“GOOD COP/BAD COP” AS A MODEL FOR NONPROLIFERATION DIPLOMACY TOWARD NORTH KOREA AND IRAN

Scholarly and popular literature in the recent past has framed nonproliferation diplomacy toward both Iran and North Korea as an example of “good cop/bad cop,” a social-psychological strategy borrowed from law enforcement to describe a process for forcing a confession by subjecting a target to stressful emotional contrast. This article examines those two cases, roughly covering the period since 2003, when the most recent attempts to deal with the Iranian and North Korean proliferation threats began, in light of criteria for employment of the good cop/bad cop strategy. There is some evidence that within the framework of the six-party talks with North Korea and within the framework of the EU-3-U.S. diplomacy toward Iran, the players seeking nonproliferation have adopted good cop/bad cop roles to that end. The article concludes, however, that while there are similarities to the interrogation room technique, the complexity of the international political environment as compared to the interrogation room has prevented the states involved from successfully adopting or effectively exploiting good and bad cop roles. Substantial and exploitable differences of interest among them, and the availability of alternative “escape routes” for the target state, raise serious questions about the applicability of the good cop/bad cop strategy to these two nonproliferation cases, and even about its applicability in future nonproliferation challenges.     

2015 and the survival of the Nigerian State

Nigeria is currently faced with serious domestic challenges. While the state is not officially at war, it is standing on the precipice, especially with the eruption of violence occasioned by the emergence of the Boko Haram sect and the tenuous peace in the Niger Delta. With the 2015 general elections on the horizon, fears of further violence and disintegration are rife, more so because of the debate over who occupies the Presidential Villa at Abuja. President Goodluck Jonathan, a southerner, seems poised for a comeback even amidst the vociferous challenge posed by the political elites of northern Nigeria. This article looks at the different scenarios that might play out in 2015. It analyses the challenges of the survival of the Nigerian state, and makes some policy recommendations that Nigeria and its people need to put into place in order to ensure its survival beyond 2015.     

Optimally scheduling interfering and non‐interfering cranes

This article treats the problem of scheduling multiple cranes processing jobs along a line, where cranes are divided into different groups and only cranes in the same group can interfere with each other. Such crane scheduling problems occur, for example, at indented berths or in container yards where double rail‐mounted gantry cranes stack containers such that cranes of the same size can interfere with each other but small cranes can pass underneath larger ones. We propose a novel algorithm based on Benders decomposition to solve this problem to optimality. In a computational study, it is shown that this algorithm solves small and medium‐sized instances and even many large instances within a few seconds or minutes. Moreover, it improves several best known solutions from the literature with regard to the simpler problem version with only one crane group. We also look into whether investment in more complicated crane configurations with multiple crane groups is actually worthwhile.     

The reliability of multicomponent systems subject to cannibalization

A reliability model for multicomponent multistate systems is presented. This is a generalization of a model previously studied by Hirsch, Meisner, and Boll. In the earlier model, when a failure occurs for which no replacement spare is available, the locations using the same type of part as that having failed are “cannibalized” so as to allocate the shortages to locations where they are least detrimental to system performance. Here, we permit certain restrictions to be imposed upon the cannibalization procedure, and develop effective techniques for relating the probability laws governing the level of system performance to the system structure, cannibalization policy, kit of spare parts, and part reliabilities.     

How to Fight Terrorism: Alternatives to Deterrence

Deterrence has been a crucial element in fighting terrorism, both in actual politics and rational choice analyses of terrorism. But there are superior strategies to deterrence. One is to make terrorist attacks less attractive. Another to raise the opportunity cost - rather than the material cost - to terrorists. These alternative strategies effectively dissuade potential terrorists. The strategies suggested here build on the "benevolence" system and tend to produce a positive sum game among the interacting parties. In contrast, the deterrence system is based on "threats" and tends to produce a negative sum game interaction.     

ARMY RE‐ENLISTMENT DURING OIF/OEF: BONUSES,DEPLOYMENT, AND STOP‐LOSS

In 2004, stretched by wartime deployments, the US Army countered declining retention by increasing re‐enlistment bonuses and implementing stop‐loss to prevent soldiers from separating at the end of their enlistment. We estimate the effects of bonuses, deployment, and stop‐loss on re‐enlistment between FY 2002 and 2006. We estimate that the baseline propensity to re‐enlist fell by 20%. However, we find that deployed soldiers are more likely to re‐enlist and that the estimated effects of re‐enlistment bonuses are similar to those estimated in peacetime. We evaluate the reasons for our findings, and calculate the cost effectiveness of re‐enlistment bonuses.     

Synchronization in hub terminals with the circular arrangement problem

Hub terminals are important entities in modern distribution networks and exist for any transportation device, that is, cross docks and parcel distribution centers for trucks, container ports for ships, railway yards for trains, and hub airports for aircraft. In any of these hubs, the mid‐term planning task of synchronizing the transshipment of goods and passengers when servicing the transportation devices has to be solved, for which many different solution approaches specifically tailored to the respective application exist. We, however, take a unified view on synchronization in hubs and aim at a general building block. As a point of origin, a basic vertex ordering problem, the circular arrangement problem (CAP), is identified. We explain the relation between the CAP and hub processes, develop suited algorithms for solving the CAP, and extend the basic CAP by multiple additions, for example, arrival times, limited storage space, and multiple service points, make the problem adaptable to a wide range of hub terminals. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 62: 454–469, 2015     

Determining crane areas for balancing workload among interfering and noninterfering cranes

This article treats the problem of subdividing an area for storing containers such that the workload is evenly shared among the cranes operating the resulting subareas. We consider two crane sets: while noncrossing constraints between cranes of the same set need to be observed, cranes of different sets do not interfere. Such a problem setting is, for instance, relevant for scheduling the (un‐)loading of vessels by parallel quay cranes operating on opposing berths or in container yards with cross‐over cranes. We formalize the resulting optimization problem, prove computational complexity, and present exact and heuristic solution procedures. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2012     

The M/G/1 queue with instantaneous bernoulli feedback

In this paper we are concerned with several random processes that occur in M/G/1 queues with instantaneous feedback in which the feedback decision process is a Bernoulli process. Queue length processes embedded at various times are studied. It is shown that these do not all have the same asymptotic distribution, and that in general none of the output, input, or feedback processes is renewal. These results have implications in the application of certain decomposition results to queueing networks.