The Iranian nuclear dilemma: light at the end of the tunnel?

In February 2012, Iran announced its willingness to resume negotiations with the Western powers. This statement followed in the wake of a damning report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors and the imposition of additional sanctions by the international community on an Iranian economy already under pressure. Tehran's announcement also coincided with increased speculation regarding an Israeli military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. At the same time, however, this seemingly positive step appeared to be undermined by Iran's concomitant announcement that “huge” technical progress has been made on Iran's nuclear programme. This article will explore the significance of the recent political, diplomatic and technical developments in the Iranian nuclear affair and situate them in the broader context of Tehran's nuclear strategy. The analysis will assess the potential for this latest phase in the Iranian nuclear crisis to reverse Iran's current trajectory and initiate a rapprochement between Iran and Western powers.     

The subversion of the Bulgarian defence system – the Russian way

Russia has long been pursuing an intended and calculated policy of keeping enough influence in Bulgaria in order to have control over national decisions. Together with the economic, energy, political and information tools used by Russia in its hybrid war against Bulgaria and in its bid to achieve an enduring “state capture,” defence is also a distinct target of Russian subversion now. A list of noticeable subversive actions with tangible effects can be summarised, ranging from fuelling division and manipulating public opinion, preventing the strengthening of the NATO position in the Black Sea, sabotaging defence reform to various options of subverting the modernisation of the Bulgarian Armed Forces and seeking new ways to keep legacy Soviet military equipment in operation as long as possible. This issue must be urgently addressed both nationally and in NATO.     

The rising unit cost of defence equipment — The reasons and the results

This paper constructs a conceptual model for the selection of defence equipment providing best value for money. It then shows how the unit cost of the chosen equipment increases between one generation of equipment and its successor because of developments in the perceived threat, the available technology and industrial productivity, and demonstrates that unit cost increases can arise from a logical and rational procurement policy and are not necessarily caused by technological chimeras and military vainglory. The resulting persistent rise in unit cost is unlikely to be significantly slowed by any of the counter‐measures yet proposed.

The paper then discusses the policies which nations have adopted to accommodate past increases in unit cost, and the options which confront any nation at the point when it can no longer afford to re‐equip a particular element of its armed forces.     

The practice and theory of British counterinsurgency: the histories of the atrocities at the Palestinian villages of al-Bassa and Halhul, 1938–1939

This article details two largely unreported atrocities by British forces operating against Arab rebels during the Arab revolt, 1936–9, at the Palestinian villages of al-Bassa and Halhul. It then examines the military-legal system that underpinned and authorised British military forces operating in aid of the civil power, suggesting that the law in place at the time allowed for a level of reprisals and punitive actions, such as happened at al-Bassa and Halhul. The article does not conclude that the law allowed for atrocities but it does argue that it gave a basic form and understanding to an operational method that was brutal and could lead to atrocities. It thus tests the idea in much of the literature on counterinsurgency that the British were restrained and used minimum force when compared to other colonial and neo-colonial powers fighting insurgents.     

Britain's Great Security Mirage: The Royal Navy and the Franco-Russian Naval Threat, 1898–1906

This article focuses on the relationship between the threat perception analyses of the British Admiralty and the strategic orientation of the Royal Navy at the outset of the twentieth century. The current view is that this was an era when fear of France and Russia drove British naval policy. However, as this article will show, Britain's Naval Intelligence Department formed a low opinion of French and Russian naval capabilities at this time and this negative evaluation exerted considerable influence over decision making. The belief that, owing to multiple qualitative deficiencies, these powers could definitely be beaten in battle lessened the standing of the Franco-Russian naval challenge and freed the Admiralty to consider the danger posed by other possible enemies, most notably Germany.     

The Telefunken Affairand the internationalisation of the Algerian War, 1957–59

Between 1957 and 1959 the West German company Telefunken and the Bonn government became prime targets in the French army's campaign against the Front de Libération Nationale's (FLN) efforts to establish communications networks. To the French military, the prevention of sales of Telefunken equipment to the FLN or its allies constituted a matter of strategic importance. To the Germans, it was an act of economic protectionism that exposed France's continued misgivings of Germany. The problem exerted a considerable strain between Paris and Bonn, and even threatened to harm German-Arab relations. The Telefunken affair thus highlights the Algerian war's international ramifications. It further reveals the responsibility of the French military in the internationalisation of that war.     

Professionalization and suicidal defence planning by the Irish army, 1921–1941

Recently declassified war plans reveal the Irish Army preparing a conventional defence against expected British invasion in 1940–41. Irish Army planners realized such a defence would have been suicidal in the face of overwhelming British military superiority, yet they rejected the obvious alternative of preparing a defence which incorporated their operational experience of guerrilla warfare from the Anglo‐Irish War of 1919–21. This was because in building a professional organization in the 1920s and 1930s, Army leaders formed beliefs about military professionalism by imitating the British Army. This, in turn, led them to believe that guerrilla warfare was not the business of professional armies.     

India–Africa defence cooperation against the backdrop of the ‘Make in India’ initiative

Although India is a major importer of defence equipment, it has also been manufacturing defence equipment for some of its needs. The Government of India’s ambitious ‘Make in India’ initiative for the defence sector aims to achieve self reliance in defence equipment production. This essay explores the opportunities for bilateral arms trade between India and Africa, as a new facet of India-Africa defence cooperation. It covers India’s arms export policy, policy reforms in India’s defence sector, and the opportunities for Indian and African defence markets.     

The rationalisation of warship building in the United Kingdom, 1945–2000

After the Second World War the Admiralty and shipbuilding industry agreed that the largest possible capacity for warship building should be maintained. This proved impossible as the Royal Navy struggled to evoke a strategy in the nuclear era and the price of increasingly complex vessels rose remorselessly. As the shipbuilding industry wilted in the 1960s in the face of international competition a process of natural selection was followed by increasing political intervention in the industry. Nationalisation in the 1970s aimed to preserve capacity and employment, policy aims which were reversed by privatisation in the 1980s and which, ultimately resulted in an oligopoly in the warship building sector.     

The British government and the end of French Algeria, 1958–62

Unlike France, Britain viewed the Algerian conflict from 1958 to 1962 primarily as a colonial war. The British government regarded Algérie française as an anachronism, which France would have to relinquish one day. Though Britain was no stranger to ‘dirty’ colonial wars, as simultaneous operations against EOKA nationalists in Cyprus continued to prove, it was not averse to displaying a certain smugness at having averted the kind of mess Algeria seemed to represent. Britain's interest in the latter stages of the Algerian conflict centred on four major areas: Perceptions of colonial warfare; de Gaulle's Algeria policy; Algeria and Britain's view of France in Europe and NATO; Negotiating the ceasefire and ending the conflict.     

The sources of the Australian tradition in irregular warfare, 1942–1974

This article had its genesis in a background study for the development of a new Australian Army counter-insurgency doctrine. Archival research showed that the Australian counter-insurgency doctrine employed in such post-1945 conflicts as Burma, Malaya, Borneo and Vietnam originated in the jungle campaigns of the South West Pacific Area during World War II. The historical record also showed that the Army's counter-insurgency doctrine, as with its World War II-jungle warfare doctrine, was a pragmatic amalgam of Australian experience and British doctrine. The article traces this process through the development of a series of doctrine manuals. It also considers the contribution of key individuals to both counter-insurgency theory and practice. This distinctively Australian approach to the development of doctrine was responsible for producing a highly successful manual, The Division in Battle: Pamphlet No. 11, Counter-Revolutionary Warfare (DIB 11), which the Army used during its involvement in Vietnam.     

A view from Berlin: Colonel Frederick trench and the development of British perceptions of German aggressive intent, 1906–1910

This essay traces the image of Germany that emerges from the reports of Colonel Frederick Trench (1857–1942), British military attache in Berlin from 1906 to 1910. At this time, the British Army possessed only the most limited intelligence‐gathering apparatus and had to rely heavily on the reports of military attaches for information about their continental rivals. Trench, who believed that Germany planned to wage war against Britain and said so categorically in his reports, was the main source of data on the German Army. From the limited surviving records of who read these reports and how they responded to them, this essay posits that Trench's views contributed to the growing British perception of a German threat, a perception that did much to influence British strategic planning in this period.     

Conflict,technology, and the impact of industrialization: The Great War 1914–18

In major respects, World War I appeared markedly unlike even quite recent wars. What, by and large, caused the difference was not quality of command or changing morale. It was industrial mobilisation and technological advancement. The emergence of new weapons, and of new methods of producing them in volume and at speed, played a crucial role in changing the nature of war.

Certainly, the peculiar qualities of the Great War of 1914–18 were not determined solely by technology. Quite other factors, such as the profundity of the issues at stake ('This war is life and death'), and the relative equality in resources and determination between the principal rivals, also profoundly influenced the nature of the conflict. Yet in delineating the dominant aspects of that struggle, the contribution made by industrialization and technology and a culture of inventiveness must loom large.

Admittedly, in some respects, the transformation of weaponry under the impact of industrialisation did not necessarily produce a new kind of war. The battleship of 1914 was hugely unlike the battleship of 1805, yet the Great War at sea was not strikingly different from the naval war against Napoleon. War in the air was an entirely new phenomenon, yet the aircraft had not reached a state of development where it could fundamentally alter the face of battle.

But in the case of the land war, new weapons and new volumes of weaponry did indeed make a vast difference to the nature and consequence of military operations. In large measure they generated the features by which this struggle is best remembered: stalemate, immobility, great battles of attrition, and ‘futility’.     

The British occupation of Mesopotamia, 1914–1922

During World War I the military campaign in Mesopotamia placed enormous demands on local man- and animal power to provide the logistical resources vital to its conduct. This required the British civil and military authorities to construct a wartime state apparatus that filled the administrative vacuum left by the retreating Ottomans and made possible its downward penetration and mobilisation of local resources for the war effort. This article examines the interaction of politics and logistics in Mesopotamia and views the enhanced wartime levels of resource extraction in light of the British attempts to codify their presence in the country after 1918 and the nationalist backlash that resulted.