How Probable is Cyber War? Bringing IR Theory Back In to the Cyber Conflict Debate

Many well-established explanations for war suggest that cyber weapons have a greater chance of being used offensively than other kinds of military technologies. This response article introduces a research agenda for the study of cyber war, and offers an example – principal-agent problems in cyber operations – to demonstrate how rigorous theoretical and empirical work may proceed.     

One more push: Forcing the Dardanelles in March 1915

The historiography of the Gallipoli campaign suggests that the Turks were critically short of ammunition for the Dardanelles coastal defences in March 1915. This theme, established by Winston Churchill, became the basis for a widespread belief that the Royal Navy, after its failure to carry the Dardanelles on 18 March 1915, simply needed one more determined naval push to breakthrough the narrows. The presumed consequence was that the Ottoman Empire, with Constantinople under the guns of the Royal Navy, would have withdrawn from the war. Using modern Turkish sources, the author examines the available quantities, placement, and expenditure of ammunition, and challenges the premise that the Turks were desperately short of heavy shells. The author concludes that the Turks had sufficient remaining ammunition to fiercely contest control of the straits.     

Bayonets on Musa Dagh: Ottoman Counterinsurgency Operations – 1915

This article examines the Ottoman military's escalatory response to violence and frames the Armenian insurrection of 1915 in the historical context of contemporary early twentieth-century counterinsurgency campaigns. A case study is presented, from a military historian's perspective, of counterinsurgency operations conducted by the Ottoman Army's 41st Infantry Division against Armenian insurgents on Musa Da? (Musa Dagh) in an operational area south of Iskenderun (Alexandretta). In this particular operational area, it appears that the modern label which most closely approximates what happened there is ethnic cleansing. Finally, the article concludes with an objective assessment of the effectiveness of the Ottoman Army's counterinsurgency operations.     

Security sector stabilisation in counterinsurgency operations: the case of Afghanistan

This article argues that the debate on security sector reform (SSR) needs to be taken further by taking into consideration the fact that, even though the SSR concept was not originally developed as an element in stabilising states undergoing an insurgency, it is very much being used for exactly that. When conducting counterinsurgency with a focus on the creation of stability, the baseline will ultimately have to be security sector stabilisation (SSS) as a precondition for complete SSR implementation. However, the two must be connected to avoid them undermining each other. This is important if a comprehensive approach to programme implementation and especially sustainability is to guide the programme, and not just isolated ‘train and equip’ stand-alone projects that do not solve either the initial need for stabilisation or the long-term need for accountable security forces. Currently, in Afghanistan the surge for security by the international military is in danger of overtaking the other elements of the SSR, thereby undermining the primary end state and thus risking laying the wrong foundation for the long-term process of SSR.