Israel’s Security Nexus as Strategic Restraint: The Case of Iran 2009–2013

This article examines the debates in Israel between 2009 and 2013 over Iran’s nuclear programme as a reflection of a particular type of civil–military or civil–security relationship. It analyses how key actors within that relationship – particularly those with an intelligence background – engaged with media outlets in Israel and further afield to influence domestic and international opinion over how best to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions. In so doing, it seeks to address one fundamental question: are governments in Jerusalem any longer the final arbiters over deciding what is in the national security interests of the State of Israel?     

Negotiating regional security and arms control in the Middle East: the ACRS experience and beyond

In this contribution, Jones focuses initially on the experience of Arms Control and Regional Security (ACRS) and the reasons why this group stalled. The sources of tension that emerged in ACRS, and which ultimately led to its suspension, derived mainly from different views on the relationship between the nuclear and other issues in these talks, as well as the composition of ACRS and its role as a group of the multilateral track of the peace process. Jones emphasizes that regional security discussions in the Middle East must address multiple threats on multiple levels, and ACRS was never politically equipped to do so. Thus, despite the real, if limited, success of ACRS, any real security regime in the Middle East will be the product of a much more inclusive process which recognizes the essential importance of cooperatively addressing multiple security challenges, including those related to the problems of social and economic upheaval in the region. Jones concludes with an argument that the time may be ripe to embark on such a process in the wake of the war in Iraq and other far-reaching indicators of change in the region.     

U.S. Troops and Foreign Economic Growth

By way of an evolutionary game model we show that mediation in international conflicts might be harmful to the conflicting parties. In fact, under anarchy both parties can be better off than under an international regime if mediation reduces the parties’ reactive capacities (i.e. their abilites to respond to an aggression). This result is applied to issues currently discussed in the literature on international relations such as the role of the United Nations as a mediator of international conflicts.     

2015 and the survival of the Nigerian State

Nigeria is currently faced with serious domestic challenges. While the state is not officially at war, it is standing on the precipice, especially with the eruption of violence occasioned by the emergence of the Boko Haram sect and the tenuous peace in the Niger Delta. With the 2015 general elections on the horizon, fears of further violence and disintegration are rife, more so because of the debate over who occupies the Presidential Villa at Abuja. President Goodluck Jonathan, a southerner, seems poised for a comeback even amidst the vociferous challenge posed by the political elites of northern Nigeria. This article looks at the different scenarios that might play out in 2015. It analyses the challenges of the survival of the Nigerian state, and makes some policy recommendations that Nigeria and its people need to put into place in order to ensure its survival beyond 2015.     

Military intelligence and the war in Dhofar: An appraisal

This article examines the role military intelligence played in the Dhofar campaign between 1970 and 1976. Drawing on an array of sources, it examines not only the crucial role played by military intelligence in prosecuting a successful operational campaign against a Marxist inspired insurgency, but equally, the importance that intelligence played in consolidating the Al Bu Said dynasty when across Oman and Dhofar itself, the material benefits to be had from the discovery and production of oil had yet to be realised.     

Optimally scheduling interfering and non‐interfering cranes

This article treats the problem of scheduling multiple cranes processing jobs along a line, where cranes are divided into different groups and only cranes in the same group can interfere with each other. Such crane scheduling problems occur, for example, at indented berths or in container yards where double rail‐mounted gantry cranes stack containers such that cranes of the same size can interfere with each other but small cranes can pass underneath larger ones. We propose a novel algorithm based on Benders decomposition to solve this problem to optimality. In a computational study, it is shown that this algorithm solves small and medium‐sized instances and even many large instances within a few seconds or minutes. Moreover, it improves several best known solutions from the literature with regard to the simpler problem version with only one crane group. We also look into whether investment in more complicated crane configurations with multiple crane groups is actually worthwhile.     

Israel’s relations with the Gulf states: Toward the emergence of a tacit security regime?

By drawing on the literature about security regimes, this article posits the idea that a particular type of regime, which can be termed a “tacit security regime” (TSR), has begun to emerge between Israel, on the one hand, and several Gulf Arab states, on the other. It is a regime which, unlike liberal institutional variants that attempt to privilege the promotion of collective norms, remains configured around perceptions of threats to be countered and strategic interests to be realized. By examining the development, scope, and scale of this nascent TSR, this article explores the extent to which Israel, mindful of Washington, DC’s regional retrenchment, sees the emergence of such a regime as redefining the political and strategic contours of Israel’s relations with much of the Middle East.     

The reliability of multicomponent systems subject to cannibalization

A reliability model for multicomponent multistate systems is presented. This is a generalization of a model previously studied by Hirsch, Meisner, and Boll. In the earlier model, when a failure occurs for which no replacement spare is available, the locations using the same type of part as that having failed are “cannibalized” so as to allocate the shortages to locations where they are least detrimental to system performance. Here, we permit certain restrictions to be imposed upon the cannibalization procedure, and develop effective techniques for relating the probability laws governing the level of system performance to the system structure, cannibalization policy, kit of spare parts, and part reliabilities.