Bush path to self-destruction: Charles Taylor and the Revolutionary United Front

This article explains the demise of Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebellion. It argues that the main cause of this fate was the group's relationship with its primary sponsor, Charles Taylor. The RUF's dependency on Taylor's patronage, coupled with the rebellion's weak organisational endowments harmed the group's prospects of success. Based on original research, the article shows how Taylor used the RUF as a strategic instrument for his own regional interests, which led to the group's unravelling. More broadly, the article speaks about proxy warfare in Africa and how the relationship between resource flows and rebellion are not always beneficial to rebels as one might expect.     

一种提高应用层组播转发速率的机制

针对应用层组播报文转发的特点,提出了一种能够提高应用层组播转发速率的新机制.该机制降低了应用层组播报文从主机内存到网卡缓冲区之间数据复制的次数,节省了CPU处理开销.理论分析表明该机制能够降低应用层组播延迟和提高应用层组播转发速率.实验验证了该机制的可行性与有效性.     

适用于云计算的多接收方代理重加密方案

在云计算环境下,绝大多数信息处理和存储都被转移到云中心,用户终端的计算和存储能力将逐渐弱化。本文针对这一趋势,提出一种适用于云计算的多接收方代理重加密方案,充分利用云中心的分布式计算能力,使用随机数重用和密文聚合技术,大大降低了计算和传输负担,实验表明本方案具有较高的效率。     

代理型防火墙Cache策略的研究与实现

在代理型防火墙中设置Cache,可以有效地减少响应延迟和降低网络带宽。对Cache实现中的信息过滤规则、过期页面处理和替换算法几个关键技术进行了深入研究,并提出了一种基于防火墙日志系统开销极小的Cache管理策略。     

基于StarBus的对象事务服务的设计与实现

在分布式计算环境中，对象事务服务（ＯｂｊｅｃｔＴｒａｎｓａｃｔｉｏｎＳｅｒｖｉｃｅ简称ＯＴＳ）对于提高分布式系统的开发效率具有重要意义。设计与实现一个高效的对象事务服务的关键在于克服网络阻塞的问题，本文着眼于一种基于面向对象传值语义的设计方法，可以有效地减少网络阻塞，适合于企业级应用。     

基于TCP Veno算法的异构网络边界代理改进机制研究

针对在异构网络环境下无线网络的特点使TCP性能下降的问题,借鉴TCP Veno算法原理,提出基于网络状况评估的拥塞控制的性能增强代理改进工作机制,动态评估当前网络的状况,调整预应答发送窗口的阈值,提高性能增强代理在较大差异网络下的传输控制效能．基于NS-2的网络仿真测试对算法进行了验证,结果显示改进后的工作机制在丢包率较大的异构网络中性能有明显提升．     

Brinkmanship,not COIN,in Pakistan’s post-9/11 Internal War

Politics is critical to making sense of Pakistani successes and failures in dealing with non-state armed groups. This includes domestic political currents; regional political currents; and the global impetus of the post-9/11 era. How these currents overlap renders to any reading of insurgency in Pakistan real complexity. This article engages with this complexity rather than shirking from it. Its hypothesis is that while the insurgency bordering Afghanistan has been an epicentre of Pakistani military efforts to fight the Taliban, this theatre is in of itself insufficiently inclusive to grasp the nature of Pakistan’s security challenges and its consequent responses.     

Life in the “Gray Zone”: observations for contemporary strategists

The term “Gray Zone” is gaining in popularity as a way of describing contemporary security challenges. This article describes the “short-of-war” strategies – the fait accompli, proxy warfare, and the exploitation of ambiguous deterrence situations, i.e. “salami tactics” – that are captured by the term and offers several explanations for why state and non-state actors are drawn to these strategies. The analysis highlights why defense postures based on deterrence are especially vulnerable to the short-of-war strategies that populate the “Gray Zone.” The article concludes by suggesting how defense officials might adapt defense policies to life in the “Gray Zone.”     

African nations as proxies in covert cyber operations

The growth of the African Internet, and services related to the Internet, has been rapid over the last decade. Following this market expansion, a variety of service providers have started to provide access. A fast-growing market puts pressure on the providers to deliver services first and only then seek to secure the networks. Over time, industrialised nations have become more able to detect and trace cyber attacks against their networks. These tracking features are constantly developing and the precision in determining the origin of an attack is increasing. A state-sponsored cyber attacker, such as intelligence agencies and electronic warfare units, will seek to avoid detection, especially when the attacks are politically sensitive intelligence-gathering and intrusion forays into foreign states' networks. One way for the attacker to create a path that links the attacks and the originating country is by actions through a proxy. The less technologically mature developing nations offer an opportunity for cyber aggression due to their lower level of security under the quick expansion of the Internet-based market. Developing countries could be used as proxies, without their knowledge and consent, through the unauthorised usage of these countries' information systems in an attempt to attack a third country by a state-sponsored offensive cyber operation. If the purpose of the cyber attack is to destabilise a targeted society and the attack succeeds, the used proxies are likely to face consequences in their relations with foreign countries, even if the proxy was unaware of the covert activity.     

Syria and the perils of proxy warfare

The ongoing civil war in Syria is evolving into a ‘proxy war’, in which both the Baathist regime and its insurgent adversaries are becoming increasingly reliant upon support from external powers. Proxy warfare has a superficial appeal for sponsoring states, as it appears to offer a convenient and risk-free means of fulfilling foreign policy goals, which will not incur the financial and human costs of direct military intervention. Using Syria as a case study, this article shows that the conduct of proxy warfare has several potential political, strategic, and ethical consequences, which any democratic government in particular is obliged to consider before it resorts to this indirect means of foreign intervention.