Country survey military expenditure in Cyprus

Cyprus, a small island state, gained independence from British colonial rule in 1960. For more that half its history as an independent state Cyprus has been under occupation following the 1974 Turkish invasion. Despite the fact that it has faced war, invasion and occupation, Cyprus has allocated a comparatively small proportion of its national income to defence. The average defence burden—military expenditure as a share of GDP—during 1964–98 was around 2.5%. However, as a result of a substantial shift in defence policy during the past decade or so, the defence burden during the 1990s has increased, averaging about 4% of GDP as Cyprus decided to implement an extensive military modernization program aiming to present a more credible military deterrence vis‐a‐vis Turkey. Empirical estimations of a demand function for Cypriot military expenditure suggest that it is positively affected by alliance spillins and external military threat.     

Reclaiming the Party’s Control of the Gun: Bringing Civilian Authority Back in China’s Civil-Military Relations

ABSTRACT

Since emerging as China’s top leader following the 18th Party Congress, Xi Jinping has moved swiftly to consolidate his formal authority as Central Military Commission chairman over the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. In redressing the civil-military imbalance wrought by Dengist economic reforms, the commander-in-chief has combined institutional mechanisms with the use of fear to impose authoritative civilian control over the military. This paper proposes that a combination of changes to the Chinese strategic environment has contributed to Xi’s utility of the anti-corruption campaign to purge the regime’s coercive forces of its previous underpinnings, and advances that the war on military malfeasance has given rise to a new set of dynamics in civil-military relations in post-Reform China.     

Space,China's Tactical Frontier

In recent years, China has made stunning progress in its satellite reconnaissance capabilities. Starting from almost no capacity for live surveillance ten years ago, today the PLA has gained the capability to support real-time tactical naval operations from space. China's suite of electro-optical, synthetic aperture radar, and electronic intelligence satellites would be key to its anti-access/area denial capabilities, through which the PLA could deny the United States military the capability to operate with impunity close to its shores. Furthermore, these achievements suggest a shift towards more military-dedicated space assets and form the contours of a crucial support system for expanded PLA operations.     

Economic Development and Military Effectiveness

Abstract

What makes some states more militarily powerful than others? A growing body of research suggests that certain ‘non-material’ factors significantly affect a country's ability to translate resources into fighting power. In particular, recent studies claim that democracy, Western culture, high levels of human capital, and amicable civil-military relations enhance military effectiveness. If these studies are correct, then military power is not solely or even primarily determined by material resources, and a large chunk of international relations scholarship has been based on a flawed metric. The major finding of this article, however, suggests that this is not the case. In hundreds of battles between 1898 and 1987, the more economically developed side consistently outfought the poorer side on a soldier-for-soldier basis. This is not surprising. What is surprising is that many of the non-material factors posited to affect military capability seem to be irrelevant: when economic development is taken into account, culture and human capital become insignificant and democracy actually seems to degrade warfighting capability. In short, the conventional military dominance of Western democracies stems from superior economic development, not societal pathologies or political institutions. Therefore, a conception of military power that takes into account both the quantity of a state's resources and its level of economic development provides a sound basis for defense planning and international relations scholarship.     

On the production of victory: Empirical determinants of battlefield success in modern war

Using a data set of historical battles from 1600 to 1973, this paper analyzes the empirical determinants of tactical success in modern war. Based on a reduced form approach we consider key elements of military theory as production factors for combat success as an output of a military production function. The paper focuses on the relationship of material and non-material factors to battlefield success, and especially on the role of superior force strengths. Contrary to the emphasis on technology which can be found in the recent literature, our estimation results indicate that numerical superiority has retained its crucial role for battlefield performance throughout history. In general, human elements of warfare, like leadership, morale and surprise, have continued to be important determinants of battle outcome despite technological progress in weapons.     

The demand for military spending in the peripheral economies of Europe

Research on the factors that determine the level of military expenditure or military burden in countries, suggest that the dynamics of the determinants of military spending will be best understood by case studies of individual countries and studies of groups of relatively homogeneous countries. This paper provides a comparative analysis of three of the EU's peripheral economies - Greece, Portugal and Spain. A simple model based on a general theory of the demand for military spending provides the basis for an investigation of the relative importance of strategic and other social and economic factors for the three countries.     

Modeling the effects of military tension on foreign trade: Some preliminary empirical findings from the Greek-Turkish rivalry

In this paper we examine the effects of irreversibility on foreign trade in the case where there are two sources of uncertainty. The two sources considered in this paper are uncertainty arising from business risk and uncertainty arising from military tension. The resulting insights are then used to model the import markets of Greece and Turkey. These models are then empirically estimated, in order to ascertain, on the one hand whether there is evidence that irreversibility is indeed a factor on the supply side of these markets, and on the other hand, the direction of the incidence of military tension on foreign trade. An index of military tension is used for the two countries, based on the number of airspace violations by Turkish military aircraft of Greek airspace.     

Military expenditure and the profit rate in Greece

This paper examines the effect of military expenditure on the profitability of the Greek economy for the 1962-1994 period. In the theoretical debate on the role of military expenditures they have alternatively been viewed either as a "burden on growth" (i.e. an unproductive drain of resources) or as a stimulating factor for demand, profitability and economic performance. This distinction is reflected in the Marxist tradition as well where in different theories of crisis, military expenditures have been treated either as an unproductive burden or as a savior of the capitalist system, mainly through their effect on the rate of profit. Our empirical tests for the relationship between military expenditure, the general Marxian rate of profit and the net rate of profit indicate that those expenditures have had a contradictory effect on profitability, stimulating effective demand in the short run, but affecting negatively both rates of profit over the long run.     

Better is the Neighbor?

Abstract

This study applies the Sequential Panel Selection Method (SPSM), to investigate the convergence properties of the military expenditure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during the period of 1990–2015. Compared to the traditional methods, SPSM considers fundamentally general spatial homogeneous and heterogeneous relationships with countries and examines the evolution of military expenditure. We find that four-fifths of NATO member countries have been convergent with the UK, but no country’s military expenditure is convergent with the US. This means that there is no significant linkage effect in the US for NATO military expenditure. While they are allies of the US, the majority of NATO member countries’ military expenditures are consistent with UK military expenditure. The main reasons are due to the geographical space layout and the international relationship convergence. The results indicate that more than four-fifths of NATO member countries have been coordinated with convergence theory and spillover effect.     

Development and conflict in the Balkans: Catch-up and military expenditure

This paper analyses the convergence between countries in relation to the catch-up hypothesis concerning the level of total productivity. The catch-up hypothesis claims that poor countries tend to grow faster than rich countries through the international diffusion of knowledge and technology. We test this hypothesis for the Balkan countries and investigate the effect of military expenditure in the region on productivity growth. The aim is to investigate empirically whether productivity growth has been greater in countries with lower military expenditure, in line with theory. The results obtained show that, overall, improvements in technological change co-exist with deteriorating technical efficiency change and that there is a negative correlation between military expenditure and either total productivity growth and technological change, and a positive, but statistically insignificant, relationship with technical efficiency change. We conclude that economic growth is the key to regional development and that too great a diversion of resources to military commitments can lead to overstretch.     

Determinants of military expenditure and the role of globalisation in a cross-country analysis

Abstract

Anecdotal evidence offers conflicting views on the impact of globalisation on military expenditure. We contribute to the existing literature by investigating the effect of globalisation on military expenditure in 82 countries for the period, 1989–2012. After introducing economic and strategic variables into the model, we utilise the dynamic panel generalised method of moments system to estimate the relationship in the variables. The empirical findings reveal that globalisation reduces both military burden and real military expenditure. The findings are consistent, irrespective of the globalisation indicator adopted. The policy implications of the results are explained.     

Military Expenditure,Endogeneity and Economic Growth

Abstract

While not always a concern for the general economic growth literature, the debate over the effects of military spending on growth continues to develop, with no consensus, but a deepening understanding of the limitations of previous work. One important issue that has not been adequately dealt with is the endogeneity of military spending in the growth equation, mainly because of the difficulty of finding any variables that would make adequate instruments. This paper considers this issue, using an endogenous growth model estimated on a large sample of 109 non-high-income countries for the period 1998–2012. The empirical analysis is framed within an instrumental variable setting that exploits the increase in military spending that occurs when unrest in a country escalates to turmoil. The estimation results show that endogeneity arising from reverse causality is a crucial issue, with the instrumental variable estimates providing a larger significant negative effect of military spending on growth than OLS would. This result is found to be robust to different sources of heterogeneity and different time periods.     

‘Pounding Their Feet’: Israeli Military Culture as Reflected in Early IDF Combat History

Abstract

How did the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) organisational and military culture shape their understanding of security threats, perceptions of warfare, and instinctive responses to security challenges? Israel's early military history is marked by the stubborn persistence of accepted patterns of thought and action. In the first twenty years of its existence, the IDF habitually came to sacrifice both political and military long-term and medium-term considerations in favour of the superficial, short-term satisfaction of its drive for action. The Israeli Army as an institution separated military actions from their political implications, and all too often, granted itself freedom of action at all levels of command. That myopic pattern led to recurring raids and minor operations during the 1950s, and contributed notably to the outbreak of the Six-Day War in 1967.     

Fighting Separately: Jointness and Civil-Military Relations in India

How do countries transition from single service to joint operations? This article engages with the discussion on military innovation to argue that civil–military relations are the most important driver for jointness. In doing so it examines jointness in the Indian military. Relying on archival research and primary interviews this article sheds new light on the operations of the Indian Peacekeeping Forces (IPKF) in Sri Lanka from 1987–1990, the 1999 Kargil War and the Post-Kargil defence reforms. The main argument is that the Indian military’s transition to jointness has been ‘incomplete’ primarily because of its prevailing model of civil-military relations. This model prevents civilians from interfering in the operational issues of the military, including on matters pertaining to jointness. It therefore recommends more forceful civilian intervention to overcome the prevailing single service approach.     

Domestic political and external security determinants of the demand for greek military expenditure

By European Union and NATO standards, Greece consistently allocates substantial human and material resources to defence. The Greek defence burden (i.e. military expenditure as a share of GDP) has invariably been appreciably higher than the EU and NATO averages. The paper applies an autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) to present cointegrated estimates of the demand function for Greek military expenditure, in which domestic political factors and external security determinants are incorporated. Our empirical findings suggest that Greek defence spending over the period 1960-1998 has been influenced by both external security concerns, namely Turkey, as well as changes in the domestic political scene.     

Playing dirty to survive: the vulnerability of civilian targets within U.S. military aid recipient states

ABSTRACT

U.S. military aid provides recipient governments the fighting capability they require to undermine domestic militant groups, which can undermine groups’ leadership structures and trigger group splintering. In this environment, brutal attacks against non-combatants become an effective mechanism for targeted groups to signal their resolve and outbid competitors. A large-n analysis of U.S. military aid between 1989 -2011 links higher levels of military aid with higher levels of rebel-perpetrated civilian killings, and deaths due to explosive attacks on non-combatant targets. A closer examination of the case of Pakistan sheds further light on the underlying causal mechanisms.     

The military recruiting productivity slowdown: The roles of resources,opportunity cost and the tastes of youth*

After a decade of successful recruiting, the US military began experiencing recruiting difficulties in the 1990s. Cyclical factors as well as trend factors may have played a role. This paper uses monthly data by state over the period 1989-1997 to estimate models of enlistment and evaluate the various explanations for the recruiting slowdown. Estimates of the impact of economic variables - relative military pay and unemployment - and recruiting resource variables - recruiters and advertising - are similar to those in previous studies. Two trend factors, rising college attendance and declining adult veteran population (influencers), are found to be important factors explaining the decline in enlistment.     

What Happened to Israeli Military Thought?

Abstract

This article addresses the following question: how can one explain the neglect of the intellectual aspects of the profession on the part of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)? The explanations offered for that neglect are a mixture of cultural and societal factors. The cultural explanation focuses on Israeli strategic culture; the traditional Israeli perception of the combination of rich experience and experience-based intuition as a winning ticket; the tendency to extol improvisation; a cult of material strength; and a strong belief in technology. The social explanation stresses the declining attractiveness of a military career for qualitative young Israelis. The article contends that change can take place only if the IDF undergoes a process of institutional intellectualism – if not willingly then one imposed by the political echelon.     

Sovereign debt,deficits and defence spending: the case of Greece

Abstract

The outbreak of the sovereign debt crisis at the end of 2009 in Greece led to a severe recession, and constant economic problems. This paper investigates military expenditure among others as a potential factor to the growth of sovereign debt in Greece over the period 1960 until currently. Our empirical findings suggest that high deficits, inflation and military spending have been the primary causes of debt growth in Greece. The structural break models reveal a much higher effect of deficits and inflation in the post-1990 period while the threshold switching regression, based on the level of sovereign debt, indicate that for levels of debt-to-GDP ratio above 90% deficits, inflation and military expenditures had significantly more pronounced effects on government debt changes.     

The inherent propensity toward peace or war embodied in weaponry

Thomas Schelling argues that armed adversaries face an inherent propensity toward peace or war embodied in their weaponry, geography and military organizations. Inherent propensity is the idea that there are characteristics embodied in the weapons that push adversaries toward peace or war, independent of the goals of the decision‐makers, the political disagreement between adversaries, and misperceptions about mutual resolve and hostility. We theoretically illustrate inherent propensity in conventional and nuclear arms settings using Lanchester and Intriligator war models. Our work extends the Intriligator‐Brito model, identifies when the competing Richardson and Intriligator‐Brito views of the relationship between arms races and war are correct, illustrates the stabilizing/destabilizing effects of alliances, and highlights the importance of arms quality control in the US‐USSR relationship.