysis, Shopping for Bombs is an important source of insight into the activities of Khan and his network.     

The British government and the end of French Algeria, 1958–62

Unlike France, Britain viewed the Algerian conflict from 1958 to 1962 primarily as a colonial war. The British government regarded Algérie française as an anachronism, which France would have to relinquish one day. Though Britain was no stranger to ‘dirty’ colonial wars, as simultaneous operations against EOKA nationalists in Cyprus continued to prove, it was not averse to displaying a certain smugness at having averted the kind of mess Algeria seemed to represent. Britain's interest in the latter stages of the Algerian conflict centred on four major areas: Perceptions of colonial warfare; de Gaulle's Algeria policy; Algeria and Britain's view of France in Europe and NATO; Negotiating the ceasefire and ending the conflict.     

Modern liberal wars,illiberal allies,and peace as the failure of policy

ABSTRACT

The post-Cold War period nearly up to the present has been characterised as the age of liberal wars, yet key facets of the liberal guidance of war remain under appreciated. This article seeks to address this wider gap with regard to the particular concern of war termination and the fulfilment or failure of policy. First, it develops characterisations of liberal wars based on the existing literature, identifying three broad types through consideration of context—defensive versus offensive—and of political and strategic agency, particularly regarding the motives for and intents of action. Three types of liberal wars result: defensive liberal wars, offensive liberal wars with humanitarian motive and geopolitical intent, and offensive liberal wars with geopolitical motive and humanitarian intent. The article then presents one exemplary case for each liberal war with an emphasis on how liberal strategy required an illiberal ally and that ally's effect on the subsequent peace.     

The Indo–French strategic dialogue: bilateralism and world perceptions

Shared willingness to develop a stronger relationship, articulated by President Chirac during his visit to India in 1998, was not weakened by India's ensuing nuclear tests. Looking for enhanced power and global recognition, India and France share a common approach to realpolitik, and India's foreign policy is still searching for fresh opportunities to maximize influence in a new global order.     

A duel complicated by false targets and uncertainty as to opponent type

An attacker, being one of two types, initiates an attack at some time in the interval [-T, 0]. The a priori probabilities of each type are known. As time elapses the defender encounters false targets which occur according to a known Poisson process and which can be properly classified with known probability. The detection and classification probabilities for each type attacker are given. If the defender responds with a weapon at the time of attack, he survives with a probability which depends on the number of weapons in his possession and on attacker type. If he does not respond, his survival probability is smaller. These probabilities are known, as well as the current number of weapons in the defender's possession. They decrease as the number of weapons decreases. The payoff is the defender's survival probability. An iterative system of first-order differential equations is derived whose unique solution V₁(t),V₂(t),…,V_k(t) is shown to be the value of the game at time t, when the defender has 1, 2,…, k,… weapons, respectively. The optimal strategies are determined. Limiting results are obtained as t→-∞, while the ratio of the number of weapons to the expected number of false targets remaining is held constant.     

Myth and the small war tradition: Reassessing the discourse of British counter-insurgency

In recent years a number of commentators have posited that the British reputation for conducting small wars has suffered in the wake of setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. The argument here contests whether such a tradition can be truly said to have ever existed. A close examination of this supposed tradition reveals it to be a myth. In fact, rarely have the British armed forces claimed a facility for counter-insurgency or small war. Invariably, commentators outside the Army have ascribed the tradition to them. Most notably, commentators in the United States keen to discern practices of minimum force or rapid institutional learning generated the narrative of British COIN expertise. Ultimately, what this myth reveals is that, when deconstructed, it is political will, not an ingrained understanding of fighting insurgencies, that has determined Britain's success, or otherwise, in so-called small wars.     

Killing with Culture: Anthropology’s Ethical Dilemma with War

ABSTRACT

This article highlights the difficulty of creating a code of ethics in anthropology, particularly one that appropriately addresses the nuanced nature of the military and the anthropologists who conduct research and disseminate information in the context of war. The article consults one of the most important books on this topic, George R. Lucas' Anthropologists in Arms (2009), along with several other relevant texts, and examines the ethical complexities and dilemmas American and European anthropologists faced during their involvement in both World Wars, as well as those faced during Vietnam and the more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The article also examines the military's recruitment of cultural experts, the methods used to culturally engage combatants, and the criticisms against social scientists who choose to work as so-called military anthropologists. The anthropologists in this article risked academic exile conducting what some consider an adulteration of academic principles. The article contributes to the discourse regarding unconventional warfare and the methods used by the armed forces to better understand the cultural nuances of people, and to highlight the need for the development of a better anthropological code of ethics that accounts for the challenges of war.     

Suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) as an information duel

Blue strike aircraft enter region ? to attack Red targets. In Case 1, Blue conducts (preplanned) SEAD to establish air superiority. In the (reactive) SEAD scenario, which is Case 2, such superiority is already in place, but is jeopardized by prohibitive interference from Red, which threatens Blue's ability to conduct missions. We utilize both deterministic and stochastic models to explore optimal tactics for Red in such engagements. Policies are developed which will guide both Red's determination of the modes of operation of his engagement radar, and his choice of Blue opponent to target next. An index in the form of a simple transaction kill ratio plays a major role throughout. Published 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 49: 723–742, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/nav.10046     

Khaki Foxes: The East Afrika Korps

Small wars demand resolute and outstanding leadership properly directed by intelligence, resourcefulness, and ingenuity. The operation of the German General Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck in East Africa during the First World War illustrate how ascendancy is possible even when campaigns are fought over greater distance and against numerically stronger opponents. Lettow-Vorbeck utilised movement, speed and terrain to get the better of the enemy. Despite inferiority in numbers, Lettow-Vorbeck's forces often dominated combat situations. Masters of patrolling, the German forces deployed raiding detachments that worked around the enemy's rear, disrupting logistics and communications. From the onset of the conflict, Lettow-Vorbeck had a clear perception of what was required of his army: to economize the forces to last out a long conflict and to commit to guerilla warfare.     

Contractual agreements for coordination and vendor‐managed delivery under explicit transportation considerations

We consider the coordination problem between a vendor and a buyer operating under generalized replenishment costs that include fixed costs as well as stepwise freight costs. We study the stochastic demand, single‐period setting where the buyer must decide on the order quantity to satisfy random demand for a single item with a short product life cycle. The full order for the cycle is placed before the cycle begins and no additional orders are accepted by the vendor. Due to the nonrecurring nature of the problem, the vendor's replenishment quantity is determined by the buyer's order quantity. Consequently, by using an appropriate pricing schedule to influence the buyer's ordering behavior, there is an opportunity for the vendor to achieve substantial savings from transportation expenses, which are represented in the generalized replenishment cost function. For the problem of interest, we prove that the vendor's expected profit is not increasing in buyer's order quantity. Therefore, unlike the earlier work in the area, it is not necessarily profitable for the vendor to encourage larger order quantities. Using this nontraditional result, we demonstrate that the concept of economies of scale may or may not work by identifying the cases where the vendor can increase his/her profits either by increasing or decreasing the buyer's order quantity. We prove useful properties of the expected profit functions in the centralized and decentralized models of the problem, and we utilize these properties to develop alternative incentive schemes for win–win solutions. Our analysis allows us to quantify the value of coordination and, hence, to identify additional opportunities for the vendor to improve his/her profits by potentially turning a nonprofitable transaction into a profitable one through the use of an appropriate tariff schedule or a vendor‐managed delivery contract. We demonstrate that financial gain associated with these opportunities is truly tangible under a vendor‐managed delivery arrangement that potentially improves the centralized solution. Although we take the viewpoint of supply chain coordination and our goal is to provide insights about the effect of transportation considerations on the channel coordination objective and contractual agreements, the paper also contributes to the literature by analyzing and developing efficient approaches for solving the centralized problem with stepwise freight costs in the single‐period setting. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2006     

The Challe Plan: Vain Yet Indispensable Victory

On April 23, 1960, General Maurice Challe left Algiers and his position as Commander in Chief there, having achieved a rapid military victory over the rebellion within Algeria. As an airman at the head of an essentially ground force engaged since 1954 in counter-insurgency warfare, he had within 16 months gained the military success everyone deemed indispensable. It proved a vain victory though over an enemy already made irrelevant by rapid developments on the national and international political stage. The enemy, Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), was a two-tiered organization. In accordance with revolutionary doctrine, the military branch, the Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN), supported the political arm, the Organisation Politico-Administrative (OPA), and in this case all operated both inside Algeria and in exile. The strength of the FLN over the course of the conflict had shifted externally to Algeria, particularly under Houari Boumedienne's leadership in Tunis. The major portion of the ALN its Tunisian sanctuary had gradually renounced the costly support of its internal units and chosen to wait in exile for further developments. The freshly formed Gouvernement Provisoire de la Republique Algerienne (GPRA), also in Tunis, had managed to obtain international recognition, and with this development the war within Algeria lost its decisive character. From an operational perspective though, the Challe Plan belongs to the list of military successes. Four years into a fight of limited tactical and strategic accomplishments, Challe, through his imagination and energy, was able to achieve victory within his short assignment with the resources at hand. Just how he accomplished this feat, as we shall see, is a fascinating example of a successful ‘small war’.