Soldiers,the Frontier and the Politics of Command in British India

The defence of India in general and the North West Frontier in particular was central to strategic debate within the late Victorian army, creating one of the fault lines between rival factions competing for key commands and appointments. After a discussion of the varying strategic options debated within the British and Indian armies, the article examines the impact of Indian defence upon the ‘politics of command’ with particular reference to the appointment of Commanders-in-Chief in India between 1876 and 1892.     

Reviews

Douglas S. Derrer, We Are All the Target: A Handbook of Terrorism Avoidance and Hostage Survival. Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press, 1992. Pp. x+135, notes, index. $14.95. ISBN 01–55750–150–5

Ian Knight, Zulu: Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift, 22–23 January 1879. London: Windrow & Greene, 1992. Pp.136, 150 illus., incl 8 colour plates, maps, biblio. £35. ISBN 1–872004–23–7

Ian Knight, By the Orders of the Great White Queen: Campaigning in Zululand through the Eyes of the British Soldiers, 1879. London: Greenhill Books and Novato: Presidio Press, 1992. Pp. 272, 17 illus., 1 map. £18.95. ISBN 1–85367–122–3

Manfried Rauchensteiner and Erwin A. Schmidl (eds.), Formen des Krieges: vom Mittelalter zum ‘Low‐intensity’ Conflict’. Graz : Verlag Styria, 1991. Pp.208. DM35. ISBN 3–22–12139–7

Harold J. Kearsley, Maritime Power and the Twenty‐First Century. Dartmouth: Dartmouth Publishing Company, Limited, 1992. Pp.xv + 203, 13 diagrams, index. £32.50. ISBN 1–85521–288–9     

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.     

Contents and Author Index,Volume 19, 2012

The U.S. Congress, charged with overseeing U.S. nuclear weapons policy and programs, usually addresses such policies and programs through the annual authorization and appropriations process, focusing mostly on questions of how many and what types of weapons the United States should deploy, with little attention paid to questions about nuclear weapons strategy, doctrine, and policy. The oversight process has brought about some significant changes in the plans for U.S. nuclear weapons, including the elimination of funding for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator study and the shift of that funding into a study of the Reliable Replacement Warhead. But with the focus on authorizations and appropriations, along with the divided jurisdiction over nuclear weapons policy and programs in congressional committees, Congress has not, either recently or during the Cold War and post–Cold War eras, conducted a more comprehensive review of U.S. nuclear weapons strategy, policy, or force structure. Changes in committee jurisdictions could affect the oversight process, but as long as nuclear weapons policy and programs remain a relatively low priority for most members of Congress, and the country at large, it is unlikely that Congress will pursue such a comprehensive debate.     

ON ETHNIC CONFLICT AND THE ORIGINS OF TRANSNATIONAL TERRORISM

Using the ITERATE dataset, we explore the origins of transnational terrorist activity, from 1982 through 1997, in 118 countries. We model terrorism, not as a function of a nation’s ethnic, religious or linguistic fractionalization, but as an independent measure of perceived ethnic tensions. When we control for institutional quality, evidence that political rights and civil liberties mitigate the terrorism‐producing effects of ethnic tensions exists only since 1990. Economic freedoms, on the other hand, robustly reduce the number of terrorist attacks originating in ethnically tense societies.