Lessons in airpower projection: Indochina and Algeria

The lessons from the two French counterinsurgencies, Indochina and Algeria, give rise to a new understanding of the projection of airpower in remote and hostile environments and the purpose, design, and use of aircraft in counterinsurgency. In both Indochina and Algeria, the campaigns were ones of poverty, and it is their imaginative management under severe resource constraints that provides thoughtful and applicable lessons for today. In both cases, airpower held the promise of delivering victory and solving the resource issue. In Indochina, acquisition of the needed aircraft, operating knowledge, and experience came too slowly to realize this promise. In Algeria, the French embraced the lessons from Indochina and were quite successful and innovative in the use of airpower. The lessons can be reduced to four requirements: (1) a network of airfields for liaison, ground-support, and intra-theater airlift to enable effective air support of ground forces; (2) a solid, reliable, and simple ground-support aircraft capable of operating from forward airfields within range of ground engagements; (3) a capable intra-theater heavy-lift transport to supply the extended ground forces; and (4) helicopter capability to enhance tactical troop mobility and support.     

The Evolution and Significance of the 1972 Incidents at Sea Agreement

As a consequence of the rapid growth of Soviet maritime power during the 1960s, hazardous incidents at sea and in the air became a regular part of the Cold War. Eventually, both Washington and Moscow came to recognize the importance of an agreement limiting this perilous set of interactions, resulting in the Incidents at Sea Agreement that was signed in May 1972. The set of rules and procedures agreed upon helped to calm tensions in subsequent crises and provides ample lessons for placing reasonable limits on other tense maritime rivalries.     

India and Israel: emerging partnership

The absence of formal diplomatic relations between India and Israel from India's hesitant recognition of Israel in 1950 and the establishment of full relations in January 1992, was the result of a complex interplay between two sets of tensions. The first involved the Arab–Israeli dispute, and India's sympathies with a post-colonial Arab world and with the Non-Aligned Movement; the second involved accommodating Muslim opinion within India. Normalization has proceeded more strongly as the growth of Hindu nationalism has weakened Muslim leverage on Indian foreign policy.     

BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL WEAPONS ARMS CONTROL IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Nonproliferation policies to prevent biological and chemical weapons use are important, but insufficient, particularly in view of the rise of global terrorism. Given the history of developing and using these weapons, it is crucial that governments properly prepare for biological and chemical threats, whether naturally occurring or man-made, such as by developing and managing effective healthcare infrastructure to mitigate widespread illness and injuries resulting from pandemics or terrorist attacks. Although the Middle East is one of the most sensitive and complex areas in the world—especially regarding regional arms control efforts and prevention—coordinating preparedness strategies among states in the region may be possible. Cooperatively addressing biological and chemical threats could lead to constructive progress towards the otherwise elusive goal of establishing a weapons of mass destruction-free zone in the Middle East.     

Building the next nuclear community

This viewpoint takes stock of the changes in the strategic nuclear landscape in recent decades and reflects on its consequences on the policy community. It finds that the number and scope of issues have expanded considerably; they have manifested themselves in many more regions of the world; and they have become deeply politicized and polarized. The consequences have been twofold: the nuclear policy field has seen the development of an increasingly diverse expert community composed of highly specialized functionalists and regionalists, and it has become ever more divided into two entirely separate ideological camps—one that believes in deterrence, the other in disarmament. The stove-piping of expertise and the widening gap between deterrence and disarmament ideologies are immensely problematic because, in different ways, they stand in the way of the emergence of a better and safer nuclear future. Looking ahead, it is critical to “bust the silos of expertise” and to build bridges between the deterrence and disarmament ideological camps. Only such a community-building effort will help solve today’s and tomorrow’s nuclear challenges.     

Facing an uncertain economic future: Environmental management spending and rural regions surrounding the U.S. DOE's nuclear weapons facilities

Using an economic simulation model, the study finds that the proposed expenditure by the U.S. Department of Energy of billions of dollars to manage the nuclear weapons environmental legacy followed by sharp reductions in expenditures would cause economic spikes and then depressions in three rural regions (Hanford in Washington, INEEL in Idaho, and SRS in South Carolina). The economies of larger and growing metropolitan regions with DOE sites will not be noticeably impacted. Simulations suggest pronounced impacts on income, jobs, and gross regional product in the three dependent rural regions. Policy options are reviewed to address the economic stresses of these rural dependent regions.     

Military spending and economic growth in South Africa

This paper undertakes an empirical analysis of the economic effects of military spending on the South African economy. It estimates a neo‐classical model common in the literature at the level of the macroeconomy and at the level of the manufacturing sector. An attempt is made to improve upon the model by allowing the data to determine the dynamic structure of the model through an ARDL procedure. No significant impact of military spending is found in aggregate, but there is a significant negative impact for the manufacturing sector. This suggests that the cuts in domestic military procurement that have occurred since 1989 could lead to improved economic performance in South Africa through their impact on the manufacturing sector.     

The impact of arms production on the South African manufacturing industry

The 1977 UN arms embargo was one of the main factors which led South Africa to establish a largely self sufficient import‐substituting arms industry capable of meeting the apartheid state's demand for sophisticated weaponry. While macroeconomic studies suggest that high military spending had a damaging effect on economic growth, no studies have investigated the disaggregated impact of military expenditure on industrial development. This paper applies panel data methods to the Industrial Development Corporation's Sectoral Database in order to analyse the level effects of military spending.     

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.