De Gaulle,the ‘Anglo-Saxons’, and the Algerian war

Rejecting the orthodoxy of French diplomatic historiography that de Gaulle was the founder of a new French independence and effected a revolution in French diplomacy after freeing himself from the Algerian yoke in 1962, this essay argues that de Gaulle sought from 1958 to make Algeria a central plank of his diplomatic strategy. That strategy sought to transform the relationship with Algeria in order forit to become the key to a neo-colonial French community, the basis for French leadership in Europe and the foundation of a new relationship of equality with Britain and the United States. However, largely as a result of de Gaulle's own making this policy failed to materialise.     

Africa's toy soldiers,non-state armed groups,and ‘voluntary’ recruitment

Armed conflict on the African continent has witnessed increasing recruitment of child soldiers, often at the hands of non-state armed groups. Unfortunately this practice continues unabated in the face of legal obligations prohibiting the recruitment of child soldiers under international humanitarian law, and international and regional human rights law. While international condemnation of the practice has led to attempts to increase the minimum age for recruitment to 18, a disjuncture persists between the legal obligations states sign up to, and the actual enforcement of these prohibitions at a domestic level.

International criminal law jurisprudence emanating from the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the International Criminal Court is being monitored closely, as these courts seek to enforce the prohibition in all armed conflicts, and against both state actors and non-state armed groups. International humanitarian law only protects child soldiers who have been unlawfully recruited. In this piece, the authors take a closer look at what amounts to unlawful recruitment in light of customary international humanitarian law, since this body of law also binds non-state actors, even without further criminalising legislation at a domestic level. Moreover, the article briefly explores whether a child can ever void this protected status by volunteering to participate directly in hostilities.     

Saudi Arabia,Wahhabism, and the Taliban of Afghanistan: ‘Puritanical reform’ as a ‘revolutionary war’ program

This article argues that the Taliban's revolutionary war (RW) program is puritanical reform informed by the Islamic legal duty of al-amr bi'l-ma‘ruf wa'l-nahy ‘an al-munkar (‘commanding what is good and forbidding what is reprehensible’). It also examines the history of this duty with examples of puritanical reform movements emerging from Berber tribes in North Africa and tribes in Arabia. Furthermore, the importance of this duty in Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, and its exportation to Pakistan where Taliban leaders imbibed this ideology, are discussed. Finally the article shows that corruption and abuses by the Afghan regime have given impetus to puritanical reformers: the condition precedent for puritanical reform is pervasive wrongdoing in an Islamic society.     

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.     

Orde Wingate, ‘Guerrilla’ Warfare and Long-range Penetration, 1940–44

Major General Orde Wingate was a highly controversial figure in his time and remains so among historians. However, his eccentric and colourful personality has drawn attention away from the nature of his military ideas, the most important of which was his concept of long-range penetration, which originated from his observations of his operations in Italian-occupied Ethiopia in 1941, and evolved into the model he put into practice in the Chindit operations in Burma in 1943–44. A review of Wingate's own official writings on this subject reveals that long-range penetration combined local guerrilla irregulars, purpose-trained regular troops and airpower into large-scale offensive operations deep in the enemy rear, with the intention of disrupting his planning process and creating situations regular forces could exploit. This evolved organically from Major General Colin Gubbins' doctrine for guerrilla resistance in enemy occupied areas, and bears some resemblance to the operational model applied by US and Allied forces, post September 2001.     

Measuring Intermediate Outcomes of Liberia’s Disarmament,Demobilization, Rehabilitation and Reintegration Program

This paper re-analyzes data from a survey of ex-combatants in Liberia conducted in, to estimate the effect of Liberia’s Demobilization, Disarmament, Rehabilitation and Reintegration program on participants’ income and employment status. As program completion was not random, these estimates are biased. I use propensity score matching to obtain a more precise estimate. The results indicate a higher employment rate for those who complete the program, although there is consistently no effect on income. These results have implications for both evaluating the outcomes in Liberia and the integrated approach to ex-combatant reintegration that the program embodied.     

Brinkmanship,not COIN,in Pakistan’s post-9/11 Internal War

Politics is critical to making sense of Pakistani successes and failures in dealing with non-state armed groups. This includes domestic political currents; regional political currents; and the global impetus of the post-9/11 era. How these currents overlap renders to any reading of insurgency in Pakistan real complexity. This article engages with this complexity rather than shirking from it. Its hypothesis is that while the insurgency bordering Afghanistan has been an epicentre of Pakistani military efforts to fight the Taliban, this theatre is in of itself insufficiently inclusive to grasp the nature of Pakistan’s security challenges and its consequent responses.     

North Korea's ‘first’ nuclear diplomacy, 1993–94

North Korea's nuclear diplomacy in 1993–94 was its first long, complex, and sophisticated military–diplomatic compaign, in which it sought to obtain both displomatic and economic benefits. Although North Korea could not achieve all of its goals, its endeavour was quite successful overall. North Korea's nuclear development, deterrent capabilities, the limits of the international nuclear regime, and the lack of transparency in the North Korean system played important roles in this.     

Musket,Rank and File for Foot Guards,Lovell’s Pattern of 1838. Ne’er a Shot Fired in Anger?

The Pattern 1838 Musket was initially designed for the rank and file of the British army, it was instead issued to the elite Foot Guards. With arguably the lowest survival rate of any 19th Century British military firearm it is one of the rarest muskets to encounter today. This is its story …     

Waging the inchoate war: Defining,fighting, and second-guessing the ‘Long War’

Abstract

This article answers three questions: What is the nature of the Long War? How is progress (or lack thereof) to be assessed? Where is it likely to go next? An appreciation of Clausewitz shows that practical centers of gravity exist for the Long War, and that the conflict pivots upon the ability to persuasively link ideology to events via a strategic narrative. A close examination of an illustrative case study, the interaction between the US and the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq 2004 – 2006, shows that Al Qaeda has suffered a severe setback, but also that the nature of the war is set to shift yet again. Further tangible progress for the US requires waging the Long War as a global counterinsurgency based on a strategy of ‘selective identification’ (versus pure ‘disaggregation’) as well as an understanding of how to more effectively craft a strategic narrative.     

Inside the Iraqi State Records: Saddam Hussein, ‘Irangate’, and the United States

This article uses captured Iraqi state records to examine Saddam Hussein's reaction to US arms to sales to Iran during the Iran–Iraq War (the Iran/Contra scandal). These records show that ‘Irangate’ marked a decisive departure in Saddam's relations with the United States. Irangate reinforced Saddam's preexisting suspicions of US policy, convincing him that Washington was a strategic enemy that could not be trusted. Saddam concealed his anger to preserve a working relationship with the Reagan administration, but this episode nevertheless cemented his negative views of the United States and forged a legacy of hostility and mistrust that would inform his strategic calculus for years to come.     

“上帝,‘挑战者’也能被击穿!”

众所周知,英国“挑战者”主战坦克是世界上技术最先进的坦克之一．在上个世纪90年代初的海湾战争中,英军投入了约100辆“挑战者”,这些坦克在海湾战争结束后无一受损,“挑战者”创造了坦克运用史上的一个奇迹,它也被称为是世界上最安全的坦克,其装甲被称为是“不可击穿”的。然而,最近这一神话却被打破了。多次装甲被击穿事件挑战“挑战者”安全纪录2007年4月,一辆“挑战者”—2型坦克在袭击中被击穿装甲,英军受损并不大,但感觉很没有面子,同时在心理上受到的震撼将远远大于事件本身,因为“挑战者”在他们的眼中几乎就是“安全”的代名词。英国国防部也     

The fertile ground of Hell’s carnival: Charles T. R. Bohannan and the US Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps’ investigations of war criminals,collaborators, and the Huk,in the Philippines 1945–1947

Insurgencies thrive in regions where government legitimacy is absent. In the post-war Philippines, Captain Charles T. R. Bohannan of the Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps became actively aware of this dynamic. Bohannan is best known for his later work with Edward Lansdale and Ramon Magsaysay in defeating the Huk Rebellion (1950–1954). Here the author examines Bohannan’s early investigative work against Japanese war criminals, wartime Filipino collaborators, and the rising threat of communist subversion most associated with the Huk. All of these experiences fed into what would be the successful campaign against the Huk, chronicled in his seminal work, Counter Guerrilla Operations: The Philippines Experience, and offers lessons on the investigative (as opposed to tactical or psychological) nature of effective counter-insurgency work, as it relates to both legitimacy in governance and the rise of insurgencies.     

Toward a ‘force-in-being’: the logic,structure, and utility of India's emerging nuclear posture

Defined as a ‘force-in-being’, this nuclear posture exhibits a deterrent capability based on available but dispersed components capable of being constituted into usable nuclear weapon systems during a supreme emergency, and even after enduring an enemy nuclear strike. On current plans, New Delhi's force-in-being will be limited in size, separated in geographical disposition, and centralized in control.     

French war plans, 1914: The ‘Balance of Power Paradox’

Historians have noted that both German and French war preparation in 1914 fell victim to the inadequacies of traditional threat-based planning: vulnerability to ‘threat deception’ which caused each to underestimate or mischaracterize the threat; a tendency to ‘mirror-image’ by fitting intelligence into preconceived notions of how the enemy was expected to behave; and ‘group think’ that discouraged a serious consideration of alternative scenarios. This article applies the ‘Balance of Power Paradox’ to explain why, at the dawn of the twentieth century, war planning in both Germany and France was driven by an acute sense of weakness which encouraged each side to fashion highly ‘risk acceptant’ strategies. In particular, he examines why and how French commander-in-chief General Joseph Joffre evolved and rationalized his audacious, and disastrous, Plan XVII to leverage French weaknesses and prevent the stronger German Army from bringing the full weight of its military strength to bear against France. The potential implication of this historical vignette is that leaders, and by extension military planners, of both strong and weak states focus on the constraints faced by their opponents, and assume that they can avoid the limitations of their position, while their opponent cannot.     

Clausewitz’s Concept of Strategy – Balancing Purpose,Aims and Means

The task of coming to a proper appreciation of Clausewitz’s thoughts on war is to combine a hierarchical structure with that of a floating balance. This article examines the relation of purpose, aims and means in Clausewitz’s theory and highlights that this relation is methodologically comparable to the floating balance of Clausewitz’s trinity. Modern strategic thinking is characterised by the ‘ends, ways, means relationship’ and the concept of the ‘way’ as shortest possible direct connection between ends and means. If strategy is nothing else than the direct way of linking the political purpose with the means, understood as combat, this understandings results in ‘battle-centric’ warfare. My thesis is that the aim (goal, way) in warfare is not a direct link between purpose and means, but rather an indirect, intermediary dimension, a mediation (in Hegelian terms) between purpose and aims with its own grammar. This article distinguishes (sometimes going beyond Clausewitz) between the rationality of the whole process of war, the rationality of the separate aspects of purpose, aims and means in warfare and finally their conflicting tendencies. This article highlights Clausewitz’s different concepts of purpose and aims and tries to shed at least some light of the strategic implications of this difference. This interpretation of Clausewitz leads to the definition of strategy as maintaining a floating balance of purpose, aims and means in warfare.     

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.     

‘Full spectrum dominance’: Donald Rumsfeld,the Department of Defense,and US irregular warfare strategy, 2001–2008

This article examines the evolution of US irregular warfare (IW) doctrine and practice from 2001 onwards. It argues that, after 9/11, top-tier civilian policymakers in the US Department of Defense (DoD) and across the US government developed a heightened awareness of asymmetric threats and non-conventional forms of warfare, especially those shaped by contemporary globalisation. The result was a gradual turn towards irregular warfare, led by Rumsfeld and the DoD, designed to ensure ‘full spectrum dominance’ across all modes of conflict. This pre-dated the insurgency in Iraq and the promotion of counterinsurgency in the US Army by General David Petraeus and others. Policymakers' reluctance to acknowledge the insurgency in Iraq was not down to a failure to understand the concept of IW, but because they had viewed Iraq in conventional terms for so many years and were reluctant to admit their mistake.