Hard Balancing in the Age of American Unipolarity: The Russian Response to US Ballistic Missile Defense during the Bush Administration (2001–2008)

One of the central debates in contemporary international relations scholarship concerns the issue of whether balancing has occurred in response to US-based unipolarity, and if it has, how this should be characterised. Existing research has seen analysts argue that major power responses to unipolarity can be placed in one of either three categories: an absence of balancing, soft balancing, and hard balancing. This article contributes to the scholarly literature by providing a case study of hard internal Russian balancing against the US’s development and deployment of Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) systems during the Bush Administration (2001–08). Russian hard balancing against the US has involved: (1) fielding new strategic nuclear and conventional weapons equipped with BMD countermeasures, and, relatedly, (2) making changes in military doctrine. As a result, security dilemma dynamics are increasingly in evidence in US relations with Russia.     

Who Really Dictates What an Existential Threat Is? The Israeli Experience

National security conception or securitization theory frames threats and conceptualizes the responses towards them. But in many cases, and especially in the Israeli context, there is a tendency to blur the nature and essence of different threats; security threats become strategic threats and then existential threats. In the Israeli context, because the broad concept of security is perceived, in most cases, as equivalent to military security, the meaning of the strategic threat will be framed, mostly, militarily, derived from military thought.

The article examines the nature of existential threats in the Israeli context and seeks to find the implications of securitization theory in this regard by analyzing the unique role of the military establishment and the influence of the military thought on strategic thought in Israel. The article also deals with the centrality of ‘military wisdom’ in the Israeli ethos and the sense of insecurity embedded in the Israeli narrative that leads to an ‘intellectual symbiosis’ between the political and the military echelons and finds this phenomenon as one of the major explanations for the influence of the military establishment on defining the nature of security threats as well as on the crucial decision to launch wars.     

The unnecessary uprising: Jeju Island rebellion and South Korean counterinsurgency experience 1947–48

This paper systematically analyzes the causes of the escalation of violence during the initial stages of the Jeju Island Rebellion and the failure of South Korean counterinsurgency operations. It is argued that four interrelated factors provided the conditions for armed insurgency in the small island of Jeju: inter-agency tension between the Korean National Police (KNP) and the Korean Constabulary; the mainlanders' misinterpretation of the insurgency; the effect of systematic police brutality; and the role of youth groups. Consequently, two counterinsurgency lessons will be drawn from this study: that inter-agency cooperation and coordination at the tactical level between security branches and the incorporation of local population at the micro-level is essential in conducting efficient and effective counterinsurgency operations.     

Croatia's bitter harvest: Total National Defence's role in the Croatian War of Independence

Croatia's successful bid for independence was one of the defining moments of the immediate post-Cold War period. Nevertheless, the means that Croatia used to obtain independence remains relatively unexamined by academics. This article focuses on the early period of Croatia's bid for secession, and specifically the role that Yugoslavia's policy of Total National Defence played in facilitating its independence. Unlike in Slovenia, where the legacies of Total National Defence facilitated Slovenia's bid for secession, in Croatia the decision of its political leaders meant that the country largely neglected its positive legacies, resulting in a protracted four-year struggle.     

Defense Spending and Unemployment in France

France has received little attention in the literature of defense economics, despite some outstanding features of the country’s situation. This study attempts to partially fill this gap with new empirical evidence which evaluates the influence of military expenditure on the unemployment rate between 1975 and 2008. Our estimation is based on the ARDL approach to cointegration. The results reveal that both defense and non-defense spending exert a negative influence on unemployment but that defense spending has a higher negative impact.     

科索沃战争中攻防对抗的几点分析

科索沃战争是一场交战双方实力悬殊的战争。拥有高技术兵器的北约军队对主权国家南斯拉夫实施了高精度、远毁伤、非接触的空袭,而处于弱方的南联盟军民,寻找对方弱点,采取灵活战术进行反空袭作战,使北约集团也付出了很大的代价。这场战争是现代高技术条件下的一场典型的进攻与防御对抗作战,它反映了以落后技术装备遏制拥有高技术之敌进攻的特点和规律。     

美国国家导弹防御(NMD)系统

1 999年 3月 ,美国国会参众两院通过了国家导弹防御系统的法案 ,该法案规定 ,一旦该系统研制成功 ,美国应立即予以部署 ,从而引起国际社会和舆论的广泛关注。简要介绍了美国弹道导弹防御计划的演变 ,国家导弹防御系统的组成、性能特点和基本配置以及拦截试验的基本情况。     

On the contribution of defense innovation to China’s economic growth

As the most knowledge-intensive industrial sectors, China’s defense industries are developing very fast. The present paper will explore the contribution of China’s defense innovation to its economic growth. Cobb–Douglas production function, integrating defense and non-defense stock in knowledge, is applied during the course. In addition, an input–output analysis of defense equipment procurement was done. Positive effect of China’s defense innovation on economic growth has been revealed by comparing the results from the two methods. And some suggestions are made to strengthen the effect.     

Security gradient and national defense – the optimal choice between a draft army and a professional army

The earlier work on the optimal design of the national security has focused on the opportunity cost of the draft in terms of foregone human capital formation. The current paper introduces the national security into the welfare analysis missing from the earlier work. This creates a trade-off between the private goods and the security as a public good in the social cost–benefit analysis. There are three major results. First, and arising from the intergenerational interaction, it is optimal to introduce a pay to the young generation when in duty even by resorting to a distortive tax. Second, when optimizing the size of the army, the optimal choice between the draft army and the professional army depends on the risk class of the country. A security gradient arises. Third, the choice is linked to the size and the quality of the reserve generated by the two approaches.     

防空兵群(团)火力配系优化

首先阐明了防空兵群(团)火力配系优化的基本概念,然后,运用作战模拟的有关理论,分别建立了火力单位距目标的最佳配置距离(D)、防空兵群(团)对来袭目标的抗击率(Pk)和被保护目标的安全率(Pa)的优化模型。在此基础上,提出了防空兵群(团)火力配系优化的一般方法。最后通过一个实例,说明了防空兵群(团)火力配系的具体步骤。