Hizbullah’s Shaping Lebanon Statehood

Abstract

Since the end of the civil war in 1990, the Lebanese second Republic has experienced a dual security governance in the southern borderland region. Up to the Syrian military withdrawal in 2005, the territorial and functional ‘areas of limited statehood’ between the State and Hizbullah worked as a cooperation. After the Syrian withdrawal, various forms of cooperation appeared, raising the theoretical interest for the ‘mediated state’ framework. It is conceptualizing the cooperation between the state and the non-state actor as an interdependency – with case study ranging from the marking of the Blue Line to the struggle against the jihadists groups.     

The FARC’s militaristic blueprint

This article intends to explain the outstanding sequence of success and failure exhibited by the FARC, the main Colombian guerrilla since the 1980s. It claims that such sequence is unintelligible unless the adoption by the FARC of a militaristic organizational blueprint at its 1982 7^th Conference is taken into account. By building itself like an army, the FARC could boost its combat capacity, maintain its structural integrity, and develop powerful mechanisms that held the whole structure together. At the same time, the militarization of the FARC also entailed significant risks and costs like political isolation and high personnel turnover. After describing the militaristic blueprint, the article compares the FARC with other irregular forces that operated in the Colombian context – a comparison which is important to understand the specificity of the FARC trajectory, as well as the benefits and costs involved in it. The analysis highlights the critical role of organizational dimensions in the explanation of civil war outcomes, and suggests that at least for some problems organizational dynamics should be observed at a low level of granularity.     

Reforming China’s defense industry

ABSTRACT

Even with sizable economic inputs, access to foreign technologies, and considerable political will, China, up until the late 1990s, experienced only limited success when it came to the local design, development, and manufacture of advanced conventional weapons. Not surprisingly, therefore, reforming the local defense industry in order to upgrade its technology base and manufacturing capabilities and to make armaments production more efficient and cost-effective has long preoccupied the Chinese leadership. The fact that most of these efforts had little positive impact on the country’s military technological and industrial capabilities only encouraged Beijing to experiment with additional reforms in the hopes of finally getting it right.     

Countering insurgency: Turkey’s policy toward the PKK’s transnational dynamics in Europe

Insurgents often develop international connections and benefit from external assistance from a variety of sources. Support from diaspora communities has long been considered one of the critical external factors in the persistence of insurgent groups. Yet how the counterinsurgent state addresses external support from transnational ethnic communities and what factors influence the state's policies remain understudied. By focusing on the transnational political practices of the Kurdish community and the PKK in Western Europe, this paper examines how Turkey has addressed the diasporic support for the PKK since the 1980s. It shows that three major factors – the composition of foreign policy decision-makers, their ideological contestation over the Kurdish question, and the European political context – have affected Turkey's policy regarding the PKK's transnational dynamics in Europe.     

The People’s Liberation Army and China’s Smart Power Quandary in Southeast Asia

Abstract

China has a strong interest in pursuing a smart power strategy towards Southeast Asia and has worked laboriously to engage with regional countries economically, socially, and politically. But China has been only partially successful in achieving its goals in the region. This paper argues that China’s security policy towards Southeast Asia significantly contradicts many other objectives that Beijing wishes to accomplish. Given the deep-seated, narrowly-defined national interests of the Chinese military in the South China Sea disputes, it is likely that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will continue to pose the main obstacle to the effective implementation of a Chinese smart strategy in Southeast Asia.     

The Zimbabwe people’s revolutionary army military operations in Makonde district and the attack on Salisbury’s fuel storage tanks, 1965-1979

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army operations in Mashonaland West province with particular reference to Makonde District during the country’s war of liberation. Despite the growing literature on ZAPU and ZPRA in Zimbabwe’s war of liberation there is little that has been written concerning the operations of ZPRA guerrillas in Mashonaland provinces. Guided by evidence drawn from secondary and primary sources the article further asserts that ZPRA adopted a four pronged strategy in Makonde District. This strategy in part was hinged on the politicization of the population on the one hand and annihilation of the enemy forces, attrition and manoeuvre warfare on the other. Again, the article argues that ZPRA guerrillas attempted to capture Salisbury (Harare) in order to conquer the Rhodesian Security Forces’ centre of gravity. It was hoped that the capture of the capital city would Makoni District was of strategic significance to the conduct of ZPRA operations and arguably hastened Ian Smith’s decision to attend the Lancaster House Conference negotiations that led to the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980.     

China’s Search for a ‘Strategic Air Force’

Once dismissed by many outside observers, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) has undergone an impressive transformation over the past two decades, emerging as one of the world’s premier air forces. As it continues to modernize, it is focused on becoming a ‘strategic air force.’ PLAAF strategists suggest this means it should play a decisive role in protecting Chinese national interests, field modern capabilities commensurate with China’s standing as a major power, and enjoy the institutional status befitting its role as a ‘strategic service,’ an important consideration given the historical dominance of the ground force in China’s military.     

The impact of Islamic State’s ideological correction initiative on al Qaeda’s bid for relevance

ABSTRACT

Al Qaeda following 9-11 experienced a period of stagnation which it sought to remedy through a project of re-branding. Critical of this approach, Islamic State claimed that al Qaeda was an elitist organization that had facilitated the stagnation of the Salafi Jihadist project. In an attempted to claim dominance over the jihad, Islamic State’s endeavored to discredit al Qaeda through a process it presented as ideological correction, linked to Islamic eschatology, sectarian agitation, permissive violence, and the caliphate. Following Islamic State’s acquisition of vast territory in Iraq and Syria, arguments proliferated that Islamic State had surpassed al Qaeda. As the caliphate has collapsed what effects will this have on al Qaeda’s fortunes and strategy? It is argued that Islamic State has provided al Qaeda’s strategic approach with renewed vigour to help ensure its survival and pursue resurgence. Al Qaeda acting in concert with the meta-strategy for survival concept, has altered an existential threat into an advantage through disavowing Islamic State’s methods, continuing to engage with localism, and pursuing rebranding by positioning itself as a moderate alternative. The cases of al Qaeda affiliates in Yemen, Syria, West Africa, and South Asia are instructive in assessing the effectiveness of al Qaeda’s resurgence.     

Expanding the Dragon’s Reach:The Rise of China’s Anti-access Naval Doctrine and Forces

Among the multiple dimensions of the tous azimuths modernisation of Chinese naval forces, the development of China’s anti-access capacity has recently elicited considerable interest. The important link between this capacity and an overarching vision of the use of force – i.e. a naval doctrine – has, however, often been left implicit. This article shows that the particular development of China’s naval anti-access forces – more precisely, forces with an impact on the naval balance – can be explained by a shift of China’s naval doctrine towards a distinctly pre-emptive posture, which, itself, stems from the set of constraints imposed by the framework of ‘local war under informationised conditions’.     

The ‘Third’ US Offset Strategy and Europe’s ‘Anti-access’ Challenge

Over the last two decades, a number of countries (most notably China, Russia and Iran) have been developing so-called anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) capabilities, such as ballistic and cruise missiles, offensive cyber-weapons, electronic warfare, etc. The development of A2/AD capabilities by non-Western countries undermines the foundations of US power projection and global military-technological supremacy. In order to overcome, or at least mitigate, the impending A2/AD challenge, the US Department of Defense (DoD) began to roll out its so-called ‘third’ offset strategy in late 2014. The strategy aims to bring about innovative operational concepts and technologies and spur new doctrinal and organisational debates. This article assesses which of the operational concepts and capabilities informing current US discussions on offset may be relevant in the context of the A2/AD challenges Europeans face on their eastern ‘flank‘ and in their ‘extended southern neighbourhood‘, and which may not. Europeans must grapple with the same conceptual puzzle as the US: how to strike the right balance between defeating A2/AD capabilities and hedging against them, i.e. through alternative strategies that are less dependent on unhindered access and resort to asymmetric forms of warfare. However, they must take into account the geographical features of their eastern flank and extended southern neighbourhood, the level of technological maturity of their challengers, and their own military-technological prowess and political limitations. This suggests a somewhat different approach to offsetting A2/AD than that adopted by the US.