Confronting the “Perpetual Menace to Human Security”

Nuclear weapon states historically have attached great secrecy to their nuclear weapon and fissile material production programs and stockpiles, despite warnings that this would fuel fears, handicap informed debate and decision making, and drive arms races. As evidenced by the “Action Plan on Nuclear Disarmament” agreed upon at the 2010 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) Review Conference, however, the international community now sees greater transparency about nuclear weapon and fissile material stocks as necessary for enabling and monitoring progress toward nuclear disarmament. To support this effort, the International Panel on Fissile Materials has proposed a step-by-step program for weapon states to declare their inventories, production histories, and disposition of nuclear warheads and fissile materials, and to set up joint projects to develop methods for verifying these declarations. This openness initiative is described here, and could be adopted at the 2015 NPT Review Conference, laying a basis for negotiating verifiable deep reductions in nuclear arsenals and their eventual elimination.     

A Cryptographic Escrow for Treaty Declarations and Step-by-Step Verification

The verification of arms-control and disarmament agreements requires states to provide declarations, including information on sensitive military sites and assets. There are important cases, however, in which negotiations of these agreements are impeded because states are reluctant to provide any such data, because of concerns about prematurely handing over militarily significant information. To address this challenge, we present a cryptographic escrow that allows a state to make a complete declaration of sites and assets at the outset and commit to its content, but only reveal the sensitive information therein sequentially. Combined with an inspection regime, our escrow allows for step-by-step verification of the correctness and completeness of the initial declaration so that the information release and inspections keep pace with parallel diplomatic and political processes. We apply this approach to the possible denuclearization of North Korea. Such approach can be applied, however, to any agreement requiring the sharing of sensitive information.     

Hybrid War and Its Countermeasures: A Critique of the Literature

This article examines critically the literature of hybrid war and evaluates the countermeasures often proposed. It explains the concept of hybrid warfare and its varied interpretations, illustrating how it is a manifestation of current anxieties in armed conflict. The selection of the literature is based on works that are referenced, that offer a scientific approach, and which review either the phenomenon of hybrid warfare or its countermeasures empirically. Unscientific works have been omitted. The analysis of the literature presented here shows that the antidotes to ‘hybridity’ lie not in the operational or tactical sphere but in strategic and political domains.     

The Illusion of Afghanistan’s Electoral Representative Democracy: The Cases of Afghan Presidential and National Legislative Elections

This article is the latest in a series of published articles systematically examining Afghan Presidential and legislative elections. Structural problems including fraud, ethno-linguistic block voting, and the Single Non-Transferable Vote have had significant impacts on the development of Afghan democratic elections. The challenge now facing the current Afghan government and future elections is the daunting task of uniting the Afghan people while not repeating the electoral mistakes of the past. The tricky balancing act of fostering an overarching national identity without being perceived as privileging particular identities requires strong leadership and a willingness to challenge traditional ethnic, linguistic, and religious norms when need be. Karzai and Ghani Administrations have seriously failed relative to this dynamic.     

Decision costs in the intelligence cycle

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The partisan war in north-west Russia 1941–44: a re-examination

This article examines the extent to which the limited achievements of the Soviet partisan movement in north-west Russia during the first months of the Great Patriotic War can be attributed largely to inadequacies in the organisation, leadership, equipment and training of the movement as emphasised in Soviet and post-Soviet Russian published works. On the basis of Soviet archival sources the author concludes that while these factors were important, German occupation policies were far more effective in inhibiting partisan activity in the area concerned than existing published material would have us believe. However, these policies seem only to have been effective in the context of the German military successes or perceived successes at the front. The author goes on to examine factors contributing to the dramatic increase in Soviet partisan activity towards the end of the period of German occupation.