Does Spoiling Work? Assessing the Impact of Spoilers on Civil War Peace Agreements

Scholars and policymakers argue that violent actors – termed ‘spoilers’ – pose a significant threat to civil war peace agreements. Yet existing research, which is overly reliant on single-case studies, has not effectively determined how prevalent spoiling is, or thoroughly examined what its ultimate effects are on peace agreements. This article draws on a newly constructed cross-national dataset of spoiling following 241 civil war peace agreements in the post-Cold War era to analyze spoiling. It finds that spoiling intended to terminate an agreement is not as common as typically assumed, but still plagues a sizeable number of peace agreements. Moreover, most actors who resort to this strategy typically fail in their goals and the agreement is not at risk, despite the high publicity and attention given to these threats. Yet particular types of actors, most notably paramilitaries and state security forces excluded from the agreement, can pose a significant threat to peace.     

From management crisis to crisis management? Japan’s post-2012 institutional reforms and Sino-Japanese crisis (In)stability

Since 2012, China’s assertion of its sovereignty claim to the contested Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands has significantly raised the risk of a potentially escalatory political-military crisis with Japan. As circumstances worsen, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has championed major institutional reforms aimed at centralizing Japanese security policy decision-making and vastly improving crisis management. This article assesses these reforms’ significance for ameliorating Japan’s long-standing internal crisis management weaknesses, and enhancing its ability to communicate with Beijing promptly under challenging conditions. While significant issues remain, recent developments – especially the establishment of Japan’s first-ever National Security Council – demonstrate significant progress. Bilaterally, however, important firebreaks remain conspicuously absent.     

PIRA Lessons Learned: A Model of Terrorist Leadership Succession

In the global war against terrorism key questions need to be asked concerning how Al Qaeda is reorganizing and who will be leading it. In the absence of, at the very least adequate open source data, how can we answer these vital questions and predict the next evolution of this deadly menace? One possible solution is to study the emergence and evolution of leadership within another terrorist organization. Based on an analysis of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, it is assessed that there have been at least two and possibly three distinct generations of leadership in that group. It is important to note, however, that although these three generations have emerged sequentially, they may well all be in positions of power at the same time. These generations are designated as; early or founding leaders; follow-on and continuity leaders; and embryonic leaders. Such analysis will not tell us whom the new and emerging leaders of Al Qaeda actually are but it might help us to frame the right questions to ask our intelligence collectors.     

New product introduction against a predator: A bilevel mixed‐integer programming approach

We consider a scenario with two firms determining which products to develop and introduce to the market. In this problem, there exists a finite set of potential products and market segments. Each market segment has a preference list of products and will buy its most preferred product among those available. The firms play a Stackelberg game in which the leader firm first introduces a set of products, and the follower responds with its own set of products. The leader's goal is to maximize its profit subject to a product introduction budget, assuming that the follower will attempt to minimize the leader's profit using a budget of its own. We formulate this problem as a multistage integer program amenable to decomposition techniques. Using this formulation, we develop three variations of an exact mathematical programming method for solving the multistage problem, along with a family of heuristic procedures for estimating the follower solution. The efficacy of our approaches is demonstrated on randomly generated test instances. This article contributes to the operations research literature a multistage algorithm that directly addresses difficulties posed by degeneracy, and contributes to the product variety literature an exact optimization algorithm for a novel competitive product introduction problem. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2009     

Principles of Minimum Force and the Parachute Regiment in Northern Ireland, 1969–1972

Developing literature on Operation Banner, the codename for the British military operation in Northern Ireland, has indicated that the conduct of soldiers deployed was not always in line with principles of minimum force. Adherence to these principles would seem to have been essential to the success of the operation given the initial deployment of the soldiers was in the role of military aid to the civil power. This article will examine the role of one of the British Army’s most aggressive units, the Parachute Regiment, and will show how the responses of the regiment to the demands of the operation in Northern Ireland were frequently in contravention of minimum force principles.     

The Prickly Thorn: A Re-evaluation of Orde Wingate and the Special Night Squads

Orde Wingate’s Special Night Squads played a key role in defeating the Great Arab Revolt of 1936–1939. Wingate’s Night Squads were distinctive in their approach to counter-insurgency warfare; in addition to bringing Arab insurgents to battle, the Night Squads proved their mettle by ‘flying the flag’ and by improving cooperation between Jewish settlers and British servicemen. Nevertheless, the Night Squad’s accomplishments and legacy must be properly situated within the broader wave of tactical innovations undertaken by the British Army throughout the Rebellion.     

‘Calmly critical’: Evolving Russian views of US hegemony

Russia has consistently opposed US hegemony since the early 1990s. Moscow has sought to create a world overseen by the UN Security Council and several power centres supporting an anti-hegemonic axis. Until recently, Russia's resources have been very limited. Russian opposition therefore was largely conceptual or a work in progress. Russian policy was largely reactive – and non-confrontational. However, the failure of the Russia-US relationship to develop practically has highlighted negative views of US hegemony, and the greater wealth generated through high energy prices is supporting an increasingly active Russian policy.     

Hoping for the Best,preparing for the worst: China's response to US hegemony

In the post-Cold War strategic environment, Beijing could plausibly have opted for Soviet-style geostrategic competition with Washington, but it has not. Chinese leaders have not thus far, and almost certainly will never, amass thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert or deploy significant forces to a network of bases spanning the globe. Nevertheless, the below assessment of China's increasing hard and soft power yields the conclusion that a Chinese challenge to US hegemony cannot be ruled out. The United States must prudently maintain military forces appropriate to facing a potential peer competitor. At the same time, however, Washington must engage in a process of creative diplomacy that simultaneously matches China's soft power and engages seriously with Beijing to create areas of consensus and cooperation.