Deterrence Beyond Downunder: Australia and US Security Guarantees since 1955

ABSTRACT

From 1944 to 1973 Australia attempted to acquire atomic weaponry. This ambition was driven by the desire to contribute to defending British interests in Asia, fears of invasion by China, Indonesia, and Japan, great-power war, and the belief that nuclear weapons were merely bigger and better conventional weapons, that they would proliferate, and that US security assurances lacked credibility. Although the pursuit of the bomb was eventually abandoned, this was not the result of US assurances. Rather, geopolitical changes in Australia’s environment meant that a major attack on the continent was unlikely to occur outside the context of a confrontation between the US, China, and the Soviet Union. This article argues that Australia may soon have to rethink its policies towards US extended deterrence and instead focus on developing its own deterrent.     

The lobbies’ network at the EU policy level: the case of security and defense

Lobbyists may not share the same interests, but they usually agree to form a link in a network which could eventually be used to spread information, to search for potential partners, to speak with one voice to decision makers. In other words, social links represent value for lobbyists because they may ultimately facilitate access. In this article, we explore the network of the Security and Defense lobbies in the EU and we describe its structure.     

Growth recovery after civil conflict: a fractional integration approach

Using recent econometric techniques based on fractional integration, we find that developing countries recover their economic growth faster than developed countries in response to a shock. Following this methodology, we find that longer civil conflicts are associated with a faster recovery process. We further investigate this issue by exploring correlations with components of GDP, military spending, institutions and aid and find heterogeneous effects of these channels by duration of conflict. Higher government spending is correlated with faster recoveries post longer conflicts, and higher consumption spending is linked to faster recoveries following shorter conflicts. Military spending appears to be driving the government expenditure that makes countries recover from longer conflicts. More democratic institutions are associated with faster recoveries post short wars but slower recoveries following long wars.     

Landmarks in defense literature

The Cavalry Goes Through. By Bernard Newman. Henry Holt, New York (1930)     

Book reviews

Red Banner: the Soviet Military System in Peace and War. By Christopher Donnelly. Jane's Information Group, Coulsdon, UK (1988), 288 pp., £35.00

Images of T. E. Lawrence. By S. E. Tabachnick and C. Matheson. Jonathan Cape, London (1988); The Letters of T. E. Lawrence. Edited by Malcolm Brown. Dent, London (1988); T. E. Lawrence. By J. Wilson. National Portrait Gallery Publications, London (1988); Lawrence and the Arab Revolts. By D. Nicolle. Osprey, London (1989)

Liddell Hart and the Weight of History. By John Mearsheimer. Brassey's, London (1989), £15.95

Science and Mythology in the Making of Defence Policy. Edited by Margaret Blunden and Owen Greene. Brassey's, London (1989), £27.50/$44.00

Warfare in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Colin McInnes and G. D. Sheffield. Unwin Hyman, London (1988), 239 pp., £25.00     

Closure properties of the relevation transform*

Sufficient conditions under which the relevation of two probability distributions is (i) NBU, (ii) IFRA, (iii) IFR are derived. The result for case (iii) corrects an error in a previous article by Baxter.     

Aggregating assignment constraints

This article shows how simple systems of linear equations with {0,1} variables can be aggregated into a single linear equation whose {0,1} solutions are identical to the solutions of the original system. Structures of the original systems are exploited to keep the aggregator's integer coefficients from becoming unnecessarily large. The results have potential application in integer programming and information theory, especially for problems that contain assignment-type constraints along with other constraints. Several unresolved questions of a number-theoretic nature are mentioned at the conclusion of the article.     

On finding spanning eulerian subgraphs

In this article, we examine the problem of producing a spanning Eulerian subgraph in an undirected graph. After the ?-completeness of the general problem is established, we present polynomial-time algorithms for both the maximization and minimization versions where instances are defined on a restricted class of graphs referred to as series-parallel. Some novelties in the minimization case are discussed, as are heuristic ideas.