The Strategic Use of Soft Balancing: The Normative Dimensions of the Chinese–Russian ‘Strategic Partnership’

This article examines Chinese and Russian foreign policy and military strategy from the theoretical standpoint of soft balancing. Analysis of their thinking indicates that both seek to offset US military superiority without engaging American power directly. To that end, Chinese and Russian strategists have adopted ‘soft’ or ‘normative’ power assets as strategic capabilities in their military and foreign policy. Alternative norms, such as the concept of ‘sovereign democracy’, allow China and Russia to deliberately ignore human rights issues in order to achieve diplomatic advantage with respect to the United States. The two powers have institutionalized these norms within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which they use to counterbalance US interests in Central Asia.     

How to Last Alone at the Top: US Strategic Planning for the Unipolar Era

This article investigates how key actors within the US defence policy community realigned their interests to forge a new consensus on the redirection of US defence strategy following the ‘peace shock’ they faced with the collapse of bipolarity. This consensus centred on the idea that achieving US security in the ‘age of uncertainty’ demanded overwhelming US military power, which was widely interpreted as necessitating military capabilities to fight multiple major theatre wars simultaneously against regional ‘Third World’ adversaries. This helped to preserve many of the principal pillars of US Cold War defence policy through deflecting calls for more radical organisational changes and deeper cuts to defence budgets.     

The United States and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) in East Asia: Connecting Coercive and Non-Coercive Uses of Military Power

Abstract

Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) is increasingly important for East Asian militaries, but there is little scholarship on how HADR relates to broader national strategies. This article considers US involvement in HADR in East Asia in relation to changing conceptions of national power. HADR is frequently described as use of ‘hard’ military assets to further soft power goals. Looking at recent US experiences, this article shows that HADR also serves instrumental ends linked to traditional military objectives. Rather than considering power as ‘soft’ or ‘hard’, it argues that HADR illustrates connections between non-coercive and coercive uses of military power.     

US warfare in Somalia and the trade-off between casualty-aversion and civilian protection

This article examines the ways in which the two normative concerns of casualty-aversion and civilian protection influenced US military strategy in the particular context of the asymmetric conflict in Somalia in the early 1990s. The article critically evaluates US military operations through the prism of international humanitarian law and examines whether American forces started prioritizing casualty-aversion over the safeguarding of Somali civilians. Finally, by drawing on emerging moral guidelines (such as Michael Walzer's idea of ‘due care’), the article examines whether lower numbers of Somali civilian deaths could have been achieved if marginal increases to the risks faced by US soldiers had been accepted.     

THE EFFECTS OF THE WORLD DEFENSE INDUSTRY AND US MILITARY AID TO ISRAEL ON THE ISRAELI DEFENSE INDUSTRY: A DIFFERENTIATED PRODUCTS MODEL

This paper models the interactions between the defense industry market structure and the defense needs of Israel, the USA and Western Europe, which produce several heterogeneous defense goods. The model specifies that the defense industries of the US and Europe are ‘large’ while that of Israel is ‘small’. The US military aid to Israel is also an integral part of the model. The results show that net defense costs of Israel are minimal when the number of its defense firms is one. The model predicts that an increase in US military aid reduces Israel’s government expenditure, its defense industry’s profits and its net defense costs.     

French Military Adaptation in the Afghan War: Looking Inward or Outward?

ABSTRACT

For some, a specific feature of the French armed forces' adaptation process in the adaptation process would be the capacity to look inward instead of outward in order to identify relevant solutions to tactical/doctrinal problems. This article questions such a narrative, and argues that the French armed forces are as quick as any to borrow from other countries’ experiences. In order to do so, this article introduces the concept of ‘selective emulation’, and compares the French and German military adaptation processes in Afghanistan. The article argues that there is indeed something distinctive about French military adaptation, but it is not what the fiercest defenders of the French ‘exceptionalism’ usually account for.     

Controlling the Sunni Insurgency in Iraq: ‘Political’ and ‘Military’ Strategies from Successful Counterinsurgency in Punjab – India

This article examines the ‘political’ and ‘military’ strategies used by the Indian state successfully to quell the Sikh insurgency in Punjab, and applies these lessons to controlling the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. At a conceptual level, this article argues that insurgencies are both a ‘military’ and ‘political’ phenomenon, and that ways to quell them can be either ‘military’ or ‘political,’ or a combination thereof. At the empirical level, this article argues that stability cannot be restored to Iraq until Sunni political actors are effectively brought into the mainstream political process through either ‘military’ or ‘political’ means, or a combination thereof. The analysis in this article provides substantive depth and detail to these otherwise seemingly straightforward propositions.     

SLOWING DOWN TO KEEP THE LEAD IN MILITARY TECHNOLOGY

We develop a model of military technology competition among states. States can choose to introduce new military technology, mimic rivals’ level of technology, or withdraw from the contest. States can choose to implement any level of technology within their current feasible technologies. We find that states with significant technological leads should sometimes withhold new technologies, only strategically releasing them to trump rivals’ efforts. We develop the model by refining Admiral Jackie Fisher’s roughly articulated concept of ‘plunging’. We then use this refined argument to reanalyze the case of naval rivalries among European powers between the Crimean War and the First World War. Finally, we conclude by discussing the model’s implications for current US military force structure planning.     

The United States and Latin America: Shaping an elusive future

This article presents a regional overview of US‐Latin American security relations, focusing on those countries where US national security interests are most likely to be endangered over the next two decades. The author examines the current US strategy of ‘shaping’ the Latin security environment, with a view to assessing the strength and weaknesses of this approach. The article presents some policy recommendations, including the recommendation that the US do more to redress the historical imbalance in Latin American civil‐military relations by strengthening civilian institutions. It also argues that at the regional level a major effort be made to recapture momentum toward the creation of a Free Trade Association of the Americas.     

Norms,Military Utility,and the Use/Non-use of Weapons: The Case of Anti-plant and Irritant Agents in the Vietnam War

The role of norms and military utility in the use of weapons is disputed by constructivist and realist scholars. Through an examination of US decision-making regarding anti-plant and irritant agents in the Vietnam War, I advance this debate in three key ways. First, I develop structural realism’s expectations regarding the role of military utility. Second, I demonstrate that social and material factors are at play in our understandings of both ‘norms’ and ‘military utility’, and that both played a role in US decisions. Third, I find that the dominant role – as structural realism expects – was played by military utility.     

Explaining US and British performance in complex expeditionary operations: The civil-military dimension

A nation's structure and culture of civil-military relations are important and largely overlooked factors in explaining the performance of armed forces involved in complex expeditionary operations. The US model of ‘Huntingtonian’, divided civil-military structures and poor interagency cooperation, makes the US military less suited for complex expeditionary operations. British civil-military relations involve a Defence Ministry that conscientiously integrates military and civilian personnel, as well as extensive interagency cooperation and coordination. This ‘Janowitzean’, integrated form of civil-military relations makes the British military more likely to provide for the planning and implementation of comprehensive campaigns that employ and coordinate all instruments of power available to the state, as well as troops in the field displaying the flexibility and cultural and political understanding that are necessary in complex expeditionary operations.     

Who Really Dictates What an Existential Threat Is? The Israeli Experience

National security conception or securitization theory frames threats and conceptualizes the responses towards them. But in many cases, and especially in the Israeli context, there is a tendency to blur the nature and essence of different threats; security threats become strategic threats and then existential threats. In the Israeli context, because the broad concept of security is perceived, in most cases, as equivalent to military security, the meaning of the strategic threat will be framed, mostly, militarily, derived from military thought.

The article examines the nature of existential threats in the Israeli context and seeks to find the implications of securitization theory in this regard by analyzing the unique role of the military establishment and the influence of the military thought on strategic thought in Israel. The article also deals with the centrality of ‘military wisdom’ in the Israeli ethos and the sense of insecurity embedded in the Israeli narrative that leads to an ‘intellectual symbiosis’ between the political and the military echelons and finds this phenomenon as one of the major explanations for the influence of the military establishment on defining the nature of security threats as well as on the crucial decision to launch wars.     

Reopen a joint school of military government and administration?

Today there are many calls for other elements of the government to do more to ‘do their part’, assist the military to restore order and stability and ‘win the peace’ in Iraq and Afghanistan, and prepare for similar roles in future conflicts. The authors here instead briefly review the history of US armed forces’ involvement in military governance operations from the Mexican War through World War II, and recommend the re-establishment of a School of Military Government similar to that created during the latter conflict.     

Kinetic responses to global terrorism: Lessons from Africa

This essay recalls the immediate and longer-term responses of the US and its allies to the events of 9/11. It contends that the die for contemporary developments in transnational terrorism was cast in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 – in particular the launching of sustained ‘anti-terrorist’ military combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and more covert ‘kinetic’ operations elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa. The essay seeks specifically to expose the counter-productivity of using military operations as the primary antidote to transnational terrorism. Focusing on the African ‘laboratory’ and the spread of transnational terrorism and Islamic militancy, particularly in West and East Africa, the essay concludes that radical Islamists have mastered the ‘battle of the narrative’ and that the Western penchant for dispensing a kinetic brand of medication is feeding rather than fighting the virus of global terrorism.     

Small footprint,small payoff: The military effectiveness of security force assistance

After 15 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, many now see ‘small-footprint’ security force assistance (SFA) – training, advising and equipping allied militaries – as an alternative to large US ground-force commitments. Yet, its actual military efficacy has been little studied. This paper seeks to fill this gap. We find important limitations on SFA’s military utility, stemming from agency problems arising from systematic interest misalignment between the US and its typical partners. SFA’s achievable upper bound is modest and attainable only if US policy is intrusive and conditional, which it rarely is. For SFA, small footprints will usually mean small payoffs.     

What is Doctrine?

‘Doctrine’ has been part of military vernacular for at least a century. Nonetheless, it is a concept which is rather under-explored. The aim of this article is thus to break doctrine down into its component parts in order to grasp what a military doctrine actually is. Thereafter, the article points out different ways to utilise doctrine as a military devise. A doctrine cannot be, or rather should not be, all things to all men. On the contrary, doctrine can be a tool of command, tool of education or a tool of change. The main upshot of the article is that the future of doctrine is far brighter than its critics want us to believe.     

The American way of war in Africa: the case of Niger

ABSTRACT

Increasing attention paid to US casualties in far-flung places such as Tongo Tongo, Niger, and headlines claiming ‘secret wars’ have fueled discussion about American military’s involvement in Africa. Though the continent has been a part of the American way of war since the beginnings of the US – consider the early combat actions of US Marines in Tripoli –, current African conflicts are challenging our understanding of war and approaches to winning it. This article examines the ways America seeks to achieve its ends in Africa with a particular focus upon the last 10 years of US counter-terrorism and stability operations in Niger and the Sahel Region. The author proposes unifying American, Allied, and partner efforts through a strategy of Active Containment.     

Through the Looking Glass: The Soviet Military-Technical Revolution and the American Revolution in Military Affairs

The roots of the information technology Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) can be traced to the mid-1970s, when the West capitalized on scientific-technological developments to neutralize the threat posed by Soviet second echelons. However, the cultivation of the technological seeds of the American RMA preceded the maturation of the conceptual ones. Although it was the US that was laying the technological groundwork for the RMA, Soviet, rather than the American military theorists, were the first to argue that the new range of technological innovations constituted a fundamental discontinuity in the nature of war, which they dubbed the ‘Military-Technical Revolution’ (MTR). About a decade later, this fundamental Soviet approach to the transformations in military affairs was analyzed, adapted and adopted by the US, and designated the RMA. This article deals with the intellectual history of the Soviet MTR and the American RMA.