From one exceptionalism to another: France’s strategic relations with the United States and the United Kingdom in the post-Cold War era

ABSTRACT

The failed expedition of Suez in 1956 and France’s subsequent strategic ‘divorce’ from the United Kingdom and the United States lies at the heart of a policy paradigm that has dictated France’s defence posture from de Gaulle’s presidency to the end of the Cold War. Some crucial features of the Gaullist posture remain today enduring references for French presidents in the definition of France’s exceptionalism. While it is so, there have been significant changes since the 1990s when it comes to France’s strategic relations with the United States and the United Kingdom. This article demonstrates the extent and mechanisms of this rapprochement by analysing it through three dimensions of policy change: modes of action, institutional commitments and discourses. The article demonstrates the dimensions’ mutually reinforcing effects and argues that France’s exceptional posture has de facto been reversed.     

Homes for heroes? Assessing the impact of the UK’s Military Covenant

The British Military Covenant can be located in and from many sources and from 2011 onwards in primary legislation. This article argues that the provision of military housing amounts to an early test of how the military covenant is understood and used by those involved in defence policy, and those in the armed forces affected by it. It finds that housing was a prominent feature of how service personnel understood how they were valued, but was not explicitly understood as a covenant issue by those personnel or the officials in charge of the Defence Estates. We locate three reasons for this: (1) the covenant has been poorly translated from aspiration into policy practice, (2) the covenant is unevenly understood across its stakeholders which has the effect of generating disappointment through misaligned expectations, (3) those engaged in the reform process surrounding the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) saw the covenant as a means to energise reform. Ultimately housing was seen as a dry and technocratic business area and thus an issue ripe for being refracted through the covenant was ultimately left outside of its remit.     

社会系统运行理论与我国现阶段政策的制定

本文阐述了社会系统运行理论的初步框架,并以其分析社会系统的组织化状态与政策在其自组织中的功能;在剖析不同类型经济系统利弊的基础上,提出了我国现阶段政策制定的基本思路。     

Towards a new national security policy for Canada

Canada is now at a crossroads unlike any other period in its history and needs to carefully consider which path to take. With the new Trudeau government comfortably ensconced since the defeat of the Harper government in the fall of 2015, a variety of competing interests have emerged in an attempt to turn Canadian policy back to a more nostalgic period of the 1970s that some see as preferable to the institutional lash-up that existed since the rolling out of the Canada First policy in the 2000s. That nostalgic period is, however, misunderstood both willfully for political purposes but also through a lack of historical context. Firmly rooting future actions in a blunt analysis of national interests is preferable to the alternative.     

Technical note: Reexamination of all‐or‐none inspection policies in a supply chain with endogenous product quality

This note studies the optimal inspection policies in a supply chain in which a manufacturer purchases components from a supplier but has no direct control of component quality. The manufacturer uses an inspection policy and a damage cost sharing contract to encourage the supplier to improve the component quality. We find that all‐or‐none inspection policies are optimal for the manufacturer if the supplier's share of the damage cost is larger than a threshold; otherwise, the manufacturer should inspect a fraction of a batch. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2008     

基于规则的动态频谱接入研究

动态频谱接入面临的关键技术之一是对接入时机和方式进行有效地管控,防止由于频谱的接入使用过于灵活造成用频的干扰和混乱。将频谱接入的时间和方式给予规则上的约束和指导,基于规则构建动态频谱管理框架可以有效实现频谱的实时管控。对动态频谱接入的规则及表述方式进行了讨论,分析了基于规则的动态频谱接入过程,最后结合美军XG项目的试验结果分析了基于规则的动态频谱接入的应用前景。     

Is human trafficking the dark side of economic freedom?

Economic freedom has increased living standards worldwide. Concurrent with such gains are rising concerns about potential human costs associated with free markets. This paper uses data on human trafficking and anti-trafficking policies, in conjunction with a measure of economic freedom, to examine whether free markets exacerbate or attenuate the incidence of human trafficking and policies designed to combat it. We do not find evidence suggesting that economic freedom is associated with human trafficking. In addition, our results suggest that economically free countries are more likely to enact and enforce policies to fight human trafficking.     

Revenue maximization in two-station tandem queueing systems

We study optimal pricing for tandem queueing systems with finite buffers. The service provider dynamically quotes prices to incoming price sensitive customers to maximize the long-run average revenue. We present a Markov decision process model for the optimization problem. For systems with two stations, general-sized buffers, and two or more prices, we describe the structure of the optimal dynamic pricing policy and develop tailored policy iteration algorithms to find an optimal pricing policy. For systems with two stations but no intermediate buffer, we characterize conditions under which quoting either a high or a low price to all customers is optimal and provide an easy-to-implement algorithm to solve the problem. Numerical experiments are conducted to compare the developed algorithms with the regular policy iteration algorithm. The work also discusses possible extensions of the obtained results to both three-station systems and two-station systems with price and congestion sensitive customers using numerical analysis.     

Rolling‐horizon replenishment: Policies and performance analysis

We consider a rolling‐horizon (RH) replenishment modeling framework under which a buyer can update demand information and inventory status, modify order quantities committed previously, place an advanced order for a new period at the end of the RH, and move along in time seamlessly. We show that the optimal order policy for the two‐period RH problem is a dual‐threshold type for updating period(s) plus a base‐stock type for the advanced order. We provide analytical formulas and algorithms to compute the optimal thresholds and the optimal base‐stock level exactly. With our analytical results and numerical procedures, we demonstrate the significant value of RH replenishment in matching supplies to demands more closely. We also show that with RH updating (flexibility), the value of additional demand information beyond the RH diminishes quickly. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2010     

A bivariate optimal replacement policy for a cold standby repairable system with repair priority

In this article, an optimal replacement policy for a cold standby repairable system consisting of two dissimilar components with repair priority is studied. Assume that both Components 1 and 2, after repair, are not as good as new, and the main component (Component 1) has repair priority. Both the sequence of working times and that of the components'repair times are generated by geometric processes. We consider a bivariate replacement policy (T,N) in which the system is replaced when either cumulative working time of Component 1 reaches T, or the number of failures of Component 1 reaches N, whichever occurs first. The problem is to determine the optimal replacement policy (T,N)* such that the long run average loss per unit time (or simply the average loss rate) of the system is minimized. An explicit expression of this rate is derived, and then optimal policy (T,N)* can be numerically determined through a two‐dimensional‐search procedure. A numerical example is given to illustrate the model's applicability and procedure, and to illustrate some properties of the optimal solution. We also show that if replacements are made solely on the basis of the number of failures N, or solely on the basis of the cumulative working time T, the former class of policies performs better than the latter, albeit only under some mild conditions. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2010