Merely ‘Docile Self-Deception’? German Experiences with Nuclear Consultation in NATO

ABSTRACT

Recent nuclear-weapons-related consultation in NATO within the framework of the Defence and Deterrence Posture Review sheds light on historical experiences with nuclear consultation in NATO. In the early years of the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG), which became the main forum for multilateral nuclear consultation in the alliance, developing a nuclear weapons first use doctrine was of particular importance. This process led to the adoption of the Provisional Political Guidelines (PPGs) on the threat to initiate the use of nuclear weapons. With a focus on West Germany as the primary addressee of the NPG, it will be postulated that nuclear consultation functioned and may still be seen as an essential tool to manage the credibility of US extended nuclear deterrence in the framework of NATO.     

Framing Political Violence: Success and Failure of Religious Mobilization in the Philippines and Thailand

How do religious civil wars evolve? Many violent conflicts are fought between groups of different faiths. The paper argues, however, that religious differences rarely directly lead to conflict onset. Rather, the apparent religious dimension of many civil wars is a consequence of successful religious framing. Political and military leaders offer religious interpretations designed to legitimize the use of force and to mobilize believers to violent action. Such framing processes can be more or less successful, depending inter alia on the authority of the political and religious leadership, on the coherence and appropriateness of the frames, on the existence of persuasive counter-frames, and on the availability of communication infrastructures that allow for effective dissemination of religious frames. Comparing violent conflicts in the Philippines and Thailand, the paper shows that religious mobilization can fail along the theoretically predicted lines.     

IN SEARCH OF THE AVERAGE TRANSNATIONAL TERRORIST ATTACK VENUE

In this paper we develop an empirical model for transnational terrorist activity for a panel consisting of 139 countries over the period 1985–1998. Essentially, we attempt to sketch the profile of the average terrorist attack venue. Our findings suggest that the terrorist attack venue is, on average, characterized by low economic openness, high demographic stress, and a high level of international disputes. Furthermore, we document a strong regional component suggesting the presence of infectious contagion on a spatial level. Our results also support the presence of addictive contagion captured by a strong autoregressive component in each country’s terrorist activity. Finally, we find a weak statistical link between the level of democracy and terrorist activity, although the level of democracy is a significant determinant of the potential under‐reporting bias of terrorist activity.     

GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME

Detect and Deter: Can Countries Verify the Nuclear Test Ban?, by Ola Dahlman, Jenifer Mackby, Svein Mykkeltveit, and Hein Haak. Springer, 2011. 279 pages, $129.     

Group testing procedures with quantitative features and incomplete identification

We present a group testing model for items characterized by marker random variables. An item is defined to be good (defective) if its marker is below (above) a given threshold. The items can be tested in groups; the goal is to obtain a prespecified number of good items by testing them in optimally sized groups. Besides this group size, the controller has to select a threshold value for the group marker sums, and the target number of groups which by the tests are classified to consist only of good items. These decision variables have to be chosen so as to minimize a cost function, which is a linear combination of the expected number of group tests and an expected penalty for missing the desired number of good items, subject to constraints on the probabilities of misclassifications. We treat two models of this kind: the first one is based on an infinite population size, whereas the second one deals with the case of a finite number of available items. All performance measures are derived in closed form; approximations are also given. Furthermore, we prove monotonicity properties of the components of the objective function and of the constraints. In several examples, we study (i) the dependence of the cost function on the decision variables and (ii) the dependence of the optimal values of the decision variables (group size, group marker threshold, and stopping rule for groups classified as clean) and of the target functionals (optimal expected number of tests, optimal expected penalty, and minimal expected cost) on the system parameters.© 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2011     

Consociationalism for Weaklings,Autocracy for Muscle Men? Determinants of Constitutional Reform in Divided Societies

Why have some countries adopted consociational constitutions after civil wars, while others have not? This contribution analyses the advent of constitutional provisions and their rationale in the five deeply divided societies that adopted the most ‘radical’ constitutional reforms in 2001–10 (Burundi, Comoros, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nepal and Sudan). In places where norm-diffusing external actors played a major role in ending an intra-state war, constitutional change was particularly profound. It appears that strong outside mediators have followed a blueprint approach to constitutional engineering in post-war societies with power sharing as a guiding principle, more often than not of the consociational type. There is reason to believe that the strong outside involvement in turn depends on a relative weak bargaining position of sitting governments.     

Clausewitz’s Concept of Strategy – Balancing Purpose,Aims and Means

The task of coming to a proper appreciation of Clausewitz’s thoughts on war is to combine a hierarchical structure with that of a floating balance. This article examines the relation of purpose, aims and means in Clausewitz’s theory and highlights that this relation is methodologically comparable to the floating balance of Clausewitz’s trinity. Modern strategic thinking is characterised by the ‘ends, ways, means relationship’ and the concept of the ‘way’ as shortest possible direct connection between ends and means. If strategy is nothing else than the direct way of linking the political purpose with the means, understood as combat, this understandings results in ‘battle-centric’ warfare. My thesis is that the aim (goal, way) in warfare is not a direct link between purpose and means, but rather an indirect, intermediary dimension, a mediation (in Hegelian terms) between purpose and aims with its own grammar. This article distinguishes (sometimes going beyond Clausewitz) between the rationality of the whole process of war, the rationality of the separate aspects of purpose, aims and means in warfare and finally their conflicting tendencies. This article highlights Clausewitz’s different concepts of purpose and aims and tries to shed at least some light of the strategic implications of this difference. This interpretation of Clausewitz leads to the definition of strategy as maintaining a floating balance of purpose, aims and means in warfare.