A realist before ‘realism’: Quincy Wright and the study of international politics between two World Wars

Contrary to conventional belief, IR theorist Quincy Wright and his cohort before World War II were neither idealists, legalists, nor moralists. Deeply grounded in the realism and pragmatism that marked the University of Chicago's interwar climate, Wright applied an ethically neutral and empirical approach to understanding international relations. Unlike the stereotypical interwar theorist, Wright eschewed legalism. He recognized that a struggle for power drove international politics and would continue to do so for the forseeable future. Above all, Wright embraced the complexities of international politics, rejecting monocausal explanations for war or simplistic frameworks for understanding international relations.     

The Kashmir insurgency: As bad as it gets

In January 2000, the Kashmir militancy is gaining ground and Indian forces are on the defensive. This is despite a decline in militancy from 1996 to mid‐1999. While India has managed to secure greater international support from the West, the failure of an elected state government in Kashmir to regain the confidence of Kashmiris has cost Delhi support. The militant revival is being driven by increasing professionalism, along with strong support from backers in Pakistan. Given there is now a 12‐year period of violence to analyse, new literature brings interesting insights.¹     

Remembering the war of liberation: legitimacy and conflict in contemporary Algeria

The aim of this article is to consider how Algeria's most prized achievement and treasured memory – the FLN's victory over the French in the war of liberation – has helped stimulate and sustain the violence that has blighted the country since independence. It argues that successive governments have propagated a legend of the war that encourages and legitimises rebellion and armed resistance. By celebrating the actions and achievements of a committed band of revolutionaries they have established a precedent whereby it is every citizen's duty to oppose and resist an unjust government. Time and again therefore, insurgent groups like the FFS, MIA, and AIS have justified their actions and won popular support by portraying themselves as the early FLN's natural heir.     

Country survey XVII: New zealand's defence policy

New Zealand's current defence strategy, first expressed in NZ Government (1991), is one of "self-reliance in partnership". We outline the country's defence policy in historical context, examine its current defence expenditure and capabilities, and document the genesis of recent major changes in security policy. We pay particular attention to the role of explicit economic analysis and advice in the formation of these policy changes.     

The Keynesian IS-MR Model and Military Spending

The issue of guns or butter is one of the most fundamental economic questions, yet there is no consensus on a theoretical framework for examining it. Over the last decade, a version of a simple Keynesian macroeconomic model has been applied a number of times to examining the link between defence spending and economic growth in a range of countries. There are reasons for doubting the soundness of this model as a basis for empirical work.     

Deferred verification: the role of new verification technologies and approaches

ABSTRACT

Researchers have recently proposed a new approach to nuclear-arms-control verification, dubbed “deferred verification.” The concept forgoes inspections at sensitive nuclear sites and of nuclear weapons or components in classified form. To implement this concept, a state first divides its nuclear program into a closed segment and an open segment. The total fissile-material inventory in the closed segment, which includes the weapon complex, is known and declared with very high accuracy. Essentially no inspections take place in the closed segment. In contrast, inspectors have access to the open segment, which includes in particular the civilian nuclear sector. The fissile-material inventory in the open segment is known with less accuracy, but uncertainties can be reduced over time using nuclear-archaeology methods. Deferred verification relies primarily on established safeguards techniques and avoids many unresolved verification challenges, such as the need for information barriers for warhead confirmation measurements. At the same time, deferred verification faces some unique challenges. Here, we explore some of these challenges and offer possible solutions; to do so, we examine possible noncompliance strategies in which a state would seek to withhold a higher-than-declared inventory.     

Basic scheduling problems with raw material constraints

One of the achievements of scheduling theory is its contribution to practical applications in industrial settings. In particular, taking finiteness of the available production capacity explicitly into account, has been a major improvement of standard practice. Availability of raw materials, however, which is another important constraint in practice, has been largely disregarded in scheduling theory. This paper considers basic models for scheduling problems in contemporary manufacturing settings where raw material availability is of critical importance. We explore single scheduling machine problems, mostly with unit or all equal processing times, and L_max and C_max objectives. We present polynomial time algorithms, complexity and approximation results, and computational experiments. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2005.     

Theories of Non-Balancing and Russia’s Foreign Policy

The beginning of the twenty-first century has witnessed the emergence of balancing responses to the US hegemony, among which Russia’s foreign policies stand out as corresponding to what is understood as ‘hard balancing.’ Why is the United States being balanced against? This paper categorizes the existing theories of non-balancing into six conditions that together guarantee the absence of balancing and demonstrates that the current unipolar system can satisfy only one of them. This eases the systemic constraints and makes balancing possible. The paper then presents three cases of balancing with reference to President Putin’s foreign policy. It argues that even though in terms of relative military capabilities unipolarity still holds, the emergence of counter-hegemonic balancing is indicative of important changes in the nature of post-Cold War American domination.