Epidemics,national security,and US immigration policy

What are relationships between epidemics, national security, and US immigration policy? This question is important because it sheds light on transnational or nontraditional security areas, American immigration policy, and a pressing issue for US leaders who have recently faced epidemics such as the West Africa Ebola outbreak that began in 2013. This article answers it and lays ground in the area by reviewing epidemics in world history, using International Relations and Security Studies works to specify dangers of contagions for states, and identifying three general immigration measures that American leaders have utilized from the seventeenth century to the present day to protect against contagions, which are (1) policies restricting entrance of foreigners thought to carry specified diseases, (2) the isolation or quarantining of immigrants with contagious disease, and (3) delegating the President with authority to stop immigration in the event of an epidemic abroad. This study has implications for research and contemporary US immigration policy.     

White hull or white elephant? Soft power and the Chinese hospital ship,the Peace Ark

Although soft power is now seen as an indispensable foreign policy tool, its efficacy has rarely been put to a rigorous empirical test. Using data from HARMONIOUS MISSIONs 2010, 2011 and 2013, this article seeks to examine the degree to which the soft power engagement missions of the Chinese hospital ship, the Peace Ark, has advanced Chinese interests. Although any conclusions drawn must be considered preliminary, as so little time has passed between the ship's visits and the current analysis, this research indicates that these missions’ impact on advancing Chinese interests was at best limited. Although observations from a single set of cases are unlikely to settle the debate between soft power advocates and detractors, it is hoped that this research will serve as a catalyst to further empirically based research on this topic.     

Women combatants and the liberation movements in South Africa

This article examines women's role as combatants in national liberation forces in South Africa. Three categories – guerrilla girls, combative mothers and the in-betweeners – are introduced to underscore the varied ways in which women have participated in combat within the national liberation movements. Factors such as age and one's ability to leave the country affected whether women could participate in combat as ‘guerrilla girls’ or if it limited them to fighting apartheid violence from home, or if there were women who can be defined as having fallen somewhere in between these categories. These categories are used to theorise women's combat roles in the anti-apartheid struggle, thus broadening and challenging the dominant notions of combat that often hide women's contributions in war. In this regard, different periods of struggle, physical location, as well as age, determined the methods of activism available to men and women.     

Women,peace and security in Africa

This article highlights and critiques the underlying conceptualisations and assumptions of the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda that emerged with the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000. The main argument is that we need to rethink the WPS agenda to produce more holistic and groundbreaking responses for the types of challenges encountered, i.e., that gender inequality and insecurity are deep rooted and multi-layered, and thus negate mechanistic responses that do not deal with cultural and structural issues. It specifically focuses on gender and peace-making and gender and peacekeeping to point to the pitfalls in the current conceptions and practices in this arena.     

Is strategic studies narrow? Critical security and the misunderstood scope of strategy

Critical security advocates commonly portray strategic studies as crippled by its narrow focus on Cold War-era military issues, as state-centric and as Western-centric. I argue that this conception of the scope of strategy is flawed and I offer a comprehensive rebuttal by working out the logic of the theories advanced by Carl von Clausewitz and Thomas Schelling. The proponents of critical security overlook the striking expansion of strategy during the Cold War, its longstanding inclusion of competing political actors not just states, as well as its capacity to put Western and non-Western actors in a common analytic frame. By breaking out of the conceptual jails in which strategy has been incarcerated, I seek to reconnect International Relations to strategic thought from which it has become increasingly estranged.     

纳米技术与国家安全

纳米技术的兴起为全世界带来了一场全新的科技变革。纳米技术在信息、化工、医药、农业、环保、航空航天等众多领域具有重要的应用价值和广阔的发展前景,被誉为21世纪的三大高新技术之一。然而,经过近五十余年的发展,纳米技术的"双刃剑"效应逐渐显现,纳米技术的滥用对国家安全可能产生的风险正在日益积聚,集中体现在人类健康与生态环境、国家经济安全、国防安全等领域。     

军事院校推动国家安全教育研究

提出互联网+时代军队院校面临与军队新型作战能力培养有关的国家安全时代课题,从整合新媒体网络资源、依托校园文化平台、构建国家安全教育体系三方面进行了对策分析,重点探索与新军事变革密切相关的"文化安全、军事话语传播、地缘政治"等议题,以学术活动的顶层设计将国家安全教育融入军事院校学员具有中国特色的军事理论创新。     

Beyond the state: reconceptualising African security in the 21st century

Confronted with myriad security challenges, African states and the much-vaunted peace and security architecture of the African Union (AU) has proven not to be up to the challenge. Indeed, this is implicitly acknowledged by the AU itself if one considers the creation of such security structures as the African Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which exists outside its peace and security architecture. This paper argues for a radical rethink of security structures on the African continent – one in which state structures of security coexist with newer forms of security actors, including private military companies (PMCs), community movements and the business sector. Whilst this shift in security actors is already happening on the ground, policymakers need to embrace this new reality.     

Indications and warning in Belgium: Brussels is not Delphi

The terrorist attacks in France and Belgium of 2015–2016 that occurred while these countries were in a heightened state of alert raise questions about indications and warning methodology as well as effectiveness of the blanket-protection deployment of security services assisted even by the military. Response and perhaps even more anticipation may require strategic rethinking in light of the predatory attacks that target the most vulnerable spots of the public space. This study looks at threat analysis in Belgium as conducted through her intelligence fusion centre Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (CUTA)?????? since its inception in 2006. With a special focus on what is known, at the time of writing, about the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, this study hopes to put into context how the system (mal)functions and will also consider the preventive measures that respond to the threat, and the international aspects which have implications far beyond Belgian borders. Therefore, a case is made for not just a Belgian homeland security framework, but one that fits into an EU-wide security concept.     

墨家思想对守护网络空间安全和平的启示

墨家思想就是中华传统文化和思想宝库中的重要代表,其倡导的"兼爱""非攻""备御""尚贤"等思想为后世所传承发展并借鉴利用。网络空间国际关系的协调和安全环境的治理,是当前国际上探索和研究的重点,我国应为其贡献中华民族的智慧,墨家思想的精髓可以为我们更好地认识网络空间发展规律、国际关系并维护好网络空间安全和平提供借鉴启示。