‘Today we shall drink blood’: internal unrest in Nigeria

Despite some tentative internal peace agreements, Nigeria continues to face violence from multiple groups. This violence feeds upon itself, with segments of the population being mobilized both for self defense and for pressing their ideological and practical goals. These multiple sources of violence, which the Nigerian government appears unable to control to any significant degree, have a long term corrosive effect on the country's internal stability. There are few reasons to be sanguine as to any rapid changes to the level of overall violence or the relative number of armed groups, although their specific identities may shift. Nigeria represents a good case study of a country in which relatively low but persistent violence by a multiplicity of groups can have major impacts on internal security.     

Capacity and competence: full-spectrum counterinsurgency in the Horn of Africa

From 2006 to 2011, al Qaeda's East African proxy, al Shabaab, served as de facto ruling party of Somalia despite the efforts of the internationally recognized Transitional Federal Government (TFG). During these five years, a violent struggle between al Shabaab and the Burundian and Ugandan Peacekeepers of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) resulted in thousands of dead civilians, hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons, and a strategic environment inhospitable to reconciliation, recovery, or development. Beginning in August 2011, AMISOM was able to break the deadlock and force al Shabaab from Mogadishu, then subsequently, Kismayo, and ultimately to consolidate and reorganize in the Somali hinterland. In order to continue the momentum, the African Union and other partner nations must support the newly recognized Somali Federal Government (SFG), neutralize al Shabaab, and provide good governance to its constituents. Al Shabaab's revenue streams must be shut down and their offensive capability must be degraded while the strategic environment is shaped to ensure that conditions conducive to a revival do not exist. Failure to do so will likely see Somalia continuing to produce Islamic extremists and pirates to menace international maritime traffic in the Western Indian Ocean, destabilize East Africa, and adversely impact millions.     

Expeditionary police advising: some causes of failure

ABSTRACT

The practice of dispatching teams of police advisors to other states to build or train foreign security forces began at the end of the nineteenth century, yet there exists no definitive history of the practice, or any definitive theoretical approach underpinning why such missions succeed or fail. Drawing upon their recent edited book on expeditionary police advising, and by examining the donor or sending states, the host nations, and the use of police in counterinsurgency situations, the authors present some key reasons why such missions fail, and lay some groundwork for additional study of this important subject.     

Bedeviled by a Paradox: Nitze,Bundy, and an Incipient Nuclear Norm

ABSTRACT

This article explores how two influential American policy makers—Paul Nitze and McGeorge Bundy—wrestled with the idea of a norm against the use of nuclear weapons. Existing scholarship has overlooked how both Bundy and Nitze came to understand the idea of nuclear non-use, especially related to the credibility of threats to use nuclear weapons. Using documentary evidence from their personal papers, this article illuminates the thinking of Bundy and Nitze, finding that both engaged with the idea of a norm of non-use of nuclear weapons in their strategic writing and thought.     

BOOK REVIEWS

This study examines how young people who have joined the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) on the two-year Military Skills Development System (MSDS) contract experience military service, and the effect this has on their ability to readapt to civilian life. The first part of the study examines the theoretical debates associated with military socialisation and reintegration into civilian life. Hereafter, the findings are presented in terms of the experiences of MSDS privates serving in the infantry, those that have left, and the perceptions of employment agencies in terms of the marketability of military skills. The conclusion is reached that MSDS members experience their two years in the SANDF as life-changing, that this affects their ability to reintegrate back into civilian society, and that the skills acquired during military training is of limited market value. The conclusion is reached that more needs to be done to assist these young military veterans to adapt to civilian life and to augment their military experience with more marketable skills to enable them to find gainful employment.     

PART II: CONTINUING TO QUESTION THE RELIABILITY OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE

Responding to Derrin Culp's critique, the author argues that distinguished nuclear theorists may be wrong because groups of experts have been wrong in the past, that city attacks are central to nuclear deterrence theory because killing civilians en masse is what nuclear weapons do best, and that understanding how effective city attacks would be in war is crucial to understanding how well they would work as threats. Moreover, while it is undeniable that nuclear deterrence works some of the time, this simply is not good enough. Because any failure of nuclear deterrence could end in catastrophic nuclear war, nuclear deterrence must be perfect or almost perfect. This is a very difficult standard to reach.