“Flectas non frangas”: revisiting early twenty-first century UK–US defense relations (2000–2005) after five years

Adopting the analytical framework of the established interpretive “schools” of Anglo-American relations, this article offers several reflections on UK–US defense relations as they occurred over the significant years of 2000–2005. During those years, trajectories were established on which UK–US defense relations continue to travel today and outcomes emerged which are still being navigated. This article concludes that the Latin phrase, “Flectas Non Frangas” (essentially translated as: “Bend not Break”), is the most appropriate to adopt to characterize the developments undergone in recent UK–US defense relations. Many historical and strategic lessons with contemporary relevance are drawn.     

Bridging the Gap: Mobilisation Constraints and Contractor Support to US and UK Military Operations

The increasing use of private military and security companies (PMSCs) has attracted considerable scholarly attention due to its corrosive effects on US democracy. Drawing on neoclassical realism, this article provides a comparative dimension to the study of the political drivers of military privatisation by analysing contractor support to US and UK operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Domestic political constraints have shaped both US and UK response to the need for more boots on the ground, increasing the propensity to use contractors as a force multiplier in spite of their problematic impact on military effectiveness.     

英国主要大学学科建设的借鉴与思考

在考察英国5所大学材料科学与工程学科建设情况的基础上,介绍了英国主要大学的办学特点和学科建设特点,并对我院2110重点学科的建设提出了建议。     

Intelligence and military doctrine: paradox or oxymoron?

This article examines the evolution of the current British military joint intelligence doctrine. We argue that military intelligence doctrine is dogged by an intrinsic tension between the ethos and expectations of military doctrine and those of the professional practice of intelligence. We further argue not only that prior iterations of UK joint intelligence doctrine failed to effectively deal with this intelligence doctrine dilemma, but also that measures in the current doctrine to address this problem directly created their own problems. Moreover, as a result, otherwise sound innovations in the current UK intelligence doctrine have proven unsuitable to wider diffusion in more recent intelligence doctrine such as the new NATO intelligence doctrine which, otherwise, draws extensively on its British precursor.     

The UK,interrogation and Iraq, 2003–2008

The UK’s interrogation operations during the conflict in Iraq (2003–2008) are often portrayed by the media as involving significant amounts of mistreatment. This article demonstrates that these practices are not necessarily representative of the UK’s interrogation operations across this conflict. In doing so it contributes to the limited literature on the practice of interrogation and on the UK’s combat operations in Iraq. The UK’s interrogation capability, and therefore its intelligence-gathering capability, is shown to have rested primarily with the military’s Joint Forward Interrogation Team (JFIT). The JFIT suffered from limitations to the number, training and experience of its interrogators and interpreters. It is argued that maintaining a permanent, higher level of preparedness for interrogation by the British armed forces is desirable.     

‘I have seen the future and it works’: The US defence industry transformation – lessons for the UK defence industrial base

The US has embarked upon a major transformation of its approach to defence industrial base planning. Although bureaucratic and industrial inertia, as well as budgetary constraints, may delay transformation, its effects will lead to radical changes in the US defence industrial base with new entrants and new combinations of players. The UK, with more modest defence ambitions, capabilities and budget, will seek to keep in touch with the US. However, a commercially‐led drive to embed UK industry even more deeply in the US defence market could be the last step in creating a largely US–UK North Atlantic relationship, with much of Europe very much a subsidiary business concern. This contains a risk that the UK will become increasingly dependent on the US for design and integration of major systems and national defence industrial capability focused on a limited number of niche technologies.     

Defence and firm performance in the UK

The UK Ministry of Defence is British industry's largest single customer and a number of firms and industries are highly dependent on defence sales. Various hypotheses have been proposed about the impact of defence procurement on firms and these are investigated using four performance indicators: financial structure, investment, productivity and profitability. With regard to the borrowing ratio, capital investment and the rate of return, there is no statistically significant difference between the mean financial ratios for low and high dependence firms. However, non‐dependents appear to have a higher level and rate of growth of labour productivity than dependents.     

Estimated UK employment dependent on ministry of defence expenditure and defence exports

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) has published estimates of the number of average full‐time UK industry employees dependent on MOD expenditure and defence exports for a number of years. This paper provides the outcome of a recent review of the process used. The method of deriving MOD and defence export final demand vectors, and calculating from these estimates of direct employment (i.e. that in supplying companies) and indirect employment (i.e. that incurred through the supply chain) are described. Difficulties with the data are explored. Alternative approaches, methods used in other countries and challenges posed by changing MOD administrative systems are briefly discussed.     

Chains,networks and shifting paradigms: the UK defence industry supply system

Industrial supply chains have emerged as the focus of much economic and business research over the previous decade and defence is no exception. This paper reviews contributions made to the body of knowledge in this field with particular attention given to primary research undertaken on the UK defence industrial supply system. In doing so, the author assesses the quantity and quality of knowledge available to researchers, analysts and policy makers. There have been a number of valuable contributions to the literature and this paper reveals a subject that is extremely complicated, dynamic and yet under‐researched. It is suggested that it may well be this complexity and dynamism, coupled with difficulty in accessing data, that has inhibited research development in this field. Defence industry supply systems are repeatedly referred to as ‘chains’; however, primary research consistently suggests this is a misnomer – the author concludes that future analysis of the UK defence sector must embrace directly the economics of networks if understanding of the same is to progress and industrial ‘invisibility’ is to be avoided.     

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT: TRENDS IN COST AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR UK AEROSPACE

This paper, intended to stimulate debate, suggests that we are at a turning point in the history of the UK military aerospace industry. It argues that there is urgent need for a fresh vision as to how the UK military aerospace industry can both prosper and make its maximum contribution to the defence of Britain. Further, the resulting plans and policies must emphasise the robustness of defence capabilities in a future in which the only thing we can be certain is that it will be very different from the present – especially whenever defence most matters.     

MODELLING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DEFENSE SPENDING AND ECONOMIC GROWTH FOR THE FIJI ISLANDS

The goal of this paper is to examine the nexus between GDP and military expenditure. We model this relationship within a multivariate framework by including exports in the model. We use the recently developed bounds testing approach to cointegration and find that there is a long run relationship among the variables when GDP is the endogenous variable. Normalizing on GDP and using four different estimators, we find that in the long run both military expenditure and exports have a positive impact on GDP. Finally, using the Granger causality test, we find that there is evidence for military expenditure Granger causing exports and exports Granger causing GDP, implying that military expenditure indirectly Granger causes GDP in the short run. In the long run, we find that both military expenditure and exports Granger cause GDP for Fiji. Our findings are consistent with the Keynesian school of thought, leading us to derive some policy implications.     

THE CASE FOR DEFENCE

What is the case for defence and is it a worthwhile investment? This question is addressed for two contrasting nations, namely, the UK and New Zealand. Economists have a set of standard analytical tools for addressing the question but they are difficult to operationalise. This paper provides policy‐relevant answers.     

Reserve forces and the transformation of British military organisation: soldiers,citizens and society

In recent years, there has been a sharp growth in political and sociological interest in the British military. Set against the backdrop of the armed forces’ increasing presence in everyday life, alongside the organizations’ ongoing restructuring, the current paper focuses on the MoD’s problematic attempts to recruit 30,000 reservists by 2020; what has become known as the Future Reserves 2020 programme (FR2020). We argue that these changes are driven in part by the need to cut costs in defence. However, we also suggest that they are a reflection of the changing nature of modern military organisation, and the manner in which armed forces engage with the societies of which they are a part, and with the citizens that make up that society. We locate FR2020 programme in the context of a wider narrative about the changing nature of military organisation in contemporary western democracies, identifying structural, circumstantial and normative reasons for change. We also examine the specific challenges of implementing FR2020 in practice, including issues of recruitment and retention, integration and support, and relations with families and employers, drawing on the experience of comparator countries to do so. We conclude by considering the implications of these changes, both for the future of UK armed forces, and for the evolving nature of military-society relations in Britain.     

The underlying causes of military outsourcing in the USA and UK: bridging the persistent gap between ends,ways and means since the beginning of the Cold War

This article reappraises the two most-studied country cases of military outsourcing: the USA and the UK. It argues that the contemporary wave of military contracting stretches back to the beginning of the cold war and not only to the demobilisation of armies in the 1990s or the neoliberal reforms introduced since the 1980s. It traces the political, technological and ideational developments that laid the groundwork for these reforms and practices since the early cold war and account for its endurance today. Importantly, it argues that a persistent gap between strategic objectives and resources, i.e. the challenge to reconcile ends and means, is an underlying driver of military contracting in both countries. Contemporary contracting is thus most closely tied to military support functions in support of wider foreign and defence political objectives. Security services in either state may not have been outsourced so swiftly, if at all, without decades of experience in outsourcing military logistics functions and the resultant vehicles, processes and familiarities with public-private partnerships. The article thus provides a wider and deeper understanding of the drivers of contractualisation, thereby improving our understanding of both its historical trajectory and the determinants of its present and potential futures.     

French Arms Exports and Intrastate Conflicts: An Empirical Investigation

The aim of this article is to evaluate how French Major Conventional Weapons (MCW) exports impact on the conflict intensity of recipient countries. The recent increase in French arms exports seems to contradict the French political discourse on the promotion of regional stability. We run zero-inflated ordered probit model in order to analyze the role of the arms trade on the intensity of civil conflicts in 144 countries from 1992 to 2014, using SIPRI and UCDP/PRIO data. Our results suggest that French MCW exports tended not to exacerbate intrastate conflicts during this period. This finding is robust to changes in the empirical framework. We propose two lines of explanations: France seems to be prone to choosing partners that respect human rights and selling more ‘defense-oriented’ MCW than the rest of the world.     

REFASHIONING AUSTRALIA'S NUCLEAR BARGAIN?

This article explores the challenges that Australia faces in reconciling its commitments to nonproliferation and uranium exports during a time when the international nuclear nonproliferation regime is under major stress and the world uranium market is bullish. The “grand bargain” that has framed Australian participation in the nonproliferation regime and the nuclear fuel market since the 1970s was only tenable in an era of stagnant uranium demand and a stable nuclear balance. However, contemporary nuclear proliferation dynamics and the revival of interest in nuclear energy have accentuated the incompatibility between Australia's commitment to nonproliferation and the desire to profit from uranium exports. The contemporary international strategic environment, international nonproliferation regime, and nuclear energy market are characterized by developments that not only undermine the basis of Australia's grand bargain, but also present challenges and opportunities for the refashioning of Australian policy.     

The economic effects of international trade in armaments in the major western industrialized and developing countries†

We have used the Michigan Model of World Production and Trade to assess the impact of exports and imports of armaments (based on 1980 data) on sectoral trade and employment and other economic variables in the major Western trading countries. If the United States were to place a unilateral embargo on its arms exports and imports, we calculate that it would experience a comparatively small amount of employment displacement in the aggregate and that most of this displacement would occur in the transport equipment and electric machinery sectors. If all the major Western countries were to place a multilateral embargo on their arms trade, the sectoral effects on the United States would be similarly small. But the sectoral effects in several other industrialized and developing countries measured as a percentage of sectoral employment, would be larger, indicating potential short‐run adjustment problems in labor markets in some cases.     

The Determinants of Arms Production

This study analyzes the determinants of arms production in 15 countries using annual panel data from 1997 to 2002. The results suggest that real GDP per capita, military expenditures, arms exports, and arms imports are positively related to arms production.     

Basra's not Belfast: the British Army, ‘Small Wars’ and Iraq

This article examines British Army operations in Iraq. It focuses on the causes of the army's apparent failure to live up to its reputation for the conduct of small wars. The paper discusses the British experience of small wars in the context of Iraq, the influence of doctrine and strategy, and the political and moral factors that shaped the army's performance. The paper's conclusions suggest that the Iraq War may cause a significant reappraisal, not just of military doctrine and strategy, but also of Britain's role in future small wars.     

A PANEL DATA ANALYSIS OF THE NEXUS BETWEEN DEFENCE SPENDING AND GROWTH IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: A COMMENT

Abstract

This paper explains and assesses the UK experience with determining prices and profitability for non-competitive defence contracts. Three periods are considered, namely pre-1968, the 1968 Profit Formula Agreement and the changes introduced in 2014. Two cases of ‘excessive’ profits were major determinants of the 1968 Profit Formula Agreement; but continued dissatisfaction with the 1968 Agreement led to changes in 2014. The historical overview of UK experience provides a basis for understanding current UK policy and offers insights for other countries facing similar policy challenges. A critique is presented of UK policy on single source pricing and profitability.