EU security sector reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Reform or resist?

ABSTRACT

Attempts to explain the failure to reform the security sectors in post-conflict countries have often resorted to two sets of explanatory factors: international and local factors. This article seeks to move from that unhelpful dichotomy to an explanation linking both factors. Drawing on a Foucauldian approach and the concept of “counter-conduct,” it examines the rationality and practices of European Union (EU) governmentality and how governing technologies are resisted and reversed by local elites involved in security sector reform (SSR). Instead of understanding power and resistance as binary opposites, this article argues that counter-conduct can be conceived as implicated in the very relations of power that it seeks to resist. To tease out these relations, the article analyzes the EU's efforts in SSR in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it identifies four forms of counter-conduct: upholding European standards, using the local ownership trap, simulating reforms, and lowering the bar.     

A nuclear-armed North Korea without ICBMs: the best achievable objective

This article analyzes the North Korean nuclear crisis from a balance-of-power perspective. It is in the long-term interests of international peace for a secure and independent North Korea to serve as a buffer between US and Chinese ground forces. However, the conventional military advantage of the South Korean-American alliance over North Korea has grown drastically since the end of the Cold War, threatening North Korea’s survival. Since North Korea lacks any reliable ally, nuclear weapons represent its most cost-effective way to restore a balance of power and thus secure itself. Accepting security guarantees in exchange for its nuclear arsenal is rhetorically appealing but not a viable approach. North Korea’s development of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), however, has overcompensated for the post-Cold War imbalance, inviting talk in Washington of waging a preventive war. Persuading North Korea to give up its ICBM capability, not its nuclear arsenal, should therefore be the primary objective of US diplomacy.     

Influence of high overload on the collimating lenses of laser ranging systems

Collimating lenses are an important component of laser ranging systems, and high overload environments severely affect the beam shaping effect of such lenses. This study proposes a buffer isolation method on the basis of impact stress wave attenuation theory for collimating lens spacers. ANSYS finite element software was applied to simulate the high load dynamics of collimating lenses, and the buffer isolation performance of different materials and composite structures was compared and analysed. Optical simulation analysis of the collimating lenses under different buffer conditions was performed using ZEMAX software to study the mechanism by which a high overload affects the collimating lenses. High overload and optical shaping experiments based on theoretical analysis were further conducted. Results showed the superiority of butadiene rubber to polytetrafluoroethylene after application of 70000 g impact acceleration. The combination-gasket method was superior to the single-gasket method, and the sandwich combination-gasket method was superior to the double-layer combination-gasket method.     

国家安全与公共卫生安全应急话语构建【专题】

近期发生的新冠病毒疫情引发公众对公共卫生安全话语的极大关注。现阶段自媒体话语滥觞对主流意识形态话语的消解，凸显了构建应急话语体系的必要性。国家安全话语构建离不开语言学话语理论支撑，语言学与大数据分析的融合可为健全国家应急话语体系提供操作思路。本文梳理疫情发生以来人民网、央视新闻等主流媒体网站及微信、微博等自媒体平台涌现的大量疫情多语类相关话语，通过弥补大数据在分析话语整体意义层面的不足，提出应急话语构建和分析的七个维度。本文认为，国防科技应发挥大数据统计分析优势的同时，结合话语分析方法构筑质化的语言学模型，走跨学科之路，构建国家安全话语公共卫生应急话语体系。     

From the ESS to the EU Global Strategy: external policy,internal purpose

Security strategies are important sites for narrating the EU into existence as a security actor. The unveiling of a new global strategy on foreign and security policy for the EU immediately post-Brexit could be conceived as a pledge to remain together as a Union for the purposes of contributing to global security in a particular way. This paper offers a brief stock-taking of the EU’s way of writing security from the European Security Strategy (2003) to the EU Global Strategy (2016). A concise exegesis of these documents exposes an interesting dynamic: as exercises in ordering the world, both strategic guidelines have turned out to be major exercises in ordering the self. The comparative snapshot shows the EU as increasingly anxious to prove its relevance for its own citizens, yet notably less confident about its actual convincingness as an ontological security framework for the EU’s constituent members over time.     

水下信息对抗中水声网络相关问题

水下信息对抗是海军信息化建设中需要重点考虑的内容之一.除了现有的声纳侦察之外,在未来的海战中,信息获取和信息对抗将更多地依赖水声网络的作用.因此,水声网络的相关问题必须得到重视.探讨了水声网络的一些关键技术,从信息对抗的角度分析了水声网络面临的挑战及应对措施.     

Regional responses to security and development challenges in East and Southern Africa: lessons and way forward

Since the mid-twentieth century, the East and Southern African regions have been mired in complex and overlapping security and development challenges, including ethnopolitical conflicts, terrorist insurgencies, the proliferation of small arms and light weapons (SALWs), and overwhelming economic crisis. These challenges have had implications for human security, socio-economic development, territorial authority, sovereignty and the stability and legitimacy of political regimes in the affected states. The adequacy and relevance of the regional responses to these challenges is the subject of ongoing debate, to which this paper now adds. Among other factors, this paper identifies competition for regional dominance and institutional inadequacies as accounting for the inability of regional governance bodies to respond adequately to the challenges they face. Consequently, it recommends the expansion of the mandate of the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) beyond regional economic integration to include peacebuilding and a deepening of the institutional efforts focused on security cooperation and conflict management.     

影响新疆人口安全发展的外在性因素分析

人口安全是关系到人口自身发展的关键问题，也是社会安全的重要基础。本文从自然资源的支撑能力、生态环境的承载能力、社会经济的保障能力等方面，深入分析了影响新疆人口安全发展的外在性因素，并提出了人口安全发展的建议，以期为新疆制定未来的人口发展政策提供参考。     

公安警卫部队青年警官心理压力的社会学分析

由于职业性质的特殊性，公安警卫部队青年警官在工作中都承受着一定的心理压力。过度的心理压力不仅影响青年警官个人身心健康，同时也直接影响公安警卫部队的各项建设及警卫任务的圆满完成。分析公安警卫部队青年警官承受的心理压力，研究缓解其压力的途径与对策，对发挥公安警卫部队青年警官工作积极性与创造性，提高部队战斗力具有重要的现实意义。     

警卫部队信息化建设的思考

信息化是一场新的警务革命，是提高警卫部队整体战斗力的重要途径，警卫部队要充分认识到信息化建设的紧迫性和重要性。加强警卫部队信息化建设要有一套强有力的领导班子，一个切实符合实际的规划和一支专而精的专业技术人员队伍，确保信息化建设与应用的大力推进。同时，通过科学管理促使信息化建设与应用效益最大化。