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.     

The impact of Islamic State’s ideological correction initiative on al Qaeda’s bid for relevance

ABSTRACT

Al Qaeda following 9-11 experienced a period of stagnation which it sought to remedy through a project of re-branding. Critical of this approach, Islamic State claimed that al Qaeda was an elitist organization that had facilitated the stagnation of the Salafi Jihadist project. In an attempted to claim dominance over the jihad, Islamic State’s endeavored to discredit al Qaeda through a process it presented as ideological correction, linked to Islamic eschatology, sectarian agitation, permissive violence, and the caliphate. Following Islamic State’s acquisition of vast territory in Iraq and Syria, arguments proliferated that Islamic State had surpassed al Qaeda. As the caliphate has collapsed what effects will this have on al Qaeda’s fortunes and strategy? It is argued that Islamic State has provided al Qaeda’s strategic approach with renewed vigour to help ensure its survival and pursue resurgence. Al Qaeda acting in concert with the meta-strategy for survival concept, has altered an existential threat into an advantage through disavowing Islamic State’s methods, continuing to engage with localism, and pursuing rebranding by positioning itself as a moderate alternative. The cases of al Qaeda affiliates in Yemen, Syria, West Africa, and South Asia are instructive in assessing the effectiveness of al Qaeda’s resurgence.     

Armour in Henry V’s Great Wardrobe

Abstract

The unpublished accounts of two of King Henry V’s armourers, Martin Pull and John Hill, shed new light on the armour worn by the king and his circle during his campaigns to France which culminated in the great victory at the battle of Agincourt in 1415.     

Smart Power and Japan’s Self-Defense Forces

Abstract

From Iraq to the Gulf of Aden and the South Pacific, this paper evaluates how far theoretical ideas about smart power manifest in operational missions of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF). To function within a ‘smart’ power context, this paper suggests that JSDF operates in ‘assisting’ mode, rather than the ‘threatening’ behavior of ‘hard’ power. JSDF also deployed alongside other Japanese ‘soft’ power tools – diplomatic, cultural, developmental, and NGOs, using tailored programs for different cultural and geographical contexts. Given constitutional constraints and public sensitivity towards coercive force, JSDF missions could be integrated more into a ‘whole-of-government’ approach advancing foreign policy goals through ‘smart power’.     

Hawthorne’s Thoughts in The Scarlet Letter

霍桑的《红字》作为美国浪漫主义时期的一篇巨著 ,有很深的思想性。在作品中可以发现霍桑的思想深受清教主义、超验主义和神秘主义的影响。正因如此 ,他的作品独具魅力 ,充满了神秘、抑郁的色彩 ,引人入胜 ,回味无穷     

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.     

Is the Horn of Africa’s ‘Cold War’ over? Abiy Ahmed’s early reforms and the rapprochement between Ethiopia and Eritrea

ABSTRACT

On 9 July 2018, Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a historical agreement pledging to end their mutual animosity and work for peace. The unprecedented rapprochement was facilitated by the new leadership in Ethiopia, merging interests between the two states and external mediation. This commentary looks into Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali’s early reform initiatives and the dynamics of the rapprochement between Ethiopia and Eritrea.     

The Millenials’ war: dilemmas of network dependency in today’s military

This work is about how the United States military has become dependent on networked technology. As arguably the largest contributor to national security, it has become so dependent that its chief doctrine integrates networked technology into nearly every specialty, with particularly intense focus on Network Centric Warfare. As the military’s old guard is replaced by the highly technical Millenial Generation, there is cause to pause when assuming this techno-acuity brings nothing but advantage and success. Vulnerabilities stemming from such extensive dependence offer opportunities for exploitation that have not gone unnoticed. The first step to moving forward from this point is to fully understand the extent to which the military has become dependent on computer networks. It might be the Millenials’ war today, but it would be quite unwise for the United States military to think about it and fight it in a purely Millenial way.     

China’s ‘Three Warfares’: Origins,Applications, and Organizations

Entering the twenty-first century, China has demonstrated an assertive foreign policy, not only in employing various types of economic and military leverage but also in conducting the Three Warfares (三战) – psychological warfare, public opinion warfare, and legal warfare. This article attempts to identify the motives and methods of China’s Three Warfares by analyzing its history, logic, and agents. Based on this analysis, the author also presents the position of the Three Warfares in China’s foreign policy and the warfares’ impact on the international security environment involving other major powers and China’s neighbors.     

‘Kadyrovtsy’: Russia’s Counterinsurgency Strategy and the Wars of Paramilitary Clans

This article analyses the steps taken by the Russian government, with the aid of a powerful local clan, the so-called Kadyrovtsy, to subdue the Chechen insurgency. It highlights the strategy used by Russia, under whose patronage former anti-Russian guerrilla fighters were transformed into paramilitary allies of the Russian government; later these former insurgents were incorporated into the regular Russian army and other state security forces. The article also identifies problems that are connected with the activities of the Kadyrovtsy in Chechnya and Russia, and the spillover into the diaspora; it also contextualises the issues faced by the contemporary Chechen ruling clan and the geopolitics of the Caucasus within the research framework of paramilitarism and counterinsurgency.     

A Quarter Century of ‘Transitory Power-Sharing’. Lebanon’s Unfulfilled Ta’if Agreement of 1989 Revisited

Most countries of the Arab Mashrek are multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian. In recent years, most of them have experienced violent clashes between groups that frame their conflicts along ethnic-sectarian lines. This article investigates the Lebanese Ta’if Agreement of 1989 as a crucial case study of how to manage such conflicts through a transitory power-sharing arrangement. It presents several provisions of this agreement that adhere to three different approaches of how to deal with such conflicts: the consociational and the centripetal models of power-sharing as well as the integrationist paradigm. It thereby seeks to develop a theoretical argument about chances and risks of transitory power-sharing in deeply divided societies and derives some general lessons for managing conflicts in the Middle East.     

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.     

Britain’s ‘Independent’ V-Bomber Force and US Nuclear Weapons, 1957–1962

This article examines a secret Anglo-American programme, Project ‘E’, which equipped the RAF’s V-bomber Force with US nuclear weapons for use in wartime. It shows Project ‘E’ was ineffective as a warhead supply programme and, furthermore, that it crippled the operational effectiveness of the V-bomber Force as a whole between 1958 and 1962. This article argues that as a result of Project ‘E’, the V-Force was neither operationally nor politically independent as a nuclear deterrent force. This challenges the traditional view of the V-Force as the benchmark of nuclear independence to assess the Skybolt, Polaris and Trident programmes.     

A Criterion for Settling Inconsistencies in Clausewitz’s On War

On War’s unfinished state has been a source of difficulties for interpretation for 180 years. By establishing a hierarchy of revision among the parts, we propose a criterion that can bring any part of On War in line with the most advanced stage of Clausewitz’s thinking. We exemplify the utility, illustrate the underpinnings and appreciate the potential of this criterion. We argue that the criterion offers the prospect of a shared, coherent, fully consistent and faithful rendering of Clausewitz’s theory of war.     

War’s Horizon: Soldier-Led Adaptation in Iraq and Vietnam

Wartime adaptation is a process of adjustment from the war you planned for to the one you have. This process of adjustment is done, in part, by the practitioners of war in the theater of conflict–soldier-led adaptation. Drawing upon two case studies of gun truck development in Iraq and Vietnam I argue that soldiers created networks in order to adapt to battlefield challenges and that the pattern of those networks carries implications for the likelihood of formal adoption by the organization. Simply put, the pattern of the flow of ideas, resources, and skills across the battlefield may affect the likelihood of bottom-up adaptation.