Country survey XVII: New zealand's defence policy

New Zealand's current defence strategy, first expressed in NZ Government (1991), is one of "self-reliance in partnership". We outline the country's defence policy in historical context, examine its current defence expenditure and capabilities, and document the genesis of recent major changes in security policy. We pay particular attention to the role of explicit economic analysis and advice in the formation of these policy changes.     

The Keynesian IS-MR Model and Military Spending

The issue of guns or butter is one of the most fundamental economic questions, yet there is no consensus on a theoretical framework for examining it. Over the last decade, a version of a simple Keynesian macroeconomic model has been applied a number of times to examining the link between defence spending and economic growth in a range of countries. There are reasons for doubting the soundness of this model as a basis for empirical work.     

Deferred verification: the role of new verification technologies and approaches

ABSTRACT

Researchers have recently proposed a new approach to nuclear-arms-control verification, dubbed “deferred verification.” The concept forgoes inspections at sensitive nuclear sites and of nuclear weapons or components in classified form. To implement this concept, a state first divides its nuclear program into a closed segment and an open segment. The total fissile-material inventory in the closed segment, which includes the weapon complex, is known and declared with very high accuracy. Essentially no inspections take place in the closed segment. In contrast, inspectors have access to the open segment, which includes in particular the civilian nuclear sector. The fissile-material inventory in the open segment is known with less accuracy, but uncertainties can be reduced over time using nuclear-archaeology methods. Deferred verification relies primarily on established safeguards techniques and avoids many unresolved verification challenges, such as the need for information barriers for warhead confirmation measurements. At the same time, deferred verification faces some unique challenges. Here, we explore some of these challenges and offer possible solutions; to do so, we examine possible noncompliance strategies in which a state would seek to withhold a higher-than-declared inventory.     

Basic scheduling problems with raw material constraints

One of the achievements of scheduling theory is its contribution to practical applications in industrial settings. In particular, taking finiteness of the available production capacity explicitly into account, has been a major improvement of standard practice. Availability of raw materials, however, which is another important constraint in practice, has been largely disregarded in scheduling theory. This paper considers basic models for scheduling problems in contemporary manufacturing settings where raw material availability is of critical importance. We explore single scheduling machine problems, mostly with unit or all equal processing times, and L_max and C_max objectives. We present polynomial time algorithms, complexity and approximation results, and computational experiments. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2005.     

British counterinsurgency in Brunei and Sarawak, 1962–1963: developing best practices in the shadow of Malaya

This paper uses recently-released material from the ‘migrated archives’ to provide an original counterinsurgency analysis of the TNKU revolt in Brunei and Sarawak from December 1962 to May 1963. It argues that, despite a failure to act upon intelligence predicting the outbreak of insurgency, Britain developed a highly effective counterinsurgency organisation. These records also indicate that decision-makers drew inspiration from the Malayan Emergency to inform success in Brunei. Although Malaya has been challenged as a counterinsurgency paradigm, the Brunei operations show the utility of striking a balance between inappropriately copying from past campaigns and developing best practices applicable to the unique environment of Borneo. In turn, the evolution of effective operational practices in Brunei informed their successful application to the subsequent Indonesian Confrontation.     

Military Debt: Perspectives from the Experience of Arab Countries

The sectoral production function model of Feder (1983) has been widely used to examine the link between defence spending and economic growth. In this paper, the model, for which too much has been claimed in some past work, is examined, and the case is made for using growth in real non‐defence output rather than growth in real aggregate output (inclusive of military spending) as the dependent variable. Attention is restricted to a small group of OECD countries for which reliable labour force and capital stock (as well as defence) data are obtainable. With non‐defence output as the dependent variable and using only high quality data, no evidence in favour of the underconsumptionist (as opposed to the defence as a burden) position is found.     

Pricing bridges to cross a river

We consider a pricing problem in directed, uncapacitated networks. Tariffs must be defined by an operator, the leader, for a subset of m arcs, the tariff arcs. Costs of all other arcs in the network are assumed to be given. There are n clients, the followers, and after the tariffs have been determined, the clients route their demands independent of each other on paths with minimal total cost. The problem is to find tariffs that maximize the operator's revenue. Motivated by applications in telecommunication networks, we consider a restricted version of this problem, assuming that each client utilizes at most one of the operator's tariff arcs. The problem is equivalent to pricing bridges that clients can use in order to cross a river. We prove that this problem is APX‐hard. Moreover, we analyze the effect of uniform pricing, proving that it yields both an m approximation and a (1 + lnD)‐approximation. Here, D is upper bounded by the total demand of all clients. In addition, we consider the problem under the additional restriction that the operator must not reject any of the clients. We prove that this problem does not admit approximation algorithms with any reasonable performance guarantee, unless P = NP, and we prove the existence of an n‐approximation algorithm. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2007