Size Still Matters: Explaining Sri Lanka’s Counterinsurgency Victory over the Tamil Tigers

The military effectiveness literature has largely dismissed the role of material preponderance in favor of strategic interaction theories. The study of counterinsurgency, in which incumbent victory is increasingly rare despite material superiority, has also turned to other strategic dynamics explanations like force employment, leadership, and insurgent/adversary attributes. Challenging these two trends, this paper contends that even in cases of counterinsurgency, material preponderance remains an essential—and at times the most important—factor in explaining battlefield outcomes and effectiveness. To test this, the paper turns to the case of the Sri Lankan state’s fight against the Tamil Tiger insurgency, a conflict which offers rich variation over time across six periods and over 25 years. Drawing on evidence from historical and journalistic accounts, interviews, memoirs, and field research, the paper demonstrates that material preponderance accounts for variation in military effectiveness and campaign outcomes (including military victory in the final campaign) better than strategic explanations. Additionally, a new quantitative data-set assembled on annual loss-exchange ratios demonstrates the superiority of materialist explanations above those of skill, human capital, and regime type.     

Brinkmanship,not COIN,in Pakistan’s post-9/11 Internal War

Politics is critical to making sense of Pakistani successes and failures in dealing with non-state armed groups. This includes domestic political currents; regional political currents; and the global impetus of the post-9/11 era. How these currents overlap renders to any reading of insurgency in Pakistan real complexity. This article engages with this complexity rather than shirking from it. Its hypothesis is that while the insurgency bordering Afghanistan has been an epicentre of Pakistani military efforts to fight the Taliban, this theatre is in of itself insufficiently inclusive to grasp the nature of Pakistan’s security challenges and its consequent responses.     

Shifting power,preventive logic,and the response of the target: Germany,Russia, and the First World War

If a declining state has incentives for preventive war, the rising state should have incentives to delay a confrontation until it is stronger. We develop the theoretical paradox and examine the July 1914 crisis. Why did Russia, rising relative to Germany, not adopt a buying-time strategy? We argue that although most Russian leaders hoped to avoid a confrontation, they feared that the failure to support Serbia would lead to a loss of Russian credibility and a significant setback to Russia’s position in the Balkans, one that could not easily be reversed, even with Russia’s expected increase in relative military power.     

Does civil war hamper financial development?

We examine how armed conflict effects financial development in a cross-country setting using dynamic panel data analysis in a panel of 66 developing countries for the period 1985–2010. Financial development is measured by M2 as a share of GDP, and credit allocated to private sector by banks as a share of GDP. Our findings suggest that armed conflict has a significant adverse effect on financial development. Simultaneously, the quality of governance is always highly significant and conducive to the financial development. The quality of governance is more salient in determining financial development compared to low- and medium-intensity armed conflict; however, the quality of governance cannot entirely offset the adverse impact of high-intensity armed conflict on financial development.     

Is Britain a force for good? Investigating British citizens’ narrative understanding of war

It is commonly assumed in the foreign policy literature that narratives are uniquely persuasive and thus integral to obtaining public support for war. Yet, empirical research on “strategic narrative” is often vague on both the concept of narrative and how it persuades. Moreover, the stories publics use to interpret war are rarely examined. This paper offers a novel approach to studying “from the ground up” the war stories of individual British citizens. It examines public interpretations of war through emplotment: the way people select and link events to create a coherent story. Examining the wars people include and those they silence, it illustrates how a diverse range of citizens morally evaluates Britain’s military role, be it as a Force for Good, a Force for Ill or a country Learning from its Mistakes. In doing so, the paper offers an alternative methodological approach to studying how individual citizens understand war.     

Majority rule,minority issues: The Macedonian question in the Dekemvriana

This article examines the role of the Macedonian Question in the 1944 December Uprising (Dekemvriana) in Greece. While the Dekemvriana is commonly portrayed in right–left terminology in the historiography, this article argues that part of the reason for the left’s failure was their inability to manage the Macedonian ethnic component of the struggle, either within their armed forces or in their relationship with Yugoslavia. As such, this article integrates the early phases of the Greek Civil War into the broader literature on minorities in civil conflict, while simultaneously exposing some of the myths about Macedonian involvement that result from its contemporary political ramifications.     

基于微分对策理论的信息战模型

基于兰彻斯特作战理论,提出了一个新的微分对策模型来研究在交战双方均有信息战系统协助作战的条件下的最优火力分配策略。又运用微分对策理论对该模型进行分析和求解,并对所得到的结论作出符合战术意义的解释。     

GPS在导航战中的作用及其干扰对抗研究

论述导航战的作用和军用范围,进攻导航战的目标和防御导航战的措施以及GPS系统中C/A码的扩展和加密应用,新码的发展和抗干扰能力。并通过应用实例进一步论述对GPS接收机的干扰原理和干扰效果分析以及美、俄两国发展GPS干扰机的技术现状。     

基于网络的指挥控制协同性能评估模型

网络中心作战是通过部队网络化而实现的军事行动,网络化作战行动的评估需要新的模型和测量方法,以便获取基于信息优势对改进后的指挥和控制的效果.在借鉴美军经验的基础上,从信息的角度区分了网络中心作战信息栅格运作的方式,运用图论、复杂性理论和性能评估理论等方法,建立了作为信息处理系统的指挥控制网络的结构、预期延迟时间、协同影响、复杂性和有效期望等待时间模型,以及作为指挥控制系统的指挥控制网络的节点决策和网络决策效能模型,是对网络中心作战方法的探索.     

精确制导武器发展趋向

通过“科索沃战争”中精确制导武器使用情况的跟踪研究 ,结合近年来国外公开报道的有关资料 ,分析未来高技术条件下局部战争对精确制导武器的发展需求 ,提出在军事技术高速发展新形势下精确制导武器发展趋向。