Country survey: military expenditure and defence policy in Norway 1970–2013

This article examines military expenditure and defence policy in Norway from 1970 to 2013. Until 1990 Norwegian military expenditure remained between 2.5 and 3.0 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Despite constant GDP shares, the military expenditure could not sustain a large and properly armed mobilization army. The constant nominal defence budgets of the 1990s accentuated the Norwegian Armed Forces' underlying imbalance between tasks, structure and budget. Around year 2000, large organizational reforms were effectuated, in which costs, the number of man-years, and underlying imbalances between tasks, structure and budget were reduced. Military expenditure increased in nominal terms between 2003 and 2013, while real military expenditure remained practically constant.     

ORGANIZED CRIME AND THE TRAFFICKING OF RADIOLOGICAL MATERIALS

Based on unique empirical data, including interviews with smugglers of radiological materials and the investigators who track them, this article discusses nuclear smuggling trends in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Smuggling in Georgia mainly involves opportunist smugglers and amateurs, as opposed to professional criminals and terrorists; however, this does not mean that radiological smuggling is devoid of professionalism or organization. The article demonstrates that professional criminals are rarely involved in smuggling due to the unreliable nature of the market for radiological materials and the threat radiological smuggling could pose to professional criminals' ability to wield political power and operate legal commercial enterprises.     

Confronting the “Perpetual Menace to Human Security”

Nuclear weapon states historically have attached great secrecy to their nuclear weapon and fissile material production programs and stockpiles, despite warnings that this would fuel fears, handicap informed debate and decision making, and drive arms races. As evidenced by the “Action Plan on Nuclear Disarmament” agreed upon at the 2010 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) Review Conference, however, the international community now sees greater transparency about nuclear weapon and fissile material stocks as necessary for enabling and monitoring progress toward nuclear disarmament. To support this effort, the International Panel on Fissile Materials has proposed a step-by-step program for weapon states to declare their inventories, production histories, and disposition of nuclear warheads and fissile materials, and to set up joint projects to develop methods for verifying these declarations. This openness initiative is described here, and could be adopted at the 2015 NPT Review Conference, laying a basis for negotiating verifiable deep reductions in nuclear arsenals and their eventual elimination.     

“Disarmament Market” Effects of Information Disclosures

In yet another wave of discussion on nuclear disarmament among political scientists and practitioners, one of the topical issues concerns the problem of transparency, its mechanisms, costs, and benefits. Numerous—though often abstract—calls for greater transparency of nuclear arsenals and postures when promoting the idea of nuclear disarmament, however, do not give a clear rationale for states possessing nuclear weapons to pursue greater transparency. Meanwhile, many other research fields—such as economics and psychology—attempt to address problems related to the lack of exact information on the counterpart's activities and intentions. Economics offers one probable analog for the transparency problem: the issue of information asymmetry and its consequences. This article is an attempt to apply the classical model of a market with information asymmetry to the analysis of the transparency problem within the nuclear disarmament process. Such an approach could help pave the way for closer cooperation between economic and political scientists in the nuclear disarmament field.     

LDO稳压器敏感度建模与仿真技术

基于LDO稳压器在电磁干扰（EMI）下产生直流偏移失效的机理分析,展开敏感度建模与仿真方法研究。使用一款实验芯片,创新地引入片上电压传感器,用于测试EMI在LDO稳压器内部的传播特性。在敏感度建模中,建立等效电路模型,通过直流功能测试,Z参数阻抗特性测试验证模型的正确性,将该模型用于LDO稳压器的敏感度预测。在敏感度仿真过程中,通过分析关键子电路和不断增加寄生元件,仿真不同寄生因素对敏感度影响的权重。将仿真结果与传导直接注入法（DPI）片上测试结果对比,仿真结果与DPI测试在频域1MHz至1GHz匹配。     

The partisan war in north-west Russia 1941–44: a re-examination

This article examines the extent to which the limited achievements of the Soviet partisan movement in north-west Russia during the first months of the Great Patriotic War can be attributed largely to inadequacies in the organisation, leadership, equipment and training of the movement as emphasised in Soviet and post-Soviet Russian published works. On the basis of Soviet archival sources the author concludes that while these factors were important, German occupation policies were far more effective in inhibiting partisan activity in the area concerned than existing published material would have us believe. However, these policies seem only to have been effective in the context of the German military successes or perceived successes at the front. The author goes on to examine factors contributing to the dramatic increase in Soviet partisan activity towards the end of the period of German occupation.     

MILITARY SPENDING AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN SOUTH ASIA: COMMENT AND RECONSIDERATION

In a recent paper in this journal, Wijewerra and Webb study the connection between military spending and gross domestic product (GDP) in a group of five South Asian countries, finding a small but statistically significant positive relationship between military spending and GDP. This paper reviews their approach and proposes an alternative which tries to deal with the problems of omitted variables and variable construction. It finds, in contrast, that a higher share of military spending in GDP is associated with lower growth of GDP per capita.